Tuesday
April 08, 2003
michigandaily.com
sportsdesk@umich.edu
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Forget Jalen and Co.,
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Jayhawks miss 18 free
throws to lose the title
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The Syra-
cuse Orangemen were playground play-
ers early, a bundle of nerves late. They
juked, jammed and barely held on for a
victory that gave coach Jim Boeheim
his long-awaited championship.
Freshmen Carmelo Anthony and
Gerry McNamara did the scoring and
Hakim Warrick came up with a huge
block at the end last night to lift the
Orange to a thrilling 81-78 victory over
Kansas.
Warrick, who missed two free throws
that would have sealed the game with
13.5 seconds left, made up for it by
coming from nowhere to swat a 3-point
attempt by Michael Lee that would have
tied it.
Kirk Hinrich, cold all night, shot an
airball at the buzzer and the Orangemen
(30-5) ran to the floor to celebrate their
first-ever title. Boeheim threw his arms
in the air and ran to shake hands with
Roy Williams, deprived once again of
the championship.
Anthony showed he is certainly ready
for the NBA if he chooses, fighting off
a bad back to finish with 20 points, 10
rebounds and seven assists. McNamara
hit six 3-pointers in the first half to fin-
Syracuse players react after winning the NCAA championship game 81-78 against
Kansas yesterday in New Orleans' Superdome.
ish with 18 points.
In a marquee coaching matchup
between Boeheim and Williams, a pair
of brilliant tacticians who had never
won it all, it was Boeheim who finally
broke through, after 27 years coaching
at his alma mater.
Sixteen years ago, Syracuse lost by
one to Indiana on Keith Smart's game-
winner with 4 seconds left on the same
Superdome floor. Boeheim said he
wanted to get the last 4 seconds right
this time, and he did just barely.
"I think this building kind of owed us
one" he said.
In the first half, it didn't look as if
he'd have to sweat it.
See ORANGEMEN, Page 10
Piece of advice to everyone:
Don't trust dad's alma mater
Jim Boeheim, you just won your first national champi- All-American seniors came up short in their biggest
onship. Where are you going next? game, and Michael Lee had a game-tying 3-pointer
Boeheim: I am going home with my twenty-something blocked by Hakim Warrick, who took off like Superman
year old wife, Julie, who got more face Seth K l em p n eers to get to the shot.
time than the Syracuse dance team last But in reality, Williams is anything but
DAVID HORN
Tooting My Own
Knox Cameron. Al Montoya.
Elise Ray. Bernard Robin-
son, Abby Crumpton. Jason
Coben. Adam Stenavich. Kristi Gan-
non. Kyle Smith.
Ron Warhurst. Tommy Amaker.
Marcia Pankrantz. Red Berenson.
Steve Burns. Bev Plocki. Jim
Richardson.
Varsity Field. Canham Natatori-
um. The Big House. The Fish. Yost
Ice Arena. Belleville Lake.
The Frozen Four. The Orange
Bowl. The Women's College World
Series. Countless NCAA Champi-
onship performances in swimming,
track, wrestling and gymnastics.
Field hockey's 2001 NCAA champi-
onship. The Olympics.
They are some of thestudent-ath-
letes, coaches, venues and events of
Michigan athletics today. There are
many more, and they are all impor-
tant brush strokes on the Wolverine
portrait. These men and women,
these places and events, are part of
my mental image of four years at
the University of Michigan and The
Michigan Daily.
For four years, I have covered
Michigan sports for this newspaper,
and for four years, I have observed
and participated in numbed awe at
the history, the drama and the excel-
lence of the Michigan Wolverines.
That was to be expected.
What came as a surprise were the
emotions I felt when Michigan and
her programs failed to perform in a
manner befitting to the Leaders and
Best.
See, I came to Michigan with a
quixotic attachment to the school's
athletic history - to Jalen Rose and
Desmond Howard and Brendan
Morrison. I very much expected to
buy into the Maize and Blue
romance that's packaged and sold
every autumn Saturday. But this
Leaders and Best nonsense? Come
on. I was, and still am, cynically
aware of the realities of collegiate
sports, and in my 18-year-old
naivete, I was uninterested in the
troublemaking of Michigan's ath-
letes, or in the transgressions of its
athletic department. It's just part of
the game, right? Every program has
its problems, and if Michigan does,
then it means we are doing what we
need to do to stay competitive.
But here's the thing: Over my
years at Michigan and my Daily
career, I've found that my attach-
ment to this school and its athletics
runs deeper than yelling vulgarities
at opposing goalies and holding sea-
son tickets to the Big House. As
time passed and Michigan players
and teams found themselves in vary-
ing degrees of trouble, I found that I
was, in fact, genuinely embarrassed.
The role of a fan can be passive, and
the role of a journalist is necessarily
objective. But as my college experi-
ence became increasingly shaped by
the exploits of our athletic teams, I
found myself wholeheartedly invest-
ed in not just the wins and losses
posted, but by the conduct - the
image.
When the Ed Martin scandal hit, I
felt a wave of emotions that I never
thought possible as a sports fan. It
was like the disappointment and
shame in finding out that your par-
ents were unfaithful. Those emo-
tions are impossible without a true
love of the parties involved - you
have to care.
I came here as a fan of Michigan
athletics; I'm leaving as a part of it.
If this comes across as nostalgic,
romantic bullshit, well, it is. But
these are the last words I will have
printed in The Michigan Daily, and
when I sat tiown to reflect on my
See HORN, Page 10
night.
Jim "Bohemian Rhapsody" Boeheim
was a winner well before he captured his
first national championship last night. He
is one of the winningest coaches in college
basketball history, has coached three Final
Four teams, landed the top freshman in the
nation last year and had married a
women who looked 20 years his junior.
Based on the lack of television cover-
&o
New o
DanceI
a loser.
Sure his team is cursed and gets more
spooked during the postseason than Shaggy
and Scooby Doo in a haunted house after a
few doobies. But Williams will be rewarded
for his years of premature exits and under-
telkf performances with one of the most presti-
gious honors in college athletics - the
Floo r North Carolina head coaching position.
When asked about it after the game by
CBS's Bonnie Bernstein, Williams dropped the "S" bomb
on national television like bombs over Baghdad.
See KLEMPNER, Page 10
TONY DING/Daily
Bob Kender: The Rob Deer of NCAA Pick'em.
age dedicated to his wife last night, people may look at
Roy Williams as a loser after an 81-79 shellacking at the
hands of the prepubescent Orangemen. After all, his two
[.1
«The travels of Nike sneakers have been traced back
to the abusive sweatshops of Vietnam, Barbie's little
outfits back to the child labourers of Sumatra,
Starbucks' lattes to the sun-scorched coffee fields of
Guatemala, and Shell's oil back to the polluted and
impoverished villages of the Niger Delta...
The cumulative response...has been a slow but
noticeable shift in how people in the West see work-
ers in the developing world. 'They're getting our
jobs' is giving way to a more humane reaction:
'Our corporations are stealing their lives.'
- Naomi Klein, Canadian Author &
anti-globalization activist
COME JOIN
.-.. . T 7.... "........-....w
Dr. Tom Palmer, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Tuesday, April 8 at 7:00 p.m.
Pendleton Room Michinan Union or nnline at
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