For me, there haven’t been any great teams in college basketball all season. So far, that’s been perfectly fine. We have the tournament to look forward to, and that means we can see teams become great in March.
However, when EVERY team that gets within five feet of the top five is losing, you kind of have to wonder what’s going on.
Listen, there are no great teams in college basketball. None. They all have some kind of weird flaw that makes them vulnerable. I mean, those Duke teams from 91 and 92 basically had no flaws and that’s how they performed the miracle against Kentucky and beat UNLV, and cruised to a repeat title.
UCONN 99. Flawless. Florida’s back-to-back crew? Flawless. We can pick them out because they’re so easy to find, but the flaws this season are everywhere, and those flaws manifest themselves in close games with teams you should probably beat, but you accidentally give them the upper hand.
What does that mean? It means that teams who have to take on “rentals” for a year before those guys go to the NBA are suffering. Even kids who probably aren’t going into the draft after one year are more than likely thinking about it. Dreaming about it. Thus, not focusing on the game.
Then, you take exasperated coaches who are so pissed off at stupid things that some of these kids do they lose their focus and call a dumb play, mismanage timeouts, or something else that’s really damning. Combine that with the fact that there is only one truly great player in college basketball (Jimmer Fredette) and that means we’ve got upset city.
I don’t know exactly how many upsets that’ll give us at tournament time, but I’m going to think about it. Maybe this is the year for history to be made!
photo credit: DB|Photography
