In a great game, Louisville achieves greatness

By Art Spander

ATLANTA – Sometimes it works out like this. Sometimes the biggest game of the season turns out to be the best game of the season, a game of emotion, drama and subplots that validates our love of sports, a game that, true to the mottos printed on the warmups of both teams, did rise to the occasion.
 
The preludes, the regionals, even the semifinals, were hesitant, awkward games, making us wonder what was wrong, instead of what was right, games when players couldn’t score, games that elicited criticism instead of the expected praise.
   
But on Monday night, the NCAA final swept away all the disappointment that had gone before, as Louisville, once trailing by 12 points, was able to sweep away Michigan, 82-76, and both take the championship and justify its overall No. 1 seeding.
   
It was a beautiful day for Rick Pitino, the Louisville coach, who in the late morning was chosen for the Basketball Hall of Fame and then so very late in the evening, just before the stroke of midnight because these games are staged for a maximum TV audience, watched and urged the Cardinals to their third title – and his second.
   
Thirteen years ago, at the only other school that counts in the state of bluegrass, thoroughbreds and college basketball, the U. of Kentucky, Pitino earned his other championship.
   
So Louisville, which at one time in the first half had trailed by 12, would come out ahead in the end, but the true winner was the sport, as wild and enthralling as only could be imagined by the record finals crowd of 74,326 at the Georgia Dome and the usual millions of television viewers.
 
“A lot of times when you get to championship games,” said Pitino, “the games are not always great, not always pretty. This was a great game.”
   
This was a game in which a kid nicknamed Spike, Michael Albrecht, a 5-foot-10 freshman, came off the bench for Michigan to score 17 points before intermission and then, as the media wondered if he were the stuff of fairy tales, slipped into oblivion.
   
This was the game in which a backup named Luke Hancock took the role of the injured Kevin Ware and not only led Louisville with 22 points but was chosen the Final Four’s most outstanding player.
 
This was the game in which players from both squads raced from one end of the court to the other at the sort of breakneck pace that had the screaming fans -- and oh, were they loud -- taking as many deep breaths as the athletes.
 
Michigan (31-8) was doing it for a while with four freshmen, and oh, are the Wolverines going to be strong in the future. Louisville (35-5) was doing it for a while figuratively without guard Russ Smith, who made only 3 of his 16 field goal attempts.
  
Yes, Ware was in the building, on the bench, the right leg in which he incurred a compound fracture 10 days earlier against Duke under sweat pants, his number “5” on the T-shirts of so many Louisville fans. He was given the opportunity to make the final snip, separating the net from the rim.
  
Louisville was not quite as ecstatic as it was relieved. The Cardinals gained control in the second half, as they did against Wichita State in the semifinal, but Michigan, shooting 52 percent for the game, wouldn’t fade until the bitter end.
  
“As fine an offensive team as there is,” Pitino said of Michigan.
   
The Wolverines with their happy ghosts from the past, Chris Webber, Jalen Rose and others from, the ’93 Michigan finalists in attendance, would get 24 points from the new Player of the Year, Trey Burke – even with Burke out most of the first half with  two early fouls.
  
That’s when Albrecht came in and came on, making 6 of 8 and getting his 17. That’s when Michigan zoomed to a 33-21 lead with 3:56 to play before halftime. But even more quickly, in three and half minutes, Louisville did its own zooming, and went ahead, 37-36. You sensed it had become the Cardinals' game.
  
“We feel bad about it,” Michigan coach John Beilein would say in retrospect. “We could have done some things better, every one of us. At the same time, Louisville is a terrific basketball team. I have not seen that quickness anywhere, and we played some really good teams. That quickness is incredible, and it got us a couple of times today.”
  
It got Louisville the victory, as one of Pitino’s horses, Goldencents, on Saturday got him the Santa Anita Derby victory.
  
“I think when you work as hard as we work,” said Pitino of his team, “it builds a foundation of love and discipline because you have to suffer together. You're always pressing.”
  
He meant for greatness. In this game, this great game, Louisville achieved it.

Reserves and persistence win for Louisville

By Art Spander

ATLANTA -- The fans of the school that didn’t win, Wichita State, were complaining, not about their team, which was magnificent, but about the college basketball rule that awards alternate possessions on what used to be jump balls and, of course, about the officiating.
   
What happened was Louisville -- which was down 12 in the second half and came rushing back to win the NCAA national semifinal, 72-68, Saturday night, and advance to Monday night’s final against Michigan -- missed a free throw with nine seconds to play.
  
Wichita’s Ron Baker grabbed the ball, then Louisville’s Luke Hancock also grabbed the ball, although the Wichita people among the huge crowd at the Georgia Dome insisted Hancock grabbed Baker, getting away with a foul that became a tie-up.
  
The possession arrow pointed to Louisville, and naturally Wichita had to foul intentionally. And that was that, the No. 1 seed beating the No. 9 seed.
   
But forget the rules and the refs. If you’re in front, 47-35, with under 14 minutes remaining, they’re not at fault. Your team is.
   
Your team, which was so protective of the ball for more than 30 minutes, which had only four turnovers, wilted under Louisville's pressure and made six turnovers in eight possessions. Your team, which got this far on 3-point baskets hit on only 6 in 20 attempts.
  
Louisville won because when its starters were less than effective, its reserves -- including a walk-on, Tim Henderson -- were very effective. Louisville won because it’s the best team in the country.
   
“They do that to everyone,” a saddened Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall said of Louisville.
   
Then he sighed, “This may be the most important basketball game I’ll ever coach. It’s definitely the most important Wichita State has played in.”
   
It was no less important for Louisville, which certainly was without its emotional leader, Kevin Ware, who broke his leg in last weekend’s regional final against Duke. Louisville has made even greater comebacks – it was down 16 to Syracuse in the Big East tournament – to advance as it has.
   
“We had to win this game with our second unit,” said Rick Pitino, the Louisville coach, “with Steven Van Treese, Tim Henderson, one of the best sixth men in basketball, Luke Hancock, and Montrezl Harrell. Our starters played poorly, and that was because Wichita State is that good.”
   
If not quite good enough.
   
Henderson is one of those hometown kids who sat on the bench while Peyton Siva from Seattle, Russ Smith from Brooklyn, Gorgui Deng from Senegal – and definitely Ware, from the Bronx – got the playing time and accolades.
   
Hancock also is a sub, if one who Saturday night, basically taking Ware’s place, was on the court 31 minutes and scored 20, one point fewer than Smith.
   
Great teams, or at least very good teams, are deep teams, with players who perform when nobody except their teammates expects them to. Very good teams have players such as Henderson, who defied the Wichita State defense, if not logic.
  
All season, in the 25 games he played, Henderson had made just four 3-pointers, In this game, an agonizingly awful one in the first half and frantically exciting one in the second half, Henderson made consecutive 3-pointers. At the most critical of moments.
  
With Wichita ahead by those 12 points, Henderson cut the margin to nine at the 13-minute mark. Then he trimmed it to six, 47-41, with 12:18 to play.
  
“Tim hits shots like that in practice,” said Hancock.
  
This wasn’t practice. This was near perfection. Three 3-pointers in 17 attempts in 25 games. Two in three attempts in the national semifinal game.
   
“I think the two Henderson hit,” said Marshall, the Wichita coach, “were in concert with the two one-and-ones (the Shockers') Ehimen Okupe missed. You got to get some points there. Then the six-point run for them becomes three or four points.”
   
A week ago, when Ware went down with that gruesome fractured leg, the Louisville Cardinals prayed for him. On Monday night, Ware said he prayed for Hancock. “We’d love for him to be out there,” Hancock said of the injured teammate. “He’s out there in spirit. It means a lot.”
    
What meant a lot was for a dog of a game, Wichita leading at half by the ridiculous score of 26-25, to awaken after intermission and make the final totals respectable. More than respectable were the turnover numbers. Louisville had only two in the second half, nine for the game, Wichita just four in the first half and 11 for the game.
  
In domes, the shooting invariably is off -- although Siva, who was 1 for 9, was asked if the depth perception affected his jumpers and cracked, “Well, my layups. I couldn’t really see. I was too far away from the basket.”
    
No laughs, just the realization he’s close to the national title.

RealClearSports.com: Sports No Longer Respite from Messy World

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

Connect the dots if you can. The man who used to coach University of Kentucky basketball, Billy Gillispie, was arraigned on a charge of drunken driving.

The University of Wisconsin is tossing away $425,000 a year by terminating advertising agreements with MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch in the "ongoing battle against alcohol abuse.''

No, it's not the people making the stuff who are entirely at fault, although they want us to believe you can't have a good time at a game without a brew or something stronger.

It's we folk of little self-control who cause the problem. But someone has to take a stand.

TCU and SMU did just that, but for an interesting reason. Anheuser has produced cans of Bud Light in school colors, as if the more you drink the more you're supposed to be backing the old alma mater.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, TCU's associate director of communications, Lisa Albert, said, " . . . we do not want TCU students, parents of TCU students and stakeholders of the university to think we support this program.''

This has been quite a week for sport, an activity once described in the famed 18th-century dictionary of the Englishman Samuel Johnson as "tumultuous merriment.''

How tumultuously merry would anyone consider Rick Pitino? Or the execs in the National Hockey League as they wrestle a maverick from Canada for ownership of the Phoenix Coyotes? Or the ballplayers who learn their drug tests were seized improperly by the government?

Or Mr. Gillispie -- who for loyalty's sake, we hope -- was sipping Kentucky bourbon, proving his heart was in the right place, if not his brain.

A former California governor and later U.S. Supreme Court chief justice named Earl Warren once said, "I always turn to the sports pages first. They record people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.''

Earl was around in the fantasy world of the 1940s and '50s, when an athlete's peccadilloes were not considered important. Jock journalists concentrated on touchdowns and runs batted in and winked at what could be judged criminal or antisocial behavior. If it didn't happen between the lines, then it didn't happen.

Sometimes -- sometimes -- you wish it were that head-in-the-sand way once more. Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the groin? The whole agonizing business with Michael Vick? These are people's accomplishments?

ESPN can get on your nerves with its self-indulgence, but the network is to be congratulated for the nightly 10 best plays of the day. For a few wonderful seconds of hand-eye coordination and dexterity, we are reminded that sport is fun and games.

Otherwise, we have Pitino acting like a would-be Clarence Darrow, defending himself and questioning the judgment of a Louisville TV station to break into a report on Ted Kennedy's death and show videotapes of the woman who claimed Pitino raped her.

Or the estranged wife of convicted NBA game-fixer ref Tim Donaghy saying he's been "treated unfairly.''

Pitino and Donaghy created their own problems. If you do things that either are stupid or illegal, or both, you pay the price.

Maybe half of what Pitino was preaching was true. "My wife and family don't deserves to suffer because of the lies,'' he said. But it's also true he had a liaison with the woman. That was no lie.

And whether Donaghy is guilty of a parole violation or just victim of a misunderstanding, well, if the man hadn't bet on games he was officiating, then he wouldn't have been sent to prison in the first place.

Sport, tumultuous merriment, has turned into a list of daily accusations and apologies. Patrick Kane, the hockey player, tried to use a cab driver as a puck, and now Kane is sorry.

Oakland Raiders head coach Tom Cable is going to be interviewed by police in Napa, Calif., about his alleged role in a confrontation that left an assistant with a battered jaw.

The world's a mess. Always has been. So we turned to sport for the presumed brief escape from that mess. For decades, we were successful because the unwritten rule was that if someone broke a rule, the possible story remained unwritten.

No longer. Earl Warren to the contrary, the failures listed on the sports pages run from Louisville to Lawrenceburg, the town where Gillispie was halted. The days of the All-American boy who was diligent and selfless are numbered.

It's been a great run for attorneys, if not so good for their clients. Someone's always making news, and except in rare cases, such as at the U. of Wisconsin, too the news is bad.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was recently honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.

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