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Road to ruin 'Year of the Home Team' could make for strange tourneyPosted: Thursday February 27, 2003 12:19 AM
One night, the Colorado Buffaloes look like a team gearing up for the NCAA tournament, knocking off top 10 teams like Kansas and Texas or drilling a top 30 team like Missouri, 89-68, last Saturday night. As soon as they leave the friendly confines of the Coors Event Center, however, they barely look NIT worthy, like in an 81-55 debacle at Iowa State on Tuesday that dropped their road record to 2-9 -- 0-6 in their conference. Normally, Colorado would be the type of team that drives the NCAA selection committee batty. But this has hardly been a normal season. In college basketball's Year of the Home Team, only a handful of squads -- Arizona, Kentucky, Louisville, Stanford -- have shown any consistent sign of their ability to win on the road. For everyone else, road records like 2-8 or 3-7 have become almost the norm. The Big Ten's top five teams are a combined 12-20 away from home. Even Top 10 teams like Texas and Duke are barely .500 on the road. "We're seeing more and more young players in the game," Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese, former chairman of the selection committee, recently told USA Today. "As a result, it's getting harder and harder to go on the road and win tough games." Which means teams like Colorado, which have something to show for themselves besides their lousy road record, may ultimately be more comfortable than they realize. "The road record, as important as that is, it's no more important than anything else," said new selection committee chairman Jim Livengood, Arizona's athletic director. "To single it out, I know that people want to do it, probably isn't fair to a lot of the teams and to the process. "The committee has noticed, like a lot of people have noticed, that yeah, teams are having a tougher time winning on the road. Do those kind of things have an effect? Sure they do. But that's just one of many, many factors we consider when evaluating teams. Those things tend to balance themselves out." Or cancel each other out.
If in weighing several different teams all are basically in the same boat in terms of road records, the committee will have to look at other methods of differentiating. Those include RPI rating, wins over top 50 opponents, schedule strength, conference record and performance over the last 10 games. Beyond the selection, the nation's road woes may also play a factor in the actual tournament. It's always been a popular technique in handicapping the field to pick against teams that haven't proven themselves away from home. What can we expect this year when dealing with almost an entire bracket of them? The answer might be a tournament short on upsets. For the second straight year, the NCAA will be utilizing the "pod" system for the opening weekend of the tournament, which tries to place top-four seeds at sites closest to home. For instance, expect to see Oklahoma and/or Texas in Oklahoma City, Florida in Tampa and Notre Dame in Indianapolis. What was already a built-in advantage for some favorites becomes an even bigger one this year considering some of the teams they'll be playing. Furthermore, this figures to be a lean year for the mid-majors most commonly associated with Cinderella runs. Livengood insists the committee is sympathetic toward smaller schools' struggles to get marquee names on their schedule, but the fact is, a team like Michigan State, even at 14-11, has offered more proof it belongs in the tournament -- with wins over Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana -- than 21-4 Butler. But at the end of the day, does anyone truly believe that, for example, Alabama -- which won its first road game of the season just last week -- has that much better a chance of reaching the Final Four than Butler or Southern Illinois? "At some point, the tournament people have to pick somebody," said collegerpi.com's Jerry Palm. "If Southern Illinois goes 25-5 but never beats anybody [good], are they more worthy than a [15-10] Villanova team that beats a good team one week, loses to a bad team the next? Typically, they'd take Villanova, but we'll see." For teams like Colorado, Michigan State, Alabama or Villanova, the best thing they can do from here is -- as the cliche goes -- win. Two potential bubble teams, Connecticut and Texas Tech, got that message Monday night. In what was nothing short of miraculous in light of the season's larger trend, both the Huskies and Red Raiders went into opposing arenas -- the Huskies to Notre Dame's Joyce Center, the Red Raiders to Oklahoma State's Gallagher-Iba Arena -- and beat quality opponents. The way things are going, could such instances alone propel bubble teams over the hump? "A road win in a conference game," said Livengood, "is almost like hitting a gold mine."
Same old DukeJust when you were ready to write off Duke, the Blue Devils are 20-4 and rounding into form at exactly the right time. In recent road routs of Virginia and Georgia Tech as well as a big home win over Maryland, Duke has looked like a much different team than a month ago, when it lost at Florida State and N.C. State. “I think we’re cockier,” said guard Chris Duhon. “It all starts with coming out and playing excellent defense.” That defense, as well as the emergence of freshman Shelden Williams inside, have been major boons, but it doesn’t hurt that J.J. Reddick has rediscovered his outside shot. Previously mired in a 13-of-47 (27.7 percent) slump from 3-point range, the freshman has nailed 15 of his past 28 (53.6 percent), including 6-of-7 against Georgia Tech on Wednesday. Kentucky coach Tubby Smith raised a lot of eyebrows last week with this description of his 23-3 squad, one that hasn't lost since Dec. 28: "I think we're a very average team doing extraordinary type things right now." This week, Smith added the following clarification: "I said before that we were average because I think there are a lot of average teams, there are no great teams out there. That's not to indicate that we don't have some talent because we have very talented players and I would put our teams talent up against anyone else in the country. Having said that, for us to put together the winning streak we have and the way we've been defending people is extraordinary." He's right about that. Besides Keith Bogans, it's not like Kentucky players will be showing up all over the All-America teams this spring. But they excel at the two things that matter most: hitting shots (48.7 percent as a team) and playing defense (40.2 percent allowed during the streak). The question is, how much longer can the Wildcats stay so hot? Long enough to last through the Final Four, April 5-7? "Their team that won a national championship in '96 -- this team this year is very similar," said Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury. "You've got to be a little lucky, but it starts with being good enough first, and Kentucky has all those ingredients to make a run to win a national championship."
Worth notingLeBron James may never step foot on a college campus, but he could have at least once chance to compete against the game's top stars. Intersport, the company that produces ESPN's annual College Slam Dunk & Three-Point Championships during Final Four week, has extended an invite to the Akron high school sensation for this year's event. James, who has yet to accept, would be the first high school player in the event's 15-year history. ... Don't count Lute Olson among the fans of New Mexico's Ruben Douglas, the former Arizona transfer who's scoring at a Kobe-like pace (34.8 points per game since Jan. 27). "He was a great scorer in his high school, and frankly that was one of the biggest problems he had here was fitting in with the other four players," said Olson. "He goes over 40, but they lose." The Lobos are 9-17. .... For the second straight season, Virginia has ruined its NCAA chances with a late-season meltdown, this one a five-game losing streak capped by a mind-boggling 78-72 defeat Wednesday at 10-14 Ohio. It’s a disturbing trend, one that unfortunately may cause the eventual demise of all-time coaching nice-guy Pete Gillen. … Kent State, last year's Elite Eight darlings, has hit a major bump in the road after starting the season 17-2. The Golden Flashes have dropped five of six, including its Bracket Buster date with Hawaii, and has fallen out of first place in the MAC East. ... Maryland has won its past two games, against North Carolina and Clemson, by a combined 79 points. Stewart Mandel covers college sports for SI.com. Got a comment, question or scoop for Stewart? Click here.
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