NCAA Tournament: Northwestern developing new mentality as it enters foreign territory

By NBC SportsMar 16, 2017, 11:51 PM EDT

By Netta-Lee Lax

SALT LAKE CITY — Going into the 1995 PSAL High School Basketball Championship, one could argue that Stephon Marbury was under pressure. A family touted as New York City basketball royalty, three of the four Marbury boys had failed to bring Lincoln High School a city title. Stephon, considered to be one of the best young talents in the nation, had also failed in the years prior. Now in his senior season with 11 seconds left and his team up by just a point, Marbury stepped to the line. This was his last chance to win the coveted title. There he stood, just 18 years old, on the line at “The World’s Most Famous Arena”. Two dribbles and one deep breath, the future NBA All-Star looks to the hoop and sticks his tongue out as his fingers glide off the pebbled leather. The tension in the air is palpable, even in watching the old film. Marbury would sink both free throws before jumping in the air ecstatically as he realizes that he had just done it – a Marbury boy had finally won a title for Lincoln. The pressure, for the moment, was released.

“I’d be hard-pressed to think there was anybody in the country that played with more pressure than us, the constant daily, will they make it, are they going to collapse, is this the Northwestern we’re always used to seeing?” – Northwestern coach Chris Collins

With just over four minutes left in Northwestern’s first NCAA Tournament appearance, Dererk Pardon stepped to the line. Northwestern led Vanderbilt, 57-55, but as Pardon prepared to shoot his free throws, the pressure that Northwestern coach Chris Collins alluded to seemed to boil over. The raucous crowd simmered down and my palms started to sweat. I covered Northwestern basketball throughout my four years at the school and often feel personally invested in their success. To this point – in the entire history of the program – these two free throws made for the biggest moment in program history. I typed up my notes, my hands too shaky to scribble anything legible, “Still over 4 minutes left when Pardon hits a pair from the line, but you’d think this was Stephon Marbury about to clinch the city title at MSG.” This was, for Northwestern fans, a moment of legend.

“The last time out before my free throws, Coach said, it’s about toughness, that was in my head the whole time” recalled Pardon, “And before one of my free throws he said, I believe in you. And that gives you a lot of confidence.”

Deep breaths taken, eye on the prize, Pardon sunk them both. Over the course of the next four minutes, Northwestern would go to the marked line four more times. In the last two minutes of the game, the lead would change hands six times. One might even argue, the pressure was mounting.

As Collins put it, “Your stomach is churning, because you want it so badly.”

The crowd grew quieter and quieter every time Vanderbilt took the lead and louder and louder each time Northwestern stole it back, but those free throws – that was where you could really sense how much this meant to this team, to this staff and to these fans.

They call them the Cardiac ‘Cats. Northwestern is better known for its failures in the athletic realm than its successes. The last time I covered the Wildcats at a major basketball tournament was the 2012 Big Ten Conference Tournament. An event marked by a first round meltdown that assured Northwestern’s all-time leading scorer would never burst the bubble and make it to the dance. It was the final game in a season filled with last minute collapses (Looking at you, Jared Sullinger). But the history of struggles on the hardwood can be traced back to the very first NCAA Final Four which was played on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. Yet until today, Northwestern was the only power conference team to have not danced in March. The further you dig into Northwestern’s basketball history, the more heartbreak you find. From legitimate tragedy when former coach Ricky Byrdsong was murdered while walking with his two children, to unfortunate parts in historic events like Wilt Chamberlain scoring 52 points in his University of Kansas debut or as one article described it the “spanking” of Northwestern. Legendary coaches like Tex Winter (head coach from 1973-1978) have tried and failed (Winter finished with a 42-89 record) where Collins has finally succeeded. In the last five years, Northwestern has won two bowl games (having not won a single bowl game for 64 years prior to 2013) and now has at least one victory in the NCAA Tournament. This is foreign territory they’ve encountered. This is a new sort of Wildcat mentality.

This season Northwestern racked up the most wins in the 112 year history of the program and as March rolled in the ‘Cats all but secured a place in the big dance for the first time with an epic last-second win over the Michigan Wolverines. With less than two seconds left in regulation Nathan Taphorn inbounded a quarterback pass, throwing the ball the length of the court right into the hands of Pardon who laid it in for the Wildcat victory. That game, explained Collins, was a turning point for the team’s mentality.

“I’ve noticed ever since winning that Michigan game we’ve relaxed and got back to playing the way we were playing all year,” Collins said.

Nine days later the Wildcats again made program history when they won two games in the Big Ten Tournament for the first time. A few days after that they finally saw their name in the bracket, I “mean the watch party was a day we’ll never forget,” recalled Collins, “Because that was history. That’s a moment that will live with me and us forever, because that was doing something that’s never been done.”

Tonight was also something that had never been done before and the pressure was on.

“We are doing this for more people than just ourselves,” senior Sanjay Lumpkin said. “We are doing this for people like Billy McKinney, Jim Stack, Drew Crawford – all these older players that have played for this program. So many people have been a part of this.”

Pardon was a mere 52 percent from the line during the regular season and through the Big Ten Tournament, but he knocked down all six of his free throws in the final stretch of this game. He was infallible and unflappable.

“I was really proud of Dererk, especially” explained Collins, “He’s had his struggles at the line throughout his career. He works at it religiously every day. For him to walk up and make six in a row in the last [four minutes], I was really proud of him.”

Dribble, deep breath, swish. The tension, for the moment, was released.

2023 March Madness: When is Selection Sunday?

By Mary OmatigaMar 12, 2023, 1:00 PM EDT

The 2023 March Madness action tips off on Tuesday, March 14 through Monday, April 3 for the men, while the Women’s Tournament begins on Wednesday, March 15 and runs through Tuesday, April 2. 68 teams will go head-to-head for a chance to be crowned national champions. It all starts off with Selection Sunday where seeds and matchups for the men’s and women’s events will be revealed. See below for additional information on how to watch the event.

When is Selection Sunday?

Selection Sunday takes place this Sunday, March 12. Teams and seeds for the Men’s Tournament will be revealed at 6 PM ET (CBS). The women’s full tournament bracket will be revealed at 8 PM ET (ESPN).

How can I watch the Men’s 2023 March Madness Tournament?

Games for the Men’s Tournament will be available on the networks of TBS, TNT, TruTV, and CBS. Viewers can also live stream the 2023 March Madness tournament on the NCAA’s website.

How can I watch the Women’s Tournament?

The Women’s Tournament will be available on ESPN. See below for the full schedule of events.

2023 March Madness Schedule:

Men’s Tournament:

Selection Sunday: Sunday, March 12
First Four: March 14-15
First Round: March 16-17
Second Round: March 18-19
Sweet 16: March 23-24
Elite Eight: March 25-26
Final Four: April 1
NCAA Championship Game: April 3

Women’s Tournament:

First Four: March 15-16
First Round: March 17-18
Second Round: March 19-20
Sweet 16: March 24-25
Elite Eight: March 26-27
Final Four: Friday, March 31 (7 PM and 9:30 PM ET/ ESPN)
Women’s NCAA Championship Game: Sunday, April 2 (3 PM ET/ ABC)

With Boeheim’s Departure, A College Basketball Coaching Era Nears its End

By Tim LaydenMar 10, 2023, 11:00 AM EST

Late Wednesday afternoon in Greensboro, North Carolina, Jim Boeheim’s tenure as head coach of basketball at Syracuse came to a befuddling and resoundingly ignominious finish. Or it came to the most appropriate end imaginable, depending on your perspective and home address. Confusing, because it remains uncertain whether Boeheim retired, was retired or forced out, parted ways or was effectively fired. (This may remain a mystery). Fitting, because his last public appearance, in the postgame press conference after a 77-74 loss to Wake Forest in the ACC Tournament, was prickly and cryptic in a way that many will see as classically Boeheimian – giving no quarter and revealing little, stubborn and borderline immature (no small feat at the age of 78), almost funny, but not quite. (It was appropriate that all of this happened in Greensboro, a place where neither Syracuse nor Boeheim ever belonged, in a conference with which he won’t be enduringly associated).

Also: The passage of time will render all of these details insignificant, likely sooner than later. They will be replaced by more enduring ones: Boeheim arrived as a walk-on player in Syracuse in 1962, and eventually coached his alma mater for 47 years and 1,557 games. These are preposterous numbers. His teams went to the NCAA Tournament 35 times, reached five Final Fours, won the national championship in 2003 and on two other occasions lost in the championship game. It’s a fool’s errand to rank coaches across eras, but Boeheim is on whatever short list you might construct. He was deservedly elected to the Hall of Fame 18 years ago.

It is worth noting the moment of Boeheim’s departure, not just as a passage of great and unmistakable importance in Syracuse, but as another milepost of broader (and perhaps less obvious) significance in the college game writ large – the passing of a certain type of celebrity coach.

Drawing a timeline of a sport’s relevance is a slippery operation at best, educated guesswork at the vagaries of cultural preferences. There are absolutes in this discussion: The NFL is now king, boxing and horse racing are relics of a distant past, hockey has a ceiling, college football’s religiosity is so intense that it turns a regional game into a national one. After that: You’re on your own to a large degree.

But there are fuzzy truths: College basketball’s modern-era popularity (I’m leaving the UCLA Wooden era just prior) was built on a few things: The explosion of the NCAA Tournament that began in earnest with Bird vs. Magic in 1979 and began evolving into the brackets/buzzer-beaters/upsets extravaganza of today, two years later on the second Saturday in March, when NBC introduced the country en masse to the cutaway moment, three times. (I wrote about this afternoon for Sports Illustrated a decade ago and stand by its relevance, the shoulders upon which everything March Madness-related stands today).

And in that same era, something else: The Cult of the Coach. Maybe it’s fair to argue that it began with Wooden, but his career unfolded in the pre-cable age, with no more than a few regular season UCLA games available for a wide audience (and seemingly most of those against Notre Dame). Wooden’s run – 10 titles in 12 years and seven straight from 1967-’73 – unfolded in the print journalism era. When he appeared on television in horn-rimmed glasses, with a program rolled up in his hand, never calling timeouts, it was akin to seeing Nixon at the supermarket – a figure from the newspaper come to life.

And it’s equally fair to argue that first manifestly famous coach of the television era was Marquette’s Al McGuire, who won his only national title on a Monday night in 1977, cried on the bench, promptly retired and became the sport’s first celebrity announcer, Madden before Madden. (If I have to tell you what an aircraft carrier is, or French pastry, well, we can’t be friends).

The real and true rise of the coach as architect of an unspoken college basketball business and media strategy coincided with the birth of the Big East Conference, a story oft-told and by now enmeshed in cobwebs, but a valuable one nevertheless. The league played on Monday nights on ESPN and despite a deep roster of talent – Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Ed Pinckney, Pearl Washington, Ray Allen, and so many others – the coaches were made the stars. In the first generation there were John Thompson at Georgetown, Lou Carnesecca at St. John’s, Rollie Massimino at Villanova, and of course, Boeheim. They battled each other for recruits, referees’ whistles, and, subtly, TV time. They were the central characters in a recurring drama.

Generations followed: Rick Pitino at Providence and Jim Calhoun at Connecticut, who ultimately won more NCAA titles than anyone else from the league.

The celebrity-making was not limited to the Big East. There were Dean Smith at North Carolina, Jim Valvano at North Carolina State (whose hug-chasing run after winning the ’83 title remains a March highlight staple), and of course, Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. Elsewhere: Bobby Knight at Indiana, Jerry Tarkanian at UNLV, Roy Williams at Kansas and then at North Carolina. In the even more modern era: Billy Donovan at Florida, Tom Izzo at Michigan State, John Calipari at Kentucky, Bill Self at Kansas, and Jay Wright at Villanova, whose reaction to Kris Jenkins’s game-winning three in the 2016 national title game might be both the peak of the Power Coach Era and its last gasp. (Pat Summit, Geno Auriemma, Kim Mulkey, Tara VanDerveer, Muffet McGraw and Dawn Staley belong on this list, too).

Let’s be clear: These were – and are — all excellent coaches, deserving of praise. And their players were excellent. But on game night, they prowled the sideline as if playing Richard III on the London Stage. They commanded massive salaries, giant shoe company deals and ruled small – and not-so-small – kingdoms with impunity. (Yes, football is bigger, but that very scale is what makes the coach oddly smaller, surrounded by the barely contained chaos of a sideline, overwhelmed by cavernous stadiums. Like we don’t see a football player’s face, we don’t see a football coach’s soul, the way we saw Boeheim’s grimace all these years).

Gradually most of them have left, though a diminished Pitino remains at Iona; Calipari, Izzo, Self (with a real chance at another title this year). But inexorably, the game has been returned to the athletes. The coaches still make money (but now, in the NIL era, so do the players). In some ways the change is subtle – Mick Cronin can perform with the best of his forebears, but the evolution of the sport has made him less king, and more partner. Same with Mark Few, Kelvin Sampson and Scott Drew. The game is the thing; it no longer needs to mythologize the coach. We are in the age of athlete empowerment at the college level, a good and fair thing.

The old system both elevated Boeheim and caricatured him. It made him a star, and a foil, wincing and groaning behind his professorial spectacles, and then conducting dismissive, theatrically unrevealing and combative Belichickian pressers. Much of it he brought upon himself, but as with Belichick, a chunk of it was for show. Away from a dais, Boeheim was insightful, frank, funny. And he loves basketball. I interviewed him once as he rode an exercise bike and talked about his days hooping in the Eastern Professional League for the Scranton Miners. “Once I drove back to Syracuse from Scranton,” Boeheim told me, “And it was snowing so hard I had to open the door and follow the guardrails to see where I saw going.”

He liked good players and kept his rotation tight to keep those good players on the floor. “Dean Smith used to have his ‘blue team,’” Boeheim told me, referring to the full-five subs Smith once employed. “I loved when he put those guys in, because there’s a reason they aren’t starting.” (As an aside, a small piece of my spirit will always think of Boeheim as the one counselor at Dolph Schayes’ Basketball Camp in the 1960s who campers did not want to get sideways with, lest they wind up doing pushups on the planks of a bunk floor; but also as a hellacious competitor in pickup games that often included NBA players).

He’ll be known in perpetuity as a guy who loved a cold and cloudy place – Syracuse – that many others only tolerated, or less. He was one with it. In 2003, in what would become his national championship year, I arranged to meet him at his office for an interview; I arrived early and his assistant called Boeheim, who was still at home; 10 minutes later he walked in, tossed his jacket over a chair and sat down to talk. That is a convenient life that he embraced. He did not build Syracuse basketball from scratch, but he made it bigger, and gave it endurance. Adrian Autry has a job ahead of him to sustain it.

Boeheim, meanwhile, exits as one of the last of his kind, part of an era that is nearly gone.

Tim Layden is writer-at-large for NBC Sports. He was previously a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for 25 years.