Asked why he decided to quit sportswriting, the late Paul Gallico replied, “February.”
It is the briefest month on the calendar, but it seemed like the longest to a columnist struggling to find inspiration.
Maybe that explains what has been happening at the elite level in college basketball recently. It’s February.
North Carolina suffered its worst defeat of the season. Kentucky went down in back-to-back games. Connecticut stumbled, although the Huskies played without their leading scorer and rebounder. And Cincinnati lost to DePaul, a team it whipped by 23 points in their first meeting.
February is the closest the colleges come to the tedium-inducing slog known as the NBA regular season. With the excitement of the start of conference play a distant memory and the NCAA tournament still a month away, the top teams sometimes have trouble getting motivated.
But the blahs don’t have to be fatal. Last year for example, Utah lost twice in the first 12 days of February. But the Utes made it to the national final.
“It’s such a long season,” Northern Arizona coach Ben Howland says. “If your team is in the middle of the pack, fighting to get into the postseason, you can use that to motivate your players.”
For the elite, an NCAA tournament berth has been a foregone conclusion since October. As the season grinds on, some teams can’t help coasting a bit.
But that doesn’t help coaches understand why talented teams often look pitiful. Consider Cincinnati’s effort in a 61-60 overtime loss to DePaul Saturday: The Bearcats committed 23 turnovers and blew an 11-point lead in the final six minutes.
“I wish I could look in their heads,” Bearcats coach Bob Huggins says. “I’d have a better idea what’s going on.”
Bearcats reserve Ryan Fletcher has a theory. Fletcher, a 6-foot-8-inch forward who has caught fire since being benched for ineffectiveness three weeks ago, believes his teammates simply aren’t putting in the effort.
Februaryitis, in other words.
“It’s midseason,” Fletcher says. “At the beginning of the season, you work hard to do things right. You want to get better every day. When things are going well, guys stop working so hard.”
After opening the season ranked 15th in both major polls, the Bearcats inexorably rose after defeating Duke in Alaska and winning at Minnesota and crushing Oklahoma at home.
Asked what happened to his teammates, Fletcher says, “Without question, we got complacent because of the success that we had. We need to go back to doing things that we did before we were No. 3 in the country (they dropped a notch after the DePaul loss).
“The beginning of the year, we would have buried a team like (DePaul). We did bury this team. We came in thinking we only needed to get out of here with a win. We should be thinking we’re going to bury them.”
An early March burial awaits the Bearcats if they keep playing as sloppily as they have in the last two weeks.
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“We throw soft passes,” Huggins says. “We’re not throwing crisp passes. We’re not doing a lot of things. Maybe now we can correct some things in practice. Maybe not.”
Mysterious Southeast: So what is Kentucky’s problem? With two losses in three nights last week, the defending national champions can’t wait for February to be over. Then again if the Wildcats play the way they did against Florida and Alabama last week, March might be over a bit too quick.
“Other teams are starting to say, `They’re not what they used to be,’ ” Kentucky coach Tubby Smith says. “We’re just not making the plays when we’re supposed to be and that’s where the self-doubt starts.”
Self-doubt wasn’t a problem for Alabama guard Doc Martin, who threw in a career-high 20 points in his first collegiate start Saturday to lead the mediocre Crimson Tide to a 62-58 victory over Kentucky. Martin was a little nervous before the game but got some good advice from his mother.
“She just said, `Baby, when you get the ball, just shoot.’ “
Missing muscle: It’s February in Palo Alto too. Film of Stanford’s 70-59 home loss to Connecticut will become required viewing for the Cardinal’s opponents in the NCAA tournament.
The Huskies snapped Stanford’s 14-game home winning streak by suffocating point guard Arthur Lee. Lee managed to score 12 points, but he made only 4 of 13 shots from the floor and had just one assist.
“Our goal was to execute our press hard right from the top and deny Lee the ball, and we executed it perfectly,” Huskies point guard Khalid El-Amin said. “I felt I had to come out early and set my mind to playing aggressive on Lee. And it worked.”
Of course film might only do so much for Stanford’s tournament opponents. How many of them will be as quick as Connecticut?
“It’s very difficult to simulate how quick and athletic a team like Connecticut is in practice,” Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said.
Pool-sheet tip: With 18 consecutive victories and a No. 20 ranking, can College of Charleston really be considered a sleeper as the NCAA tournament approaches?
The Cougars are tied with No. 1 Duke for the longest winning streak in Division I. They’re 12-0 in their first season in the Southern Conference after amassing a 74-6 mark over the last five seasons in the Trans America Conference.
John Kresse’s team (21-2 overall) features seven seniors. And you know what coaches say about experience at tourney time.
“We’re just playing a great brand of ball,” senior forward Sedric Webber says.
Rock chalk: It was easy to write off Kansas after it dropped back-to-back games for the first time in 10 years and tumbled from the Top 25 for the first time in eight years. But the Jayhawks have won three straight, partly because coach Roy Williams went to a smaller, quicker lineup.
“Everybody’s saying we’re wounded and we’re not very good,” Williams says. “You get tired of hearing you’re not very good. I think we’re a pretty good basketball team.”
And they’ll be even better when Williams can add players as tough as point guard Jeff Boschee, a true freshman from North Dakota.
Sidelines: Saturday’s crowd at the Rosemont Horizon was 15,816, the largest to see DePaul there since 1992. It was a raucous atmosphere from tipoff to the final buzzer, when jubilant fans mobbed the Blue Demons on the floor. These were real Chicago hoop fans, as opposed to the cell phone-toters who show up for Bulls games–or used to show up.
Pitt students gave coach Ralph Willard a warm welcome in the Panthers’ first home appearance since Willard announced he would resign at the end of the season. Students chanted, “Go to Boston! Go to Boston!”, a reference to Willard turning down a job with Rick Pitino’s Celtics to remain at Pitt two years ago. The inspired Panthers went out and lost 88-60 to St. John’s, Pitt’s worst home loss since a 31-point drubbing by the Johnnies in 1984-85.
Louisville has work to do before it makes the NCAA tournament. But the NCAA’s decision to reverse its ban on postseason play for the Cardinals gave the team a boost. “Winning the appeal gives us something more to work for,” swingman Eric Johnson says. “Now we’ve got to go out and win the rest of our games and see what happens.” No problem. The ‘Ville faces UNC-Charlotte and Georgia Tech this week and still has to play at Cincinnati and at Southern Miss.