KcMizzou
03-28-2009, 11:36 PM
Ugh. :(
Missouri’s Final Four dream died early
GLENDALE, Ariz. | There comes a moment in every good dream, a hard moment, when you realize that it is only a dream. The moment came for Missouri exactly 26 seconds into its tournament game against Connecticut on Saturday. That’s when Missouri’s Zaire Taylor drove hard to the basket, attempted a layup, and had it blocked hard by Connecticut’s Stanley Robinson.
Understand, that’s not when Missouri lost the game. No, this would be a full afternoon of punches and counterpunches, sprints and comebacks, big shots and fierce defense. The game story will tell you: Missouri overcame an early deficit and took this game into the final minutes — the Tigers even led the game for 27 happy seconds in the second half — and it is only because Connecticut’s tough players made tough shots and all their free throws in those final minutes that the Huskies won the game 82-75. Yes, the top-seeded Huskies had to will their way to the Final Four. Missouri pushed them hard.
Still, it seems now as red-eyed Missouri players stare into space, not quite able to believe it’s over, that it was that first blocked shot that snapped the Tigers out of their happy dream. This season had been beautiful. They were picked to finish seventh in the Big 12. They were supposed to crumble after a surprisingly good start. They were expected to get beaten up by the class teams of the conference like Kansas and Oklahoma. They were called lucky when they beat the three teams placed in front of them in the Big 12 tournament. They were supposed to get exposed when they played a dominant Memphis team.
They won a school-record 31 games, and faced Connecticut for a shot at the Final Four.
“We came from nothing,” Missouri senior Matt Lawrence would say, and those four words would make a good title for the book. The Tigers came from nothing and kept on winning, and you can give all the basketball reasons — they had versatile big men, they had tough guards, they had a deep bench, they deeply believed in coach Mike Anderson’s 40-minutes-of-hell system — but there was something else, something that Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun tried to describe about his own team after Saturday’s game.
“We seem to find a way to win basketball games,” Calhoun said. “That seems to be the one ingredient that’s very difficult to describe. It is the grit of this team, and it is the will to find a way. Some teams have it. You can’t describe it. You can’t talk about it. But it is there or, quite frankly, it is not there.”
Missouri had it too. That, in the end, was what made them so much fun to watch. They never won the same way twice. They rarely had the same hero in back-to-back games. Sometimes it was DeMarre Carroll making his acrobatic shots around the basket, and sometimes it was Leo Lyons making smooth moves between defenders, and sometimes it was Zaire Taylor manning up and slapping away passes, and sometimes it was J.T. Tiller driving without fear into the eye of the defense, and sometimes it was Matt Lawrence launching killer three-pointers at the very moment when the game was in the balance.
A dream season. And, sure, it felt like it could go on. What was so striking about Missouri’s upset victory over Memphis on Thursday is that the Missouri players never seemed to think of it as an upset. There seemed no doubt in their minds, from the opening tip, that they were the best team on the floor. They played free, and the Memphis players never knew what hit them.
But that’s the thing about dreams. Just when they get good, the alarm goes off, the baby cries, the sunlight slips through a crack in the curtains. Happens in sports all the time. Take golf: Gil Morgan was once 12 under par at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. It was preposterous. He had never played so well. He led the tournament by 7 shots. And then he faced a tough chip out of the rough into a downhill lie, an impossible shot, and he would remember thinking: “So, this is where the U.S. Open really begins.” He would shoot 8 over par the rest of the day, and 9 over par the next day. He had been shaken out of his dream.
That’s what the first few minutes Saturday were like for the Missouri Tigers. When Stanley Robinson blocked Zaire Taylor’s shot, it was almost like you could see the Missouri players recoil. You can never know what’s going on in a player’s mind — the players may not know themselves — but for the next three minutes the Tigers played as though, for the first time, they fully understood where they were, what they had done, how big and strong this Connecticut team was, how badly the odds were stacked against them.
With the score 4-2, Taylor drove hard to the basket, and again his shot was blocked by Stanley Robinson. Connecticut scored. Matt Lawrence missed an open three-pointer. Connecticut scored.
Then came a telling moment. Carroll drove into the lane and had a shot from 4 feet out — the kind of soft shot that made him one of the best players in the country this year. But Connecticut’s 7-foot-3 Hasheem Thabeet was there, as was Robinson, and, really, there’s no other way to say it: Carroll panicked. His 4-foot shot went barely 2 feet, a sickly airball, and after a scramble on the other end, Connecticut’s Jeff Adrian got the ball and dunked it hard.
Then came another telling moment. Leo Lyons launched a three-point shot. That’s not his game — he had tried only 13 three-point shots the whole season, and none with his team fading like this. It was a desperation shot when the Tigers needed to keep it together. The shot missed and Connecticut grabbed the rebound, raced down the court and fed Craig Austrie, who made a three-point shot of his own.
Connecticut had a 13-2 lead. Three minutes had gone by. Mike Anderson called timeout to settle down his team.
And, like I say, he did settle down the Tigers. Missouri played absurdly hard the rest of the game. Several players came off the bench and played good ball. Junior Keith Ramsey scored eight points, dished out three assists, added two steals and blocked a shot. Sophomore Justin Safford scored nine. Freshman guard Marcus Denmon provided some calm. Those young guys played so well that Missouri came back, and they were on the floor in the critical final minutes instead of the Missouri seniors who had struggled.
“Those guys that were out there playing,” Anderson would say afterward, “I thought they had it going on. They were playing well, and they were going to give us an opportunity to win. Some days, you know, guys don’t have it.”
But even though Missouri did come back, I don’t think the Tigers ever quite recovered from those painful and scared first three minutes.
They were always chasing Connecticut on Saturday, always stalking Connecticut, and it takes so much energy to come back like that. It never seemed like the game was on equal footing. Connecticut teetered, definitely, and the Huskies needed a gutsy and lucky bank shot from Kamba Walker and 11 straight free throws to finish things off. But all along the Huskies seemed just a little bit ahead.
The loss, of course, does not diminish Missouri’s remarkable season. Most wins in school history. Led the nation in assists. A home victory over Kansas and Oklahoma. A Big 12 tournament championship. An appearance in the Elite Eight. The Tigers did come from nothing, and they brought Missouri basketball back from the abyss. Nobody likes for beautiful dreams to end, but they do. And all that’s left then is to remember the dream and feel good.
Missouri’s Final Four dream died early
GLENDALE, Ariz. | There comes a moment in every good dream, a hard moment, when you realize that it is only a dream. The moment came for Missouri exactly 26 seconds into its tournament game against Connecticut on Saturday. That’s when Missouri’s Zaire Taylor drove hard to the basket, attempted a layup, and had it blocked hard by Connecticut’s Stanley Robinson.
Understand, that’s not when Missouri lost the game. No, this would be a full afternoon of punches and counterpunches, sprints and comebacks, big shots and fierce defense. The game story will tell you: Missouri overcame an early deficit and took this game into the final minutes — the Tigers even led the game for 27 happy seconds in the second half — and it is only because Connecticut’s tough players made tough shots and all their free throws in those final minutes that the Huskies won the game 82-75. Yes, the top-seeded Huskies had to will their way to the Final Four. Missouri pushed them hard.
Still, it seems now as red-eyed Missouri players stare into space, not quite able to believe it’s over, that it was that first blocked shot that snapped the Tigers out of their happy dream. This season had been beautiful. They were picked to finish seventh in the Big 12. They were supposed to crumble after a surprisingly good start. They were expected to get beaten up by the class teams of the conference like Kansas and Oklahoma. They were called lucky when they beat the three teams placed in front of them in the Big 12 tournament. They were supposed to get exposed when they played a dominant Memphis team.
They won a school-record 31 games, and faced Connecticut for a shot at the Final Four.
“We came from nothing,” Missouri senior Matt Lawrence would say, and those four words would make a good title for the book. The Tigers came from nothing and kept on winning, and you can give all the basketball reasons — they had versatile big men, they had tough guards, they had a deep bench, they deeply believed in coach Mike Anderson’s 40-minutes-of-hell system — but there was something else, something that Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun tried to describe about his own team after Saturday’s game.
“We seem to find a way to win basketball games,” Calhoun said. “That seems to be the one ingredient that’s very difficult to describe. It is the grit of this team, and it is the will to find a way. Some teams have it. You can’t describe it. You can’t talk about it. But it is there or, quite frankly, it is not there.”
Missouri had it too. That, in the end, was what made them so much fun to watch. They never won the same way twice. They rarely had the same hero in back-to-back games. Sometimes it was DeMarre Carroll making his acrobatic shots around the basket, and sometimes it was Leo Lyons making smooth moves between defenders, and sometimes it was Zaire Taylor manning up and slapping away passes, and sometimes it was J.T. Tiller driving without fear into the eye of the defense, and sometimes it was Matt Lawrence launching killer three-pointers at the very moment when the game was in the balance.
A dream season. And, sure, it felt like it could go on. What was so striking about Missouri’s upset victory over Memphis on Thursday is that the Missouri players never seemed to think of it as an upset. There seemed no doubt in their minds, from the opening tip, that they were the best team on the floor. They played free, and the Memphis players never knew what hit them.
But that’s the thing about dreams. Just when they get good, the alarm goes off, the baby cries, the sunlight slips through a crack in the curtains. Happens in sports all the time. Take golf: Gil Morgan was once 12 under par at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. It was preposterous. He had never played so well. He led the tournament by 7 shots. And then he faced a tough chip out of the rough into a downhill lie, an impossible shot, and he would remember thinking: “So, this is where the U.S. Open really begins.” He would shoot 8 over par the rest of the day, and 9 over par the next day. He had been shaken out of his dream.
That’s what the first few minutes Saturday were like for the Missouri Tigers. When Stanley Robinson blocked Zaire Taylor’s shot, it was almost like you could see the Missouri players recoil. You can never know what’s going on in a player’s mind — the players may not know themselves — but for the next three minutes the Tigers played as though, for the first time, they fully understood where they were, what they had done, how big and strong this Connecticut team was, how badly the odds were stacked against them.
With the score 4-2, Taylor drove hard to the basket, and again his shot was blocked by Stanley Robinson. Connecticut scored. Matt Lawrence missed an open three-pointer. Connecticut scored.
Then came a telling moment. Carroll drove into the lane and had a shot from 4 feet out — the kind of soft shot that made him one of the best players in the country this year. But Connecticut’s 7-foot-3 Hasheem Thabeet was there, as was Robinson, and, really, there’s no other way to say it: Carroll panicked. His 4-foot shot went barely 2 feet, a sickly airball, and after a scramble on the other end, Connecticut’s Jeff Adrian got the ball and dunked it hard.
Then came another telling moment. Leo Lyons launched a three-point shot. That’s not his game — he had tried only 13 three-point shots the whole season, and none with his team fading like this. It was a desperation shot when the Tigers needed to keep it together. The shot missed and Connecticut grabbed the rebound, raced down the court and fed Craig Austrie, who made a three-point shot of his own.
Connecticut had a 13-2 lead. Three minutes had gone by. Mike Anderson called timeout to settle down his team.
And, like I say, he did settle down the Tigers. Missouri played absurdly hard the rest of the game. Several players came off the bench and played good ball. Junior Keith Ramsey scored eight points, dished out three assists, added two steals and blocked a shot. Sophomore Justin Safford scored nine. Freshman guard Marcus Denmon provided some calm. Those young guys played so well that Missouri came back, and they were on the floor in the critical final minutes instead of the Missouri seniors who had struggled.
“Those guys that were out there playing,” Anderson would say afterward, “I thought they had it going on. They were playing well, and they were going to give us an opportunity to win. Some days, you know, guys don’t have it.”
But even though Missouri did come back, I don’t think the Tigers ever quite recovered from those painful and scared first three minutes.
They were always chasing Connecticut on Saturday, always stalking Connecticut, and it takes so much energy to come back like that. It never seemed like the game was on equal footing. Connecticut teetered, definitely, and the Huskies needed a gutsy and lucky bank shot from Kamba Walker and 11 straight free throws to finish things off. But all along the Huskies seemed just a little bit ahead.
The loss, of course, does not diminish Missouri’s remarkable season. Most wins in school history. Led the nation in assists. A home victory over Kansas and Oklahoma. A Big 12 tournament championship. An appearance in the Elite Eight. The Tigers did come from nothing, and they brought Missouri basketball back from the abyss. Nobody likes for beautiful dreams to end, but they do. And all that’s left then is to remember the dream and feel good.