Steamrolled

UNC demolished Michigan State, 89-72 in a 76 possession game in the National Championship last night. After 10 minutes, UNC held a 20 point lead and the game was virtually over. The reason the Spartans lost last night was because of turnovers - 21 of them - that gave a very talented team even more opportunities to score. There was a lot of talk about this game that Michigan State had to play "flawless" basketball. I don't think that's true at all, but the Spartans did need to play better than this. The most frustrating part for Tom Izzo's team is that the Tar Heels are actually pretty mediocre with respect to forcing opponents to cough the ball up. But in their two meetings this season, Michigan State turned it over on over 25% of their possessions.

On the other side of the ball, UNC had a mere 7 turnovers. That's a 14-possession swing, and it accounts for nearly the entire scoring gap between these teams. Had State held onto the ball last night, we would have had ourselves a game.

But not for nothing, I was not particularly enthralled with how that game unfolded last night. UNC's initial blitz was impressive, but the next 30 game minutes resembled something of a free throw contest. Between the two teams, 69 free throws were attempted. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you'd be hard-pressed to find many games this season with more. Yes, these teams like to go inside, and yes, there were players on the floor last night who are very gifted at getting to the stripe. But Ty Lawson had 18 FTAs on 10 shots. Both UNC and MSU had a FTA for nearly every two point shot attempt. They say the best-officiated games are the ones where you don't notice the officials, but it's hard to see how you couldn't notice these guys last night.

There weren't many of these, but one silver lining for the Spartans was the play of Goran Suton. He continued his sparkling tournament with 17 points on 10 shots, to go with 11 rebounds. He played the best basketball of his life at the most opportune time, and it's a big reason why Michigan State got this far. Box score.

So that's it for the 2008-09 season. We've certainly had fun. We'll be back with some final thoughts tomorrow.