SAN DIEGO (AP) — No school located anywhere close to the West Coast has won the NCAA men’s basketball championship since Arizona did it in 1997.
The top-seeded Wildcats have another powerhouse team this March, and their quest to end the West’s drought begins Friday morning in San Diego.
Their first task out here on the edge of the Pacific?
Avoiding the Sharks.
Jaden Bradley and the blue-blood Wildcats (30-2) open the NCAA Tournament against Long Island University (24-10), a No. 16 seed that has every hallmark of the scrappy small schools that annually rocket to national prominence by taking a bite out of March Madness.
“We’re not going to take this game lightly,” said Bradley, the Big 12 player of the year. “We’re going to go out there (and) do what we do all year.”
The nation is about to learn about an entertaining underdog coached by New York City hoops great Rod Strickland, who has swiftly led the Sharks from rock-bottom to the tournament. Just three years after LIU won only three games, the Sharks’ reward for winning the NEC regular-season and tournament titles is a long shot at the No. 2 team in the AP Top 25.
Viejas Arena will be packed with Arizona faithful, but LIU will have a cheering section expected to be anchored by two unlikely superfans. The Brooklyn-based Sharks had meager attendance and almost no footprint in the crowded New York market when college basketball enthusiasts Cameron Koffman and David Pochapin — who didn’t attend this school, mind you — adopted the team and started the “Fins Up” craze.
That’s when one fan yells the phrase, and everybody else simultaneously claps their hands once above their heads, leaving them up to resemble a shark’s dorsal fin.
It’s simple and fun, and it’s become a viral sensation as the Sharks got better and better. Players sometimes do it on the court, and other schools like Nebraska — who don’t have shark mascots — have even picked it up.
It’ll happen Friday in San Diego, and the LIU players can’t wait.
“I feel like the first ‘Fins Up’ is going to send shivers down everybody’s spine,” said LIU’s Greg Gordon, the NEC’s defensive player of the year. “I feel like even Arizona would do it. It’s such a great movement. Everyone loves it. It gives us the belief that no matter where we are, people, they’re rooting for us. It definitely helps us a lot.”
In the zone
First-year Villanova coach Kevin Willard will recognize the matchup zone defense deployed by ninth-seeded Utah State on Friday in San Diego.
That’s because Aggies coach Jerrod Calhoun picked up the structure of his team’s remarkably effective defense from Ralph Willard, the veteran coach who also happens to be Kevin’s father.
“I had to listen to my dad when I drew Utah State, because Coach Calhoun does it probably better than anybody,” Kevin Willard said. “(Calhoun has) taken what my dad’s defense was, and he has actually made it even a little bit better, in my opinion.”
There are even more surprising ties between these two programs: Calhoun said he learned much of what he knows about being a head coach from Rollie Massimino, the Villanova legend who coached Calhoun at Cleveland State.
The Wildcats famously won it all in 2016 and 2018, and they’re back in the tournament for the first time since 2022. Utah State is here for the fourth straight season and fifth of six despite multiple coaching changes, but is hoping to improve on last year’s first-round exit.
Record watch
At some point during second-seeded Purdue’s game against No. 15 seed Queens on Friday night — probably within the first couple of minutes — Boilermakers guard Braden Smith will dish out the last two assists he needs to make history.
The All-American guard has 1,075 assists. Bobby Hurley holds the Division I career record with 1,076 during his days at Duke.
Not that Smith’s career needs a whole lot more to distinguish it. The senior from Russellville, Arkansas, already is the only Division I player with at least 1,500 points, 1,000 assists and 500 rebounds. He’s won a couple of Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles. And two years ago, Smith took the Boilermakers to the national championship game, where they finally lost to UConn.
“For me, it’s just playing the game you love. It’s just something you enjoy doing every single day,” Smith said. “I’ve never really got out of that, or got away from that. It’s just continuing to compete and get better. Obviously, as a basketball player you try to improve every year and every single day. I feel like that’s just really what it is.”
(Not so) home cookin’
No. 10 seed Missouri should feel comfortable playing seventh-seeded Miami on Friday at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, a couple of hours east of the school’s flagship campus in Columbia and a building in which the Tigers play every season.
The only problem: Their most recent memory there is a decidedly bad one.
In the annual Braggin’ Rights Game against border rival Illinois in December, the Tigers fell into a 16-point hole by halftime — and then things really went south. In the end, they were waylaid 91-48 in a performance that served as a humiliating reality check.
“After we played here, we went home and we met as a team. We met with the coaching staff and psychologist, and really just kind of talked about what does it look like going into SEC play for us,” Tigers forward Mark Mitchell said. “That really helped us just kind of get things off our chest. And the frustration we had, and it really helped moving forward.”
Missouri bounced back to finish 20-12, earning one of the last at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament.
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AP Basketball Writer Dave Skretta in Kansas City contributed to this report.
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