LOS ANGELES — Just as the roof was about to blow off the joint, with a crazy-passionate arena awash in a sea of the red-hot intensity stoked by a classic basketball showdown between Wisconsin and Arizona, Wildcats freshman Stanley Johnson blew his cool, and felt compelled to tell me about his grievance, shouted with the adolescent rage of a child shocked to learn that life’s not fair, not fair at all.
“That was all ball! That was the worst call I ever saw in my life!” Johnson screamed at me, because I happened to be sitting courtside, 35 feet from the same foul line where Wisconsin center Frank Kaminsky was headed to shoot free throws, after a tough call went against Arizona late in the second half, with a berth in the Final Four on the line.
“Really?” I politely asked Johnson.
“Look at the replay! Look at the replay!” insisted the 6-foot-7 Johnson, who boldly went up to challenge a dunk attempt by Kaminsky, who is not only 7 feet tall but the biggest and baddest senior in college hoops.
So I took the advice of Johnson and reviewed the videotape showing on the giant scoreboard monitor. Yes, Johnson swatted the ball, but he also put a healthy dent in Kaminsky.
It was a foul. It was more than the correct call, though. This single play went a long way toward illustrating why Wisconsin beat Arizona 85-78 on Saturday and eliminated the Wildcats for the second straight season in the NCAA West Regional final.
Johnson is a precocious 18-year-old basketball phenom whose athleticism positively reeks of first-round NBA draft choice potential. But Johnson and his teammates were beaten by the grown men from Wisconsin, led by upperclassmen Sam Dekker and Kaminsky, who make a strong case that both the college and pro games would be better served if players who commit to a university out of high school were required to stay in school for three seasons, rather than the one-and-done policy now in place.
“Every one of these guys in college thinks they’re a pro. I’ve (identified) two of them: Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker. I know they’re pros,” said Arizona coach Sean Miller, whose Pac-12 Conference kingpins took a 33-30 lead at halftime but could not hold off the Badgers, who won for the 35th time in 38 games.
Wisconsin is portrayed as a happy, little Disney story of Midwest values, led by 67-year-old coach Bo Ryan, beloved for telling more corny jokes with a hidden philosophical message on a daily basis than your grandpa does at Thanksgiving dinner.
This Arizona vs. Wisconsin steel-cage match was the coming-out national party for Kaminsky 12 months ago, when he scored 28 points during a one-point victory for the Badgers. Kaminsky went one point better this time, scoring 29, with his collection of delicate floaters and impeccable footwork the right stuff that fueled a 55-point outburst by the Big Ten champs.
More instructive, however, was the man-to-man matchup between Dekker and Johnson. “Future first-round picks going at it,” Wisconsin guard Josh Gasser said. Conventional wisdom in the NBA of 2015 is that youth must be served and a player that hangs around college is doing little or nothing to further his basketball education.
With that in mind, Johnson is projected as a lottery pick, while Dekker is pegged to be a pick in the second half of the opening round because he is a ripe old 20 years old. Here, however, is the truth: Dekker owns a better handle to beat a defender off the dribble and a much more refined offensive game than Johnson possesses. During warm-ups prior to the second half, Dekker swished shot after shot from 3-point range with an effortlessness that seemed tension proof. Then Dekker did the same with Johnson in his face during the final 20 minutes, sinking all five of his attempts beyond the arc at clutch time, leading Wisconsin to a head-shaking 78.9 percent accuracy from the field against a stout Arizona defense.
When Dekker took the ball hard to the hole with 3 minutes, 36 seconds remaining in the second half, he muscled through a hack by Johnson. With a shrill tweet of a referee’s whistle, Johnson’s fifth foul sent him to the bench with a lottery ticket to the NBA, while the old-school three-point play by Dekker gave the Badgers an insurmountable 74-64 lead and punched their ticket to the NCAA tourney semifinals in Indianapolis.
“I’m not going to apologize for being 34-4,” said Miller, paying tribute to his players as the Wildcats’ championship dream died, “and I’m not going to apologize for not making the Final Four. … We lost to Wisconsin in two hard-fought battles in the Elite Eight. And if that’s a problem, you know what you can do.”
Arizona is going straight to the desert, to do a slow burn, pondering what might have been. It’s on Wisconsin to the Final Four, where the Badgers were eliminated by a single point by Kentucky in 2014 on a long-range jumper from Aaron Harrison.
Wisconsin knows it has what it takes to win it all. While his teammates waited to cut down the nets in Los Angeles, Dekker got a pat on the pack from Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Better hop on Bucky Badger’s bandwagon in a hurry, while there’s still room.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
