FOURMAL INVITATION
Blue-blood UNC and 3 newbies vying for title
IF WE’RE talking about a “Hey, who invited these guys?” perspective, the Final Four that will gather just outside Phoenix in a few days probably doesn’t match up to 2011, when an 8-seed (Butler) and an 11-seed (Virginia Commonwealth), both schools (at the time, anyway) from proudly nonpower conferences, crashed the party in Houston.
But even then, through fate and coincidence, there was a decided evenness to that party. Butler and VCU were bracket-busters, yes. But the other two participants were two of the sport’s absolute blue bloods, Kentucky (bluest of the blue) and Connecticut (also pretty damned blue). This weekend? North Carolina is a lighter shade of blue, but blue nonetheless, and the Tar Heels will stand alone with their pedigree and their history. It may be hard for the average college basketball fan to pick among the gate crashers in the Final Four — Oregon, Gonzaga, South Carolina — but there is only one choice if you put your money behind Old Money. What follows is a primer of the New Bloods and the Blue Bloods:
North Carolina Tar Heels
Blue Blood factor: 100 out of 100. Odds of winning title: 2-to-1
North Carolina has the two most vital ingredients toward being a college basketball blue blood. First off, the Tar Heels have a history that extends backwards forever: 48 NCAA appearances, dating back to 1941; 20 Final Fours; five national championships; 38 regular-season ACC titles. Names? Jordan. Worthy. Perkins. Ford. Scott. Cunningham. Rosenbluth. Smith. McGuire.
Anyway, if we’re going by reputation and experience, then Carolina should cruise through Glendale in a cakewalk. Remember those 20 Final Fours? Yeah. That is 19 more than the other three teams at the Final Four have, combined.
Here’s one for you: Entering the game Saturday with Oregon, Roy Williams already has coached 520 minutes in the Final Four.
Mark Few, Frank Martin and Dana Altman combined?
You, no doubt, already guessed it. Zero minutes.
All of which makes for a thoroughly unfair yet, at the same time, altogether reasonable point: There are three teams at the Final Four who can win the national championship. There is only one that can lose it. They’ll be wearing blue.
Gonzaga Bulldogs
Blue Blood factor: 50 out of 100 (and climbing). Odds of win
ning title: 3-to-2 Before this spate of tournament success (19 straight NCAAs), Gonzaga was known for two people. One was John Stockton, who played four years in Spokane then became one of the greatest professional point guards of all time, leading the Utah Jazz to the NBA Finals twice. The other was Bing Crosby, who grew up just outside the campus g ro unds, who graduated from Gonzaga High and attended Gonzaga College for two years before declaring early for the big-band draft, later leading Bob Hope on the road to Singapore, Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia, Rio and Bali.
Every campus has its urban legends. One that has swirled around Gonzaga, on and off for close to a century, is this: Sophomore Bing Crosby, inspired either by daring or by drink, helped to toss a piano off the roof of DeSmet Hall. There’s only one small detail wrong with that tale: DeSmet wasn’t opened until 1925. By then, Bing Crosby was well on the road to Hollywood.
But there remains this fun artifact, carefully preserved through the years: a windowsill in Room 244 of College Hall, a protective strip of plastic covering a pocket knife’s etching that is close to 100 years old: “Harry Bing Crosby.”
Oregon Ducks
Blue Blood fac tor : 20 out of 100. Odds of winning title: 5-to-1
Oregon is the big-talking, bigspending billionaire who was born in the projects, raised on the mean streets, educated thanks to his street smarts, who made a killing in the tech boom and just bought his way into Baltusrol. Or at least that’s a fun way to look at a team owned (um, make that supported) by Phil Knight, the Nike founder who actually was invited onto the ladder to snip away a piece of the net when the Ducks beat Arizona last week.
The funny part of all of this is that there was a time when Oregon had more NCAA championships than North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, Kentucky — and everyone else, for that matter — combined. The first NCAA Tournament was held in March 1939. Oregon won all three of its games, resoundingly: 56-41 over Texas and 55-37 over Oklahoma in the West Region held in San Francisco, then 46-33 over Ohio State in the finals held at Northwestern.
They weren’t called the Ducks then. They were called the Webfoots. Why anyone would ever have thought that “Ducks” was better than “Webfoots” is beyond explanation. And, actually, they weren’t much referred to as Webfoots either: the preferred nickname used by the newspapers of the time was the “Tall Firs,” because they were so much bigger than most of their foes.
The starting front line: 6-foot-8 center Slim Wintermute, and 6-4 forwards John Dick and Lannie Gale.
South Carolina Gamecocks
Blue Blood factor: 15 out of 100. Odds of title: 8-to-1
The Gamecocks are the feelgood team in this grouping, partly because they are the lowest remaining seed (7), partly because their coach, Frank Martin, has become the breakout coaching star of the tournament.
But there is also a sense that South Carolina finally has received some closure for one of the most controversial decisions in the history of college sports. Bob Ryan, whose opinion I trust implicitly on such matters, tweeted this week: “There have been numerous ‘dumb’ college decisions. But the chronological grandpa was South Carolina leaving the ACC.”
Now, there is a loud football crowd that would argue that in the end, South Carolina’s ultimate migration to the SEC (after 20 lean years as an independent and then a member of the Metro Conference) has more than made up for the shortsightedness of sports secession. Still, there is something positively delicious at the possibility of a North Carolina-South Carolina title game.
Winner gets a free weekend stay at “South of the Border.”