Making it to the Final Four is supposed to be more than confetti, souvenir hats and the chance to pop your jersey on national television. Making it to the Final Four is confirmation that you’ve truly arrived as a program; that the world better not sleep on you anymore.
Tell that to Bob Huggins. His West Virginia team just lost an 11-point lead and an extremely winnable game at Louisville on Wednesday night.
Huggins has been dealing with injuries, suspensions and guys walking away from the bench in the middle of the game. No wonder the Mountaineers have lost four of their past nine and are gasping to hold the final spot in the upper half of the Big East.
"We’ve got eight guys on scholarship and about three guys that can play," Huggins said. “What can you do? You coach the guys you have.”
Maybe Huggins can call one of the three other coaches he saw at the Final Four in Indianapolis last season. Just one, Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, has a team that appears capable of returning for this season’s Final Four in Houston.
At Michigan State, Tom Izzo has been tugging at his hair as furiously as Huggins has been rubbing his brow. Before the season, the consensus was the Spartans were the second- or third-best team in the nation.
They’re not even the third-best team in the Big Ten. They started Thursday tied for fifth. Izzo just dismissed Korie Lucious, a guard who gave him 20 points against Duke last December.
Then there's Brad Stevens at Butler. His program finished inches from toppling Duke in the 2010 national final. There was so much love for the Bulldogs that a book was written about “the Butler Way.”
The Bulldogs started this season ranked 17th in the Associated Press college basketball poll, but the Butler Way has hit a harsh detour. The Bulldogs needed about 15 seconds to discover this season is not last season.
They lost to Louisville by 15 on their first road trip. They’ve been handled twice by Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They’ve been losing one of every three games all season. If the NCAA picked the tournament field today, maybe the Bulldogs are in -- and maybe they are not.
Rick Pitino knows the feeling at Louisville. In his final six seasons at Kentucky, he made three Final Fours and two Elite Eights before departing for the Boston Celtics in 1997.
This is his 10th season at Louisville. He’s added one Final Four in 2005. His 2008 and 2009 teams pushed into the Elite Eight and then last season Pitino took the worst first-round NCAA tournament loss of his career.
His 2011 team has shown considerable grit as it sits in a three-way tie for second in the Big East with Connecticut and Villanova. But the Cardinals are looking at a Saturday-Monday trip to UConn and Georgetown — and there are no guarantees.
“With the success that we had last year and the run that we made, Big East teams really know how to play us,” West Virginia guard Joe Mazzulla said. “They come at us with the toughness that we try to show. It’s a challenge.”
“It’s an interesting dynamic (in college basketball) right now,” Pitino said. “It’s very difficult to stay on top, even if you don’t have any surprises.”
Consider these numbers: Of the 20 teams that made the NCAA Final Four during the five seasons from 2000-2004, 19 made their way back into the tournament the following season. Seventeen of them won at least one NCAA game. A dozen returned to the Sweet 16.
That’s not the situation any more. Of the 20 teams that made the NCAA Final Four during the five seasons from 2005-2009, seven failed to make it back into the tournament the following season. Just seven got back to the Sweet 16.
And it’s not just the George Masons that have been swallowed by potholes. Florida won back-to-back NCAA titles in 2006 and 2007, and the Gators are still waiting for their next NCAA tournament victory. North Carolina and Connecticut, two programs that suffer heartburn when they don’t win championships, went from the 2009 Final Four to the 2010 NIT.
Aren’t we seeing more teams from more leagues pursuing success with more resources?
“Without question,” Pitino said.
“When they cut us back to 13 scholarships, that started changing everything,” Huggins said. “It’s tough to maintain with only 13 scholarship players.
“You look at the elite programs that are losing guys to the NBA. Then you have one or two other things go wrong and it’s tough.”
Here is how difficult it’s been for West Virginia: The Mountaineers lost two seniors — Da’Sean Butler and Wellington Smith. Devin Ebanks bypassed his final two seasons for the NBA.
Huggins just suspended guard Casey Mitchell, his team’s leading scorer, with no suggestion when Mitchell might return. Noah Cottrill, one of his top recruits, was suspended after the first week of practice and left school in January without playing a game.
Sophomore Danny Jennings walked off the bench during a game against South Florida last Sunday. He won’t be back. Freshman center Kevin Noreen is another scratch with a knee injury. One recruit didn’t make it academically; another was stopped by a medical condition.
“What are you going to do?” Huggins asked. “It hasn’t been a great week.”
That’s no way to get back to the Final Four.
