8B
NCAA BASKETBALL
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2007
Gerry Broome/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two high-profile universities meet in basketball's biggest game after playing for football championship
Ohio State's Greg Oden prepares to slam the ball during a 67-60 victory against Georgetown in its Final four semifinal basketball game on Saturday at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
Eric Gay/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Florida's Corey Brewer, left, and his teammate Taurean Green participate in a press conference on Sunday. Florida will play Ohio State on Monday for the national championship.
Charlie Neibergall/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ohio State coach Thad Matta, left, and Florida coach Billy Donovan, appear Sunday at separate press conferences at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The coaches will face off in the national basket championship on Monday.
Oden wants to fit in, enjoys campus life
BY TIM DAHLBERG ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA — It's hard to escape attention when you're the center of attention.
On campus, Greg Oden literally sticks out in a room of 600 freshmen attending a biology lecture. At the Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio, people chuckle as they watch him try to scrunch his lanky frame into a go-cart.
On Sunday, it was Oden chuckling as he talked about the time he boogied to the dancing machine at the GameWorks in the mall.
"It was a bilious sight," Oden said. "I built up a crowd."
The center of attention is used to attention by now. People have been watching ever since he started growing quickly and picked up a basketball in Indianapolis.
He's 19 now and plays basketball for a living. At least people think he's already playing basketball for a living.
The center of attention is actually the center for Ohio State, which plays Florida for the national championship Monday night. He gets tuition, books, meal money and the opportunity to be as normal a man about campus as your average 7-footer who can dunk from 10 feet out.
It doesn't make much sense to come back. Not when Oden can make himself rich instead of helping enrich his university.
The center of attention is about ready to finish a one-year apprenticeship for the NBA before signing for untold millions. Or at least that's what people who pay attention to these kind of things are figuring.
The center himself says he's discovered he likes school and enjoys being on campus.
BY EDDIE PELLS ASSOCIATED PRESS
"I'm pretty sure they wouldn't let me in," he said, "because some guy would say, "That's Greg Oden."
He wants to fit in, doesn't want anyone paying attention. But this is one freshmen who can't join fellow students trying to sneak into nearby bars.
Oden won't likely match up directly with Florida's flamboyant Joakim Noah in Monday's final, but the contrast between the two big men couldn't be more stark.
Some think the center of attention could eventually become one of the best basketball players ever. He watches videos of all the low-post players and tries to copy things Bill Russell, Kevin McHale and Kareem Abdul-labbar used to do.
"I think my mom wouldn't like me acting like that," he said. "She taught me better."
The center of attention would be
herrited with that kind of attention.
Noah flies up and down the court with his bushy ponytail flopping up and down. He blows kisses at cheer-leaders, pumps his chest with his fists and screams after blocks and dunks.
ATLANTA — It's no accident that they are meeting again for a championship, Calling it pure coincidence might not be totally right, either.
Florida and Ohio State are dominating marquee college sports like no two programs ever have. Their meeting Monday for the basketball title comes three months after they played for the football championship. Regardless of the outcome, the Gators already go down as the first program to hold the men's basketball and football titles at the same time.
The programs are products of two mega-sized athletic departments awash in money, fan support, strong decision makers at the top and good coaches interspersed throughout their respective campuses.
"When you have resources, that usually means you have the wherewithal to have good facilities," said Chuck Neinas, the well-respected leader of a search firm that finds football coaches and athletic directors for big-time programs. "You build a tradition of success that attracts talent, and that allows you to pay for good coaches."
Though the schools operate in different sections of the country, these power programs have more things in common than not. Most notably, these are — or at least once were — schools where football was king.
Nothing against the basketball programs, but success in football drives success in everything else at most universities. It's the sheer fact of numbers. With the exceptions of a few elite basketball programs,
there's simply more money to be made by filling 105,000 seats in the Horseshoe, or 90,000 at the Swamp, than by filling a basketball arena one-fifth their size.
"The correlation between 105,000 people on a Saturday afternoon in the Shoe definitely helps all programs," Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. "I think it's helped us through the recruiting process. The notoriety of the football program is something we try to work hand-in-hand with."
Thanks in large part to revenue from the football program, Ohio State led the NCAA in revenue last year, bringing
gram is terrific. As I said earlier, I think where there's problems on campuses with coaches is when all the focus is totally just on one sport."
The days of basketball coaches defending their programs' status on these campuses are long gone. Instead, they bask in the football teams, taking recruits to games and bringing those coaches in for motivational speeches to their teams.
"My goal is not to make Ohio State a basketball school. I think my goal is to make it the best basketball program that we can."
And Matta: "My goal is not to make Ohio State a basketball school. I think my goal is to make it the best basketball program that we possibly can."
in nearly $105 million, Florida brought in $78 million. Both programs made enough money that they were able to donate to their schools instead of having the school supplement them.
Harmony aside, this isn't to say these programs are perfect. It's
"It's everything at Florida that's good," Gators coach Billy Donovan said. "Certainly the football pro
THAD MATTA
Ohio State basketball coach
The OSU football program has moved from the Maurice Clarett imbroglio. The star of the 2002
national championship team, Clarett created problems while he was in school by accusing administrators of not caring about him and caused even more drama afterward when he lied about receiving thousands of dollars in improper benefits.
In basketball, Matta was hired to clean up the program after former coach Jim O'Brien was fired for giving $6,000 to a recruit, which helped land the Buckeyes on probation.
The probes led to the departure of embattled athletic director Andy
Geiger, who said he was burned out from all the turmoil. Despite that, he laid much of the groundwork for the current success, and his replacement, Gene Smith, has overseen a transition for what is largely regarded as the country's biggest athletic department.
"Certainly, youd have to put Jeremy Foley and Gene Smith in the finalists of the most respected athletic directors in country," Neinas said.
Foley runs a department that is not so lovingly known by some as "The Firm," for its dispassionate ability to make problems go away.
For all the money and success these programs have generated, the trips to the title games aren't big money makers, but it will be hard to call either of these schools losers.
Starters give Florida opportunity for history
BY JIM LITKE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA — Most kids think the world began when they started watching TV.
Few would argue that if Florida successfully defends its national championship against Ohio State, the Gators belong among college basketball's all-time best. Who else belongs on that list?
When we asked Monday night's starters, only one named a team that dominated before they were born.
"I'll go with whichever UCLA team won the 88 games in a row," Florida's Lep Humphrey said.
That wasn't a single team, obviously, which raises an essential point in the debate.
Just getting in position to repeat is tougher than ever. That's in large part because the exodus of top players that began with Kevin Garnett leap-frogging college to the pros in 1995 has made keeping a team together a difficult-enough task by itself. The NBA age minimum adopted in 2005 has made it easier, but not much.
UCLA won seven consecutive titles from 1967-73, then was beaten at the Final Four the following year by North Carolina State — just months after Notre Dame ended the 88-game winning streak. Since then, four teams have returned to the title game with a chance to repeat. Only the 1992 Duke team boasting future pros Grant Hill, Christian Laetner and Bobby Hurley pulled it off.
The big reason the Gators are even in position is because all five starters returned, including potential NBA first-round picks Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer. No team wins without great players, but not every player in college becomes an NBA star. One measure of how unique that is these days came when someone asked Ohio State coach Thad Matta how long it would be before it might happen again.
"Hopefully," Matta deadpanned,
"next year."
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Sunday April 15, 2007
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Sunday April 15,2007
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