Stars? Who needs ’em? Not Louisville, Michigan

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ATLANTA – What bails a basketball team on a night when its best offensive players are struggling to score?

Uh . . . that’s a rhetorical question.

A team can always rely on its defense to get it out of the stickiest of jams:

It’s the oldest and most reliable of the staples of Hoops Coaching 101.

Of course, a few other offensive options can always come in handy, too.

Both NCAA Championship semifinal winners illustrated that perspective Saturday night in the Georgia Dome.

Russ Smith, Gorgui Dieng and Peyton Siva – who have combined to average 39 points this season as their team’s three-best scorers – missed 21 of 28 shots from the floor Saturday night for Louisville.

The Cardinals, despite trailing by 12 points early in the second half, turned up their defensive pressure down the stretch and got exceptional offensive efforts by three reserves in order to knock off Wichita State, 72-68.

In the second game, University of Michigan’s John R. Wooden and Oscar Robertson Award winner – as the National Player of the Year winner, if you’re scratching your head – Trey Burke was held to a season-low seven points while missing seven of his eight shots.

And backcourt mate Tim Hardaway Jr. clanged – and missed – 12 of his 16 attempts from the field while freshman Nik Stauskas – who dropped in six 3s against Florida in the South Regional final – missed all five of his shots.

But the Wolverines’ man-to-man defense forced the Syracuse Orange to hit just .418 from the field, and miss 11 of 14 attempts from behind the arc.

And freshmen Mitch McGary, Glenn Robinson III, Caris Levert and Spike Albrecht combined for more than half of their team’s points – 34 – in their team’s 61-56 victory that set up a Michigan-Louisville confrontation Monday night for the national championship

It should be a dandy, as – for the most parts, at least – were the semifinals played in front of 75,350.

First, a quick rundown on how Louisville beat an oh-so-game and oh-so-well-coached Wichita State club that landed in Atlanta via impressive wins over Pittsburgh, Gonzaga, La Salle and Ohio State:

The Cardinals, facing a man-to-man defense that was equal parts sound and assertive, struggled to score in half-court opportunities against the Shockers in a first half that ended with the No. 9 seed – the first of those to get to the final weekend of the season since Pennsylvania earned the right to get thumped by Magic Johnson and Michigan State in Salt Lake City in 1979.

And – largely because they were having such a difficult time scoring which allows them to set up the press – was able to force just four Wichita State turnovers.

And the Shockers went about 14 minutes of the second half without coughing it up, either.

But then Louisville – courtesy the jump shooting of reserves Tim Henderson (two 3s from the same spot in the right corner) and Luke Hancock (who scored 14 of his 20 points in the second half) – started scoring and locked in with its full-court pressure.

The Shockers turned it over seven times down the stretch, giving them seven fewer times to attack a half-court defense they had done a pretty good job against (13 of 26 from the field) after intermission.

And, as for Michigan:

It was a game touted – somewhat correctly – as being decided by how well the Wolverines probed, and scored against, the Orange’s zone.

And Coach John Beilein – in beating a Jim Boeheim-coached club for the first time in 10 tries – put a team on the floor that was both prepared and skill enough to attack that zone with much more success than any of Syracuse’s first four tournament opponents had.

Even when Burke was struggling to create any space between him and Syracuse defenders, the Wolverines were getting fairly high-percentage attempts consistently.

That was because of the presence of the 6-foot-9 McGary, who bounce in and around the zone and had a great deal of fanning the ball to open jump shooters once he caught the ball in the mid post area.

On a night when center Gorgui Dieng and his Louisville backcourt teammates (Silva and Smith), and Burke and his sophomore point guard counterpart for Syracuse (Michael Carter-Williams, who missed five of six shots and had five turnovers and only two assists) began their games in the spotlight, it was the supporting casts that should have been taking the most post-curtain bows.

And – as Beilein and Louisville’s Rick Pitino would, no doubt, attest – the ability to cull those kinds of performances from others when stars are having wobbly nights is one of the major reasons coaches get to work on the final night of the season.