Yes, cool nicknames for pressure defenses cross the boundaries of language and sport.
The Syracuse basketball team presses when it’s desperate.
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“Our personnel is not suited for it,” coach Jim Boeheim said Friday. “It was good for four minutes against Virginia and two minutes against Gonzaga. I wouldn’t trust it too much longer than that. I didn’t.”
So do not expect to see a lot of Syracuse’s press in Saturday’s second game in the NCAA Final Four, the one matching the Orange and North Carolina, the lone remaining No. 1 seed. With the Tar Heels favored by 9 1/2 points according to Linemakers, though, it is likely we will see some of it. Which leads to the question: Is it possible the widespread panic we’ve seen in the past three weeks could spill onto the Final Four stage?
If the 2016 NCAA Tournament has one overriding theme, this is it. There have been at least five stunning collapses among the 64 games played to date. Given that the teams reaching the NCAAs are typically exceptional, it has been astounding to watch so many of them dissolve. The meltdowns have been as long as 10 minutes or as brief as 20 seconds, but they began on the first Thursday and continued into the Elite Eight.
Perhaps we could see more Saturday or Monday. Oklahoma did not do well against West Virginia in the Big 12 Tournament, turning over the ball 21 times in a semifinal loss. What if Villanova falls behind because Buddy Hield hits a bunch of 3s and slaps on a press out of desperation?
It is rare for teams that use full-court pressure as their primary defensive tactic to reach the deepest levels of the NCAAs. Richardson loved the name he gave his D, but when his Arkansas Razorbacks reached three Final Fours in the 1990s they were built around high-level low-post talents Oliver Miller and Corliss Williamson. Maryland’s Gary Williams had to quit pressing to get to a Final Four and then win one in 2002. Pressure tends to work best at home, with an enthusiastic crowd behind it. Its effect can be muted on the road or at neutral courts.
Boeheim said there are few good pressing teams now, “Because it’s hard to press good teams. Whenever you press, you double-team the ball. If you’re double-teaming the ball, there’s a guy open. Good teams find that guy.”
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This typically is the case, but in this tournament several good teams have dissolved when protecting leads that seemed to assure their advancement to the next round.
“It’s not freshmen making these mistakes,” said Jordan Cornette of the Notre Dame radio network and a former Irish star forward. “It’s really bewildering to me because it’s such experienced kids this is happening to. And some guys have been in that moment. I think what it comes down to is — these might not be the four best teams, but some of these guys have the intestinal fortitude or that gene where the moment never seems too big for them. They play the same way out here as they do in the third week of the basketball season in November.
“Some guys tighten up in that moment. Doesn’t mean they’re not clutch players, but in that moment they realize the season’s on the line, the nation is watching and they tighten up more so than they would early in the season.”
It began with Purdue against Little Rock, the Boilermakers leading by 14 points with 4:05 left and still up by seven with 2 minutes to go. They were caught by the Trojans and lost in double overtime.
There was the epic meltdown by Northern Iowa against Texas A&M in which the Panthers lost a 12-point lead that stood with 35 seconds left, thanks to a series of plays that each had to be as disastrous as possible for the result to be anything but a UNI victory.
Wisconsin led Notre Dame with 28 seconds left after Vitto Brown’s 3-pointer broke a tie, but Nigel Hayes turned over the ball against a Notre Dame trap after the inbound passer ignored point guard Bronson Koenig’s wide-open cut across the court to strand Hayes in the left corner in an Irish two-man trap.
And in Chicago, the Orange came from behind to beat both Gonzaga and Virginia, two well-coached teams with veteran players that had established over the preponderance of those games that they were the superior teams. But they were not, in the end, the winners.
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“It’s the nature of this tournament to be so special, and they’re still 18-to-22 years old. And they look up with 10 minutes and they’re up double-figures, they’re going to relax,” Big Ten Network analyst Stephen Bardo told Sporting News. “I don’t care what team it is. What we’re seeing is, these other teams that are fighting to come from behind, this is it. There’s a finality about losing in this tournament that propels teams to come from behind.”
For some of the players involved, there also has been a finality to the finality. For some, it’s not just their seasons that end, it’s also their college careers. And for a few of the seniors, there might not be any significant competitive basketball beyond this tournament.
Maybe it’s an advantage to be Syracuse freshman Malachi Richardson, well aware that there’ll be NBA games in his future and delighted to make this last as long as he can.
“I think ignorance is bliss in that situation,” Bardo said. “He knows it’s the Elite Eight. But does he really know? He may never get back here again. He’s still kind of a freshman like, ‘Let me just go play. I’m going to prove coach wrong.’ And look what we’ve got.”
