9803310095
DETROIT FREE PRESS
980331
Tuesday, March 31, 1998
METRO FINAL CHASER
1D
Photo CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/Associated Press;Photo MIKE BLAKE/Reuters
Utah's Michael Doleac gets ready to block a shot by Kentucky's Allen
Edwards. Doleac finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks.
Kentucky's Nazr Mohammed and Utah's Drew Hansen both get a hand on a
first-half rebound Monday night at the Alamodome.
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1998, Detroit Free Press
HOW TUBBY'S TEAM SUBMARINED MAJERUS' MARAUDERS
SAN ANTONIO -- At the far end of the court, Rick Majerus had his mouth agape, his big body
sagging, what little hair he has left dripping sweat behind his ears. As a
coach who just turned 50, is a bachelor, and lives in a hotel because "I don't
want to have to make my bed," he might have believed that believing was
enough, that making your life all about doing the impossible might just make
it ...possible. And until the waning minutes of Monday night, who would have
argued? He had brought a no-star team to the lip of an NCAA championship,
knocking off, along the way, last year's king, Arizona, and perennial royalty
North Carolina. And now, here were his Utah Utes, against the last dragon,
maybe the most storied basketball program in America, the Kentucky Wildcats.
And the Utes had, at some point or another in this raucous evening,
outrebounded them, outshot them, out-hustled them, out-defensed them.
The only thing they couldn't do was outlast them.
Comeback 'Cats. Kentucky played this championship like a boxer who knows that
his best friend is the length of the fight. Despite a 10-point halftime
deficit, the 'Cats kept chipping away at the lead, squeezing Utah down the
stretch, blocking shots, poking the ball away, until slowly, slowly, the Utah
magic drizzled and fizzled. Fatigue began to drag on the Utes like a wet suit.
Michael Doleac, their thick senior center who had been masterful in the first
half, was lumbering upcourt and clanking shots. Hanno Mottola, the Finnish
sensation, lost his concentration and threw a three-pointer into the side of
the backboard. Andre Miller, the Utes' whirling point guard, tried to slalom
his way inside, but only put enough on the ball to get it to the rim, not in.
The Utes went nearly six minutes without a basket, then another six minutes
without a basket. Finally, with just a few ticks remaining, Kentucky's Wayne
Turner took a lob from Jeff Sheppard and slammed the ball through the hoop,
giving Kentucky its biggest lead, 10 points. And as Turner waved his arms in
glee, Majerus and his team had the look of men who push a boulder to the top
of the mountain and let go. What happens?
It rolls back on you.
Comeback 'Cats.
"Viva La Alamo!" screamed Tubby Smith, the first-year coach for Kentucky who
gave the Wildcats their second championship in three years with a 78-69
victory, and will forever love this town. "I want to thank God, my family, my
wife, these players, all the players.... "
Back to Tubby in a moment.
There were no bad stories in this wonderful Final Four, and certainly Smith's
becoming only the seventh coach to win it all in his first season at a school
(the last was Steve Fisher at Michigan) is a book waiting to be written. But
Majerus and Utah were an emotional favorite, if only because it's not every
year -- or even every decade -- that you get a coach who looks like a deli
owner, eats like a permanent customer, and manages to laugh despite the
pressure cooker that is college basketball.
Unlike Kentucky -- which captured its seventh NCAA crown -- the last time Utah
won a national title, it was as a substitute, filling in for an Arkansas squad
that couldn't make it. The year was 1944, and those Utes held a team vote to
see whether they wanted to bother to ride a train to New York City.
Majerus and his Utes needed no vote to attend this affair. They had earned the
final with defense, with boxing out, with rebounding -- all those
non-glamorous things. As Majerus said last week, "Do you know how hard it is
for 'SportsCenter' to find a highlight of us?"
Maybe that's a good thing.
And it almost became a legendary one.
Almost.
Now, back to Tubby....
"I want to thank my athletic director, God, Rick Pitino, all these players....
"
Pressure was on Smith
Well, can you blame Smith? Here is a guy who took over a team that is religion
in the state of Kentucky. Such is the pressure cooker there, that when Smith
was considering the job, a female Kentucky columnist urged him not to accept
because "Kentucky is not ready for a black basketball coach.... I fear for
your safety and the safety of your family.... The first game you lose, it
won't be, 'You're a bad coach,' it'll be, 'You're a bad black coach.' "
But Smith, who earned his nickname Tubby as one of 17 children on a poor
Maryland farm who didn't like to get out of the galvanized steel bathtub when
his time was up, was not the type to be intimidated. And you could argue that
his victory Monday night was an even more superb piece of coaching than
Pitino's win in 1996, because this group did not have that NBA-bound talent.
"Anytime you take over from a coach as talented as Rick Pitino, there's
pressure," Smith admitted an hour after the title was his. "But I try not to
look at this as a personal thing. It really hasn't hit me yet. I had to ask
our athletic director C.M. (Newton), 'Did we really just win the national
championship?' I don't know how it's supposed to feel!"
It's supposed to feel good, and no doubt it does. Not that Kentucky fans were
thrilled with the early returns Monday. The first half of this game was like
watching basketball from a bygone era. You half-expected your TV set to go
black and white and flash a commercial for Brylcreem. This was 1998? There
wasn't a dunk for the first five minutes, Kentucky made no three-pointers the
entire half, balls were bounced inside to big men, many of the shots were
banked gently off glass, nobody complained to the refs, and Utah kept throwing
these long lob passes -- remember when they called them "baseball passes"? --
for breakaway lay-ups.
Oh, yes, and the Utes rebounded. They rebounded offensively and they rebounded
defensively, using the classic box-out position and riding the thick frame of
Doleac, who is -- get this for an anachronism -- a fifth-year senior.
I didn't know they made those anymore.
Anyhow, the Utes ran off at halftime with a 10-point lead. And lesser teams
might have been scared witless. But Kentucky never panicked. The Wildcats came
back Monday night the way they came back last weekend against Duke, overcoming
a 17-point deficit, and Saturday in the semifinals against Stanford,
overcoming a 10-point deficit.
"We're always confident we can come back on people," said Scott Padgett, who
had 17 points and five rebounds. "We use our defense to wear you down."
In the final 11 1/2 minutes Monday night, Utah scored three baskets, the last
one a meaningless three-pointer. Meanwhile, Kentucky scored just enough to
break Utah's will. The clincher came on Utah's last gasp, clinging to a
four-point lead. The Wildcats' Cameron Mills, who hit several killer
three-pointers against Duke, escaped the Utah defense and fired a 21-footer
that ripped the net.
"That," Utah's Drew Hansen would later sigh, "was the biggest defensive
mistake of my life. That's what Mills does. Makes three-pointers. And I let
him."
The squeeze was on, and moments later, Utah succumbed.
"We were beaten by a better team," Majerus said. "Our hats are off to them.
They're number one, but ..."
He looked over at several of his players, who were trying their best to keep
their heads high.
"...but these guys are No. 1A."
Fitting close to season
What a nice final sentiment, a fitting close to a balanced college basketball
season and a March Madness that was like a box of Belgian chocolates, with
something wonderful and different inside each one. There was the nuttiness of
West Virginia's last-second, bank-shot victory, the syrupy sweetness of
Valparaiso and its father-son story, the hardened almond of Jim Harrick's
return to glory with Rhode Island, the bittersweet taste of Duke just missing
its chance to return to glory with Mike Krzyzewski.
The Big Dance did not disappoint. And Monday night was a nail-biter until the
last minute. Admit it. You were wrapped up into it, and you didn't even know
half the players.
Well, what we may have had with this goose-bumpy tournament is the return of
team basketball -- by necessity. Remember how we predicted the death of
college hoops with the rise in departing underclassmen? News of death may have
premature. What died is the sport that cultivated one star player and tried to
ride him to a title -- the way Purdue tried with Glenn Robinson, the way LSU
tried with Shaquille O'Neal. Those players won't stick around long enough to
get it done anymore.
What may replace them is what we saw here with Kentucky and Utah. Teams that
rely on everyone. Teams that swarm on defense like bees. Teams that feature
point guards -- real ones, not Michael Jordan impersonators -- teams that
pass, that use the time on the clock, that press from one end of the floor to
another, that don't spend time preening or dancing or arguing with referees,
because they're too busy concentrating.
Majerus and his wonderful story lost with the same class he had shown in
winning.
And as the interview area began to clear, Tubby Smith, the new king of
Kentucky, stayed in his seat, watching the exits, happy to just be sitting
still.
"It's amazing," he mused, "what you can achieve when you don't care who gets
the credit."
Wow. A great game -- and we can actually learn something, too?
I guess that's why they call it college.
To leave a message for Mitch Albom, call 1-313-223-4581.
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
COLUMN;BASKETBALL;UTAH UTES;RICK MAJERUS;TUBBY SMITH;UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY