West Coast ball gets shot of life
UCLA, Gonzaga make statement
LOS ANGELES — With three games remaining in the NCAA tournament, this much is indisputable —college basketball can go strong to its left.
For the first time, every school in the Final Four is located not necessarily on the Left Coast, but west of the Mississippi River. Seven of the teams in the Elite Eight fell into that category.
With the exception of UCLA — and that reputation was forged in the John Wooden era — the blueblood programs are out and the new are in, with Gonzaga, Baylor and blast-from-the-past Houston rounding out the Final Four.
Watching from the couch are familiar programs such as Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, Michigan State and Louisville. Of those schools, North Carolina, Michigan State and Kansas made the tournament.
“This is a renaissance for West Coast basketball,” said Fox analyst Steve Lavin, a former UCLA coach. “People forget that the West Coast was the epicenter of college basketball for decades. Naturally, the results of this season will be tough to duplicate on an annual basis, but this a timely shot in the arm for college basketball on this side of the country.”
In a year when people are rolling up their sleeves for real shots, some people will point to this Final Four as yet another result of COVID-19 weirdness.
Said Michael Holton, a former UCLA player and assistant coach: “I think when people look at this year they’ll say, ‘What? There was no North Carolina, no Duke, no Kentucky? Oh yeah, that was that year that was crazy, it was COVID, it was this, it was that.’ I just think it’s going to be convoluted, unfortunately.”
That said, he isn’t complaining. “I think it’s great that Gonzaga has a chance to go undefeated from the West Coast Conference,” said Holton, a color analyst for the Portland Trail Blazers, his former NBA team.
Phil Martelli, longtime coach of St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia and now an assistant for Michigan, which lost Tuesday to UCLA, said no one should add an asterisk to this season.
“Everybody needs to appreciate the sacrifices these kids have made,” Martelli said. “I don’t see anything where an asterisk will have to be applied. These teams that got this far, they’re going to be in that bubble for over three weeks. The kids haven’t really had that college experience. There’s no crowds to speak of. every kid that participated in college basketball this year, men’s and women’s, should be applauded.”
These are heady times for UCLA, the gutty program that has survived the improbable odyssey from the First Four to its 19th Final Four, the second-most to North Carolina’s 20. (The number is 18; the NCAA vacated the Bruins’ 1980 appearance.)
“I think UCLA and what they have done is really going to be good for the conference,” said Mike Montgomery, who coached Stanford to the Final Four in 1998. “Now kids are going to say, ‘Hey, UCLA is back. I can go there and win. I can go there and play for a national championship.‘ “
Gonzaga, meanwhile, is looking to become the first team to finish the season and tournament undefeated since Indiana in 1975-76. UCLA accomplished it four times under Wooden.
“Having been a West Coast person, it’s so great to see that the storyline is about the regionality,” said Gloria Nevarez, commissioner of the West Coast Conference. “Because we know we have good basketball out here, but there are certain challenges we have with the time zone.”
Likewise, this season is a coup for Texas schools, further validation that there’s far more than football in the Lone Star state.
“Basketball in Texas has been an afterthought for so long,” Sports Illustrated columnist Pat Forde said. “They’ve got two in this Final Four, they had the national runner-up in 2019 [Texas Tech]. Texas was a three-seed this year, North Texas won a game. Abilene Christian won a game, beating Texas. Basketball in Texas has gotten so much better.”
Austin Karp, sports ratings analyst for Sports Business Journal, said it will be a challenge for CBS to attract a coast-to-coast audience without the marquee teams in the mix. Compared to 2019 — the 2020 event was scrubbed amid the pandemic — the audience is down 12% headed into the Final Four, pushed down by a 45% drop for the Elite Eight.