SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And now it's time for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: Final Four weekend. The final set for the women's tournament. Men's semis tonight. Sports writer Howard Bryant joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us, Howard.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott. How are you?
SIMON: Oh, I'm fine. Well, you know, I didn't get between the two coaches last night.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: So let's begin. Number - all four No. 1 seeds made it to Phoenix for the Final Four. UCLA beat Texas. South Carolina beat UConn 62-48. But there was that verbal confrontation between the schools' two great coaches, Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley. What stood out for you?
BRYANT: Well, what stood out for me was the fact that Geno is one of the greatest coaches of all time - maybe the greatest coach in the women's game. And Dawn Staley is running right up there as the formidable challenger to everything that Geno's been doing there. UC - I'm sorry - UConn beat them in the national championship game last year - beat them by almost 30 points, beat them by 20 in the regular season. And this was revenge for South Carolina. And Geno didn't like it. And it looked - it was not a great look on national television. But you've got these, you know, two huge competitors going up against it - everything on the line. And, I mean, I think this stuff kind of blows over. I don't think it's as big a deal, but it was pretty ugly at the end, because I think Geno looked a little bit like a sore loser. But...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Two titans went at it, and now, you know, South Carolina is in the championship game again.
SIMON: Well, college sports - they help us learn sportsmanship, right?
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: South Carolina going...
BRYANT: Not last night, they didn't, Scott.
SIMON: South Carolina's going for its fourth title. Last was two years ago. UCLA has never won it. South Carolina a good bet?
BRYANT: It was one of those games last night - we've seen them. You know, we've seen them in football. We've seen them, you know, in basketball, where whoever won last night's game is going to win the championship. And now UCLA's going to say something about it. Let's not forget that UCLA last year was one of those teams that everybody thought was going to be the one that kind of stepped in between UConn and stepped in between South Carolina. So everybody in that locker room at UCLA believes they're the underdog. Everyone in there doesn't - very few people probably think they're going to win this game. But in that room, they know they can win, and that's what it's all about. They stick together. You got a pretty big game coming up.
SIMON: Men's Final Four tonight in Indianapolis. First up, Illinois. (Imitating accent) ED (ph) Illinois...
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: ...As the Balkan Five might put it, versus UConn. Right after that, two No. 1 seeds, Arizona and Michigan. Do they look like - do they look ahead of the other two?
BRYANT: Yeah. They - it's somewhat similar, except for the fact that, you know, UConn's a dynasty now. Should they be there? probably not. Duke kind of handed them that spectacular victory last weekend. But once again, once you get there - UConn is like one of those dynasty teams, like the Yankees and, you know, those teams where if they're in it, you never really want to count them out. You know, Dan Hurley's a great coach, even though he's sort of Bobby Knight 2.0 in terms of his, you know, on-court antics. But Arizona is the best team in the country, I felt. You know, they have a 23-game win streak coming in. They are very, very tough. This is a real concept...
SIMON: (Shouting) I-L-L-I-N-I.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: But then again, once again, you got a big team like Illinois. And when you get there - I think the one thing about this, Scott, is that these teams are so - I'm not going to say they're all completely evenly matched, but they're all pretty damn good.
SIMON: Tiger Woods says he's stepping away from golfing indefinitely to seek treatment - follows a car crash last week, his fourth car accident. We know it's a sad story for one of the greatest athletes of all time. But do we leave something out when we see it like that?
BRYANT: Yeah. We do. And before we - as we always do, we focus on the particular. We focus on the individual, especially if that individual is famous, such as, you know, Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods is a tabloid story now and a very - in a lot of ways, a fairly sad one. However, let's talk about Tiger Woods being sort of a menace on the road. Tiger Woods endangered a lot of people and has endangered a lot of people in some of these - I think, there's three or four incidences now, especially the last one. You look at the footage of that, and it's too much. And so I'm happy that Nick Faldo had come out and said something about this, as well. But I know we do our celebrity culture as we do, but there's a lot of safety issues here, too. Tiger Woods needs help.
SIMON: Howard Bryant. Thanks so much.
BRYANT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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