Average Frank Views: Notes from a Championship

What a game of identity – Michigan State had four starters from Michigan, one from Ohio, while North Carolina didn’t have a player from in-state or near it in the starting lineup. Tom Izzo is well-identified as Michigan State’s coach; Roy Williams, as much as we try, still feels like Kansas’s coach on the wrong sideline.

Identity is what involves fans in sports, and this game showcased what is starting to hurt the NCAA tournament but also makes it great. With all the young coaches coming on, let’s hope a few of them stay at their schools and create icons for the future. Jamie Dixon at Pitt, Jay Wright at Villanova, Billy Donovan at Florida, etc… all have a chance to become the next Bobby Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith, Denny Crum, or Lute Olsen. These coaches that stayed with one school created an identity. You don’t like Lute Olsen? There’s a reason to root against Arizona. You hate Bobby Knight, it’s just as well, it was a reason to root against Indiana for 29 years.

2009 NCAA Men's Final Four

Instead, we have too many of these Rick Pitino-types. He should be an icon, but he’s been too many places. Roy Williams in North Carolina powder blue still seems like Superman wearing Batman’s clothes.

When you root for Michigan State you truly are rooting for the blue-collar elements of the state of Michigan. When you root for Roy Williams and North Carolina, you’re rooting for… cream-of-the-crop recruits from around the country and a coach that built his legend somewhere else and needed to come home after 15 seasons.

There just isn’t as much to root for, or against.

Sloppy play – CBS’s Clark Kellogg, broadcasting his first NCAA Championship game, kept calling on Michigan State’s need to “knock down some shots,” but didn’t they first just need to prove they could hold possession for more than 11 seconds?

This has been a recurring trend in recent years – lackadaisical play. It’s hard to picture a tournament game that occurred any time from the ‘80s through the mid-‘90s with teams playing like this. Would Villanova in ’85 ever have run down the floor and put up a three-pointer off just one pass? (Or, the equivalent, since there was no three-point shot yet). Perhaps, but it’s hard to imagine, so it would have been the rare exception. But it’s easy to picture current teams playing this way.

Hand it to him, again – How about Magic Johnson at halftime saying it straight out, “Michigan State has to get the ball inside… They gotta work inside out, instead of outside in.”

Where was Billy Packer? – He (was) unceremoniously retired last year after 34 NCAA Championship games, and isn’t it a strange choice to go with Clark Kellogg to replace him? He’s clearly not good enough. Also he lowers the class level of the event, closer to an ESPN-type feeling vs. the timeless aura of Packer and Jim Nantz. It’s another element of identity – the national championship game on CBS has a certain time-honored quality to it, but Kellog’s style cuts into that somewhat.

That was close – For anyone that’s been out of college for more than six or seven years, aren’t you glad? You didn’t have to participate in the jump-up-and-down trend of collegiate fans.

Minimal confidence from CBS – How about CBS’s weak belief in our interest in the game, with the extended Green Day montage for the opening? Why not tell us more about this particular game, this matchup? Hansbrough is a genuine story. He’s the rarity, a national player of the year that came back for his senior year to win it all. Show us some scenes from that embarrassment against Kansas in the Final Four last year – tell us what Hansbrough has said about this mission.

That’s a strong, identifiable and relatable human story, but instead we got some unnecessary Green Day promotion, both for the band and the network.

It has to be said – Has there been a more inappropriate final lap of a legendary actor’s career than Gene Hackman as the Lowe’s voiceover man? Say it isn’t so, Coach Norman Dale.

• January 20, 2009 -- Domination (5)
• April 15, 2009 -- Average Frank Views: Magic and Bird vs. Spike TV (1)
• March 13, 2009 -- Fierce And Nerdy: The Madness Has Begun (2)
• March 30, 2009 -- Average Frank Views: Gonzaga Makes Them Suffer, Again (1)
• March 28, 2009 -- (B)racket (20)