USC basketball: Forward Ari Stewart transferring from Wake Forest

Ari Stewart, a 6-foot-7 forward who played two seasons at Wake Forest, is transferring to USC, Trojans basketball Coach Kevin O’Neill announced Friday.

Stewart averaged 8.5 points and 4.9 rebounds per game last season as a sophomore. He started 16 games and scored a career-best 18 points and had seven rebounds in a 90-69 loss against Virginia Commonwealth, which eliminated USC from the NCAA tournament to start its run to the Final Four.

Under NCAA transfer rules, Stewart must sit out the 2011-12 season. He will be eligible in 2012-13 and have two seasons of eligibility remaining.

“He is going to have a great year of development during his redshirt year and is going to be a great contributor to our success once he becomes available," O’Neill said in a statement. "He has a tremendous upside as a player and I’m convinced he can raise us to another level.”

Stewart, from Marietta, Ga., averaged 7.3 points and 3.2 rebounds per game as a freshman. He chose Wake Forest over offers from Oregon, Virginia and Xavier as a high school senior.

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--Gary Klein

Photo: Ari Stewart, left, formerly of Wake Forest, takes a shot against Georgia Tech's Daniel Miller during an NCAA college basketball game in Winston-Salem, N.C. March 3, 2011. Credit: Lauren Carroll/AP

Question of the Day: Who will win next year's NCAA men's tournament? [Updated]

Writers from around the Tribune Co. weigh in on next year's NCAA men's basketball tournament. Check back throughout the day for more responses and feel free to leave a comment of your own.

Shannon Ryan, Chicago Tribune

Picking participants in this season’s NCAA tournament championship was a guessing game. Next season, there are more serious contenders. North Carolina, Duke, Louisville and Texas could all vie for the crown next season. But the title game in New Orleans next season will feature Ohio State beating Kentucky for the championship it was unable to obtain this season.

Kentucky’s hopes depend on whether many of its talented freshmen will return. Ohio State’s potential  hinges on Jared Sullinger staying true to his word. If the big man returns for a sophomore season as he vowed, the Buckeyes will be hard to stop. True, they lose sharp-shooters David Lighty and Jon Diebler. But they return a host of talent including rising sophomore point guard Aaron Craft, senior guard William Buford and sophomore forward DeShaun Thomas.

The Buckeyes should have gone all the way this season as a No. 1 seed in the tournament. They’ll do it in 2012.

Question of the Day: Should and will UConn coach Jim Calhoun retire after winning the NCAA title? [Updated]

Writers from around the Tribune Co. weigh in on Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun after winning the NCAA championship Monday night. Check back throughout the day for more responses, vote in the poll and feel free to leave a comment of your own.

Chris Dufresne, Los Angeles Times

Yes, absolutely, positively, it is the perfect time for Jim Calhoun to retire. He probably won't do it soon. He likes to quote advice from former North Carolina Coach Dean Smith who said to never hastily make an important decision. He might wait until October to assure one of his assistants gets the job.

But it makes sense for Calhoun to walk away on top, after his third title, and not have to face that three-game suspension next year for NCAA violations.

Calhoun is a proud man, who probably did his best coaching job this year. He'll likely be losing his star player, Kemba Walker, to the NBA. Connecticut has a lot of young, talented players to build around. Freshman Jeremy Lamb is an emerging star and Shabazz Napier is ready to take over for Kemba at the point.

But this just feels like the right time for Calhoun, given all he's been through, to step aside. Not many guys get to go out with a national title. John Wooden did it at UCLA in 1975, and that's pretty good company.

Question of the Day: How much does the loss by the UConn women diminish their legacy? [Updated]

Writers from around the Tribune Co. weigh in on the loss by two-time defending NCAA women's champion Connecticut to Notre Dame in Sunday's tournament semifinals. Check back throughout the day for more responses and feel free to leave a comment of your own.

Gary Klein, Los Angeles Times

Not one iota.

UConn is currently to women’s basketball what John Wooden’s UCLA teams were to the men’s game in the late '60s and mid-'70s.

UConn’s record 90-game winning streak that ended in December surpassed UCLA’s 88-game streak. The Bruins, coincidentally, saw their streak ended by Notre Dame, the school that defeated UConn in the Final Four on Sunday.

Notre Dame’s victory over the two-time defending champion Huskies reminded of North Carolina State’s victory over UCLA in the 1974 men’s Final Four. The loss ended UCLA’s run of seven consecutive NCAA championships.

Women's basketball: USC preparing to play Toledo for WNIT title

USC’s women’s basketball team will play Toledo on Saturday in the WNIT championship game at Savage Arena in Toledo, Ohio.

USC (24-12) will attempt to win its fifth consecutive road game. The Trojans, who opened the tournament at home against UC Santa Barbara, advanced to the final with victories at Nevada, Brigham Young, Colorado and Illinois State.

USC defeated Illinois State, 63-36.

Trojans Coach Michael Cooper, who won several NBA titles as a player with the Lakers, said the Trojans are at home away from home.

 “Championships are won on the road—that’s what Pat Riley used to say,” Cooper said in a phone interview on Friday.

Naama Shafir, a junior guard from Israel, averages 14.6 points a game for Toledo (28-8), which advanced to the final with an 83-60 victory over Charlotte and has a 17-game home winning streak.

USC is seeking its first postseason tournament title since winning the NCAA title in 1984.

“We’re all clicking,” said junior guard Briana Gilbreath, who averages a team-best 14.4 points a game for the Trojans. “People are making shots and we’re doing everything right.”

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-- Gary Klein

Photo: Trojans guard Briana Gilbreath shoots the ball as Stanford Cardinal forwards Joslyn Tinkle, 44, and forward Kayla Pedersen, 14, defend at the Galen Center. Credit: Kirby Lee / U.S. Presswire.

Question of the Day: Who will win Saturday's two NCAA Final Four games?

Writers from around the Tribune Co. weigh in on Saturday's NCAA basketball games,  Kentucky vs. Connecticut and Virginia Commonwealth vs. Butler. Check back throughout the day for more responses, vote in the polls and feel free to leave a comment of your own.

Shannon Ryan, Chicago Tribune

Butler will get another shot at the NCAA tournament title, this time against Connecticut, on Monday.

Butler isn’t so wide-eyed at the whole Final Four experience after last season’s run to the championship. The veteran Bulldogs rely on a solid defense that will cool off VCU’s hot shooters. If Shelvin Mack is on target with his shooting, which he has been in the tournament, the Bulldogs will advance.

In Las Vegas, if a number is hot on the roulette wheel, you keep riding it. Why bet against Connecticut and Kemba Walker?

Walker is the tournament’s brightest star and has taken the Huskies to another level since the Big East tournament. Winners of nine games in 19 days, they’ll unravel a talented Kentucky team just as they did when the teams met in Maui early in the season. Connecticut freshman guard Jeremy Lamb has developed into a solid counterpart to Walker. 

It’s been an unpredictable tournament, but Butler and Connecticut have enough reliable players to launch each team into the championship.

Paul Doyle, Hartford Courant

Let’s put an end to the “experience” story line when evaluating the Butler-VCU game. Yes, Butler played in last year’s Final Four and won’t be shaken on the big stage. But after watching VCU run through one favored opponent after another, does anyone think this team will be intimidated by the bright lights?

USC basketball: O'Neill not surprised by Virginia Commonwealth's Final Four run

Virginia Commonwealth has made one of the most improbable runs in NCAA tournament history, going from "First Four" to Final Four, from playing in Dayton, Ohio, to Chicago to San Antonio and, finally, to Houston, where the 11th-seeded Rams will face eighth-seeded Butler in a national semifinal Saturday.

Throughout that run, the Rams, who hail from the Colonial Athletic Assn., have knocked off, in order, teams from the Pacific 10, Big East, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences, including blue-blood powers such as Georgetown and, on Sunday in the Southwest Regional final, top-seeded Kansas.  

Many of the national talking heads who so fervently bashed the idea that VCU -- which finished fourth in its league and lost four of five heading into its conference tournament that it didn't even win -- could earn an at-large bid are now eating heaping helpings of crow with plenty of humble pie for dessert.

Then again, anyone who had the Rams going far in their bracket must have been a VCU student, such as this guy.  Everyone else, well, their brackets are just plain ruined, says ESPN. Oklahoma City Thunder star forward Kevin Durant even tweeted that his pool was devoid of VCU-to-Final-Four picks. 

But USC Coach Kevin O'Neill, whose Trojans were VCU's first victims in the tournament way back on March 16, is hardly surprised with the Rams' accomplishments. 

"There's nothing magical about what they're doing," he said by phone Monday. "They're good."

There was plenty of concern among USC's coaching staff before the Trojans faced VCU that the Rams were a dangerous team, with underrated players such as point guard Joey Rodriguez and forward Jamie Skeen and a chip on their shoulder that would become strong motivation. Those fears played out in full.

College basketball: Derrick Williams -- the outlier who skirted the grassroots basketball hype machine and still made it

Arizona forward Derrick Williams (above) is perhaps the best player in college basketball. He's as strong as a power forward, as versatile as a guard. The 6-foot-8, 241-pound sophomore is averaging 19.5 points and 8.4 rebounds and shooting 60% from the floor. There's not many like him, if any at all. 

On Saturday night, Williams, this season's Pacific 10 Conference player of the year, will lead the fifth-seeded Wildcats against third-seeded Connecticut in the NCAA West Regional final in Anaheim's Honda Center.

This puts Williams just 40 minutes from a Final Four, and he'll be playing in front of many family and friends in a place that's about 15 minutes from where he grew up in La Mirada.  

After this season should he decide to leave, Williams will become a millionaire many times over. He will be a lottery pick. Material objects once thought unobtainable will not be any more.

This is the back end of the traditional rise-to-basketball-stardom narrative. That story arc is a familiar one. It has been around for some time. In past decades, it has taken a new form, which is as follows:

-Star for a household name AAU team that travels the nation, performs in front of large crowds and numerous NBA scouts and college coaches, and also happens to be bankrolled by a big-name shoe company that also happens to help bankroll several big-name college basketball programs that thereby all but guarantee a coach from one of the said big-name college basketball programs will see you in person.

Thursday's San Diego State-Connecticut game may come down to 'Cardiac Kemba' [Video]

He has been called "Cardiac Kemba" for his late-game heroics, which drives up the blood pressure of his teammates, fans, opposing coaches and reporters who then have to re-write their stories on deadline. 

Yes, we're people, too. 

But University of Connecticut sophomore point guard Kemba Walker is the undisputed king of clutch in college basketball this season, and should the third-seeded Huskies' NCAA West Regional semifinal game Thursday night against second-seeded San Diego State come down to the wire expect the ball in his hands. 

You may wonder, what's going through his head when that time is running down? 

"I don't know," he said Wednesday. "My teammates always tell me -- they give me a certain look. It's like, 'Kemba, win this game, just make this shot!' "

That's his goal, which he usually accomplishes (see video). Walker keeps it simple, which, according to the great Malcolm Gladwell, is important in these situations.

Gladwell wrote a brilliant story for the New Yorker about what happens to humans in pressure moments. The story was titled "The Art of Failure" and it obviously pertains to sports quite a bit. He noted that  there was a distinct difference between choking and panicking, which are often considered the culprits when some athletes doesn't perform in the clutch. 

"Panic, in this sense, is the opposite of choking," he wrote. "Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart."

Not that we're diagnosing why Walker succeeds in this situation, but he seems to simply focus on breaking down his defender to get the best shot he can, regardless. And that works, just as it does in most other points of the game.

Arizona Coach Sean Miller was a childhood guest on 'The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'

Here's Seanny! 

Those who constantly peruse YouTube might already have known that Arizona Coach Sean Miller, who will be leading his fifth-seeded Wildcats against top-seeded Duke in an NCAA West Regional semifinal game Thursday in Anaheim, was once a guest on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."

But for those of us with day jobs, this information is news. Here's your video evidence of the 14-year-old Miller showcasing his impressive dribbling skills for Carson.

 

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski still not interested in Lakers job

In 2004, the Lakers made a strong pitch to hire Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, but he ultimately turned them down.

On Wednesday at the Honda Center in Anaheim, where Krzyzewski's top-seeded Blue Devils will face fifth-seeded Arizona in the NCAA West Regional semifinal Thursday night, Krzyzewski again said he's not interested in the job, which will come open if current Lakers Coach Phil Jackson retires at the end of this season.  

"I've never thought of ever leaving Duke for another school, but there were three serious times when I almost left to go to the pros," Krzyzewski said. "One was when Dave Gavitt took over the Celtics, and another was with the Trail Blazers, but one that I took to a far level was the Lakers situation, and they were great with me.

"I could not give up what I've got, what I have at Duke. It just wasn't worth it."

Krzyzewski has coached Team USA and said that made him a better coach. 

"I love the NBA, but it made me love the NBA more," he said of that experience. "I'm good with where I'm at, I'm too old to do anything else, kind of like (Boston Globe sports columnist) Bob Ryan."

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-- Baxter Holmes

Photo: Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski speaks during a news conference for a West regional semifinal game in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Wednesday, March 23, 2011, in Anaheim, Calif. Credit: Mark J. Terrill / AP