An inside look at the Final Four
Quick look at Saturday's national semifinal matchups:
OHIO STATE VS. GEORGETOWN
OHIO STATE (34-3)
ROAD TO THE FINAL FOUR: The top-seeded Buckeyes beat No. 16 Central Connecticut State 78-57; No. 9 Xavier 78-71, OT; No. 5 Tennessee 85-84; No. 2 Memphis 92-76.
STARS: Freshman center Greg Oden, a first-team All-American, leads the team in scoring (15.4) and rebounding (9.5) but the clutch play in the tournament has come from freshman point guard Mike Conley Jr. (15.3 points and 4.2 assists in the NCAAs) and senior guard Ron Lewis (21.8 points in the NCAAs).
COACH: Thad Matta is in his third season with the Buckeyes. He is the first coach to lead them to a No. 1 ranking since 1962. He led his previous two schools (Butler and Xavier) to the NCAA tournaments in each of his four years with them.
KEY POINT: The team has lived up to the pressure of the standout freshman recruiting class and its only losses were to North Carolina, Florida and Wisconsin, all teams that held the No. 1 ranking at some point this season. The Buckeyes are on a 21-game winning streak.
GEORGETOWN (30-6)
ROAD TO THE FINAL FOUR: The second-seeded Hoyas beat No. 15 Belmont 80-55; No. 7 Boston College 62-55; No. 6 Vanderbilt 66-65; No. 1 North Carolina 96-84, OT.
STARS: Junior forward Jeff Green, the Big East player of the year, leads the team in scoring (14.4) and is second in rebounding (6.2) and assists (3.2). Junior center Roy Hibbert enters the game with five straight double-doubles and leads the team in rebounds (6.9) and blocks (2.5)
COACH: John Thompson III is in his third season at Georgetown and this is his second trip to the NCAA tournament. He and his father, John, are the first father-son to lead teams to the Final Four. The Hoyas won the 1984 national championship under the elder Thompson.
KEY POINT: The Hoyas are ninth in scoring defense in the country (57.8) and fifth in field goal percentage defense (38.2). They are third nationally in field goal percentage (50.6) and have shot better than 50 percent from the field 22 times this season.
THE SKINNY: While the attention will be focused on the two 7-footers in the middle, this game has plenty of other players capable of taking over at key moments. Both teams are capable of playing possession-by-possession games and getting it going in the open court.
THE PICK: Green is one of the most versatile players in the game and he should be a tough matchup for Ohio State. Georgetown 68-63.
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FLORIDA VS. UCLA
FLORIDA (33-5)
ROAD TO THE FINAL FOUR: The top-seeded Gators beat No. 16 Jackson State 112-69; No. 9 Purdue 74-67; No. 5 Butler 65-57; No. 3 Oregon 85-77.
STARS: The players are all familiar since they are the same ones who led the Gators to the national championship last season. The five starters average between 13.2 and 10.1 points, but Florida's frontcourt of Al Horford (9.2 rebounds) and Joakim Noah (8.5) draw the most attention.
COACH: Billy Donovan is in his 11th season at Florida and he led the Gators to their first national championship last year. He is the school's all-time leader in wins (294). He is one of six coaches to play (Providence 1987) and coach in a Final Four.
KEY POINT: Florida is 20-1 in postseason play in the last years, including its current 10-game NCAA tournament winning streak. The Gators have held 10 of their last 14 postseason opponents to 60 points or less. They average 11.3 offensive rebounds a game and are outrebounding opponents by 15.8 in this tournament.
UCLA (30-5)
ROAD TO THE FINAL FOUR: The second-seeded Bruins beat No. 15 Weber State 70-42; No. 7 Indiana 54-49; No. 3 Pittsburgh 64-55; No. 1 Kansas 68-55.
STARS: Arron Afflalo, a first-team All-America, leads the Bruins in scoring (16.9) and broke out of a shooting slump with 24 points in the regional final win over Kansas. He is also the Bruins' top defender and at 6-foot-5 has drawn both guards and forwards during the season.
COACH: Ben Howland is in his fourth season at UCLA and he is the first coach to lead the Bruins to consecutive Final Four appearances since John Wooden.
KEY POINT: The Bruins defense has been impressive in the NCAA tournament with their four opponents averaging 50.2 points and none topping 55 points. Only Kansas (41.1 percent) shot better than 40 percent against them in the tournament. UCLA shot 53.3 percent against Kansas, the first team to shoot over 50 percent against the Jayhawks this season.
THE SKINNY: Florida beat the Bruins 73-57 in last year's title game and the Gators will have all five starters back to just two for UCLA. Both teams have plenty of NCAA tournament experience and both are outstanding defensive teams with Florida having an edge in rebounding.
THE PICK: It all comes down to how Florida can keep Afflalo from getting on a shooting tear that would give the UCLA frontcourt room to be effective down low. Corey Brewer is one of the best defenders in the game and that will make things tough on Afflalo. Florida 67-59.
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Barton tops D-II defending champ for first D-II ti
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Anthony Atkinson scored 10 points in the final 39 seconds, including a layup at the buzzer, to give Barton College its first NCAA Division II title with a 77-75 victory over previously unbeaten and defending champion Winona State.
Barton ended Winona's two-year, 57-game winning streak and survived a review of the final play by the officials.
"I was just thinking about the next play," Atkinson said. "I got a bucket, then another and the next thing you know, the game's over."
Winona appeared poised to repeat as champion when Zach Malvik made two free throws to put the Minnesota school ahead 74-67 with 45 seconds left. Three straight baskets by Atkinson made it 74-73, then Jonte Flowers hit one of two foul shots to put Winona in front 75-73 with 19 seconds remaining.
Atkinson made a layup to tie it with 11 seconds to go. Bobby Buffaloe then made a steal, tipping the ball away from Malvik right to Atkinson, who raced down court and scored the winning basket just before time expired.
The play was reviewed by the officials, but it stood and for the second time during the tournament, an unbeaten team fell.
"Our team played tremendously," Barton coach Ron Lievense said. "We had all three games in the tournament go down to the wire. This team has faced so much adversity, but we never stopped believing."
Atkinson scored 29 points for Barton (31-5). Malvik scored 26 for Winona (35-1), which had defeated previously unbeaten Bentley in the quarterfinals.
"You can't find a better ending," Lievense said. "All I said to Anthony at the end was that it was time for him to take over."
Barton's fans held "We Believe" signs in the stands. The school, which played and won nine overtime games this season, trailed by seven points with less than a minute remaining.
"This is so tough to swallow," Winona forward Quincy Henderson said. "And I'm still trying to figure out what happened."
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Website does the math to pick NCAA winners
Posted 2d 12h ago
By Samuel Spies, Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. There are plenty of strategies for winning the NCAA office pool that have little to do with basketball best mascots, coolest uniforms, favorite team colors.
For Tom Adams, it's all about the math.
The systems analyst from Cary runs poologic.com, a website that brings a little science to March Madness. Since the site went online in time for the 2000 tournament, he estimates users could have won more than $250,000 in office polls by using his algorithm and recommended strategies.
"Pool managers hate this," said Adams, a graduate of North Carolina, the top seed in the East Regional.
The basic science is pretty simple. Based on a pool's scoring system, poologic.com calculates the advantage of picking an upset versus the favorite in the brackets. In a standard-scoring pool, the program doesn't offer users much of an assist. But in a pool where picking upsets earns extra points, it can be a winner enough to lead those running office pools to complain.
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"Managers told them they didn't like the fact they were betting so many upsets," Adams said. "Some pool managers change the rules. There's a bit of a battle between poologic and the people who are running the pools."
The idea of using statistics to value one team over another isn't a new concept it's pretty common these days in baseball, for example, where both fantasy players and front-office professionals use similar systems to evaluate individual players.
To take full advantage of the program, Adams warns against picking teams that are No. 1 in the polls and are local favorites. This year, he said he's entering four brackets with Kansas, North Carolina, Texas A&M and UCLA as champs.
"It's complicated math to figure out how to maximize your score with upset incentives," he said. "That's hard to do. Poologic does that for you."
Adams' system uses betting point spreads and team rankings from various websites to pick its NCAA tournament winners. He stayed home from work on Wednesday to add the latest information to the site, which got about 15,000 hits last year.
The 56-year-old developed his system after learning the Java programming language. Looking for something to do with that knowledge, he settled on a website for picking NCAA tournament winners. That was at the height of the technology boom, and Adams figured the site would earn him more money than whatever he collected each March.
"It was 1999, and supposedly every website you created was going to turn into gold," he said.
It didn't, and while Adams is sure others have won pools using his program, he has yet to cut down any nets. Adams won a pool using a similar strategy in 1999, but has finished in the money just once using poologic.
"I'm a bit behind," he admits.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Posted 2d 12h ago
Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Santa Clara 63, St. Mary's 47
March 5, 2007
CBS SportsLine.com wire reports
PORTLAND, Ore. -- John Bryant had 14 points and Santa Clara beat St. Mary's 63-47 Sunday night to advance to the West Coast Conference tournament final against Gonzaga.
The winner of Monday night's title game gets an automatic NCAA Tournament berth. Top seed Gonzaga beat fifth-seeded San Diego 88-70 in the other semifinal game at the University of Portland's Chiles Center.
The second-seeded Broncos (21-9) finished second to Gonzaga in the WCC standings. They had a bye until the semifinals, while third-seeded St. Mary's (17-15) defeated seventh-seeded Portland 87-47 in the quarterfinals.
Santa Clara, which swept the two-game regular season series, held off a St. Mary's rally midway through the second half. Sean Denison's dunk with 1:08 left made it 58-47, sealing it for the Broncos.
Tempers flared briefly after St. Mary's Brett Collins slammed into Santa Clara's Scott Dougherty as he went up for a layup. Collins was ejected from the game.
Collins was the only Gael in double figures with 13 points.
The Broncos lost their final two regular season games at Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine, snapping a six-game winning streak. Their biggest win came on Feb. 12 at Gonzaga, when they snapped the Bulldogs' 50-game winning streak at home with an 84-73 victory.
Santa Clara's Dick Davey was voted WCC coach of the year, breaking a string of six consecutive coach titles for Gonzaga coach Mark Few. Davey is retiring after this season.
It was a tight and scrappy first half, but Santa Clara went on a late 9-0 run capped by Mitch Jenke's 3-pointer that made it 33-28 at the half.
Santa Clara jumped out to a 39-28 lead to open the second, but the Gaels kept up and narrowed it to 41-39 on Collins' 3-pointer and Wayne Hunter's layup.
The Broncos extended their lead again to 49-41, with the 6-foot-11 Bryant scoring on a layup and two free throws.
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Pepperdine 89, Santa Clara 82 OT
Feb. 26, 2007
MALIBU, Calif. (AP) -Chase Griffin scored a career-best 34 points, including eight in overtime, to lift Pepperdine to an 89-82 victory over Santa Clara Monday.
Griffin, who scored three 3-pointers, shot 11 of 16 from the field for Pepperdine (8-22, 4-10 West Coast). Kingsley Costain had 12 points, all on 3-pointers, and Shane Griffin added 10 for the Waves.
John Bryant had a career-best 26 points and 13 rebounds for Santa Clara (20-9, 10-4). Scott Dougherty scored 16 points, all in the second half, while Sean Denison and Danny Pariseau added 15 points apiece for the Broncos.
The Waves trailed, 75-72, when Willie Galick's three-pointer with nine seconds remaining in regulation tied the game. The Broncos followed with two failed shots as time expired and the game went into overtime.
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