Their Paths Were Vastly Different

Down by 20 points with 2:50 left in the first half, with your best player destined to foul out with 4:02 left in the second half.

Down by 15 points with 4:02 left in the second half, facing an opponent that shoots free throws at a clip of better than 77%.

Obviously, what we had here were two textbook studies on how to win an NCAA regional final in overtime.

Saturday in Albuquerque, the Louisville Cardinals watched the West Virginia Mountaineers make three-point baskets from mountains near and far away, gasped a lot, blinked a lot, and talked themselves into staying on the court only because, well, no quintet of mortal humans could keep that up for a full 40 minutes, right?

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Cardinals when star forward Francisco Garcia logged his fifth foul with barely four minutes left in regulation, with Louisville still trailing by five points. What to do now? Besides digging in on defense and hurtling themselves after every missed shot and praying for anything to stop Kevin Pittsnogle from channeling the spirit of Jerry West ‘59, there wasn’t much left for the Cardinals at that point.

Sure enough, the West Virginia three-point assault eventually cooled ... all the way down to below 70%.

Louisville then scraped together a few inside baskets, blocked a shot in the last half-minute and, how about this, the Cardinals had somehow forced overtime. Once there, the Mountaineers began to look tired -- hoisting all those long shots can do that to a team -- and remarkably, Louisville proceeded to grind out an unlikely 93-85 victory.

A couple of hours later in Chicago, top-seeded Illinois was mired in even more dire straits. The Illini, unable to cope with Arizona’s bruising inside game, were down by 15 points with four minutes left in regulation, down by 14 points with 3:33 to go, down by eight points with 1:03 left.

Following the lead of Washington and Duke on Friday, Illinois was a No. 1-seeded team planted high on the endangered species list. To that juncture, Illinois’ strategy had been just the opposite of Louisville’s. Instead of trying to withstand a three-point barrage, the Illini were subsisting almost entirely on long-range wishful thinking, not the best way to overhaul any team coached by anyone as tournament savvy as Lute Olson.

Or so one had to think.

With the possible exception of Olson’s Wildcats, who suddenly stopped thinking. Illinois applied the press, because it was the only option it had, and for a handful of gruesome minutes, everything Arizona attempted stopped making sense.

Stupid passes. Stupid shots. “Some just stupid turnovers,” as Arizona center Channing Frye would acknowledge during his postgame interview session.

Incredibly, Arizona frittered away all of its lead down the stretch, allowing Illinois to tie the score at 80-80 with a closing 17-3 run.

Onto overtime, where Arizona got a second chance to do a bunch of other stupid stuff, including a final play that did not include Frye or Salim Stoudamire touching the ball. Instead, the most important play of Arizona’s season revolved around Hassan Adams holding the ball far too long before casting an off-balance jumper that slapped the backboard as the buzzer sounded.

Illinois had advanced to the Final Four by an amazing final score, 90-89.

Next Saturday in St. Louis, Illinois (36-1) will play Louisville (33-4) in one national semifinal. In itself, there’s nothing surprising about that. Illinois has been the nation’s top-ranked team for 17 weeks. Louisville was a No. 1-seeded team masquerading as a No. 4, as Washington rudely discovered in the round of 16.

This much, however, is surprising: To get to that semifinal, the Illini and the Cardinals had to overcome a combined deficit of 35 points during their fourth-round games.

Just your basic routine roads to the Final Four.

Of Saturday’s losers, West Virginia certainly deserved better. Given hardly a thought on Selection Sunday, the Mountaineers quickly became the unofficial adrenaline suppliers of this NCAA tournament. Their double-overtime 111-105 victory over Wake Forest was an “instant classic” that actually lived up to the hype. Their three-point expertise was nothing less than a marvel to behold.

“They were falling out of bounds, shooting from half-court, banking them in,” Louisville Coach Rick Pitino said during a CBS interview, shaking his head in admiration.

The Mountaineers made 18 three-pointers, an Elite Eight record, out of 27 tries -- for an absolutely absurd percentage of 66.7%. And still, they lost in overtime.

You have to hand it to West Virginia. The Mountaineers threw everything they had at Louisville. Unlike Arizona’s Wildcats, who handed it to Illinois by throwing everything away at the end.