Charlotte's Bilas to irritate VCU -- again

I had a 30-minute phone conversation with Jay Bilas late Wednesday. A Charlotte resident since 1993, Bilas had just arrived in Houston and was getting ready to cover the Final Four for ESPN.

Bilas has been getting a lot of heat lately -- most of it good-natured -- from everyone associated with Virginia Commonwealth because he railed against VCU's selection into the NCAA tournament field so strongly on Selection Sunday. VCU coach Shaka Smart wondered aloud after one Rams' NCAA tourney win if Bilas had watched the game. Bilas has tweeted that crow actually tastes a lot like eating chicken (although he still firmly believes VCU should have never made the field).

VCU, of course, is in the Final Four, where it will face Butler. UConn and Kentucky will play in the other, far more traditional semifinal. (My column on why I really hope Butler or VCU wins the whole thing can be found here).

I'll be writing a column later this week on Bilas, whose combination of thoughtfulness and humor makes him the best studio analyst in college basketball. But I went ahead and got his picks for the Final Four, and here they are. Again, VCU fans will be irritated.

Bilas's picks:

Semifinal 1: Butler over VCU. Bilas said while VCU has played better to this point, Butler is an expert at slowing the game down and will "squeak one out."

Semifinal 2: UConn over Kentucky.

Final: UConn over Butler.

Much more from Bilas to come later this week, but he says of this Final Four: "If you played it four different times, you really could have four different champions. There just is not a single great team in college basketball this season, which is going to make this one a blast."

Bobcats win, but how?

I saw the Bobcats outscore Milwaukee 7-0 in the final three and a half minutes Monday night to edge the Bucks 87-86 at Time Warner Cable Arena and remain alive in the playoff race, and I'm still not quite sure how it happened.

Gerald Henderson scored all seven of those points for Charlotte, but the Bobcats still made some serious miscues that could have easily allowed the Bucks to win. Boris Diaw had two bad turnovers in the last 90 seconds. There were some defensive errors that allowed Milwaukee's most exciting player, Brandon Jennings, to repeatedly get open (and Jennings just slithered his way open a lot of times, too).

And yet, the Bucks went 0-for-10 from the field in those final 210 seconds. Here's a list of the 10 shots they missed in that last bit while Henderson was catching the Bobcats up:

1. Jennings 3-point miss at 3:27
2. Andrew Bogut (who had 26 points but didn't score in the 4th)-- 10-foot hook shot miss at 3:01
3. Jennings 3-foot jumper at 2:11 (Jennings had 26 points as well, but went 2-for-12 in the fourth quarter)
4. Jennings 3-point miss at 1:47
5. Jennings 14-foot jumper miss at 1:02
6. Bogut misses layup at 38.9 seconds (this was the easiest shot the Bucks got)
7. Jennings misses contested layup at 15.9
8. Jennings misses contested layup at 5.9 (following his steal of Diaw's in-bounds pass)
9. Jennings misses 3-pointer at 2.0
10. Carlos Delfino misses a tip-in from 1 foot at buzzer

So you've got to put this one more on Jennings' back than anyone's -- he missed seven of those 10 shots. Said Milwaukee coach Scott Skiles: "We had multiple plays at the rim that we ran and got wide-open looks, we just couldn't make them." The Bucks ended up 4-for-22 in the fourth quarter. I didn't say it was great basketball, but it was entertaining basketball.

The Bobcats, meanwhile, won their third straight game despite playing their third-string point guard, Garrett Temple, for the game's last 9:56. It was an amazing victory on several fronts, and it kept the Bobcats (31-42) in the playoff chase, one game behind Indiana for the No.8 spot.

3 thoughts on UNC's loss

I'm back from a one-week break and am fairly astounded, like everyone else, that both Butler and VCU made the Final Four.

Kentucky beating UNC? Now that wasn't astounding. If they played 10 times, I figure each team would win five. Very evenly matched. In my mind, the difference on Sunday was:

1) John Henson's foul trouble. Why was Henson reaching down for the volleyball-spike block on some of them, instead of simply keeping his hands up and going for the tip block? It's so much safer. Henson deserves credit for staying out of foul trouble nearly all year, but this was a bad day to have a bad day, as John Fox would say.

2) 3-point issues. Kentucky made 12 of 22 from three-point range, which is not that easy to do even if you're shooting alone in an empty gym. Kudos to the Wildcats for that -- like Arizona against Duke, Kentucky got a 3 whenever it needed one. But as for North Carolina... Leslie McDonald sure slumped late in the year, which meant that Harrison Barnes was about the only guy who could make a 3 for the last couple of weeks. And when Barnes' outside shot was off -- he was 2-for-9 from 3-point range Sunday -- there just wasn't enough help.

3) The knife edge. This Carolina team had a very good season -- a great one, really, given that it made it to the final 8 after not making the NCAA tournament at all in 2010 and was also the final ACC team to go out.

But it also had a disturbing tendency to play on a knife edge. Other than the Marquette game in the Sweet 16, it's hard to remember a game against a quality opponent in which UNC simply put the other guys away early and then kept that team down. It made valiant comeback attempts many times, but you can't live like that forever.

Duke, UNC win nailbiters

A few notes on UNC and Duke as the Tar Heels and Blue Devils each advanced to the Sweet 16 out of Charlotte on Sunday, winning two outstanding NCAA tourney games by a combined total of only five points:

-- Sunday was a lot better day than Friday was in general for both Charlotte and the NCAA tournament. The games were great, the crowd was far more into it, and both Washington and Michigan proved to be excellent sparring partners for the two ACC rivals. If it had gone just a little differently, it could have been a Black Sunday for both UNC and Duke (the 1979 edition, for those with long memories), but both did just enough at the end to win.

-- I thought the officials needed to do some more video review at the end of the UNC-Washington game. First of all, Washington should have had about 1.1 seconds left to get off that final shot, not 0.5, but no official corrected that.

-- I also thought John Henson goal-tended Washington’s final shot, although since it was mistakenly shot from two-point range it would only have made the score a one-point UNC margin instead of the three-point UNC win (86-83) that officially resulted.

-- Henson is involved in so many weird plays, isn’t he? Just in the final 10 seconds, he tipped a ball on an in-bounds pass to cause a turnover, then dropped a desperate heave from a Washington player out of bounds, then did his “was it a goaltending?” act.

-- I know Duke guard Kyrie Irving is supposed to be the next John Wall and all, but he still looks rusty. There’s no doubt that Duke’s Nolan Smith, the ACC Player of the Year, remained the best player on the floor Sunday in Duke’s 73-71 win.

Smith (24 points) was great. He almost broke a Michigan defender’s ankles with one crossover move. Irving was just OK, but he did hit a key bank shot in the final minute (his only field goal of the game).

-- Congrats to Coach K and his 900th career victory. Amazing.

-- The attendance at Time Warner Cable Arena Sunday was a bit better than Friday. There were about 1,500 more tickets sold for Sunday’s session compared to Friday’s – the Sunday session ticket was $77.

The announced crowd was 18,329 Sunday, compared to 16,852 Friday. Still, it’s a stunner the whole weekend wasn’t a complete sellout with both North Carolina and Duke in the house.

-- I am off until Monday, March 28 and won’t be posting on this blog until then. Thanks to all of you so much for reading this blog, and have a good week!

Washington a dangerous matchup for UNC Sunday

Washington will pose a serious “round of 32” threat to North Carolina Sunday when the two teams square off at 12:15 p.m. And one Georgia player came just short of predicting a Huskie victory early Saturday morning.

Georgia’s Trey Thompkins, who had 26 points in Washington’s 68-65 win over the Bulldogs Friday night, was asked after the game how far he expected Washington to go in the tournament.

“I feel this Washington team will go deep into the tournament,” Thompkins said. And although he didn’t explain that by further, I wouldn’t think one victory would be considered “deep” by anyone.

Washington, a No.7 seed, has far more NCAA tournament experience than the current crop of Tar Heel players. The Huskies made it to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2010 before losing to West Virginia.

They have a 5-9 junior guard in Isaiah Thomas (no relation to the original Isaiah Thomas) who makes them go, and a couple of seniors in the post (6-9 Matthew Bryan-Amaning and 6-6 Justin Holiday) who are very respectable players.

Said Georgia coach Mark Fox, who is a longtime friend of Roy Williams, shortly after his team had lost to the Huskies Friday night in Charlotte: “Washington scores it from so many places…. It should be a heckuva ballgame.”

For the second game in a row, the Tar Heels have also found a team that wants to run with them. Long Island was the nation’s No.4 scoring team (UNC beat the Blackbirds, 102-87 Friday night).

Washington? It’s the nation’s No.3 scoring team, averaging 83.5 points per game.
The Huskies won the Pac-10 tournament this season (but finished only third in the Pac-10 regular season).

In the game vs. Georgia Friday, Washington was slowed considerably by the Bulldogs’ insistence on playing at a leisurely tempo. But the Huskies had a nice run early in the second half and held a lead of around 10 points most of the way until Georgia made a furious comeback at the end. A missed Bulldogs’ three-pointer from about 25 feet was all that kept the game from going into overtime.

One other note: attendance for the night session at Charlotte’s Time Warner Cable Arena was announced at 16,852, which is a couple of thousand people short of a sellout. That's something, isn't it? Duke and North Carolina can't sell out in Charlotte?!

First-day thoughts from Charlotte's NCAA tourney

You want buzzer beaters? You want last-second drama?

Maybe Sunday -- at least in Charlotte (where, by, the way, the times have been announced for Sunday's two games). Not Friday.

On Sunday, North Carolina plays Washington at 12:15 p.m. Duke plays Michigan 30 minutes after that game, which will allow for a likely 2:45 or so start. Both games will be televised by CBS -- it's sort of an old-school afternoon coming up.

Through the first three games of Charlotte's latest NCAA hosting experience Friday, we saw a 30-point win (by Michigan), a 42-point win (by Duke) and a 15-point win (by UNC).

The final Friday game -- which actually ended at about 12:15 a.m. Saturday -- was a little better. Washington edged Georgia, 68-65, although the Bulldogs had about a 30-footer at the buzzer that could have tied it (but wasn't close). Washington led most of the second half by 8-10 points, though -- it wasn't exactly a thriller.

Washington will likely run with the Tar Heels Sunday. The Huskies were No.3 in the country in scoring this season, averaging 83 per game, although Georgia slowed them down a little.

In the UNC game, the Tar Heels led by 10-16 points for most of the second half over those gritty Long Island Blackbirds before winning 102-87.

As I write in my column for Saturday's newspaper, though, this game again exposed some flaws in the Tar Heels. They committed too many turnovers (18), shot poorly from three-point range (3-for-17), allowed too much penetration by LIU's quick guards and had some concentration lapses that allowed LIU to stick around too long.

As Roy Williams said afterward: “I’m not pleased with the way we played, but I’m pleased we’re still playing.”

Duke was much more impressive in its first-round victory, but of course Michigan won by 30 as well (in what was likely Bruce Pearl's last game as Tennessee coach). I think the Blue Devils are too athletic for Michigan, though, especially now that Kyrie Irving is playing again.

Kyrie is in -- and that changes a lot

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski made official Thursday afternoon what had been long suspected -- Duke freshman point guard Kyrie Irving will play in the NCAA tournament.

Irving hasn't played since December, when he injured his toe against Butler. Coach K said he would come off the bench and play a limited number of minutes.

Still, I can easily see this becoming one of the biggest storylines of the NCAA tournament. Without Irving, Duke still grabbed a No.1 seed. With a healthy Irving? Well, if he plays like he did in December, let's just say I'd like to rethink my pick of an Ohio State-Kansas final.

Too late now on that, but it was good to see Irving running with the other Blue Devils in Thursday's open practice and it will be good to see him play in Charlotte this weekend. He was a good soldier by all accounts during his absence, and so now we all get to see what he's got.

"To have Kyrie back will be a huge lift," said Nolan Smith, who now won't have to constantly pressure the opposing team's point guard on defense since Irving can do that whenever he's in the game.

Said Coach K of Irving: "This kid will be a great player. He won't be a great player tomorrow (against Hampton, 3:10 p.m. tipoff Friday)."

That's probably true, but by next week? Irving may well be a great player once again, and he may make Duke a very serious contender for its second straight national title.