ST. LOUIS — Rebounding plus defense equals Final Four.
Strip away the warm and fuzzy storyline of Bruce Pearl’s Tennessee Volunteers reaching their first-ever NCAA tournament regional final; ignore the similarly stirring angle of Michigan State surviving and advancing without injured point guard Kalin Lucas. The real key to this afternoon’s Midwest regional final always returns to the above formula.
“Defense and rebounding is going to win this game,” Pearl said Saturday. “If we can defend and rebound, we’ll be OK. If we come out intimidated, like I think we were early against Ohio State, well …”
That’s why they play the game. Because you never know how a team will respond from one game to the next. Especially in this year’s tournament.
But the emphasis — particularly where sixth-seeded Tennessee is concerned — is clearly on defense and rebounding, which Pearl and the Vols referred to no fewer than eight times in their group news conference, perhaps because the Spartans outrebound their opponents by almost nine a game while the Vols have been outrebounded by 1.2 rebounds a game.