I’m a curmudgeon. I’m just not the kind of happy idiot who can relax and enjoy the kind of trigger-happy meth-fest that was OSU/Carolina last night. I’m just not persuaded that the Thad Matta, Tommy Amaker, Roy Williams, Ernie Kent strains of run and gun and its attendant buzzwords–athletes needing “freedom,” uptempo, 100 possession games, perimeter first, scores in the nineties, good offense inspires good defense (to name a few)–are the future of the game. Or, if it is the future of the game, I’m going to dig in my size 13’s and resist, whine, malign until I’m an island in a vast ocean of my own bile.
The endless spew of bobbleheaded media flaks will only make me more mulish. Polls that place OSU, Kansas, and Carolina in the top ten while Butler remains cemented at 19 make me grumpy. Shots of Greg Oden with carnival barker accompaniment that he will be the greatest and most revolutionary college basketball player ever entrench me further. Pundits who giddily declare last night’s game a masterful excellence-fest need to settle up their bar tabs and walk it off a bit.
Giving up ninety points in a college basketball game is bad defense and woeful clock/ball management. The disinterest in running patient half-court offense in favor of loose shooting and one-on-one basketball made the first half no better than an And 1 video. For those who think this is good basketball, well, all the power to you. But don’t complain when Greece beats our professionals with pick and rolls. And don’t complain when you lose to more disciplined, boring teams (Butler? Gonzaga? Oral Roberts? Bucknell?) with inferior athletes. And come March, pray that your beloved thirty foot jumpshots are falling.
The fact is Carolina won tonight because they were the only team to establish the high percentage postgame. While Hansbrough and Brendan Wright ate up the low post, the Buckeye jumpshots got a little tight. Game over.
Thad Matta was blithe and unchastened in defeat. He wouldn’t change a thing, except to have a few more jumpers fall. Furthermore the chattering PR men are convinced these two teams are on a bullet train to the Final Four. Maybe so. But I wouldn’t lay my mortgage on either.
