Heavyweights Still Standing at the Finish

The high in Minneapolis on Sunday was 23 degrees, with a wind-chill factor of minus-6.

Snow is expected Wednesday.

Onward to the Final Freeze!

It seems like an ice age ago since Winthrop was knocked out of this NCAA tournament, but it really has been less than three weeks since the field of 65 was pared to 64, then 32, then 16 and now four.

Michigan State held off Temple on Sunday to win the South Regional title, while Arizona outlasted the University of Illinois at Glasgow (Robert Archibald) to win the Midwest.

And so next Saturday’s Final Four field is set. Arizona plays Michigan State in one national semifinal--a matchup that should be a carbon copy of Sunday’s Arizona-Illinois fist fight.

Michigan State hasn’t reached Duke-like status yet, but the Spartans are making their third consecutive Final Four appearance and seek to become the first team since Duke in 1992 to defend a national title.

The other semifinal pits Duke and Maryland, a game that is a carbon copy.

The schools already have met three times this year, Duke winning two of the three but hardly in a position to brag about it.

A quick Sunday recap:

The only thing missing in Arizona’s 87-81 victory was a cut-man. Six Illinois players fouled out in a game that proved the Pacific 10 Conference can take a punch.

In fact, Arizona forward Michael Wright may look in the mirror this morning and see Arturo Gatti.

Despite regional final losses by Stanford and USC, the Pac-10 enters the Final Four with a conference-best 12-4 tournament record.

You can’t help but get swept up a bit with Arizona, the preseason No. 1, which weathered a turbulent season in which Coach Lute Olson lost his wife, Bobbi, to ovarian cancer.

Those weren’t all tears of joy Olson was fighting back after Sunday’s victory.

CBS analyst Bill Walton, in the awkward position of having to call a game in which his son was a participant--”Terrible pass by Walton!”--recounted some of Arizona’s travails this season, including the one-game suspension of forward Richard Jefferson.

Walton did not mention Jefferson was suspended in the wake of taking free plane fare and NBA tickets from Luke Walton’s father.

Illinois did its best to derail the Lute-Olson-deserves-this moment, getting an unexpected performance from Archibald, an import from Scotland, who pulled the wool over Arizona’s eyes for 25 points.

Arizona can expect more of the same from Michigan State next weekend. The Spartans are the top rebounding team in the country and hail from the same rugby-scrum Big Ten Conference.

The sad residual of Michigan State’s victory is that it came at Temple’s expense.

“If we weren’t playing them, I’d be rooting for them to get to a national championship,” Spartan Coach Tom Izzo told CBS after the game.

John Chaney’s Owls, the 11th-seeded team in the South, made a miraculous run to the regional final. But how come the buck always has to stop here?

The 69-year-old Chaney has yet to push through to a Final Four, having been bounced from a regional final for the fifth time. Four of those losses came against top-seeded teams.

Few expected this Chaney squad to make it this far.

If not for a last-second victory over George Washington in the second round of the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament, Temple would not have made the field of 65.

As the hour-glass runs out on Chaney’s career, we think of the near misses. In 1988, Chaney’s Owls were top seeded in the East until losing to Duke. Mark Macon, Temple’s star guard, made only six of 29 shots.

We think back to last year, Chaney’s best Final Four shot since ’88.

But in a second-round game against Seton Hall, star guard Pepe Sanchez fouled out and Ty Shine, a Seton Hall reserve, scored 26 points to lead his team to an overtime victory.

“I feel high because these kids got me here,” Chaney said after Sunday’s loss. “I feel low because I couldn’t carry them any further.”

Duke making the Final Four is not a news bulletin.

This is the school’s 13th appearance and the ninth for Coach Mike Krzyzewski.

It’s an incredible feat in the post John Wooden era, but Duke needs to hang another banner soon or risk wearing the Atlanta Braves tag--tremendous decade, but how come so few rings?

Duke has not won a national title since 1992.

Krzyzewski has lost four times in the title game, most recently to Connecticut in 1999. That Duke team was one of the more talented in college basketball history, but couldn’t close the deal.

This year’s team isn’t as good.

“I don’t consider us a great basketball team,” Krzyzewski says.

What the Blue Devils have are the nation’s two best players in senior forward Shane Battier and sophomore guard Jason Williams, who averaged 28 points in four games and has been, by far, the most dominating player in this tournament.

What to make of Duke-Maryland IV?

Unlike Wisconsin vs. Michigan State, which met for a fourth time in a national semifinal last season, the Duke-Maryland rematch has some appeal.

Duke won two of the three previous games, but Maryland easily could have swept the series.

On Jan. 27 at Maryland, the Terrapins blew a 10-point lead in the final minute and lost in overtime, 98-96.

It was a collapse, but seldom is it mentioned that Maryland lost the lead in part because starting point guard Steve Blake fouled out with 1:51 left in regulation.

To that point, Blake had held Williams to 13 points and 10 turnovers.

Maryland dominated the rematch in Durham a month later, 91-80, getting a 28-point performance from guard Juan Dixon.

Duke won the third game in the ACC tournament semifinals, 82-80.

The winning basket came with 1.3 seconds left when Nate James tipped in a missed shot by Williams.

Maryland nearly won the game when Dixon almost made a half-court shot at the buzzer.

Maryland Coach Gary Williams joked this week that his team’s two losses against Duke were labeled “instant classics” while his team’s 11-point victory rarely rates a mention.

Post mortems, local:

* USC’s victory over Kentucky and run to the East Regional final ranks as one of the top tournament highlights. Funny, but that’s sort of the way we thought USC could play all season. Now comes the price of fame. Coach Henry Bibby’s name is traveling warp-speed on the Internet gossip wires as a possible candidate for open vacancies across America.

Will the football school that just hired Pete Carroll for $1 million per season do what it takes to keep Bibby?

Stay tuned.

* UCLA. Frankly, Lav, we could use the rest after this soap opera season, although there is no excuse for allowing Jason Kapono to pick up his fourth foul in the first half against Duke.

* Stanford. We’ll miss the brainiacs and their thoughtful quotes. Maryland played a perfect game. What can you do? In the end, the loss of front court men Curtis Borchardt and Justin Davis to injuries caught up with the Cardinal. It was the last ride for seniors Michael McDonald, Ryan Mendez, Jarron Collins and possibly his brother, Jason.

Good news: sophomore All American Casey Jacobsen is probably returning.

“What the seniors taught me was mostly what you all don’t see,” Jacobsen said. “Their careers were amazing. My goal is to leave Stanford basketball sometime with as much pride and dignity as they have left with us.”

* Bob Knight. He was named coach at Texas Tech on Friday.

It’s the most news Knight has made this deep in the tournament since 1993, the last time he took a team past the second round.