WE LOVE COOPER FLAGG — HURLEY AND PITINO, NO? — AS A SPORT WINS EYEBALLS
College basketball needed a player who might become an all-time legend, and if Flagg and Duke contend for a championship, the tournament will draw fans who don’t require a dumb expansion to 76 teams
March Madness or Mindless Monotony? The NCAA basketball tournament will expand to 76 teams next year, no doubt a dreary nod to gambling and the women’s game when our still-precious brackets don’t need an enlargement. What we have at the moment is something the event has lacked, particularly when you look atop the NBA draft and see Zaccharie Richer and Alex Sarr without knowing who, what, when, where and why.
What we have is Cooper Flagg, an American from New England, known as “The Maine Event” when the state otherwise is known for lobsters and lighthouses. He is only 18. He is bigger than Krzyzewskiville and more skilled than any college player we’ve seen since Zion Williamson, if not Kevin Durant. And if he leads third-ranked Duke to a national championship, Flagg will become a legend who will take his New Balance ads to the next level, where one of nine tanking teams will win his services.
We first watched him rule training camp with Team USA, earning hugs from LeBron James and praise from the sport’s greats. Did he not realize where he was, what he was doing? Flagg said his favorite player was Larry Bird, who stopped playing 33 years ago. “I watched a lot of movies and stuff on him, and old championship games,” he said. “My parents really loved watching him play, they were huge Celtics fans, so growing up for them, they were Larry Bird fans, so they had the old games and stuff, so they just threw the DVDs in and we would watch.”
He is not the next Bird. He is the first Cooper Flagg. “He looks like a hell of a player,” Durant said in Las Vegas. “He’s 17 years old coming in here playing like a veteran almost. No emotion. Just going out there and doing his job.”
As the Final Four awaits, Flagg is dominating competition as a possible unanimous pick for National Player of the Year. He scored 42 points one night and rocked January with averages of 25.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 42.9 percent on three-point shots. His coach, Jon Scheyer, also was a teenaged star who scored 21 points in 75 seconds at his suburban Chicago high school. He refuses to be gentle in handling Flagg, who scored only five points in the first half against North Carolina State. The second half: 23 points, five rebounds and a monster block in a 74-64 victory.
“He told me I was being finesse, soft,” said Flagg, not using the actual words. “Coach is always honest with me about what he thinks. That's what I need. It's about responding well, and hearing that helps me a lot. It's not a choice anymore; I have to be aggressive. What Coach has told me is that's going to create for everyone else. In the first half, I felt that a little — just being passive and playing soft. I have to be aggressive at all times.”
Remember that moment as we study him next month. “In that timeout, I challenged him because his game is not just about scoring but his game is about impacting winning in every facet,” Scheyer said. “He knew it. Credit him for responding. I could go on all day about Cooper, how coachable he is. There's maybe a few times throughout the year where he's not going to like what you say. A lot of guys will fight it, not acknowledge it. It's a credit to him and the relationship he's allowed us to develop, telling each other the truth.”
The truth is lost, of course, when Flagg says he might “come back next year” to Duke. He doesn’t sound thrilled about Utah Jazz or Washington Wizards road trips. As it is, he makes big NIL amounts. “I still feel like a kid," Flagg told The Athletic. “This is the only way I've ever known college. That's how I see it. I really wouldn't know how kids felt before, and if this feels different, if this feels more like being a professional. I mean, it's the same thing for kids in high school, too, getting paid a lot of money. I don't know. I feel pretty normal.”
He’ll feel rich on June 25 in Brooklyn.
Will Scheyer, considered a surprise successor when Mike Krzyzewski retired, win the school’s sixth national title? His story will flank the wildness of Dan Hurley, who is 17-8 at Connecticut and never will admit he should have taken the $70 million offer to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. He’ll squeeze into the tournament and growl his way to a victory or two, behind freshman Liam McNeeley, but he won’t win a third consecutive national title. What’s happening in life, Dan? Last week, after beating Creighton in Omaha, he engaged with enemy fans and pointed to his hand.
“Two rings!” he said.
Then he referred to someone as “Baldy,” which Hurley thought was well-deserved after people chanted “F— Dan Hurley!” while arena beers were sold for $1. “I’m not going to lie to you — that was very gratifying,” he said. “I waved at some people. I just wish there was more of them still left. There’s been a lot more of them left when I’ve lost. When I’ve gotten my butt kicked here, I’ve obviously had to walk off unceremoniously just crushed by the crowd, cursed at. As long as they’re not leaning over the rail or getting in my face, I think it’s what makes college basketball so much better than any other type of basketball. The home fans here didn’t get the win that they wanted, but they got a show.”
Do his antics help college ball or damage it? Hurley creates discussions, but they were better when he was winning championships and worse when he’s losing them. Weeks earlier, he told an official, “Don’t turn your back on me. I’m the best coach in the f—ing sport.” In November, he went viral-bonkers in Hawaii. How much is too much?
“I think that’s just an excuse for bad behavior,” ESPN’s Jay Bilas said. “My thing is more about the competitive advantage that is perceived by what they call ‘working’ the officials or trying to influence the officials. It’s the constant berating of officials throughout a game that fans think are influencing calls, and we need to deal with that. If it doesn’t influence calls, then it’s really bad optics. Generally I believe college coaches behave poorly relative to NBA coaches. And I don’t think that’s a very good look.”
Hurley just laughs. “The people that want to have at me, the super soft media people that want to cancel me for being an intense coach, you know, I don’t think we need to make sports softer,” he said. “So, yeah, go for it. And then fans of teams and programs that wish they were us, that get joy out of these moments with me on the sideline, then enjoy that. But you know you don’t have what we got, which is the banners. But if this is your moment right here to mock me on social media for being an intense coach, go for it.”
His mania is accompanied, in a slightly more measured way, by Rick Pitino. He is 72. Coaches of his age are long gone, such as Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim. Yet he took over a St. John’s team that couldn’t shoot last fall — and he’s drawing crowds at Madison Square Garden. Where hasn’t he coached? The Knicks, the Celtics. Kentucky and Louisville. Iona and somewhere in Greece. UCLA’s Mick Cronin said if he had Pitino’s money, “I’d be on a private plane to Cabo right now.”
This week, St. John’s is ranked 10th. A documentary — “Pitino: Red Storm Rising” — is featured on Vice TV. “The great thing about us is, I would say, we’re 60 percent of the way potentially,” he said. “We’re not a very good offensive team. We don’t pass real well, we don’t shoot real well, and we can get so much better at that.”
It wasn’t enough to lead Georgetown by 26 points at halftime. “I told them I’ve only had one team in my life that had a big lead like that and just went for blood,” Pitino said. “Here I’m coaching 50 years, 38 as a head coach, and only ’96 Kentucky could go out in the second half and dominate.” His team won 66-41.
The coaches still serve the game, for better or worse, such as Bruce Pearl at No. 1-ranked Auburn and John Calipari at Arkansas. Can you imagine four SEC teams ranked in the national top six? Last weekend, Pearl beat Nate Oats and No. 2 Alabama in … the Iron Bowl. Players from both teams surveyed the NBA draft last spring and chose to stay on campus. “This game, 1 versus 2 on national television, is going to be something that’s significantly more watched than the Maine Celtics against the Westchester Knicks,” said Pearl, referring to G League teams.
It was important for the men’s game to have a run. Caitlin Clark overpowered March and April, drawing 18.7 million viewers for the women’s championship game. Now she is overwhelming the WNBA, to the point her agent thinks she is hideously underpaid with her $78,000 salary next season. Erin Kane is correct. How much was Clark worth to the league’s economy with the Indiana Fever? Almost 27 percent last year, said an economist, who added she was worth $36 million to Indianapolis.
“Will Caitlin Clark ever be paid by the WNBA what she's really worth to that league? I don't think that's possible,” Kane said. “She should be recognized for what she has done and what she's brought to the league from an economic standpoint. Simple as that.”
The women’s game features JuJu Watkins and Paige Bueckers, but eyeballs will return to the tournament that somehow needs 76 teams. Flagg has our attention, thankfully. Hurley has our attention, regrettably. Pitino has our attention, curiously.
Who wins?
This time, we care.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.