The mother of all distractions

UNC opening is sure to be a Final Four sideshow

Welcome to Roy Week.

It was already going to be his week, what with all those nattering nabobs in the press room gearing up to pounce on Ol' Roy Williams for his trademark inability win the "big one." Now Williams has been hit with the mother of all distractions: His alma mater suddenly has a coaching vacancy, and Chapel Hill has again turned its lonely eyes to him.

Let's quickly dispense with the first matter. No matter how you slice him, no matter how you dice him, Roy Williams is a great basketball coach. Yet every time he gets to this point, all we hear about is how he hasn't won a championship -- as if it's so easy to get to one Final Four, much less four of them. Remember, people, it took John Wooden 16 years to win a national championship at UCLA. It took Dean Smith 23 years at North Carolina. Seems to me Roy is right on schedule, and winning two more games this weekend won't mean he's any smarter.

As for the Carolina question, the timing is unfortunate, but I must say it will be a guilty pleasure to watch it all unfold in New Orleans this week. I can't wait to hear all the different ways reporters think up to ask The Question. ("Coach, if you were a tree, which would want to be: a Carolina pine or a Kansas cottonwood?") And what's the over/under on the first time Williams uses the word frickin' in response? Williams' famously strained relationship with KU athletic director Allen Bohl will be laid on the table and dissected like a frog in a seventh-grade science class. Admit it: You hated the smell of formaldehyde, but you couldn't wait to see that frickin' frog's intestines. Like I said, a guilty pleasure.

The only thing that will be missing from the Roy circus is Siegfried. The sad irony is that Williams genuinely does not like to have attention focused on him, especially during such an important week. He never kept it secret that coaching at North Carolina was his dream job, yet he turned down the opportunity to return three years ago because he felt loyalty to the players he had brought to Lawrence. I'm sure he hoped he would never have to go through that rigmarole again, yet here he is, back in the Final Four, and the Carolina question is going to be the elephant in the Superdome.

Ol' Roy would just as soon we all talk about Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison and how hard it's going to be to stop that dadgum Dwyane Wade. But whether he likes it or not, this is going to be Roy's week. Let the sideshow begin.

Semifinal scenarios

OK, the jig is up. All those bracket projections? They're guesses, folks, nothing more, nothing less. We so-called experts don't really have any better idea about who will win these games than you do, which you already know if you entered Sports Illustrated's bracket in your office pool. So instead of trying to predict who will win Saturday's games, I decided to cover all possible scenarios. This way, no matter what happens, I can say I told you so. Check back here on Monday for my championship-game guess, er, prediction.

The "Marquette Beats Kansas" scenario: It isn't often that the Jayhawks don't have the best player on the court, but that will be the case on Saturday. Wade, the Golden Eagles' electrifying shooting guard, has proven that it's not impossible to put up mind-blowing numbers while still helping your team win. I see Marquette finishing on top in one of two ways: Wade is out-of-his-mind brilliant like he was against Kentucky, or the Jayhawks become so focused on stopping Wade that they leave open Marquette's marksmen, guard Travis Diener and forward Steve Novak, while letting 6-foot-10 center Robert Jackson kill them on the offensive boards. Diener is also the type of heady point guard who can keep the game at a slow enough pace, which is a must against Kansas.

The "Kansas Beats Marquette" scenario: Jackson has been prone to getting in foul trouble this year, so the Jayhawks would do well to punch the ball inside to Collison early and often. Nobody has yet succeeded in stopping Kansas' secondary break, so the best strategy is to run with the Jayhawks. Good luck there. Also, Wade is not a great long-range shooter, and if his shot is off (remember, players often don't shoot well in a dome), then Plan A goes out the window. And here's a hunch: This type of game is usually decided by a secondary player who steps up at an opportune time. Someone like Kansas swingman Keith Langford. If he scores in double digits, the Jayhawks coast.

The "Texas Beats Syracuse" scenario: Everyone seems to believe that a zone is the best way to stop a penetrating point guard, but that's only half true -- because penetration from the point is also the best way to beat a zone. And in case you haven't noticed, T.J. Ford is pretty good at slipping into open cracks. (That's why his teammate Royal Ivey calls him "Rat.") In addition, Texas is more than just Ford, contrary to what you might have heard. The Longhorns have a plethora of spot-up shooters as well as the nation's best rotation of big men. As long as someone is making shots, the Longhorns should be able to beat the zone with relative ease.

The "Syracuse Beats Texas" scenario: OK, the zone should frustrate Ford -- not because he can't beat a zone, but because he and his mates haven't faced anything like it all year. It's that same lack of familiarity that always makes Temple so tough to beat in March. Syracuse also earns the nod in the best-player-on-the-court category. (And stop dreaming that Carmelo Anthony is coming back next year, 'Cuse fans. He's not.) Syracuse doesn't quite have the size to match Texas up front (who does?), but few people realize that the size of Syracuse's guards, especially 6-4 Billy Edelin, is a major advantage. It's a pretty easy scenario to envision: Jeremy McNeil and Craig Forth hold their own on the boards, Gerry McNamara and Hakim Warrick nail open jumpers, 'Melo gets his -- and the Orangemen move on.

Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers college basketball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Davis' first book, Equinunk, Tell Your Story: My Return to Summer Camp, is available through Chandler House Press.

 

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