One shining moment
The nets had been cut down, the Final Four hats had been passed out, the bright lights of the TV cameras had made their march out of the locker room after a whale of a March Madness game. Plenty of time had passed for John Lucas to soak in what he had just done -- shoot his Cowboys to San Antonio with a game-winning 3-pointer against top-seeded Saint Joseph's on Saturday in the East Rutherford regional final. But it just wasn't happening.
Lucas shook his head in disbelief. "Man, I don't know what happened on that play," Lucas said. To explain his heroics, the junior guard had to resort to language that, "We don't usually use around the media," he said. "When it left my hand, I said, 'Oh, that's buckets!'" The shot found the bottom of the bucket, sending a Continental Airlines Arena crowd full of Saint Joseph's loyalists into complete shock, and Lucas, a Houston native, back to his home state for a chance to win a national championship.
Let's try to fill in the gaps for Lucas' disorientated account of the final sequence: Lucas said he was planning on feeding forward Joey Graham in the post, thinking Graham would take it to the basket and make the shot or at least get fouled. But Graham popped out to the perimeter to receive the pass, and nearly lost the basketball when he attempted to penetrate. Graham managed to corral the ball and flip it to Lucas, who had alertly stepped back into a clear area to launch a 3-pointer from the wing with 6.9 seconds left.
"That had to be the biggest shot of my life," Lucas said.
Player who impressed me
Even the best of shooters can get ice cold at the worst time. But what separates a guy who can shoot well from a great shooter is the confidence to take the big shots when he's been off the mark all night. That pretty much sums up the night for the would-be hero of this regional final, Pat Carroll of Saint Joseph's. Caroll was a frigid 1-of-6 from 3-point land in the first half and missed his first three attempts from beyond the arc in the second half. But Carroll hit a pair of 3-pointers in the closing minutes, including one with 28 seconds left that would have gone down as the game-winning shot if not for Lucas' last-gasp trifecta. After the game, Carroll could only think about the slew of misses and not the would-be game-winner.
"This was just the wrong game to miss your shots like that," he said.
Courtside confidential
When you hit the big time, you pick up big-time fans. The first new celebrity on the Cowboys' bandwagon is actor Tim Robbins, fresh off winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Mystic River. Robbins, a UCLA grad who said he just showed up hoping to see a great game, had seats in the first row behind the Cowboys' bench Saturday. After the game, he posed for photos with Oklahoma State's cheerleaders before heading into the winning locker room. Lucas, for one, was thrilled to see Robbins. "I loved Shawshank Redemption," Lucas said. "I can't believe I stayed up for the whole movie, because it was so long, but it was a really good movie." ... Saint Joseph's could have taken a page from the Princeton offense to offset the Cowboys' aggressive overplaying on the perimeter. Early in the first half, when a Delonte West pass intended for Jameer Nelson on the wing was deflected out of bounds, Nelson drew an imaginary line toward the basket as if to say, "backdoor cut." ... When asked if he would still tune in to the Final Four on Saturday, Carroll tried to think of an excuse for not watching before giving up. "Eh, I got to ... Man, I love basketball, so I'll probably watch it."
Championship formula
The Cowboys may already have overcome their biggest hurdle -- believing they can play at a championship level.
"We're just getting used to the fact that we're a great team," said junior guard Daniel Bobik, who had a horrific first half (three fouls, two bad turnovers, zero points). "In the first half, we played like we were intimidated and scared. We're not used to this, playing in the Elite Eight for something that means so much."
Intimidated? Scared? That was hard to believe coming from a member of the Cowboys, who looked like they were walking on air after defeating Pittsburgh on Thursday in the regional semifinal. The problem, Bobik said, was the extra day sitting around with nothing to do but think about the magnitude of the upcoming matchup with the top-seeded Hawks.
"That's why it is the mentally tough teams that win," Bobik said. "We stayed in the hotel the whole time [Friday]. We didn't go to New York City, didn't hang out at the mall. We spent more time with the media than we did even at practice. You end up psyching yourself out. It's very mentally draining."
Well, now the Cowboys have six days to think about their next game, which will be on a much bigger stage and mean so much more -- the national semifinal against the winner of Sunday's Kansas-Georgia Tech game. Oklahoma State handled Kansas in their only meeting this season, 80-60, on Feb. 9 in Stillwater, Okla. It might not be ideal for the Cowboys to be facing a conference rival in the Final Four, but on the bright side for them, this is a fairly nondescript Jayhawks squad they would be facing. Georgia Tech would pose an interesting matchup because of its athleticism, especially if the Yellow Jackets try to run and gun with the Cowboys. Still, we haven't seen anything yet that would suggest Georgia Tech could play at the championship level that Oklahoma State reached here Saturday.
