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NCAA Regional Finals: Sunday Recaps

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The Final Four is set in New Orleans with Kentucky and Kansas joining Louisville and Ohio State in New Orleans next Saturday. TheSportsNotebook recaps the final games in the South & Midwest brackets…

SOUTH (Atlanta): Kentucky 82 Baylor 70
I thought Baylor had the talent to at least compete in this one, but Kentucky showed that when they come to play they are simply unstoppable. They were up twenty by the half and this was the only one of the four regional finals not worth watching in the second half. UK owned the free throw line, getting 44 attempts to Baylor’s 19—an advantage too great to be attributed to just end-game foul situations and translated that into a 30-16 scoring advantage. Baylor had good things going—they won the battle of the point guards, with Pierre Jackson beating Marquis Teague in both points and assists. Perry Jones III and Quincy Acy combined for 39 points and 16 rebounds. But those were the only three players who got anything done. Brady Heslip, whose three-point shooting was identified here as being key to a Bears upset, couldn’t get going. On Kentucky’s side, Anthony Davis had an 18 points/11 rebounds afternoon in spite of a collision with his knee that temporarily had Big Blue Nation undergoing a collective coronary. And Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, a player I’m coming to love, concluded a great two-game through Atlanta with 19 points and 5 rebounds.

John Calipari is in the Final Four for the fourth time in his career (’96 UMass, ’08 Memphis and the past two years with Kentucky). He’s looking for his first ring. For your off-the-wall thought of the day, how about this one—if Kentucky wins it all, and the Miami Heat again come up short of a title, does Heat president Pat Riley place a call to Calipari to see if he wants to take his talents to South Beach? These are the kind of thoughts you come up with when you’re making a three-hour drive across the plains of Illinois with a fellow sports fanatic, but this one makes an almost frightening amount of sense.

MIDWEST (St. Louis) Kansas 80 North Carolina 67
The instinctive thing to say is that the loss of Kendall Marshall finally caught up to North Carolina. And there would be a basis for that belief. The UNC starting backcourt combined for nine points, while Kansas point guard Tyshawn Taylor hit for 22 by himself. North Carolina was out-executed down the stretch in a game much closer than the score makes it sound. As one who saw his bracket finally come down completely with the Tar Heel loss, I’m obviously sympathetic to such a line of thinking. But we have to point out that Carolina’s strength, the front line, was alarmingly pedestrian for a big game—especially a big game when the entire college hoops world knew they’d have to kick up their production. Tyler Zeller, who pounded Ohio for a 20/20 night on Friday, had 12/6 on Sunday. John Henson’s line was 10/4, and Harrison Barnes concluded a two-game stint in St. Louis that stands to cost him a lot of money in the NBA when also had a 10/4 line. Kansas, getting rebounds up and down the starting lineup, and not just from Thomas Robinson and Jeff Withey, but everybody—the Jayhawks won the battle of the boards 40-30 and because of that won the game. So while there’s no point denying the obvious impact Marshall’s loss had on North Carolina, there’s also no point in ignoring that Kansas did what few—if any—teams in college basketball could have done, and it’s contain the entire Carolina frontline while owning the glass.

Bill Self makes his second Final Four trip with Kansas. The last one was with New Orleans…in 2008, when he beat Calipari’s Memphis team thanks to a huge game-tying three at the end of regulation by Jayhawk guard Mario Challmes, whom Calipari will get reacqauainted with when he goes to the Heat this summer. I’m just not going to let this theory die easily.

Saturday’s Final Four games will be Kentucky-Louisville in the opener at 6:09 PM ET, with Kansas-Ohio State following 40 minutes after the conclusion of the first. Last week, TheSportsNotebook gave a historical nod to the 1983 Mideast Regional, one that ended with an epic Louisville-Kentucky final. Now the two rivals can up the ante with their meeting in the Final Four.

NCAA Regional Final Previews: Sunday

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We fill out the Final Four card for New Orleans with two more games today. The finals of the South and Midwest Regionals are underway and it’s heavyweights in action—two #1 seeds, a #2 seed and a #3 seed. TheSportsNotebook previews both games, each televised on CBS…

SOUTH REGION (Atlanta, 2:20 PM ET): Kentucky-Baylor
Baylor is one of the two teams in the country where Kentucky has to genuinely be concerned about the talent level with—the other would be North Carolina, although with their current injury situation that we’ll discuss in a moment, Baylor’s probably left as the only one. Perry Jones III, Quincy Acy and Quincy Miller are more than a match for Kentucky’s shotblocking freshman Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Terrence Jones. In the backcourt, Baylor’s Pierre Jackson can match up with Kentucky’s Marquis Teague on the point. And the Bears are playing well right now, with a win over Kansas in the semifinals of the Big 12 tournament seemingly just what the doctor ordered to get this #3 seed playing to its potential. That’s the good news for Baylor. The bad news is that just because there’s not the same kind of talent disparity here that exists in Kentucky’s other games doesn’t mean UK isn’t better. Doron Lamb and Darius Miller give a backcourt dimension that it will be tough for Brady Heslip to match. Furthermore, while Kentucky’s freshmen are a source of concern, the reality is that throughout the season it’s been the more experienced Bears who have been inconsistent, and as studio analyst Kenny Smith pointed out, can start succumbing to one-and-one basketball rather than cohesive team play. Baylor’s path to win means first staying focused on the team game and then getting maybe 15 points or so from Heslip to ease the pressure on other parts of the floor. Is that realistic? Absolutely. Would I predict it? No.

MIDWEST REGION (St. Louis, 5:05 PM ET) North Carolina-Kansas
The broken wrist of North Carolina’s Kendall Marshall has overshadowed all other news in this regional, and after the  way North Carolina fell apart offensively in their survival win over Ohio on Friday, it may not overshadow news in most of the Western world. Marshall practiced yesterday, the first time he’s handled a basketball since the injury last weekend. Based on that we have to assume he’ll suit up, and I have to think he’s going to at least try to play. When he’s healthy, North Carolina is the better team here. As good as Kansas’ Thomas Robinson is in the paint—and in fact, Robinson is the best player on the floor today—UNC brings too much with Tyler Zeller, John Henson and Harrison Barnes. With Marshall out, the Tar Heels have demonstrated—not just on Friday, but last season prior to the lineup change at point guard—that all that talent is for naught, as no one can run a cohesive offense. So there’s the extremes—an effective Marshall means a Carolina win, one who can’t run the offense means Kansas wins.

But what about the middle ground, perhaps the likeliest scenario, which is that Marshall plays, can do enough things to run an offense, but is limited? I have to lean Kansas in this situation. Tyshawn Taylor, the Jayhawks own guard was terrible Friday night, but if he comes out and plays better, he can exploit Marshall if his counterpart can only dribble one way, or worse, if he can’t shoot and hit a 10-12 foot jumper, meaning Kansas can pack it in defensively without consequence. I look for Kansas to win, but not with a lot of conviction—the Jayhawks are lucky to survive and looking to re-enact their 1993 Final Four team. That year they were the #2 seed, while top-seeded Indiana was devastated by the loss of forward Alan Henderson (in this case just prior to the NCAA). Kansas cashed in the bracket break. The regional they won that year took place in St. Louis and their coach was Roy Williams. A lot’s in place for some déjà vu later this afternoon.