Conditional Love

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament has been ideal, all things considered.

That’s for the greater good. That’s for overall interest. It’s not from my perspective.

It’s good for the tournament that Davidson, a No. 10 seed, almost made it to the Final Four, but it’s probably also good that the Wildcats didn’t actually make it. The fact that the Final Four actually consists of the teams deemed most likely to be there is a triumph of the system.

A decade ago, I would’ve been happy.

As the years have passed, though, I’ve grown more selective. I’m not the basketball fan I once was. I don’t like basketball per se. I like basketball when it’s played the way I like.

The gallant Davidson bid grabbed my interest. The Wildcats and Stephen Curry were, to me, a throwback to other gallant bids. To be specific, it brought me back to Princeton and Bill Bradley way back in the mid-1960s. I wasn’t quite seven then, so forgive me if the details are sketchy. I read about it later.

I’m not as partisan as I once was. I’m partial to the way certain teams play. Davidson is one of them. One of the teams Davidson beat, Gonzaga, was another. I like to watch Michigan State. The only game I actually saw live this year was a momentous one. I watched Vanderbilt beat Mississippi State in overtime, and the Commodores’ best player, Shan Foster, scored 42 points and hit nine straight three-pointers at the end. The final one was with three seconds to go in OT and Vandy trailing by two. It may have been the greatest individual performance I ever saw in person.

The only other individual performance that springs to mind was a game Bob McAdoo had for North Carolina at Clemson when I was a kid. I saw that game in person, too.

So Vandy, which sadly lost in the first round of the NCAAs, also has some responsibility, along with Davidson, in restoring some love of basketball as a game. If I hadn’t watched the Commodores play – and my being there was almost an accident and definitely a coincidence – I probably wouldn’t have been as interested once the tournament came around.

Vanderbilt plays a deliberate, clever half-court game, complemented by an opportunistic fast break when conditions warrant it. I’d like the Commodores even more if they played better defense, but their failings are more a result of being outmanned physically than being unsound fundamentally.

I enjoy watching three of the Final Four. North Carolina and Kansas are teams of splendid versatility. UCLA plays exceptional defense. Nothing against Memphis, but I think it would be an offense to the gods of basketball if a team won the national championship without being able to hit free throws any better.

Ten years ago, it would’ve been all about whom I liked and whom I didn’t, and I’d like to think my tastes have grown more refined. I used to hate UCLA, basically, because they won too much. It’s hard not to admire John Wooden, but when I was a kid, I managed somehow not to like him. Now I’m old enough to realize how silly that was.

Or maybe it’s that my alma mater, Furman, dropped basketball shortly after I graduated but just kept on playing games.

If the Paladins came back from the dead, it’d probably have the same effect on me as Vanderbilt and Davidson.

You can reach Monte Dutton at mdutton@gastongazette.com.