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ROAD TO ATLANTA
Injured guard cleared to travel to final four
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Iniured shooting guard Kevin Ware after his injury against Duke.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Injured Louisville guard Kevin Ware will travel to the Final Four on his crutches and expects to be a big presence for the Cardinals.
Cleared by doctors to accompany Louisville to Atlanta, the sophomore told The Associated Press Wednesday that he plans to be a full participant in the team's preparation for Saturday's game against Wichita State. The Cardinals left around 7 p.m. for a flight expected to last just more than an hour with Ware on it.
Ware said the overwhelming support he has received has helped him maintain his spirits and strengthened his confidence of a full recovery. He hopes by next season to be helping the Cardinals defend the national championship he believes they'll win this weekend.
Ware credits teammate Luke Hancock for calming him down.
"Luke said his words, and I just kept repeating, 'yall gotta go win this game.' I'm fine. . . It really helped the team."
But it wasn't easy for the Cardinals, many of whom cried after seeing Ware's gruesome injury — his bone protruding through his skin.
The normally reserved 20-year-old calmly recalled how he felt when he suffered the devastating injury, saying he doesn't think Louisville would be in the Final Four if he had lost his composure.
"He got me to that point where I really had to put the pain on hold," said Ware, with his leg in a cast propped up on a couch at the Cardinals' practice facility. "Once he said his prayer, I was kind of thinking the whole time, 'you can either be a crybaby about it or you're going to get your team back and get them in the right mindset.'
Even Louisville coach Rick
Pitino was emotional, wiping tears from his eyes and later saying that the sight of his player's injury almost made him vomit.
But Pitino said everyone's emotions have settled down, knowing
that it appears Ware will be OK.
"I think we're all fine now," Pitino said. "Just having Kevin around, we can exhale now."
The coach said having Ware in Atlanta might provide the Cardinals with a little "extra emotion," but in his experience the "the team that executes the best will win."
The coach downplayed staying with him at the hospital after his injury.
And while Pitino said everyone can exhale now, the Cardinals had to take a deep breath when Ware went down on Sunday. They eventually regrouped and took the lead at halftime against Duke en route to an 85-63 victory over the Blue Devils in Indianapolis.
Pitino and his son, Richard, spent Monday at the hospital with Ware, who was pictured holding the championship trophy in his bed. Though Ware had maintained his composure talking with AP, he became very emotional during an earlier interview with ESPN when talking about waking up and seeing the championship trophy.
"There's not a coach in America that wouldn't be there," he said.
Through it all, Ware said he had to remain strong. He was placed on a stretcher and wheeled out of Lucas Oil Stadium to cheers of 'Kevin Ware, Kevin Ware,' before heading to Methodist Hospital.
Ware underwent a two-hour operation to repair compound fractures of the tibia that left the leg at an odd angle. He awoke the next morning to discover he had become an overnight sensation, and the afterglow hasn't waned.
His condition and progress have been featured every day on the major networks, the Internet and especially social media. The Cardinal's practice facility was surrounded by a phalanx of satellite trucks, and the interview requests
RICK PITINO Louisville coach
helped Wareget an early jump on his rehail as he shuttled back and forth between make-shift sets.
Ware said he has heard from several of his NBA idols, including Kobe
Bryant, Kevin Durant and Charles Barkley. The Louisville guard said he has even heard from first lady Michelle Obama and the Rev. Jesse jackson.
For the soft-spoken Ware, the support and media attention has meant more interviews than he ever imagined.
"I had no idea I would get this kind of attention," he said. "I'm one of those guys who just likes to play basketball. But the injury opened up a lot of people's eyes and I really appreciate all the support. It really means a lot."
But as Ware cherishes the flood of warm wishes, he's also dealing with the irony of the injury's occurrence with 6.33 remaining in the first half against Duke.
He leaped high near the right sideline to defend a 3-point attempt, similar to a defensive play he made without incident in Louisville's game in November against Duke in the Bahamas. This time he landed awkwardly, with the leg going in two different directions.
"That was frustrating because it happened the same exact way, me making the play," Ware said. "I was
thinking then about just blocking the shot and that was what I was thinking this time. This was just different"
Ware also lamented the timing of his injury, a recollection that made him pause for a moment. A key part of Louisville's guard rotation who often substituted for starters Peyton Siva and Russ Smith, Ware had overcome a one-game suspension in January and was coming off a career-best, 11-point effort in Friday's tournament win over Oregon.
Pitino said that performance typified Waase's maturation process.
"Kevin has gone from being a quiet, unsure guy to being a very mature man," the coach said. "Kevin was very quiet, he kept to himself and didn't show many emotions. In the last couple of months, he's come out of his shell and is showing his emotions."
Then came the injury that has changed Ware's perspective.
"I think God puts things in your life and you have to go through certain obstacles," he said. "I just feel like these are obstacles that are going to make me grow up for the better. It's going to open my eyes to a lot of things I probably haven't seen before."
Ware said he's already seeing how difficult it is getting around with one healthy leg.
Fortunately for him, his girlfriend, Louisville sophomore Brittany Kelly, has been there to help since he was injured. Ware's teammate and roommate, forward Chane Behanan, will lend a hand as well.
"He's handling it better than I would've expected," Kelly said. "When they took the towel off his leg, he asked if he'd be able to play next week before they told him no."
Ware's mother, Lisa Junior, also plans to move from Georgia to aid her son's healing process. Ware said his leg will need eight to 12 weeks to heal before he begins rehabilitation in hopes of returning by the start of practice in October.
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MEN'S BASKETBALL
WSU coach content in Wichita
Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall signals that his team is headed to the Final Four. They defeated Ohio State 70-66 in the West Regional final in the NCAA men's college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 30, 2013, in Los Angeles.
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ATLANTA — Gregg Marshall sat in his office on the campus of Wichita State on a cold January morning, his familiar eye glasses set aside, and gazed at the championship nets nailed to the wall.
Every one of them represents a league title he won at Winthrop. Seven in all.
Seven times in nine seasons he took the tiny school in South Carolina to the NCAA tournament, and he insists that he would have been perfectly content doing the same thing for the better part of another decade. He's not the sort to uproot his family, jump to the next best thing, the bigger job with the bigger salary, especially when they too often turn out to be a mirage.
"You can't buy happy," Marshall said. "Winning is important to me, and we've proven we can win here. And so it would have to be really, really special, and the timing would have to be right, and it's not just me. It's my players and the players I recruited and my family."
So it took the right opportunity at the right time for Marshall to leave for Wichita State, where he now has the Shockers in the Final Four. And he insisted back in the quiet solitude of his office that it would take the right opportunity at the right time to pry him loose again.
So there was Louisville coach Rick Pitino, who will oppose Marshall on Saturday night at the Georgia Dome, skipping town after five years at Boston University to become an assistant for the New York Knicks. And there he was after just two years and an improbable Final Four run at Providence in the late 1980s, leaving to take over the same NBA team as its head coach.
There was a time not so long ago that Marshall's steadfast dedication to the Shockers would have run countercurrent to big-time college basketball. The coaching
ladder was one to be climbed until your arms gave out, until you reached the pinnacle of the sport — or until you fell.
That was how it was done. Tackle your current challenge, and look for a bigger one.
While that is the path that brought Pitino to this Final Four, it is not the path Marshall plans to take his career.
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