Archive for the ‘Tech/ACC’ Category

The pressure seems to be getting to these guys, don't you think? (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)

In the mind of Kentucky fans, there could be no greater indignity than the thought of these mighty Wildcats arriving at the 2012 Final Four and being undone not just by Louisville but by a Louisville team coached by Rick Pitino. It would be worse than Christian Laettner undoing the Unforgettables as coached by Pitino. It would be …

It would be like Laettner’s school (Duke) losing to North Carolina in the Final Four — with Mike Krzyzewski coaching the Tar Heels.

Even before the delicious match was officially made, Pitino — who coached Kentucky to the sixth of its seven NCAA titles — was waxing evocative. “There will be people in Kentucky who will have a nervous breakdown if they lose to us,” he told reporters Saturday after his Cardinals overhauled Florida to take the West Regional. “They’ve got to put the fences up on the bridges.”

The days leading to Saturday’s Final Four collision …

Continue reading Who’s afraid of Louisville and Pitino? Not Calipari’s ‘Cats »

The nation's best player isn't above diving after a loose ball. (AJC photo by Hyosub Shin)

To view the faces of the Indiana Hoosiers early Saturday morning was to see incredulity on parade. They’d made 52.2 percent of their shots against an opponent that on average had limited teams to 37 percent. They’d made eight turnovers in 40 frenzied-yet-focused minutes. They had, as coach Tom Crean kept noting, scored 90 points.

And they’d lost by 12. They were like Sham in the 1973 Kentucky Derby: They’d run the race of their lives, but they’d run it against Secretariat.

Said John Calipari, Kentucky’s coach: “Indiana played great. We just happened to play a little better.”

Indiana was ready for Kentucky — the Hoosiers had beaten UK in December, so they knew what was coming — and they got big performances from everyone. (Five starters in double figures.) They scored 90 points against a team that hadn’t yielded even 75 this season. As noted, they lost by 12.

It felt close, but really it …

Continue reading As Indiana learned, Kentucky is a different breed of ‘Cat »

An Acy-Deucy trap: Baylor's Quincy Acy and Deuce Bello. (AJC photo by Hyosub Shin)

If this NCAA tournament comes down to which team can function the best if the power fails, Baylor’s your champ. The Bears wear yellow uniforms that could pass for landing lights at Hartsfield-Jackson.

(Officially the Baylor colors are green and gold. I don’t care. These uniforms are gold in the way that Tennessee wears burgundy.)

(Update: I’m told the Bears’ look has been dubbed “Electricity.” Was I right about a power failure or what?)

Remember those Power Ranger Pro Combat togs the Georgia Bulldogs sported against Boise State last September? They’ve been eclipsed as the most garish uniforms ever worn by a team under the off-white roof of the Georgia Dome. But give the Bears this: They showed up and played a heck of a lot better than Georgia did.

Baylor hit Xavier so hard so fast that the tournament-tested Musketeers didn’t know whether to spit or call timeout. Oddly enough, Xavier coach Chris …

Continue reading The brightly clad Baylor Bears barge into the South final »

John Calipari enjoys Thursday's open practice. (AP photo)

Kentucky’s coach comes equipped with not one Hot Button, but two. The first: Is John Calipari a cheater — two of his three Final Four runs were vacated — or not? The second: Has his recruit-a-new-team-of-lottery-picks-every-year cheapened the college game? (Ready, set, discuss.)

Today, for variety’s sake, we take the road less traveled. We ask: Can the nation’s highest-paid coach really coach?

The answer: Yes, with one pesky asterisk attached.

Calipari has had eight 30-win seasons. By way of contrast, Mike Krzyzewski has had 12, Tom Izzo three. Only once since 2005 has a Calipari team not won 30 games, and that was last season’s Kentucky bunch, which won 29. He’s the nation’s best recruiter by three miles, and Wildcats center Anthony Davis figures to be the third Calipari product drafted No. 1 overall in five years.

And yet: Davis, who could be the national player of the year, has taken the fourth-most shots among …

Continue reading Kentucky’s John Calipari: A big winner in dire need of a title »

Hurryin' Hoosiers: Back in Atlanta to rock the NCAA favorite? (AP photo)

Survive and advance. In the NCAA tournament, that’s supposed to be all that matters. Jim Valvano coined the phrase in 1983, the year his North Carolina State Wolfpack survived Pepperdine and Jim Harrick in double overtime, UNLV and Tark the Shark on a Thurl Bailey tip-in, Virginia and Ralph Sampson on Lorenzo Charles’ free throws and Houston and Phi Slama Jama on the most serendipitous air ball in the history of the sport.

But now, 29 years later, we ask: When is surviving and advancing not enough?

Maybe when your point guard suffers a broken wrist, as happened to North Carolina. Maybe when your starting center is gone for the duration, as is the case with Syracuse. Those four No. 1 seeds who looked unassailable only a week ago. Two have been weakened, and the other two had nervous moments in the Round of 32. Michigan State nearly blew a lead against St. Louis, and Kentucky was tied with Iowa State in the …

Continue reading The Sweet 16: Even for the No. 1 seeds, survival isn’t a given »

Furman with Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1949. I wasn't around. (AJC photo)

November 24, 1984: I did something I hadn’t done before and would never do again. I drove Furman Bisher to a college football game.

Clemson was playing South Carolina — the Gamecocks were very good that year — and we had only one parking pass. So we met somewhere off West Paces Ferry and he seated himself in my Corolla and off we went.

It was two hours to Clemson, plus another 30 because we got stuck in game traffic. (Being relatively new at the ol’ AJC, I hadn’t yet mastered the David Davidson Back Way — get off at Fair Play and take back roads through Seneca.) And we hadn’t passed Roswell Road before Furman said something that made me start doing a bit of math.

For reasons unknown, I’d mentioned Sandy Koufax. Said Furman: “I met Sandy when he was a rookie in Dodgers camp.” I thought to myself: OK, Koufax was a rookie in 1955; I’d been born in 1955.

I was new at the AJC in 1984 — I’d started in March — but …

Continue reading Driving Mr. Bisher: A car ride to Clemson that changed one life »

TV or not TV, that is the question. Or something like that. (Photo and pedicure by yours truly)

I’ll have you know that I clipped my toenails just for this. (I even thought about putting polish on them. Then I realized I don’t really know how that’s done.) And clipping my toenails is, for this correspondent, an experience fraught with trauma.

On Sept. 25, 1997, I had taken a shower and repaired to the bedroom to clip my toenails. The deed done, I walked into the bathroom to return the clippers in question to their assigned drawer. I slipped on a wet spot and shattered my right kneecap into seven asymmetrical shards. I was on crutches until January. To this day, I have no right kneecap.

But I digress. I worked up my nerve and clipped my toenails because I didn’t want to appear all scraggly for our new-look NCAA tournament Day 1 live chat. As you can see, we have a new TV. The old one in the den stopped working last summer. (Although the old one in the den wasn’t nearly as old …

Continue reading With toenails trimmed, our new-look NCAA live chat is a go! »

The pix that launched a thousand quips: Ol' MB watching the 2009 Big Dance. (Photo by 'ol MB.)

It began innocently enough, or so I thought. I took a picture of me watching the 2009 NCAA tournament. Hilarity ensued, on least on your part. Y’all started cracking jokes about the hygienic quality of my feet, which were shown in propped-up mode, but mostly about the vintage of my TV.

Well, here it is 2012 and I still haven’t lived it all down. But we are, I’m afraid, about to try it again.

Coming at noon: Our fourth annual NCAA tournament live blog. (The second installment, you might recall, did not feature the infamous console TV but was done from a room at the Milwaukee Hyatt. And then, when informed that this fine establishment DID NOT OFFER ROOM SERVICE FOR LUNCH, the proceedings were switched to Major Goolsby, a sports bar across the street.)

We’ll go until 4 p.m. or so, and our early games today include Murray State-Colorado State, Kansas State-Southern Miss and …

Continue reading Feets don’t fail me now: Our live NCAA chat is coming soon! »

Will Murray State be the next VCU? Or will VCU itself be the next VCU? (AP photo)

On the road to the Final Four, everyone needs a little help. Toward that end, we’ve sought the guidance of five learned observers, posing the same four questions to each. Our illustrious panel includes:

Barry Goheen, a Vanderbilt legend for making seven game-tying/winning shots in the late ’80s, including two outrageous treys in seven seconds against favored Pittsburgh in Round 2 of the 1988 NCAA tournament, the clip of which is available on YouTube; now a litigator for King & Spalding and chairman of the Atlanta Tip-Off Club.

Ron Hunter, an NCAA tournament participant with IUPUI in 2003, when his 16th-seeded Jaguars lost 95-64 to Kentucky, the tournament’s top seed; now the coach of Georgia State, which was picked to finish 11th in the Colonial Athletic Association but won 20-plus games for only the fourth time in school history.

Dave Odom, who as coach of Wake Forest and South Carolina took …

Continue reading Customer service: Our expert panel provides bracketing help »

The Harvard Crimson react after seeing they've been drawn against Vandy. (AP photo)

The NCAA tournament is comprised of 67 games over 20 days and, unlike the college bowl season, all 67 matter. Some, however, will matter more than others. Today we offer a list of the 10 games in this Big Dance — some scheduled, others projected — that rise to the level of truly significant.

Round 1, West Regional, 9:10 p.m. Tuesday: BYU versus Iona. Nobody paid much attention when VCU met Southern Cal in the First Four last year. Then VCU, whose mere presence in the field was a source of some ridicule, took down five teams from BCS leagues in 11 days. VCU is back this season — more about the Rams in a bit — but the mid-major at-large selection triggering the most buzz is Iona.

The Gaels, who are 25-7, were upset in the Metro Atlantic tournament semis by Fairfield, and their worksheet wasn’t without holes. (They’d beaten Maryland but had lost to Hofstra, which finished 11th in the 12-team …

Continue reading The Big Dance: 10 key steps along the way to an NCAA title »