Final Four

NEW ORLEANS -- Michigan coach Steve Fisher must not have read the newspapers or heard the comments made on television during this year's NCAA tournament. Or, he seems to ignore them the way his Wolverines seem to ignore him.How else do you explain Fisher's reaction to a question regarding his team being a group of uncoachable, undisciplined, underachievers who had trouble with the likes of Temple and George Washington at last weekend's West Regional in Seattle?"I have not heard that," Fisher said earlier this week from Ann Arbor during a national news teleconference.

C It took a while, but Purdue women's basketball coach Lin Dunn has found the only negative aspect to reaching the NCAA women's Final Four this weekend in Richmond, Va.For the first time in her seven years at Purdue, Dunn actually will be on duty, coaching the Boilermakers as they pursue their first national championship. That means she won't be available to entertain her colleagues in the lobby of the coaches' headquarters hotel."I just realized when we made the Final Four that the weekend would lose some of its vacation nature," Dunn said during a national telephone news conference.

DETROIT -College basketball hasn't feted an undefeated champion since Indiana in 1976. The last team to even enter the NCAA tournament unblemished was Nevada-Las Vegas in 1991. History and context, however, became roadkill when Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green resisted the NBA and returned to North Carolina this season. "We were anointed," coach Roy Williams said. Not for the Final Four. Not for a championship. For perfection. Predictably, the Tar Heels stumbled.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The NCAA has taken major steps to eliminate the "$350,000 free throw" of the men's tournament and distribute the wealth of its seven-year, $1 billion contract with CBS.NCAA executive director Dick Schultz yesterday outlined a plan that breaks down $108.25 million from this year's tournament revenues into 10 different pots designed to help more than just the 64 schools that participate in the tournament.The largest chunk of the money -- $31.25 million -- will be distributed to conferences in Division I, based on their teams' performances in the six previous NCAA tournaments, Schultz said.

Keith Smart's kids had heard the stories about their father's most famous moment as a basketball player, the jump shot from the left wing at the Superdome that beat Syracuse and gave Indiana the 1987 NCAA championship. They have seen the framed picture of Smart taking the shot hanging on the wall in their father's home office in Oakland, Calif., where Smart is in his fourth season as an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors, this year under Don Nelson. But Smart's 8-year-old son, Jared, wanted to witness it for himself.

Baltimore will find out at the end of next week if its bid to be the host of the NCAA men's lacrosse final four in 2005 and 2006 has been successful, tournament coordinator Marty Schwartz said yesterday. Philadelphia is also competing for a two-year contract, but Baltimore is considered the front-runner because of its unequaled success (109,000 spectators for the three-day Memorial Day weekend) in conducting the 2003 final four at M&T Bank Stadium. Both cities have made presentations to the NCAA Lacrosse Committee.

Two weeks after the NCAA made Florida the favorite to repeat as national champion, nothing has changed. A generation after his father made history, John Thompson III has recorded more. There will be gravitas aplenty at the 2007 Final Four in Atlanta, as the Gators have lived up to their overall No. 1 seed and kept alive their quest to become the first repeat NCAA champion in 15 years. Joakim Noah, the Most Outstanding Player from the 2006 Final Four, and four other starters are back from the Florida team that beat UCLA in last year's championship game.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - History is the next barrier in Massachusetts' way.By way of motivating the Minutemen this season, coach John Calipari has coaxed, prodded and pushed them past real and imagined foes. Follow a great win with another great win. Learn to play well in the afternoon. Overcome the absence of Marcus Camby; overcome nemesis George Washington.If Massachusetts is going to reach the Final Four, it will have to set a precedent. The top-ranked Minutemen (31-1) open the NCAA tournament today at the Providence Civic Center against lowly Central Florida, and if they turn their top seed in the East into a regional title, they'll become the first team from the Atlantic 10 Conference ever to get to the Final Four.

The Final Four has a tough act to follow. A one-possession game with less than a minute remaining, North Carolina-Wisconsin in Syracuse, N.Y., was the least dramatic affair of the past two days. The NCAA tournament got three overtime regional finals for the first time. The survivors move on to St. Louis, where one semifinal will pair the comeback kids of Illinois and Louisville. The other appeared headed to a clash between the game's two greatest bluebloods until Michigan State persevered in Austin, Texas.

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Connecticut women's basketball team has been bemoaning the lack of respect for its unbeaten season. So it figured that when it beat Tennessee, 70-64, for its first national title and got the first call from a president to a victorious women's team, the Huskies still got no respect.President Clinton, a graduate of Big East rival Georgetown, placed a call to Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma from Little Rock, Ark., but Auriemma was on hold for about five minutes while the president's staff patched him through.