MINNEAPOLIS — Virginia, the only top seed remaining, will face Auburn, which is making its first appearance in the Final Four, in the first of two national semifinals of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament on Saturday. Michigan State, the 2000 champion, plays the newcomer Texas Tech in the second game.
No. 1 Virginia (33-3) vs. No. 5 Auburn (30-9), 6:09 p.m.
No team is hotter than Auburn, which arrives at its first Final Four with a 12-game winning streak: four to end the regular season, four to win the Southeastern Conference tournament and four more in the N.C.A.A. tournament. (The Tigers could become only the second national champion, after Connecticut in 2011, to play 41 games.)
Bruce Pearl’s Tigers have done it by being among the best 3-point-shooting teams and by getting more of their points off 3-pointers than all but six teams in Division I. For that reason, the Tigers’ most impressive win was over second-seeded Kentucky in the regional final, precisely because they could barely buy a 3, going 7-for-23 from beyond the arc. They also won that day without their best big man, Chuma Okeke, who had sustained a season-ending knee injury a game earlier.
Sounds like a tough out, right?
Well. Virginia has the third-best 3-point defense in the country, even as its excellent offense, led by the wings Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome and De’Andre Hunter, and its Tony Bennett-branded, dead-last pace make maximizing points per possession against it essential.
If the Cavaliers sound tough to beat, well, only two teams have accomplished the feat: Duke, twice; and Florida State, which used its sheer size and athleticism to overpower Virginia in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. That is something Auburn will struggle to do without Okeke.
So, yeah, the Tigers have their work cut out for them.
No. 2 Michigan State (32-6) vs. No. 3 Texas Tech (30-6), 8:49 p.m.
Between two excellent teams, a balanced one should defeat the less-balanced one, right? The former describes the Spartans, who have a top-10 offense and a top-10 defense, whereas the latter is the Red Raiders, who, according to the KenPom rankings, have the country’s best defense but an offense that is merely excellent rather than superb.
But those are season-long figures. In the N.C.A.A. tournament, including against highly regarded Buffalo, a Michigan team with a typically stout defense and a Gonzaga juggernaut, Texas Tech has turned on the offensive jets, shooting 53.4 percent from the field compared with its season mark of 47.2 percent. The Red Raiders have done this while making 3-pointers at a slightly lower rate, which means a good game from deep likely makes Texas Tech almost unbeatable.
Coach Chris Beard’s squad will need to be about that to defeat Michigan State, which uses a smaller rotation than the average Tom Izzo squad but otherwise resembles his seven other Final Four teams in its balance and toughness.
Point guard Cassius Winston increasingly looks like the national player of the year (non-Zion Williamson category), having contributed 20 points on 19 shots, 10 assists and 4 steals in last weekend’s one-point win over Duke. The Spartans will need a similar kind of game from Winston (and similar playing time; in the regional semifinals and final combined, Winston sat for only the final minute of the first game) to get by Texas Tech.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/sports/ncaa-mens-final-four-preview.html
2019-04-06 07:00:05Z
52780262074635
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar