RTC is reporting from the Final Four in Atlanta, Georgia, this weekend.

Three Key Takeaways.

Luke Hancock’s Game of His Life Ensured Louisville Advanced Tonight

1. The Game Was Ugly, But Louisville Can Do Ugly. One reason the Cards are so difficult to match up against is that they are just as comfortable playing an ugly, foul-ridden, poor-shooting train wreck of a game as they are an up-and-down virtuoso performance. This was the former. In the first half, the Cards allowed Wichita to force them to settle for long-range jumpers to the tune of 4-of-13 with only seven field goal attempts coming from two-point range. By the time Louisville had fallen behind 12 points just shy of midway through the second half, those numbers looked even worse — 18 shots from three and only 11 from within the arc. Only when Louisville started driving the ball inside to a more equitable split (the Cards finished the game with a 25/24 ratio) did openings appear for the only hot shooters on the floor, Luke Hancock and Tim Henderson. 
2. Tim Henderson and Luke Hancock Saved the Day. Speaking of those two, there’s no question that their contributions on nights where Peyton Siva and Gorgui Dieng couldn’t make shots (they combined for a 1-of-10 performance) saved the Cardinals’ hides tonight. It wasn’t so much as the volume of scoring — Hancock ended up with 20 points, while Henderson had six — but it was the when that mattered most. After the Shockers’ lead ballooned to 12 points, it was Henderson who nailed consecutive threes to bring the lead back to a much more manageable six very quickly. If Wichita had pushed its lead up to 15 or more at that point, it’s questionable whether the Cards would have found enough offense to come back in this one. After Henderson’s pair of bombs, it was Hancock’s turn. He followed up with a pair of layups and a three, ensuring that the Louisville push was for real, and then not only gave the Cards its first lead in a long time with a three at the 6:30 mark, but essentially sealed the game with another one at two minutes. He also managed to get his hands on some balls for deflections and steals, but the key point is that 13 of his 20 points came in the last 12 minutes of the game. More on his Final Four-saving performance below.
3. Wichita Was One Bad Stretch From the Unthinkable. For much of this game, the appearance on the floor was that Gregg Marshall’s group was the better team. Their ability to not fall victim to the Louisville pressure was outstanding for the majority of the contest, mishandling the ball only five times in the first 33-plus minutes of action. Once Louisville started to finally get some shots to go down, Wichita got rattled for the first time all game, turning it over four times in the next two minutes and three more times down the stretch. It’s certainly not worthwhile to delve too much into hypotheticals, but Wichita had the exact game plan and execution it needed to win this one. Peyton Siva and Gorgui Dieng were offensive nightmares. Russ Smith was solid, but high-volume in his attack. Wayne Blackshear and Chane Behanan weren’t going to beat the Shockers tonight. It really took a totally couple of unexpected efforts from Hancock and Henderson to make the difference here in Atlanta, or it says here that Wichita would have been playing on Monday night.

Star of the Game. Luke Hancock, Louisville. Certainly didn’t have that one on the SOTG pool, and I’m not sure anyone else did either. As noted above, it wasn’t just his overall numbers — 20 points, four rebounds, two assists, two steals, on 6-of-9 from the field, including 3-of-5 from distance — it was that so much of his offensive effort was exactly when Louisville needed a player to step up. Hancock averaged 7.4 PPG this season and only hit the 20-point mark once all season (22 against Notre Dame in 46 minutes of action).

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Two games to get to Monday night… here are our breakdowns.

#1 Louisville vs. #9 Wichita State – National Semifinal (at Atlanta, GA) – 6:09 PM ET on CBS

Pitino is Inching Closer to His Second Title (AP)

Let’s get this out of the way right off the top – Louisville is the heavy favorite. Vegas calls them a 10-point favorite and KenPom.com agrees. They’re on a 14-game winning streak and have won those games by an average of 18 points. In a season where for the most part there has been no clear-cut favorite all year long, we certainly have a clear-cut favorite now. If some team other than the Cardinals are cutting down the nets on Monday night, it will be a surprise. So, with that said, let’s ask how Wichita State can keep this game close? First, it begins with playing the type of defense it has played in the tournament so far (0.94 PPP allowed in their four games). In particular, the Shockers have caused trouble for some big-time guards, limiting Tray Woodall of Pitt to what he called his worst game ever, harassing Kevin Pangos into 6-of-17 shooting, holding La Salle’s perimeter players to a combined 14-of-47 shooting, and making Aaron Craft a non-factor offensively. If guys like Malcolm Armstead, Tekele Cotton, Fred VanVleet and Ron Baker can turn in a similar performance and limit potentially erratic guards like Russ Smith and Peyton Siva (who, for instance, in Louisville’s last loss, combined to shoot just 5-of-25 from the field in a five-overtime loss) to poor shooting nights, that is step one for the Shockers.

Step two is having the Shocker “big” guys, Cleanthony Early and Carl Hall (both just 6’8”), stay out of foul trouble and stay effective against the likes of Gorgui Dieng inside. Hall and Early have both been foul prone this season, but on a team without a ton of skilled depth up front, Gregg Marshall will need the services of those two for the bulk of the game. But not only are the Cardinals a potent offensive team, they are the nation’s best defensive team – by a long shot. In the KenPom era (dating back to 2003), they’re the only team with an adjusted defensive rating below 82.0, essentially equivalent to allowing less than 0.82 points per possession. And while Wichita has had good success offensively in this tournament (1.09 PPP), they are about to face a whole different animal. The good news is, they just got done withstanding the pressure defense of Craft, one of the nation’s best perimeter defenders. The bad news is, Smith is even better. And he’s paired with Siva who is also one of the nation’s best on-ball defenders. And should Wichita escape the perimeter pressure and get the ball inside, either on the bounce or on the pass, there’s Dieng waiting for them as a potent shot-blocker. For Wichita to have success against that defense, they’ll need to have guards like Baker, Armstead and VanVleet to connect from deep, and they’ll need Early to be able to bring his man out of the middle and knock down some perimeter shots as well, essentially softening up the Cardinal interior for exploitation later in the game.

One bit of good news for the Shockers, with Dieng attempting to block almost every shot in the paint, the Cards don’t do a great job cleaning the defensive glass, while the Shockers are among the best in the nation at getting on the offensive boards; that trend will also have to continue for the Shockers to have a chance. So, those are a whole lot of ifs and buts. And we haven’t even mentioned potent Louisville weapons like Chane Behanan, Luke Hancock, Montrezl Harrell and Wayne Blackshear. The fact is, it is going to take a major confluence of events for the Shockers to stick around in this game. They’ve shown that they not only get great coaching, but they take that coaching well. And, as always, they’re going to play angry, so if you look up at the final media timeout and see the Shockers in the ball game, don’t be, well, shocked. But more likely the talent advantage that the Cardinals have slowly but surely wears Wichita down and Rick Pitino advances to his third national championship game.

The RTC Certified Pick: Louisville

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It would have been easy to lose faith in Syracuse near the end of the regular season. The Orange sputtered to a 5-7 finish over their last 12 games, which in itself was enough point-blank evidence to jump off the bandwagon. The swirling rumors of NCAA impropriety and looming specter of coach Jim Boeheim’s retirement added to the general malaise that fell over this program as it hobbled into the final Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. What’s happened since? This In-Depth Final Four preview, the last installment of our four-part series, should give you a pretty good idea. The Orange are to be feared, and this, in long form, is my explanation why.

(Revisit previous entries Wichita State, Michigan and Louisville)

Smart and controlled point guard play from MCW has pushed Syracuse into the Final Four (Getty Images).

Pre-Tournament Capsule. Non-conference schedules in Syracuse, New York, are unfailingly bland subjects. The Orange hardly ever leave the state of New York, and when they do – as was the case this season when they opened the season by traveling across the country to play San Diego State on top of the USS Midway aircraft carrier, as well as an SEC-Big East challenge game at Arkansas – it’s extremely rare and/or typically not of their own volition. The Orange “ventured” to Madison Square Garden three days before Christmas and took their only loss before Big East play, a four-point defeat to Temple. They buzzed through the early part of conference play looking like one of the four or five best teams in the country, with wins at Louisville and home Notre Dame sprinkled therein. Things got ugly in the portion of the hoops calendar we like to call the “dog days” – the mid-to-late February stretch of conference play where teams start running on fumes at the tail end of a long league schedule. The Orange dropped four of five to close the regular season, then got off the mat and played their way into the Big East Tournament championship game, an emotional conference sendoff that ended with fellow ACC-bound member Louisville tearing the lid off MSG in a pristine second-half effort. Syracuse may have fallen in the finals, but that ugly stretch at the end of conference play was officially a figment of the past. The Orange were ready for the Big Dance.

How They Got Here. There was nothing circuitous or fluky about Syracuse’s path to Atlanta. They drubbed Montana in a game many thought could give the Orange real problems (HA!), pulled away from Cal in a hard-fought second half, put the nation’s then-No. 1 efficiency offense (Indiana) in the 2-3 blender and dropped Big East foe Marquette in the Elite Eight. Looking back, astonishing as it may seem, that round-of-32 bout with Cal was, I’d argue, the most trying game Syracuse has played in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

Final Four History. Only one of Syracuse’s Final Four appearances came before Boeheim inherited the head coaching job in 1976, and Boeheim was very much a part of that one too, only in a different capacity. When Syracuse reached the national semifinals in 1975, Boeheim had been an assistant for six seasons. Little did he know the head coaching job would open up one year later, and the rest – the four Final Four appearances, the 900 wins and counting, the national championship – became part of the legendary coaching monolith we know invariably associate with Syracuse basketball. Boeheim’s last Final Four trip with the Orange was led by one of the most dominant freshman stars in the modern hoops era and ended with a title. That would be Carmelo Anthony circa 2003.

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From 68 down to four, as we tip off the penultimate games in the college basketball season on Saturday evening in Atlanta. In this week’s RTC Podcast, hosted by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114), the guys take a look back at last weekend’s action, discuss all the news and notes on hirings and firings from this week, and move forward with picks and analysis on the Final Four. We’ll be back on Sunday with a short podblast to discuss what went down the night before, so keep an eye out for that.

• 0:00-4:45 – Shockers Back to Their Shocking Ways
• 4:45-8:28 – Louisville Looking Almost Unbeatable
• 8:28-13:43 – Kevin Ware Enters the Pantheon of Grotesque Sports Injuries
• 13:43-19:17 – Trey Burke Carries Michigan to the Final Four
• 19:17-22:43 – Syracuse Goes From Good to Great
• 22:43-26:40 – LA Coaching Carousel
• 26:40-32:17 – Big Ten Related Coaching Changes
• 32:17-36:52 – Rutgers Controversy
• 36:52-40:55 – Pac-12 Ref Controversy
• 40:55-47:28 – Final Four Picks

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Final Fours are just as prone to upsets and unpredictability as any other round of the NCAA Tournament. The scouting reports on each team are more extensive, the shock factor mitigated by previous results, but the inherent variance of the games themselves breeds upsets at any level of competition. Even the best teams can be had given the perfect combination of stylistic match-up (see: Syracuse – Indiana) or hot shooting (see: Wichita State – Gonzaga). The cream of the crop is never impervious to the competitive desires of underdog opponents; thinking otherwise is ignoring three quarters of a century’s worth of college basketball history. So with that out of the way, let’s get to the truth: I’d be lying if I tried to convince you that anyone other than Louisville deserves to be treated as the odds-on favorite going into college basketball’s final weekend. The Cardinals are the best defensive team in the country, a rapidly improving offense and, following Sunday’s emotional Elite Eight victory, are playing with the well wishes of injured guard Kevin Ware as a primary motivation. Louisville has it all. Let us dig deeper and find out what makes the Cardinals such overwhelming favorites to finish the season on top of the college hoops world.

(Revisit previous entries Wichita State and Michigan)

Pre-NCAA Tournament Capsule.

A jolt of offense from Smith has Louisville on the brink of the national championship (AP Photo).

We began the season rightfully touting Louisville as one of the nation’s best and most complete teams, and its early non-conference work did everything to affirm that premise. The only blemish before Big East play was a loss to Duke in the Battle 4 Atlantis Championship game (star center Gorgui Dieng was injured). The Cardinals turned in another solid Big East season, finishing tied for first place with a 14-4 record, with only one real period of concern baked in throughout – a three-game losing streak comprising a two-point home loss to Syracuse, a road-loss at a then-scorching Villanova team, and a two-point defeat at Georgetown. The Cardinals quickly recovered to dust off 10 wins in their next 11 games, the one loss a five-overtime thriller at Notre Dame, then ripped through the Big East Tournament to claim the No. 1 overall seed.

How They Got Here. Geographic priority was awarded to the Cardinals for their top-seed status, but the committee did them no favors in terms of ease of regional competition. Two Hall of Fame coaches were situated alongside Louisville in the Midwest, and the rest of the region – including trendy Final Four pick St. Louis, national player of the year candidate Doug McDermott, NCAA seeding travesty Oregon and Colorado State, the nation’s best rebounding team – was littered with potential early-round pitfalls. Louisville navigated its rocky road with aplomb, first handling North Carolina A & T, then destroying Colorado State, followed by a comfortable eight-point win over Oregon and, lastly, a punishing second-half spurt to pull away from Duke in a highly-anticipated Elite Eight clash. Aside from Duke hanging tough through the first 20 minutes, Louisville has yet to meet its equal in this field.

Final Four History.

Paired with Dieng, Behanan is a load to handle on the low block (US Presswire).

It’s best to analyze Louisville’s Final Four history through two different lenses. Removing the Cardinals’ 1959 Final Four jaunt from the equation, UL’s trips to college basketball’s marquee event can be separated along the historical dividing lines of two legendary coaches. With Denny Crum, the Cardinals made it to six national semifinals, including two championships (1980, 1986). Nearly 20 years later, when Rick Pitino’s constant job hopping from college to the NCAA and back again gave way to a sustained tenure in Louisville, Kentucky, the Cardinals returned to the Final Four in 2005, made consecutive Elite Eight runs in 2008 and 2009, then rode the unnerving audacity and mercurial play of Russ Smith and a stout defense to another Final Four in 2012. One year later, the Cardinals are once again left standing among the last four teams playing meaningful postseason basketball.

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The NCAA Tournament is here and there’s more news, commentary and analysis than any of us can possibly keep up with. To make things a little easier, we’ll bring you a list of daily links gathered about teams in each of the four regions all the way through the Final Four.

Michigan

• A report broke Thursday morning that Wolverines guards Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. will declare for the NBA Draft when their season comes to an end.
• A great profile by Rod Beard of the Detroit News on the decisive leadership of Trey Burke. Burke’s leadership on and off the court has helped lead Michigan to its first Final Four in 20 years.
• Michigan forward Mitch McGary has lost 20 pounds since the beginning of the season and the now lighter freshman has been a key component of the team that is set to make its first Final Four appearance since 1993.
• On Thursday, Michigan coach John Beilein refused to discuss the report that his guards Burke and Hardaway Jr. will declare for the NBA Draft.
• Michigan freshman reserve point guard Spike Albrecht was headed to Appalachian State before the Wolverines gambled and gave him a late scholarship offer. That gamble has paid off majorly for the Wolverines, as Albrecht has developed into a very capable back-up to star guard Trey Burke.

Syracuse

• Bud Polquin of Syracuse.com writes that it is coach Jim Boeheim‘s fourth Final Four appearance and it is probably not his last.
• A lot has been made about rumors that this could possibly be Jim Boeheim‘s final season at Syracuse, but the veteran coach made known that “he fully intends to coach Syracuse in the ACC.” 
• The path Syracuse point guard Michael Carter-Williams has taken in his Orange career to the Final Four is quite similar to the path former Syracuse point guard Lazarus Sims took to the 1996 Final Four.
• Syracuse has decided that its motto for the week is to become legendary.
• It is possible that Syracuse forward C.J. Fair will declare for the NBA Draft following the end of the season, but the junior is just focused on playing in the Final Four right now. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The last team remaining from the best conference in the country quietly enters the Final Four with much the same youthful construction of last season’s Kentucky Wildcats. Don’t believe it? True story: Michigan starts three freshman – forwards Nik Stauskas, Glenn Robinson III and center Mitch McGary – a sophomore (Trey Burke) and a junior (Tim Hardaway Jr). It is the youngest team left in this NCAA Tournament and, like Kentucky, heavily relies on three first-year stars. This weekend, that youth, the legs that power the nation’s No.1 offense, will meet a defense unlike any it has seen all season. The Wolverines have already eliminated #5 seed VCU, #1 seed Kansas and #3 seed Florida, with each game presenting a different challenge from the previous. Syracuse offers something completely unique – a hellacious 2-3 zone defense operating at full force. So let’s peel back the curtains and explore whether Michigan can survive Saturday’s semifinal and, if so, whether a follow-up win in the national championship is in the offing.

(Also feel free to revisit Tuesday’s Final Four team du jour: Wichita State)

Pre-Tournament Capsule. From November to January, everything about Michigan suggested the bullish preseason predictions – that Michigan was a top-five team, that Trey Burke was an All-American, that John Beilein’s perimeter-oriented system would flourish with so much talent at his disposal – were rooted more in reality than typical overzealous summer conjecture. The Wolverines got out to a 16-0 start, claiming non-conference wins over Kansas State, Pittsburgh and Arkansas, and entered a January 13 game at Ohio State with the No. 2 ranking and all the signs of a true Big Ten title contender. The Wolverines fell behind early and never made it back, and after following up the OSU loss with four straight wins, lost three of their next four during a brutal four-game stretch that included games at Indiana, home against Ohio State, at Wisconsin and at Michigan State.

But for a rocky scheduling patch in early February, Michigan ran into few problems it couldn’t handle in the regular season (Getty Images).

The constant grind of Big Ten competition – from the raucous arenas to the physicality of the play to the demanding mental and physical toll of a 40-minute contest against a multitude of top-10 teams – left Michigan tied for fourth at the end of regular season play. The early sizzle of the Wolverines’ high-powered offense and freshman star power was fading fast, and a convincing nine-point loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten Tournament only hammered home the idea that Michigan was probably still too young and inexperienced to cause any serious damage in an NCAA Tournament setting.

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The NCAA Tournament is here and there’s more news, commentary and analysis than any of us can possibly keep up with. To make things a little easier, we’ll bring you a list of daily links gathered about teams in each of the four regions all the way through the Final Four.

Louisville

• Many people around the country are very surprised that Wichita State has advanced to the Final Four, but Louisville coach Rick Pitino is not one of them. “I picked Wichita State to go to the Final Four,” Pitino said Monday during a conference call.
• Louisville junior guard Russ Smith was named a third team All-America selection by the Associated Press.
• When Louisville guard Kevin Ware suffered his horrific compound fracture Sunday, one teammate rushed to be by his side as he laid on the court writhing in pain; that teammate was swingman Luke Hancock.
• With the injury to guard Kevin Ware, Louisville’s backcourt depth took a bit of a hit. Walk-on Tim Henderson will be called upon to play increased minutes in Ware’s absence and Cardinals coach Rick Pitino expects him to step up in his unexpected role.
• The injury to Ware definitely has caused and will continue to cause some adversity for Louisville, but as Pat Forde of Yahoo! Sports explains, this injury is not the worst adversity head coach Rick Pitino has had to handle.

Wichita State

• Wichita State guard Malcolm Armstead‘s road to the Final Four includes stops at a junior college and Oregon before he had to pay his own way at Wichita State. While his road was uncommon, he is now living out a dream by playing in the Final Four.
• When Wichita State capped off a three-game losing streak in early February by losing to lowly Southern Illinois, Shockers coach Gregg Marshall thought there was a chance his team might not make the NCAA Tournament.
• Wichita State’s surprising run to the Final Four has captivated the sports world so much that the Shockers will be featured on one of the three Sports Illustrated regional covers this week.
• In basketball, first impressions do not always turn out to be lasting impressions. This is definitely the case when it comes to head coach Gregg Marshall and Shockers’ forward Cleanthony Early. Marshall initially thought Early was nothing more than a gunner, but Early’s success on the court has definitely changed Marshall’s tune.
• Maryland coach Mark Turgeon, who was the Shockers’ head coach from 2000-07, was certainly excited to talk about his old school earning a trip to the Final Four.

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