Three weeks ago, Texas was embarrassed. Flat out, embarrassed.
In their first and only Big 12 tournament basketball game in Dallas, the Longhorns fell to Texas Tech and fell hard. Of course, when you’re letting your opponent sink 71 percent of its three-pointers, the chances of survival are rather bleak.
Texas had gotten a bye into the quarterfinals, but sooner than Bob Knight could say NIT, it was bye-bye for the Longhorns.
And it meant absolutely nothing.
Zero.
Maybe less.
As did the failure of Syracuse to win the Big East tournament or Kansas to win the Big 12 tournament or Marquette to win the Conference USA tournament. May this be a reminder to any of us who fretted about any carry-over effect from those losses because those were no confidence-shaking defeats.
Of the teams heading to New Orleans for the Final Four this Saturday, not a single one captured its league tournament. None.
So much for the value of momentum.
A bigger premium should be placed on short-term memory and long-season mindset. Texas did and finds itself in the Final Four as a result. There was no panic after the lopsided loss to the Red Raiders, just more purpose.
Let this be a lesson to the NCAA tournament selection committee. The regular-season ring is the thing and should be given more merit, which is why Kansas, and not Oklahoma, should have been made a No. 1 seed.
A weekend tournament is a nice diversion, makes some coin and more often than not crowns a champion who really had something at stake. OU, for instance, was intent upon proving it was better than the Big 12’s third-place team.
Consider that pre-NCAA tournament lock Kentucky — expected to last longer than that Oscar-night kiss Adrien Brody put on Halle Berry — is no longer playing. The Wildcats have won five Southeastern Conference tournament titles in the past six years. For their trouble, they’ve been to the Final Four once during that span.
Syracuse, Texas’ opponent in the national semifinals, bowed out in the Big East Conference quarterfinals. Marquette also was an early Conference USA casualty. The Jayhawks bowed out in the Big 12 semifinals, needlessly irritating Roy Williams.
Their respective conference champions didn’t do poorly, so it’s wrong to assume that earning titles somehow sapped those teams. Oklahoma reached the Elite Eight. So did Pittsburgh. Louisville, however, got bounced in the second round by upstart Butler.
Five of the Elite Eight won their conference regular-season titles. A sixth, Texas, finished second. The other two clubs — OU and Michigan State — were strong thirds in their leagues.
Winning a league tournament can backfire.
“Obviously, you can get a situation like at Oklahoma where Hollis Price came out of it injured,” Texas Coach Rick Barnes said, “and I’m not sure he ever got back to 100 percent.”
Price didn’t get back to the Final Four either, nursing a partially torn groin muscle that limited his quickness and lateral movement. In four playoff games, his scoring average dropped from 18 points a game to seven.
The Longhorns were fresher and healthier, and some think the loss to Tech helped galvanize and re-energize them.
“We came out flat against Tech,” forward Brian Boddicker said. “The guys weren’t really excited. We took our butt-whipping, and it helped us get re-focused.”
Arizona’s Lute Olson had it pegged right when he dismissed his Wildcats’ overtime loss to UCLA in their Pac-10 tournament opener. He should know. His 1997 club lost its last two games of the regular season to Cal and Stanford, then got by three No. 1 seeds to take the national championship.
This Final Four bunch shows that teams have to get hot at the right time and build momentum throughout the tournament.
It might be argued, however, that Texas hasn’t even played its best basketball in its four NCAA games. But it’s overcome faulty shooting with T.J. Ford’s ball-handling wizardry — only 12 turnovers in four games — and accurate free-throw shooting as well as superior bench play, defense and rebounding. The Longhorns obviously regained their regular-season magic after that late loss.
Their fellow finalists in New Orleans can say the same. They made the tournament as at-large picks, and they’re still playing large.
