Warriors beautiful in an ugly game

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — It was so ugly, and yet it was so beautiful. It was basketball as boxing more than ballet, a game too full of missed shots and fouls, a game to be forgotten more than remembered.

Unless you were the Warriors.

Style didn’t matter for the Warriors. All that counted was the result. They had to get a win. A loss and the season was finished. A loss and they wouldn’t be together again on a court until the fall.

But they didn’t lose.

To the thrill of 19,596 fans at Oracle Arena. To the satisfaction of their head coach, Mark Jackson. Maybe even to the delight of the NBA, which on Saturday will have three game-sevens to put forth, one of which will match the Warriors, those how-did-they-do-it Warriors against the Clippers in Los Angeles.

That one became reality Thursday night when Stephen Curry intentionally missed a free throw, slamming it off the glass, with 00.4 remaining, so the Clips wouldn’t have a chance at a rebound, and the Warriors had a 100-99 victory.

The first-round playoff between the only two California teams in the postseason was tied at three wins apiece, and after all the emotion of the week, the tapes of racial remarks by Clippers owner Donald Sterling, the banning of Sterling by NBA commissioner Adam Silver, the emphasis was on playing the game.

No matter how poorly.

“This is who we are,” said Jackson, almost defensively, of a squad that wasn’t sharp on offense but had more than enough character. “We’ve proven that when we play our brand of basketball, we’re awfully tough to beat. I’m proud of my guys. It’s been an incredible, incredible ride.”

And it’s not over yet for the sixth-seed Warriors.

“Now against a three-seed with two of the top 10 players in the world, and a future Hall of Fame coach,” said Jackson, exaggerating a bit — if not that much about Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and Doc Rivers — “we are going to Game 7 in spite of all the sideline music.”

That’s his way of alluding to the situation involving Sterling, and involving the heart of the NBA, a league that prides itself on equality.

“And I like my chances because I’ve got a group of guys that want to do whatever it takes to win.”

Even when they only shoot 39.3 percent from the floor.

Even when they lose center Jermaine O’Neal with a knee injury just minutes into the second quarter.

Even when David Lee fouls out with 9:44 left in the fourth quarter.

They were down. They were up. They were down. They were up.

They got 45 minutes 29 seconds, 24 points and nine rebounds out of Curry. He wasn’t holding back, taking 24 shots, making nine, but why hold back when you’re trying to hang on?

They got 40 minutes 35 seconds from Draymond Green, who might not have had half that total if Andrew Bogut weren’t out with a fractured rib. Green had 14 points. Green had 14 boards.

“It wasn’t a very well-played game by either team,” said Rivers, the Clippers' coach, “going by shooting percentages. But I think both teams played extremely hard.

“I don’t know if they played harder than us, but they made the big plays. Give them credit. I thought they came up with just enough plays to beat us.”

That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? To win, if by one point as the Warriors did. Those fans at Oracle, in their gold T-shirts emblazoned with “Loud, Proud, Warriors,” were so wound up it seemed they could power the lights with their energy. This was it, the season on the brink, and they hoped to keep it alive.

Hoped the Warriors would keep it alive, which they did.

“They made tough shots,” said Jackson of his players. “You’re thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness. Can we get out of here and make sure there is a Game 7?'”

He knows the answer. We know the answer. We don’t know whether Game 7 will be the Warriors' last game of this 2013-14 season, but even a defeat should not diminish what they’ve attained and how they’ve done it.

“Those guys just competed,” Jackson said again. “I’m excited to see this young basketball team experience a Game 7 on the road. They haven’t experienced it as players. It’s new to Klay Thompson. It’s new to Stephen Curry. It’s new to Draymond Green. It’s new to all my guys, other than the veterans who have been around on other teams.

“It’s new to me. It’s going to be a lot of fun because a lot of folks didn’t we’d be here . . . We earned this platform.”

The very hardest way.

Giants are struggling – and in first

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By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Their No. 1 starter, Madison Bumgarner, has lost three in a row. Their No. 2 starter, Matt Cain — who used to be their No. 1 starter — hasn’t won a game this early season.  Their corner infielders can’t hit, can hardly make contact.

And yet the San Francisco Giants are in first place. If barely.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do (Tuesday),” said the man trying to make sense of this confusion, Giants manager Bruce Bochy. He meant as far as his starting lineup. In another sense, he always knows what to do, keep pushing and pulling.

Baseball is a funny sport. There are so many games. If you lose 60 of them, you’ve had a great season. But if a team loses the last game it played — as did the Giants on Monday night, losing 6-4 at AT&T Park to the San Diego Padres — then it’s as if the world has ended.

Players tread silently through the clubhouse. Reporters are doubly careful to be similarly silent, as if the slightest bit of noise, loud talking or, heavens, a chuckle would be irreverent. That the Giants came in with a four-game winning streak doesn’t help the situation one bit.

Mad Bum was 2-0 not all that long ago. Now he’s 2-3. The first two losses could be attributable to the Giants' hitters. Well, call them batters, because if they had hit, Bumgarner and San Francisco would have won each, instead of losing each, 2-1. Monday night was different.

“I didn’t have my command,” said Bumgarner. And so the Padres — mainly Rene Rivera, a catcher who was hitting .200 before the first pitch — commanded Bumgarner.

Rivera drove in the first five San Diego runs with a double in the fourth and home run in the fifth.

“He made a few more mistakes than we’re accustomed to,” said Bochy of Bumgarner. “He didn’t get the ball where he wanted.”

No pitcher is going be effective in every game. Even Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson were off occasionally. So before piling on Bumgarner, it might do well to stand clear.

The trouble is the Giants are a team built on pitching, so the temptation is to panic quickly when the pitching isn’t there.

Cain, who is scheduled to pitch Thursday, has been baffling. He’s 0-3 with a 4.35 earned run average in five starts, the worst start of his career. That perfect game seems 20 years ago, not two.

“We’re really spoiled,” was Bochy’s remark. He said it specifically about Bumgarner, but it could apply to Cain. Or Tim Lincecum. For so many years, they’ve been, if not perfect — well, Cain was — then dominant.

Now, even with the addition of Tim Hudson, who has been the star, the team ERA is 3.41. As a comparison, the Padres, who have won three of four from Los Gigantes in 2014, have a 3.17 ERA.

“Give them credit,” Bochy said of the Padres, whom he managed before the Giants. “You really have to credit one guy.”

That would be Rivera, whose five RBIs not surprisingly were a career high and the most ever by a Padre at AT&T.

Bochy, as is his style, did mention the almosts and could-haves. Buster Posey’s long shot to left in the sixth hit a few inches below the fence instead of clearing it. Michael Morse’s second of three singles could only bring Posey to third where, because third baseman Pablo Sandoval then struck out, Posey remained.

“Buster’s ball just missed going over,” said Bochy, which was true. “It was a strange night. I thought we had some good at bats at times.”

Sandoval, the third baseman, had some bad at bats.

He’s a free agent, playing as much for a big contract as for the Giants and seemingly a mess. Monday night he hit into a double play, flied out, struck out with the tying run on third and one out in the sixth and then flied out.

That left him batting — yikes — just .172.

The first baseman, Brandon Belt, has a better average, .255, but he was 0 for 3.

“Our corner guys are going to have to get on track for us to have success,” reminded Bochy, stating the obvious.

Your first and third basemen not only are supposed to hit but hit with power. Belt at least has seven home runs. Sandoval has two.

“We’ve got to get them going.”

No one had the audacity to ask how.

The Sports Xchange: Ko, Lewis push each other into Skirts lead

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By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

DALY CITY, Calif. — One, Lydia Ko, just 17, is supposed to be the future of women's golf. The other, Stacy Lewis, 29, is very much the present. 

Together, which is how they've been grouped through three rounds and will be today in the fourth, they're giving the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic an enthusiastic one-two punch. 

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 The Sports Xchange

Warriors on outside looking at Clipper win

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The game is won inside. That’s the NBA playoff mantra. The Warriors are an outside team, a team that beats you with threes by Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.

Or as Thursday night at the Oracle, when the three-pointers didn’t fall, beats itself.

You’ve heard the phrase, the cliché: Dance with what brung ya. You don’t chase your style or philosophy in the playoffs. And without Andrew Bogut, the W’s didn’t have much chance inside anyway.

The Los Angeles Clippers had too much for the Warriors. Too much offense from Blake Griffin, who was banking them off the glass or ramming them through the rim, who scored 32 points and played like a man who was the first overall pick in the draft, as he was five years ago.

The Clips had too much defense. The Warriors, greatest outside shooters in the league or so we’re told, went 6 for 31 on three-pointers, and at one juncture were 2 for 24.

A hot Griffin, a cold Stephen Curry, and the Clips win it, 98-96.

Yes, the W’s had the ball in the final few minutes. Yes, it was in Curry’s hands. Yes, the sellout crowd of 19,596, all in the gold-colored T-shirts with the slogan “Loud. Proud. Warriors” was shrieking hysterically, the W’s having cut an 18-point deficit to two.

But in this game, the better team won and deserved to win. And the Clips now lead the best-of-seven first-round series two to one, with Game 4 on Sunday at the same place and perhaps headed for the same result.

“We earned the game,” said Doc Rivers, the Clippers' coach, “because we played better.”

If not all the time, especially in a fourth quarter that could be considered a quasi-embarrassment to the sport. And more of the time than the frustrated Warriors.

“There’s going to be a game soon where both teams play great,” said Rivers. With a maximum of four games remaining, it better come soon.

“In this one, we survived,” said Rivers, as forthright as he is wise — the man having led the Boston Celtics to the championship not that long ago.

The Clippers had the third-best regular season record in the Western Conference, behind San Antonio and Oklahoma City. The Warriors were sixth. That Golden State stole Game One of the series may have given some the erroneous idea the W’s are better than the Clips.

They are not, although they could beat them in seven games. Except not playing as they did Thursday night.

Not shooting 41.6 percent. Not making 17 turnovers. Not letting Griffin make 15 of 25 from the floor.

“He’s just been great,” Rivers said of Griffin. “He’s making jump shots. The bank shot that he’s added to his game, facing the basket, has taken him to a different level, because he’s very difficult to guard now. If you get up on him, he goes around you, and if you back up on him, he uses the glass.”

The Warriors simply use their long-range shooting, and when it isn’t working — Klay Thompson, the exception, was 10 of 22 for 26 points — they’re where they were in the second half on Thursday, far behind.

“If anyone breaks the mold,” said Rivers, disputing the thought that an outside shooting team can’t win in the postseason, “it is (the Warriors). They’re great at it. We’re great at posting. We have to do what we do.”

Meaning get the ball to Griffin.

“He’s having an outstanding series,” said Mark Jackson, the Warriors' coach, “topping off an outstanding season. He’s playing at a high level.”

Curry had done the same until the last couple of games. But the Clippers won’t let him loose, double-teaming, chasing him around the court. At halftime, Curry had taken only three shots and made just one. He did finish with 16 points in 43 minutes, but that was on 5 for 12 from the floor.

“We were not playing well,” said Jackson, refusing to name any single player. “I thought we tried to do too much. We were just on the edge a little bit. Then we settled down.”

Now, however, the Clippers have settled on top of the Warriors. A win by 30 points in Game 2. A win by 2 in Game 4.

“I feel we’re in character,” said Jackson. “When we defend at a high level and execute and take the basketball it shows that we’re tough to beat, and that’s been consistent in this series, also.

“Where we’ve had problems is when we’ve turned the basketball over, we’ve taken bad shots. We’ve allowed them to get it going. We’ve gone away from the game plan discipline. We’re not good enough to do that and win.”

As they showed Thursday night.

The Sports Xchange: A's Chavez gets his first win of season

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By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

OAKLAND — It's not exactly a Hollywood story, so call it a Fontana story. That's a working class city in Southern California about 40 miles east of Hollywood. Yet the location in this instance is not as important as the plot. 

"It's all about getting an opportunity," said Bob Melvin, manager of the Oakland Athletics, "and doing something with it. Jesse got that opportunity." 

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 The Sports Xchange

Giants still can’t hit

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By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s impossible to dislike Bruce Bochy. He never belittles his players, never gives the press the slightest chance to find something wrong with the Giants.

Even when there is something wrong with the Giants.

They’re not hitting. Other than Angel Pagan (.377), Brandon Crawford (.311) and the new guy, Michael Morse (.306).

And since Pagan and Crawford didn’t start on Thursday, their day of rest after two night games and ahead of a trip to San Diego, the Giants couldn’t hit.

At least not well enough to beat the Dodgers, who won 2-1 Thursday before the usual sellout at AT&T Park after the Giants had taken the first two games of the series.

“Win two out every three,” said Madison Bumgarner, “you’re doing OK.” Absolutely. Win three out of three, you’re doing better.

Someone had the temerity to ask Bochy if this Giants team, as Giant teams of the past few years, was strictly dependent on pitching — which, of course it is.

“I don’t think so,” was Bochy’s answer. “I think we saw great pitching in this series (against the Giants).”

Is that why Hunter Pence is hitting .206, Pablo Sandoval .175?

“We’re not swinging the bats right now,” said the manager. “It’s hard to put runs on the board.”

Hasn’t it always been the last five years? A week ago Matt Cain held Colorado to one run. And lost, 1-0. Nightmares of the past, when Tim Lincecum went through the same problems.

Every game becomes agony, the bite-your-cuticles, hold-your-heart complications that Mike Krukow, the pitcher turned TV announcer, labeled “sweet torture.” 

Sweet if you win, that is. And how can the Giants win if they keep leaving men on base and Sandoval literally isn’t hitting his weight?   

Three times he came to the plate with Pence on base Thursday and never got a ball out of the infield.

In the last five games, the Giants scored a total 11 runs. That they won three of those is attributable to Sergio Romo, Jean Machi and others on the pitching staff.

Bumgarner started Thursday and made it only into the fifth before Bochy decided to change — even though Mad Bum had given up only one run. Then again, there were Dodgers on first and second when he was relieved by Yusmeiro Petit.

“The outside corner was hard to get today,” said Bochy of Bumgarner, who walked three and gave up six hits. Whether that was Bumgarner’s fault or the fault of home place ump Seth Buckminster can be debated.

Unarguable is the fact that Sandoval, the third-place hitter, is having a miserable time, most likely because this is the last year of his contract and he’s trying to make a big-dollar impression on whomever (Giants or any team) would sign him.

Bochy said that Sandoval should be thinking of hitting, that his agents are the ones who ought to be concerned with salaries and the like. It’s human nature, however, for a man to let the situation control his life.

“It’s got to be in his mind,” said a former Giants player.

Bochy said Sandoval, with only 11 hits, two homers and six RBI in 63 at bats is “really pressing. But it’s his job to play and not let anything else be a distraction.”

Dodgers starter Hyun-Jin Ryu was distracting enough for the Giants. He pitched a shutout for seven innings before leaving the game for a pinch hitter in the top of the eighth.

“We had the right guys up,” said Bochy, referring to when the Giants scored a run and had two more runners on, in the ninth against Kenley Jansen.

That would be Ehire Adrianza, who, taking over at second on a double-switch in the fifth, had three hits, one of those driving in Brandon Belt with San Francisco’s only run.

That would be Crawford, who pinch-hit for Joaquin Arias and flied out to end the game.

Bochy was not distraught. “The pitching,” he said about the series, “was really good for us.”

It had to be. Because the hitting was really bad for them.

“There’s not a guy out there I don’t have confidence in,” said Bochy, the general in support of his troops.

Statements such as that always are appreciated and admirable. A single at the proper time would be just as appreciated.

On Jackie Robinson Night, Giants win in early morning

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By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The game was everything baseball could be and should be, full of passion and tension, and carrying with it thoughts of a pioneer whose courage and skill helped shape the sport to what it has become.

This was the night the Major Leagues honored Jackie Robinson, and at AT&T Park, the timing was perfect, even if the game time, 4 hours and 54 minutes, may not have been.

The Dodgers, Jackie’s team, against the Giants, which almost were Jackie’s team.

The Brooklyn Dodgers, of course, when Robinson in June 1947 became the first African-American to play in the major leagues. And the New York Giants, who nine and half years later, in December 1956, traded for Robinson, unaware — as were the Dodgers — that Jackie had retired.

So much on this Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, 12 innings of baseball coming to an end at 12:14 a.m., a beautiful end for the several thousand fans who remained from the sellout crowd of 42,469.

Hector Sanchez singled home Brandon Crawford from third, and the Giants were 3-2 winners.

The rivalry. The revelry. The reminders that major league baseball was off-limits to African-Americans until 1947 when Jackie, as beautifully planned by Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, was elevated to the big club.

You know the story. You’ve seen the movie “42,” a slightly embellished version of Jackie’s life, as Hollywood biopics tend to be. That was Jackie’s number, 42, and Tuesday night it was worn by every player on both teams, by every player in the majors.

A grand gesture by the Giants, who used both their main radio announcer, Jon Miller, and famed Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully for the pre-game introductions. For the 86-year-old Scully, there was great meaning.

Beginning with the Dodgers in 1950, Scully not only knew Robinson but that winter he somehow got involved in an ice skating race with Jackie.

“We had some sort of symposium up at Grossinger’s in the Catskills,” Scully said earlier in the long evening. “There was a rink. I had grown up in New York, so I knew how to skate. Jackie, I don’t think had ever been on skates.

“He said, ‘I’ll race you.’ I was surprised. ‘But you don’t know how to skate.’  He told me, ‘That’s the way to learn.’”

What America learned was that baseball truly became an American game when the doors were opened to all races.

Another African-American who followed Robinson into the majors was Monte Irvin, who joined the Giants out of the Negro Leagues and played his way into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Irvin, 95, was invited to the pre-game festivities but sent a note, read to the crowd, that at his age air travel was too hard on his body. 

Irwin played with Willie Mays, and Mays, heading for his 83rd birthday, was in the Giants' clubhouse before the game, although he didn’t take part in any ceremonies. Too bad.

Another nice touch was the tribute to Boston on this first-year anniversary of the bombing at the marathon finish line. Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” the Red Sox’ theme song, was played over the sound system, and the AT&T crowd sang along, as the fans do at Fenway Park.

There was a full moon peering down from beyond McCovey Cove, further embellishing an evening made even more special when Sanchez, who had struck out as pinch hitter in the ninth and then replaced Buster Posey at catcher, ripped a pitch off Brandon League with two outs in the bottom of the 12th.

“I had to do something,” joked Sanchez. “My wife was sitting in our car in the parking lot for three hours.”

League was the seventh Dodgers pitcher. Yusmeiro Petit, who got the victory, was the eighth used by the Giants.

“It’s great that every year we honor Jackie Robinson the way we do,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said in his pre-game interview in the dugout. “No man had his impact on baseball and society.”

Bochy made his comments at 4:30 p.m. nearly eight full hours before he and his team were done for the evening. And the morning.

This one won’t be forgotten for a long while.

Newsday (N.Y.): Miguel Jimenez, at 50, shows the youngsters something at Masters

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

AUGUSTA, Ga. — He was close, and that did mean something for a 50-year-old in a sport where most of his competition is a decade or two younger.

Miguel Angel Jimenez didn't beat Bubba Watson, who won the Masters for the second time in three years. Nor did he finish ahead of Jordan Spieth or Jonas Blixt who, both being in their 20s -- Spieth 20, Blixt, 29 -- are young enough to be Jimenez's sons.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Bleacher Report: Renewed Bubba Watson Escapes Pressures, Looks Dominant After 2014 Masters

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

AUGUSTA, Ga. — He's won that second major, and do not forget the adage: Anyone can win one, but it takes a great golfer to win two or more.

What Bubba Watson won't forget is how he reacted to the first.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Bleacher Report: Anything Can Happen at Augusta: Get Ready for a Fantastic Finish at 2014 Masters

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Never mind who isn’t here, and, yes, we’ll get to that. Look who is here: the kid who may be America’s next great golfer, the lefty who won two years ago and a 50-year-old pot-bellied Spaniard.

And look where they are, high on the leaderboard, each with a legitimate chance of taking the 78th Masters.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Bleacher Report: Struggling Phil Mickelson Gets His Punishment, an Early Exit from 2014 Masters

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

AUGUSTA, Ga. — On the bubble. A bad place to be. But that’s where Phil Mickelson was. “Looking at the cut line,” he said.

And then off the bubble and under it and looking at a weekend without golf.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Bleacher Report: No Ordinary Family Affair for Craig and Kevin Stadler at the 2014 Masters

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

AUGUSTA, Ga. — They made history, but only one made birdies. The first father and son pair to play in the same Masters went their own ways on the scoreboard, which, according to others, is what they’d already done in their lives.

Craig Stadler, the dad, and Kevin, his first-born, were separated by 40 minutes Thursday on the pairing sheet of the 78th Masters and were separated by 12 strokes when the first round was over.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Bleacher Report: Is Jason Day Ready to Complete Improbable Journey and Win the 2014 Masters?

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Suddenly the kid from nowhere, from the Australian backcountry, from the tough childhood, is everywhere.

Suddenly, Jason Day is in the The New York Times and Sports Illustrated.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

UConn’s defense, free throws win a title

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By Art Spander

 

ARLINGTON, Texas — It’s a lost art, or so we’re told. Nobody cares about free throw shooting. Flying dunks get you on instant replays. All free throws do is get you a national championship.

There’s a lesson to be learned and a skill to be practiced. University of Connecticut, UConn in the vernacular, was perfect from the foul line Monday night, 10 for 10.

That the Huskies were relentless on defense was something also to be recognized.

As UConn will be recognized for an NCAA title with a 60-54 win over Kentucky in a final game that had two former presidents of the United States, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, side by side and next to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

It was at Jerry’s place, AT&T Stadium, the huge spaceship of building on the plains — the networks call the area North Texas, like Southern California or Eastern Europe — where this final game of the 2014 college basketball season drew a record crowd, 79,238.

It was at Jerry’s place where that solid defense and that perfection from the line kept Kentucky behind from start to finish. Not once in 40 minutes did the Wildcats creep into the lead.

“The way we started really cost us the game,” said John Calipari, the Kentucky coach.

The Cats hit only 5 of their first 17 field goal attempts. The Cats trailed, 30-14, with a second less than six minutes remaining in the first half.

That they cut the margin to four, 35-31, by halftime verified the Calipari contention that his players never gave up. Huzzah. They just never got ahead, either.

“Why?” asked Calipari, rhetorically. “Duh. Five freshmen in their first final. Give Connecticut credit. They were the aggressor. I told my team we had to be aggressive, sprint the ball up the court, to attack them and not let them attack you. We jogged. But again, these kids fought and tried.”

So did UConn, which had senior leadership from guard Shabazz Napier, a brilliant defender, hawking the ball, battling through screens, and an excellent shooter.

He was 8 for 16, 4 of 9 beyond the 3-point arc. He had three steals. He had three assists. He was selected outstanding player of the game.

“Napier impacted the game,” said Calipari. "He impacted every game he’s played. Terrific player. He has a swagger about him, and he deserved to have the swagger.”

UConn had some failings, missing 10 of its first 11 shots in the second half. But when Kentucky came close, 48-47 late in the second half, there was Napier, swish, with a killer 3-pointer.

“He made a play,” Calipari said. “He made that dagger."

UConn, at No. 7, is the lowest seed ever to win the championship. The Huskies had trouble overcoming St. Joseph’s, 89-81, in the first round of the tournament and during the season they lost three times to Louisville, one time by the score of 81-48. So they finished with an overall record of 32-8.

Still, they are No. 1 at the end, which counts, doesn’t it?

“I said in the beginning 18 months ago,” second-year UConn coach Kevin Ollie told CBS-TV, “when we started the process was going to be first. We was last. Now we’re first.”

Ollie, who grew up in the tough part of Los Angeles and went to Crenshaw High, doesn’t always speak the King’s English, but his thoughts are well understood. And after spending years in the NBA, a journeyman going from one team to another, he understands winning basketball.

His teams swarm on defense — the Huskies shut down No. 1 Florida in Saturday’s semifinal — and they are fundamentally sound. Ten for 10 from the line. Only 10 turnovers.

“Coach Jim Calhoun, the greatest coach ever, paved the way,” said Ollie, who was recruited by Calhoun and then before the 2012-13 season replaced him.

This was the fourth national championship for UConn, each of its last three coming in Texas — one in San Antonio, one in Houston and now one in the suburbs of Dallas.

“We ran out of time,” said Calipari.

More accurately, they ran into UConn.

Bleacher Report: How DeAndre Daniels Found His Inner Superstar and Started Dominating for UConn

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

ARLINGTON, Texas — No one knew what DeAndre Daniels wanted. Maybe not even DeAndre Daniels. He was a 6'8" kid with a fine shooting touch and very little sense of direction.

Daniels was the highest-ranked unsigned recruit in the Class of 2011 when he chose Connecticut. After almost opting for Kentucky. After thinking about Kansas. After decommiting from Texas, once his “dream team.”

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Big D wins for UConn in the Big D

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By Art Spander

ARLINGTON, Texas — Big D they call this area, the Metroplex, the suburbs of Dallas. Big D, as in defense, which is what Connecticut, UConn, put up against Florida.

Which had won 30 straight games. Which had been ranked the best college team in the land.

Such a lark for the Gators. A 16-4 lead, a presumed place in Monday’s final. And then Big D from UConn, D as in difference, because on this Saturday night deep in the heart of Texas, that was the difference in the first game of the two NCAA semifinals.

They were at Jerry Jones’ “Joynt,” the massive, billion-dollar domed stadium on the plains, created by the Cowboys' owner, who along with 80,000 others — the majority of whom booed Jerry when he was shown on the huge TV screen — watched how defense could take control.

It was defense that took UConn (31-8) from that early deficit to a 63-43 victory and into the championship against Kentucky, which defeated Wisconsin, 74-73.

The Gators (36-3) couldn’t get the ball inside. Couldn’t get the ball into the basket.

UConn’s guards, Ryan Boatright and Shabazz Napier, pressured and hustled, swatted and flailed. And also scored, backing DeAndre Daniels’ 20 points, Boatright with 13, Napier with 12.

But that didn’t mean as much as the way they kept Florida from scoring.

They harassed Scottie Wilbekin, the guard who runs the Gators, limiting him to four points and one assist. They forced him into three turnovers. As a team, Florida had only three assists total. And 11 turnovers.

“The difference in the game,” said Florida coach Billy Donovan, “was Scottie Wilbekin couldn’t live in the in the lane like he had all year long for us.”

He had to take up temporary residence in a less advantageous part of the court, where the mistakes were greater than the contributions.

“That’s not what we usually do,” said Wilbekin. “That’s crazy. All credit goes to them and their guards, and the way they were denying and putting pressure on us.

“We weren’t taking care of the ball. When we would get by them, we wouldn’t keep the ball tight, and they would reach from behind. We were being too loose.”

Wilbekin had averaged 15 points, three assists and only one turnover in the seven postseason games Florida played before Saturday night.

“On offense,” he said after his last game as a senior, “we couldn’t get anything going. They were being really aggressive. A couple of us were having bad shooting nights.”

UConn’s guards were the reason.

“He couldn’t get off screens,” conceded Donovan.

Exactly the way Kevin Ollie, UConn’s second-year coach, had planned it.

“We just wanted to be relentless,” he said. “Wanted to make them uncomfortable. We wanted to challenge every dribble, every pass. They wanted to attack empty elbows, if you understand what I’m saying, where they’re coming off pick-and-rolls. So we wanted to keep them on the baseline.”

At the beginning of December, when both schools were searching for the future, Florida and UConn met at Connecticut’s Gampbel Pavilion, and Napier hit one at the buzzer for a 65-64 win by the Huskies.

That was Florida’s last defeat. Until Saturday night.

“Certainly we would have loved to have played on Monday night,” said Donovan, who coached Florida to NCAA titles in 2006 and 2007, “and I told them before the game that the team that plays the best is going to play on Monday night.

“I thought UConn played better than we did.”

Did he expect that? No. Did we expect that? No way. We always figure that the favorite will end up the winner. Yet college basketball is a delightfully unpredictable sport, one with athletes leaping in celebration and pom-pom girls weeping in dismay.

The Florida cheerleaders paraded gloomily from AT&T Stadium, which is what the building has been named, only hours after arriving with a spring in their step. Their team would take another title. Except it wouldn’t.

“As the clock’s unwinding,” said Donovan of the final seconds, when defeat was unavoidable, “you’re kind of sitting there and kind of realize this is getting ready to come to an end.”

As it did, along with a 30-game unbeaten streak, a chance for the championship.

UConn stopped both. Big D in the Big D.

Bleacher Report: Has Time Run out for Tiger Woods After Missing 2014 Masters with Back Injury?

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

The clock ticks. No one wants to hear the sound. Few pay attention, particularly athletes. They believe they’ll always be young. Until suddenly they’re not.

A golfer’s career is long, longer than careers in other sports, but it is not forever. The opportunities get fewer as the months and the tournaments go by.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

‘I’d boo me too,’ says A’s new closer Jim Johnson

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Opening day is for baseball. Opening night is for the theater. But if the A’s, the defending AL West Division champions, had tried to play an afternoon game Monday they would have been rained out. After dark they merely were shut out.

Only one of 162. That’s the way major leaguers reflect on every defeat. In the major leagues if you lose one out of three you’ll have great season, a 90-win season or better.

But it hurts to lose that first one. Especially at home. Especially in front of a rare sellout crowd, 36,067.

Especially when the relief pitcher you traded for in the off-season enters in a tied ninth inning and pitches so poorly that Oakland not only loses to the Cleveland Indians, 2-0, but he is booed when pulled after three of the four batters he faced reached base.

The A’s had a reliable closer in Grant Balfour, but they — meaning GM Billy Beane and others in the front office — saw a reason to acquire Jim Johnson from the Orioles and dump Balfour. Johnson had more than a 100 saves over the previous two years for Baltimore.

He made his first appearance in Oakland’s first game. He was not at all impressive.

“I did everything you’re not supposed to do as a pitcher,” confided Johnson, who to his credit didn’t try to hide in a clubhouse packed with reporters and TV cameras.

What he was supposed to do remains conjecture. What he did was walk the first man he faced, Asdrubal Cabrera, give up a single to the next man he faced, David Murphy, and hit with a pitch the third man he faced, Yan Gomes. Bases loaded and no one out. Help!

Nyjer Morgan’s fly to center got an out but it also got Cabrera home on a sacrifice fly. Nick Swisher singled to center, scoring Murphy, and as the disenchanted gathering at the O.co Coliseum provided an accompaniment of boos, out went Johnson, replaced by Fernando Abad.

“I would have booed me too,” agreed Johnson after a debut not long to be remembered. “It’s not the way you want to start with a new team. It’s too bad after the way Sonny Gray battled. But there will be better days.”

Gray, named to start an opener for the first time in his brief career, thought there wouldn’t even be a game because of the afternoon downpour. The uncertainty had him even more nervous than a 24-year-old with only 61 days of major league experience could ever be.

“It was kind of tough mentally,” said Gray. He walked two of the first three Indians batters and needed to throw 29 pitches in the opening inning. Still, no one scored — then or in the subsequent five innings Gray pitched.

Of course, no one scored for the A’s in nine innings, including the eighth when they had the bases loaded and one out. Josh Donaldson had hit one more than 400 feet off the center field boards, but the A’s on base ahead of him, Daric Barton and Coco Crisp, had to hold up on the ball to make sure it wouldn’t be caught.

After Donaldson’s blast, reduced to a single, Jed Lowrie struck out and Brandon Moss grounded to first.

Oakland manager Bob Melvin, a stable sort, shrugged off the entire experience. The A’s had been unable to play their final exhibition Saturday at Oakland against the Giants because of a rainstorm. Maybe just the opportunity to get through game, even a losing game, was a relief of sorts.

The A’s are built on pitching, and through eight innings Gray, Luke Gregerson and Sean Doolittle provided shutout pitching. No complaints there.

The ninth undid them, but if you can’t get a run on offense then something bad is bound to occur.

“He walks the first guy,” said Melvin, a onetime catcher, analyzing Johnson’s ineffectiveness. “But he’s always the type of guy who’s one pitch away form getting a double play. It just wasn’t his day.”

At noon you’d have sworn it would be no one’s day except the groundskeepers. The rain was coming down hard, and not far away in Berkeley lightning hit a tree and split it down the middle. At 4 p.m., three hours before the scheduled first pitch, workers were pushing water by the gallon off the tarp covering the infield.

The poor A’s, was your only thought. Tickets already sold. Anticipation high. A couple of exhibition wins over the Giants at AT&T Park in their rear-view mirror. How cruel the sporting gods are.

Then, as if on cue, the sun came out. The A’s and their fans finally had a good break. Until the ninth inning.

Bleacher Report: Masters 2014: Playing the Waiting Game with Tiger Woods

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By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

The pain is physical, a back that aches when Tiger Woods swings a golf club, which he must do if he is to play the game.

The pain is mental. The Masters is just over a week away, a tradition like no other, as we’re so often reminded by Jim Nantz, a tradition to which Woods has contributed greatly. And Tiger, winner of four green jackets, is wondering whether he’ll compete.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.