I’ll start by not wasting anyone’s time complaining about this year’s tournament pairings. That path is well-traveled.¹ And well it should be! The pairings are outrageous! Kansas was punished! Kentucky, Duke, and Syracuse — they’ve all got golden tickets to Indianapolis. Right? Right?

For starters, I’m glad I’m not Kentucky

For so many reasons. Let’s look at the round two match-ups. Texas and Wake Forest have been terrible — horrible — over the past couple of months. But, they’re talented, and each could gel for just long enough to beat anyone in the country, including Kentucky. Is this unlikely? Highly. Is it more likely that Cornell will grind their way past Temple, Wisconsin and Kentucky? Perhaps. But indulge me: Texas actually matches up pretty well with Kentucky, size-wise and talent-wise. I think that it’s possible that they could get motivated (ever so briefly) to not be embarrassed by them. Am I picking Texas over Kentucky? Maybe not. Texas coach Rick Barnes is never in danger of out-gameplanning anyone. He’s never been accused of having his team ready to play, and his teams are always threatening to underperform. Let’s not forget this. Still, I wouldn’t want to be a Kentucky fan, not in this tournament, or in any lifetime. Because let me be frank: I don’t think I could face a world without reading, without literacy. I just don’t think I could do it.

Which reminds me, did you hear that Coach K was born in the year of the Ratfaced Bastard?

Eerie, right? Not sure what his astrological sign is, but I’m relatively sure that all the major media figures kiss its ass.

But Duke didn’t get an easy road, either

I know, most people say that Duke has the easiest path: a #4 seed in free-fall after its star blew out his knee (Purdue), and a #2 seed that lost six of its last ten (Villanova). I say: Thank you for noticing, world, but look at the #3 seed: Baylor. This team got punished for playing cupcakes early — Hardin Simmons? Texas Arlington? Southern? Hartford? Coach Scott Drew, c’mon. You asked for your cruddy seed. But then Baylor played a tough conference schedule, didn’t lose a game by more than 7 points, and they absolutely light it up (119 points per 100 possessions — 5th in the country). Enough about Baylor; Duke may not even get there. Louisville will give Duke everything they can handle in round 2; perhaps more. Rick Pitino v Coach K, in the second round? Fans’ brains might explode. Which coach do I hate more? Minds will boggle.

Back to the Wildcats

Kansas State. Are they good enough to reach the Final Four. Yes. Can they beat Syracuse? Quite possibly. How do you beat Syracuse? You punish the zone. And K-State has two guys who can do this — Pullen and Clemente. What about the glass? Two more guys: Wally Judge and Curtis Kelly. They can hold their own underneath. KenPom has K-State ranked 5th in the country in offensive rebounding percentage at 40%. They gather 40% of the rebounds on their offensive glass. That’s huge. And they play great defense. Did I mention I wouldn’t want to be Syracuse? I wouldn’t. Especially because a big guy might be hurt. Or, he might not be. March madness, baybee!

The team that will break my heart: Cornell

Every year I pick a team like this. They’re good. They play under control. They’ve got a system. All the ingredients are there for surprise. Subtext: They played very well against Kansas. Okay, let’s face it, they out-played Kansas for 20–25 minutes in the hallowed hall of Lawrence, and they came up short (barely). Texas A&M, Baylor, Colorado, Kansas State and Memphis also played very well against the Hawks, and lost. Subtext: I also have these teams doing well in the tournament. Caveat! Anyway, every year, I pick a team like this to get out of the first round, and they lay an egg. I’m looking at you, Butler team of 2008. This year’s heartbreaker is especially obvious to avoid because Temple is a good team who could easily ... force the aforementioned egg? To emerge? Anyway, Temple is a great defensive team, though you wouldn’t have been able to see any evidence of that against ... Kansas! Yes, they lost to the Jayhawks at home. By 32 points.

Did I mention that this bracket breakdown was from the point of view who has watched 34 Kansas games, and roughly 20 total other games. Caveat!

¹ I will offer one suggestion: Why not just factor their media desirability into the RPI? Your team’s winning percentage x their opponent’s winning percentage x their opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage x the likelihood that your team will draw a large, rich audience to the Final Four weekend equals their seed. It’s obviously a factor in every year’s bracket. Last year, North Carolina was invited to do the Tennessee Waltz all the way to Detroit. In other words, they had it easy. In other news, the nation loves them some Tar Heels. It’s worth mentioning that advertisers tend to pay more when the Heels are playing. And of course CBS is for-profit enterprise. You get the point. We all do. It’s time to be up-front about it.

Okay, wait. One more thing. I will post something about the absurd lopsidedness of the pairings:

You want to make marginal No. 1 Duke’s road that easy? Seeding the bracket is tough, but come on. The South reeks of a committee that lost the forest for the trees, and Kentucky, Syracuse and Kansas — especially Kansas — will suffer. So much for being the overall No. 1. If we can’t reward Kansas for its excellence with something better than this, then the anti-expansion folks’ main point is officially moot. The regular season doesn’t matter.

More here.

Now, I was going to let this go, because I think I know what he means: “Game pressure” sounds like a specific kind of pressure that can’t be replicated outside of a game. Young teams, perhaps, are particularly vulnerable to it because they haven’t been in as many ... games. Anyway, I was going to let it go until Bilas referred to Kansas guard Sherron Collins as “Lawson-esque” (as in North Carolina guard Tywon Lawson) and then predicted that Tyler Hansbrough will again be the national player of the year.

You mean Lawson is “Collins-esque,” right?

Where was Lawson in the Final Four? I’ll tell you: He was getting killed by Collins. If Collins played in the ACC, he’d be getting compared to Chris Paul. (I think he’s more like Vinnie “the Microwave” Johnson). On that note, I hope that Bob Knight is going to break up the ACC-loving commentary cabal at ESPN. From the couple of games I’ve seen, he is made for TV. And he speaks to basketball fans, not just fans of the ACC. He’s not afraid to say unpopular things; not a surprise. He’s also likely to compare current players to non-ACC players (such as his Indiana players from the 70’s), and he’s completely at ease in dissing other talking heads. Is there some way that I can get his commentary on every game? Please?

Aldrich ruled Hansbrough in the Final Four. “But he just works so hard.” Other athletic centers rule him regularly. “He doesn’t take possessions off.” The argument against him being player of the year is so strong; it seems almost silly to carry it out. Photo: Getty Images

I’ve got no real beef with Psycho T, as Hansbrough is known, but he is not the best player in the country. How could he be? Whenever he plays against anyone big and athletic, he gets killed. Yes, he brings it every night; yes, he leaves it all on the court. Dickie V loves it. All the older commentators love it. Who doesn’t love a kid who plays hard every minute he’s on the court? I love it. He’s like Nick Collison. Nick Collison was awesome, but he was not the player of the year, was he? Would anyone argue that he was, other than hopeless Kansas loyalists? He was a good player on a great team. Like Hansbrough, now. Collison’s problem was that he didn’t play for the most visible program in the most over-hyped conference in the country. If Hansbrough played at Texas, he’d get compared to Collison all the time, and he’d be the feel-good choice for the Naismith. If only.

An obscured leaping figure

As I stepped through the swish multiple times, I saw something I hadn’t seen before, a sort of puff of smoke on the grassy knoll. There’s a leaping figure behind the backboard, at the very far end of the Kansas bench. Just after Mario’s shot goes through, the players on the bench appear to be in disbelief, but a black clad figure at the end of the bench suddenly springs up, spinning, arms flailing. I think that this was pretty close to my reaction as well.

This is closest I could come to a shot of the bench at that moment Mario’s shot goes through the net. It’s unclear who it is from this photo, but it’s almost certainly the same guy you can see onscreen, jumping and celebrating.

You can kinda see a black blur behind the backboard in this YouTube clip, but it’s much more clearly viewed in high-definition about two feet from your TV screen.

Fast-forward to the post-game celebration, and it becomes clear that the figure is none other than former Kansas backup point guard and current video assistant, Brett Ballard. Awesome. I was always a Ballard fan because he’s a Kansas kid, from Hutchison. [Here’s a nice Kansan profile of Ballard.]

Now he’ll always be the visual record of my own reaction to Mario’s shot.

Watch the last few minutes of the game again, and you’ll begin to see how many little things went KU’s way. There were big things, of course — Calipari’s lack of faith in his bench, Joey Dorsey’s fouls, CDR’s clankers from the line — but there were also those momentary mistakes that add up: a terrible transition decision by Memphis, questionable judgment when Calipari doesn’t call timeout after a made free throw to ensure that his team fouls, and the simple bad luck of Derrick Rose’s first free throw that hit every part of the rim and then bounced out with 10 seconds left.

Still, Kansas needed a miracle to simply pull even.

Photo: Streeter Lecka

Luke Winn of Sports Illustrated really nails the last few seconds in his Tourney Blog: “The ball took what Collins said seemed ‘like five seconds’ in the air, perfectly rotating, and Brandon Rush, who had positioned himself near the basket in the event of a tip, looked up at the net and ‘saw it splash right in there.’ ... ‘It will probably be,’ said Self, ‘the biggest shot ever made in Kansas history.’”

The bench reacts to Mario’s shot. Photo: Jeff Haynes

The Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock commented on the stories behind the story: “That’s how you win it all, exorcise the demons and baptize a new era of greatness. You do it with an unforgettable rally, a stunning three-pointer and with your most famous and infamous coaching alum sitting in the stadium, cheering you on and sporting a Jayhawk sticker.”

Photo: Jed Jacobsohn

The Star’s Joe Posnanski on Memphis’s seemingly insurmountable lead, and Mario’s shot: “When you’re young, you live in the moment. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Chalmers was not feeling the pressure of history when he fired the shot. He never could have made it then. Kansas was trailing by nine points with barely 2 minutes left. Memphis had taken all the intensity and will and ferocity that Kansas had to give, and then the Tigers pulled away. Up nine with about 2 minutes left? Over.”

Sherron & Bill Self. Photo: Streeter Lecka

Collins’s contribution was huge, despite his turnovers. He was in Derrick Rose’s face all night, and his pace and fearlessness created the two biggest moments of the game — the steal with just under a minute left, and the pass to Mario with 5 seconds left. Dana O’Neil’s article on ESPN really captures it well (title: “Without Collins, there is no Chalmers.”). Derrick Rose commented on Sherron’s play during Memphis’s post-game press conference: “He did what he supposed to do as a point guard — control the team, push the ball up the court and make tough plays at the end. He just controlled the game.”

Self was characteristically modest after the game, “The outside public may view people that win a championship differently, but coaches know you don’t get smarter because a hard shot goes in or doesn’t go in. I’m proud of our guys, happy for everybody involved, but I don’t see it that way.”

I’m not sure what it will take for the talking heads to give him some respect, honestly. In ESPN’s pre-game show, the former coaches (Vitale, Digger, and Knight) lavished praise on Memphis coach John Calipari. Vitale threw around all the usual hyperbole (“genius,” “innovator,” as I recall), and even Knight complimented Cal’s inventiveness as a coach. After the game, the mood was funereal around the ESPN desk, as if they themselves had lost the game. Why? There are some compelling conspiracy theories bouncing around the comments on the Lawrence Journal-World site, e.g. “[Supporting] Kansas promotes [KU’s] recruiting and keeps Kansas a Cadillac program. In turn, that steers recruits away from schools where the talking heads have loyalties and relationships with coaches that give them the access they require in the major media markets they need to pump up their Q ratings and market share ratings.” Hmm.

Finally, the NYT’s Pete Thamel posted some engaging commentary on The Quad, the NYT’s college sports blog. He describes the scene in the Memphis locker room afterward:

There are only two locker rooms I’d ever seen where the players were this devastated. One was the U.S.C. locker room after Matt Leinart and the Trojans lost the national title to Texas in the Rose Bowl. I remember Leinart sitting alone on a bench, eating a turkey sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie and drinking a Gatorade. It was kind of surreal that his whole senior year had come down to that.

The other was the Oklahoma locker room after the Sooners lost to Boise State in what many consider the greatest finish to a college football game. That would be the Ian Johnson, Statue of Liberty, hook-and-ladder game. The most bizarre scene from that locker room was Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops just standing by himself, staring off into the ether. It’s rare to see a head coach alone anywhere, anytime. But Stoops could have been on Pluto, and no one at that second was going to visit.

Finally, today’s Kansas City Star front page. Nice! I had the 1988 version on my bedroom wall for about 10 years, until it basically turned into dust.

I designed a t-shirt that expressed my feelings with regard to the Heels, which — in a really weird coincidence — echo Ol Roy’s sentiments c. 2003.

For many Kansas fans, Roy’s angry words ring true — truer, even — today. Sure, Roy may have claimed to have “given a shit” at that moment, but he changed his tune a week later. Jayhawk fans probably still couldn’t give a shit, to say the least. Now, we can declare this to the world. [Buy it now now now from Zazzle].

A day that will live in infamy

In case anyone’s wondering what the heck the shirt is all about, let’s take a quick trip down YouTube lane. The year was 2003; the time was 10 minutes after KU’s national final loss to Syracuse; the place was the tunnel outside the Kansas locker room.

It actually gets better with age, doesn’t it?

The “shit” part clearly wasn’t pre-meditated, yet it was perfectly timed, putting a bitter exclamation point on a ringing rebuke. Of course, the most shocking part of it all was that it came from the man who had — to that point — cornered the market in “dadgums” and “doggones:” Ol Roy, the kind country cousin of college basketball. In more ways than one, that interview was the end of an era, and in retrospect, Roy’s aw-shucks-ing and dadgum-ing seems a little silly, but it sure worked well for a while.

Now, well. Times have changed.

My patented approach = tossed out the window

I’ve filled out 20+ brackets in my life, and each year I take basically the same tack: At least one #1 seed goes down relatively early; every Big 12 team represents. This mostly works, but it gets complicated because I also generally want Duke to flame out early (and with the greatest possible degree of humiliation), and I expect the Pac 10 teams to eat shit as well. History has not been kind to this approach.

Did I mention that I usually send Kansas to the Final Four at least as well? So yes, I usually lose whatever pool I’ve entered.

Instead, I predict that history will be made in a couple of ways

Of course, I still have Duke flaming out and Kansas winning, but I’ve twisted a couple of the other valves in my strategy engine:

1. All 4 #1 seeds make the Final Four. In every case, I couldn’t imagine any one of them losing. North Carolina is playing in their home state all the way through. Memphis is good, and they’re mad, and I don’t think they’re going to have to face Texas, so who are they going to lose to? Pittsburgh? Bob Knight thinks so, but I’m not so sure. Kansas is also good, and they’re focused, and I just hope that Bill Self has them ready to go. UCLA is the only team that, to me, seems vulnerable, if only because K-Love’s back may be hurt. Then again, Ben Howland is a wily bastard, and I wouldn’t put it past him to use a very minor injury to start messing with the minds of future opponents, a la Bill Belichick.
2. The Pac 10 performs. I dare you to look into the seasons that each of the teams played. They played good teams, and they performed pretty well. I’ve got USC in the Elite Eight. Crazy? Maybe. But they finished the season pretty strong, even though Wazzu obviously had their number. Which is why I have Wazzu advancing before losing a tight one to UNC.
3. The Big 12 fizzles. K-State is reeling, and I’ve got them losing to USC. Oklahoma looked awful quite a few times this year; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see St. Joe’s stick it to them. I’ve got Texas losing to Stanford, only because I have a hard time seeing Damion James single-handedly dealing with the Lopez bros. On the other hand, I do have Baylor and A&M winning in the first round, and I’ve got Kansas winning it all. So it’s a minor fizzle.

Remember: You heard it here first. Probably not.

As Dick Vitale would say: It’s March Madness, baby!

Let’s start at the top

Memphis is the rarely defeated team with killer athletes and a dickhead for a coach; North Carolina has player of the year Tyler Hansborough and the electrifying “Carolina break” (formerly known as the Kansas break), but it’s also got some glaring inconsistencies; UCLA has good balance, a great coach, good defense, and a stone killer in freshman Kevin Love; Kansas has experience, Darnell Jackson, and a recent history of flameouts [cf. Bucknell, Bradley] to overcome.

Mid-major blah blah blah

As usual, there are also a host of mid-major teams with chips on their shoulders. Butler had Florida on the ropes last year; this year, they have to travel to Birmingham as a #7 seed to play South Alabama (a #10 seed); if they win, they earn the right to play another fired-up southeastern team, Tennessee. And Gonzaga (#7) has to travel three time zones to play a team that’s driving three hours within its home state, Davidson (#10). It appears that the tournament committee is no longer amused by fundamentally sound, deeply experienced, singularly focused mid-major teams taking down high seeds in the early rounds. An interesting development.

Mid-major dis disclaimer

By dissing mid-majors, you think I’m playing with fire, but I’m not. Oh, no. I’ve already been burned. Twice. There’s nothing left to burn. I’m a blackened husk. It began in 2006; I wrote a long email about “the myth of mid-majors” to my friends. Then, I traveled to Austin, where I watched the the Jayhawks mail in a first-round game against Bucknell. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Bucknell that they were supposed to climb inside the envelope and disappear. To the delight of the entire bar from which I watched, they held off the Jayhawks and advanced. The next year, it was Bradley. I was in a hotel in Albuquerque. Alone. Agonizing.

Kansas & UNC earn a right to stay close to home

Both teams get to stay local, but each gets tested by an interesting foe. UNC doesn’t leave the state until they travel to San Antonio for the Final Four, but they need to beat Tennessee — a team that beat Memphis, a team with a legitimate claim to a #1 seed — before they get to San Antonio. Kansas tours the Midwest, heading to Omaha, then Detroit, but they need to beat Georgetown — a consistent, gritty team that is well-suited to stick it to the inconsistent Jayhawks — before cutting down the regional nets. Seems fair, mostly.

But does this obsessing over geography really matter? I don’t know. On a purely philosophical level, the champion has to win six games, period. Georgia won four games in three days to take the SEC tournament; they’d won a total of four games in two-plus months of conference play. The Fab 5 advanced to the Final Four through Atlanta and Lexington in 1992, Phoenix and Seattle in 1993.

On a historical note

Last year, Kansas got shipped two time zones westward and played what amounted to an away game against UCLA. I was there, surrounded by cologne-wearing, hair-gelled, Steve-Lavin-look-alike douchebags who roared with every impossible fadeaway prayer hit by Arron Afflalo (not misspelled), and every brass-balled pull-up j by Darren Collison. It has taken me some time to admit that UCLA may have been the better team, a fact that wasn’t made any more comforting by Bill Walton’s pod-rhapsody about the beauty of UCLA’s win [mp3]. The tournament committee’s calculus: Kansas wasn’t a clear #1 seed, so they needed to travel across the country to beat UCLA in their back yard in order to prove they belong in the Final Four. Which brings me to this year’s Memphis team.

This year, Memphis gets sent through the fire

Don’t you get the feeling that the tournament committee smells blood with Memphis? The Tigers were ranked #1 for a lot of the year, and they lost just ONE game all year. Except. Except they have the misfortune of playing in a weak conference, and their one loss happened to come at home against a team that got its ass handed to them by Texas. For this, they get sent to Houston for the South regional final, where they may in fact meet up with Texas. (Is there any way that the crowd won’t be heavily pro-Horn?) The tournament committee is clearly saying: Show us what you’ve got, Derrick Rose and Joey Dorsey. Show up what you got, John Calipari! [Here it is again. John Cheney threatens to kill John Calipari. Thank you, YouTube]. Who knows? Maybe it’s a sort of karmic payback for Dorsey referring to himself as Goliath, with Greg Oden as David during last year’s tournament. Dude, if you’re Goliath, then survive this rock-slinging gauntlet.

Rick Barnes can recruit, but can the dude coach?

Two things I noticed about Barnes during the Big 12 final: (1) The guy either can’t consistently set up a decent play off a dead ball, or his players just can’t execute one. I find it hard to believe that DJ Augustin, one of the most talented players I’ve seen in a long time, can’t execute a play. So I’m left with the impression that Barnes is just a bad game-planner. Too many times, his team came out of a timeout with some crap play that resulted in a bad shot or turnover. Augustin can often bail Barnes out by hitting lots of bad shots, but how far can this take them, really? (2) Even worse, Barnes rides his stars, and they suffer against deeper teams. Augustin played all 40 minutes in the Big 12 tournament final and he averaged 39+ for the season. He finished with 20 points, scoring only 2 in the second half and missing all nine shots that he took. AJ Abrams is no help; he can spot up and drain threes, but he’s my size and needs to run off a bunch of screens to get an open shot, and therefore he does little to ease the burden on Augustin.

Ol Roy on the horizon for the Jayhawks

While I love all of this, I’m also focused on the prospects of my team. To paraphrase a once-great Kansan, I could (mostly) give a shit about storylines. As a Kansas fan, I’m primarily worried about Portland State breaking new ground as a #16 seed. Let’s take care of that one. Then I’m worried about UNLV; then Clemson; then Georgetown. Then: Ol Roy?

In the Final Four, there’s the potential for some great, great match-ups, which I’ll detail in another post. Too much needs to happen between now and then.

Living in the Bay Area, I’ve watched Baron Davis and Don Nelson breathe life into the corpse of the Golden State Warriors by playing fast, loose, undisciplined, unpredictable basketball. When they’re clicking, the Warriors are invigorating and life-affirming. Nellie doesn’t burden the team with structure — they don’t really run an “offense” or play “defense” in the traditional senses — instead, they rely on the players’ abilities to improvise, pull their opponents out of their own structures, and wear them down with running and gunning.

Playground electicity

When the Warriors are good, they’re like the best playground basketball team you could ever imagine. What makes them all the more exciting is that their roster lacks key traditional dimensions associated with successful teams. They compete without the traditional man-mountain in the low-post to take on Shaq, Yao, Duncan, or Pau; instead, Andris Biedrins, who has very little in the way of a J and doesn’t ever try to play facing the basket, uses his quickness and hops to rebound, follow, and generally surprise opponents with his ability to keep Warrior possessions alive. (Check out where The Wages of Wins ranked Biedrins for the 2006–2007 season) Spoiler: He’s #1 on the team, with 11.7 to Baron’s 9.7.

On the guard front, Baron and Stephen Jackson and Monta Ellis don’t really run an offense as much as they weave through defenses in perpetual one-on-fives, driving to the rim, dishing to teammates. Baron has a (admittedly deserved) reputation as a shoot-first point guard, but he defers to others when they’re hot and his teammates seem to feed off his energy. Monta, more of a two-guard than a point, somehow can’t shoot the three, but he can blow by just about anyone and he’s one of the better finishers in the league right now. 6’9″ Al Harrington is more reliable from behind the arc than he is with his back to the basket; Wages of Wins doesn’t think much of him, but it’s hard to deny the problems that he creates for defenses when he’s in the game. Stephen Jackson — Stack Jack, as Baron calls him — is the glue; when he’s in the game, everyone is better. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to play with him? He’s got everyone’s back.

Darnell can’t do it alone. Photo: Nick Krug, Lawrence Journal-World.

Contrast the Warriors with the other team that I follow, the Kansas Jayhawks. Where the Warriors are dangerous, inscrutable, fierce competitors who save their best for big games, the Jayhawks have been the opposite: soft, predictable, vulnerable when the game is on the line. Where the Warriors have at least three guys who thrive in pressure situations — Baron, Stack Jack, and Harrington — the Jayhawks have eight guys who could start on any team in America, but not one who wants to take over a game.

Last week, I trekked to Oracle with Justin, Mara, and Lynne (Lynne? Blog?), and we watched the Warriors wear down the Celtics and, in the final moments, drive a dagger into their hearts. Three days later, I watched the Jayhawks wilt in the final moments against a very, very fired up Oklahoma State team.

Part of the problem is that Kansas simply doesn’t have reliable offensive weapons; another part is that teams love beating the Hawks, and each Jayhawk opponent is playing its biggest game of the season. College basketball is different in that regard. Message boards don’t rejoice each time the Lakers lose a game, but oh how people love to see teams like Kansas (Google: “kansas” + “choke”), Duke (Google: “duke” + “choke”), and Kentucky (Google: “kentucky” + “choke”) lose. Which is fine. If people didn’t really react this way, the wins wouldn’t be as much fun.

The root of the Hawks’ problem is offensive, though. The Warriors are stocked with guys who can create their own shot, but Kansas has to rely on Mario Chalmers and Sherron Collins (and, to some extent, Russell Robinson) to break down defenses and spring Brandon Rush on the perimeter or Darrell Arthur inside. Like the Warriors, the Hawks don’t run a structured offense with interchangeable parts; they rely on athleticism. This lack of dimension is easily exploited by teams who effectively pressure the Hawks’ guards, and who run big guys out to trap the ball at the three-point line. Add to this mix the fact that Kansas guards cannot seem to defend opposing guards, and there’s no question that they’ve got some big problems to solve before mid-March.

Julian Wright is taking the opportunity of a lifetime, and who can blame him? He brought enthusiasm and energy to every game, contributed hugely in many of the big wins in the last couple of years (cf. these dunks during the Florida game and this epic 33-point performance at MU), and showed enough skill and potential to be very highly regarded by NBA scouts. Who wouldn’t seize a chance to be financially secure, and to play in the NBA? The future is rarely certain in these situations, as these guys can attest. Best of luck to you, JuJu.

The KU-sports-related Internet is (predictably) thrashing around with the news, and the emotions range from hurt to happy, fatalistic to optimistic. And who can blame them, really? The last four years have been tough on Kansas basketball, so tough that the mention of certain names — Roy, Micah, Padgett, Galindo, Giddens, CJ, etc — can provoke pangs and spasms of hurt and guilt. I guess Julian gets added to the list now, though personally I think he’s ready and I’m happy for him. Most of the commenters at the end of this story feel otherwise.

Julian’s departure is complicated, of course, by the fact that he pledged to stay following the loss to UCLA. This CBS reporter was really peeved that Julian reconsidered his prospects after the season ended, which seems kinda silly to me. Did it really take Julian’s change of heart to communicate to him that big-time college sports are bittersweet, unpredictable, and perpetually compromised by the twin prospects of major, life-changing injuries and major, life-changing paydays?

Whatever happens, I think that Julian will eventually have a good NBA career. Ryan Greene of kusports.com compares Julian to Shawn Marion, and I see the resemblance as well. That said, he would be way better off with established, veteran-heavy teams like Phoenix (who wouldn’t?) or Chicago, where he’d be able to learn and adjust out of the spotlight. Career-endangering teams like Memphis, Atlanta or (once again) Sacramento will give him too much responsibility too soon, though he may be able to survive that either way. Long term, he’s a Western Conference player who will come off the bench, get his 12 and 8, continue do all the little stuff that makes him great (deflecting passes, setting other guys up, keeping offensive rebounds alive), and be a good team guy to boot.

The bright sides

Looking forward to next November, here are three scenarios that reflect my thinking on the remaining possibilities for early entries and (yikes, not again!) transfers.

• Without Wright: Actually may be better. Like Drew Gooden’s early exit, I actually think there’s quite a significant bright side here. Julian’s athletic ability and talent require that he play a major role in the offense, which results in fewer opportunities for the talents of other players — Mario’s drives and shots, Sherron’s shot and drive, Rush’s entire offensive arsenal, Shady’s sweet moves inside 12 feet. When Gooden left, Collison’s McHale-like low-post presence and Hinrich’s Stockton-like ability to make the right decision on every fast break ended up providing a system more stable than the one focused on Gooden’s always athletic, sometimes erratic presence. Without Julian at the 4, Shady starts and gets more time. This means that the line-up gets bulkier without losing that much in the way of speed. They’ll miss Julian’s explosiveness and shot-blocking, but they gain Shady’s sweet touch and better ability to (more dependably) make plays while posting up. If Rush is still around (not likely, so see the bullet point below), I tend to think that this line-up may even be more dangerous than if Wright had stuck around.
• Without Wright and Rush: Lots of re-jiggering, lots of uncertainty. Losing Rush is a much bigger deal than losing Wright, obviously. He’s the team’s best on-the-ball defender; he became the go-to scorer during the games in San Jose, and he can stroke it. Unfortunately for him, he’s not the explosive athlete that Julian is, and scouts are not evaluating his draftability in the crystal-ballish terms of upside and potential. His capacity is known, apparently, and therefore it has limits in the eyes of scouts. Does this mean he can’t become, say, a Bruce Bowen type of player? Heck no. In fact, I think he’d fit in really well with the type of team who would draft him in the 20’s or so. And this is probably what will happen, so it all works out for the best, for him. If money and academics (which are a major hassle for him) were not issues, he’s in a great position to thrive next season. He fits into Self’s system really well; he really began to shine at the end of the season; another season would really give him a chance to refine his dribble-drive and his outside shot. But this is not an ideal world, and barring the entry of the entire UNC team or an injury that prevents him from competing in the pre-draft camps, I suspect he’s gone. Good luck to him.
  So. How do the Hawks replace Brandon? Who becomes the stopper? Who takes over the offense at the end of games? Who attracts the other team’s defenders whenever he’s on the floor? I’m not really sure about any of this. A couple of things are certain, though: This will be a seasoned, capable team. They’ve been through a lot, beaten Kevin Durant twice, won two Big 12 tournaments, etc. Moreover, they’ll be without a superstar like Brandon and Julian, and this — weirdly — might make them much more like Self’s Illinois teams — gritty, hungry, scrappy and dangerous in the tournament.
• Without Wright, Rush, and Collins: !@$#%$#@*&. Almost too painful to consider. How many times did I text the words “Thank God for Sherron” during the Big 12 season? How many times did he single-handedly change the pace and momentum of a game with a vicious drive to the basket? He’s not ready to jump to the League, but rumor has it that he wants to be closer to home. But would he really want to sit out a year, play for a school in a mid-major conference, give up a chance to play in a Final Four, give up a chance to play on national television for 15–20 or 20–25 games next year? I really hope not. Man, that would hurt.

Here’s the bracket that I made on the Monday after the seedings were announced.

UPDATE: Since Monday, I’ve been spending a lot of time reading up on the teams I don’t know/care about — in SI.com and its Tourney Blog, statistical analyst Ken Pomeroy’s blog, the NYT Bracket blog, and the ever-unfriendly ESPN.com which must hide a lot of its useful stuff behind its subscription service, Insider. In any case, the more you read about the first round match-ups, the more confusing it all gets. I’ve seen many of the teams play at some point during the season, but I’m totally in the dark on pretty much any team from the Pac 10 (even though I live in California, I just really can’t even force myself to care about it) and almost all of the mid-majors.

One bracket change came out of this — I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Duke seems less likely to get upset by VCU. Duke has been criticized a lot for being soft, sloppy, and generally uninspired, and they’re coming off a stinging loss in the ACC Tournament. How could they not be hungry? They’ve got a bunch of talented players, and it just seems really unlikely that they won’t be able to pull off a win against a VCU team that has only played one team in the tournament (Old Dominion).

While I’ve only changed one outcome, my reading did produce many doubts in my bracket, which I detail below. (It also caused me to create three more versions of my bracket to account for the different scenarios that the pundits highlighted — What if Oregon can’t play defense? What if Oden explodes on the scene and dominates everyone? What if North Carolina is as good as they appear to be in 3-minute stretches?)

UPDATE 2: Incidentally, SI writer Grant Wahl’s bracket is almost exactly the same as mine. (Actually, same with Seth Davis). Same Final Four; same final game; same outcome. The only big differences are that he has Texas beating UNC (UPDATE 3: Now, so do I), and Creighton beating Memphis, whereas I have both UNC and Memphis getting knocked out in the next round. (I also have more first-round upsets than him ... Oral Roberts over Washington State, etc).

UPDATE 4 (in the week following the first two rounds): After two straight years in which my bracket burst into flames during the first weekend, I was just happy to emerge with 15 out of 16 teams still alive. Mostly, I got burned by my late changes — Texas beating UNC and Duke beating VCU — and by the fashionable upsets that I stubbornly decided to stick with — Georgia Tech over UNLV, Creighton over Nevada, and Oral Roberts over Washington State, each of which found their own agonizing way of driving a spear through my heart. Crxp.

As usual, there were a couple of teams that I was totally, totally wrong about: (1) UNLV. Obviously, these guys can play. I discounted them because (a) who did they beat? and (b) the coach’s son seemed to play an inordinately important role. Both seemed like big-time red flags. I ignored the fact that they were experienced, and that they were clearly pissed off by their #7 seed. Who would have thought that the team that rose to the occasion would be composed of hard-nosed guys led by journeyman coach Lon Kruger (UNLV), and not composed of McDonald’s All-Americans and led by the sainted Coach K? Seemed unlikely before it happened, but oh how sweet it is in retrospect. (2) Texas. During the two Kansas games, they were dangerously weak at guard. Both games would likely have been blow-outs if Durant hadn’t totally gone off in the first 15 minutes of each. Abrams is a terrible ball-handler who needs multiple screens to get his shot going, and Augustin is completely dominant one moment and out-of-control the next. USC forced these guys to play a bigger role by taking away Durant’s dribble; good call, Tim Floyd. (Didn’t really think I’d be saying those words anytime after 2002). On the other bench, Rick Barnes made no discernible adjustments. Again, not that surprising, in retrospect.

The next round looks mostly boring to me, though I guess half the games could be exciting — UNC-USC, if USC is able to hang on while UNC goes on its periodic runs, A&M-Memphis should display some good offensive firepower (unlike Pitt-UCLA, which almost certainly will be a grind-it-out snore-fest), and KU-SIU which could be exciting if KU has a hard time running its offense against the defense-minded Salukis. Let’s hope that it’s not exciting in this way.

In the second half, different story. Two things changed (at least): Brandon Rush was on Durant, rather than Julian Wright. It was hard to say whether Durant just cooled off, or whether Rush cooled him off, but the fact was that he missed 4 of 5 shots before going down with a twisted ankle. Second thing: Another player immediately double-teamed Durant on the perimeter whenever he got the ball, and Texas failed to exploit this for easy low-post baskets. (Nice call by Coach Self. Not sure why he didn’t go to this earlier, but I’m just glad that it worked). At the same time, I can’t believe Texas couldn’t exploit this. I mean, teams must be doing this all the time. Why weren’t they able to find Damian James for easy baskets underneath, or Augustin on cuts to the basket? (I share Bill Simmons’s assessment of Texas coach Rick Barnes, by the way: “How can you not run more plays for Kevin Durant? Post him up and he has 27 different ways to score. Curl him off picks and he makes 15-footers like they’re layups.”)

Speaking of bad coaching, I was mystified that Texas didn’t start fouling sooner. Kansas wasn’t even in the bonus until the 2:20 mark, and Texas didn’t start fouling until the 1:18 mark when they were down by 8. RussRob missed the front-end of a one-and-one, and Texas cut the lead to 6. Then, on consecutive possessions, Mario makes one of two; RussRob makes one of two; Julian makes one of two. HEART ATTACK TIME. Instead of a 6-point lead, it’s a 3-point lead, and Texas has a chance to tie. This is a huge, huge issue going into the post-season, both for the Hawks chances and my own physical and mental health.

Incidentally, with this in mind, I deeply enjoyed a recent piece by Gene Weingarten about FT shooting: “If I took a year off and practiced all day, every day, I could then defeat the NBA’s best free-throw shooter in head-to-head competition” (via kottke).

Contain Kevin Durant. I know, I know. Obvious. Duh. Everyone tries to do this. But I think Kansas has a chance to succeed. Yes, he’s going to get 10–15 points no matter what you do. He’ll be everywhere — around the basket, out on the perimeter, getting put-backs, rolling off picks and taking jumpers. The challenge for the Hawks is to make sure he doesn’t get 30–35, to limit the number of open looks he gets on the perimeter, and to make sure that he doesn’t get anywhere near a rhythm like he had against Texas Tech (37 points, 23 rebounds). Durant thrives when teams don’t have someone who can get in his face when he’s away from the basket. At 6’9″, he’s going to shoot over the kind of guy who will take away the drive, but he’s also fast and agile enough to go around most guys his size. All of that said, I think he’s going to have problems with KU’s long, fast, and highly disruptive defenders — Julian Wright and Brandon Rush. I think it’s totally possible for them to contain him, as long as they stay out of foul trouble.

Disrupt the supply chain. DJ Augustin kept them in the game last night when Durant went into a funk. In many games this year, I’ve seen him slice through defenses, get to the basket, and generally create the kind of chaos that leads to easy put-backs for Durant. Mario Chalmers, Russell Robinson, and Sherron Collins have to keep him from driving, and complicate his distribution of the ball.

Run them ragged, and don’t get beat by AJ Abrams. Or anyone like him. Last year, the relatively quiet Abrams exploded for four three-pointers during a first half run, singlehandedly demoralizing the Hawks. The good news is that, this year, the Longhorn weaponry is far from secret. Abrams, Augustin and Durant play pretty much all game, every game. This is an opportunity for the relatively deep Hawks to be relentless in their defense — Maybe even press a little? C’mon, Coach. Gimmick defenses have stunned KU twice recently (A&M, OU). Why not break one out once in a while?

Making free throws. The mere thought that this game will come down to free throws makes my stomach hurt. The last five minutes of the Oklahoma game was excruciating in that it almost turned into A&M, Part II. Unfortunately, it’s no secret that Kansas can’t shoot free throws. They’re going to get fouled late in the game; with any luck, Chalmers and Robinson will control the ball and hit their freebies.

Lastly, Collins and Arthur must contribute, and Rush has to get his shots. It’s pretty amazing that the Hawks could get by OU without contributions from any of these guys, but there’s no way that a win versus Texas is possible without them.

Resolved

• Rotation. Coach Self seems like he’s found the right starters, and his bench guys inject energy almost every time. This was not the case last year, and even earlier this year, when Kaun, Jackson, Wright and Hawkins (last year) were in and out of his doghouse and the starting lineup. I’m not getting too excited about this, because it’s one of the more elementary requirements for any deep advancement in the tournament.
• Pace. During Self’s first year, it was clear that Miles, Langford, and Simien all struggled with his insistence on cohesive half-court defense, which prevented a lot of the sprinting out that characterized Roy’s offense (and probably was a major part of why those guys came to KU). Langford especially seemed to struggle when he wasn’t getting multiple opportunities for (relatively) easy transition baskets. This year’s team seems to have fully embraced Self’s approach, while also running a pretty mean fast break when they get the opportunity.
• Defense. It’s Coach Self’s calling card, and it ensures that KU is competitive in every game. There isn’t a team in the country right now who has a definitive answer to it; I say this with confidence because Florida is really the only team that would appear to be dominant, and we all know what happened there.
• Bench. A newly resolved matter, thanks to both Sherron Collins and Shady (whose huge rebounds late in the K-State game allowed KU to steadily pull away). Darnell Jackson is always solid, and occasionally he is a total badass. Watching him tearing shit off the glass and kicking it out to RussRob is a comforting sight, especially when Kaun and Shady seem to have so much trouble laying down the law in the paint.

Unresolved

• The go-to guy. Yes, Collins has emerged as a major late-game threat. Is he a true go-to guy yet, though? I’m not sure. Coach Self gave him the ball in last possession of the A&M game, rather than Chalmers, Rush, or Wright, so clearly the staff believes that Collins can do it. He’s got the moxie, not to mention the game, for making big plays late in the game, but the reason that I think that this is still unresolved is that, usually, when you’ve got a go-to guy, the rest of the team seems relaxed and comfortable, and this comfort translates into wins in close games. Thus far, I seen very little comfort during close games (a la Missouri, Iowa State, A&M, Texas Tech). I started to see more of it during K-State, but it still took some luck — Rush’s three-point play after Julian’s terrible no-look somehow skittered through four K-State defenders — and some K-State mistakes in order for KU to escape with a win. Nevertheless, this is getting better, no question. What needs to happen: Kansas needs to win an A&M-style game, a down-to-the-wire game in which the other team keeps bringing it (like Florida), and in that game the go-to guy needs to execute on every possession, like Acie Law of A&M did.
• Post play. If this team didn’t rely on scoring in the post, I’d say that Sasha Kaun has been pretty solid. He rarely makes a bad pass; he picks up the occasional stupid foul (but seems to be getting better in this regard); he establishes position well and draws defenders. Defensively, he’s rarely out of position. Little of this ever makes it on a stat sheet, and all of it contributes to open looks for other players on the offensive end, and fewer opportunities for the opponent on the defensive end. So he’s solid, except for the fact that he becomes offensively inept at really inopportune times. It’s hard to ignore the many, many occasions when he has failed to finish the bunnies; if he gets fouled, we all know what we’re in for. Shady, on the other hand, simply needs to get hungry. All of the tools are there; they just need to be brought to bear with a little passion. Not that I’m going to make any Rudy Gay comparisons. There’s no way that Self would ever allow Shady to conduct himself with the nonchalance that Gay routinely brought to UConn. What needs to happen: Shady needs to show more of what he showed against K-State; Kaun needs to convert his easy baskets; Jackson needs to keep doing what he does.
• Easy baskets. Free throws fall into this category; so do layups. I’ve never seen a team blow so many open, close range buckets, or brick as many FTs. Jackson and Kaun are approaching Richard Scott-level incompetence in this regard, and even Chalmers and RussRob (admittedly, my favorite of the current Hawks, esp. after he got in Cartier Martin’s face during the K-State game) isn’t 100% reliable down the stretch. And Rush missed the two FT’s after Huggy’s T, which could have put KU up by 7. (Good thing Collins hit a three in the ensuing possession). Anyway, one virtue of Roy’s teams is that they seem to get 10–15 easy baskets every game: fast break layups and dunks; post guys who get sprung open by a back screen; open jumpers for the big guys trailing the fast break. Self’s teams must get fewer of these looks, which may be okay since they seem to have trouble converting them anyway. What needs to happen: It may be impossible for this team to become a good FT-shooting team, but it’s eminently possible for them to make layups, especially Kaun.

Where does this rank among the hardest-to-swallow losses in recent memory? I don’t want to go overboard here; it’s not as crushing as the two NCAA Tournament early exits. It also wasn’t as demoralizing as losing to K-State (at home) and Missouri (after leading by 7 with a little over a minute left) last year. It’s most reminscent of the 2004 home loss to Richmond, when the entire sporting nation could turn on ESPN to see the Hawks implode on their home floor to a team that wasn’t even playing that well. ESPN didn’t carry the ORU game on Wednesday night, THANK GOD, but the loss rippled through the sports press in a way that always seemed to emphasize the Hawks simply failed to look, umm, good. SI said simply: “Oral Roberts outplayed No. 3 Kansas the whole way.”

Question: How in the world does SI rank KU above a team like Florida, the defending national champions who returned every starter from last year? Did they want to avoid jinxing Florida for some reason? (SI added KU to its list of cover jinxes). Maybe they settled on this arrangement before Sasha Kaun got hurt, and before CJ Giles pulled a Lawrence Phillips and got himself kicked off the team?[1] Even so, how does any front line arrangement compete with Gator paint-dominators Al Horford and Joakim Noah? We’ll find out soon enough, I guess, since the teams will meet a week from tomorrow in Vegas. Gulp.

[1] Wikipedia’s abstract on Lawrence Phillips: “Lawrence Phillips (b. May 12, 1975 in Little Rock, Arkansas), is a former professional American football and Canadian football running back who has had numerous conflicts with law enforcement.” Sorta says it all.

Once again, the Jayhawks exited the NCAA tournament in the first round; this time, it was a 77–73 loss to Bradley, marking the second year in a row in which the heavily-favored Hawks were up-ended by a lower seed.

What the hell went wrong? Bradley came out loose and snappy; the Hawks looked spooked and tight. A couple of unlucky early possessions tipped the momentum toward Bradley, and you could see the Hawks get somewhat prematurely discouraged and frustrated. Up until the very late second half, the vaunted Jayhawk defense — which had created easy offensive opportunities all year — struggled to keep up with Bradley’s relentless inside-out attack. All year, Kansas had locked down their opponents, forcing bad shots and racing it right back up their opponents’ backside. This time, they played Bradley’s game for almost 40 minutes.

The most confounding part was that they seemed so out of sync. The stars from the Texas game fell victim to the fumbles and hiccups that characterized the early season. Julian Wright disappeared for minutes on end; Mario Chalmers couldn’t get anything to fall in the first half; Sasha Kaun’s shots got some tough treatment by the rim, and then, man, what happened? And JHawk, well, you just knew that he wouldn’t repeat the 4-for-5 shooting from three point range. Without RussRob, the Hawks would have never been in the game.

Nevertheless, late in the second half, Self went with three guards, and the sudden, swarming defensive pressure paralyzed Bradley’s offense. Chalmers and Robinson created turnovers, shredded Bradley’s defense and — BAM — we got a quick glimpse of what could have been a 25-point cakewalk on another night. The Hawks just totally overwhelmed the Bradley backcourt for the last 7 or 8 minutes, and improbably the game was within reach.

Then, heartbreak. The Hawks created another turnover, and brought the ball upcourt, down by three with a little over a minute left. Hawkins comes around a screen. He’s got an open look. DUDE, KNOCK IT DOWN! It looks good when it leaves his hands. The ball is arc-ing toward the basket. I’m in a hotel room in Albuquerque, standing on the bed with my arms raised in three-point/field goal formation, and I’m remembering the Missouri game from 2003 when Aaron Miles hit a long, contested three as time ran out to win the game, WHICH I ALSO WATCHED FROM A HOTEL ROOM! SYNCHRONICITY! and I’m not breathing, and my heart is pounding GO IN for God’s sake! NO! Rebound! NOOO!

Alas.

Was it worse than last year? I would say yes. Last year’s team partially imploded in the late season, limped out of the Big 12 tournament, and rolled over somewhere en route to their first round game. This year’s team, though. I don’t think I was the only one who was having visions of the Fab Five dancing in my head. For days after, I mourned both my bracket (in shambles), and what could have been a victory over Pitt, a domination of Memphis, and a rocking good game against UCLA. LSU would have been a problem. Within seven or eight feet of the basket, they were tough; outside of that, inept. Could the Hawks have stopped them enough in the paint for that to matter? Perhaps.

I grew up in Kansas. My grandfather, great-grandfather, dad, uncle, and aunt all attended the University of Kansas. My family had season tickets for both football and basketball games, and I spent a sizeable chunk of my childhood running around those stadiums. At football games, we sat on the 50-yard line, about 30 rows up from the field. For basketball, we sat courtside — second row, actually — behind the Kansas bench, Jack Nicholson-style.

Any fan of college sports will tell you that season tickets to Kansas football have never been in high demand, at least not in my lifetime. The last glory year for Kansas football was 1969, when they were edged 15–14 by Penn State in the Orange Bowl. My dad traveled to Miami for that game, and the story of profound heartbreak still stings, even though I wasn’t there. The basketball Jayhawks had hay days in the fifties, again, well before my time, winning a national championship in 1952 and coming up one point short of another in a classic 1957 duel with North Carolina.

All of this began to change in 1984, when journeyman genius Larry Brown was hired as head basketball coach. He had not yet attained the status of wizard as he seems to have today, but Brown converted a team that had been run into the ground in the early 80’s into a national title winner in the span of five years. The aftermath of his tenure wasn’t pretty: he took a job with the LA Clippers after the title game and left KU to deal with the graduation of one a Jayhawk great (Danny Manning), and, umm, some NCAA sanctions that resulted in a year-long suspension from the NCAA tournament. The future looked bleak in 1989, even more so when the athletic department hired a relatively unknown North Carolina assistant named Roy Williams.

As it turned out, 1989 was merely the beginning of a 15-year run of basketball excellence. Salad years. Coach Williams proved to be an unquestionable master of the college game (an encyclopedic account of his achievements), patching together the team that remained after Brown’s exit and leading them into the Final Four within two years and in the process creating a new style of offense that proudly bears the name, The Kansas Break. Accolades accumulated: Final Fours in 1991 and 1993. A nationally-televised 150–95 drubbing of Kentucky in 1989. One of the all-time great college basketball teams in 1996. More Final Fours in 2002 and 2003.

When Coach Williams returned home to North Carolina after the 2003 season, the question on everyone’s mind was: Will 2003 be looked at as another 1989, or as another 1969? The beginning of a new era of greatness, or the beginning of a long decline?