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Can Anyone Beat Duke? Each of the other Final Four entrants is uniquely capable of upsetting the Blue Devils. Whether one of them will is another matter
Posted: Wednesday March 24, 1999 11:59 AM
By Jack McCallum Remove from your mind the vision of Michigan State, Duke's semifinal opponent on Saturday, clanging jump shots and turning their games into rock fights at 10 paces. Forget that the preseason goal of Ohio State, which could play the Blue Devils in the championship game, was, in the words of coach Jim O'Brien, "maybe to get invited to the NIT." Ignore the fact that Connecticut, Duke's other final-game possibility, barely beat Gonzaga 67-62 to make the Final Four and seems to go through more emotional ups and downs during one game than the Blue Devils have gone through all season. Most of all get amnesiac about Duke's eye-popping statistical dominance this season (see chart below); the formidable specter of coach Mike Krzyzewski, Mr. March, directing traffic from the sideline in his fifth Final Four of the decade; and the learned opinions of most of America's hoop heads, including Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson, who says, "When I think of a great team, I think of Duke. When I think of another great team, I think of Duke's bench." Just get your mind to accept the notion, for a moment, that the Blue Devils can be beat. After all, Duke was the last team to beat a seemingly invincible opponent in the Final Four, when it upset unbeaten UNLV 79-77 in 1991 for the first of Krzyzewski's back-to-back titles. "Coach told us, 'I'm going to be talking to the media all the time about how great UNLV is,'" says Bobby Hurley, the point guard on that team, "'but I'm going to tell you guys right here, right now, I think we can beat them, and I want you to believe we can beat them.' That kind of confidence rubs off." This year's first-time-to-the-Final Four coaches -- Michigan State's Tom Izzo, the 1998 national coach of the year whose team seems to reflect his smiling-assassin persona; Ohio State's O'Brien, who worked so many miracles this season he should hold his summer camps at Lourdes; and Connecticut's Jim Calhoun, an edgy sideline sentry who lives and dies with every possession -- will be working the mental game, too, and all are experts at it. Do we really think any of these supporting acts in St. Pete can beat the Blue Devils? We do. (Please note that can is different from will.) Here's how: MICHIGAN STATE OVER DUKE, Saturday night. In the Spartans, the Blue Devils will be meeting a true modern Stone Age fam-i-ly. Though they frequently fail to draw iron, the Spartans rarely fail to draw blood. Witness the collision between point guard Mateen Cleaves and Oklahoma's Eduardo Najera, who was setting a pick in the Midwest Regional semifinal last Friday night. Najera ended up with a concussion and a lacerated chin, while Cleaves walked away with just a head bruise. In the ensuing huddle, assistant coach Tom Crean cracked up the Spartans by saying of Cleaves, "It's not like he's missing an arm or anything." In one practice this season, center Antonio Smith says he was elbowed in the face a dozen times, sustaining two chipped teeth, and had to get stitches in his right elbow after he used it to knock out one of guard Doug Davis's teeth. Saving Private Ryan was a cotillion compared with the average Michigan State scrimmage. The Spartans come about their toughness naturally. Cleaves, Smith, shooting guard Charlie Bell and forward Morris Peterson (Michigan State's leading scorer even though he comes off the bench) are all natives of Flint, the blue-collar Michigan city that defines gritty. They played together on various schoolyard and AAU teams, but high school was another matter. For example, during one game between Northern High (Cleaves and Smith's team) and Northwestern High (Peterson's), Smith went after Peterson when Peterson committed a hard foul on Smith's brother Robaire. A scuffle ensued until Cleaves played peacemaker -- by pushing Peterson away. All four of the Flintstones proudly sport FLINT tattoos on their arms. Even Sparty, Michigan State's broom-headed mascot, was wearing a paste-on skin FLINT during Sunday's 73-66 win over Kentucky in the Midwest final. This Duke team is supposed to be tougher than previous Blue Devils teams, which, rightly or wrongly, were thought to have had a soft, preppy aspect to them. In any case there's no reason to believe that the Blue Devils will recoil in terror at the sight of a few tattoos, particularly since they rolled the 'Stones 73-67 earlier this season. But Duke has spent so much time playing above the fray, refining the art of clean, surgical basketball, that one has to wonder how they will do if their semifinal turns into a contest of rim-rattling jump shots (the Spartans outrebounded the Blue Devils by an absurd 41-25 margin in their Dec. 2 meeting) and tooth-rattling picks. Remember this: Duke has trailed only five times in the second half this season, but three of those times it was to unintimidated urban teams -- Cincinnati, St. John's and Fresno State. If Michigan State keeps the game close, it just might steal a win the way Cincinnati did in handing the Blue Devils their only loss so far this season. OHIO STATE OVER DUKE, championship game, Monday night. A few months ago the Buckeyes, known as the Suckeyes during last season's 8-22 campaign, weren't sure they were as good as Northwestern, never mind dreaming about challenging the likes of Duke. "Who ever thought this could happen?" O'Brien whispered to point guard Scoonie Penn, as they embraced at midcourt after a 77-74 win over St. John's in the South Regional final. "Not me," answered Penn. If not you, Scoonie, then who? While Duke's 36-1 season has been an almost uninterrupted ascent, Ohio State's has been nothing less than a magical mystery tour. The tour leaders have been Penn, who has been mightier than just about anyone in the tournament, and southpaw shooting guard Michael Redd, who seems unstoppable once he decides to bull his way to the hoop, which is a large percentage of the time he has the ball. Two players, no matter how formidable (this duo averages 36.8 of Ohio State's 75.3 points per game), do not an upset make, of course, and, for the Buckeyes' backcourt to dominate, it must find a way to get Blue Devils quarterback William Avery into foul trouble and onto the bench. Even while giving due consideration to the importance of sweet-shooting senior Trajan Langdon, the MVP of the East Regional, it's not hard to conclude that Duke's one indispensable player is Avery, a 6'2" sophomore. Without Langdon the Blue Devils could get outside shooting (albeit not as proficient) from Avery, Chris Carrawell and Shane Battier. Without center Elton Brand, it could plug in supersub Corey Maggette and go with a smaller, quicker lineup that could up the tempo and run by a lot of teams. But Duke without Avery simply isn't so devilish. "Trajan and I can both play point," says Carrawell, "but we're not comfortable doing it. We have to have Will Avery out there." Never mind the decisions that Avery makes on the run; it's the lightning-bug manner in which he runs Duke's half-court zone offense that's irreplaceable. If there's a seam in a zone, Avery is in it before it closes. If there's no opening in front of him, he beats his man off the dribble, draws another defender and kicks to Langdon or small forward Carrawell. And with the shot clock running down and the opposition in man-to-man, Avery will manufacture a scoring opportunity for himself or somebody else. How important is he? Keep in mind that when the Blue Devils upset UNLV in 1991, one reason for their unexpected success was that they fouled out Runnin' Rebels point guard Greg Anthony.
Right now, the only point guard playing at Avery's level is the 5'10" kid who used to snack on Scooter pies and buzz around on a scooter. To Penn's estimable presence add one other Ohio State virtue: the sudden emergence of heretofore unassertive 6'11" junior center Ken Johnson, who had 12 points and seven blocks against St. John's. We're not sure that Johnson, a poetry-writing, piano-playing art major, would survive a scrimmage in Bedrock, uh, East Lansing -- O'Brien calls him "one of the sweetest, nicest young men you could ever want to be around," and Johnson acknowledges that he "wasn't raised by a lot of hard-type people" -- but he has shown himself to be a clutch player. Before a game against Michigan in Ann Arbor on Jan. 16, Johnson sat at a piano in the hotel lounge, drew a crowd of Dairy Queen conventioneers and performed flawlessly. If it wins the national championship, fourth-seeded Ohio State will have beaten three No. 1 seeds -- Auburn, Connecticut and either Duke or Michigan State. That's exactly what another No. 4 seed, Arizona, did when it won the title by defeating Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky in 1997. From time to time magic carpets do stay aloft. CONNECTICUT OVER DUKE, championship game, Monday night. The runnin' and gunnin' Huskies seem to be the most likely candidate to spring an upset. They have a Northeast nastiness about them, a we-be-bad sensibility that does not seem artificial. Some of it comes from the pugnacious manner of Calhoun, a heart-on-his-sleeve guy who surfs the Internet to read most everything that's written about UConn and has been known to challenge the wordsmiths with whom he disagrees. Some of it comes from their beach ball of a point guard, 5'10", 203-pound Khalid El-Amin, the only player in America who could go 0 for 12 from the floor, as he did against Gonzaga, and still act as if he owns the arena. Some of it comes from the formidable contributions of their X factors, guard Ricky Moore (a defensive stopper) and power forward Kevin Freeman (15 rebounds against Gonzaga, 10 off the offensive glass). Both are hard-nosed, unselfish players who, like Duke's Battier, don't need the ball to have a profound effect on a game. Still, the Huskies must combine octane with attitude to beat Duke. Alone among the Blue Devils' challengers, they'll be glad to play an up-tempo game and challenge the wildly overstated belief that Duke is deep. Anyone who has seen Connecticut's fast break at its 4x100-meter-relay best knows it could happen like this: Center Jake Voskuhl, who has three inches on the 6'8" Brand, rebounds and outlets quickly to El-Amin. Forward Richard Hamilton, the only Connecticut player who could possibly start for Duke, catches El-Amin's lead pass on the run, takes one dribble and jams it, no more than four seconds after the play begins. That sequence or something like it is repeated a few times, and suddenly Langdon and Avery get winded or commit fatigue fouls and have to go to the bench.
Connecticut goes nine or even 10 deep. In Albert Mouring, a sophomore three-point specialist, the Huskies get another potent scorer to take pressure off Hamilton and El-Amin. In Rashamel Jones, a battle-tested senior guard, they get a lot of leadership and defense. In Edmund Saunders, a 6'8" sophomore forward, they get a post player to battle Brand on the boards and, from time to time, hit a midrange jumper. In E.J. Harrison, a senior walk-on guard who has played in every tournament game, they get someone to buy El-Amin a few minutes of rest -- a significant factor against Duke's relentless traps. And in Souleymane Wane, they get a 6'11" body to collect a few fouls against Brand and perhaps swat away a shot or two. Then again Duke is that rare team that can play varied tempos, and if it wants to slow UConn down, it can do so by battling the Huskies on the boards, thus decelerating the transition game. And at the other end the Blue Devils can work the clock by running their seamless half-court offense. Krzyzewski will have thought of all these things -- and much, much more -- before tip-off. The blistering halftime lecture he gave the Blue Devils after they led Southwest Missouri State by only 39-30 in last Friday's regional semifinal -- "Do you want to go home? Do you want to come here after the game crying?" he screamed, calling them fat cats and grabbing the jerseys of Avery and Maggette -- is just one indication that he will make sure the Duke players are keeping their eyes on the prize. Yes, as much as we love Scoonie and the Flintstones and the bundle of up-and-down-the-court energy that is Connecticut, our suspension of disbelief was interrupted by the screeching sound of chalk. We like the Blue Devils. We like them a lot. Issue date: March 29, 1999
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