Final Four 2012 Predictions: Role Players Who'll Emerge at Key Moments

I throw out my predictions first.  

Kentucky over Louisville

Kansas over Ohio State

Kentucky over Kansas.

Predicting which role player will emerge for their team can be a challenging task. After all, it's tough enough to predict who will get to the Final Four let alone predicting which random bench guy will step up big for their team.  

There are exactly four reasons that make it impossible to predict the NCAA tournament with great accuracy.

The one game elimination.

The invention of the three-point line.

The five foul rule.

The mystery of whether or not a team with upperclassmen has an advantage.  

So to determine this short list, I essentially used these four factors to best predict who will emerge as the key role player.  

Ohio State: William Bufford

William Bufford is essentially a role player at this point.  He just happens to be a role player who plays about 38 minutes a night and is projected to be drafted in the early second round.  

Bufford hasn’t been the same player since mid-January.  Heck, he hasn’t been the same player all season long.  Simply put, he’s a shooter who has lost his stroke.  All season long, Bufford’s been in a state of premature Heat Check.  Every time he makes a shot you start thinking, “OK, he’s back; he’s going to go off.”  But then he never does.

Here’s what he’s shot in the tournament so far.  

Against Syracuse: 3-12 

Against Cincinnati: 1-8

Against Gonzaga: 4-13

Against Loyola: 5-11

Bufford is a key who I could see coming up big.

Wait, what am I saying?  Bufford is not the key; everything the Buckeyes have done this year (and they’ve been a really good team) has been in spite of one of their best players. 

He’s no longer allowed to be considered one of the best players.  There isn’t one bone in my body telling me that Bufford will have a good game and come through big.

Then again, it is the Final Four, and he’s the only Buckeye senior.  It seems like having senior leadership/experience is a huge advantage at this stage of the tournament.

Look, if by some miracle Bufford were to turn it on, then Ohio State could potentially run away against Kansas.

That's really what the tournament comes down to...which team has the player that can randomly get hot. 

Kansas: Thomas Robinson

OK, so Robinson doesn’t fall into the “role player” category, but he’ll need to play a specific role if the Jayhawks want to beat the Buckeyes.  What is that role?  The role of the spoiler.  Translation: getting Jared Sullinger into early foul trouble.

Kansas and Ohio State matched up back in December when the Jayhawks comfortably won at home.  Jared Sullinger did not play that game because he was nursing a back injury.

In my opinion, Sullinger gives the Buckeyes one advantage over every other team in the country in that he’s the best natural rebounder in the college game.

Yes, even better than Robinson.  That isn’t to say he’s a better player than Robinson, because he’s not.  At least I don’t think so.

Here’s what I’m trying to get at.  The Jayhawks without Thomas Robinson are a better team than the Buckeyes without Jared Sullinger. I’m not a coach at any level of basketball, and I won’t pretend to be either.  But I do know this...

1. A player has a maximum limit of five fouls.
2. It’s an unwritten rule in college basketball that when a player gets his second foul in the first half, the coach has to sit them until the second half.
3. Jared Sullinger is the best player for the Buckeyes.
4. The tournament officiating has proven to be awful.
5. There’s a reason college refs are doing the college game instead of the NBA.
6. Sullinger and Robinson are both future NBA big men with big bodies.
7. That matchup could get physical.
8. The refs might, shall I say, freak out and start calling ticky-tack fouls.

Knowing all of those things, if I’m Kansas, I take my chances and pound Thomas Robinson inside and hope I get the benefit of the doubt.

At the very least you know Sullinger will be going into Saturday’s game knowing he can’t get into foul trouble, so early in the game he won’t play as aggressive on defensive end as he would in a January game against Northwestern.

Kentucky: Marquis Teague

We all know about Anthony Davis, Terrence Jones and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and so does Louisville. 

It’s possible Pitino out coaches Calipari in this matchup, so if Louisville finds a way to “manage” and/or contain Kentucky’s big three, Teague—a player with the biggest potential of anyone to be the unsung hero—will become more important than he’s ever been.

Because he’s no Brandon Knight, a lot of people underrate Teague.  They forget how much of what Kentucky does actually runs through him.  After all, he is the point guard on the best team in the country.

Louisville: Kyle Kuric and Chris Smith

Let's be honest, against a team as talented as Kentucky you can pretty much call any Louisville player a “role player.”

You can argue that Gorgui Dieng, Louisville’s center, is a key guy in this contest, but Dieng hasn’t gone up against anything remotely close to Kentucky’s Terrence Jones and Anthony Davis.

If the Cardinals are going to stand any chance in this contest then a lot of things are going to have to go their way.  Luckily for Louisville, there’s a three-point line.  That sounds like an ignorant thing to say, but it’s the reason for many of the upsets that destroy our brackets every March. 

I'm going to be real straightforward with this: Kyle Kuric and Chris Smith are the Cardinals best shooters. They'll need to show up, and it is a pretty safe bet to assume they will because they’re both seniors.