A Shining Moment

So for the third straight time, Villanova has lost in the NCAA tournament to the eventual champion. Was that part of the subconscious reason I picked Kansas to win it all in my bracket? Who knows. This year was the first in which I knew the least about college basketball, quickly selected teams, and somehow got the right champ and the correct runner-up, Memphis. Of course, this isn’t too hard when all #1 seeds make the Final Four, but I am giving myself some credit, as most everyone I know (defined as everyone in my office who entered the pool) did not have the Kansas-Memphis matchup, going instead with some combination of N. Carolina and UCLA.

 

More interestingly, the overtime scoring got me very close to the 148 overall points I had down as the tiebreaker. Not bad. Not bad at all.

 

Two things I didn’t like about last night’s game (aside from the often ragged play. The Kansas-UNC semi-final was a masterpiece of up and down basketball compared to this, uh, uneven contest.).

 

Anyway, the three things: 1) can the media give Bill Self and the Jayhawk faithful at least one day, or even 12 hours, to celebrate their victory before peppering the head coach with questions about whether he is going to jump ship? Can’t everyone let Self bask in the glow of his team’s accomplishment for at least a little while? CBS grilled Roy Williams 5 years ago outside the loser’s locker room about whether he was leaving Kansas to go to UNC. There’s a time and a place for those questions. Minutes after the championship game is not one of them.

 

The two other things I didn’t care for are Jim Nance’s now insufferably pithy crowning statements. Last night it was “rock, chalk, championship.” At one time they were, or at least seemed, unscripted and accurately captured the moment, probably because they sprung from the moment. Now they reek of advance planning and focus group testing. It’s really, really annoying.

 

Second: I’ve been a Billy Packer-basher ever since Packer had the gall to ask Dwayne McClain in the 1985 post-championship game interview whether he pretended to get hurt after missing an embarrassing dunk during the game. A disbelieving McClain insisted he was really hurt and Packer quickly backtracked and moved on. Hey, Billy, if you are going to make that charge in that moment (see above) don’t backpedal so quickly, see it through. But what really put me initiated me into the hate Billy Packer club was his bizarre and irrational hatred for Jameer Nelson and Delonte West’s #1 seeded St. Joe’s team from a few year’s ago. Packer seemed personally offended that St. Joe’s got that high a seed and actually gloated when the Hawks lost to the #2 seed Ok St. in the regional final as some sort of justification for his ridiculous position.

 

Anyway. It was not a good night for the college basketball refereeing community – what with the Derrick Rose miscalled three pointer that they eventually reviewed and changed to a two, and John Calipari wondering how hard his players had to foul on Kansas’ last possession for a whistle to be blown.

 

But the icing on the cake occurred with 3:12 to go in the first half when the Memphis guard dirbbled, put both hands on the ball for a chest pass, dropped the ball and then picked it up and made a pass. It was either a travel, discontinue, and/or double dribble – take your pick-  in the back court and in clear view of everybody yet no whistle was called. That’s right. A rare triple turnover for Memphis that was, incredibly, not called. As bad as it was for the refs, Nance and Packer also blew it.

 

Nance said the ball got away from the player. The Memphis guard hesitated to pick it up and finally did, astounded that play was not immediately stopped. The Kansas player guarding him quickly signaled for traveling, but no call came.

 

Packer sagely proffered that the player was allowed to pick up the ball and that “you have to know the rules.”

 

Really? Does Packer understand the basics of traveling? Can Packer define discontinue? How about double dribble? I wouldn’t be making as much of a big deal about this except that Packer is such a pompous windbag to suggest that he knew the rule, and the Memphis player somehow didn’t (but did since he hesitated to retrieve the ball). Packer’s only been covering basketball for 30 years, you would think he would know better.