A Grip on Sports: Memories are never perfect but they also allow one to compare and contrast the past with the present – and most times the present wins
A GRIP ON SPORTS • If college basketball isn’t on your radar right now, then we’re not sure we can be friends. After all, what else is there to focus upon? Taxes? The M’s? The sun disappearing and never returning? Ha. All pale in comparison to tonight’s big desert battle. Or Sunday’s outcome in Cleveland.
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• Usually, we want to look forward first. Not today. Today we have to look back. To yesterday. Yester-year, too. Sunday was a perfect outcome for those who love team basketball. And those who love star-driven teams.
Was it Bird vs. Magic, Part Deux? A little. There are some comparisons that can be made to that 1979 NCAA Finals classic, the game that not only elevated men’s college hoops further into the nation’s consciousness, but also was the precursor to the NBA’s revival.
Caitlin Clark plays Larry Bird in our never-to-be sold script. The Magic role? We’ll stretch an inch or two and designate the Gamecocks’ Kamilla Cardoso, the 6-foot-7 senior who was magical in the post yesterday. The teams seem to fit as well, with Clark overshadowing the rest of the Hawkeyes and Cardoso the driving force of a well-balanced, talented group.
No upset here. South Carolina, with Dawn Staley pulling off a spot-on Jud Heathcote performance, finished off Iowa 87-75 and completed a 38-0 season. But for the first 10 minutes or so, it seemed as if Clark would hand Staley’s team their second Final Four loss in two years. The soon-to-be WNBA star had 18 points in the first quarter. Was dishing dimes. Pulling down rebounds. Winning. Until the Gamecocks’ depth – how many great freshmen does Staley have? – took over. And the better team won.
Clark finished with 30 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Cardoso was even better, in a sense, with 15 points, 17 rebounds, one Most Outstanding Player trophy and another title.
It may not have been full-on 1979 again – it would have taken one of the coaches wearing a Nate Oats-like blazer to complete the experience – but it was close. Now let’s see where the women’s game goes from here.
• Keeping with our historical-fiction theme, we give you the 1984 NCAA men’s title game. Yep, 40 years ago. The Kingdome. The Space Needle. And two giants in the post, Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing vs. Houston’s Hakeem Olajuwon.
Where had the men’s game traveled in the five years after Bird and Magic? Straight up. The Final Four had outgrown on-campus arena’s – Bird and Magic met at the University of Utah – and morphed into a spectacle held in a huge football facility. It’s really never left.
Tonight, we are left with top seeds Connecticut, the defending champ, and Purdue. And the two biggest of big men who dominate college hoops’ skyline circa 2024.
OK, Purdue’s Zach Edey dominates the skyline. UConn’s Donovan Clingan just dominates the paint. Either way, it sure seems tonight’s title game (6:20, TBS) will be a throwback to that battle four decades ago.
Except better. The 3-point line spreads the court these days. Allows players like the 7-4 Edey and the 7-2 Clingan more room to move. Neither Ewing nor Olajuwon were the focus of the offense, with Houston’s big man getting just nine shots and the Hoyas’ Ewing eight. Each had nine boards. But Ewing stood out in the paint, blocking four shots and winning the MOP award as Georgetown prevailed 84-75.
If either Clingan or Edey is held to under 10 shots tonight, it might be a bigger upset than Purdue winning. Both teams run through their bigs, with Clingan hard to stop in ball-screen action and Edey an unmovable force at the block – and a freight train after screens.
All UConn (36-3) wants is a draw between the two. Purdue (34-4) needs Edey to come up big. The former seems more likely than the latter. Which is why the Huskies are favored (6.5 points) to become the first team since Florida in 2007 to repeat as national champions. And it might be impossible for Purdue to pull a Virginia, lose as a one-seed to a 16-seed one year – and win the title the next.
It’s 1984 all over again. And we can’t wait.
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WSU: College athletics is nothing like it was in 1984. Good or bad. Former Washington State athletic director Bill Moos believes in the latter for the most part. He spoke with the S-R’s Thomas Clouse recently for this story. … Evan Stinson’s decision to follow Kyle Smith to Stanford is big news on the Cardinal campus. … Klay Thompson is playing well enough the free-agent-to-be is going to make even more coin. … Elsewhere in the Pac-12 and the nation, Oregon has hired Arizona State’s running back coach. … Not surprisingly, considering the head coach, Colorado is building on the defensive side first this spring. … Cam Rising’s return has electrified the Utah offense. … The Arizona roster has been bolstered with portal additions, even this spring. … How will the USC basketball roster change under Eric Musselman? … We can pass along more championship stories from the Phoenix area. And more from Tucson.
Gonzaga: Shades of Steele Venters. Last spring, Venters decided to attend GU. But he also decided to sample the NBA’s evaluation process. Former Pepperdine standout Michael Ajayi, who has announced his transfer to Gonzaga, is following the same road map. Whether he exits before Venters is to be determined. Theo Lawson has all the particulars in this story. … Of course, former Gonzaga assistant Tommy Lloyd’s name is being bandied about concerning the suddenly available Kentucky position. (Long-time coach John Calipari found a safe haven in Fayetteville, Arkansas and is reported to be headed to the Razorbacks.) National writers have discovered Few is not leaving Gonzaga so they’ve moved on to the next best thing. That being said, we hope we haven’t invoked the columnist’s jinx and Few doesn’t fly off to Lexington this week.
Indians: The first two Northwest League games were pitchers’ duels. The final of the three-game set with Vancouver? It was a slugfest. The result was the same, however, with Spokane winning 7-6. Dave Nichols has the game story. … Elsewhere in the Northwest League, Hillsboro defeated Everett 4-3 and Tri-City handed Eugene its first loss, 4-3.
Mariners: Emerson Hancock wasn’t getting the low strike. And we knew in the first inning he wasn’t long for the game. He wasn’t. And neither were the M’s, who fell 12-4 and lost another series. … Scott Servais is taking it slow with Bryce Miller early on. … There have been a lot of pitchers dealing with blown out elbows already. What’s to blame? There are two points of view on that.
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• There are many reasons why “The Rockford Files” is still our favorite television show, some 50 years after we first watched it live. James Garner, sure. The stories, of course. Car chases. The beat downs. Bad guys come-uppances. Relationships, between father and son and between friends. The writing, including the TV maturation of one David Chase. All those things. We like to think those of us who love the show understand the ups-and-downs of life a little better than the rest of the world. And now we understand Jim Harbaugh a little better. And like him a smidgen more. Until later …