FanHouse Jeff Adrien

DETROIT -- On command, when a local kid named Durrell Summers lifted off and nearly decapitated Stanley Robinson with a vicious dunk, a moving wave of green-swept humanity rose and rocked. Yes, your honor, this was a ridiculous homecourt advantage, a home-FIELD advantage of about 45,000 local crazies in a 72,500-seat football stadium, an advantage in ways freakishly unprecedented in the fiercely neutral extravaganza known as the Final Four.

Ford Field is guilty as charged.

And not a soul with a conscience should complain about it.

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Late in the first half of an incredibly entertaining national semifinal game, players from Connecticut and Michigan State had to be separated by officials. The incident stemmed from a hard foul on Michigan State's Travis Walton, where he got a good piece of Jeff Adrien under the basket.

As Walton first fell to the ground, Adrian attempted to push him but whiffed. Walton took exception and swiped back at Adrian, and then an amoeba formed under the basket. Little more than pushing and shoving -- really, just grandstanding, but you can't blame them -- occurred before cooler heads prevailed and the players were separated. Of note, Hasheem Thabeet really looked like he wanted to fight someone (pictured right with teammates restraining him).

Rebound. Make the shooters beat you. Rebound. Make Thabeet roam. Rebound.

These are the five keys for Michigan State if it's to win its Final Four game. The most important are the first, third and fifth, but Nos. 2 and No. 4 could make the difference if the game is close.

Connecticut has only lost four games this year. One was in six overtimes, so we're going to throw that out. The other three all offer clues on how to beat the Huskies.

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For all Jim Calhoun is, Hasheem Thabeet, Connecticut's seemingly two-story tall center, needs just one marvelously apt word to size up what the coach means to this Final Four team.

Gotta love Robbie Hummel's toughness, not to mention his ability. The kid did everything he possibly could to make sure the Boilermakers didn't get run out of the building. But in the end, Purdue didn't have anything or anybody that could do anything at all to combat Hasheem Thabeet.

There is no shame in this. No one does. There's no player in college basketball that has any kind of answer for Thabeet, which is why UConn remains a worthy 1-seed and one of the favorites to win the whole thing in spite of the absence of Jerome Dyson. They still have way too many good players to be counted out, and they have the game-changer in the middle. Thirteen rebounds, four blocks, just one foul...he did everything he wanted to do tonight, and as a result the Huskies didn't have to sweat.

PHILADELPHIA -- Uh, oh. Jeff Adrien was posing for the cameras and woofing, enjoying this blowout a little too merrily. You could say it was a "Yo, Adrien!'' moment in Rocky Balboa's city, and while Connecticut was comfortably en route to a 92-66 rout of Texas A&M, my eyeballs instinctively shifted to Adrien's coach, Jim Calhoun, who doesn't suffer self-posturing well and needs no stress in his life.

Impressively, he handled the scene with aplomb. Calhoun looked at Adrien, lifted both hands in a stop-it gesture and simply said, "Don't.'' We can't promise he'll handle future flashpoints as calmly, knowing him as a maniacal competitor who paces the sideline, chomps gum furiously and might emasculate an official as quickly as he shouts down a political activist inquiring about his salary. "I did yell a couple things out,'' he said to laughter in the media room. "My wife will tell me about them later.''