Blue-blood battles galore: After UConn survived MSU's furious rally, a Duke showdown awaits with a Final Four bid on the line
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WASHINGTON — Earlier this week, as he spoke to reporters here from Capital One Arena, a day before his team tangled with Duke in the Sweet 16, Rick Pitino caused a bit of a stir.
“The blue bloods no longer control basketball,” he said.
“There’s no such thing as a blue blood anymore,” he added later.
And just in case we didn’t catch it the first two times, Pitino again quipped before leaving the podium, “There are no more blue bloods and I think it’s great.”
Well, about that…
A day after Pitino’s comments, Duke outlasted his St. John’s team and UConn survived against Michigan State to deliver an East region final on Sunday evening pitting two of the sport’s most recent dominant basketball powers in the country.
Are they blue bloods? Perhaps the bluest of the blue bloods over the last three decades.
The Blue Devils, the Huskies and a Final Four trip on the line in the nation’s capital? Yes, that’ll do just fine.
Between them, they’ve got 11 national titles, 25 Final Fours and 87 — yes, 87 — NCAA tournament appearances.
Dead blue bloods? At least not here in the East regional.
In fact, the two programs account for more than one-third of the national titles since 1999 and six of the last 15.
They almost didn’t make it to this point, though. The Blue Devils needed to overcome a 10-point second-half deficit with an injured Caleb Foster rallying the team over the Johnnies. In the nightcap here, the Huskies (32-5) blew an early 19-point, lost the lead, got it back, lost it again and finally finished off the Spartans, 67-63.
At halftime, UConn coach Dan Hurley glared toward his senior leader, Alex Karaban, who up to that point had been skittish to shoot.
“If you’re going to go out in this tournament, you’ve got to go out firing,” he told him.
Karaban finished with 17 points, buried half of his field goals, hit three 3-pointers and snagged 7 rebounds, most of them coming down the stretch of a one or two-score game.
“We let it fly. We’re going to let it fly,” Karaban said afterward.
Clutch free throws for the Huskies kept them on top late. Karaban and Tarris Reed Jr. combined to make their final six free throws. Each trip to the line extended the lead to three or four points.
With 44 ticks left, Karaban found Reed down the lane. He was fouled and made both free throws to make it 63-60. With 22.5 seconds left and leading by one, Karaban sank two free throws. And with UConn up by two, Reed secured the game with a pair of free throws with 4 seconds left.
As he walked up to the line, teammates yelled support toward Reed, “We trust you! We trust!”
The baskets prevented a historic collapse.
Had they won, the Spartans’ 19-point comeback would have been the sixth-biggest in NCAA tournament history. Down 25-6 just 10 minutes into the game, MSU began its rally, outscoring the Huskies 22-10 over the next 15 minutes.
In fact, UConn scored 25 points the first 10 minutes of the game and then scored 25 points over the next 23 minutes.
“It’s about how we are going to respond,” Karaban said about MSU’s comeback. “Making sure we didn’t allow Michigan State to break us.”
What happened early on?
“They punched us in the mouth,” MSU coach Tom Izzo said. “It was an onslaught there.”
During the postgame news conference, Izzo waved away questions about retiring.
What does he plan to be doing in five years?
“Trying to win a national championship. Plain and simple,” he said. “I’m feeling good. We all talk about retirement. Why? What the hell am I going to do?”
He expressed confidence that he’ll return the Spartans to a Final Four one day, that he’ll be able to claim victory in a regional final.
“It’ll happen,” he said, squinting into the crowd of reporters.
But on Sunday here in Washington, D.C., as the city’s annual Cherry Blossom Festival hits full swing, the blue bloods meet in the nation’s capital.
