After a week of nostalgia and remembrance, in this valedictory Big East tournament that threw open and widened memory lane, the championship game boiled down to basketball, plain and simple. That captured perfectly all that the tournament came to mean over the years.
On Saturday, triumph resulted from Louisville's defense, an updated basketball chaos theory that bore little resemblance to the celebrated teams of the conference's distant past. This was new-school Big East, Louisville's Big East, not a tribute to the 1980s.
Louisville pressed. Louisville pressured. Louisville trapped. Louisville turned Syracuse ballhandling into a misnomer, in that for a long stretch in the second half the Orange could not handle the ball long enough to get off a shot.
As both teams head to the Atlantic Coast Conference in the next two seasons, the Cardinals (29-5) secured bragging rights in their final Big East meeting with the Orange (26-9). The scoreboard read, 78-61, in favor of Louisville, a team that played defense like a painter who splattered streaks all over the canvas and somehow turned bedlam into art.
"I thought they were the best team in the league from the beginning," Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said. "They proved that today."
In victory, Peyton Siva tallied 11 points, 8 assists and 4 steals, his position as much gnat as guard, to secure his second straight conference tournament most outstanding player award. The only other player to do that in Big East history turned in a decent professional career. His name? Patrick Ewing.
All week, so many of the top-ranked teams in college basketball fell like dominoes, as if the rankings had suddenly been inverted. Down went Duke. Down went Georgetown. Down went Michigan and Michigan State. In the wake of all those losses, Louisville most likely cemented its No. 1-seed status at Madison Square Garden.
Louisville entered the finale favored, but in light of those losses — and a regular season in which the No. 1 ranking seemed to carry a curse — perhaps that was a bad omen. Or maybe not.
James Southerland broke the Big East tournament record for 3-pointers early, with his 17th and 18th long-distance baskets of the week. So continued his personal 3-point contest, which staked Syracuse to an early lead.
As the Cardinals closed the gap, Syracuse guard Michael Carter-Williams attacked the basket as if he were in a spat with the rim, with one drive, then another, then a third. He finished the second on his backside while simultaneously pumping his right fist. He dished six assists in the first half and banked in an ugly 3-pointer — for the record, he did not call it — while fading left.
Syracuse opened a 35-20 lead. It did not exactly feel safe. Especially when the press started.
The championship featured a team among the most successful in Big East history (Syracuse) and the team most successful in recent Big East tournaments (Louisville). The Cardinals reached four of the previous five championship games and won the title last season before making a run to the Final Four. That Louisville's Rick Pitino once worked under Boeheim only added to the subplots.
Jay Wright, the Villanova coach, sent Pitino a text message Saturday. "It's only fitting it's you and Jim," it read.
The Orange sputtered at the end of the regular season, so much so that Boeheim joked Friday that he tasted dirt as pundits began to lower the coffin on Syracuse's season. But the Orange tend to elevate at Madison Square Garden, and elevate they did here, besting Seton Hall, Pittsburgh and Georgetown in succession. Louisville, meanwhile, steamrolled back into the title game, topping Villanova and Notre Dame.
Syracuse found itself this week, found its rhythm, especially on offense. The Orange managed all of 39 points against Georgetown earlier this month, a single-game low for the Boeheim era, which started roughly around the same time as bell-bottoms. This week, Boeheim said, "Syracuse played as well in New York as we ever could have hoped for."
Well or not, Louisville was not done. Russ Smith, playing in honor of Jack Curran, his high school coach at Archbishop Molloy in Queens who died a few days ago, tossed in a 3-pointer. The hulking forward Stephan Van Treese, shaped like a linebacker, tipped in a miss.
The Cardinals swung momentum with their strength: their defense, which swarms and steals and blocks and harasses. Louisville's defensive impact is not always obvious early, but it becomes especially acute late in games, the basketball equivalent to body blows in boxing.
"I'm at a loss for words," said the colorful Smith, perhaps for the first time.
Louisville turned to the reserve forward Montrezl Harrell at the end. His teammates grabbed steals and corralled loose balls and fed him in the post for dunks. He finished with 20 points in 24 minutes. It seemed fair to wonder at that point not when Syracuse would make its next shot, but when it would next attempt one.
When it ended, Louisville players mobbed one another on the court, surrounded by television cameras, as they passed out championship hats and hoisted cheerleaders on their shoulders. They mugged for the cameras. They danced. They bounced up and down.
At a postgame news conference, Boeheim was asked if he considered the history involved, all that mushy sentiment, the finality of it all, the end of this Big East. Boeheim said he thought about how badly Syracuse handled Louisville's pressure, how it needed to head to the airport.
"Those were the two thoughts I had," he quipped in a way that only Boeheim can.
That was the perfect way to end it.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Louisville 78, Syracuse 61: Louisville Edges Syracuse on Their Way Out the Door
Dengan url
https://dunialuasekali.blogspot.com/2013/03/louisville-78-syracuse-61-louisville.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Louisville 78, Syracuse 61: Louisville Edges Syracuse on Their Way Out the Door
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Louisville 78, Syracuse 61: Louisville Edges Syracuse on Their Way Out the Door
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar