The 2005 NCAA basketball season slunk off into the night, capped not by yet another spectacularly exciting game, but rather by a workmanlike hammering of nails into Michigan State's coffin by the athletic, precise and skilled Baylor Bears.
It was a desultory end to what had been a riveting women's tournament, culminating with the unlikely appearance of Michigan State and Baylor in the finals, as perennial powers Connecticut, Stanford and Tennessee dropped out along the way. The Bears took care of the consensus favorite, LSU, in the semis, and then put the hurt on the Spartans in the championship game.
Early on, it appeared that Baylor's jitters would give Michigan State an early lead its matchup zone dearly needed, but when Emily Niemann dropped in the first of her five first-half threes with 17:39 to go to make it 3-2, it proved to be the closest the game would be the rest of the way. An 8-0 run turned a 12-8 margin into 20-8, and the Spartans never got closer than nine thereafter.
Joanne P. McCallie, who has done a brilliant job at MSU, yelled at her team to wake up late in the first half, but it wasn't that the Spartans weren't trying -- they just weren't good enough. Though Sophia Young finished with 26 points, nine rebounds and four assists, she struggled for long stretches, which one would have thought would have opened the door for Michigan State. But Steffanie Blackmon, all but invisible in the semis (one rebound) took advantage of the Spartan focus on Young and scored 22 points to go along with her seven rebounds.
And then there was Niemann, an unlikely looking sharpshooter who was four of 17 from three-point distance in the first four tournament games. But like a lot of shooters, when the first one goes down, the second one comes a lot easier; and the third one easier still. When she hit a stepback three with 3:11 left in the first half, the score was 32-13, and even the Spartan faithful had to wonder.
Which leads us to the trap of the matchup zone that McCallie favors. The matchup is a tremendous defense, confusing and baffling to most offensive systems. It requires a lot of practice time because of the complex shifts, and most teams that play it seldom do much else. So when Michigan State needed to adjust, it couldn't -- the Spartans literally had no other option.
When Niemann was shooting from well beyond the arc (she wound up with 19 points), careful geometry of the matchup could not extend to slow her down. Trailing late in the game, the Spartans couldn't shift to a man-to-man, much less to some kind of halfcourt trap (they lacked the quickness to match Baylor fullcourt). They were stuck in the zone, and Baylor simply watched the clock run.
By game's end, it was 84-62, the second-largest margin ever in a championship game, but it had never really been very close. Chelsea Whitaker controlled Kristin Haynie (though she did finish with 17 points, six assists and six rebounds) and the rest of the team shot just 36.5%. Lindsay Bowen did her best (20 points, eight at the line), but Liz Shimek and Kelli Roehrig were a combined six for 15, and neither had an offensive rebound.
Oh yes, rebounding, the statistic that Pat Summitt most famously linked to winning championships. The stat sheet Tuesday is Exhibit A, certainly: Baylor's 35-21 edge on the boards was magnified by its 12-4 advantage in offensive rebounds and its 17-0 margin on second-chance points. (Oddly, during the season, the Spartans were the better-rebounding team ...)
And even though the Bears had those early turnovers, they controlled the ball consistently the rest of the way, with only three in the last 31:09. That meant Blackmon and Young were getting their shots (they were a comgined 18 of 38), and that the only way Michigan State could get the ball back in the late going was to foul.
That plan, however, didn't work any better than the previous ones.
In the end, though, this was more about Baylor simply being better. Young has emerged as the best player in the country, and though Blackmon isn't as consistent, when she's on, she's a very hard guard. And Kim Mulkey-Robertson changed up on McCallie by going with 5-7 sophomore LaToya Wyatt (19 minutes) rather than with six-footer Chameka Scott -- and Wyatt came through with eight points and four rebounds.
In a way, it was sad that the tournament, and the season, ended on such a let's-get-it-over-with note, given the twists and turns that had gone before. On the other hand, though, it was clear that the best team won -- and that, after all, is what it's supposed to be all about.