SEVEN MEMORABLE MOMENTS FROM THE FIRST WEEKEND
Here are the things that will stick with me for the longest from the first weekend of the Big Dance.
Here are the seven things from the first weekend of the 2021 NCAA tournament that are going to stick with me, that I am going to remember for a while.
If you enjoy this content and would like to support The Rebound, you can sign up for $7 a month below:
CREIGHTON’S CELEBRATION
The last month has been something of a nightmare for the players in this Creighton program.
Through no fault of their own, they’ve become the center of a controversy that somehow managed to become a flashpoint in discussions about the race, cancel culture, the power dynamics in college basketball and, as a byproduct, the fairness of limiting athlete access to their name, image and likeness right.
All of that because their coach was dumb enough to ask his players if they were on or off the “plantation”, something that he has repeatedly said was him failing to find the right words in a moment of passion.
That created strife within the locker room. That created dialogue outside of the locker room. It became the talking point at every media availability the team had. Most of the team forgave McDermott relatively quickly. Some of the team took longer. I am sure that there are people affiliated with the program, players or otherwise, who are still not ready to accept that this was nothing more than a man misspeaking.
And after everything that the kids on this roster dealt with over the course of the last 12 months — getting pulled off the floor at halftime of last year’s Big East tournament, the social isolation, the endless testing, all of it — to have their opportunity to make noise in what will be the last postseason run for many threatened because of it was entirely unfair, but reality.
So I was happy to see the Bluejays get to the Sweet 16.
I was even happier to see the emotional release that came in the locker room after their win over Ohio on Monday:
Look at that emotion!
You love to see it.
This is Creighton’s first trip to the Sweet 16 since the NCAA tournament expanded back in 1985, and I’m just so thrilled that those players are able to experience it.
And for me, that will be the moment that I remember the most after the first weekend of this year’s NCAA tournament.
THE END FOR GARZILLA
The brutality of the NCAA tournament is that there can only be one team that ends their season with anything other than a loss.
67 teams will see their dream die before they can cut down those final nets, and for Iowa’s Luka Garza, that happened just two games into the Big Dance. The No. 2-seed Hawkeyes were run off the floor by No. 7-seed Oregon on Monday afternoon despite 36 points from the soon-to-be-named National Player of the Year, and the last image that we will have of Garzilla in an Iowa uniform is of him leaving the floor of a blowout with 36 seconds left on the clock to a standing ovation from the limited number of fans that were allowed to be in attendance.
I think an end like this was probably inevitable.
Iowa was never going to beat Gonzaga. Oregon was, clearly, a terrible matchup for them, and if Iowa had found a way to advance, I’m not sure what they would have been able to do against USC and Evan Mobley.
But it doesn’t make it any less striking to see the most accomplished college basketball player since Tyler Hansbrough leaving the floor in tears:
It’s the dichotomy here that really gets me.
It sucks that we won’t be able to see Garza play anymore. He’s a two-time first-team All-American that has been arguably the best player in the sport the last two years. At the same time, a moment like this is what we love to see, because it means the kid loved that team and that program and that school as much as we do.
ROD FARVA TAKING DOWN ILLINOIS
Anyone that has seen the movie Super Troopers understands this reference.
I’m not saying that Loyola-Chicago star center Cameron Krutwig is the reincarnation of Farva, the comedic star of one of a cult classic, I’m just saying that we’ve never seen them in a room together:
But the best part about this is that Krutwig absolutely torched the team that had been playing some of the best basketball in the country over the course of the last month. He finished with 19 points, 12 boards and five assists. He did his best to keep Kofi Cockburn in check. The defining moment at the end of the game, when the Ramblers put the finishing touches on the win over their in-state rival, came when Krutwig picked the pocket of all-american guard Ayo Dosunmu.
Krutwig is the opposite of looking the part, unless “the part” is a doofus state trooper that wants you to say Car RamRod.
But that kid can play.
And he is the biggest reason that the Ramblers have a very real chance to get to their second Final Four in the span of three tournaments.
ORAL ROBERTS
For just the second time in NCAA tournament history, we have a No. 15-seed in the second weekend. The first, obviously, was Dunk City, when FGCU unexpectedly took the nation by storm and became the single-biggest story in America.
This group is different.
Instead of high-flying acrobatics and a coach who worked on Wall Street and whose wife was in Maxim, we have a team that finished fourth in the Summit League, that has a couple of stars on their roster and a coach that once tried to fight Kevin Bacon in a barber shop:
But this ORU team is good!
Max Abmas is the guy we knew about, the nation’s leading scorer. It’s just the third time in tournament history that the nation’s leading scorer has reached the Sweet 16, as Abmas joining Adam Morrison and Jimmer Fredette as the only players that can make that claim. But Kevin Obanor has proven himself to be a guy that is going to be able to play professionally somewhere, and the fact that those two are elite in ball-screens, ORU has shooters every where else on the court and that they just seem completely averse to actually playing defense means that their games are guaranteed to be fun and high-scoring.
Arkansas is up next.
Speaking of Arkansas …
ERIC MUSSELMAN’S TABLE DANCE
There are not many people in college basketball that enjoy the attention the spotlight brings as much as Eric Musselman.
He understands the value in it. He understands that every time someone like me writes about the things he does at Arkansas, it makes Arkansas a talking point. He knows that going viral brings publicity to his school and his program, and that the visibility is the best way to be able to signal to recruits that being a part of the program will ensure that they get their own name out there. It’s why you see him take off his shirt to celebrate. It’s why he’s a willing guest on so many different podcasts and radio shows.
He knows what he’s doing and he knows how to play the game.
I respect it.
And it doesn’t make his over-the-top reactions any less funny or ridiculous.
On Sunday, after his Razorbacks beat Texas Tech in an absolute thriller, he sprinted across the floor, jumped up on a table and celebrated with the Arkansas fans that were in attendance from afar:
He wasn’t done, either.
After that, he took a shot as a gambling analyst for CBS Sports that said on the air that Chris Beard vs. Musselman was the biggest coaching mismatch of the NCAA tournament.
Just be glad he kept his shirt on this time.
JOE PLEASANT’S FREE THROWS
The stones on that kid!
Joe Pleasant was a terrible basketball player when he was younger. He admitted as much to Jeff Goodman earlier. On the season, he’s shooting 58 percent from the free throw line.
And then, with 1.2 seconds left and a chance to upset No. 3-seed Texas on the line, Pleasant stepped to the charity stripe and canned not one, but both of his free throw attempts.
That’s not easy to do for anyone, and the emotion he exuded after the win should tell you all you need to know about what it meant to him to make those shots.
MICK CRONIN SEEING HIS FATHER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A YEAR
UCLA is in the Sweet 16 after starting out the tournament in the First Four, and Mick Cronin had a chance to see his father, Hep, for the first time since the pandemic hit:
We can all relate to that moment, of finally having the chance to see our loved ones again.