Tape-delayed tidbits from the Final Four

These are some things that we forgot to mention during the Final Four :-)


Tom Izzo
Izzo's game plan to tire out the Tar Heels back-fired because of the way the TarHeels jumped to a 20-point lead. From there on, the slugfest was actually in favor of UNC, and that took the legs off the Michigan State players who needed them a lot more than the TarHeels because they had to score 20 points more than UNC in the second half.

And yes, Izzo should have called at least two time-outs earlier on in the first half to stem the tide. Even a high-school coach knows that! Ben Howland and Pete Gillan would have used up all of their timeouts before the first TV timeout :)


North Carolina
It is really amazing, that after soooo many years of college hoops only thirteen coaches have won multiple national championships. Only 13! And one of them is "dum' ol'roy". This is amazing, just thirteen! Of course Wooden ate up a whole decade on his own :)

Soft this, soft that, but this UNC wine-and-cheese team managed to do something historic: Win the most crowded road game in the history of college hoops, facing a hostile crowd of over 60,000. I do not believe anyone played in front of a bigger hostile-road crowd?

So while they were "wine and cheese" during the regular season, they got an injection of toughness from the Felton/McCants/May team of 2005 and may have actually played a little bit better on average. With the exception of the Lawson-toe-v*g*na-LSU game issues, when Lawson was warmed up and ready to go, it was Tar Heels all the way!


What did Draymond Green say?
In one of the interviews Izzo mentioned that Green said something to the team, that was so good and mature and profound that it surprised him. We forgot to google it, and by now it may be too late.

What was it?


Star vs Role player
I'm glad Bob "Guitar Hero" Knight brought this up a couple of times. It is extremely frustrating to see analyst after analyst use the stupid and divisive categorization of players into "stars" and "role players". This is just stupid.

Pigeon-holing players like that is for small minds and idiots who can't seem to understand anything that is not binary.

It's one thing to get this gibberish from play-by-play guys and TV anchors who are usually clueless anyway, but TV analysts, most of whom are former coaches and players, should know better!

So, Bob, please, the next time someone says something stupid like that, please stop them and yell at them live on TV!

Tell them, Bob! Tell them!