It is at once the joy and the frustration of chronicling sports.
It is simultaneously the thing that animates so much of a life spent watching athletes and coaches in the competitive arena; yet, it is also the source of such exasperation in the larger theater of public debate.
It’s fun, but the road to enjoyment can wear on the mind.
Sure, this is precisely what March Madness itself happens to be, but everything that’s been said above also applies to this process of placing games — their outcomes and the “why” of them — in their proper contexts.
Stephen F. Austin’s entirely absurd and mesmerizing (aka, “vintage March Madness,” emphasis on the “Madness” part) Houdini-style win over Virginia Commonwealth on Friday night in San Diego was the headliner in another riveting night session. Yet, it was just one of three games which brought up the need to place a proper degree of weight, causal centrality, and intellectual emphasis on the various factors that create a given outcome.
We’ll get to SFA-VCU in a bit. Let’s briefly touch on the two other case studies in an attempt to drive home the point of this commentary.
In Kansas State-Kentucky, a Kansas State player dunked before the game began, a violation of the rules and cause for a technical foul within the parameters of the rulebook. Some will say that the rule is bad and should not be enforced. Some will say that the rule is bad but should be enforced. Such a discussion is to some extent unavoidable, and for the first three or four minutes, it’s intellectually involving, but after that, people on both sides of the divide should be united in acknowledging the larger point, which doubles as the best resolution to such an argument:
Eliminate the rule, eliminate the controversy. Can’t human intellectual energy be directed toward the simplest, best solutions and the root causes of problems? No bad rule in the rulebook, no future problem — right? Should this really be so hard?
Moving on…
In Providence-North Carolina, plenty of fans and commentators on Twitter reacted to the Friars’ inability to box out Carolina’s James Michael McAdoo on a foul shot with under four seconds left in regulation with UNC clinging to a one-point lead. Yet, there was this small failure on the part of Providence (players and coaches together) that played a larger role in deciding Friday’s 6-11 East Region game in San Antonio.
Providence, in a 77-77 tie, got the ball with over a full minute left in regulation. This log indicates somewhere in the area of 1:07, allowing for a runoff of two to three seconds after a made bucket before the one-minute mark of regulation. (Before the 1:00 mark of regulation, made buckets do not lead to stopped clocks; it’s only in the final minute that a made bucket immediately stops the clock.)
With a 35-second shot clock, Providence had a chance to get a shot off in 25 seconds and still have a seven-second cushion for a 2-for-1. A shot in 20 seconds would have given the Friars a 12-second cushion and an almost-certain exchange of possessions. Getting the 2-for-1 meant, very simply, that North Carolina would have to stop Bryce Cotton on an extra possession. Given that Cotton scored 36 points and was easily the best player on the floor on Friday, it was remotely important for Providence to gain that extra possession.
Moreover, it’s not as though Providence got the ball back with 50 seconds left. That’s not enough time to get a clean look if the initial defense reacts well to a set play. Getting the ball with 1:07 left? This shouldn’t even be an issue. A 2-for-1 should have been assumed in this situation.
Yet, Providence didn’t shoot until roughly 39 seconds remained, and when North Carolina rebounded with 37 seconds left, Providence had essentially left itself with no margin. The 2-for-1 had been eschewed. North Carolina made a go-ahead foul shot with 3.5 seconds left. Providence never got Cotton another look at the rock.
You tell me: Was Providence’s box-out failure with 3.5 seconds left more important in deciding the outcome of the game, or was it the 2-for-1? This really shouldn’t be a debate. Yet, it seemed that attention on the part of many fans and commentators gravitated to the box-out lapse… when Carolina had already taken the lead inside the final four seconds of play.
Place. Blame. Where. It. Fully. And. Primarily. Belongs.
Now we arrive at Stephen F. Austin-Virginia Commonwealth, the acronym game between two mid-majors.
Is there any question at all that Virginia Commonwealth’s JeQuan Lewis had no business being within three or four feet of SFA’s Desmond Haymon on a “not-tying three-point-attempt-that-become-a-gateway-to-a-tie” with three seconds left in regulation? No, of course not. In a four-point game (67-63, VCU), Lewis had absolutely no reason to even think about challenging Haymon’s shot with that particular time-and-score situation. Lewis does deserve some of the blame for VCU’s loss.
Let’s just avoid making him the centrally responsible figure in all this, shall we? Applying various weights and measurements to this situation should make the calculus rather clear, yes?
Replays of the shot indicate that Haymon fell back entirely on his own power without Lewis touching him. The official assumed contact when the play merely showed a player’s body moving. Primary responsibility or blame for this loss should go to the official. When a call is made in the final five seconds of a game; the call represents the difference between a regulation-time win and overtime; AND the call is clearly wrong, it is fair to break the traditional, longstanding sportswriter’s practice of refusing to say that a call decided a game. Sometimes — not usually, and not even 20 percent of the time — calls decide games. This was one of the very rare instances in which it happened.
That is where primary and central blame for VCU’s loss should be assigned.
Secondarily, VCU’s horrible foul shooting — four misses in the final 32 seconds of regulation — caused the Rams to lose. A remotely decent performance at the charity stripe would have sealed the win. Lewis takes a back seat to both the bad call and his team’s foul shooting on the list of reasons why the fifth-seeded Rams didn’t close the sale in San Diego.
We are left with one of the great lessons of sports, a lesson that coaches must always communicate to their players: Don’t put yourself in position to lose (or go to overtime) on one bad call or one bad break. Always give yourself more of a margin or more options whenever possible.
Be sure to lead by five points, not four, if you give the opposition a four-point play on a bogus call.
Be sure to lead by three, not two, so that you can purposefully foul in the final five seconds of a game and deny your opponent a chance at a tying triple.
Be sure to make the front end of a 1-and-1 (or split a pair in a double-bonus situation) when leading by three in the final 10 seconds of a game, so that you can lead by four.
There’s always a threshold of safety teams can cross within the theater of competition. VCU and Providence didn’t clear these thresholds, and that’s a big part of why they lost on another special night at the 2014 NCAA Tournament.
