Tuesday, March 07, 2000
Bearcats back on top - for now
No. 1 ranking may be curse in tournament
BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It hits Jay Bilas every spring, though not as hard as it did the first time. He watches the winning team cut down the nets in the NCAA championship game, and he's back in 1986, in Dallas, in agony.
Bilas was a starter on the Duke team that entered the NCAA Tournament with the No.1 ranking in the wire-service polls but finished No.2 in the championship game, behind Louisville.
“We'll all go to our graves thinking we were the better team,” Bilas said, “although I'm sure their guys would say the same.”
That the Blue Devils failed to win the NCAA championship even though they were ranked No.1 was hardly unusual. It happens nearly every year. Since 1983, only two teams that carried the top poll ranking into the tournament left with the championship trophy: 1992 Duke and 1995 UCLA.
Thus do the 2000 Cincinnati Bearcats face what has become a sort of blessed curse. They regained the top spot in both the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls as the result of Stanford's upset loss Saturday to UCLA. So long as they survive this week's Conference USA Tournament, the Bearcats will begin the NCAAs next week with the top ranking.
Duke was No.1 last season and lost in the title game. North Carolina was No.1 in 1998 and fell in the Final Four. Kansas was No.1 in 1997 and dropped out in the Sweet 16. Those three teams were a combined 64-5 entering the tournament and still weren't dominant enough to claim the title.
“I can't explain why so many teams have gone in No.1 and haven't won it,” said Bilas, now a college basketball analyst for ESPN. “Mostly, because it's re ally hard.”
Bilas is an ideal person to speak on the subject, because he's one of the few who's actually seen this from both sides. Not only did he play for the Blue Devils when they lost in 1986, he was a graduate assistant coach when they won the title as the top-ranked team in 1992.
The difference between those two teams? Well, that's simple. More than talent or execution or competition, the difference was the 17-foot turnaround jump shot Christian Laettner nailed following a 77-foot pass from teammate Grant Hill to beat Kentucky in the East Regional final.
“Because otherwise, they went home crying,” Bilas said. “There is a luck element to it. I've seen that Laettner shot probably 1,000 times. You know how improbable that was?
“At that last timeout, you think about what you need to do to win the game. But at the same time, you're realistic going, "Geez ... what are the chances of this happening?'
“The interesting thing about that is how fragile this whole thing is.”
UCLA needed a miracle only slightly less improbable than Laettner's to get through the second round of its title chase. In the second round of the West Regional, the Bruins needed star guard Tyus Edney to drive the length of the court and bank in a half-hook to defeat Missouri 75-74.
That's how close the NCAA came to having no top-ranked teams claim the title in the past 17 years.
“I think it was just one of those deals where they were a pretty good team,” said Cameron Dollar, a reserve guard on that team who is now an assistant coach at Saint Louis. “I don't think the pressure of the No.1 deal weighed on us.”
If the odds do not seem promising for the Bearcats even though they'll be favored to win the championship, there is another trend that should please them.
Since 1991, there have been four high-major teams that entered the NCAA Tournament with one loss or none. None of those teams won the title. In that same period, five teams entered with two defeats. Four became NCAA champions.
UC's current record: 28-2.
“You hope they go out playing to win the trophy,” Bilas said. “Especially when you get to the championship, there's a part of you that thinks, "Wow, we've got the national championship in our grasp.' And you really don't. You've got to go out and take it.”
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