This wasn’t supposed to be the NCAA final. Once the bracket came out four Sundays ago, we knew Wisconsin and Duke were not going to meet in the Tournament. Their 8 December match-up, won by Duke, 80-70, would not have a rematch. The NCAA Tournament title game was going to be Kentucky and Duke. Or Kentucky and Villanova. Or Kentucky and Gonzaga or Kentucky and someone, it didn’t really matter who. All we knew was that some doomed team from the right side of the bracket was going to reach the championship game and then have their hopes and dreams destroyed before millions on national TV by the NBA-caliber Wildcats.
It was written.
Then Wisconsin went and trashed the whole script. Instead of the title-game plot that was anticipated for months, and that I was going to write about in this very space – “How can Team X try to wreck Kentucky’s perfect season?” – we’ve got a Wildcat-free final with completely unexpected storylines. Here they are.
Wisconsin’s quest to complete the journey
The USA hockey team’s victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Lake Placid semi-finals would only be remembered as a nice upset by the small community of Olympic hockey diehards if Herb Brooks’ team didn’t go on to beat Finland in the gold medal game. There would be no “Miracle” movie, Mike Eruzione wouldn’t still be making a living off the game 35 years later, and Al Michaels’ iconic call might be: “Do you believe in anticlimaxes?!” Duke are Wisconsin’s Finland. (No offense intended to the good people of Finland by comparing them to Duke). As exciting as the win over 38-0 Kentucky was, this Badgers team needs to cut down the nets in Indianapolis to really be remembered in history outside of Wisconsin. A championship – which would be Wisconsin’s second, but first since 1941 – is also necessary to put Bo Ryan’s program on the same level with the Dukes, Kentuckys, North Carolinas and Michigan States in the national mindset. If Wisconsin lose, it will just reinforce their status as second tier.
By the way: that 1941 championship? The Badgers beat Washington State in the title game by a score of 39-34 and shot 23% from the floor. Twenty-three percent. So maybe let’s all stop pretending this is a down era in college basketball.
The destruction of perceptions
To hear many tell it, the 2015 Badgers are not far removed from that 1941 outfit that beat teams while scoring in the 30s. In reality, the Badgers have a historically potent offense, with an average 1.28 points per possession – the best-ever PPP since the stat was recorded. In their last six games, from the Big Ten Tournament title game through their national semi-final win, the Badgers have averaged 78.8 points per game, beating Michigan State, North Carolina, Arizona and Kentucky along the way. Yes, the Badgers don’t play an up-tempo style. So what? Fast doesn’t mean something is good. And if you’re male and think fast does mean good, you probably have a very difficult time staying in a relationship.
Wisconsin’s postseason run has already begun the demolition of the Badgers-are-boring narrative and made a whole lot of national sports media figures look stupid along the way. For that, we owe them all our gratitude. A Badger championship would just be the bozo nose on the media’s clown suit. Hard not to root for that.
On the Duke side, they are – and this is hard to admit in my own brain, let alone write in a public forum with my name attached to it – they are ... here goes ... not loathsome. Whoa whoa whoa. Hold on. Not loathsome FOR DUKE. This Blue Devils team still has “Duke” on the front of its jerseys and therefore carries with it all the hateable trappings that entails. But this particular Duke team plays a fun brand of basketball. Justise Winslow is as exciting a player to watch in college basketball. Jahlil Okafor isn’t far behind. There’s not a player on the roster in that Christian Laettner, JJ Redick mold that makes you want to hurl things at your TV screen. Admit it: If this Duke team was placed in a different uniform, you could easily see yourself jumping on their bandwagon. Now go take a shower.
Yet while we face the fact that this edition of the Blue Devils isn’t so bad, the hardcore Dookie is being forced to face a fact that troubles them, as well. And it’s this: Mike Krzyzewski is now the John Calipari-style coach gaming the system with one-and-dones. If Coach K wins his fifth national championship, it won’t be done with a senior-laden team he spent four years molding as men and making sure they worked just as hard in the classroom so they were armed for life with knowledge, as the Krzyzewski legend goes. It will be a title won by Winslow, Okafor and Tyus Jones, three freshmen – and two likely one-and-dones in Winslow and Okafor – who dropped into the program as basketball mercenaries and then departed eight months later to the pros. If Krzyzewski cuts down the nets again and goes down in history as John Wooden’s equal, fine. Let’s just makes sure his image as college basketball’s ethical outlier gets cut down with it.
The legend of Frank Kaminsky
With a big performance in the title game and a national title, the senior big man will go down as one of the iconic names in college basketball lore. He’s gone from a freshman who averaged 1.8 points per game after being recruited by the likes of Bradley and Northern Illinois to the Naismith College Player of the Year as a senior. He’s as gawky and awkward looking as a successful athlete can be. And he embraces that. He dances. He sensually rubs trophies. He tweets that he hates Kentucky. He causes his opponents to unravel. And he dances still more.
There’s no way to know what sort of NBA career Kaminsky will have. Basketball “experts” far above my pay grade have botched draft evaluations of many a four-year college basketball star. (See: Morrison, Adam.) What we do know is that Kaminsky has just one game left in a pretty remarkable college career and Monday night is a chance to see him end it in style. It’s hard not to root for the wonderful doofus.
Sidenote: Here’s a fun thought exercise. Reread the first paragraph in this Kaminsky section. Now imagine him doing all of those things not in a Wisconsin jersey, but in a Duke jersey. You would despise him. Such is the power of the Duke brand.
The two best teams in the national title game
The two best teams playing for the national title game seems obvious, but in a 68-team tournament, it’s actually a luxury. The concern in single-elimination tournament formats is that the prohibitive favorites will be undone by a single bad games and some undeserving scrub team that happened to go on a two-week run will play for the championship. We don’t have that here. Kentucky, who were undefeated and the No 1 overall seed, lost. Yes. But they didn’t lose because they had a bad game at the wrong time. “I mean, they out-rebounded us by 12 rebounds,” Calipari said after getting eliminated. “That doesn’t happen. You think about this. We had six turnovers for the game. We shot 90% from the free-throw line, 60% from the three, and 48% from the field, and we lost?”
Wisconsin and Duke are the two best teams in the country. We all thought the best teams were Kentucky and ... whoever. Someone a distant second to Kentucky. But it’s Wisconsin and Duke. Both teams had great regular seasons and they’ve only gotten better since. Better than Kentucky. Better than everyone else. What we expected to happen didn’t. That’s what makes sports so entertaining. And that’s why, in a season in which we constantly heard how bad college basketball has become, we have ourselves the best NCAA Tournament title game match-up in a long time.
Title game prediction: Wisconsin 74-70 Duke. Frank Kaminsky dances into the heart of America.
