Cinderella Orange hope they don’t turn into pumpkins
HOUSTON — In this most unpredictable of college basketball seasons, it’s fitting that Cinderella Syracuse has a shot tonight to upend the lone top dog remaining at the NCAA tournament.
A shot, sure, but not a very good one.
North Carolina already beat the Orange twice this season (84-73 and 75-70) and has been even better since. Syracuse always finds long, athletic players, but has met its match in the Tobacco Road representatives.
The Tar Heels got a No. 1 seed for a reason. They’ve been bigger and better than most opponents all season and that shouldn’t stop now. The Syracuse players should come in feeling looser, because they know they are playing with “house money,” according to head coach Jim Boeheim, but North Carolina should have plenty of time to stabilize.
Syracuse has looked finished many times in recent weeks, while North Carolina has mostly cruised. That would be a worry for the Tar Heels, had Notre Dame not finally given them a challenge last week.
This group needed that competition to get ready for the final weekend of the season. If the Tar Heels win today, they square off in Monday night’s title game against either Oklahoma or Villanova, a pair of No. 2 seeds who will battle in today’s first semifinal.
The zone will present some issues — North Carolina loves to take advantage of its height and athleticism by going inside, but the Orange will dare the favourites to fire away — but UNC’s shooters have found the range in the tournament. There’s also the familiarity that comes with already having met twice.
With all of the focus on how well North Carolina will shoot the ball, Syracuse’s offensive inconsistency has been underplayed.
Not to mention history shows that Final Four teams shoot far worse in huge football stadiums like NRG Stadium than usual because the sightlines are so difficult.
Keep a close eye on who wins the battle up front. Brice Johnson and Isaiah Hicks are very good, but DaJuan Coleman has been excellent in the past against the Tar Heels, Tyler Roberson is no slouch either and Tyler Lydon has been intriguing defensively.
Roy Williams is not letting his squad get overconfident, no matter how much they are favoured by and even though Syracuse is just the fourth double-digit seed ever to get this far.
“The Syracuse games, the games went right down to the wire,” the Tar Heels coach said Friday.
“Both games within the last three or four minutes, especially at our place, I think it was like 2½ minutes, we were up one, scored the ball, took it to three. At their place about five minutes to go, I think it was still a one- or two-possession game.”
Williams then told the story of Villanova in 1984, a team that was the huge underdog against Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown Hoyas.
The Hoyas won two regular season contests — but they were closer than most people thought — and then Villanova pulled off one of the most memorable upsets ever to win the national title.
But Williams also basically said if a better team is a better team, winning for a third time shouldn’t be any more difficult than the first two victories, so who knows how he really feels about this one. The last time Boeheim and Williams squared off in a game of today’s magnitude, neither had won a national championship.
It was the 2003 title game and Syracuse, behind Carmelo Anthony and Hakim Warrick, bested Williams in his final game coaching Kansas.
Boeheim was asked what he said to Williams after that game.
“I said, ‘you’ll win one.’ Didn’t tell him he’d win two,” Boeheim said. “I hope I didn’t make him think he could win three.”
While Boeheim would love to win another championship, he said winning one is already a grand accomplishment and he’s not worried about his legacy.
“I stopped trying to prove people wrong a long time ago,” he said.