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What We Learned, Two Days From Selection Sunday
1. Kemba Walker was stealing the show. He had the prime location of New York and the historic stage of Madison Square Garden; he had the programming power of ESPN and the cachet of an 11-bid conference. He had all of those things in his favor, and delivered his fourth, heroic performance in four nights at the Big East tournament, scoring 33 points to lead UConn to an overtime upset of Syracuse and a spot in Saturday’s championship game. Afterwards, he posed for pictures with former President Bill Clinton, who’d been wowed in the stands, and it seemed for a moment that the college basketball universe, just as it had after the Maui Invitational in November, was revolving around Walker. He was making us forget about a certain other scorer we’d become obsessed with in the months in between:
The Jimmer.
BYU’s Jimmer Fredette, the nation’s leading per-game scorer, was being relegated to a Las Vegas sideshow. He was stuck with a 9 p.m. tipoff on a semi-obscure cable network (CBS College Sports); he was stuck playing a New Mexico team that had already beaten the Cougars twice. And he was without a true inside presence to do battle against the Lobos, because his suspended center, Brandon Davies, was stuck on the bench in a cardigan sweater. Merely advancing to the Mountain West tournament final was going to be an issue, much less recapturing the straying hearts of the college basketball nation.
But The Jimmer began hitting jump shots — threes, leaners, leaning threes, sideways leaners around defenders — and he had 10 points in three minutes, then 17 points in 12 minutes. Word spread through Twitter, through press rows and press rooms at other tournaments, that you must find this on TV, lest you miss a vintage performance. By halftime, without the help of a single free throw, Fredette had broken the MWC tourney single-game scoring record with 33 points. What Kemba needed 45 minutes to do, Jimmer had accomplished in 20.
In the next half, all he did was break Danny Ainge’s all-time BYU scoring record; finish with a career-high 52 points (on just one free-throw!), equaling Providence’s Marshon Brooks for the highest single-game point total this season; and carry the Cougars to an 87-76 victory and yet another meeting with San Diego State.
Less than two hours after the world was Kemba’s, it was Jimmer’s again.
He clearly has no desire to back into the Wooden and Naismith Awards, and — what matters even more — he may just salvage a No. 1 seed for BYU. The Cougars were almost removed from the No. 1 discussion after losing Davies on March 1 and being blown out by New Mexico on March 2. But if they beat San Diego State a third time to own both Mountain West titles and finish 31-3, is there any logical way the selection committee could deny BYU a No. 1?* Especially with Pitt going one-and-done in the Big East, and Notre Dame failing to reach the championship round? You can’t punish BYU for losing Davies to an Honor Code violation, if all it did without him was win its conference tournament.
(* If the committee is reading: In the event that you insist on making BYU a No. 2, I’ll promise to keep my complaints to a minimum if the No. 3 in that region is UConn. You know full well that a Jimmer-Kemba Sweet 16 game would drive TV ratings through the roof.)
:rockon1:
What We Learned, Two Days From Selection Sunday
1. Kemba Walker was stealing the show. He had the prime location of New York and the historic stage of Madison Square Garden; he had the programming power of ESPN and the cachet of an 11-bid conference. He had all of those things in his favor, and delivered his fourth, heroic performance in four nights at the Big East tournament, scoring 33 points to lead UConn to an overtime upset of Syracuse and a spot in Saturday’s championship game. Afterwards, he posed for pictures with former President Bill Clinton, who’d been wowed in the stands, and it seemed for a moment that the college basketball universe, just as it had after the Maui Invitational in November, was revolving around Walker. He was making us forget about a certain other scorer we’d become obsessed with in the months in between:
The Jimmer.
BYU’s Jimmer Fredette, the nation’s leading per-game scorer, was being relegated to a Las Vegas sideshow. He was stuck with a 9 p.m. tipoff on a semi-obscure cable network (CBS College Sports); he was stuck playing a New Mexico team that had already beaten the Cougars twice. And he was without a true inside presence to do battle against the Lobos, because his suspended center, Brandon Davies, was stuck on the bench in a cardigan sweater. Merely advancing to the Mountain West tournament final was going to be an issue, much less recapturing the straying hearts of the college basketball nation.
But The Jimmer began hitting jump shots — threes, leaners, leaning threes, sideways leaners around defenders — and he had 10 points in three minutes, then 17 points in 12 minutes. Word spread through Twitter, through press rows and press rooms at other tournaments, that you must find this on TV, lest you miss a vintage performance. By halftime, without the help of a single free throw, Fredette had broken the MWC tourney single-game scoring record with 33 points. What Kemba needed 45 minutes to do, Jimmer had accomplished in 20.
In the next half, all he did was break Danny Ainge’s all-time BYU scoring record; finish with a career-high 52 points (on just one free-throw!), equaling Providence’s Marshon Brooks for the highest single-game point total this season; and carry the Cougars to an 87-76 victory and yet another meeting with San Diego State.
Less than two hours after the world was Kemba’s, it was Jimmer’s again.
He clearly has no desire to back into the Wooden and Naismith Awards, and — what matters even more — he may just salvage a No. 1 seed for BYU. The Cougars were almost removed from the No. 1 discussion after losing Davies on March 1 and being blown out by New Mexico on March 2. But if they beat San Diego State a third time to own both Mountain West titles and finish 31-3, is there any logical way the selection committee could deny BYU a No. 1?* Especially with Pitt going one-and-done in the Big East, and Notre Dame failing to reach the championship round? You can’t punish BYU for losing Davies to an Honor Code violation, if all it did without him was win its conference tournament.
(* If the committee is reading: In the event that you insist on making BYU a No. 2, I’ll promise to keep my complaints to a minimum if the No. 3 in that region is UConn. You know full well that a Jimmer-Kemba Sweet 16 game would drive TV ratings through the roof.)
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