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    Beyond the Boxscore

    Final Four inspiration dies quick: UH is already Dickey done, Rice hangs on theledge

    Chris Baldwin
    Mar 10, 2011 | 2:06 am
    • Shasta can start getting ready for football season — already.
    • Arsalan Kazemi carried Rice to one win. Only problem? He needs to do it threemore days in a row.
    • The Final Four and all its logos can only inspire so much.

    It wasn't that long ago that the University of Houston played a starring role in the Final Four preview luncheon at Reliant Stadium.

    When you got off the long escalators to the West Club, beaming UH cheerleaders were there to great you. During the press conference, Shasta (the school's Cougar mascot) stood by the stage, along with more beaming UH cheerleaders. First-year Houston men's basketball coach James Dickey sat on the stage next to a clearly outmanned Rice coach Ben Braun.

    It truly felt like the University of Houston was a huge part of the Final Four, Oh sure, anyone with half a college basketball brain knew there was plenty of illusion involved. This year's UH team making the Final Four would be equivalent to the Detroit Lions winning the Super Bowl or the Pittsburgh Pirates rolling to the World Series. It wasn't going to happen. But on this mid January day, the longshot of making the 68-team NCAA Tournament field still seemed to be in play.

    Dickey's Cougars were 11-6 on Jan. 18, the day all the Final Four fanfare really barreled into Houston.

    "When you see Houston attracting an event the magnitude of the Final Four, the players in our program can't help but be inspired," Dickey said then. "It makes anyone think about the possibilities."

    Less than two months later, on a rather mundane Wednesday night in El Paso — the city that no one really wants to visit — the Cougars' season ended quieter than a church mouse. Houston fell to Marshall 97-87 in the first round of the Conference USA Tournament. It was UH's 12th loss in 13 games.

    And now, the Cougars return to Houston — the mecca that everyone in college basketball and many outside of it — want to get to in April. Sure, UH's old, glorious college basketball moments, particularly coach Guy Lewis' legacy, will be honored in Jim Nantz's Wortham Theater NCAA Salute Thursday night of the big Final Four week. But Dickey and his players will in many ways be forgotten outsiders, watching the party go on all around them.

    Final Fours don't change destinies. Bad teams are still bad teams, no matter how many fancy signs are put up in their eyesight.

    Rice coach Ben Braun found himself answering Final Four questions that dreary January day too.

    "At Rice, our cheerleaders have to go to school," Braun cracked, noting the early afternoon time. "Sammy the Owl's in class right now."

    Braun gets to make jokes for at least one more day. His team held on by the Owl hair of their chinny chin chin to beat SMU 58-57 in its first round Conference USA Tournament game Wednesday night. Arsalan Kazemi — a 6-foot-7 forward who's considered a legitimate NBA prospect — put up 24 points and 13 rebounds.

    Now, he only has to do it three more times, starting with Thursday night's game against No. 2 seed Tulsa, to steal Braun an NCAA Tournament berth. No, the Owls aren't expecting to go dancing either.

     Reality Check

    Even back on that January day, before the likelihood of a third straight losing season to open Braun's career behind the hedges set in, he couldn't help but acknowledge the uphill climb he faced.

    He talked about embracing Rice's high academic standards, about it allowing him to attract a "special kind" of kid. Special kids at Rice tend to be special students, not the type of players which prompt Final Four dreams though. Braun's always looked younger than he is, but this is a basketball lifer with 34 years of head coaching experience.

    He knows the score. He's never put up three straight losing seasons before in 30-plus years in stops like Siena Heights, Eastern Michigan and Cal. Braun hasn't gotten worse at coaching. He's gotten a tougher job.

    Still, like Dickey, Braun would talk about how knowing the Final Four was coming to Houston excited his players.

    "When you see it going on in your city, you can't help but get into it," Braun said. "We don't talk about it as a team, but the players notice it."

    When you're a basketball player at UH or Rice and you see the Final Four coming, it's like a community theater actor noticing that a Jeff Bridges movie is in town though. No matter how many cheerleaders you bring out, you're stuck outside peering into the window — in this case, Reliant Stadium's glass suite-side facade.

     No Butlers

    At that preview luncheon, an NCAA official made reference to Butler playing in the Final Four in its home city last year, with the big stadium only six miles from the Bulldogs' campus. Dickey and Braun both chuckled a little at that one.

    Houston's biggest Division I-A basketball programs aren't going to be in the big dance let alone the final curtain. Little Texas Southern actually has the best chance to give the city a representative in the field of 68 — though Wednesday night's near-upset loss in the first round of the SWAC Tournament isn't exactly a confidence inducer.

    Will UH or Rice have a better shot to at least be assured of tourney participation when the Final Four returns to Houston in 2016?

    Dickey comes across much better in person than he does on a resume or a sound bite. He carries an almost professorial calm with a confident undertone. Houston's program cannot help but be better for the discipline Dickey demands. But he needs program-changing players — and how many UH basketball coaches have failed at that?

    Besides, with college basketball's climate today, you'd be a fool to suggest that either Dickey or Braun will still even be here in 2016.

    This moment's passed them by. And it all looked so promising, or at least interesting, in January. A Final Four in your city guarantees nothing.

    At least, Shasta will have no reason to skip school anytime soon.

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    Beyond the Boxscore

    Houston in line to get more Final Fours after 2016: NCAA officials expect it tobecome a regular

    Chris Baldwin
    Apr 5, 2011 | 7:07 pm
    • The success of Bracket Town meant almost as much to the NCAA as the success atReliant Stadium.
      Photo by Bruce Bennett
    • NCAA official Greg Shaheen praised Houston's Final Four efforts.
    • Kemba Walker wasn't the only one who flew high at this Final Four.
      Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

    When even NCAA officials are making jokes about the lowest-scoring NCAA Championship Game since 1949, you know they had a good time in Houston.

    That's what happens in the Final Four wrap-up press conference Tuesday. Greg Shaheen — the highest-ranking NCAA official in the room — opens his portion with a crack about the offensive woes Monday night.

    Shaheen notes that if more people had the motor shown by Houston Final Four Local Organizing Committee interim executive director Doug Hall then "we might have had a game last night where both teams scored 60 points."

    "You were on overdrive," Shaheen says to Hall.

    Yes, there is a whole lot of love in the room when the Houston LOC and the NCAA meet for the last time before this 2011 Final Four becomes part of the record books — and thoughts begin to slowly turn to the 2016 Final Four that will be held in Houston and the 2015 regional at Reliant Stadium before that.

    It does not figure to end in 2016 though. Shaheen — the NCAA's interim executive vice president of championships and alliances — tells CutureMap he expects there will be even more Final Fours in Houston in the future.

    "I don't see any reason why Houston wouldn't become a regular part of our rotation," Shaheen says.

    Shaheen would be the first to say that the NCAA's Basketball Committee will make the final call like usual on future sites, but he says the committee is thrilled with Houston's performance.

    "This is what a showcase event should look like," Shaheen says of a Houston event that set the Final Four record for total attendance (145,747 at the two nights of games) and also drew an estimated 140,000 to the Big Dance Concert Series (the concert figure is based on an "approximation" of the number of people who came through Discovery Green during all three concerts that lasted several hours each) and another 49,000 to Bracket Town at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "This is what a national championship should feel like.

    "It should be exhausting the next morning and be a seamless effort."

    Later Shaheen quips, "UConn is not the only winner here."

    Instead, Texas might be the biggest winner of all. For the Lone Star State has emerged as the NCAA's big event darling. Texas will host three Final Fours in a six-year stretch (Houston in 2011 and 2016, Dallas in 2014). And that type of dominance is not expected to end anytime soon either.

    "In the modern era, for both the men's and women's championships, I don't know that any state has emerged like Texas," Shaheen says. "And I think you have to include San Antonio (host of the 1998, 2004 and 2008 Final Fours) in that equation as well. There are a lot of things Texas offers the championships that are unique."

    Standing off to the side in the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency — which served as the headquarters for the coaches convention during Final Four week, housing all the big names who weren't coaching in the games — Robert Dale Morgan is sure of what makes Houston such a lure.

    Morgan, the president and executive director of the 2011 Houston Final Four LOC, held a similar position for Houston's 2004 Super Bowl and many credit his vision with helping the city see its big sports event potential, with a Super Bowl, Major League Baseball All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Game, Major League Soccer All-Star Game and now a Final Four all having been held here since 2004. Not that Morgan wants that recognition.

    He chooses to sit in the crowd rather than on the stage at the wrap-up press conference. He probably could have blended in to, wearing a Houston Final Four hat with his suit, if so many people on the stage didn't point him out. Bob Beauchamp, chairman of the Houston Final Four LOC, calls Morgan, "the best in the business."

    "Having six million people who care," Morgan says in explaining how Houston's positioned itself as the host city with the most. "Having a dozen Fortune 500 companies. And oh by the way, we have really great weather 300 days out of the year."

     Trash Talk Between Friends

    Houston hands off the Final Four to New Orleans, next year's host. The transition is a bit of intentional symbolism by the NCAA which wants to recognize how closely the two cities are linked and the Bayou City's role in helping after Hurricane Katrina.

    This will be the fifth Final Four that New Orleans has hosted and the city's LOC executive director John Koerner can't help but point out to Houston, the new city in "the rotation," how great every one of the NCAA Championship Games held in the Big Easy has been.

    "New Orleans has hosted some of the most memorable finals ever," Koerner says. "We had Michael Jordan's shot, Keith Smart's shot, Chris Webber's infamous timeout and Hakim Warrick's block at the buzzer."

    And from its first Final Four, Houston has? Well, a whole lot of clangs — and Butler's record-low 18.8 percent shooting.

    Not that anyone in the NCAA is holding it against the Bayou City. The organization credentialed 1,387 media members for this Final Four, loved the visibility brought about by having it in one of the America's biggest cities. Even if you have to wonder how much everyone was into it locally. The TV rating in Houston for the unsightly Butler-UConn national championship game only ranked 30th out of the 56 major media markets.

    Shaheen's not dwelling on that. Instead, he's sticking around Houston to take in more of the city without the pressures of the mega event.

    "I don't have a flight home," Shaheen says, knowing that Southwest Airlines' grounded jets have made it much harder than usual to land one last minute. "So I'll be staying here two, three, four, five more days. I may be looking to get an apartment and just become a resident."

    Shaheen laughs. Who says NCAA suits don't have a sense of humor?

    When they are happily in Houston, they sure do.

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