This year, the Timberwolves' assistant coach decided the time had come for him to stop talking publicly so much about his Villanova team's inexplicable upset victory over Patrick Ewing and mighty Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA men's basketball title game and defer attention instead to the university's present teams, which had done pretty well themselves in recent seasons.

"That was the plan," Pinckney said.

Then his alma mater went and reached its first Final Four since Pinckney, Harold Pressley, Gary and Dwayne McClain and Harold Jensen and coach Rollie Massimino defeated by a basket defending national champion Georgetown, which had lost one game the season before and two games by a total of three points that season.

Their 66-64 victory in Lexington, Ky., remains one of the greatest upsets in sports history and the greatest in NCAA Tournament play since, well, North Carolina State had stunned Akeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and Houston two years earlier.

"Listen, there's nobody like that team was," Pinckney said of the 1985 Hoyas. "I'm not just saying that. Just look at what they did to teams. They didn't let you score. They didn't let you do anything. They just pretty much destroyed any kind of game plan you had. I'd match that team up to any team to ever win a national title."

This week, ESPN, Sporting News radio, Jim Rome, NBCSports.com, Sirius XM radio and stations in Philadelphia, Delaware, Indiana, New York and Florida, among others, have called, seeking Pinckney's reminiscences about that 1985 team and his observations about this 2009 Villanova team.

"I always felt talking about that team took away from their team," said Pinckney, who was a Villanova assistant coach for four years before the Wolves hired him last year. "It was, like, 'enough already with 1985.' That was a successful year, this team is very successful, too. They have been for the last six, seven years. I just thought it was time to give it a rest, but it's been a very special run for these guys."

And Pinckney has risen and fallen from afar with every moment in every game.

"I couldn't handle Villanova losing," Wolves coach Kevin McHale said early in the tournament, "because Eddie Pinckney would go into such depression, it'd take a week just to get him out of it."

McHale was joking. Sort of.

"I'd like to argue that point, but I can't," Pinckney said. "I kind of lose it when they lose. I'm still close to all those guys."

Pinckney plans to watch Saturday's game surrounded by his teammates from that 1985 team.

TIMBERWOLVES 103, JAZZ 102: Trailing by four points with fewer than three minutes remaining, the Wolves won at Utah for the first time since December 2005 with an inexplicable finishing flourish that left coach Kevin McHale positively beaming and clapping his hands all the way to the locker room after Deron Williams' potential winner missed just before the final buzzer.

Twice already this season, Utah's Mehmet Okur had beaten the Wolves with a late shot. This time, a Wolves team missing Al Jefferson, Randy Foye, Craig Smith and Corey Brewer provided the awkward telling shot that helped beat an opponent that was 32-6 on its home floor until Friday night. The Jazz also played without coach Jerry Sloan, who was in Illinois Friday to attend his brother's funeral.

"It's very satisfying, especially for me," Wolves third-year forward Rodney Carney said, "because I have never won here. This is a tough place to play."

Carney matched his career high with 25 points and assured victory by scoring 10 of those in the final quarter, five of them that proved pivotal in the final 94 seconds. His off-balance, left-handed tip of Ryan Gomes' desperate three-point attempt as the shot clock expired didn't rival Okur's two winners for dramatics, but that unlikely basket with 1:34 left provided a 96-94 lead.

It also extracted all the noise from perhaps the loudest arena in the league and zapped energy from a Jazz team fighting to avoid a first-round playoff meeting with the Los Angeles Lakers and playing its fourth game in five nights after flying home from Thursday's late TNT game in Denver.

Carney's three-pointer from the corner -- one of five he made Friday -- put the Wolves ahead to stay at 103-100 with 32.9 seconds left. Williams scored 34 points and got Wolves guard Sebastian Telfair to foul out of the game, but his left-side jumper as he fell away from a reaching Kevin Ollie missed just as time expired.

Gomes also scored 25 for the Wolves.