Ah, March Madness. For every avid basketball fan out there, this can be the most wonderful and most stressful time of the year. Millions of brackets are filled out, and people generally root for teams they otherwise wouldn’t care about in the interest of their brackets. Guilty as charged. This year’s tournament didn’t disappoint. From Nigel Hayes’ post-game shenanigans to Georgia State’s R.J. Hunter’s miraculous game-winning shot against Baylor in the Round of 64, this tournament has been one for the ages. Now, as we approach the final weekend of the NCAA tourney, four teams have the chance to make college basketball history.
Wisconsin vs. Kentucky
It looks like the best game, possibly of the entire tournament, will fall on the Final Four game between the Midwest and West Regionals. Sitting at 38-0, the mighty Kentucky Wildcats are looking to finish their first perfect season in program history, a feat that hasn’t been done in men’s college basketball since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers team won 32 straight and claimed the NCAA Championship. Frank Kaminsky and the dangerous Badgers just may be the team to end that dream for the Wildcats.
If anything, Kentucky’s close call against Notre Dame in the Elite Eight proved that they can be beaten. Almost nobody would have said that 10 days ago. Here’s a sobering thought — for 14 of the final 15 minutes of that matchup, Notre Dame set the pace and wouldn’t allow Kentucky to take the lead. Notre Dame played the all-around better game. Kentucky just got lucky. If Demetrius Jackson didn’t pick up that foul with six seconds left on the clock and if Andrew Harrison didn’t make those two free throws, that game might have gone into overtime and Notre Dame could have really done them in. If Jerian Grant didn’t miss that three-point jumper with a second remaining, the Wildcats would have gone packing.
And we’re talking about the team that destroyed West Virginia just two days before, 78-39. Kentucky scored more points in the first half than the Mountaineers did in the entire game. Yet Notre Dame almost beat that team, and Wisconsin is arguably a much better team. Coming in at No. 2 right behind Kentucky, Wisconsin boasts a better basketball power index (BPI) index with 92.2 than the Irish, who sit at 84.6. To date, the Badgers sport a 35-3 overall record with an impressive 16-2 Big Ten record. The Irish were not as lucky. Up to this point in the season, Notre Dame sits at 32-6 overall and 14-4 in conference play.
Kentucky has all the great big men, it’s true, but Wisconsin’s right up there with them. Standing at seven feet, Frank Kaminsky has been Wisconsin’s front man for the past two years, and rightfully so. He averages 18.7 points a game and grabs an additional eight boards while making a stellar 55 percent of his shots. 6-foot-9 Sam Dekker is right there with him, scoring 13.9 points per game and getting 5.5 rebounds per game while shooting 53 percent to help out his senior forward. Nigel Hayes, the Badgers’ 6-foot-8 sophomore forward, completes the trifecta with 12.4 ppg and 6.3 rpg. Not to mention that his new stenographer girlfriend, full of pulchritude and somewhat of a relationship quandary, will more than likely be there to help him along with his game and his sesquipedalian vocabulary.
John Calipari may have met his match. All in all, none of the Wildcats’ statistics are as impressive as the statistics of the Badger trifecta. Sure, they have three players averaging double digit scoring, barely. Aaron Harrison leads the team in scoring with 11 points a game, but Devin Booker and Karl-Anthony Towns both average only 10.1. I guess Towns’ little imaginary friend Karlito doesn’t exactly help him with his shooting, does he? That means the scoring is ultimately distributed pretty evenly among the Kentucky players, which, along with their nearly impenetrable defense, can make them extremely lethal. But I think the Badgers will be up to the challenge, and any matchup with the two top teams in the country is sure to be a thriller.
Michigan State and Duke:
Some may say that Michigan State is the big surprise team of the tournament. The Cinderella, if you will. But I disagree. That Cinderella team was NC State, and the clock already struck midnight on their tournament run. This Spartan team didn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I had them in my Final Four from the start of the tournament (thank God!).
Much like Georgetown’s predictable tendency to choke early on the big stage, Michigan State has always been a powerhouse tournament team, no matter how poorly their regular season turned out, and they should be treated like it. Using the words of the ever-colorful Bill Walton, “This is not a truck-stop team.”
The best analogy I can think of to describe this team reigns from one of the greatest movies of all time. That’s right, Space Jam. Much like the Nerdluck aliens at the beginning of the movie, Michigan State seemed like a small, insignificant team at the end of the regular season that wouldn’t stand a shot against Michael Jordan and the jacked-up-from-Michael’s-secret-stuff Looney Tunes, which in this case is Jahlil Okafor and the Duke Blue Devils. Heck, Michigan State only has a 27-11 record right now.
But whenever it’s tournament time, these Nerdluck Spartans use their special powers to steal the talents of Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, etc., to become the “Monstars” of the tournament. But that’s no matter. If Okafor and his Looney Tunes show up, as they usually do, in this Final Four game, the Blue Devils have a good shot of ending the dream for the Spartans.
Purely from a statistical standpoint, the Blue Devils are a much better team than Michigan State. They have a better BPI ranking of 88.8 than that of the Spartans (82.4) and they’ve had much more success with this tougher schedule with their impressive 33-4 record.
Okafor leads Duke with an NBA-caliber 17.5 points a game and 8.7 rebounds per game, which three other players complement with their own double-digit averages. Watch out for two of these players, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones, to make insane clutch plays. They have a habit of doing that.
But that’s not to say Michigan State doesn’t have a few tricks up its sleeve. Led by Travis Trice (15.3 ppg), Denzel Valentine (14.3 ppg) and Branden Dawson (11.9 ppg), the Spartans have a lot of offensive firepower that can be hard to tame at times.
Just look at their last game against Louisville. Most would have thought that the game would have been an easy “W” for the Cardinals, but thanks to stellar offensive performances from Valentine, Trice and guard Bryn Forbes, the Spartans were able to send an arguably better team packing.
Don’t count the Spartans out just yet. It is March, after all, prepare for a little madness.
Contact CU Independent Basketball Writer Alissa Noe at alissa.noe@colorado.edu.
