By Bob Markus

There's something faintly familiar about Saturday's semi-final matchup featuring Michigan State against a little known school from Indiana. Haven't we seen this game before? Well, almost. With the Spartans reaching the Final Four for the sixth time in 12 years and playing a Butler team that made it for the first time ever, its a pretty simple segue back to 1979 when Michigan State and Magic Johnson beat Indiana State and Larry Bird in what is still the most watched NCAA final game ever. Except that it might be better to compare Butler's appearance in the big dance's last tango with the high school team in the movie "Hoosiers" than with the Bird-led Sycamores. That's not a knock against Butler, which comes into Saturday's showdown with a 24-game winning streak. That's impressive, but keep in mind that Indiana State came into the 1979 championship game with a 33-0 record and was the No.1 ranked team in the Final AP poll. The Sycamores were expected to get to the finals; Butler's Bulldogs weren't.

Similarly, this year's Michigan State run to the Final Four was much more unexpected than the '79 team's great waltz. Michigan State lost four games that year and I covered three of them for the Chicago Tribune. They might have been world beaters the rest of the year but they were 0 and 3 when I saw them. They must have been delighted when they found out I wasn't covering the Final Four. They played their worst game of the year at Northwestern, played so badly that Coach Jud Heathcote benched Johnson and the rest of the starters before the first half was over. The other two games I saw them lose were stunners. Purdue upset the Spartans on a buzzer beater from about 35 feet out. But that was nothing compared to their loss at Wisconsin, where guard Wes Mathews drained a shot from the center circle as time expired. The Purdue game was made even more memorable for me by the circumstances under which I covered it. It was played on a Saturday afternoon, with tipoff scheduled for 4 p.m. if I remember correctly. I decided to take my son, Mike, who was 8 at the time, and we set out after breakfast for the 140 mile drive from our home in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka to the campus in West Lafayette, Ind. There was a steady drizzle the whole way, but the trip was uneventful. But by the time the game was over and I had filed my story, the drizzle had turned to snow and as we started back home the weather reports on the radio were ominous. Dangerous conditions. Don't drive unless you absolutely have to. I thought about checking into a motel for the night. The Tribune would have paid for it. But I thought about it only fleetingly before I remembered that a few weeks earlier I had interviewed members of the Minnesota basketball team, which had been snowbound for two days after a game at Purdue.

Fortunately, traffic was light, mostly a few trucks which helped clear a path for us as we proceeded at about 30 miles an hour. It seemed to take forever before I took a left turn off Sheridan Rd. onto our street, Willow Rd. Just one more left turn to go and we'd be safely home. But I never made that turn. Instead my car buried itself in a two-foot snow bank and it was obvious it was going no farther on this night. I went to the front door and rang the bell. My wife opened the door and said, "Hi, guess what happened?" Remembering the many radio reports of garage roofs caving in under the weight of the near-record snow, I replied, "The garage collapsed." Bingo! I called the police and told them about my car being out on the street and then went to bed at about 3 in the morning. Such are the pleasures of covering college basketball in the midwest.

I covered another memorable Purdue game that year, memorable mostly because neither of the two teams' stars would consent to be interviewed after the game. Purdue center Joe Barry Carroll was one of the silent stars and the other, of course, was Bird. Except for the fact that Indiana State won and the postgame silent treatment I don't recall anything about that game.

There are no Larry Birds or Magic Johnsons in this year's Final Four, just four hard-working teams that managed to survive two weeks of bracket-busting or, as in the cases of Butler (twice) and West Virginia, contributed to the rash of upsets. Only hard core basketball fans or fans of the teams involved could name more than one or two players on the four teams, but three of the coaches are household names--in more than a few households. West Virginia's Bob Huggins has a championship ring from his days coaching Cincinnati and Duke's Mike Kryzyewski has two, along with 11 Final Four appearances. Vastly underrated is Michigan State's Tom Izzo, whose six Final Fours in a dozen years are the most of any coach during that time span. Butler's coach is pretty much unknown to everybody outside the state of Indiana, including me. But, playing in their hometown, the Bulldogs have a chance to change that if they can win just two more games. The first step comes Saturday when they get to answer the question of the day: Izzo is or Izzo not my baby.

By Bob Markus

Call me a Luddite. I'm not sure that is really the word to use, but I kind of prefer it to "stupid." A Luddite is a person who hates modern machinery, would rather travel in a horse drawn carriage than in a gas guzzling automobile, would rather wash his clothes in a nearby creek than in a spin dry washing machine, would prefer to beat the dirt out of his carpet to using a vacuum cleaner. That's not me. I appreciate modern conveniences even if I did, until quite recently, use my dishwasher only as an air-drying rack. It's just that, somewhere in the last 20 years, modern technology passed me by. I owned a microwave for about five years and never used it until my kids finally took pity on me and showed me how. Even now the only thing I can use it for is to reheat something. I was among the last persons to own a CD player or a DVD and I almost never use either one. I have a cell phone, but don't know how to use it, except to make an outgoing call. I don't even know the number. But of all the modern gadgets, the one that baffles me the most is the computer. I hate my computer and it hates me. Two weeks ago I was composing my blog and was nearly finished when I apparently hit some extraneous key that instantly narrowed my screen to the size of a Band-aid. Fortunately I had prior experience in writing on a small screen. As a sports writer for the Chicago Tribune I learned how to write on a first generation computer--the Teleram. This was a bulky portable machine that weighed about as much as a bowling ball and had a screen that would accommodate perhaps 150 words. Then you had to transmit the screen to the office computer by using a modem, a set of rubber couplers into which you would place your telephone before hitting the send button. The rate of failure to launch was higher than a Sherpa's base camp--and that was under benign conditions. Let there be any noise above a whisper anywhere within 20 yards of your machine and the chances the copy would actually reach your newspaper were miniscule. Among the more dreaded assignments in those days was a Purdue basketball game. Not that the Boilermakers weren't both competetive and accommodating. But the press box for basketball was in the midle of the Purdue cheering section and the only way you had a chance of filing during a game was to hope the opposition went on a crowd-silencing run.

I finally managed to finish my blog and post it, even in its reduced size, but I knew right then that my computer and I were at war. Some of you may have noticed that last week I did not post a blog. I intended to and actually got three paragraphs into it when suddenly the computer let me have it with both barrels. Not only did the incredible shrinking screen manifest itself again, but the cursed cursor froze. No matter what I tried I couldn't unfreeze it. Even two days later the computer was as useless as a Republican alderman in a Chicago city council meeting.

But there really is a silver lining in every cloud. My recalcitrant computer ended up doing me a huge favor. The blog I had started writing concerned the NCAA basketball tournament. More specifically it was my own private selection show in which I revealed who was going to win the national championship. And the winner is. . . .drum roll please. . . . . . .Villanova. This, in part, is what I wrote: "Pay attention now. Trust me. The national final will be a replay of the 1985 classic title game between Villanova and Georgetown, with the same result. Except this time when they cut down the nets the Wildcats will do so as the favorite." How did I come to this conclusion? Beats me. I guess my rationale went something like this: Georgetown and Villanova were both contenders in the Big East, generally acknowledged to be the strongest conference in the land. Georgetown had finished strong, reaching the Big East tournament finals. Villanova had not. But there have been teams that staggered into the tournament and won it and teams that seemingly had momentum going in and lost in the first round (See DePaul circa 1980s.]

Huey Long used to have a saying: Every man a king. This is the time of year when the corollary becomes appropriate: Every man a college basketball expert. There was a time when I considered myself among that number. I was The Tribune's national college sports writer at the time and travelled across the country, seeing most of the top-rated teams in person, catching the rest on television. I hobnobbed with Jimmy V and Dicky V and Coach K and I figured I knew all there was to know about college hoops. Wrong. I might have been able to tell a two-three zone from a man-to-man defense, but, as Bob Knight would gladly tell you, my basketball knowledge didn't go much beyond that. One year I picked Knight's Indiana Hoosiers and Jim Boeheim's Syracuse Orangemen as the most over-rated high seeds in the NCAA tournament and predicted both would exit stage left before the first act was over. That was the year those two teams ended up playing in the national championship game. I should have waited a year. The next year the Hoosiers did exit early, losing, if memory serves, to Richmond in the first round.

I had the advantage in those years of being able t0 pick the brains of some of basketball's brightest minds. Like Denny Crum, the Louisville coach who told me that guard play was the key to winning an NCAA tournament. That would be pretty useful information, if only one were able to determine which team has the best guard combination. Like Dick Vitale with his Diaper Dandies and P.T. Players. Trouble is, just about every player Vitale saw was in one of those categories. The point is, I had advantages the ordinary fan filling out his tournament brackets didn't have, but still some barmaid from Pensacola who picked the winners based on how many times her dog barked when she recited the team names would always outdo me. The second point is that if I couldn't pick the winners when I presumably knew what I was talking about why should you pay any attention to me now when I haven't watched a single game from start to finish? I don't even own a dog. But I do know where I can borrow one.

So, thanks to my balky computer I've been given a rare second chance. Nobody has to know that the two teams I picked to play for the title never made it out of the first week-end. It'll be our little secret. I'm just going to start over and pick the winner from the 16 teams still playing. First, the Final Four. In the South Regional it will be Duke over St. Mary's in the final. I know that Cinderella is supposed to go home once the Sweet 16 begins, but I like St. Mary's to pull one more upset, beating Baylor. But Duke, which should end Purdue's valiant run, will be too strong for the Gaols. The best game of the tournament could be the East Regional Final with Kentucky playing West Virginia. Although the Wildcats are very young I remember well the Fab Five Michigan Wolverines. I didn't cover the Final Four that year, but I did cover one of Michigan's early round games. Michigan not only had an all-freshman lineup, but a freshman coach, Steve Fisher, who had been an assistant to Bill Frieder during the regular season. Frieder had volunteered to stay and coach the Wolverines during the tournament after accepting the head coaching job at Arizona State. I asked Bo Schembechler why he hadn't taken Frieder up on his offer and Bo spat out: "Because I want a Michigan man coaching Michigan." Fisher coached the Wolverines to the national championship. Kentucky will have some trouble against underrated Cornell, but the Wildcats' athleticism will prevail in the end. I also like Kentucky over West Virginia, which shouldn't have too much trouble with Washington in the regional semi-finals.

I originally picked Kansas State to reach the Final Four from the West regional and since they are still alive, prudence dictates that I stay with the Wildcats. But Syracuse has looked so good in the first two rounds that I'm jumping on the band wagon. In the Midwest I'm taking a big leap of faith and picking Northern Iowa, which caught a break when its next opponent, Michigan State, lost its point guard in the victory over Maryland. In the final I'll take Northern Iowa over Ohio State, which will have its hands full with Tennessee in the semi-final. So there's your Final Four--Northern Iowa, Syracuse, Kentucky and Duke--three No. 1 seeds and a No.9. If I had to pick a winner to emerge from that group I'd probably go with Syracuse. I like the Orangemen's chances. And my second chances.

By Bob Markus

I haven't watched much college basketball this year, a fact I hope you won't remember in a week or so when I give you my "expert" opinion on who's going to win the NCAA tournament. But this morning I noticed in the radio-TV listings that DePaul's Big East tournament game against South Florida was going to be televised. I knew that this would be my last chance to see the Blue Demons this year inasmuch as they had about as much a chance to beat South Florida or any other Big East team as Alf Langdon had to beat FDR in the '36 Presidential race. Over the last two seasons DePaul had a 1-35 record in regular season conference play. But, given that a year ago the Blue Demons had upset Cincinnati in the tournament opener after going 0-18 in the regular season, there was reason to hope. When I turned the game on it was halftime and DePaul had scored 15 points. That was half as many as South Florida had put on the board. Things got a little better for the Blue Demons in the second half. They got within five points with plenty of time left in the game, but never could get closer than that. Another season over and deeper in the dumper for a team that used to be the toast of Chicago. Now, they're simply toast.

You may wonder why I care, but the answer to that is pretty simple. I covered DePaul basketball for The Chicago Tribune for three years back in the day and in a way they were among the most satisfying years of my 36-year writing career. I came to the beat reluctantly, to say the least. Actually, I came to it angry, ticked off. Not at DePaul and certainly not against Ray Meyer, the iconic coach who was approaching the 700 win mark in what had been announced as his last hurrah. The object of my roiling rage was my sports editor, George Langford, who at one time I had considered a friend. For the first half of that year, 1983, I had covered the Cubs and, at the All-Star break, was scheduled to switch back to the White Sox in keeping with The Tribune's tradition of rotating the baseball beat writers at midseason each year. I was at the All-Star game when I received a message to call the office. When I did, Langford told me that he was taking me off the beat and told me to see him in the office the next day. When I did he told me that the move was instigated by the editor of the paper, Jim Squires, who said he was tired of the baseball writers getting beaten by the rival Sun-Times. I can honestly say that I had not been beaten on a single story that year. On the other hand, Jerome Holtzman, who was covering the White Sox, had been skinned alive quite regularly by Phil Hersh, who, I admit, was, and probably still is, one of the greatest pure writers of sports I have ever read. Further incensing me was the fact that Holtzman was being rewarded by being named the baseball "bigfoot", the national baseball writer, who would cover the World Series and other big events. Taking over my beat was Fred Mitchell, who was moving over from the Bulls beat. Fred is a good guy and a good writer, but the irony here is that he HAD been beaten earlier that year by his Sun-Times counterpart on the story of a Bulls coaching change. Langford then told me that I would be covering Ray Meyer's final year, which I would have appreciated as being the plum assignment it was had the circumstances been different.

It could have been a deadly tedious job had it been any other coach. But Meyer made it easy for me and the Sun-Times beat man, Joel Bierig. In his 42 years as head coach at DePaul, the grandfatherly Meyer had accumulated a wealth of stories and each day after practice he would share some of them with us. Add to that the fact that Meyer's last team was one of his best. That is saying something when you consider that over a three year stretch in the early '80s, his teams went 26-1, 27-1, 26-1--only to be upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament each year. A few years before that he had taken the Blue Demons to the Final Four, where they lost to Larry Bird's Indiana State team. It was Meyer's second Final Four and although he never won The NCAA tournament, he did win the NIT, which at the time, 1945, was considered at least the equal of the NCAA tournament. That squad was led by George Mikan, the 6-10 giant whom Meyer transformed from an uncoordinated hulk into the most dominant player of the first half of the 20th Century.

Meyer's last team took a 26-2 record into the NCAA tournament and, in light of the previous first round fiascos, everyone held their breath until DePaul had dispatched its first round opponent, Illinois State. Next up, in the semi-finals of the Midwest regional in St. Louis, was Wake Forest. Leading the whole way, DePaul had an eight-point lead with three minutes to play, still led by two and had the ball with 26 seconds to play. That's when the dream season turned into a nightmare. Point guard Kenny Patterson had the ball and the game in the palm of his hands. All he had to do was dribble out the final seconds, or go to the foul line and make his free throws. Instead he saw teammate Ty Corbin streaking for the basket and he threw what was meant to be an alley-oop pass for a Corbin dunk. Instead the ball sailed far over Corbin's head. When Wake Forest's Delaney Rudd let go of a 20-footer with the clock ticking down to all zeroes, everyone in the house had the same feeling that Meyer gave voice to the next day. "When he shot it," said Meyer, "I said, 'It looks good.' And it was." That was not the end of it. DePaul led 71-69 in the overtime and, after Wake's Danny Young had tied it again, Patterson went to the free throw line with 19 seconds to play. He missed the front end of a one-and-one and Young finally plunged the dagger deep into Meyer's heart with 2 seconds to play.

After 42 years a man shouldn't have to lay his broken heart out on a table and let the vultures feed on it. But the next day Meyer held an impromptu breakfast press conference and, literally, poured his heart out. "I knew for me it was all over," he said. "I walked down the gauntlet of newspapermen and I saw the lights flashing and I knew it was the last time I would ever make that walk. I lost a good friend. It's sinking in rapidly now. I've lost a real close friend that's been with me for so long. Three quarters of my life I've been in basketball. It will be a sad day for me next Oct. 15 when the boys go out on the gym floor and I do not. I'll sit in the office and I'll hear the ball bounce and wish I were down there to help them."

DePaul's defeat had a trickle down affect on me. During our meeting at the All-Star break Langford had promised me that I would be covering the Final Four and if DePaul had made it to Seattle there would have been no question about it. But Langford was no longer the sports editor and Gene Quinn, who was, called me into his office and said, "I'm sending (Mike) Conklin to Seattle. I still haven't made my mind up about you." A few days later he told me I was going, that Conklin would do the main story and I would do sidebars. Mike and I arrived in Seattle and immediately started looking for something to write about. No press conferences were scheduled, but I knew the Virginia sports information director and I suggested to him that he bring his coach over to the media center. Meanwhile, having nothing better to do, I wandered over to the hotel where all the coaches were staying and took a look around the lobby. I was astonished to see John Thompson, coach of the eventual champion Georgetown Hoyas, giving a long TV interview. I sidled over to a spot where I could hear what was being said. One of the TV crew gestured to Thompson, obviously asking whether he should get rid of me. Thompson indicated it would be all right for me to stay. Just as the television interview ws wrapping up, another writer, who knew Thompson pretty well, came by and the two of us approached the infamously media-disdaining coach and asked if we could talk to him. He nodded his assent and gave us nearly a half hour, touching a lot of bases, including why he kept his players away from the media. The story of the day had been that Thompson was keeping his players--and himself--in some secret hideaway. And here he was right out in plain sight and talking to the media and only the two of us had the story. I don't know about the other guy but my story won the Illinois UPI first place award and Gene Quinn finally made his mind up about me.

I covered Joey Meyer's first two years as DePaul's head coach and then went on to become The Tribune's national college sports "bigfoot. Joey did not have quite the success his father had, but he had his moments, including winning the National Coach of the Year award--an honor his father had won four times--in 1987. Joey lasted 13 years at DePaul and won 231 games. Between them father and son won 955 games for the little school by the el tracks. Then Joey had two bad years and was fired in 1997. DePaul hasn't been to the NCAA tournament since. From the little I saw watching the Blue Demons this afternoon, it doesn't appear they'll get back there very soon.

By Bob Markus



Vince Lombardi notwithstanding, history tells us there can be victory in defeat. Dunkirk comes to mind. The United States Olympic hockey team, circa 2010, seconds the notion. Thirty years after a plucky team of amateurs pulled off the biggest upset in Olympic history, a squad of gritty professionals did it again. And this time they didn't even have to win the game.



One of the glorious aspects of the Olympics, winter or summer, is that you don't have to take home a gold medal to be a winner. Sometimes a silver or even a bronze can bring just as much joy. No one who watched Sunday's gold medal game could have come away with any other conclusion than that this was a second Miracle on Ice. The USA's 3-2 overtime loss to Canada might not have brought on as great a feeling of exhileration as did 1980's defeat of Russia's Big Red Army hockey machine. But it came close.



The U.S. team may have accepted its silver medals with bowed heads, but certainly with no sense of shame. I can't help comparing their demeanor with that of another Silver medal winning U.S. team--the 1972 Olympic basketball team. That team was so incensed by the bizarre officiating that gave Russia two mulligans, and ultimately the victory, in the final three seconds of the championship game that it refused to accept the silver medals. I covered that game for The Chicago Tribune and in my lead called it "the greatest three second violation in the history of basketball." I could sympathize with the players, but I could not agree with them. To many Americans it was a gesture of righteous indignation. To much of the rest of the world it was typical American hubris.



Although I consider myself as patriotic as the next guy and was rooting for the U.S. to win the game, I can't help but wonder if Sidney Crosby's game-winning shot wasn't the perfect ending. Certainly, Canada had a far greater emotional investment in its hockey team than did we Americans. It's THEIR game and they feel as strongly about it as we do about basketball. To prove it, Sunday's game was the most watched TV show in Canadian history. A lot of Americans watched it, too, but not as many as watched the 1980 games against Russia in the semi-final and Finland in the finals. Interest in hockey appears to be waning in this country, which is precisely why the NHL closed shop for two weeks to allow its star players to participate in Vancouver. If Sunday's thrilling climax doesn't give the game a boost I don't know what will.



Hockey as a sport has a couple of strikes against it. First of all, if you want to play it you have to know how to ice skate. That eliminates about half the world right there. Then, too, hockey does not translate well to the television screen. The puck, which is hard to see when you attend a game in person, is all but invisible on the screen. In fact, the one advantage the home viewer has over the fan in the arena is the ability of instant replay to show how a goal was scored. Before hockey became my fulltime beat in my final two years at The Tribune, I confess I hardly ever saw a goal being scored. The game is too fast, the puck too small, and my eyes too weak. I found, however, that when I watched hockey 100 nights a year I could train myself to concentrate on the puck and as soon as I learned the proper terminology I could report with some assurance that Jeremy Roenick had gone top shelf on Patrick Roy or that Chris Chelios had slipped one through the five hole on Martin Brodeur.

As often happens in life, a set of circumstances beyond my control led to my getting the hockey assignment. Having already covered most of the major beats at one time or another, I was at that stage of life where my main ambition was to be invisible. I never went into the office because there was no need to do so. If they wanted me they knew my phone number. I spent my days hoping the phone wouldn't ring, especially during Jeopardy. Then one day the phone rang. Wayne Gretzky was in town with the Los Angeles Kings and our beat writer who was supposed to do a story on "The Great One" had called in sick. Although they didn't expect me to talk to Gretzky himself at this late date perhaps I could get out to The Stadium and talk to Blackhawk goalie Eddie Belfour about what made Gretzky Gretzky. Eddie gave me some pretty good stuff and there is some irony in this because after I took over the beat the volatile goal tender and I did not always see eye to eye. It turned out that the beat writer was having some domestic difficulties, with his frequent absences due to road trips at the crux of the situation. So I finished out the season, including the playoffs, as the hockey writer. I soon discovered that hockey players were easier to get along with than some other professional athletes. The other writers on the beat seemed to be good guys, which is important. Most people don't realize it, but, as a sports writer, your best friends are not the guys in the office whom you never see. Rather, it's the beat writers from the rival papers with whom you spend so much time on the road. Sure, I have friends at The Tribune, but none any closer to me than Joe Goddard, who covered baseball for the Sun-Times when I was a Tribune baseball writer. After considering all of this I asked for, and got, the Blackhawk beat. It was a good two years. The Blackhawks were still selling out The Stadium every night and they made the playoffs both years I covered. They got to the conference finals that first year, losing to the Detroit Red Wings in a dramatic series where, it seemed, every game went at least one overtime and Belfour stood on his head nightly in a valiant, but doomed, effort to reach the Stanley Cup finals. By that time Eddie and I were not speaking to each other. When you're covering a hockey team and the No.1 goalie won't talk to you, that's not a good thing. Eddie came around a little bit when we discovered a mutual love for auto racing and we got along O.K. until I interviewed him for a story I was doing on backup goal tender Jeff Hackett. Hackett had been playing pretty well whenever he got the opportunity and my lead suggested that the Hawks now had two No.1 goal keepers and you could call them One and One-A. Belfour went bonkers when he read that and we were back to square one.

Roenick was one of my favorite players, a go to guy, as we say. He was always good for a juicy quote and from what I've read he hasn't changed much. It was strange to see him on Sunday's telecast, rendered nearly speechless by the amazing game taking shape in front of him. But that's what this game was, a stunner, and it doesn't matter who you were rooting for, because there were no losers in this game. Only winners.