West Coast to become Best Coast? Stage set for Final Four

The Final Four is set. And in an unusual bit of geography, it’ll be schools from neighbouring states out west (Oregon, Gonzaga) against schools from neighbouring states in the east (North Carolina, South Carolina).

The national semifinals in Phoenix will feature No. 1 seeds in the Bulldogs and Tar Heels, a No. 3 seed in the Ducks and the surprising No. 7-seed Gamecocks. The first game on Saturday will be South Carolina-Gonzaga, tipping off at 3:09 p.m. PT. Oregon-North Carolina will follow roughly 40 minutes after the completion of that game.

For the Tar Heels, it’s a record 20th trip to the Final Four. Meanwhile, it’s the first Final Four trip for a trio of coaches in Gonzaga’s Mark Few, Oregon’s Dana Altman and South Carolina’s Frank Martin.

Tyler Dorsey had just led Oregon to its first Final Four in nearly eight decades when he looked into a TV camera and passed along a very simple message to all those East Coast fans.

The ones who are often asleep before the Ducks have even taken the floor.

“Wake ’em up,” Dorsey said with a grin. “Wake up!”

Wide awake, sir. All of college basketball is awake to the West Coast now, after the Ducks dumped top-seeded Kansas and No. 1 seed Gonzaga routed Xavier to send two teams from the Pacific time zone to the national semifinals for the first time in NCAA Tournament history.

If one of them should win the title, it would be the first for a school west of the Mississippi in a decade, and the first by a true West Coast team since UCLA in 1995.

“We’ve opened a lot of peoples’ eyes as far as people thinking the West Coast is soft and we’re not as good as the East Coast,” the Ducks’ Jordan Bell said. “East Coast bias and stuff like that . . . I really hope we’ve opened peoples’ eyes. I hope people see we’re as good as anybody else.

“Just put up a court,” Bell said. “We’ll see who is best.” Hard to argue who that is so far. Gonzaga has been marching toward national prominence for years, but only reached the Final Four for the first time when it dumped the Musketeers on Saturday night.

The Ducks are headed back for the first time since 1939, when the team dubbed the “Tall Firs” won their only title.

In doing so, Altman’s team gave the Pac-12 — which started with four teams in the field — a 10-3 mark in this year’s tournament.

“It means a lot for us to hold it down for the Pac-12,” Dorsey said. “We take pride in that. They always talk about how West Coast basketball is not as good as whoever, but we don’t worry about that. We just lace them up and go play and play as hard as we can.”

“People think West Coast kids are soft. We’re all about going to the beach, sunshine,” said Bell, a product of from Long Beach, Calif. “It shows no matter where you’re born, toughness is just something you learn.”

Sure, there will still be one traditional powerhouse at the Final Four — that being the Tar Heels — but the West Coast will be well represented for a change.

“I think it has a tendency to sometimes be cyclical,” said Few, who pointed out how good several other West Coast teams were this year.

In Sunday’s Elite Eight games, Luke Maye hit a jumper with 0.3 seconds left, and top-seeded North Carolina held off Kentucky 75-73 to earn the Tar Heels’ second straight trip to the Final Four, while Sindarius Thornwell scored 26 points as South Carolina earned its first trip with a 77-70 victory over Florida.