Syracuse paints New Orleans orange
Patrick Schneider Charlotte Observer (KRT)
Kirk Heinrich reacts to his airballed three at the buzzer that would have sent Monday night's
NCAA Championship game to overtime. Instead, Syracuse won 81 -78 for the title.
Andrew Bagnato
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
NEW ORLEANS—Seniors? Who needs seniors?
With unstoppable freshmen Carmelo Anthony and
Gerry McNamara leading the way, the Syracuse Or
angemen held off Kansas 81-78 Monday night in a
thrilling NCAA championship game at the Super
dome.
Syracuse won its first NCAA title in its third trip
to the final. Coach Jim Boeheim won his first
championship with his 654th career win and 38th
in the NCAA.
Anthony scored a game-high 20 points, pulled
down 10 rebounds and dished out seven assists on
his way to being named the Final Four’s Outstand
ing Player.
“We talked him being the best player in the coun
try,” Boeheim said. “Not the best freshmen in the
country, the best player.”
Boeheim’s triumph came at the expense of a
golfing buddy, Kansas coach Roy Williams, who
has earned the distinction of being the finest
coach never to win a national title. Williams has
418 career victories, 33 in the NCAA tourney.
Under Boeheim, Syracuse lost the ‘96 title game
to Kentucky and the ‘87 final to Indiana. Against
Indiana, Syracuse’s undoing came at the free
throw line, where the Orangemen missed several
key free throws down the stretch and made only
11 of 20. Monday night, Kansas made only 12 of 30
from the line.
“I told Roy the same thing people told me in 87,”
Boeheim said. “He’ll be back, he’s a great coach.”
Will this be Williams’ last game at the Jayhawks’
helm? He is said to be the leading candidate at North
Carolina, his alma mater. Williams has handled ques
tions about the Tar Heels job without providing a clue
to his intentions.
Kansas faithfuls obviously want him to stay; when he
strode onto the Superdome floor about 25 minutes be
fore tipoff on Monday night, a roar went up and became
a standing ovation.
The Orangemen start two freshman and a sopho
more. But they weren’t the least bit intimidated by the
bright lights of the sport’s biggest night, with 54,524
watching in a football stadium.
“This late in the year, our guys are pretty fed up
with listening to all this stuff about youth and the
all the talk of us being young,” McNamara said be
fore scoring 18 points in the title game. “We
haven’t played like it all year and we’re not going
to start now.”
Syracuse set the tone on the game’s first possession.
Anthony faked a drive on the right wing, drew two de
fenders and threaded a pass to Craig Forth alone un
der the basket. Forth laid the ball in.
That basket was more than Kansas guard Kirk
Hinrich scored until 9 minutes 30 seconds re
mained in the first half.
Syracuse hit long shots and short shots; in the first
20 minutes the Orangemen hit 20-of-36 shots from
the floor (55.6 percent), and 10-of-13 from beyond
the arc (76.9 percent).
For Kansas, the frightening part was that Syracuse
had cooled off from its pace in Saturday’s semifinal
victory over Texas. The Orangemen hit 57 percent for
the game in a95-84 win.
Syracuse’s 53 first-half points set a championship
game record.
Williams assigned 6-foot-5-inch Keith Langford to
guard the 6-foot-8-inch Anthony. Langford matched
Anthony’s 13 points in the first half but picked up his
third and fourth fouls in a 9-second span less than 2
minutes into the second half. Syracuse seemed in
command at that point. But then the Orangemen be
gan to fray.
McNamara threw the ball away twice in three pos
sessions. On the second turnover, Hinrich scored on a
fastbreak layup and drew a foul on Kueth Duany. The
free throw sliced Syracuse’s lead to 53-52.
No one has ever come back from a deficit as
large as 18 points to win a title game.
There had been a lot of pregame talk about how
KU would handle Syracuse’s 2-3 zone defense. But
the Jayhawks had most of their trouble at the free
throw line. During one critical stretch in the sec
ond half, as they desperately tried to rally, the Jay
hawks missed nine straight free throws and 12 of
13. Perhaps that’s not surprising for a team that
shot only 66 percent from the line during the reg
ular season, seventh in the BigXII.
One might expect a more veteran team — a
team that had played in the Final Four only 12
months earlier — to handle the pressure better
than a younger squad. But it was the Jayhawks
who came apart down the stretch.
In one of the more telling exchanges, Langford
and Hinrich collided at the top of the key, creating
a turnover. Langford compounded the blunder by
fouling out trying to prevent a breakaway layup at
the other end. Still, Collison and Hinrich made
Syracuse earn the title.
In the last 4 minutes they combined to score 11
consecutive points to pull KU to within 80-75 with 1
minute 53 seconds left.
When Miles found Michael Lee for a layup with 1
minute left, the Jayhawks trailed 80-77.
The final minute was riveting, a fitting end to an un
predictable tournament. KU had a chance to tie with
39 seconds left, but Aaron Miles’ three-pointer
rimmed out. Jeff Graves made l-of-2 free throws to
whitde the deficit to 2. After Duany hit a free throw to
make it 81-78, Hinrich’s potential game-tying three
rolled out with 14 seconds left. Hakim Warrick could
have put the game away at the line, but he missed two
free throws.
Warrick atoned by swatting Lee’s three-pointer into
the baseline photographers with 1.5 seconds left.
Kansas had one shot left, but Hinrich’s three-point
er at the horn sailed over the rim and the youthful Or
angemen were champs.
© 2003, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
UConn, Tennessee meet for women’s title
Mel Greenberg
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
ATLANTA — After Connecticut
claimed its second NCAA women’s
basketball championship in three
seasons last April, it seemed that the
Huskies might have to live off that tri
umph for a while before returning to
the Women’s Final Four.
Sue Bird, then the top player in the
nation, and three others in the start
ing lineup were on their way to gradua
tion and careers in the WNBA.
“I did not think we would be
back,” Connecticut coach Geno
Auriemma, who grew up in Norris
town, Pa., said Monday. “But Oct.
12 when practice started, it was
business as usual.
“We are Connecticut and we need
to be in the Final Four and we need to
play for the championship and that’s
the way it is.”
The Huskies were 39-0 last season
and, as improbable as it once
seemed, they almost put together an
other undefeated run to reach
tonight’s title game (8:30 EST, ESPN)
at the Georgia Dome before a sellout
crowd of 28,010.
The only smudge on this season’s
36-1 performance was left by Villano
va, which shocked the Huskies in the
Big East Conference title game to end
their women’s Division I record 70
game win streak.
It will be the third time Connecti
cut will meet archrival Tennessee
(33-4) in the championship game,
after claiming victories over the
Vols in 1995 and 2000. The Huskies
also posted a rout a year ago over
coach Pat Summitt’s squad in the
national semifinals.
Tennessee has a record six NCAA
trophies, but has gone five seasons
since claiming its last one with the
stellar 1998 team that included jun
ior Chamique Holdsclaw and a tal
ented group of freshmen.
This Connecticut squad also has a
group of blue-chip newcomers in 6
foot guard-forward Barbara Turner,
6-foot-2-inch guard Ann Strother
and 6-foot-2-inch forward-center
Willnett Crockett. But it has been the
consistent work of 6-foot junior
guard Diana Taurasi, who succeeded
Bird in the national spotlight, that
has carried the Huskies.
The native of Chino, Calif., saved
Connecticut on Sunday night when
she popped a three-pointer to com
plete a rally from what had been a 50
41 deficit to Texas earlier in the sec
ond half.
After putting the Huskies ahead
with 2 minutes, 6 seconds to play,
Taurasi, who had 26 points in the
game, also knocked a last-second at
tempt out of the hands of the Long
horns’ Alisha Sare to preserve the 71
69 triumph.
“Toward the end of the games, I
want the responsibility to be in con
trol of the outcome,” Taurasi said
yesterday. “When there is an open
chance to take the shot, I am going
to take it. If I miss, I miss. If it goes
in, it’s great. I am not the type of
person who would want to think lat
er that I should have taken that
shot. I can’t be afraid.”
Taurasi’s no-fear attitude pro
duced a 63-62 win over Tennessee
earlier this season in overtime in
Hartford when she hit several key
baskets down the stretch. Earlier,
she hit a what-the-heck long at
tempt from behind the half-court
line as the first half ended.
“It’s exciting to see — not neces
sarily to go against — but to see a
player like that in the women’s
game,” Summitt said of Taurasi.
© 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
Track
continued from page 13
Record books beware
In a squad that is returning all six
of last year’s NCAA participants and
three Pacific-10 Conference run
ners-up, the record books should
continue to take a beating in 2003.
Oregon already has eight partici
pating athletes who rank in the top
three on the Ducks all-time rank
ings in their respective events.
Senior Carrie Zografos owns Ore
gon’s best time in the steeplechase
at 10:42.0. She currently ranks
third among returning Pac-10 ath
letes in the event.
The Ducks have a total of 18 athletes
that rank in the top-10 of almost every
event. With veteran leadership and
new freshmen powerhouses, the
records could continue to improve
during the next two months.
Contact the sports reporter
at jessethomas@dailyemerald.com.
Hockaday
continued from page 13
His proposals no less than shake
the very foundation of the NCAA
mansion. He will force the student
athlete scale, currently weighted in
favor of the revenue-producing “ath
lete,” to tip back to the knowledge
spouting “student.”
Brand’s main detractors are col
lege coaches, the villains of
Brand’s tale. When Syracuse grad
uates one-fourth as many players
as it did last year, the implication
is that Jim Boeheim couldn’t keep
his kids in school.
A standoff is coming. On one
end of the dusty road is Brand,
touting grand theories of academ
ic reform. On the other end are
the coaches, who want desperate
ly to hold on to fat contracts and
athletes who will focus on three
pointers more than they’ll focus a
microscope. They decry Brand’s
use of silly graduation rates.
But Brand should win this duel
because his plan will do more than
harp on graduation rates. He’ll ask
for degree-progress reports, expect
ing student-athletes to keep pace
with college like a sprinter keeps
pace with his competition. He’ll
come up with a fair formula that al
lows for transfers and other irregu
larities, a BGS of college life.
The point is, Brand will turn a
college education back into some
thing of value. He’ll make sure that
if college athletes aren’t paid with
dead presidents, they’ll at least get
paid in knowledge.
Adam Smith would be so proud.
Contact the sports editor
atpeterhockaday@dailyemerald.com.
His views do not necessarily represent
those of the Emerald.