Unheralded Takes On Overlooked

They are like the undercard before the main event, the junior varsity game before the big boys take the court.

All season, Syracuse and Mississippi State have played in the shadows. Now that they’ve gotten to the Final Four, it seems nothing has changed.

Before top-ranked Massachusetts and No. 2 Kentucky take the court today in the most anticipated event of the college basketball season, Mississippi State meets Syracuse in a semifinal game viewed largely as a sidelight.

“We knew coming into this game that Kentucky and UMass was going to be billed as the championship before the championship,” said Mississippi State forward Dontae’ Jones, undaunted by the prospect of fans milling around the arena during his game, much like boxing fans do during the undercard of a big fight.

Even Mississippi State coach Richard Williams will be hurrying from his postgame news conference to get a glimpse of the Wildcats vs. the Minutemen.

“We’re certainly not the marquee matchup,” he conceded Friday. “You have the No. 1 and 2 teams in the country playing the other game. I’m anxious to see what happens. I want to see that game.”

Still, the concept of UMass-Kentucky being the de facto national title game is offensive to those involved in the first contest between MSU (26-7) and Syracuse (28-8).

“If people want to look at it as the JV game, we’ll take it like that,” Jones said. “But it’s still the Final Four, and we still have a chance to play for the championship, and we’re going to go into it playing like that.”

Of course, MSU and Syracuse are used to their overlooked status. State was barely noticed this season because Kentucky was the first team in 40 years to go unbeaten in the Southeastern Conference. The Orangemen, meanwhile, were only the fourth-best team in the Big East.

Take heart, Bulldogs and Orangemen. The scenario at this Final Four is almost a carbon copy of the 1983 tournament. Houston and Louisville, both No. 1 seeds, wound up playing in one semifinal game at Albuquerque; the other contest had two longshot teams, North Carolina State and Georgia.

After Phi Slama Jama - the Houston team featuring Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler - had defeated Louisville 94-81, everyone anointed the Cougars as champions. Two nights later, North Carolina State shocked Houston 54-52.