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Get inside March Madness with SI.com's Luke Winn in the Tourney Blog, a daily journal of college basketball commentary, on-site reporting and reader-driven discussions.
3/29/2008 06:27:00 PM

Elite Eight Q&A With ... Memphis' Pierre Niles

Pierre Niles
Pierre Niles averages 0.8 points per game off the bench for top-seeded Memphis.
AP
HOUSTON -- The blog's Q&A routine has changed for the NCAA tournament. After running through a series of stars over the past two seasons -- everyone from Texas A&M's Acie Law IV to to Vandy's Shan Foster -- the focus has turned to the reserves. On Friday we ran our first-ever walk-on Q&A, with Texas' Ian Mooney, and today's subject is Memphis' Pierre Niles, a sophomore forward who averaged 0.8 points in 4.3 minutes per game this season, and at 310 pounds, gives the Tigers some serious muscle off the bench when needed. Niles, whose real first name is Jartavious, is one of two native Memphians on the Tigers' roster. He earned cult fame in the college hoops world in February, when, during a fracas following Memphis' 79-78 win at UAB, he slapped an unruly fan wearing a Larry the Cable Guy costume. We caught up with him in the locker room on the day before the Tigers' Elite Eight showdown with Texas.

Luke Winn: You're usually wearing headphones during these interview sessions, and then I've heard you loudly singing rap lyrics from time to time. What songs are you belting out?

Pierre Niles: It's just local rap -- Yo Gotti. Well, he's not local anymore. He signed with Cash Money [Records] last year. That's my favorite rapper, so every time in the locker room or on the bus, I've always gotta listen to him to get my mind right.

LW: You've been listening to him since when he was just local, though?

PN: I've been listening to him ever since he first came out in Memphis, my seventh- or eighth-grade year. And as the years got on, he's been getting bigger and bigger. I've got all of his CDs on here [holds up his iPod].

LW: The style of Memphis hip-hop is ... what?

PN: It's hype. Something you can dance to, get crunk to. A lot of my teammates don't like it because they're from up north. They like music they can get laid back to. But I'm from Memphis, so I like something I can get hyped to, get my mind right. Like, D-Rose [Derrick Rose], he'll listen to some Kanye West, because he's a laid-back guy, not a hype guy.

LW: You've got "North" and "Memphis" tattooed on either forearm, from your old neighborhood. Is Hustle and Flow, like, an accurate look at Memphis?

PN: Yeah, I'm from that hood, North Memphis, and then I've got Andre Allen over there [across the locker room], he's from South Memphis. So when they made that movie, we'd look at stuff and be like, we've been there -- to the skating rinks, to the streets that they was on.

LW: Have you been on the Internet and seen the montage someone made -- with Whoop That Trick from Hustle and Flow playing, and you slapping that fan at UAB? [It's here, but the lyrics are explicit.] That's almost like your own music video.

PN: [Laughing.] I ain't seen it until Andre Allen came to me and told me it was up on MySpace. So they showed it to me then, that somebody had put that together.

Pierre Niles
AP

LW: Was that the craziest game you've ever been in as a player, with the crowd in Birmingham acting like it did, almost like a riot?

PN: It wasn't the craziest game. But the fans were just disrespectful, throwing beer, spitting on us, and all kinds of stuff like that. Stuff that wasn't called for. And one of the players got in my face and called me some words. So I just retaliated.

LW: And that fan in the orange jumpsuit?

PN: He was just pointing in my face and calling me different names. I ain't the type of dude to let somebody say something to my face, and point in my face, so I did something about it.

LW: Have you ever seen Larry the Cable Guy, the comic that the fan was dressed like?

PN: Never seen him. But I've heard about him.

LW: What has it been like, to see Derrick Rose kind of turn into one of the stars of this NCAA tournament? That double-pump reverse he had last night against Michigan State was pretty amazing.

PN: There's a lot of freshmen out there -- you've got O.J. Mayo, Kevin Love, Michael Beasley -- but I don't see none of them doing what Derrick Rose is doing. He carried us out of a drought last night, he came back in, picked the game up, and that man carried us all the way. He's got something special in him.

LW: And Rose's dunk? What about that?

PN: He said he was going to stop laying the ball up this tournament. And he showed that last night. He ain't playing around no more. Everyone was saying to him, "You've got too much hops to just be trying to lay the ball up." So he during the conference tournament that he'd start dunking in the [NCAA] tournament, and last night, he got that fastbreak, and he did something real nice with it.

LW: Derrick calls what Chris Douglas-Roberts does -- the crossovers and floaters and such -- "old-man moves." What do you call them?

PN: I just call them sweet. He's so sweet with the ball, smooth with it. He can play like an old man, but I don't think an old man would have the moves he's been doing. To be honest with you, other than Thad Young, my old AAU teammate, CDR is one of my favorite players I've ever played with.

LW: In your scouting report of Texas, what do you guys plan to do to counteract the fact that their big men are on the perimeter a lot?

PN: I think it's just Damion James. That's just one player we have to worry about. [Connor Atchley] can shoot it a little bit, but the only one we have to worry about is James. He's a real good player.

LW: Texas sort of has a version of you in Dexter Pittman, the 299-pound guy who comes off of its bench. How would that matchup work, if you were pitted against him?

PN: It would be a good matchup. I don't know if he's bigger than me. I think I'm kind of faster than him, and can jump higher than him, so I'd like to see it play out. We played against each other in AAU once, and we beat them.

LW: I assume you end up battling a lot with Joey Dorsey in practice. How does that go?

PN: We go against each other a lot. Coach wants [Dorsey] to match up with me because I'm big and physical, and he thinks I can help Joey out. Plenty of practices he'll have the best of me, and in plenty I'll have the best of him. Sometimes coach will call practice off if we're really going at it. Like, Joey will dunk on me or I'll dunk on him. Coach Cal called it off one time after I dunked on Joey -- just blew the whistle and said, practice over, practice over, so we just brought it in.

LW: What kind of tricks does Joey use to get position for rebounds? And how do you get in his head?

PN: He's just big and physical, and he's got quick feet. He ain't like the big men who can't move. If you look at him he's like a power forward. He's just playing the five because we don't have a real five. Joey is real strong and he gets real low in position. If you want to get in his head, though, just keep talking to him, checking him, keeping him unfocused.

LW: What's your best Joey story from the past few years?

PN: Last year, in San Antonio [for the Elite Eight] we were having a water fight in the hotel -- it's a normal thing, we just had one in Little Rock, too -- and he was throwing cups of water at people. Well, Joey peeked out his door, and I think it was Willie or Andre, they had filled up this big thing of hot water out the tub. Joey looks out, and they threw the bucket in his face, and he started screaming and hollering and running down the hallway, jumping up and down like a monkey. That was the funniest thing last year.

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3/29/2008 05:17:00 AM

Day 18: Meet Your Elite Eight

Danny Green
Danny Green gives North Carolina a lift off the bench at the offensive and defensive ends.
Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
Breaking down a weekend so good that it probably makes Greg Oden wish he were back in school, rather than being reprimanded for playing pickup games at 24 Hour Fitness ...

East Regional Final: No. 1 North Carolina vs. No. 3 Louisville

What you should care about:

• The Ultimate Big-White-Guy Battle -- Tyler Hansbrough vs. David Padgett -- will take center stage, but I'm more interested in the duel of the nation's best sixth men. Earl Clark, the dude with the moneybag tattoo on his shooting hand, dominated Tennessee on Thursday, scoring 17 points and grabbing 12 rebounds off the bench. Cardinals coach Rick Pitino starts Clark on the pine because he likes the veteran stability that senior Juan Palacios provides early in games, which means the 'Ville has an incredibly dangerous weapon coming off its bench. Tar Heels coach Roy Williams called Clark a "terrible matchup," but Carolina has a super-sub of its own in Danny Green, who often takes the floor as an undersized four. Green's 12 first-half points against Washington State helped fill the void of Hansbrough's slow start.

• The tournament's best offense is meeting its best defense. Carolina, as we mentioned on Thursday, was absolutely scorching in the first two rounds, delivering the fourth- and sixth-most offensively efficient performances of the entire season (out of 10,478 games!). And Louisville suffocated both Oklahoma (0.78 PPP allowed) and Tennessee (0.79 PPP allowed) in its past two games. No team left in the tourney is playing D at a statistical level even close to the Cardinals.

The pick: North Carolina 79, Louisville 75. Offense wins, for once.

West Regional Final: No. 1 UCLA vs. No. 3 Xavier

What you should care about:

• The Bruins have gone from tourney favorite to tightrope act over the past two weeks, and logic would suggest that if they couldn't put away Texas A&M or Western Kentucky, they're going to have serious trouble with the Muskies. But Xavier has been almost as famously bad at maintaining tourney leads -- see the second-round game against Ohio State in '07, and Friday's win over West Virginia for examples -- as UCLA has been about digging itself early holes. Xavier's vaunted defense had plenty of trouble with Joe Alexander in the second half, and I have my doubts about them containing Kevin Love. (Especially after finding out that the only reason they held Mike Beasley to six points in December was because Lil' Mike had on ill-fitting shoes. I'm not serious there, but you have to give Mike credit for a creative excuse: he blamed it on bad vintage Jordans.)

• According to kenpom.com's "correlation" data, the Muskies' defensive efficiency is heavily related -- "significant with a 99 percent confidence," in the site's parlance -- to how well they limit their opponent on the offensive glass. And UCLA happens to be ranked eighth in the country in offensive rebounding percentage at 39.5. The Bruins grabbed nearly half (49.5 percent) of the available offensive boards against Western Kentucky on Thursday.

The pick: UCLA 67, Xavier 66. Late-game miracle TBD.

For Sunday's Elite Eight picks, click here.

• Tourney Blog Pool update: Our 5,490-bracket competition on Facebook is getting heated heading into Elite Eight weekend. John Cramer of the U.S. District Courts network (on Facebook) is alone in the lead with 80 points, all of his Final Four teams alive, and North Carolina beating Texas in the title game. In second place is Josh Dixon of Copiah-Lincoln Community College; he has 79 points and the same UNC-over-UT title game, but could jump into the lead if Xavier upset UCLA to make the Final Four. Meanwhile, our top Kansas bracket belongs to Greg Small of Baltimore, our top Memphis bracket is David Jordan of UCF, our top Texas bracket is Jeremy Loomis-Norris ... and our top UCLA bracket is Adam Hill, an alum of Indiana.

As for your blogger, I'm tied for 160th, nine points off the lead. Top three percent ain't bad. Look for a longer post on the leaders -- with interviews via Facebook! -- leading up to the Final Four.
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3/28/2008 11:23:00 PM

How Texas Took Down Stanford: An Inside Look

D.J. Augustin; Damion James
Freeing up D.J. Augustin (left) was part of the Longhorns' key to success.
AP
HOUSTON -- An inside look at how two facets of Texas' scouting report of Stanford -- which SI.com was given an advance breakdown of on Thursday -- played out in the Sweet Sixteen:

Defending Brook Lopez:

"They don't play around. It's like Vince Lombardi back in the day with the Packers. I'm going to tell you I'm running right, and you're going to have to stop me from running right. Stanford is going to put Brook [Lopez] on the right block, and Robin on the left block, over 95 percent of the time, and they'll have three guards on the perimeter, backed up to almost where the hashmark used to be, and [Mitch] Johnson will throw a 30-foot post feed to a hand. And Brook will just turn -- without bringing it down or dribbling -- and get right into his shot."

Texas assistant Russell Springmann told me that on Thursday; he had handled the main scouting duties of the Cards, and how well the 'Horns defended 7-footer Brook Lopez would be a major factor in the game. There were two keys: Pushing him off the block -- "making him catch it out where the NBA lane line is, at least," Springmann said -- and pressuring their guards enough to affect the precision of their post feeds. But early on in Texas' 82-62 win on Friday, it was a task that seemed impossible to execute. Against the slender Connor Atchley, Lopez repeatedly caught entry passes in his comfort zone, then turned and kissed in short-range shots off the glass. He hit 6-of-11 shots from the field to score 15 first-half points and almost single-handedly keep Stanford in the game.

Plan A for the 'Horns was to use just one defender against Lopez, in order not to leave the weak side open for what essentially would be Lopez Volleyball -- Robin crashing the offensive glass for put-backs of Brook misses. Plan B, which Texas shrewdly switched to for much of the second half, was to fall into a combination of zones -- a 2-3 and a 3-2 that sent a multitude of bodies at Lopez. Dexter Pittman, a 299-pound reserve, was one of those bodies, and in the final nine minutes of the second half, he used his girth to actually move Lopez out of the lane on multiple occasions, making life tough for Stanford's star as other 'Horns ran down to double-team the post and push him even further away. "I always kept my leg higher than [Lopez's], and didn't let him get position," said Pittman. "Coach said we were going to attack him like an army. If you look back to Kansas State, that was the same thing we did to [Michael] Beasley ... we kept throwing bodies at him, and made sure we were touching him every time he touched the ball."

Lopez shot just 4-of-11 in the second half for nine points, and finished with 25. Facing that sagging zone, he did not make a field goal for the final 13:55 of the second half. None of Stanford's other interior players stepped up as he began to struggle, and the 'Horns raced away into the Elite Eight. "Having all those bodies rotated on him, especially from our bench -- Gary Johnson, Dexter Pittman, Clint Chapman and even Lex [Alexis Wangmene] played a big factor," said Springmann. "Some of [Lopez's] shots started getting more difficult because they were 2-3 feet off."

Freeing D.J. Augustin:

"We need to make both of [the Lopezes] go out on the perimeter, defending ball screens and handoffs. Our bigs need to play away from the basket as much as possible; we want to open up the floor so it makes it harder for them rotate, and get back and block shots."

This, Springmann said on Thursday, would be the key to Texas generating offense on Stanford's normally packed-in D. The 'Horns were able to spread the floor against a team with a decided size advantage, and hold Robin Lopez -- the Pac-10's leading shot-blocker -- to zero swats on the night (Stanford had just four as a team, compared to Texas' five). This was how the game turned into a blowout despite the fact that the 'Horns hit only seven of 22 three-point attempts.

All-America point guard D.J. Augustin, who had a team-high 23 points, scored just six of them from beyond the arc. Texas' offense relies heavily on random ball-screening action by its two big men -- usually Atchley and Damion James -- and how the Lopezes chose to defend these screens dictated the way Texas attacked.

While watching film of the Cardinal, Springmann had noticed that Robin Lopez tended never to "show" on the perimeter -- that is, jump out and cut off a guard's penetration, rather than sagging back behind the pick. "That allows you to get a guard coming of a screen when [Robin's] man sets it, because if you do a good job of screening and make contact with the guy defending the cutter, a lot of times you're going to be able to get a shot."

For the most part on Friday, neither Lopez brother opted to hedge any of Texas' perimeter picks. "They kept rotating back, or they'd space off and allow D.J. to come off the screen," said Springmann. "They had to make a decision whether they were going to going to go with the penetration, or stay [with their men], and D.J. was able to turn the corner."

Once he did get space inside the arc, Augustin was masterful, hitting floaters -- including one improbable moonball at the 8:39 mark of the first half -- and mid-range jumpers and layups to kill the Cardinal's shot at reaching the Elite Eight. When Stanford's other big men came up to cut off his penetration, Augustin dished off to create easy buckets, finishing with seven assists against just two turnovers. "All year long, he's a guy that when we give it to him, we know he's going to make something happen," Texas coach Rick Barnes said of Augustin. "But there's so many other things out there that are happening for him to do that." On Friday, it all started with the screens.

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3/28/2008 06:11:00 PM

Hoops On The Big Stage

Reliant Stadium
Luke Winn/SI

HOUSTON -- We've entered the gridiron portion of this NCAA tournament, and here at Reliant Stadium the setup is technically of the basketball-on-a-three-foot-stage-in-the-middle-of-a-football-field variety. Had West Virginia's loose-ball kamikaze artist, Joe Mazzulla, been playing here last night, he'd have taken a dangerous plunge down into press row rather than colliding head-on with a table-top.

The two photos below should give you an idea of the setup, with the strange raised court set amid seats that gradually slope down from the edge of what's normally the Houston Texans' home field. I walked up on the floor a few minutes ago ... and realized there are only about 4-5 paces between the sideline and the edge, which is a little scary.

Reliant Stadium
Luke Winn/SI

Reliant Stadium
Luke Winn/SI

Minnesota -- whose home benches are below their court -- is the only team in the nation that would not need to get acclimated to this arrangement. For the rest of us, including Texas, Stanford, Memphis and Michigan State, this will be quite the experiment.

A few quick predictions before I leave you for a few hours, with the promise to check back post-game:

• Texas 74, Stanford 71.
• Connor Atchley's perimeter game makes the difference for the 'Horns.
• Memphis 66, Michigan State 56
• The Spartans hang with the Tigers for 30 minutes ... but just won't be able to score enough against Memphis' underrated man-to-man D.

Reliant Stadium
Luke Winn/SI

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3/28/2008 02:55:00 AM

Day 17: The First Walk-On Q&A, With Texas' Ian Mooney

Ian Mooney
Ian Mooney shoots a jumper in Texas' practice on Thursday at Reliant Stadium.
Jim Sigmon/University of Texas
The Blog's two-season series of player-and-coach (but mostly player) Q&As has featured such luminaries as Roy Hibbert and Rick Majerus, but we've never before interviewed a walk-on. That changed today, as the subject is Texas senior forward Ian Mooney, who shares a name with the former host of WWF's Wrestling Spotlight and, unlike most walk-ons, had three double-digit-minute games this season, averaging 0.3 points on the season. Mooney wears the No. 22 in honor of his late brother, Brendan, and transferred from St. Louis to Texas after one year as a walk-on with the Billikens. Longhorns point guard D.J. Augustin says Mooney "sets the best screens" on the team, and strength and conditioning coach Todd Wright warns onlookers not to dismiss Mooney as unathletic because of his stocky Irish frame. "He might look like he's been drinking for three days, or that he just fell off the potato truck," Wright says of Mooney, "but he can really jump. Seriously, he'll throw down dunks."

We caught up with Mooney in the 'Horns' locker room before their Friday practice:

Luke Winn: You went from being a walk-on as a sophomore, to a scholarship guy last season [when a gap was left by Daniel Gibson leaving early], back to being a walk-on. That's an interesting back-and-forth.

Ian Mooney: I just take what comes my way. I had a scholarship fall in my lap, and now I'm back to just doing what I do, walking on.

LW: Did you earn the full ride last year by harassing Kevin Durant in practice? [Coach Rick Barnes had said that Mooney guarded Durant "better than anyone."]

IM: I think they kind of had some extra [scholarships] lying around last year, but I'm fine with the Durant angle.

LW: And you've already graduated?

IM: I graduated this past summer in corporate communications. It's like communication studies in corporate situations -- doing sales presentations, things like that. And I'm in grad school now, for advertising, which is pretty tough. That's fine, though -- I'd rather do advertising than be taking basket weaving or doing the Leinart plan.

LW: What's the University of Texas equivalent of a ballroom-dancing class?

IM: I took a semester of piano once, and that was my fine-arts credit. I don't know if that was as bad [as ballroom dancing], but our homework was singing in class and practicing our stuff.

LW: You've seen some serious time in a few games this year [against TCU and St. Mary's in January]. How did that come about?

I think coach [Rick Barnes] just kind of got frustrated with some of the guys, and gave me a shot. We were playing against TCU and they had undersized big men, and our guys were having trouble with it. Coach gave me a shot, I did well, and found a couple more minutes the next game, which was cool.

[Note: In order to conduct this interview, Mooney took a break from playing a white-board game with teammates Matt Hill and Damion James that was essentially Pictionary for movie titles. Mooney is the one drawing in the photo below.]

Qwest Center
Luke Winn/SI

Where did you come up with that game? And which movies did you draw?

IM: I brought it over from high school [at St. Michael's in Austin], but it just started today because we've been bored like crazy. We just needed to pass the time. I did Courage Under Fire -- you see, the lion without the heart from Wizard of Oz, and then the fire? It's supposed be be flip-flopped, but it's there. Then I did Camelot, drawing camels in a parking lot. [He also did Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, with a pot of honey and some small stick figures, and Hill drew Next Friday by using a calendar.]

LW: I heard last week about the team's obsession with Rock Band in your home locker room ...

IM: We first got it started with Guitar Hero. One of the managers brought it in, and then we convinced him to get another guitar -- and then we made him keep the guitars in the lounge, because we were playing it so much. Then Rock Band came along and the next thing you know, we had a band. D.J. is good at drums, because he played in middle school, and Clint [Chapman] is probably the best at guitar. Justin [Mason] is on the mic. He sings the classic rock. Very adequately.

LW: D.J. is pretty well-covered in the press. What doesn't get out there about him?

IM: He jokes a lot, but he knows how to turn it on and off. One second he'll make fun of you, and then be like, "Hi, Mrs. Mooney!" [to your parents]. I don't know how creatively funny he is, but he's very good at either reiterating what you say and making fun of it, or changing what you say. That and calling you out. Anytime you get a new haircut, he'll be the first one to say it's ugly. Or if you show up wearing, like a polo shirt, and look pretty preppy, he'll call you out.

LW: Who pulls most of the pranks?

IM: Well, D.J. just threw a cup of water in Dex's [Dexter Pittman's] face right before film yesterday. And Harrison likes to hide under the table [pointing to a locker-room table with a tablecloth that hangs down to the floor] and grab people's legs as they walk by. Beyond that ... there aren't a ton.

LW: Since you're always guarding them in practice, what has it been like to see Connor Atchley and Damion James kind of blossom into big-time players this year?

IM: The main thing that happened with Connor is, he realized that he had to do it, first of all -- that the team had to have him come a long way and be good this year. Once he started gaining confidence, the players started giving him the confidence back, and he realized that he always had the skill set. That's why he got recruited. Once he figured out that he didn't necessarily have to be huge, strength-wise, to play well, he did it.

For Damion, I just think he fits more comfortably this year. Last season coach had him running the three or four every other game, and now he's kind of locked up in the four at the beginning of every game, and transitioning out of it. The game isn't as fast for him anymore, and he understands it better. That, and for a lot of these guys, there's a lot less frustration in their second year on defense. Coach would always ride us about our defense last year, and now that we have a solid team foundation on defense, no one is as frustrated, and you can focus on other aspects of your game.

LW: Being the only grad student, are you like a grandfather figure on the team sometimes?

IM: Sometimes I am the elder, I get up on my hickory stump every once in a while, and do my rants and raves. But I'm also the go-to-guy, like the encyclopedia when the guys need random information. We'll be on the road and they'll be like, 'Mooney, what's over there? Or, what's the capital of Denver?'

[While Mooney is laughing about accidentally saying 'The capital of Denver,' teammate J.D. Lewis chimes in with a story about abusing their sage status to trick Pittman into believing that the Hollywood sign was in New York. While playing in New Jersey for the Legends Classic, they told him he had just missed the sign from the bus, and Pittman said, "I see it! I see it!"]

LW: You've been to more NCAA tournaments than anyone in here. Does the experience change every time?

IM: This will be my third, and every time it's different because as you get older, you better understand what's at stake. Now, every game could technically be my last game ever. It's weird to think about that.

[Lewis interjects to say, "No way, dude. There's the YMCA."]

IM: Yeah, there is the YMCA. I have one year of school left, and I'm from Austin, so I'll be staying there and chilling. And dominating the rec leagues.

LW: You won't have coach Barnes riding you in rec-league games. What are his rants like this year?

IM: He goes on kicks where he'll try to be funny, to call out guys in the middle of film with some kind of punchline. He'll pause the tape sometimes and just be like, "Wow, Mooney, you're really athletic." Or the other day in practice, he was talking about something [negative] and just said, "That would be like Mooney running the point." He'll be acting really serious, and then drop in a jab, and you'll be like, "Is that a joke? What's going on here, coach?"

LW: What would it be like, if you actually ran the point?

IM: It would be straight dimes. Straight dimes.

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3/28/2008 12:52:00 AM

On The Night Of The Sub, Carolina Keeps Rolling

North Carolina
Bob Rosato/SI

HOUSTON -- Thoughts while watching the games on an off-night in Texas ...

• North Carolina's offense is getting insanely efficient. The stats site Basketball State kept points-per-possession data on 10,478 Division I games (nearly every one) this season, and get this: The Tar Heels' performance against Arkansas in the second round (1.54 PPP) ranks fourth overall, and their performance against Mount St. Mary's in the first round (1.51 PPP) ranks sixth overall. The next-most-efficient performance by any team in an NCAA tournament game belongs to the Razorbacks, who scored 1.29 PPP against Indiana -- but that ranks 51st.

On Thursday night, Carolina's offense came down out of the stratosphere, scoring 1.046 PPP against Washington State. Which at face value doesn't look phenomenal -- until you consider that Wazzu's vaunted defense held Notre Dame to 0.68 PPP in the second round. There's only one team in the nation with a more-efficient offense (and a better D) than the Heels: Kansas. The fact that I picked anything other than a KU-UNC meeting in San Antonio (I had Tennessee in my original bracket) was not smart. Fans and media members aren't the only ones salivating over the prospects of that game: Scalpers would have a field day with one of the toughest Final Four tickets in years.

• When you're a No. 2 seed that's two games away from the Final Four, changing point guards 33 games into your season is not a golden idea. Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl explained his rationale for moving Ramar Smith off the point and starting J.P. Prince there against Butler and Louisville, saying, "I just thought that the point-guard play we were getting wasn't going to win a national championship. So if we make the decision and it doesn't pay off and I'm sitting here in front of you and explaining why I made that choice and we lost the game, I could go to bed going, 'It's OK.'"

Perhaps Pearl was thinking just that on Thursday after a 79-60 loss to the Cards. But here's the counter-rationale: There was also no way you were going to win a title starting a lanky wing player (Prince) at point who lacked experience and had twice as many turnovers (four) as assists (two). Smith may not be an all-world point, but he was back running the show for much of the Louisville game after the Prince experiment failed early. The reality was that Smith was still the Vols' best option, and they dug themselves a deep early hole by tinkering with the rotation.

• Orlando Mendez-Valdez (of Western Kentucky) will probably go down as the best hyphenated NCAA tournament name of all-time. It easily tops Douglas-Roberts, Caner-Medley or Fuss-Cheatham, and as long as Horatio Sanz' Vasquez-Gomez-Vasquez character from Saturday Night Live never acquires basketball skills, Orlando should be safe. His 12 last-name characters (plus the hyphen) fill up the back of a jersey like no other name; if Douglas-Roberts was in the same font size on Memphis jerseys, it would go down to Chris' shorts.

• Thursday was the night of the sub. North Carolina's Danny Green, whose name is nearly always appended with the words "one of the best sixth men in the country," came up huge for the Heels while Tyler Hansbrough started slow against the Cougars. In 23 minutes, Green had 15 points on 6-of-10 shooting as well as five rebounds and three steals. (Unlike his boxing double, Green appears to have a fine career left ahead of him.)

Meanwhile in Phoenix, Xavier's B.J. Raymond came off the bench to drill two huge threes -- including the game-winner in overtime -- in a 79-75 win over West Virginia. And in the nightcap, James Keefe -- James Keefe! -- was the surprise of UCLA's win over Western Kentucky, scoring 18 points and grabbing 11 boards in 25 minutes.

• Thank you, Bill Raftery, for reprising the "Send it in, Jerome!" with a "Send it in, Joe!" after a monster Joe Alexander dunk on Thursday. I know Gus Johnson has become something of a cult hero amongst tourney junkies -- and he is good -- but I'd be fine if Raftery and Verne Lundquist called every game from here on out.
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3/27/2008 06:58:00 PM

Brook Lopez And The King Of Pop

Brook Lopez
Robert Beck/SI

HOUSTON -- I've found that when you ask college players -- both black and white, northern and southern, East and West Coast -- what's playing on their iPod right before games, two artists are almost always mentioned: Lil' Wayne and Kanye West. Since it's seemingly mandatory to have that duo in your earbuds, I take note when a player admits to listening to something unexpected. Like when Notre Dame's Luke Harangody told me he uses the Braveheart soundtrack to get pumped up. Or when I read in Kelli Anderson's Lopez twins story that Brook's go-to pregame tune is Michael Jackson's Speed Demon.

Speed Demon is one of those Jackson tracks whose music video -- a claymation classic that was a part of the Moonwalker movie -- actually trumps the song. It was clay-mated by Will Vinton, the guy who created both the California Raisins and the Domino's Noid, and features MJ turning into not only a motorcycle-riding rabbit, but also Pee Wee Herman, Sly Stallone and Tina Turner. "I love that video, personally," Brook said here on Thursday. "I've watched it a lot. That just goes to having two older brothers [Alex, 31, and Christopher, 26] who've lived through the '80s." Watch it below:



Brook was kind enough to give us his full pre-game playlist, which, he says, has "loads of Michael":

• Dirty Diana from Bad
• Baby Be Mine from Thriller
• Can't Let Her Get Away from Dangerous
• Remember The Time from Dangerous
• You Rock My World from Invincible
• Get On The Floor from Off The Wall

He admitted that his musical taste isn't limited only to the King of Pop: Before Brook cranks up the MJ, he warms up with -- you guessed it -- Kanye.

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3/27/2008 06:08:00 PM

Some Old-Fashioned Ribbing

John Calipari and Rick Barnes

HOUSTON -- The Memphis-can't-shoot-free throws thing is more than just a media talking point. It's now fair game as a topic for coach-to-coach ribbing.

Texas coach Rick Barnes was being interviewed by pack of local TV reporters on Thursday when Tigers coach John Calipari happened by and jokingly interrupted the scene. Barnes took the opportunity to offer Cal a job:

"Hey, coach, I'm running a camp in Austin," said Barnes, "and I need somebody to come in and teach free throws."

Calipari's rebuttal referenced D.J. Augustin's late-game performance against Miami on Sunday in Little Rock: "I think your point guard shot that airball."

Augustin did nearly give the 'Canes a chance to pull off a miracle comeback in the game's final seconds when he left a crucial shot about a foot short. And the Tigers are a horrible free-throw shooting team: They rank 339th in the country from the charity stripe, at 59.2 percent. It's a problem that Calipari doesn't really think is a problem -- mostly because Memphis has been bad at free throws for the past three seasons.

"With four minutes to go, we made the free throws we need to make," Calipari said Thursday. "Now, we'll miss some, but they don't play a factor. They make the game closer. I sweat a little bit. But [the players] are looking at it like, 'Coach, you trust us, we'll do what we have to do.' So the big deal about it, that's fine. If you look at our team, there's so many other good things to talk about how we play; how we play defensively, how we swarm, how we play offensively, it's different. People that don't know it, think that it's just throw the balls out and shoot layups. And that's fine, too."

Any team hoping to beat the Tigers by strictly winning the free-throw battle probably isn't going to fare too well. As we learned in Wednesday's scouting reports of the No. 1 seeds -- from actual opposing assistant coaches -- sealing up Memphis' driving lanes and preventing Dorsey-and-Dozier damage on the offensive glass is far more important.

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3/27/2008 01:00:00 PM

Year Of The Tigers

Antonio Anderson
Luke Winn/SI

HOUSTON -- One of the more innovative -- and completely out of left field -- developments in college hoops this year was a partnership between Memphis ... and Beijing. In September, coach John Calipari entered into a deal with the Chinese Basketball Association to teach a series of clinics and camps in China, as well as allow a delegation of CBA coaches to shadow the Tigers in October practices. (One of the coaches has remained with the team full-time as an observer.) The presumption in the short-term is that this will help sell a lot of Memphis gear in the Chinese market, and in the long-term, that when the CBA considers allowing the next Yi Jianlian to play a year of college ball in the U.S., he'll commit to Calipari.

The only visible effects of the partnership, here in March, is the Chinese coach hanging on the periphery of the Tigers' entourage, and the t-shirts a few players have been rocking in the locker room. I snapped the above photo of junior guard Antonio Anderson on Sunday in Little Rock, after inquiring about the shirt:

"That's for the people back in China," Anderson said. "We represent."

I asked him if he knew what the Chinese characters meant (since I had no idea).

"Naw," Anderson said. "I know it's something back to the China people saying thank you, or something like that."

To find out what the Memphians' tees actually say back to the "China people," I sent a photo of the tee to a Mandarin-speaking college friend who went to Shanghai to teach English after we graduated in '02 ... and has pretty much stayed there since, having turned into something of an entertainment mogul and DJ. The only thing relevant here, though, is that he's good at translating Chinese characters into English. Without knowing any of the context -- e-mailed it right out of iPhoto without telling him the team or player -- this is what he sent back:

"The characters are pronounced 'Meng-Fei-Qi,' but they are not combined like that in standard Chinese, so that means it's a proper noun not found in China whose pronunciation is similar. For example: Minnesota in Chinese is written 'Ming-Ni-Su-Da.' So my guess is that it's a name of a non-Chinese city, place or thing, like Memphis or Mencius [the philosopher]. The funny thing is, things like this are almost always written phonetically, and often written differently depending on who's doing the writing. Like, Bjork doesn't just have one name in Chinese. She has four."

I wrote him back to reveal Anderson's identity, and he replied, "Well, then it's definitely Memphis."

Not Mencius. Not a thank-you. Just Memphis. Mystery solved.

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3/27/2008 09:03:00 AM

Day 16: H-Town Style

HOUSTON -- In honor of the No. 1 seed here in Texas, this week's update of the Style Archive leads off with a recently de-sleeved Memphis Tiger. The Archive, if you missed it during the regular season, is a museum of college hoops style that featured 44 exhibits in 2006-07 and is up to 63 exhibits for '07-08. (Click here to read the season's full archive, or send a nomination to hoopstylesi@gmail.com.)

D-Shirted
Chris Douglas-Roberts, 6-7 guard, Jr., Memphis
Classification: Sleeve removal
Spotted: March 23 vs. Mississippi State
Notes: CDR's trademark was a baggy tee -- until he switched to a smaller one midway through '08, and then ditched it altogether in time for the NCAA tournament, claiming not to be the least bit superstitious.

NCAA Flair
Every tournament team
Classification: Blue jersey patch
Spotted: Omaha, Little Rock, Raleigh ...
Notes: The NCAA mandated that all teams in the tournament wear the same jersey badge on their left shoulder, and for UCLA, at least, it matches. For a team like Michigan State or Wazzu, not so much.

Three Shades of Pearl
Bruce Pearl, coach, Tennessee
Classification: Sartorial diversity
Spotted: Over the course of '06-08
Notes: First the orange blazer (right), then the shirtless stunt for a Lady Vols game (left), then this spacesuit/warmup for a recent speech. Pearl has the market cornered on coaching outlandishness.

Perma-tears
Tyler Smith, 6-7 forward, Soph., Tennessee
Classification: Facial tattoo
Spotted: Entire '07-08 season
Notes: Smith had these tears tattooed in memory of his late father, Billy, who passed away from lung cancer in September. Billy's illness was the reason Smith left Iowa in '07 and transferred closer to home.

Hair-on-Gody
Luke Harangody, 6-8 forward, Soph., Notre Dame
Classification: Various-sized buzz-cuts
Spotted: March 2 vs. Depaul; March 20 vs. Winthrop
Notes: 'Gody's iconic 'do, which was passed down from his father, Dave, is characterized by the fact that it sticks straight out of his head in all directions. The family simply refers to it as "Harangody Hair."


• Tourney Blog Pool Update: A few more leaders have been checking in via our Facebook profile, including University of Texas freshman Dustin Replogle, who sits third out of 5,490 ... and not surprisingly, has the 'Horns winning it all. Also on the first page of the leaderboard, our top Memphis bracket belongs to Kellen Freeman of Ivy Tech (in Indiana) and our top two Carolina brackets belong to Haley Carney of IUPUI and John Cramer of the U.S. Federal Courts network. Congrats to all.

• The tourney playlist, curated by the folks at Gorilla vs. Bear, rolls on with two new mp3s for your iPod: Day 15's track is Cold Son Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, whom I'm hoping to see in New York before heading to the Final Four ... and Day 16's track is Caribou's Melody Day.

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3/26/2008 12:45:00 PM

Scouting The No. 1 Seeds: Kansas

Kansas
Bill Frakes/SI

SI.com asked an assistant coach from a former Kansas opponent to break down the Jayhawks using material from his actual scouting report. Here's what he had to say:

"The biggest issue is keeping [Kansas] out of transition. They're a team of great spurts, and early in the year their margins of victory were so large because they were going on 3-4 big spurts per game, getting out in the full-court, and it was always the deciding factor.

"They're a very balanced team, so you have to choose something to take away. They're a team that ball-screens a lot, and out of their screens they get a lot of layups for their bigs off penetration, and they get a lot of lobs. The way I think you handle the the screening action is to push up and try to contain the guards, which is easier said than done, but it means their big men are going to have a tougher time getting easy looks.

"You have to be conscious of keeping them off the offensive glass, too, since they're usually plus-8 or plus-9 in that category. Off of pick-and-roll plays, they get the ball to the rim and then always seem to have two bigs crashing the glass, and on top of that, [Brandon Rush] is a very good offensive rebounder himself. So there are a lot of block-out responsibilities there.

"We felt like Mario Chalmers was a huge key; he's the one guy who attacks the rim constantly off of ball screens and can score. Rush is more of a catch-and-shoot guy -- he's the best shooter in the Big 12, and he's 6-foot-6, but he's not great off the dribble with his mid-range game. Nor is Russell Robinson. But Chalmers is terrific; he can get to the basket, he can stop and shoot at 15 feet, he can step behind the screen and hit a three, all with a lot of effectiveness. From our view Chalmers was their best player.

"Now that Sherron Collins is healthy, you have to find a way to keep him in front of you, because he's so big and powerful. If he gets his body by you, you're not going to get back around him, and he's a very effective finisher at the rim. He's good at setting big guys up for easy little dump-off passes. So you have to keep him contained and make him shoot over the top instead.

"There are a couple of things that seem to go unnoticed with Kansas. The first is that their bigs sprint to their screens; if you watch Sasha Kaun or Darnell Jackson or Darrell Arthur, they sprint from the post to set a screen. So the big guys guarding them are at a disadvantage, because they never get in the right defensive position. They'll run some double ball-screens on the outside, too, where the first guy slips [to the basket] and that forces you to help.

"The second is that they're an unbelievable passing team. That's why they're very hard to zone. They're always in attack mode, and their guards catch the ball where they want it, close to the three-point line in triple-threat position. They'll run some high-low sets that are effective, especially with Darnell Jackson, whose shooting has expanded the floor for them. Last year they didn't have a big man who could shoot that well. Arthur is so strong and quick on offense that we wanted to make sure he didn't get deep post-ups. We tried to be physical with him before he got into the post and not allow him to get the ball. When he does have it, his main move is a fadeaway over his right shoulder, and he'll counter that with a jump-hook -- but he always needs a dribble to get that off, so you can attack him that way.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, [Kansas] is going to play man against you. Chalmers is as good a defender as you'll find anywhere in the country; he's a great anticipator, has quick hands and causes havoc in passing lanes. He and Robinson are constantly looking to create steals. Rush is a very underrated on-ball defender because of his length, and they're throwing a lot of different big guys at you. They're efficient defensively because of their quickness and their length, and the fact is that they dominate the glass, so you rarely get multiple shots.

"One thing you can do is try to take their big men away from the basket. For guys like Arthur and Jackson, and much more so Kaun and [Cole Aldrich], their comfort zone is within 7-8 feet of the basket, and once you get them away from it, they don't guard as well or rebound nearly as well. Arthur has been prone to foul trouble, too, and if a team attacks him and gets him out of that comfort zone, there's a chance he'll pick up some early fouls. Sometimes he's overly aggressive, or a half-step out of position, or just trying to make a play that sometimes he shouldn't make. If you get him out and they have to bring in Kaun or Aldrich, who aren't as athletic, then you try to lure them out to the perimeter.

"There are two intangible things that are just as important with Kansas. First, you can't lose your composure against them, because they're so well-coached that their effort never varies. You have to match the mental toughness of an experienced team. The second is the tempo of the game. You have to try to control your pace, because if you get running with them, they're going to run you out of the gym. That's what they like to do, and you have to be smart enough to avoid it."

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3/26/2008 12:00:00 PM

Scouting The No. 1 Seeds: Memphis

Joey Dorsey
David E. Klutho/SI

SI.com asked an assistant coach from a former Memphis opponent to break down the Tigers using material from his actual scouting report. Here's what he had to say:

"Everything starts with their backcourt. You have to pressure whoever has the ball out to the perimeter, but play soft on everyone else so you can keep the gaps filled when they do their dribble-drives. Close the gaps, make them kick it back out, and then close on the shooters. You want them taking as many jumpers as you can, because they're not a great shooting team.

"The sets they run are not complicated, but that's smart on [coach John Calipari's] part because it allows them to play off of their natural ability, and create havoc that way. A sagging man-to-man defense is what I think is best rather than a zone: You just leave too many gaps with the zone, and you don't have set block-out responsibilities that way, so guys like [Joey] Dorsey and [Robert] Dozier will kill you on the offensive glass. And you need to limit their second-shot opportunities, or you'll have no shot of winning.

"Derrick Rose is a heavy right-handed driver who likes to use hesitation moves to get to the rim with his right hand or shoot one-handed leaners. He likes to cross over from left-to-right, and he also tries to seek contact with his left shoulder before going up. Our scouting report on him was to push him left, because he's liable to get out of control that way. He goes so fast that sometimes he'll leave the ball when he goes left, and he doesn't always finish as well when he has to go to that side, either.

"[Antonio] Anderson is a glue guy who's good at a lot of stuff and great at nothing. The reason he's a glue guy is because he'll let the ball go through him, to CDR [Chris Douglas-Roberts] or Rose. Anderson will only pull the trigger on a three late in the shot clock. That's why the other guys -- who are better shooters -- don't start in front of Anderson. He gets those minutes because he'll let it go through. If you put [Doneal] Mack out there, he's gonna shoot it every time he touches it, and CDR and Rose won't get it back. When CDR does get it, he's shooting over 40 percent on threes, but he doesn't take that many. He does most of his work off the dribble.

"Against Dozier, you have to play physical. He doesn't like a lot of contact, and you need to body him up to keep him off the glass. When he's on the perimeter, play him to drive to the right and then pull up; he likes to fake one way or the other with a foot fake, and then spin back around with a jump hook or a fadeaway.

"It's hard for them to win if Joey [Dorsey] isn't involved. He's always opposite the ball, waiting for those offensive rebounds. That's his game -- just rebound the back side. Memphis doesn't shoot a great percentage if you keep them out of the lane, but it'll beat you on the offensive glass. The only way Dorsey gets the ball -- and really, this is their way of getting a post feed -- is when their guards drive, force the bigs to come up to help too quickly, and then throw a lob over the top of you to the corner of the backboard. That's how they keep [Dorsey] happy, by getting him a few dunks, and then he keeps rebounding for them. If he's not a man on the glass, they probably wouldn't have beaten Mississippi State in the second round [of the NCAA tournament].

"A team that's going to beat [Memphis] will need to have a deep bench, because the dribble-drive is so hard to defend, and if you're tired and reaching in, you end up picking up fouls. If you get in early foul trouble, then they've got you. Because once they start driving at you hard, you'll have to let them go by. I think a team like Kansas, that could run with [the Tigers] and has a lot of bodies, could hang in an up-and-down game.

"I think you can score on Memphis early in transition, by throwing over the top of the press, or score on them late in the shot clock. But don't try to score in between that. They're a very good defensive team, especially on your first 2-3 passes in the half court, but by the sixth or seventh pass they're not very good. They want the ball back so bad that they try to make steals at that point, and get out of position. They feel like they can afford to gamble because they have shot blockers behind them. If you drive the ball, the key is to come to a jump stop, pump-fake, and if nothing is available, kick the ball back out and start over again.

"Anderson is their best defender; you need to try to attack Rose and CDR, because they don't always compete all the way to the rim. They're good athletes, but they don't want to get in foul trouble. On the inside, Dorsey is a banger who does things to get under your skin. He'll hold you, grab you, shove you, but he does that work long before the ball hits the rim, so the refs don't call it as much.

Memphis is going to show you all man-to-man, and they play it physically, trying to intimidate you and take you out of your game. They'll bully you and talk trash to you. And because they're looking for early steals, you need to play with poise and be patient with your attacks."

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3/26/2008 11:08:00 AM

Scouting The No. 1 Seeds: North Carolina

Qwest Center
John Biever/SI

SI.com asked an assistant coach from a former North Carolina opponent to break down the Tar Heels using material from his actual scouting report. Here's what he had to say:

"You need to keep [Tyler] Hansbrough from catching the ball inside the paint as much as possible. We call it 'owning the real estate' -- beating him to those spots and not letting him get position. Some people will double him, but I'm in favor of just using one-and-a-half guys. The first one, his main defender, should be physical, but not go for the shot block. The second guy could come over and almost always go for the block, since [Hansbrough] is not kicking it back out. He averages less than one assist per game. He expanded his offense in the ACC tournament to the point where he knocked down 15-foot jumpers, but you'd much rather have him doing that than working inside five feet. He can also kill you on the offensive boards, so you have to do a good job of blocking him out.

"A big thing to focus on with Carolina is transition defense. They're mainly looking for layups. [Wayne] Ellington will spot up a little bit, and so will [Danny] Green, but if you really study them in transition off of missed shots, there aren't a lot of threes. Either [Tywon] Lawson is trying to go coast-to-coast or their wings are flying to the rim, old-school 45-degree style, looking to get layups or get fouled. You have to sprint back and get as many people in the paint as possible, and don't divert from that strategy for the whole game. You're trying to guard the basket as opposed to guarding any specific person. Maryland, when they beat Carolina [in Chapel Hill], did a really good job of getting back and clogging the paint.

"In the half court, you have to be worried about Lawson's penetration. He likes to do misdirection stuff, but mostly he's trying to go north-south, and you need to try to square him off and stay in front of him. Ellington is a great multi-dimensional scorer, but Green can be the biggest matchup problem. They'll play a small lineup with him at power forward rather than [Alex] Stepheson or [Deon] Thompson, and it really changes the dynamic, if he's making threes from the four position. Not every team has a big guy who can get out and guard Green on the perimeter.

"On defense, they seem to be vulnerable after three passes. What they try to do on D is rush you into taking bad shots, so they can get it and go the other way on offense. On your fourth or fifth pass they tend to start to break down.

"We felt as though you could attack Hansbrough inside, because he's not as mobile on defense as he seems to be on offense. He tries to avoid fouling a little bit, and he's not a guy who blocks many shots [only averaging 0.4 per game]. On the perimeter, Lawson isn't a great on-ball defender, and Ellington isn't very good on D at all; he's very screenable. [Marcus] Ginyard does a good job of getting after it. Their defense is so geared to rushing you and turning you over that it doesn't take 30 seconds for it to break down -- more like 15 or 20, after some quick rotations of the ball.

"That doesn't mean you should try to slow down the whole game, though. A pressing defense still can have benefits. Lawson, now that he's healthy, won't be all that vulnerable to it, but [Quentin] Thomas, the backup point, is still a guy you might like to try to press. The bigger thing is that it can take Hansbrough out of the game a little bit. About half the time -- or even more than that -- he'll take the ball out of bounds against a press, which means he's less likely to be involved on the offensive end when they go for a quick shot. It's one way you can try to neutralize him."

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3/26/2008 10:32:00 AM

Scouting The No. 1 Seeds: UCLA

UCLA
Robert Beck/SI

SI.com asked an assistant coach from a former UCLA opponent to break down the Bruins using material from his actual scouting report. Here's what he had to say:

"UCLA is not a scoring machine, and the stuff they run is simple -- but they execute it all really well, by setting hard screens and being very physical. That's what makes them difficult to guard. At the end of day, though, they are not a very good outside shooting team. [Darren] Collison can get it going a little bit, but [Josh] Shipp has been struggling. [Russell] Westbrook is an average shooter at best, and [Luc Richard] Mbah a Moute doesn't shoot it well. Defensively you have to make sure you protect the paint and make them shoot as many contested jump shots as possible.

"Where they're phenomenal is when you turn it over and let them come at you fast in transition -- that's a guaranteed bucket. And if you let them beat you on the boards and get out in transition, that's a bucket, too. You have to take away all of their easy opportunities to score, and really clog the paint and make them beat you from the outside, preferably by having Mbah a Moute and [Alfred] Aboya take jump shots.

"You want to play [Collison] straight up -- don't make the mistake of sagging off of him -- and know he's going to use on-balls [screens] to create penetration, and he'll step behind the screens and shoot threes, too. Whoever you have guarding Aboya, or Mbah a Moute, or Westbrook should be a help guy [on Collison]. Shipp has lost his confidence a little bit, but you don't want him to get it back against you, so play him out to the three-point line and make him a driver. He's not very quick or effective off the dribble, and that way, you're just pushing back into the pack in the lane, where you have everybody clogged in.

"In their offensive sets, Shipp is the one they consistently run plays for to get open jump shots. Collison gets most of his offense going through on-ball [screens]. And all the post plays are run for [Kevin] Love. They have a couple of misdirection [plays] where they swing the ball away from him and then bring it back, and he resets his post position. You need to be physical with him and try to push him off the block. And if your defense is packed in, like I said before, you'll have other guys hovering over to double-team, either on the backside if you're fronting him, or doubling from the front if you're playing behind. Those two fadeaway shots he hit to beat Texas A&M, you want him taking those all day. Those are so much better than the two-footers that he'll always make -- and get fouled on plenty of times too.

"The flip-side of this is you aren't going to score on them that easily, either. So it becomes a rugby scrum, or a boxing match where you punch and continue punching. Because everything Mbah a Moute isn't offensively, he is defensively. He gets after it on defense. Westbrook gets after it, too; Collison gets after it, Mata gets after it. All those guys who aren't good on offense are great on defense. What UCLA is trying to do is overwhelm you physically in every phase of the game: denial, on the ball, setting screens, getting through screens, bumping cutters, hard shows on on-ball screens.

"More than anything, it becomes time-consuming to score against them. The No. 1 way you can do it is to get to the foul line, so you have to go right at them. If you shy away and shoot jump shots, you won't ever score. If you go back and look at the games they lost, they always have guys foul out. And in games that [opponents] shy away and take all jumpers, it's like blood in the water. They play just like the Detroit Pistons or the Knicks of old, in that they're programmed to be aggressive on every player. The detriment of that, though, is if they run into a ref with a tight whistle and get in foul trouble, they're just going to keep fouling you. They can't just turn that aggressiveness off mid-game, so you'll end up shooting 30 free throws. But sometimes, if you've got a West Coast crowd in their favor, the ref will start feeling bad because he's sent the other team to the line for 30, and might start compensating.

"Collison and Westbrook are such good defenders because they have great quickness and size, and long arms to create deflections. But when you're trained to be the attacker, as they are, when somebody attacks you, you're going to foul them. You want to put them in situations where they have to foul. Westbrook, especially, is really good if you're in passive mode, but when teams are aggressive and square up and go at him, he'll reach from behind, he'll get beat. When somebody is being the aggressor against him, it's hard for him.

"In the post, UCLA has one of the more aggressive double-teams in college basketball. The second guy just runs over to knock the snot out of you. You've gotta be able to handle that. They've got guys like Aboya, Mata and James Keefe coming off the bench, and they don't care if those guys foul out. They're just going to go at you. And a lot of times they catch teams off-guard because they're so physical. UCLA can end up almost training the refs that way; because they come at you so hard and so frequently, how can the ref tell anymore what should be a foul and what's just good defending?"

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3/25/2008 04:57:00 PM

Day 14: Following The Money

Qwest Center
John Biever/SI

NEW YORK -- For the NCAA, Vegas odds are such a taboo subject that they'll be making teams participate in mandatory "Don't Bet On It" gambling seminars at this week's regional sites. And while gambling is not condoned by this blog, there is plenty of good information to be gleaned from sportsbooks' handicapping of NCAA tournament futures. Because as much as I'd like to think our writers' brackets on SI.com have some value, it's probably more worthwhile to just follow the money.

Tourney Blog collaborator Jacob Wheatley-Schaller, the Emory student behind Vegas Watch, calculated the percentage chance each Sweet 16 team has to reach the Final Four, based on Monday odds from multiple sportsbooks. I'm reprinting Jacob's data here, along with my commentary. Let's start with the South Region, where I'll be this weekend:
South Region: Houston

Sd.  Team              Vegas%
1    Memphis           37.0%
2    Texas             27.8%
3    Stanford          21.8%
5    Michigan St.      13.4%
What you should care about: Of all the No. 1 seeds, Vegas has the least confidence in Memphis to make the Final Four. The Tigers check in at a whopping 14.2 percentage points lower than Vegas' second-most-vulnerable No. 1 seed, North Carolina (51.2 percent in the East). The rest of the Heels' region looks like this:
East Region: Charlotte

Sd.  Team              Vegas%
1    North Carolina    51.2%        
3    Louisville        22.6%
2    Tennessee         16.8%
4    Washington St.     9.4%
What you should care about: For those who put cash behind their picks -- and don't just pontificate on SI.com -- Tennessee's stock is really slipping. Vegas thinks Louisville has a much better shot than the Vols do of reaching San Antonio.
Midwest Region: Detroit

Sd.  Team              Vegas%
1    Kansas            61.9%
3    Wisconsin         23.3%
10   Davidson           8.8%
12   Villanova          6.0%
What you should care about: The Badgers are at least getting a little bit of credit for their School of D. Davidson isn't being given much of a shot to knock off UW, even after beating Gonzaga and Georgetown in Raleigh.
West Region: Phoenix

Sd.  Team              Vegas%
1    UCLA              64.6%
7    West Virginia     15.7%
3    Xavier            14.9%
12   Western Ky.        4.8%
What you should care about: Percentage-wise, UCLA has the easiest road to the Final Four, and Western Kentucky is the biggest longshot of the 16 -- but you probably didn't need odds to come to that conclusion. What's more interesting is that seventh-seeded West Virginia is given a better shot that third-seeded Xavier. Bettors love Huggs, apparently.

• In the Tourney Blog pool, where only SI.com fame -- and not cash -- is on the line, we have two leaders out of 5,490 brackets after the first weekend. The pair who are tied with 54 points are:

- Michael Edwards, a senior at the University of South Florida ... who unfortunately also picked Duke to win it all.
- Kellen Freeman, from Honolulu, Hawaii, who has Memphis beating Louisville in his final.

The blog has contacted both of them via Facebook, in hopes of learning more about our frontrunners. If you're near the lead in the Blog Pool and want pub once you jump to No. 1, send over a friend request.

(If you care, I'm currently ranked 243rd. Top five percent ain't bad.)

• We slacked a bit on the Tourney Playlist, curated by Gorilla vs. Bear, so we're dropping two mp3s today: Day 13's track is King Khan & The Shrines' Welfare Bread, and Day 14's is Spoon's The Underdog, which could be Western Kentucky's anthem in Phoenix.
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3/25/2008 09:01:00 AM

On To The Sweet 16 ...

Qwest Center
A prospective ticket buyer on Saturday in Omaha ... who was also offering up his Kansas sweatshirt in exchange for a $50 donation to a charity of his choosing.
Luke Winn/SI

AIRPSPACE BETWEEN LITTLE ROCK AND DETROIT -- On the off-day before Wisconsin beat Kansas State in Omaha to reach the Sweet 16, reserve senior center Greg Stiemsma found time to shop for a fishing pole at the Outdoor World in Council Bluffs, Iowa. This trip did not affect his preparedness for Saturday's game -- he scored 14 points in 14 minutes against the Wildcats, and also did some inadvertent damage to Bill Walker's face -- but it did help Stiemsma get ready for Memorial Day weekend, when, instead of preparing for the NBA draft, he'll be angling in Canada. Stiemsma specifically selected a seven-foot rod with medium/heavy action because, he said, "I needed something with backbone. We're going to be catching some big Northern up there."

I'll go out on a limb and guess that none of the victorious players from this past weekend's other sites -- in Little Rock, or Anaheim or Birmingham, or Denver or Tampa, or Washington D.C. or Raleigh -- went hunting for new tackle boxes before practice. But the Sweet 16 we were left with has room for all kinds: Rural fishermen (Stiemsma, who's from Randolph, Wis.) and brawny West Baltimoreans (Memphis' Joey Dorsey, who's from Wire territory); super-sized clutch stars (Stanford's 7-foot, 260-pound Brook Lopez) and super-slender ones (Davidson's 6-3, 185-pound Stephen Curry). Glamour teams (the Tigers, 'Horns, North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA and Tennessee), Final Four darkhorses with "backbone" (the Badgers, Louisville, Xavier, Stanford, Michigan State and Washington State) and even a pack of giant-killers (West Virginia, Davidson, Western Kentucky and Villanova). All of which should make the NCAA tournament's second weekend as good as its first.

Five Matchups I'm Most Excited For (over the next two rounds):

5. Rick Pitino vs. Bruce Pearl: Can we get them to break out the white suit (Pitino's) and the orange blazer (Pearl's) just for the occasion? It's doubtful that either signature look was packed for the Louisville-Tennessee showdown in Charlotte, but this duel of sideline flamboyance and pressure D should not disappoint. One gets the feeling that if these guys met twice every season, they'd hate each other.

4. Stanley Burrell on Darren Collison. It would be in Xavier's best interest to put Burrell, its defensive stopper, on the Bruins' speedy point guard should the two teams meet in the Elite Eight. An all-out lock-down of Collison could make it hard for the Bruins to break 55 points.

3. Michael Flowers on Stephen Curry. Neither Gonzaga, whom Curry scorched for 40 points, nor Georgetown, whom he lit up for 30, has a perimeter defender like the Badgers' Flowers. He was snubbed for a second straight Big Ten defensive player of the year award, but is still considered the main cog in the nation's most-efficient defense.

2. Tennessee vs. North Carolina. Would Tyler Hansbrough be a bigger matchup problem for the Vols than Tyler Smith would be for the Heels? And will UNC defend the perimeter against JaJuan Smith and Chris Lofton as well as it did in its second meeting with Duke, or will the Heels let one of Tennessee's shooting stars turn into Tyrese Rice for a half? I'd prefer if Louisville and Washington State played nice in the Sweet 16, just so these questions can get answered.

1. Texas vs. Memphis. This shootout could easy top that Tigers-Vols classic from February. A.J. Abrams is shooting 60 percent (12-of-20) from long-distance in the dance, and every player in the 'Horns' starting lineup is capable of knocking down treys. Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, meanwhile, would love to get in a transition war that ends with scores in the mid-80s.

Five Half-Serious Suggestions:

1. For players: Don't wear NBA socks. The two guys I saw rocking the Jerry West logo above their shoetops did not fare well on the first weekend. USC's O.J. Mayo wore a white pair against Kansas State, perhaps in honor of Heat coach Pat Riley's attendance, and the Trojans were upset 80-67. Mississippi State's Charles Rhodes wore a black pair against Memphis, perhaps in honor of it being his last game before the NBA pre-draft camp, and the Bulldogs lost 77-74.

2. For the NCAA: Create a screening process for potential refs in the West Regional, just to be sure they're not susceptible to the "UCLA Spell" in late-game situations. I picked the Bruins to win it all -- and still think they can pull it off -- but would rather it not happen by virtue of non-calls like the one below, from Texas A&M's final shot in Saturday's thriller:

UCLA Foul
AP

3. For followers of pregame minutiae in Houston: Count how many different combinations of Adidas gear Memphis players sport during warmups. At one point on Sunday in Little Rock there were seven: Dorsey was the only player in warmup pants, presumably so he'd have a pocket for his iPod. Antonio Anderson wore a black tank top. Derrick Rose and Jeff Robinson wore blue tank tops. Shawn Taggart and Willie Kemp wore white tees. Robert Dozier had on a Memphis shooting shirt. Chris Douglas-Roberts rocked his new no-sleeves look. The rest of the Tigers wore their new Adidas long-sleeve warmups that read "Believe in We" on the front and "March is a Brotherhood" on the back. While Memphis may have a brotherhood, apparel-wise, there is no unified front.

4. For Stanford's Trent Johnson: Call Wagner's Mike Deane and have him send his seatbelt guy over to Reliant Stadium.

5. For CBS: If Memphis happens to lose, make Dorsey a guest analyst for the Final Four. I'd pay extra for a special audio feed of Gus Johnson on play-by-play and Dorsey on color -- and I'd probably replay the audio clips for the whole offseason, just for comedy's sake. Dorsey hates talking to the press so much that he avoided local writers for a long stretch of the C-USA season, and even hid under a table during the Tigers' off-day media availability in Little Rock. But when he actually does choose to speak, you tend to not want to move away from his locker, for fear of missing something golden. Case in point: after Sunday's 13-point, 12-rebound, six-block game against Mississippi State, Dorsey offered the following window into his mental fluctuations ...

"Everything was on me today. Beginning of the game, coach [John Calipari] was on me hard, and I'm like, 'What am I doing wrong?' I'm blocking shots and rebounding, and I'm still getting an earful from coach. So the guys on the team told me, 'Don't worry about it, we'll talk to coach and get him off your butt.' They got coach off my butt and it was good after that."

The All-First Weekend Team:

G: Stephen Curry, Davidson
30 points, five assists vs. Georgetown; 40 points, five steals vs. Gonzaga

If they gave out a first-and-second-round Most Outstanding Player award, Curry would've been a lock to win it.

G: Scottie Reynolds, Villanova
21 points, four rebounds vs. Clemson; 25 points, eight rebounds, five assists vs. Siena

Reynolds has been the best player on the floor for two straight games; is there any way he can keep it up against Kansas?

G: A.J. Abrams, Texas
26 points, 6-of-10 threes vs. Austin Peay; 26 points, 6-of-10 threes vs. Miami

Another game, another six treys: Why Miami didn't put more of a defensive emphasis on Abrams is beyond me.

F: Kevin Love, UCLA
20 points, nine rebounds, four blocks vs. Miss. Valley State; 19 points, 11 rebounds, seven blocks vs. Texas A&M

Add "block machine" and "fadeaway jumper artiste" to potential descriptions of the Bruins' super-frosh.

F: Joe Alexander, West Virginia
14 points, eight rebounds vs. Arizona; 22 points, 11 rebounds, three blocks vs. Duke

Breakout star of the Big East tournament is turning into the breakout star of the NCAA tournament, too. Alexander earned plenty of new fans by insulting Duke, too.

Sixth Man: Courtney Lee, Western Kentucky
Stats: 15 points, nine rebounds, four assists vs. Drake; 29 points, seven rebounds, three steals vs. San Diego

Lee's pro-level game made the difference in the second-round Cinderella clash.

And Finally, Five Predictions:

1. Final Four: Tennessee vs. Kansas and Texas vs. UCLA.

2. Regional Most Outstanding Players: UCLA's Kevin Love (West), Tennessee's Tyler Smith (East), Kansas' Brandon Rush (Midwest) and Texas' Damion James (South).

3. Western Kentucky -- but not Xavier -- takes UCLA to the wire in Phoenix.

4. Louisville, the sexy Final Four sleeper, doesn't put much of a scare into Tennessee in Charlotte.

5. The Drake-Western Kentucky buzzer-beater aside, Memphis-Texas ends up being regarded as the best game of the dance. I'm headed to Houston on Wednesday. And I cannot wait for that one.
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3/23/2008 10:31:00 PM

On Anniversary Day, Dorsey Receives A Gift

Joey Dorsey
Joey Dorsey (right) conversed with former Tigers star Anfernee Hardaway (second from left) before facing the media on Sunday.
Luke Winn/SI

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- For Joey Dorsey, who can alternately be Memphis' most quotable player or its most stand-offish, who's just as liable to dominate a game on the boards as he is to disappear into a psychological black hole, Sunday was the sweetest of one-year anniversaries. Remember what Dorsey did on March 23, 2007, in San Antonio, on the eve of the Tigers' meeting with Ohio State in the South Regional final? That's where he chose to make the two most ill-fated statements of his college career, both directed at Buckeyes center -- and soon-to-be No. 1 draft pick -- Greg Oden.

The first: "I'm an underrated big man and he's a lot overrated as a big man." The second: "I'm Goliath. He's the little man." You all know how the rest of the story goes: Dorsey had just three rebounds, 17 short of his prediction for the game, and failed to score a point or block a shot. Oden had 17 points, nine boards and a block. Ohio State won by 16. Dorsey went home, his tail between his legs. Speaking about the incident this summer, Dorsey admitted that it would be best, in the future, "to let the giant sleep." He also hinted that his coach, John Calipari, had relayed similar advice in a rather forceful manner.

On that date, Mississippi State was preparing to head to New York for the NIT Final Four, so perhaps the Bulldogs' star junior forward, Charles Rhodes, was so busy packing that he was never made aware of Dorsey's cautionary tale. And so, even though Dorsey was owed no karmic favors -- his Oden-related embarrassment was entirely of his own doing, and he only dug himself in more holes as a senior -- Rhodes gave him a gift on the morning of March 23, 2008. He served up motivation to Memphis' sleeping giant on a silver platter.

Soon after Dorsey awoke on Sunday, many hours before No. 1-seeded Memphis would go on to beat No. 8 Mississippi State 77-74 and advance to the Sweet 16, he received some news from Calipari. At the Bulldogs' press conference the previous day, in a response to a question about what he had to do to get the better of Dorsey in this second-round matchup, Rhodes had said, "I really think he's got to get the better of me in this matchup. He's a great offensive rebounder. He's not really [an] offensive player." That's all Rhodes said. And unlike the absurdities that Dorsey spewed in Oden's direction, Rhodes' statements were true: he averaged 9.9 more points per game (16.9 as opposed to 7.0) than Dorsey did during the regular season.

But Dorsey's psyche is so fragile, even as a senior in his last NCAA tournament, that this was enough to set off the forward who hadn't registered double-figures in either points or rebounds since March 8 against UAB. "I was so mad," he said, "I was furious about that." Furious enough to block Mississippi State's first shot of the game, a Jamont Gordon layup attempt, and swat three more shots in the first half. Furious enough to finish with 13 points, 12 rebounds and six blocks, compared to Rhodes' 14, 10 and one. Furious enough so that ...

"I knew," Dorsey said, "how Oden felt when I called him out."

If one were to look closely at the fresh pair of Adidas Rhodes sported in his final game as Bulldog, written on the outsides of both shoes were the words "Resurrection Sunday." It was Easter, and Rhodes had seemingly meant to disseminate a Biblical message for the national-television audience. But the irony in it was all too apparent, for Rhodes was directly responsible for rousing the one player who could counteract the physicality of Mississippi State's vaunted front line. And in the aftermath, Rhodes had no interest in repenting for his verbal misstep:

"I said that to get him pumped up," Rhodes said. "I'm not scared of any challenge. That's what I want -- the best out of any player. And he brought it a little bit tonight, I'm pretty sure because of what I said. And you know, they ended up winning the game. It is what it is."

It took Dorsey a few months to admit that he regretted his Oden remarks. Perhaps somewhere down the line Rhodes will admit the same. But he definitely wasn't interested in doing it on Sunday. "Regret it? Not at all," said Rhodes. "It ain't like [Dorsey] scored 40 points and grabbed 25 rebounds. I don't regret nothing I said."

Rhodes is essentially Mississippi State's version of Dorsey, a player who has constant loose-cannon potential despite being a senior. It was only fitting, then, that Rhodes brought Dorsey back full-circle a year later, from the caller-outer to the called-out, from the punished to the one handing out the punishment. "That's Joey Dorsey when he's right," Calipari said of the player the country saw on Sunday, who looked far more like the Dorsey who had 14 double-digit rebounding games before Valentine's Day than the one who did it just once after that. "That's what he is. He's not always right, but when he is right, that's what he is."

The record should note that Dorsey wasn't all perfect on his anniversary. He fouled out with 22 seconds left, bumping Rhodes to set up an and-one play that sparked a late Mississippi State rally, which kept the result in the balance until the game's final shot. On his way off the floor, Dorsey made sure to complain to the refs, his palms up and a look of disbelief on his face. After the game, he tried to retreat to Memphis' shower area -- and into a conversation with former Tiger Anfernee Hardaway -- to avoid talking to the press.

"You know I hate doing those interviews," Dorsey said, before a team official prodded him back into into the public portion of the locker room. Once there, though, he sat down and held court with reporters for 20 minutes. It all came rather easy to him, because Joey Dorsey, when he feels like it, can be one captivating enigma.

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3/23/2008 02:45:00 PM

Xs and Os: West Virginia's "Hybrid Open-Post Princeton" Offense

(Ed.'s note: In the interest of giving you a coach's angle on the NCAA tournament, we've enlisted Bruno Chu of the blog The X's and O's of Basketball to provide a series of guest posts during the dance. Today's topic is an interesting offensive development out of Morgantown. Bruno takes it over from here.)

What happens when a John Beilein-coached team falls into the hands of Bob Huggins? At West Virginia, the result was a truly unique hybrid offense, combining Beilein's Princeton-styled five-out scheme with Huggins' Open Post Motion. This system, which I've marveled at all season, is similar to Duke's in that the Mountaineers also shoot a lot of three-pointers. But WVU has an increased number of backdoor options and is more motion-based than the Blue Devils. Here are a few ways WVU scored on Duke in its second-round upset:

Off-ball Screening Options: In this series of two plays, West Virginia runs the same action. It gets to a four-out situation and an off-ball screen is set for star forward Joe Alexander. Depending on how the defense plays the screen, Alexander will either curl off shoulder-to-shoulder all the way to the rim, or V-cut back to the ball for the three-pointer.

In the first diagram, the defense tries to trail over the top of the screen with no switch, allowing Alexander to get all the way to the basket and finishes while being fouled:



In the second diagram, the defense decides to go underneath the screen; Alexander sees this and V-cuts to get an open look from beyond the arc:



Shuffle Cut: With the shot clock winding down, Mountaineers guard Alex Ruoff reads a defensive overplay by the Blue Devils' Jon Scheyer. Ruoff fakes coming to the ball, then shuffle-cuts to the corner to receive the pass for the catch-and-shoot three:



West Virginia's motion may have been the perfect antidote for Duke's overly aggressive D. When the Mountaineers meet Xavier in Phoenix on Thursday, they'll see a more traditional, keep-in-front man-to-man, but Huggins' hybrid offense is good enough to continue generating open looks for the likes of Ruoff and Alexander.

Previous Xs-and-Os Breakdowns:
• Washington State's Pack-line Defense
• Arkansas' Crunch-Time Plays
• How Stanford Feeds the Lopez Twins

(Read more from Bruno Chu, a high-school coach in Vancouver, B.C., on his excellent blog: The X's and O's of Basketball.)

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3/23/2008 01:56:00 PM

Day 12: Easter In Litte Rock

Little Rock
Luke Winn/SI

Little Rock
Luke Winn/SI

Little Rock
Luke Winn/SI

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Under different circumstances I'd be depressed if my Easter brunch consisted of fruit and yogurt in the Memphis airport. But this is the reality of life on the road during the NCAA tournament: If you want to try to catch two games on Sunday in Little Rock after covering two on Saturday in Omaha, you're going to have to sacrifice a few luxuries. I made it to Alltel Arena with about an hour and a half to spare before the tip of Texas-Miami -- more than enough time to take pictures of the gym, a program vendor, and a guy in a cowboy hat ... as well as check on the status of the Tourney Blog Pool.

• On the pool front, heading into Sunday we had a six-way tie for first (at 42 points) between readers Mick Crum, Sam Cichanowicz, Jeff Coverdale, Jay Tatum, Michael Edwards and Kellen Freeman all have a pool-leading 42 points. More importantly, my mother (who entered the pool without even letting me know) is tied for 17th out of 5,490 brackets. Which means I can now insult 5,455 of the bracketeers by saying that my mom knows more about basketball than they do. (Your blogger, meanwhile, is tied for a semi-respectable 213th.)

• The Tourney Playlist (curated by the folks at Gorilla vs. Bear) rolls on, one free mp3 at a time: Day 12's track is Panda Bear's Comfy in Nautica, an indie hymn apropos of the holiday.

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Tourney Blog Playlist
Curated, one mp3/day, by:
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(Right-click the song names and choose "Save As ..." to download for your iPod)

  1: Yeasayer
      2080
  2: The Black Lips
      Not a Problem
  3: Band of Horses
      The Funeral
  4: Beach House
      Gila
  5: Del T.F. Homosapien
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  8: Grizzly Bear
      On a Neck, On a Spit
  9: Girl Talk
      Hold Up
10: Destroyer
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11: Iron and Wine
      Innocent Bones
12: Panda Bear
      Comfy in Nautica
13: King Khan & the Shrines
      Welfare Bread
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      The Underdog
15: Stephen Malkmus &
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      Cold Son
16: Caribou
      Melody Day
17: She & Him
      Why Do You
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18: Panda Bear
      Comfy in Nautica
      (xxxchange Remix)
19: Amanaz
      Khala My Friend
20: Writing On The Wall
      Buffalo
21: Holy F---
      Nude (Remixed)
22: Quiet Village
      Free Rider
23: Stephen Malkmus &
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      Baltimore
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27: Cat Power
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