It was the fluke catch of the week. Sunday night at the Meadowlands, Giants rookie receiver Hakeem Nicks caught a tipped pass that had been intended for Mario Manningham and carried it all the way to the end zone for a 62-yard touchdown against the Cardinals. It was a shake-your-head play -- the kind the defense can write off as an excusable miracle, a bizarre bounce, nothing more than pure luck.
But they say luck is the residue of design, and the people who know Hakeem Nicks say that design is a huge part of his game. Coaches and teammates past and present describe Nicks as an intensely studious, hyper-prepared player who obsesses over his playbook and game scripts and would rather talk about route-running than anything else. Knowing Nicks means knowing that the seeds of that Sunday night play were planted years ago at Independence High School in Charlotte, N.C., where a coach named Tommy Knotts drills 16- and 17-year-old kids on something even NFL coaches struggle to get across -- the importance of film study.
There's no real secret as to what did in Michigan State in the NCAA championship game. Yes, there was the superior talent on North Carolina. The Tar Heels shot really effectively in the first half. North Carolina could actually make free throws. The issue for Michigan State, though, was their inability to hold onto the ball.
The Spartans turned the ball over 21 times in the game. The poor ball-handling made it easier for North Carolina to go on runs big runs and stopped Michigan State attempts to come back cold.
This certainly wasn't the same Michigan State team we watched the past two weekends. But it was the same North Carolina team we all thought, back in November, was the best team in the country by a mile.
If ever a national championship game felt like a coronation, it was 2009.
There were reasons, over the past three months, to doubt these Tar Heels. There was Ty Lawson's bum toe. There was that weird and inexplicable loss to Boston College. There were memories of the way they went out, too soon, in the tournament the past two years. The 2007 collapse against Georgetown. The 2008 pasting by Kansas.
This is it. The last game of the 2008-09 basketball season. Whether you're rooting for Michigan State or North Carolina join is for a live chat at 9 PM ET and stick with us through the night. We'll be talking about the game, how the teams got here, the Arizona and Memphis quests to find someone to take their job, and anything else that comes to mind.
Tom Izzo has used words like "enigma" and "challenging" to describe Raymar Morgan. He has spoken of the difficulty he's had in finding the multi-talented junior forward to keep his mood up, and to play with consistency. In a year of challenges overcome at Michigan State, Morgan has represented one of Izzo's most persistent coaching conundrums.
But after Morgan went off for 18 points, nine rebounds and five steals Saturday night in the Spartans' national semifinal victory over Connecticut, the word Izzo used to describe Morgan was short and simple: "Best."
Whether it was an off night, the size and length of North Carolina's defense bothering the smaller Villanova guards, it all added up to the same thing: a crate load of bricks. When the Wildcats shoot a hideous 5-of-27 on 3-pointers (18.5 percent), they do not have much of a chance. There is not much to decipher.
Villanova gave up size all over the court, so they needed to hit some of their jump shots to have a chance, to open up lanes for penetration to the basket and to give Dante Cunningham a little space inside to work.
As discussed here earlier in the week, there was a way for Villanova to beat North Carolina. They had to do it on the perimeter, where they were supposedly strong and the Tar Heels were supposedly weak. They had to do it by exploiting Carolina's suspect three-point shooting defense and driving against the Heels' weak help-side interior defense.
This was all feasible. Anybody who's watched Carolina play for the past couple of years has seen the Heels go through scoring droughts and fritter away leads while they ignored defense entirely for large chunks of the game.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Ford Field. It looks as if North Carolina doesn't do that anymore. In fact, with a healthy Ty Lawson and an improved 40-minute focus, it looks as if North Carolina might not have any flaws in its game at all.
This is what we have been waiting all week for, through non-stories like Ty Lawson legally playing craps, through analysis beaten into the ground, through the cycling of the coaching carousel. Well, Michigan State and UConn tip off at 6:07 PM EST. We will start the live blog at 6 PM ET. Join us after the jump.
PHILADELPHIA -- Dante Cunningham pays attention. He watches basketball. He knows who the good players are, the ones getting all the attention. He's well aware of what North Carolina's Ty Lawson has been doing -- ACC Player of the Year, front-runner (so far) for NCAA tournament most outstanding player. Cunningham is impressed. But he's not scared.
He's been watching Ty Lawson play his whole life.
"As a friend, I'm proud of him for what he's doing," Cunningham said of Lawson on Wednesday, at Villanova's final practice before departing for Detroit and the Final Four. "But as a competitor, I have to sit and understand that he has gotten better. I mean, obviously. He's one of the better players in the country. And we're going to need a great game plan to contain him."
PHILADELPHIA -- Detroit's Ford Field is the place where Villanova's NCAA tournament ended last year, with a Sweet 16 loss to eventual champion Kansas. The site of this year's Final Four, it's the place where the Wildcats' 2009 tournament will end as well. This time, they're hoping they can win a couple of games before that happens.
This time, they think they'll be better prepared for the unique challenge of playing a basketball game in a converted indoor football stadium -- in particular the unusually long walk from the locker room and a raised floor that apparently shakes a bit when you play on it.
It was the fluke catch of the week. Sunday night at the Meadowlands, Giants rookie receiver Hakeem Nicks caught a tipped pass that had been intended for Mario Manningham and carried it all the way to the end zone for a 62-yard touchdown against the Cardinals. It was a shake-your-head play -- the kind the defense can write off as an excusable miracle, a bizarre bounce, nothing more than pure luck.
There's no real secret as to what did in 
Whether it was an off night, the size and length of North Carolina's defense bothering the smaller Villanova guards, it all added up to the same thing: a crate load of bricks. When the Wildcats shoot a hideous 5-of-27 on 3-pointers (18.5 percent), they do not have much of a chance. There is not much to decipher.
As discussed 
PHILADELPHIA -- 
PHILADELPHIA -- Detroit's Ford Field is the place where 
