NCAA: Princes of darkness and great white walls (part 1)

This latest edition of the NCAA Tournament has clearly shown the extent to which different teams thrive or fail in different situations.

The perennial heavies, those who wear the home white jerseys as the higher seed in almost every game, don't always handle that white-hot pressure very well. On the other hand, many teams just below the top echelon become transformed into super squads when they have to put on their dark road jerseys. The teams in this year's Final Four, their Tournament histories, and the teams they faced on the road to Minneapolis, all lend more than a little credence to the "uniform factor," which is anything but uniform in its application to college basketball's better teams.

Let's start with the dirty dozens who will be wearing the dark duds on National Semifinal Saturday, Arizona and Maryland. Arizona advanced to the Four-front in Minnesota with a win over Illinois on Sunday. The Wildcats were the lower-seeded team in that game, as the second seed to Illinois' #1 seed.

In recent years, regional finals involving a #1 seed against a 2 or 3 seed have been quite evenly contested. Since 1997, the top seeds own a narrow 5-4 margin against 2 and 3 seeds. Within this dynamic, Arizona has fared better as the lower-seeded team over time. Arizona's first Final Four, in 1998, was achieved as a 1 seed, with the victory in the regional final coming against second-seeded North Carolina. After that, however, Lute Olson has never made the Final Four as a top Cat.

In 1994, Olson's second trip to the Big Show was achieved as a second seed in the regional final, as the Wildcats wore their road unis and wore out top-seeded Missouri, winning the game in a rout. In 1997, the Wildcats won the regional final in their home whites, but the game was against a team that was six seeding lines below the Wildcats. (Fourth-seeded Arizona beat 10th-seeded Providence, and the white jerseys didn't exactly help, as the Wildcats played shaky ball but managed to beat the Friars in overtime.) In Arizona's NCAA Tournament history, 1997 stands out as the year of years in which Lute Olson's ballclub thrived on "road (uniform) rage." The Wildcats, as a 4 seed, conquered three number one seeds on the road to a championship, slaying Kansas, Carolina and Kentucky in their blue road jerseys.

To add a footnote to Arizona and Lute Olson's NCAA track record in dark unis, it should also be added that Olson's first-ever Final Four, with Iowa in 1980, was achieved as a second seed against top-seeded Georgetown. Lute loves the road, and this past Sunday reaffirmed that. Saturday, Arizona will wear blue... but might not feel the same way.

Without a Final Four history, Maryland's seeding psychology can be limited to this year's Tournament, and the results speak for themselves. In each of the first three rounds, the Terps, wearing white, were not tremendously impressive. They pulled away from Georgia State in the second round, but that was Georgia State. In their two D.C.-area games, against George Mason and Georgetown (by George, Maryland was busy during this year's Dance?), the Terps struggled mightily, and let their inferior opponents linger for a good long while--to the very end for George Mason.

But once the Terps broke through that Gary Williams Sweet 16 barrier and entered the Elite Eight against higher-seeded Stanford, something magical happened as the Terps donned their red road unis for the first time. They didn't play tight, everyone shot the ball aggressively and well, and Maryland simply took the game to Stanford from beginning to end.

And what about Stanford, while we're at it? If St. Joseph's guard Marvin O'Connor had been able to connect on a three-pointer with the game tied at 76 and 2:30 left, the Cardinal might have been dismissed from the second round as a high seed for the third straight year. The Cardinal lost as a 2 seed to Gonzaga in 1999, and as a 1 seed to UNC last year. The top-seeded Cardinal almost failed to make the Sweet 16 this year as well. The reason? It's hard to identify anything other than the fact that wearing white--much like Arizona over the long run of Tournament history--has made Stanford a tight Tournament team.

Against Maryland in the West Final on Saturday, that was undeniably the case. Stanford's only Final Four run in recent years came as a 3 seed in 1998, when the Cardinal--wearing red--beat Brian Cardinal and second-seeded (and white-clad) Purdue in the regional semis. Then, in a fashion similar to Arizona in '97, the Cardinal's decidedly higher seeding in the Midwest Final (against 8th-seeded Rhode Island) did not translate into a great performance. In fact, the Cardinal, down seven with less than 1:30 left, were dead in the water, before guard Arthur Lee's three-pointer and two steals carried Stanford to an improbable come-from-behind win. In retrospect, it shouldn't surprise people that Maryland played with a much more relaxed and game-ready mindset than did Stanford on Saturday.

To shift the focus back to the Terps themselves, Maryland will wear red on Saturday against Duke.

Question: In the three times that Maryland played Duke this year -- home and home plus a neutral-site game -- in what environment did Maryland score its lone win against the Dukies?

Yup -- on the road in Cameron Indoor Stadium, and by 11 points.

Arizona and Maryland, the princes of darkness in the Final Four bracket, are just where they want to be on Semifinal Saturday.