Final Four Matchup: Jayhawks vs. Tarheels
GAME: Kansas Jayhawks (35-3) vs North Carolina Tar Heels (36-2)
DATE/TIME: Saturday, April 05 - 8:45 PM EST
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - If the choice had to be made between talent and experience, Roy Williams knows what he'd pick.
"I think everyone would take experienced talent over anything else," he said.
He is one of the few coaches who has that commodity - rarer by the day in college basketball - at his disposal this season.
Which is why Williams is coaching North Carolina in the Final Four.
"At this level, with the four teams that are in, what you have is you have basically experienced talent on every team," he said.
But the Tar Heels and Kansas, their opponent in Saturday's second semifinal, have that combination in a particularly special way.
Tyler Hansbrough vs. Brandon Rush, though they may never find themselves paired up one-on-one in this game, is the kind of junior-vs.-junior matchup that has become all too rare in the college game.
Hansbrough had the stats to leave after last season - 18 points, eight rebounds per game - but he likes college and comes from a family that didn't need money. No rush to head to the NBA, he stayed and some say he might stay again when this season's over.
Meanwhile, Rush was supposed to be out the door after last year, but a knee injury that forced him into ligament surgery limited his choices, brought him back to KU, and now, he's two wins away from a reward that money can't buy - the national title.
And that's not all.
"It's possible I could be a better draft pick than I was last year," Rush said in interview last month. "Just because of the type of team we have. How far we go in the postseason will help me out a lot, too. Everything is better."
In a season in which the NCAA selection committee seemed to get everything right - no big controversies when the bracket came out, all four No. 1 seeds making it to the Final Four for the first time - even the semifinal pairings had a certain perfectness about them.
The UCLA-Memphis game, in addition to being a rematch of their classic 1973 final dominated by Bill Walton, pits the two remaining top freshmen in the country, Derrick Rose and Kevin Love. And Kansas-Carolina not only gives us Williams going against his old school but also lends a rare view at two upperclassmen stars leading their teams.
The experience factor on these teams doesn't stop at Hansbrough and Rush.
You have to go nine players down the Kansas scoring list before you find your first freshman. All but one of the starters, Darrell Arthur, are upperclassmen. Russell Robinson, Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun: Real college basketball fans know these names not necessarily because they're tearing it up every day, but because they're true college players. They've been around a while.
Carolina is basically the same story. The Heels have only one active freshman on the roster, Will Graves, and he barely plays. The rest of the lineup includes sophomores Ty Lawson, Deon Thompson and Wayne Ellington and junior Marcus Ginyard.
Those who argue that a team must have a superstar, the kind of guy with such great talent that he almost has to go pro after one year, can easily point to Carmelo Anthony, who led Syracuse to the national title in 2003 then left, as expected, for the NBA.
Just as solid an argument, however, could be made for the Florida Gators, who won two in a row with Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer, Al Horford and the rest. They won their first title as sophomores, their second as juniors, and coach Billy Donovan argued they should be considered one of the best teams of all time considering the 'dynasty' they established in an era that dictates against them.
"Not as the most talented, and not on style points," Donovan argued after last year's win, "but because they encompassed what the word 'team' means."
Maybe the best test of which model works best will come in the final Monday, when one team led by a junior will face another led by a freshman.
Meanwhile, NCAA president Myles Brand clearly appreciates players like Hansbrough and Rush - the increasingly rare stars who stick around.
He called the age limitation rule, which currently forces U.S. players to be 19 and a year out of high school before they are eligible for the draft, "entirely, entirely, a management-labor issue within the NBA" over which he has no control.
"I'm always saying I want to go longer," Brand said.
It'd be hard for him to find a college coach who would disagree.
Final Four: April 5 and 7, 2008
Alamodome
San Antonio, Texas
Host: University of Texas-San Antonio
Final Four Ticket Prices: $220/$190/$170/$140
Final Four Tickets Info: SOLD OUT
Official Packages: www.ncaa.com/hospitality
NCAA Tournament Updates:
East Regional
West Regional
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South Regional
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