| Thursday, March 9
By Pat Forde
Special to ESPN.com |
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Billy Donovan is no Dale Brown, which is a positive pretty much any way
you look at it. But with the Florida coach facing the bizarre scenario
of sharing the Southeastern Conference title and still needing to play
four games in four days in the tournament, he might borrow from the
playbook of the league's Loon Emeritus.
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Inside the C-USA tournament
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The Storyline: Can anyone beat -- or even bother -- Cincinnati?
The key stat: The Bearcats ran the table in the league, going 16-0 and
winning those games by an average of 16 points. Any chance that will
change?
The Star of the Show: Cincy center Kenyon Martin leads the nation in
spiked shots and crushing dunks. But he's rounded out his game
admirably, adding a jump shot and ball handling to the package.
The Potential Sleeper: Memphis has gone through a miserable season --
head coach fired after some tawdry business right before the games
started, a rocky run under interim coach Johnny Jones, constant
speculation that John Calipari will be on board next year -- and
suddenly jelled at the end. The Tigers have won five straight, including
three straight road games for the first time in forever. Playing at home
won't hurt, either.
The Current Slumper: Marquette has overachieved this season to put
itself in line for an NIT bid, but the Golden Eagles have been
introduced to the wall down the stretch. They've lost seven of their
last 10.
The pick: Let's venture out on a rather sturdy limb and pick the
Bearcats.
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In 1987, faced with the same challenge for his LSU team in the SEC
tournament in Atlanta, Brown announced that he would not sleep
throughout the course of the event. He was going live, 24/7, for four
days. This was Brown's motivational way of persuading his Tigers that
fatigue could be conquered with the proper mindset.
So the SEC tourney literally became all Dale, all the time. He called
reporters' rooms in the dead of the night, whispering sweet nothings
into their fuzzy heads. "This is your 3 a.m. barometric pressure check,"
Brown would say, beginning rather short conversations.
He was, of course, totally nuts. And his team, 8-10 in the league going
into the tournament, totally bought it.
The Tigers made it to the final before finally succumbing, losing 69-62
to Alabama. Then LSU, as a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament, went all
the way to the final eight before losing to eventual national champion
Indiana by a point.
Sometimes, crazy works.
And sometimes, teams can summon the strength to play four-in-four. In
fact, seven teams have done it since the SEC revived its conference
tournament in 1979, the most recent being Georgia in 1997.
But only one team has actually won the tournament that way. Auburn in
1985, the No. 8 seed going into the tourney, ran the table. (Having
Chuck Person didn't hurt.)
Florida's task is both easier and more difficult than Auburn's that
year. Winning four in a row in a golden year for SEC hoops seems
preposterous, but it's not out of the question.
The Gators, who open against Mississippi on Thursday, are third in the
Eastern Division but 10th in America according to the latest ESPN/USA
Today poll. They certainly have the talent to beat anyone in their path
in Atlanta, and they have the depth to play four.
Best of all, they're cozily situated in the same bracket with Auburn,
the emasculated runner-up in the West. Without suspended star forward
Chris Porter, who doesn't figure to play this week, the Tigers lost to
Florida by 29 in late February.
After that would figure to be Tennessee, a team that beat the Gators
twice this season but needed a total of three overtimes to do it. The
talented Volunteers haven't won a single SEC tournament game since 1996,
so they've got some proving to do.
Win the first three and Florida would be likely be looking at either LSU
or Kentucky, who are on course for quite a collision in the Saturday
semifinals. The Tigers can go body for body with Tennessee in terms of
talent but are similarly unproven in this event (no SEC tourney wins
since 1993). Kentucky all but owns the event and the venue (won seven of
the last eight tournaments and are a daunting 12-0 in the Georgia Dome)
but has been susceptible all season to dysfunctional shooting.
Florida obliterated LSU earlier in the year and split with Kentucky. It
wouldn't be scared of either team.
Now comes the hard part: Is a team built around full-court pressure and
built upon freshmen and sophomores up to the grind? Can Florida play
BillyBall -- running and gunning and playing in the 90s -- for four
straight days? Can its young stars maintain their mental edge for that
long?
Maybe. But Donovan would like to see his team have a capable Plan B on
the nights when the 3-pointers aren't falling -- which is bound to
happen at least once in four games.
"We've got to find different ways to somehow win the game," he told the
Gainesville Sun.
"They (the players) need to figure out that when they're not making
shots, they have to find other things to do -- get out on the fast
break, get a second shot, get fouled, get to the free throw line or go
inside maybe a little bit more," Donovan said.
The exemplar of such resourcefulness is Kentucky, which shared the
league title with Florida, Tennessee and LSU despite being on course to
finish as the worst shooting UK team since 1962-63. There's no telling
how the Cats are going to shoot from night to night, but opponents can
always count on hellish defense and brutish rebounding.
If there has been one constant from Rick Pitino to Tubby Smith, it has
been consistent effort. Kentucky simply never mails it in -- especially
at this time of year.
"If they're having a poor shooting night in the SEC tournament or the
NCAA Tournament, it's not going to hit them like a ton of bricks,"
Donovan said.
Kentucky usually is the brick wall hitting opponents about now. Pitino
was a preposterous 17-1 in the SEC tournament, and so far Smith's
winning percentage in this event as the UK coach is higher -- he's 6-0.
In the NCAAs, Pitino was a razor-sharp 22-5, but Smith has him beaten
there, too. He's 9-1 as the UK coach.
Smith has also had the advantage of playing a maximum of three games in
this tournament. Donovan now needs to win four. Paging Dale Brown, come
in Dale...
Around the South
Cotton picking his future: Alabama forward Schea Cotton said he will return home to Southern California after the season is over for Spring Break to ponder a jump to
the pros. The sophomore has played just one year of Division I ball
after transferring from junior college. He led the Crimson Tide in
scoring this season at 15.8 points per game.
Tide coach Mark Gottfried will also be holding his breath in regards to
star recruit Gerald Wallace, who also is said to be mulling a possible
leap to the pros.
Can you say "Football State"? Despite having one of the best seasons in
school history, Tennessee actually returned part of its ticket allotment
for the SEC tournament. The Volunteers turned back 208 unsold ticket
books from an allotment of more than 1,300.
Reversal of fortunes: March is the greatest month for college basketball players, but also the
cruelest. Nobody knows that right now any better than Murray State guard
Aubrey Reese.
A year ago he was the toast of Championship Week after swishing a
miraculous jumper at the buzzer to beat Southeast Missouri State for the
league tournament championship and NCAA bid. This year the OVC Player of
the Year endured a nationally televised disaster in the same event,
against the same opponent.
Reese made his first shot against SEMO less than 90 seconds into the
game, then missed his next 17. He entered the game averaging 21 per
contest and left it with three.
The iron -- and the irony -- were most unkind.
After the game was over he buried his head on his mother's shoulder and
sobbed.
"This game," Reese said, "was what you have in your nightmares."
"He's devastated," said Murray coach Tevester Anderson. "He's a gamer, a
winner. This tore him apart."
Triangle talk: Watch OVC champion Southeast Missouri run its precise offense of passes
and cuts and see if it looks familiar: It's the triangle offense the
Chicago Bulls rode to six NBA titles. And the Indians make it work
wonderfully with no Michael Jordan in sight.
Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. |  |
