The "Fab Five" documentary that recently aired on ESPN generated a lot of headlines and controversy, and the thought occurs now that the timing was entirely appropriate in one respect.
One of the dominant and defining themes was Chris Webber inexplicably calling a timeout his team didn't have in the 1993 national title game against North Carolina, applying wrapping paper and a nice little bow to the Tar Heels' victory.
Who knew that we'd see a smorgasbord of similar not-so-shining moments on the first weekend of this year's NCAA Tournament?
You hate to come off as a stuffy purist who does nothing but talk about how great it was in the old days. And the basketball that took place from Thursday to Sunday was quite exciting, entertaining and enjoyable.
But it was hard for close followers of college basketball to watch the madness unfold over the weekend without wondering what has infected the minds of some of these players.
The most glaring example, of course, was the end of the Butler-Pittsburgh game. Butler's Shevlin Mack committed a foul at halfcourt with his team up one and 1.4 seconds on the clock. Then Pittsburgh's Nasir Robinson one-upped the blunder and fouled Matt Howard on a missed free throw, allowing Howard to win the game with free throws from a foul that occurred 90 feet from Butler's basket.
"I've been playing basketball my whole life and I know I shouldn't have done that," Robinson said afterward. "It was a stupid play."
How about John Henson? The guy might've been the MVP of North Carolina's comeback win over Washington thanks to his deflection of a Huskies inbounds pass. But he came perilously close to being distinguished as the goat after inexplicably touching a halfcourt heave by Washington and letting the ball bounce out of bounds. He followed that blunder by inexplicably goaltending a last-second shot by Washington (lucky for him, it was a two-point shot and the Heels were up three).
"I said, 'What were you thinking?'" Roy Williams said of Henson.
And heck, Clemson wasn't immune. After some highly questionable shot selection late in the first half, the Tigers committed three straight turnovers late to squander a chance at beating West Virginia. The Tigers might argue that the ridiculous lack of preparation time kept them from being able to practice against the 1-3-1 that Bob Huggins deftly sprang on them, but still ... the choice of passes were questionable at best.
There are more examples, and they're not limited to just the players. The referees have experienced their own spells of brain cramps, going back to the utter debacle at the end of the Big East Tournament game between St. John's and Rutgers.
No excuse at all for them to not put time back on the clock in the North Carolina-Washington game. No excuse at all for the ref's quick five-second call in the Texas-Arizona game. And not much excuse to not call an obvious foul on Arizona just before the buzzer.
So how to explain such a rash of boneheadedness? Has the so-called "basketball IQ" diminished over the years as the general emphasis on team basketball has decreased in favor of the more individual, AAU-vibed stylings?
The opinion here is that the AAU thing tends to be a scapegoat and ends up being blamed for all the game's ills. There are some negatives to it, but there are also some positives as well.
Maybe the so-called "20-hour rule," which limits the amount of time college coaches can spend with their teams each week, has played a role.
Or are these late-game gaffes more a reflection of the distracted nature of our society in general? The constant connectivity, the Facebooking, Twittering, texting and everything else, is assaulting our attention spans. If someone can't sit down and concentrate long enough to read a 10-paragraph news article, then maybe a few mental breakdowns during a high-pressure situation aren't so outrageous.
Whatever the cause, let's hope the curtain falls on this comedy of errors this week.
Make that tragedy of errors.
LW
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