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SALT LAKE CITY — Christian Laettner. Kevin Pittsnogle. Andre Miller. Gordon Hayward.
There are some players that will forever be associated with the NCAA tournament, aptly referred to as March Madness. Some of the players that will come through Salt Lake City in the coming days will continue to make an impact in basketball, either in professional leagues or by coaching, while some will slip on a jersey and hear their name over the speakers for the final time.
The games provide an opportunity for fans to reach out beyond themselves. No other tournament in sports can attract like March Madness. Every year, tournament darlings capture the hearts and attention of the country as the little school triumphs over the big school.
Related:
Nobody in Utah is worthy to attend Big Dance
The streak is over at 19. For the first time since 1994, no college basketball team from Utah was invited to play in the NCAA Tournament. Without improvement, the wrong kind of streak could extend to two years.With six games spread out from Thursday until Saturday, EnergySolutions Arena will be rocking with college hoops play from Gonzaga, Belmont, Arizona, Pittsburgh, New Mexico, Harvard, Southern and Wichita State.
Want some reasons to go? Here are five.
Gonzaga
This is the team that finished the regular season with the top ranking in the country, and for good reason. They rebound well, they shoot the ball well, they have good ball movement, and they have arguably the best college player in the country, as well as an excellent coach.
The Bulldogs didn’t just win games this season — they won by halftime.
They will be playing against significantly more challenging teams in the NCAA tournament than the West Coast Conference could muster up. But, in their first games, it would be very surprising to see the Bulldogs unable to impose their will on the teams they face.
Kelly Olynyk
While BYU fans were able to see Olynyk play in Provo, this is a chance for everyone to see a National Player of the Year candidate operate on the hardwood. Olynyk has been a terror on the court this season after sitting out the previous year as a redshirt. The 7-shoot Canadian has averaged 17.7 points on 65.5 percent shooting this season, and his points per game would be higher if he was playing more than 25 minutes a night.
Gonzaga likes to run Olynyk around the free-throw line, and have him use his experience to help facilitate the offense. He can dish to his talented teammate Elias Harris or Kevin Pangos for open shots, pull up for a jumper on the elbows, or drive to the rim, create contact, and get to the foul line. He’s nearly unstoppable at times, and had a perfect shooting night against the Cougars in Provo this season.
The coaches
Mark Few, Steve Alford, Jamie Dixon, Tommy Amaker, Sean Miller and Rick Byrd are tremendous head coaches. The six coaches have combined for 1,800 victories, and all share one missing item from their resumes — a Final Four appearance.
Dixon and Few are friends, having remained close despite coaching thousands of miles apart. Steve Alford is a Bobby Knight disciple, having learned the college game from the legend while playing for the Indiana Hoosiers in the 1980s. Tommy Amaker, head coach for Harvard, was roommates with Mike Brey at Duke and has helped the Crimson become relevant in basketball, making the tournament for a second straight year.
Byrd has been with Belmont since the 1980s and has patiently crafted his program into the team that will take the court Thursday against the Wildcats. Sean Miller was a point guard with Pittsburgh but now coaches Arizona, and the Wildcats will look to run with Belmont in their game.
If you like coaching, the games this weekend have it in spades.
Ian Clark
The Belmont Bruins are a potential Cinderella team in the tournament, and are lead by this sharp-shooting guard from Memphis. Clark is a senior on the Bruins, and is averaging 18.1 points while shooting 46.3 percent from behind the arc. If the Bruins want to escape the first round after failing to do so the previous two seasons, Clark is going to need to be nearly perfect in order to beat the Wildcats.
The Bruins don’t have a lot of momentum, having gone 4-6 in their previous ten games. The Bruins force a bunch of steals, averaging 10 per game this season, and can light it up from the three-point line, making an average of 9.4 per game. Will they be a Cinderella team? Go and watch Clark and his friends, and see what happens.
Defense
Some college teams like to move the ball up and down the floor, creating opportunities to score in transition, or shoot open shots early in the shot clock. They are determined to win games by outscoring their opponent.
Other teams are determined to win games by not letting the other team score — at all. They block shots, play physical defense on the perimeter, and take the ball.
Pittsburgh, New Mexico and Gonzaga are three of those teams. According to Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, these teams are all in the top 20 in the nation at defense.
Pittsburg has a deep bench and can rotate bodies in off the bench to keep up the intensity. New Mexico doesn’t foul, and will play stifling defense for a full 48 minutes. Gonzaga will deny the offense any space to operate, and managed to go the entire season with perhaps one defensive hiccup, when they let Marcus Smart of Oklahoma State score 23 points against them — Gonzaga won.
Points will be hard to come by against those teams — but if blocked shots, steals and rebounds are part of the game you enjoy, be sure to watch these teams play.
An added bonus ….
The games will be played in EnergySolutions Arena. While it’s not quite the same as watching the Jazz play, the odds are pretty good that a Stockton will be on the court for two games. It’s an arena that has a great basketball feel in it, from the towering layers of green chairs to the video screens that look like giant Lite-Brite boards.
The student-athletes play the game because they love to play — plain and simple. The emotion of college basketball is difficult to ignore, and EnergySolutions should be rocking, whether the team you want to win is ahead or not.
The arena is often listed as one of the most difficult places to play in for visiting teams — quite a reputation to keep up.
The first game is Thursday, at 11:40 a.m. MDT, with Wichita State against Pittsburgh. That game will be followed by Gonzaga against Southern. Arizona and Belmont are scheduled to tip off around 5:20 p.m. MDT, with New Mexico closing out the day against Harvard once the Bruins and Wildcats are done playing.
The next round of games is scheduled for Saturday, with the winners of Gonzaga-Southern and Wichita State-Pittsburgh playing each other, while the winners of Arizona-Belmont and New Mexico-Harvard play to decide who will advance to the Sweet 16.
Video contribution: Andrew Wittenberg
Dan Lewis covers BYU sports for KSL.com. He is currently attending Brigham Young University, studying communications with an emphasis in multimedia journalism.
