The Final Four is stuffed with a fairly formidable but pedestrian lot, assuming your sentiment is tugged more by a previously overlooked darling who beats the odds before finally succumbing to them.
That aspect of the NCAA tournament died with Davidson and left the field with four No. 1 seeds: North Carolina, Kansas, Memphis and UCLA.
The conspiratorial-minded see a movement to keep down the mid-major programs that pull on our heartstrings.
And pull the Wildcats did, right down to the final shot that went left of the basket and allowed Bill Self to shed his label as the best coach never to reach the Final Four.
Of course, that eventually might lead to a less gracious evaluation of Self as the coach who cannot win the big one.
That assessment was hung on Roy Williams the longest time until he took control of the North Carolina program and won a national championship. Even then, it was said anyone with a vaguely functioning brain could have won the national championship with that particular group of players.
The coaching assessments often cut two ways in the NCAA tournament.
The Dick Vitale types gush in praise of every coach, while the ink-stained wretches tend to traffic in misguided skepticism.
Both views are typically inaccurate unless the ones issuing the critiques are sitting in on practice, breaking down film with the coaches and know the various personalities that make up the teams.
Coaches exist in an environment filled with superlatives, good and bad. Yet coaches are rarely as good or bad as they are made out to be because the mastery of the chalkboard is not as complex as it is made out to be.
It certainly is far easier to diagram an X and an O than it is to deal with the nuances of cold fusion, and all coaches know how to scribble an X and O that works each time in theory.
Besides, so much of college coaching is about securing commitments from the top prep talent in the nation and abroad, and that is done far removed from the eyes of the critics.
If a college coach from a major conference meets that challenge, he usually is well on his way to 20-win seasons and berths in the NCAA tournament.
John Calipari, the Memphis coach, tested his mettle in the NBA to disastrous effect. It is not that he suddenly became a basketball dunce. It is that there are often no easy personnel answers in the NBA, certainly none as easy as luring an 18-year-old to your institution.
Ben Howland keeps leading UCLA into the Final Four. He also keeps losing in the Final Four, which could set tongues wagging if the condition persists.
Even Bob McKillop, the Davidson coach who could do no wrong in the tournament, found he was not impervious to the instant analysis that floods the airwaves and cyberspace mere moments after the completion of a game.
More than a few observers questioned why McKillop had Stephen Curry dribble up the floor on the last play, only to face two defenders and then a third before passing the ball to Jason Richards.
This is not what Curry does. He wowed the tournament faithful by running off screens and releasing shots in the blink of an eye. His creativity with the ball was not in persuasive evidence in the four games.
Yet McKillop knows Curry’s capabilities better than anyone, has seen him in countless practice situations and undoubtedly believed he could create a shot for himself in that instance. And McKillop did not want to risk his best player not getting a chance to touch the ball on the deciding play if the Kansas defenders had elected to swarm him coming off screens.
It did not work out in Davidson’s favor. It did not work out the way much of America would have liked.
But it was no reflection on McKillop’s IQ.
It was a reflection on the all-or-nothing thinking that shapes the perceptions of the coaching fraternity.
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