 |
| |
|
 |
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Guess again Juggernauts Kentucky, Arizona are out on Upset SaturdayPosted: Sunday March 30, 2003 12:50 AM
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- So you wanted to see Arizona and Kentucky, did you? Sorry -- the NCAA tournament doesn't have a consolation bracket. In a span of about four hours Saturday, Marquette and Kansas obliterated three months of conventional wisdom as to who college basketball's two prevailing powers were in 2002-03. Arizona and Kentucky may or may not have been the best teams in the country this season. It doesn't really matter. "This isn't football," said Kansas' Nick Collison. "You don't have to be the best team all season. In the tournament, it's one night." One night, Arizona was 17 points better than Kansas, on the Jayhawks' home floor no less. Unfortunately for the Wildcats, that night was in January. Likewise, Kentucky won 26 straight games this season and entered the tournament No. 1 in the country. Saturday, those Wildcats were the No. 2 team in Minneapolis. And so it is that a full week before the Final Four we know that the next national champion won't be one of the two pre-tourney favorites. Having played Kansas twice and fallen behind by huge deficits in both contests, losing the latter, Arizona's Channing Frye was asked if the Jayhawks were his pick to win the NCAA tournament. "The way this season has gone," said Frye, "who knows who the team to beat is now?" Actually, this season and this tournament had been relatively tame until Saturday.
Two teams, Arizona and Kentucky, separated themselves from the pack by losing just three games each and keeping the No. 1 ranking between themselves the last couple months. They, along with Texas and Oklahoma, all made it through the first three rounds of the tourney, begging the question of whether for the first time all four No. 1 seeds would meet in New Orleans? Then came Upset Saturday. Mind you, these weren't exactly Cinderellas doing the bouncing. Marquette, a No. 3 seed, went 23-5, won the Conference USA regular season and has one of the best players in the country. Kansas was a No. 2 seed, a Final Four team a year ago, with two of the top 10 players in the country. But when you're Arizona and you entered the season No. 1 and you dominated your conference and you've listened to people tell you all season just how great you are, you never imagine your season will end in the Elite Eight, not even to a team the caliber of Kansas. "I really want to throw up right now," said Frye. "It's not that we didn't still have a great season. A team like ours, with the leadership we had, with the type of guys we had, comes along once in a million. We felt that that this was our year." Roy Williams knows the feeling well. The Kansas coach was victorious Saturday, but he's also been on the other side, when his team's season ended sooner than expected, most notably 1997. The 34-2 Jayhawks were in the role of Arizona this year, and Arizona that year was the one doing the upsetting. "That's what people want the tournament to be -- unpredictable," said Williams, who contrasts the one-and-done nature of March Madness with the long NBA playoffs that virtually guarantee the best team wins. "That's the lure of this tournament. It's bad for coaches -- what Lute feels right now is terrible. But it's great for the fans." Especially fans of Kansas and Marquette, two of this season's last four national championship contenders. They may be joined by two No. 1 seeds, Texas and Oklahoma. Or it may be a seventh seed, Michigan State, that lost four times as many games as Arizona and Kansas this season, or Syracuse, a three seed just like the Golden Eagles. Which of these is your new "best team in the country"? Whichever one doesn't lose. Stewart Mandel covers college sports for SI.com. Got a comment, question or scoop for Stewart? Click here.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
