Different styles clash in semifinals
Long road could end with favorites battling it out
INDIANAPOLIS — Next up on the long list of wannabes eager to stop, or even slow, the undefeated Gonzaga Bulldogs is a team basketball fans might have heard of: UCLA.
In a strange twist that typifies a strange year, the legacy program with more national championships than anyone is a plucky up-and-comer this time around. The Bruins are listed as the biggest underdog at the Final Four in 25 years — 14 points — as they head into Saturday night’s game.
And tiny Gonzaga — enrollment 7,300 with a dozen or so very talented basketball players sprinkled among them — is the behemoth nobody can seem to touch.
In the other game, somebody will be doing a joyful Texas two-step after Baylor and Houston meet Saturday night in the Final Four.
It could be Bears coach Scott Drew, who built his now-mighty program from the ashes of one of the worst scandals in sports history. Led by guards Jared Butler, Davion Mitchell and Macio Teague, they’ve have rolled to their first semifinal since 1950 with the kind of joie de vivre nobody thought possible two decades ago.
Or it could be Cougars counterpart Kelvin Sampson, who has spent more than a decade trying to outrun the “cheater” label hung from his neck during his days at Oklahoma and Indiana. He might finally have done it with this bunch, a mishmash of overlooked prospects and transfers that have fans fondly recalling the halcyon days of Phi Slama Jama.
Either way, the first Final Four game involving two programs from the football-mad Lone Star State will produce a hoops finalist that stands on the verge of a its first national championship.
UCLA is the fifth 11th seed to reach the Final Four, and joins the 2011 VCU squad as the second to get this far after starting in the First Four, the preliminary round the NCAA added when it expanded the bracket to 68 teams a decade ago.
Heading into Selection Sunday, the Bruins (22-9) were viewed as slightly better than a bubble team, but the First Four placement identified them as one of the last four teams in. That placed a chip on their shoulders, but with Gonzaga (30-0) looming, this is no time for outside motivation, according to coach Mick Cronin.
“I give them pointers and try to be honest and tell them how hard it’s going to be because of who we’re playing,” said Cronin, who has led UCLA within two wins of the program’s 12th national title. “I’m not the false-motivation guy, because none of that is going to help you when you’re trying to stop Jalen Suggs in transition.”
Suggs, a freshman who will likely go in the NBA lottery if he leaves after one season, is one cog on a team with the nation’s best offense (91.6 points per game), the nation’s best shooting percentage (54.8) and the nation’s most impressive margin of victory (23.1). The Zags have won 29 of their first 30 games by double digits.
It has been 71 years since the
Bears reached this point. Seven coaches tried and failed to replicate the success. The last of those, Dave Bliss, brought the program to its nadir: the 2003 shooting death of player Patrick Denney, his teammate Carlos Dotson pleading guilty to the murder, an NCAA investigation and attempts by Bliss to cover it up.
Into that cesspool came Drew, the squeaky clean son of Valparaiso coach Homer Drew, who set about rebuilding a program hit hard by NCAA sanctions. In five years, he had the program back in the NCAA Tournament, and trips to the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight became commonplace until finally breaking through this season.
“We had goals,” Butler said, “to leave a legacy at Baylor and be the best team Baylor’s ever had.”
Sampson, who grew up among the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, is returning to the Final Four after leading Oklahoma there in 2002.
The intervening years brought so much scandal — impermissible text messages and phone calls, a messy split with Indiana, a five-year “show cause” penalty from the NCAA — that it nearly torpedoed his career.
Much like he rebuilt Houston, though, Sampson painstakingly rebuilt his reputation.
Now, both are back on the national stage.
“We didn’t try to cut any corners,” Sampson said. “We did it brick by brick.”