Final Four comes down to defence, desire for redemption
GLENDALE, ARIZ.— March Madness is down to four teams with a national championship in their sights. Saturday’s men’s semifinals pit Gonzaga against South Carolina followed by Oregon vs. North Carolina. Here’s what you need to know:
SOUTH CAROLINA (7) VS. GONZAGA (1)
TIPOFF: 6:09 p.m. (TSN4/CBS) South Carolina and Gonzaga have a lot more in common than just being in their first Final Four. Experience has been a key word around the two programs. A more pertinent word is defence.
They don’t play the same style, but they both are effective in holding down an opponent. Guard Duane Notice, a Toronto native, is the defensive focal point for seventh-seeded South Carolina.
“Just as your point guard initiates your offence, your on-ball defender initiates your defence,” Gamecocks coach Frank Martin said Friday. “When your point guard’s good offensively, your team is good offensively. When your on-ball guard is good defensively, your team is good defensively. They go hand in hand.”
Top-seeded Gonzaga relies on seven-foot-one centre Przemek Karnowski to lead its defence.
“The rim protection that we have this year is different than anything we’ve been able to put out there,” Bulldogs coach Mark Few said. “We got the bulk, the strength, size of Karnowski which allows us to not have to double-team. So then we’re not forced into rotations. But then we also can combine that with the athleticism, the shot-blocking of Zach Collins and Killian Tillie helps.”
Ask the Gamecocks about Gonzaga’s defence and rim protection is mentioned again and again.
“Their bigs are huge,” South Carolina’s Sindarius Thornwell said. “They rebound well and we are big on offensive rebounding. We are big on attacking the rim. They do a great job keeping you out of the rim and make you take pull-up jumpers. We must do a good job moving their defence so we can get easier shots.”
Gonzaga has allowed 60.9 points per game. South Carolina’s scrambling zone has kept its opponents off balance and out of sync. The Gamecocks allow 64.9 points per game.
“We have been working on it all week, just trying to find ways to exploit their defence,” Gonzaga’s Johnathan Williams said. “I feel like we’ll be fine. We just need to follow the game.”
Before this year, South Carolina’s last NCAA win was in 1973. Gonzaga has 21 tournament wins in the 18 consecutive years the Zags have reached the NCAA under Few.
OREGON (3) VS. NORTH CAROLINA (1)
TIPOFF: 8:49 p.m. (TSN4/CBS) Roy Williams could hear his own footsteps as he padded through the near-silent locker room, trying to wrap his mind around an unanswerable question: What do you say to a group of players who did nothing wrong, but lost anyway?
In some form or other, that question has lingered at North Carolina all season. With a win over Oregon in the Final Four, the Tar Heels will be back to the title game where, last year, Villanova unravelled their dreams with a game-winning three with the buzzer sounding.
“The most inadequate feeling I’ve ever had in my life,” Williams said this week. “What I did is, I tried to tell them, let’s focus on using this feeling as fuel, as motivation, to work extremely hard in the off-season.”
Most of the key players from last year’s Tar Heels — among them, Joel Berry II, Isaiah Hicks and Justin Jackson — are back. They have a group-texting channel named, simply, Redemption.
The North Carolina players have walked the fine line this season between the natural inclination to dwell on the painful loss, and the impossible task of forgetting it.
“A dream was to get here,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t necessarily to get back here and get back what we thought we won last year.”
Oregon had title dreams last year, too.
The Ducks were a No. 1 seed. In an NCAA Tournament that veered off the rails, forward Dillon Brooks, a Mississauga native, got lectured by Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who lectured in the handshake line for jacking up (and making) an uncontested three while the teams were running out the clock in Oregon’s win. Then, the top-seeded Ducks ran into Buddy Hield in the Elite Eight.
They looked primed for another run this season, then big man Chris Boucher, a Montreal native, went down with a torn-up knee in the Pac-12 tournament, and thoughts of Oregon repeating as a1seed went out the window.
Instead, the Ducks were seeded third and largely overlooked.
“We just had each of our guys step up and try to do a little more,” Ducks coach Dana Altman said.
Oregon’s Tyler Dorsey is shooting 65 per cent (17 for 26) from threepoint range in the tournament. He said teams haven’t been stepping out to challenge his shot as much in the tournament, and that’s even more the case as he’s extended his range over the last few weeks. The key to keeping a hot hand? “Nothing to figure out, really,” he said. “I’m just getting a lot of shots. I’m probably getting more than anyone, and I’ve got the hot hand.”