FOUR TOPS

By CHRIS DUFRESNE

March 31, 2001 12 AM PT

MINNEAPOLIS — The coaches are outraged over lack of job security, the players want a chunk of a $6-billion pie, Arizona has a 17% graduation rate, the weather’s lousy, the souvenirs are rip-offs and the most talented players with remaining eligibility are cashing checks in the NBA.

Everyone and everything that is wrong about college basketball has descended on Final Four weekend like a frozen mist upon the Twin Cities.

Every coach with a beef is voicing it, every capitalist with a profit motive is exploiting it.

Coaches wonder when 20-win seasons became grounds for dismissal.

There have been 80 coaching changes in the last year and the carousel hasn’t stopped yet.

Jerry Green went 89-36 at Tennessee and was kindly escorted into retirement.

“I was stunned and appalled,” Kansas Coach Roy Williams said Thursday at the annual National Assn. of Basketball Coaches news conference.

Players wonder how $6 billion in television revenue can leave no money for them to take a date to a dinner and a movie.

The NBA is trying to put an age cap on players, yet keeps stealing basketball babes from their cradles.

“Whose fault is that?” Stanford guard Casey Jacobsen said last week. “Is that the kids’ fault. I don’t think so. How can you blame a kid if the NBA wants to draft you?”

NCAA President Cedric Dempsey is concerned that the flesh now being peddled on the recruiting trail has dropped in age to the sub-teens, yet, golly-gee-whiz, what can be done to stop it?

And while $6 billion sounds like a lot of money to you and me, Dempsey in his state-of-the-NCAA address claimed only 48 of the organization’s 976 schools make more money on sports than they spend.

Against this miserable backdrop, it is our displeasure to welcome you to the best Final Four anyone can remember.

You heard it right.

Despite the doomsday complaints, the laws of diminishing returns and flat network ratings, this could be a weekend to remember.

After poring over the merits of the teams, and dissecting the matchups, one is left with no other choice but to pick Arizona, Michigan State, Duke and Maryland to win the national championship.

For the first time in years, there is no clear-cut favorite, no weak Wisconsin sister, no team of destiny.

It will shock no one if any of four participants is whooping it up with Jim Nantz come Monday night.

This may be the best collective Final Four field in the modern era, at least the bluest-blooded since 1993, when No. 1 Kentucky met No. 1 Michigan in one national semifinal and No. 1 North Carolina met No. 2 Kansas in the other.

Yet, Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, making his ninth Final Four trip in 16 years, is hard-pressed to remember a better gathering than this one.

“Usually, one game is better than the other,” he said Friday. “Then, the winner of the harder game has a disadvantage for the next. That’s why a lot people have talked about reseeding the Final Four. Sometimes the two best teams have played in the semifinals. That’s not the case with this Final Four. I think all four teams are big-time teams.

“It’s probably as good a Final Four as it’s been in that respect.”

Coach K is Korrect.

Most years, a team or two that doesn’t measure up sneaks in the Final Four gate.

Wisconsin made an incredible run to reach last year’s Final Four, but the Badgers’ defeat by Michigan State in the national semifinals was the team’s 14th of the season.

And while college defections have diminished the sport’s overall quality, and denied us of truly fearsome squads such as Indiana in 1976, or Nevada Las Vegas in 1991, the quality of the four teams in Minneapolis is impeccable.

Maybe the college game isn’t going to hell in a peach basket.

Here is the compelling case for why each school should win the title:

* Arizona: The Wildcats were preseason No. 1 and are now playing like it. In a first, five Arizona starters made the preseason Wooden Award watch list. Compare and contrast: USC, which beat Kentucky in the East Regional semifinals?

Arizona beat USC by 44 points at USC.

The Wildcats can beat you fast or slow. Rubber-stamped by some as a typically soft team from the typically soft Pac-10, Arizona absorbed 36 fouls last week to defeat Illinois in the Midwest Regional final.

Why will Arizona win?

“You just look at balance,” Wildcat forward Richard Jefferson said. “You know, we’ve got the three-point shooters. We have the shot blocker. You know we have the muscle down low.”

The X-factor is the mercurial 7-foot-1 senior center Loren Woods, but even he came up big in the victory over Illinois.

* Michigan State: How do you bet against the defending national champion? This is Michigan State’s third consecutive Final Four appearance. Coach Tom Izzo is 16-2 in four NCAA tournaments. The Spartans are smart, veteran-led, and the best rebounding team in the country.

Tough?

Last year, Izzo’s team actually practiced in football gear.

Anything else?

“We do play a game we call ‘war,’ ” Izzo said Friday. “It’s just a game. I do it five, six minutes a practice. That’s really the brunt of our rebounding drills. We line up five guys on one side, five on the other, throw a ball at the backboard, see who’s going to come back with it.”

* Duke: Which school has a better chance to win? The Blue Devils have arguably the best coach since John Wooden in Krzyzewski. They boast the nation’s two best players in point guard Jason Williams, who averaged 28 points in four tournament games, and Shane Battier, as complete a player as you’d want on the final weekend.

Battier is so complete he vowed to try to go an entire season without uttering a cliche to reporters.

Can Battier make it two more games?

“It’s not over till it’s over,” Battier joked. “So I guess I have a couple more days.”

* Maryland: At first blush you’d say this is the odd team out. Maryland lost five of six games at one point this season. In reality, Maryland is the hottest team among the four. Last week, it shot 60% from the field in its upset of Stanford, a team many expected to win the championship.

Maryland is 10-deep, beat Duke in Durham by 11 points and lost two other games by a total of four points.

In point guard Steve Blake, the Terrapins have a player who has, more than anyone else, been able to contain Duke’s Williams.

His secret?

“Make him see that I’m there,” Blake said. “No open looks.”

This much we know: Two schools will win today and play each other Monday night.

Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess.

Because?

“It’s anybody’s tournament,” Blake said.