After this weekend in Minneapolis, everything could be different for Virginia, Michigan State, Texas Tech, or Auburn.
The 2019 Final Four in Minneapolis will feature three head coaches leading their teams in a national semifinal for the first time, two programs making their first appearance on the sport’s biggest stage, and one looking to become the just the 10th member of college basketball’s three titles or more club.
The action on the final Saturday and Monday of the season always comes at us fast, and the immediate reaction is typically limited to what it all means for the players and the coaches directly involved in that moment. History reveals a larger, more intense reality. Every March, and every Final Four is loaded with one or two split seconds that have the ability to change the direction and the perception of an entire program forever.
Two years in particular exemplify this phenomenon better than any others.
1989
When the topic of the 1989 national championship game arises, the name that immediately pops into the heads of most college basketball fans is Rumeal Robinson. The sophomore guard’s two clutch free throws with three seconds to play in overtime wound up being the difference in Michigan’s 90-89 win over Seton Hall, a victory which gave the Wolverines a national title that still stands alone as the only one in program history.
For a smaller contingent, a different name pops up when the ‘89 title game is mentioned and their brain’s synapses reflexively fire: John Clougherty. It was Clougherty who called the foul on Gerald Greene, sending Robinson to the line to make the free throws that would change both programs forever. Thirty years later, the call remains an extremely sore subject for Seton Hall fans, Michigan-haters, and critics of officials alike.
With good reason ...
P.J. Carlesimo would spend three more seasons at Seton Hall before venturing out on an ill-fated career as a head coach in the NBA. He would go on to win three NBA championships as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs, but 1989 would exist forever as the closest he ever came to winning a championship as a head coach. To his credit, Carlesimo has never openly criticized Clougherty’s call.
“Sure, I wish he hadn’t made the call, but the thing that everyone forgets is if he hadn’t made the call, they were going to get a shot,’’ Carlesimo said in 2014. “Rumeal would have dribbled himself into a jump shot or he would have passed it to Loy Vaught and Loy would have taken an elbow jump shot.
“That’s the way the game should have ended. You want it to end with somebody doing something good. I guess Michigan people would say, ‘Well, it did — with Rumeal making two free throws.’ But you’d prefer that it comes down to a shot — a guy makes or misses a shot — and that’s the way the game ends. But it didn’t.
“Do I think about it? Yeah. People bring it up.’’
Carlesimo isn’t the only notable name from that team who struggles to keep himself from playing the “what if” game when thinking about April 3, 1989.
“It was a life-changing call,” said Seton Hall backup guard Pookey Washington. “If you are a national champion, your life is different, the way you are perceived is different. We didn’t think about that at the time, but as I navigate through my real life, that’s a huge piece that altered everyone’s movement in the world. That’s how big that call was … and you can’t get that back.’’
Seton Hall hasn’t sniffed a national championship since 1989. Carlesimo led the Pirates to the Elite Eight in 1991, but they haven’t played in another regional final since. In the time since Carlesimo bolted for the NBA in 1994, Seton Hall has missed the NCAA tournament entirely a whopping 18 times. Despite some recent success under head coach Kevin Willard, the Pirates still haven’t been to the Sweet 16 since 2000, and have won just won game in the Big Dance since 2004.
How different might all that be if Clougherty had swallowed his whistle and Seton Hall, not Michigan, is known for the last three decades as a national championship-winning program?
“The big question is would P.J. Carlesimo have stayed if they’d won a national title,” said longtime college basketball writer Jerry Carino of the Asbury Park Press in Monmouth, New Jersey. “There’s no way to know for sure if he would have, but it certainly would have made a difference when you’re talking about the direction the program ended up going.
“Everybody around here has always looked at that team as a national championship team. That call was so egregiously bad. They had a parade for that Seton Hall team when they came back. They come back every few years for a reunion and they always roll out the red carpet for those guys.”
The monumental pendulum swing works both ways.
In the 30 years since their win over Seton Hall, Michigan has advanced all the way to the national championship game on four occasions, including a year ago. In all four of those games, the Wolverines have tasted defeat.
How different would the reputation of Michigan basketball be if the Wolverines had played in seven national title games (they were also national runners-up in 1965 and 1976) without cutting the nets a single time? It’s not hard to make the case that a single foul call is the only thing keeping John Beilein’s program from existing in the same plane the Buffalo Bills will be forever stuck in until they win a Super Bowl.
A championship changes everything, and everything is what’s on the line for Virginia, Texas Tech and Auburn this weekend in Minneapolis.
2000
The outlier in this year’s Final Four is Michigan State, one of just 15 programs in college basketball that has won multiple national championships. The Spartans head coach, Tom Izzo, is making his eighth appearance in the Final Four, the fifth-most of any head coach in the history of the sport.
That’s an impressive fact that might automatically be coming with an unimpressive addendum if not for a split second in 2000.
On March 9 of that year, in the quarterfinals of the Conference USA tournament, Cincinnati star Kenyon Martin broke his right leg after incidental contact from a Saint Louis player forced him into an awkward fall.
Seconds before that incidental contact, Cincinnati was 28-2 and the undisputed No. 1 team in the country. Martin was college basketball’s unstoppable force, a player who, even after the injury, swept every major national Player of the Year award. Seconds after that incidental contact, the entire landscape of the sport had shifted.
Martin’s injury occurred just three minutes into the game against Saint Louis, a team Cincinnati had beaten by 43 points only five days earlier. The Bearcats never recovered from the shock of Martin going down, and lost their postseason opener to the Bilikens by 10.
Cincinnati head coach Bob Huggins saw the writing on the wall almost immediately.
“My frustration is for (the players),” Huggins said following the loss to Saint Louis. “I think I’m going to be able to do this a lot longer and will have more good teams. This was their chance. I think in life you have very few chances to be special.”
Despite having a resume that should have clearly earned them a spot on the top line, Martin’s injury resulted in the NCAA tournament selection committee giving UC a No. 2 seed. Cincinnati was able to get past UNC-Wilmington in round one, but lost 69-61 to seventh-seeded Tulsa two days later. An unfitting end to what had seemed to be over the preceding months a dream season.
Huggins’ premonition about coaching good teams in the future wound up being accurate. He took Cincinnati to the Sweet 16 a year later, and would ultimately make his second Final Four with West Virginia in 2010. Cruelly, that run with the Mountaineers also ended with an injury to a star player, as All-American Da’Sean Butler tore his ACL during WVU’s national semifinal loss to eventual champion Duke.
Almost two decades after Huggins lamented the loss of something special for his players, Huggins appears to have realized how Martin’s injury has affected his own legacy. Unlike P.J. Carlesimo, Huggins has never shied away from speaking in absolute terms when playing the “what if” game.
“If we had had Kenyon, we would have won the national championship,” Huggins said flatly in 2016. It wasn’t the first or the last time he would make the proclamation.
That national championship would ultimately go to Izzo and Michigan State. Led by star point guard Mateen Cleaves, the Spartans rolled through the NCAA tournament on their way to the program’s second national title. In the Final Four, they were tasked with defeating eighth-seeded Wisconsin (53-41) and fifth-seeded Florida (89-76).
It’s staggering to think about how a college basketball world with one slight change — Martin is one foot more to the left for that moment on March 9, 2000 or his right leg just absorbs the incidental contact in a slightly different manner — can be so vastly altered.
Let’s say Martin remains the best player in the country for the rest of that month, Cincinnati remains the best team in the country for the rest of that month, and the Bearcats wind up winning their first national championship since 1962. Huggins isn’t just a coach with a big personality and 850+ career wins, he’s a coach with a big personality, 850+ career wins, and at least one national championship. Maybe he’s never forced to step down at Cincinnati, maybe he’s already Hall of Fame, certainly he’s perceived differently. One awkward step.
And what about Izzo? In this world, he never earns the reputation of “Mr. March.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He’s coming to Minneapolis this weekend on a mission to forever shake the stigma of being known as “the best head coach to never win a national championship,” the guy who had been inches of the mountain top seven times before, but still had never been able to plant that flag. One awkward step.
The college basketball gods give, and the college basketball gods take away. History tells us what they choose to give and what they choose to take away on Saturday and Monday will affect the programs involved for decades to come.