No one but Kansas was shocked by the teams-all survivors of regular-season traumas-that seized spots in the Final Four

Issue date: March 31, 1997

The NCAA shouldn't sell a program in Indianapolis this weekend. Vendors outside the RCA Dome should hawk a self-help manual instead, something called The Road to the Final Four Less Traveled or some such. There would be no better way to address all the psychological traumas, physical hurts, emergency meetings, remedial workouts and disrespectful newspaper clippings that have beset Arizona, Kentucky, Minnesota and North Carolina this season. None of the Final Four is a surprise exactly, but all have had years marked by slights, blights or both. Quick, someone: Is four too few for an encounter session?

Williams blasted his way to a game-high 22 points as the Tar Heels blew away Louisville 97-74.    (Manny Millan)

Maybe a team has to hit some kind of bottom before it can really begin climbing toward the top. And perhaps that's why the lone No. 1 seed unable to reach the Final Four was Kansas, taken out by fourth-seeded Arizona 85-82 in a semi of the Southeast Regional in Birmingham. The Jayhawks weathered their adversity easily, scarcely bothered by injuries that struck guard Jacque Vaughn and forward Scot Pollard during the season. Contrast the Jayhawks with, say, North Carolina, which lost its first three ACC games and stood 3-5 in the conference at the end of January. "It made us mentally mature," junior guard Shammond Williams said after the Tar Heels defeated Louisville 97-74 in the East Regional final in Syracuse, N.Y. "It taught us that we had to do all the little things to be good."

ALSO

Avant Guard Big Shots Scratchin' and Clawin' Surprise, Surprise

SEARCH CNN/SI

No team is better at working through its issues than the one based in the rehab capital of the U.S., Minneapolis. When two cabin-fevered Minnesotans hoisted a sign reading hey cbs, just 2 more wins and we're sleeping in the lincoln bedroom in San Antonio's Alamodome on Saturday, their banner addressed the network that failed to feature Minnesota, now 31-3, on any of its regular-season telecasts. And before the Golden Gophers beat UCLA 80-72 in the Midwest Regional final, a comment made to the Los Angeles Times by Bruins forward Charles O'Bannon and faxed to Minnesota trainer Roger Schipper by a fan, helped goose the Gophs. "He talked about us like we were a no-name team," said Bobby Jackson, the most prominent of the Minnesota names that in all fairness could not be characterized as household, after knocking off UCLA. "We just wanted to show him what a no-name team looked like."

If the Gophers aren't a collection of individuals, it's by coach Clem Haskins's design. Winner of eight games by five points or less during the regular season, Minnesota came from six points behind in the first overtime in the Midwest semifinal to defeat Clemson 90-84 in double OT and from 10 points behind in the second half to beat the Bruins. Humorist Garrison Keillor, a Minnesota alumnus, calls the Gophers "the right team for a state of Germans and Scandinavians who believe in hard work, perseverance and don't think you're somebody special, because you're not."

Jackson may not think he's somebody special, but he is. His two overtime jumpers put away the Tigers, and for much of the game against UCLA he filled in at point guard for Eric Harris, who was suffering from a shoulder bruise. But what makes the Gophers this season's most surprising team is that they have eight other players who, like all the children inhabiting Keillor's Lake Wobegone, are above average. Haskins uses each of them to particularly good effect against teams like the Bruins, who play a core of six. "I'm tired," confessed UCLA forward J.R. Henderson to Minnesota forward Courtney James during the second half of last Saturday's game. The Bruins' three-point shooting-they were 3 for 16 for the day-suggested that Henderson's teammates were gassed too.

Under Haskins's direction the Gophers' team meetings aren't exactly group-therapy sessions. In San Antonio, Haskins warned his players to stay away from women and carousing, and he found new reason to light into freshman guard Russ Archambault. Haskins famously forbids tattoos on his players, but for cultural reasons he faced something of a dilemma with Archambault, whose father is a full-blooded Lakota Sioux and whose epidermis is essentially a fresco. "He told me since I already had 'em, he can't take 'em off," Archambault says. But when the Gophers gathered after their game against Clemson, he made the mistake of wearing a baseball cap, touching off a 10-minute philippic from Haskins about another pet peeve. By never letting anyone think he's somebody special, Haskins has ensured that his Gophers get their due, collectively.

Kentucky has been routinely accorded respect, sometimes respect laced with fear, ever since coach Rick Pitino came to Lexington eight years ago, but this season even the Wildcats have had a rough go of it. The NBA plucked four players from last season's national champions. And when guard Derek Anderson, then the front-runner for the SEC Player of the Year award, went down with a torn right anterior cruciate ligament in January and guard Allen Edwards joined him on the sidelines with a stress fracture in his right ankle, diagnosed after the second round of this NCAA tournament, the Wildcats lost more points than the Dow after an Alan Greenspan utterance. Yet as 34-4 Kentucky returns to the Final Four with only eight scholarship players and a questionable Edwards, Pitino has lived in his favorite catchphrase from a year ago, "the precious present," by not once complaining about the Cats' circumstances. "He thrives on adversity," says forward Scott Padgett. "He thrives on a challenge. A lot of people thought, He's won one, he'll relax a little. But he's driven even more to get a second one because people think it's impossible."

John Thomas, just another Minnesota no-name, helped the Gophers to build a 10-rebound edge over UCLA.    (David E. Klutho)

Pitino actually called a staff meeting for 7 a.m. last April 2, just seven hours after Kentucky beat Syracuse for the title. Mindful of his experience as a greenhorn coach at Boston University, when the Terriers followed 17-9 and 21-9 seasons with a 13-14 stinker, he exhorted his assistants to work harder, particularly at recruiting. Nothing changed once the season began; after freshman center Jamaal Magloire casually allowed an Iowa player to hoist a three-pointer in the second round of the NCAAs, Pitino convened a special "practice" for his derelict big man, devoted entirely to conditioning.

The most striking thing about last season's Wildcats was the sheer numbers Pitino had at his disposal. "The horn would go off, and they'd send in a new fleet of players," said Utah guard Ben Caton after losing to Kentucky in the NCAA tournament for the second straight season, 72-59 in the West Regional final in San Jose last Saturday. "This year they didn't do that as much, but they're still high-quality players. I'd hate to see them at full strength."

Swingman Ron Mercer represents the highest of that high quality. There's no more majestic sight in the college game today than that of Mercer cornering around a screen and rising like a hood ornament for a jump shot. He went on two scoring binges in the West final, one in the first half (eight points in less than three minutes) and another in the second (six in four minutes), to repulse two Utah challenges. "Last year's team didn't have Ron Mercer, like we do," says Padgett. "As a freshman, Ron let the game come to him. Now Ron takes over a game."

In its semifinal Kentucky will be in the unaccustomed position of facing a team deeper than it is. And Minnesota features two Kentuckians with a particular incentive: Haskins, as Clem the Gem of Campbellsville, Ky., had to become an All-America at Western Kentucky in the mid-1960s because there was no place for blacks in Lexington at the time. And even though Gophers guard Charles Thomas was Kentucky's Mr. Basketball in 1995 as star of his high school team in the coal-mining hamlet of Harlan, he didn't get a nibble from Pitino. He has spent idle moments this season stretched out on his dorm room bed, imagining a matchup with the Wildcats in the Final Four.

But the only team Minnesota has faced with a press comparable to Kentucky's is Iowa. And although the Gophers beat the Hawkeyes twice, the Wildcats' press is more remorseless. Kentucky may be down to eight players, but it's such a balanced eight that until guard Wayne Turner scored 12 points on his birthday against Utah, former walk-on Cameron Mills was the Cats' leading scorer in the tournament. And now that Edwards has had his cast removed and could play in Indy, Admiral Pitino may once again be amassing an armada at the scorer's table. Look for Kentucky to win this more fascinating of the semifinals.

In January, when North Carolina began its ACC season 0-3, the Tar Heels had plenty of alibis to choose from: a Christmas-break trip to Holland and Italy that included an exhausting three games in four days; an injury to sophomore forward Vince Carter that had deprived them of their most versatile scorer; and a point guard, Ed Cota, who was a freshman making his first tour of the conference. But at a team meeting following a 12-point loss at Virginia on Jan. 11, the Heels refused to make excuses. "We met and said we had to stop caring who scored and who got credit and who got attention," said senior center Serge Zwikker last week. "If not, we knew we were going to be remembered as one of the worst teams in Carolina history. You could tell things just clicked after being put into perspective like that." In their next game the Heels came from nine points back in the last two minutes to beat N.C. State.

"I think they had more confidence in themselves than I did at the time," said coach Dean Smith, who had done his part by holding specialized practices for his big men and one-on-one meetings with every player. Soon North Carolina began putting together its current streak of 16 victories, which includes comebacks at Georgia Tech (after having been down 16 in the second half) and at Clemson (from 13 behind in the first half). North Carolina's great strength is knowing its strength and going relentlessly to it. After California eased ahead by seven points in the East Regional semifinal in Syracuse, the Tar Heels got the ball to forward Antawn Jamison seven straight times and wound up winning 63-57. In the final the Tar Heels sprinted to a 21-point halftime lead, saw Louisville close to within three and then went on a 12-0 run to wrap matters up. Afterward even the euphoria in the Tar Heels' locker room had a world-weariness to it. "I've watched thousands and thousands of Final Fours," said Carter, who turned 20 Jan. 26. "Now I'm finally in one."

Forget Providence's God Shammgod, and listen to God Deanngod, who has been in thousands and thousands of Final Fours (well, O.K., 11). "We handled it," he said of the Tar Heels' early adversity. "And now we're going to the Final Four. And we're not just going, we're going to the Final Four to win this thing."

Taking issue with that is Arizona-just as the Wildcats took issue with an issue of the Birmingham News in which a headline appeared reading, it's kansas and those other guys. The News had a point. Arizona's only senior rarely plays, and its lone returning starter, junior guard Miles Simon, missed the season's first 11 games for flubbing a math course. Skeptics who had expected Arizona to go down to underdogs South Alabama and College of Charleston in rounds 1 and 2 were on to something: In the second halves of both games the Wildcats trailed by 10 points before coming back to win. And then Arizona, an early-round upsettee in recent national tournaments, scored the upset of these NCAAs by taking out No. 1 Kansas.

The Jayhawks had adapted splendidly to not having Vaughn and Pollard at different times during the regular season. But first Pollard and then Vaughn committed his fourth foul midway through the second half, and to do without both at the same time proved to be too much, as Simon and linemates Mike Bibby and Michael Dickerson used their quickness to get open shot after open shot against the slower Jayhawks defense.

But Kansas was beaten on the inside, too. During a morning shootaround the day of the game, Arizona coach Lute Olson had invited his four big men to claim white towels he had brought-flags of surrender if they had any disinclination to try to stop Pollard and 6'11" forward Raef LaFrentz. None of the four stepped forward, and that night Pollard failed to score. All season the Jayhawks had dominated the defensive boards; yet 37 times the ball went up on the Arizona glass, and 16 times the Wildcats came away with it. Thus did the Wildcats rock the chalk. "It was their quickness against our size," disconsolate Kansas coach Roy Williams said afterward, "and this time their quickness won out."

This time and more times than not. However math-impaired Simon may be, he has surely mastered the lesson of the season, which involves simply counting to three. A three-guard lineup beat Kansas, and three guards represent Arizona's best chance against North Carolina.

The Wildcats will be playing a team that, like Kansas, looks first inside. Only the Tar Heels' frontcourt has less mobility than the Jayhawks', particularly at center, where Zwikker suffers from a sort of Dutch-elm disease. The Wildcats also have guards who are bigger than Cota and Shammond Williams. Arizona has already beaten the Tar Heels, 83-72 in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off Classic on Nov. 22, and that was without Simon. And the Wildcats will try to stop Jamison by using 6'8" junior defensive specialist Bennett Davison, who drove Kansas's LaFrentz off the blocks, throttled Providence's Austin Croshere during Arizona's 96-92 overtime win in the Southeast final and held Utah All-America Keith Van Horn without a single second-half basket in a 69-61 Arizona win back in December.

But as the Tar Heels have played perhaps the best basketball in the land for the last two months, Cota has been Bibby's equal as a freshman floor leader. And a final between Kentucky and North Carolina, college basketball's two winningest schools, is an irresistible prospect, for the two have never played each other in a title game. Two weeks ago Smith passed former Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp as Division I's alltime winningest coach, and if the Tar Heels were to win on Monday night he would move ahead of the Baron (and remain behind only UCLA's John Wooden) on the list of Final Four victories.

A Carolina-Kentucky final is where our encounter session breaks up. Each of the Final Four has come around to feel I'm O.K., You're O.K. But with the chance to defend Rupp's honor, the first champion to repeat since Duke will also say, We're UK.