A vote for the Hoosiers

ATLANTA -- Here's what the head tells me: that Maryland is a team of extraordinary balance, depth and discipline. The first four times the Terps had the ball in Saturday's semifinal against Kansas, they tried to deliver it to Chris Wilcox inside. They didn't succeed, and the Jayhawks took the opportunity to sprint out to a 13-2 lead, pinning two quick fouls on Wilcox's fellow frontline pillar, Lonny Baxter, along the way.

It didn't matter, of course. Wilcox, Tahj Holden and Ryan Randle, and in the end even Baxter, asserted themselves around the basket, as Team G. Williams nudged past Team R. Williams for a spot in the title game. The point here is the one Terps guard Drew Nicholas made after Saturday's game: "You combine the weight of those four guys, that's a lot. They gave Nick Collison and Drew Gooden all they could."

The head tells me that Jared Jeffries and Jeffrey Newton, lithe, mobile and sensible as they proved to be in Indiana's defeat of Oklahoma, don't have any more weight to throw at Wilcox, Baxter, Holden and Randle than Collison and Gooden did.

Wilcox is an athlete so impressive that I'd pay to watch him bound off the bench to report to the scorer's table. Like a football team, Maryland established its ground game so it could go to the air, in the form of Juan Dixon's outside shooting and defensive havoc.

Here's what the heart tells me: that every Hoosier can shoot. That their big men may be lean, but they block shots. That, as ex-Providence coach and former NCAA tournament committee chair Dave Gavitt marveled to me on Saturday night, "They have great spacing." That too many pixie-dust particles are floating around the Georgia air for Indiana to fail to write the last of six chapters in its postseason storybook. That NCAA finals -- Loyola vs. Cincinnati, Texas Western vs. Kentucky, N.C. State vs. Houston, Villanova vs. Georgetown -- often exempt themselves from rational analysis.

If Indiana is to win, here's how it'll happen:

Dane Fife, the guard who locked up the Sooners' Hollis Price, must at least control Dixon. "Dane has been matched up against great scorers all year," Hoosiers assistant John Treloar said after the semifinals. "Whoever that scorer is, we always put Fife on him, and he always comes up big." At least two of Maryland's big guys must run into foul trouble. And, as one press-row wag put it as we filed out of the Georgia Dome early Sunday morning, "George Leach" -- he's IU's 6-foot-11 sophomore -- "had better have the game of his life."

The problem for the Hoosiers, and for those inclined to follow your hearts, is that Maryland is as experienced as it is deep and balanced and disciplined. The Terps are on point. As guard Steve Blake says, "Indiana's playing too good right now for us to buy into their underdog role."

But what the hey. Heart over head. Indiana by five.

SI senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, which is available online and in bookstores everywhere. He can be reached at http://www.biggamesmallworld.com.

 

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