Tuesday, April 03, 2001
Dunleavy was the difference
MINNEAPOLIS — There were a bad novel's worth of story lines in this game. Mike Dunleavy wasn't one of them.
We had Lute Olson's bittersweet season and Loren Woods' coming-awake party. We had Shane Battier's brain. Where was the Dunleavy angle?
Do you think the Arizona coaches sat in a hotel room at 4 Monday morning saying, “If we're going to have any chance in this game, we gotta stop that Dunleavy kid”?
Mike Dunleavy celebrates with Jason Williams et al.
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But there he was, tossing 3-balls into plot lines. A "3' from the left wing, another from the right. Incredibly, a third, like he was winning stuffed dinosaurs at the county fair or something. This was all in 45 seconds, between the 17:01 and 16:16 marks
of the second half.
Arizona was pounding Duke inside. The Wildcats were poised to offer their coach the ultimate honor to his late wife's memory. Duke was just hanging in there.
Dunleavy's threes took it from 37-33, Duke, to 46-39. But he wasn't done. The sophomore scored on a layup five minutes later, and immediately followed that with a dunk. He had 18 in the second half of the closer-than 82-72 win. Duke needed them all.
The boy can play
Jason Williams, magical in the first two weekends of the tournament, was a non-factor, misfiring so many threes, you wondered why he kept throwing them up.
Shane Battier couldn't guard Loren Woods. Woods has been described as a soft, spacy, self-critical head case. He was suspended twice in his career — by two different schools — for a perceived lack of effort.
Woods had the answer Monday night.
He stuck Battier, the two-time national defensive player of the year, for a whole catalog of moves — spinning left-handed layups and feathery jumpers. At 7-foot-1, all of it wingspan, Woods was too tall for the 6-8 Battier.
The Blue Devils put Carlos Boozer on Woods in the second half. He had nine more points, but Battier, freed of the defensive burden, had 12 points of his own, including consecutive buckets with about three minutes left.
But it was Dunleavy who gave the Blue Devils breathing room, and who would've thought that? The 6-8 sophomore is no wider than a fence post. He looks like he should be walking his girlfriend home from the junior prom.
The Reds call Danny Graves “the baby-faced assassin.” Dunleavy makes Graves look like Bob Hope.
Arizona had no answer
“It's about time,” Dunleavy said. Time for what? “I was finally able to give us a little boost.”
The coach's kid — his father Mike Sr. runs the Portland Trail Blazers — played like a coach's kid. He wiggled around screens to get open, he had a feel for where the ball would be. He played smart basketball, on a night when sanity is a prized trait.
The Wildcats got great games from Woods and Richard Jefferson, who hit key three after key three in the second half. But they had no answer for the kid who looks like Huck Finn.
Lute Olson walked off slowly when it was done. Slowly and alone, to a life he's never known. He didn't get the moment he wanted. Or rather, the moment many wanted him to have.
Battier, the senior, said he'd “ride off into the sunset on a white horse.” As for Dunleavy, he snipped some net.
Some story. At the Final Four, you never know.
E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.
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