The Road to the Final Four That Is. Two impressive performances on Saturday night by Memphis and Kansas. It reiterates what I said on Saturday morning.
Defense Wins Championships. If the Tigers or the Jayhawks didn't convince you, I don't know what will.
In the first game, Joey Dorsey gave a terrific defensive performance with 15 rebounds and held Kevin Love to only 12 points on 4 of 11 shooting from the field (previously he had been 24 of 37 in his last 3 games) and only 9 rebounds. Derrick Rose held Darren Collison to 2 points on 1 of 9 shooting with 5 turnovers. Josh Shipp hit two of his first three pointers, then only had one three pointer the rest of the game shooting 3 of 9 from the field. UCLA as a whole shot 37.5 percent from the field and only shot 4 of 13 from beyond three. Now it wasn't just a defensive performance by the Tigers. Rose showed why he might one of the top three picks in the draft after slicing through the Bruins defense for 25 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists. Simply put, Collison could not guard him as Rose consistently drove through the basket (and if Rose could finish better, he easily would have had over 30). Chris Douglas Roberts (its hilarious listening to Jim Nance try to be cool and call him CDR) gave another dominant performance with 28 points. Roberts gave the fans at the Alamo Dome and around the country one of the signature moments of the Final Four as he took a baseline pass and dunked over Love, sending Love crashing to the floor. Then the final piece of the play was the camera showing Dorsey pointing to a fallen Love as if to say "Ahhh, look at the big Bruin star on the floor. You just got a facial!". Priceless.
Right before the second game, I said to my friend Mal, as we were watching the games at his house, I don't think you can have a better performance than Memphis gave in that first game. Well, for the first 15 minutes of the second game, I was wrong. For in those first 15 minutes, Kansas gave an absolute clinic on defense, offense and transition basketball. If it wasn't the Jayhawks looking inside to Darrell Arthur or Darnell Jackson, it was Russell Robinson finding Brandon Rush or Mario Chalmers for three pointers or drives to the basket. Defensively Arthur, Jackson, Sasha Kaun and Cole Aldrich, who had an outstanding game off the bench, made Tyler Hansborough and company work inside. They played terrific help defense and forced many Tar Heel turnovers at the beginning of the game. Finally the Jayhawks made the Tar Heels to shoot from the outside, which is not their strong suit. That resulted in a 40-12 lead with five minutes left in the first half.
Now here is where the Jayhawks could have put the game away but with five players each having two fouls, coach Bill Self had to keep his lineup on the court and the Jayhawks were clearly tired, thus they became sloppy with the ball. In fact after Aldrich had hit a jumper with 6:49 left, the Jayhawks did not score for nearly the next five minutes until Chalmers hit a layup with 1:57 left. During this time the Tar Heels started to right themselves and made a 10-0 run. They would cut the lead to 44-27 at half, thanks in large part to the best sixth man in college basketball, junior Danny Green (who had 15 points for the game). The Tar Heels would continue their run in the second half and starting from 17:33 with the Heels down 19, 52-33, North Carolina would go on a 17-2 run over the next five minutes as Hansborough, Green and Wayne Ellington led the way back to a four point deficit at 54-50. The teams would trade baskets and with the Heels down five 58-53, the Tar Heels had a chance to cut it two, but Danny Green's three pointer went in and out. Right after that, Kansas would again get the intensity they had in the first half and put the game away with a 22-8 run.
The Jayhawks showed the Tar Heels weakness on defense by shooting 53 percent from the field (Rush led the way with 25). Defensively, Kansas held NC to 35.8 percent from the field, outrebounded them 42-33, contained Hansborough to 17 points on only 13 field goal attempts, blocked nine shots, and forced NC to shoot 5 of 24 from beyond three.
As for tonight, I predicted Kansas to win the Final Four and I will stick with that. But I could easily see Memphis winning. Comes down again to how Kansas' guards deal with the height differential with the Memphis guards. And can Dorsey repeat his performance again the quad threat the Jayhawks pose inside? We'll see. Hopefully its an exciting game.
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