MEMPHIS RUN?

A number of people have emailed me, wondering what I thought about a possible run to the Final Four by the Memphis Tigers.

There is no question that John Calipari’s team is loaded with talent and it more then capable of winning four games to advance to San Antonio. But the question most have raised is whether or not C-USA has prepared them for the challenges that lay ahead.

Memphis had a few challenges during the course of the season. Excluding their opening round game, Memphis will face arguably better opposition then they saw throughout their conference season. They had a number of games in which the team appeared to simply hit the switch to take it to another level and win the game. Flipping the switch is dangerous in March. There simply are no rollovers in the NCAA Tournament.

Now all that said Memphis has a lot more talent than most teams in the tournament. And remember those UNLV teams in the early 1990s. At that time they were still playing in the Big West Conference, which was very comparable to the current C-USA. In fact C-USA is a stronger league.

The point being that talent is still talent, whether you are playing in an average league or against better competition in the NCAA tournament.


WHAT IT TAKES

So what will it take for Memphis or anyone else to be the last team standing in San Antonio? Talent is certainly a big factor, but that alone is often not enough.

Ordinarily teams that advance to the Sweet 16, Elite Eight and the Final Four all do a few things very well.

For starters you have to be able to defend. There have been a lot of high-octane offenses that have exited the tournament early, in years past. You must be able to score, but you have to stop the opponent from scoring.

Offensively you have to be able to execute in the halfcourt. A lot of teams can get up and down the floor in transition, but somewhere along the line you are going to have to produce points with your halfcourt offense.

It’s also very important to take care of the basketball. The difference between 20 wins and being near the bottom of your conference is normally just a handful of possessions throughout the season. There is such a fine line between winning and losing and that is magnified in the tournament. Each possession is crucial to advancing.

Another key is the ability to make free throws. Poor free-throw shooting teams are usually exposed in March. If you have a lead you need to put it away at the free-throw line. If you are trying to rally you need to take advantage of trips to the line.

Confidence is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. Quite often you will hear a coach say something like, “We hated to lose, but this loss will actually be better for us because it gives us extra days to prepare for the NCAA tournament.” Come on now. Basketball is a game of confidence. Losing puts doubt in a team’s head.

Lastly I think it’s important to have a little luck. In any given year you can look at the Final Four participants and find at least once bounce that went their way at a crucial juncture of the game.


AN OUTSTANDING COACHING JOB

Names like John Calipari (Memphis), Matt Painter (Purdue), Bruce Pearl (Tennessee) and others will dominate the talk of National Coach of the Year honors. And deservingly so, but there are a lot of coaches that won’t get any consideration, but they have still done outstanding jobs.

I know this will sound strange, when you look at the win-loss record and I know you will say I am bias, but how about the job Billy Gillispie has done at Kentucky.

Consider the fact that the team had to deal with a change to a completely different coaching philosophy. Consider also that there was a big adjustment period for the coaching staff. And consider the myriad of injuries and the overall lack of great talent.

Coach Gillispie had done an outstanding job this season. Most everyone wrote this team off half-a-dozen times in December and another half-dozen or so in the past few weeks, but Gillispie has kept the team together, all the while making progress.

Personally I always think Coach of the Year honors often overlook the really outstanding jobs. If coaching was the deciding factor in a team's success and not players, then the same team every year with the best coach would win the championship!


PLAYER OF THE YEAR

You can certainly make an argument for someone else, but most of the talking points for National Player of the Year center on Michael Beasley and Tyler Hansbrough.

Michael Beasley has certainly lived up to all the hype surrounding his recruitment to Kansas State. He’s averaging nearly 27 points and 13 rebounds per game. Averaging a double-double is impressive in itself, but Beasley’s numbers are ridiculous.

In his first collegiate game he had 24 rebounds. He’s had only three games this season in which he failed to reach double-digits in rebounds and has reached the teens in scoring in all but one game this season. He’s had 13 games in which he has tallied 30 or more, including three 40-point efforts.

Those are pretty lofty numbers, but Hansbrough’s stat sheet is impressive as well.

The 6-foot-9 junior is averaging 23 points and nearly 11 rebounds per game. And while it might not be any eye-popping stat, he also leads UNC in steals.

While Beasley has been ridiculous at times, Hansbrough has been a model of consistency for his team. He has scored in double figures in every game, with 39 in a win over Clemson.

Hansbrough is the best player on the top-ranked team in America. He’s the National Player of the Year.


MORE IN OR OUT

Who will be happy and who will be upset, come Sunday evening? The past two weeks have been dominated by talk of which 65 teams are in the NCAA right now. Of course there is a good chance someone will play themselves into or out of the tournament before I have finished my column.

Projecting the field has essentially become the pre-tournament ‘tournament.’ Whether you agree with what is written by so-and-so and discussed on TV by this-guy-or-that, it should be noted that it’s helping to bring attention to programs that otherwise might not get a lot of airtime.

Last season there was so much talk about Drexel’s NCAA Tournament resume. Every segment on tournament projections had a major focus on the Dragons, who failed to win the Colonial Athletic Association tournament. Of course in the end Drexel was passed over by the NCAA selection committee, but not before all of that attention.

Think about all the publicity that Bruiser Flint and his team received. By Sunday afternoon most fans knew the University’s enrollment, student-to-teacher ratio, its complete academic profile and game-by-game recap of the entire season.

Making the NCAA tournament would have been the perfect ending to such a week of national attention. For seven days they were America’s team.

So that is the hand dealt to St. Mary’s, South Alabama and VCU. As the week has progressed we have all learned a lot more about their respective programs. All of them, some of them or none of them could be invited to the NCAA tournament, but come Sunday we will know more about these three programs then most that have already been invited.