Final Four Notebook: Time To Get To Work For UVA

By Scott Ratcliffe & Jerry Ratcliffe

MINNEAPOLIS — The Final Four festivities have begun inside U.S. Bank Stadium, as all four teams went through their first practice on the court Thursday, and met with TV crews and reporters.

For top-seeded Virginia, the questions regarding last year’s first-round loss were still being asked, along with a myriad of other topics.

“I don’t think about it out of the blue like I used to,” UVA junior guard Kyle Guy admitted, regarding the historic loss to UMBC a season ago. “When we beat Purdue I was at half court and I was thinking about the 180 turn we took and how joyous that was, to be able to be on my knees again, but this time crying tears of joy instead of being upset.”

Virginia coach Tony Bennett was later asked about Guy’s relationship with Ty Jerome, and last year’s defeat came up in conversation again.

Bennett was discussing the 2017 NCAA Tournament second-round loss to Florida, as the Gators, as he put it, were “beating the brakes off of us” late in the contest when he decided to put the two then-freshmen into the game.

“They’re at the scorer’s table, and I’m going to remind them of this — I went and knelt down next to them and said, ‘Take this and remember this. We’ve got to take the next steps,’” Bennett recalled. “Then last year when we got beat by UMBC, I said, ‘You two are coming up to the podium.’”

The coach explained that there were two reasons for choosing Guy and Jerome to take the tough questions that nobody had ever had to answer — one was that he didn’t want to throw that burden onto his two seniors, Devon Hall and Isaiah Wilkins.

“I don’t want them to be up there,” Bennett told Guy and Jerome. “We’re going to go up there and it’s going to be one of the hardest things you ever have to do — how you’re feeling and what you’re going to have to respond to — but it’s going to mark your life. And I said, ‘And this is going to be something we’re going to try to overcome.’”

Bennett said from that moment on, everything within the program has hinged on how to battle through the loss, and how to use the adversity to fuel them ahead. So far, so good.

 

Mamadi’s Moment

Virginia’s Mamadi Diakite has become somewhat of an overnight household name after burying a buzzer-beating jumper to save the Cavaliers’ season and send the South Region championship game against Purdue into overtime on Saturday.

So how is he handling the life-changing moment?

“My cousins told me that if I go back home right now, the whole population would come welcome me home, which is very amazing,” the Guinea, Africa native said, “and here in the US, everywhere I go people want to take pictures with me. I just saw Grant Hill and he told me how proud he was.”

Diakite admitted that he didn’t play up to his potential during the ACC Tournament in Charlotte, that he “owed the team one,” and wanted to do anything possible to help keep the season going. His memorable moment more than accomplished both of those objectives.

Added Bennett: “I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I’m sure he’s the toast of the town in so many ways. His shot was amazing. That shot will go down — the pass and the shot — in Virginia basketball history.”

Diakite, who included that ‘The Shot’ has been showing on the news all over his native country, is honored to be part of the group of other African-born players who have advanced all the way to college basketball’s final weekend.

“I’m on a list where we have Hakeem Olajuwon, Kansas’ [Udoka] Azubuike, and some other guys who have reached the Final Four,” he said. “That’s an honor for me, I feel blessed to be here.”

 

Clark Ready For Business

The guy on the other end of that shot, the one who made it all happen with the heads-up assist that some are calling the best they’ve ever seen, was, of course, freshman point guard Kihei Clark. The 5-foot-9 floor general was quite businesslike with his description of now being on the sport’s biggest stage in just his first collegiate campaign.

“We know what we’re here to do,” Clark said following Thursday’s practice. “This is all great, but we know what we’re focused on. We’re pretty locked in as a team. I feel the guys do a good job of being locked in.”

Clark admitted he was a little overwhelmed with the size of U.S. Bank Stadium, which seats 66,655 fans and has been converted from an NFL football field to a basketball court for this weekend’s games.

“That arena is huge,” he said. “It’s nothing like I’ve ever been in, so it was nice to get some practice time in there.”

Clark and the rest of the UVA backcourt will be going up against talented Auburn guards Jared Harper and Bryce Brown, and he believes the ‘Hoos will be ready for the challenge.

“They’re quick and they are fast and they can really shoot it,” Clark said of the Tigers. “We’ll just have to use the best of our abilities to guard them as a team.”

Bennett touched on how nicely Clark’s come along in his first year, noting how much faster and more intense this level of basketball is, but how Clark’s IQ and feel for the game has given him a bit of a head start on his college career, despite his small stature.

“He understood it at a young age how to play,” the coach said. “Your eyes tell you that when you watch players, they just impact the game in different ways, whether it’s scoring or not — his ability to put pressure on the ball and defend. The quickness of Auburn is maybe the best we’ve seen… and you always need a guy who can hopefully keep these guys in front and work the ball.”

 

Controlling the Pace

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl went over the challenges that both the UVA offense and Pack-Line defense will create for his Tigers come Saturday night.

“They put good pressure on the ball, but they also pack that three-point line, and they just don’t let you get clean looks off,” Pearl said of the ‘Hoos. “They’ve got great length. They know when to jump out and hedge and they know when to zone.

“Obviously, they’re extremely well coached. They build a wall and they just don’t let you see over it.”

Pearl pointed out that his team’s best asset on the offensive end is UVA’s greatest strength defensively, the 3-point shot. Conversely, his Tigers like to cause turnovers and the Cavaliers usually do an excellent job of taking care of the ball.

“We try to turn people over,” Pearl explained. “We turn people over almost 25 percent of a possession… the more you try to turn [the ‘Hoos] over, the better you make their offense.

“So the challenge for me is, do we do what got us here, or do we play them the way you need to play them in order to be able to contain that system? So, from that standpoint, it’s obviously a tough matchup.”

Pearl believes it would be very challenging to make UVA play any faster, but that trying to speed them up in the half-court may be the way to create some issues for Bennett and the Cavaliers.

“If we’re going to win,” said Pearl, “[we’ll have to] beat Virginia at their own pace.”

A few Auburn players seemed to be singing a different tune regarding the tempo of the game.

“[Pearl] told us they were going to try to play slower,” a confident Danjel Purifoy said of the Wahoos. “Everybody’s saying they’re going to try to play slower and try to make us also play slow, but we’ve been playing fast this whole tournament and we’re just going to keep trying to play fast and make them speed up and make turnovers, and that’s how we’re going to win the game.”

Another Auburn junior forward, Anfernee McLemore, agreed with Purifoy, that the Tigers would in fact be the ones who will be dictating the pace.

“We definitely think we want to push the tempo of the game,” said McLemore. “[The Cavaliers] are going to want to be a little more patient with their offense, but you know we like to run-and-gun fast. So we’re just going to continue with our playing style and make them adjust to our speed rather than slow down to their style.”

 

NCAA Not Against Guy Wedding Plans

Apparently there was a big mix up about Guy being told that the NCAA ordered him to take down Guy and his fiancee’s wedding registry on social media because it was a violation of rules.

When asked about that during a Thursday address to media covering the Final Four, NCAA president Mark Emmert said he had only heard of the issue as he was walking into the U.S. Bank Stadium, site of this weekend’s Final Four.

“I immediately grabbed my people and said, ‘What’s this about?’” Emmert said.

“What we know right now is that nobody in the NCAA said anything of the sort. We don’t know what the source of that information was, whether it came from the institution or not,” Emmert said. “It’s certainly not the case that that’s a violation of NCAA rules. We allow people to have all the usual and accustomed gifts among families and friends at all holidays and weddings. There’s not a prohibition against that.”

Emmert said the NCAA has already reached out to UVA to try to find out what transpired.

“That’s simply and inaccurate story,” Emmert said.

 

FBI Investigation

Media asked Emmert for an update on the federal investigation into the present college basketball scandal, which has resulted in some coaches sentenced to prison time and other trials ongoing.

What is the NCAA doing in the meantime?

“Some of the [trials] are wrapping up because they had pleadings now and people have pled guilty,” Emmert said. “In a number of cases they still have a trial to go, at least one trial to go. We are in close contact with the SDNY throughout all this process.

“There’s been some misunderstanding about the latitude we have or don’t have. We still don’t have all the information that we would like to have from those trials.”

Emmert said the NCAA has asked the Court, petitioning the Court to provide it with all the findings that come out of the hearings and the material that has been used in those trials, which are not automatically passed along.

“SDNY doesn’t — or the FBI doesn’t backup up to Indianapolis and drop all those documents off,” Emmert said. “We have to ask for permission to get them. We need the Court to grant that permission, and then we could import them under our new rules into the process.”

The new rules allow the NCAA to take that information and evidence from other proceedings, whether they’re legal proceedings or others, and directly import them into our investigatory work without having to go re-investigate and rediscover.

 

Charlottesville-Auburn Friendly Bet

Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce president Elizabeth Cromwell issued a formal challenge to Auburn, Ala., COC prez Lolly Steiner for a friendly wager on Saturday night’s Final Four semifinal between UVA and Auburn.

“The Charlottesville business community is fired up about the Final Four, and on behalf of the Chamber, I am betting on a victory against the Auburn Tigers,” Cromwell said.

Cromwell bet a case of fine Virginia wine, made by a chamber member, as her part of the wager.

“The University of Thomas Jefferson is going all out against the University of Charles Barkley,” Cromwell jested.

In response, Steiner happily agreed to the bet.

“The excitement in Auburn is palpable as we get ready to cheer on our history-making Tigers,” Steiner said. “And we’re already looking forward to a celebratory toast with that fine Virginia wine.”

Steiner hasn’t said what the Auburn COC will offer up to match Charlottesville’s bet.

“I don’t think I’ll have to make that decision,” Steiner said. “War Eagle!”

 

Minneapolis Expecting Sellout

Dan Gavitt, senior vice president of NCAA Basketball, told media Thursday that organizers are expecting a capacity crowd of 72,000 for the Final Four this weekend.

Gavitt pointed out that of the attendance numbers of the 13 sites of the tournament thus far, approximately 540,000 fans have attended March Madness games, and that nine of those sites were either sold out or nearly sold out.