This is a pretty weak class. There is no sure-thing consensus number 1 player in this field. I see most teams drafting need, no matter where they end up in the order.
Come Saturday night, We can start guessing who’ll “Dance”.
UK absolutely has to beat Florida. What a weird season for the Wildcats.
Terps put the hurt on Duke.
Probably still out of the NCAA tournament. If they can beat Carolina tomorrow, that may get them in, but that weak non-conference schedule might keep them out regardless. I’m thinking the only way they can get to the dance is to win the ACC.
Glad to see SLU putting together such a solid season after the death of Rick Majerus. I’ve seen them play twice in person this year and a handful of times on TV, and they just play solid team defense and efficient offense. Hopefully they can add a A10 tourney title to their conference championship and make a nice NCAA run.
Jas-I’ve heard commentators say that St. Louis is a scary tourney team. (someone even said F4 good)
Kinda quiet in here…
So, my Ducks won the Pac-12 tournament after finishing one game out of first in the regular season…and the committee apparently thinks they are the fifth best team in their conference? How’s that work??
Stupid Kentucky. I wonder how often a team that won the Big Dance one year went to the NIT the very next year? I can’t imagine it happening very many times.
They got totally screwed, as did Oklahoma State who has to play them.
Since 1985, the defending champion has failed to make the NCAA Tournament the next year 5 times (Kentucky this year, North Carolina 2010, Florida 2008, Kansas 1989, Louisville 1987).
Most of those teams lost a lot key players after winning the title. Kentucky lost 6 players to the NBA draft, Carolina lost Tyler Hansbrough and three other starters, Florida lost all 5 starters, and Louisville lost Billy Thompson and Milt Wagner. Kansas was suspended from the tournament for recruiting violations.
That is more than I would have thought. Almost 18% of the time. I wonder if that figure will accelerate as three of the five teams were all since 2008 and more big programs have more and more one and done players.
I was blown away to see that. A twelve seed?!? I have no idea how they justify that. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to get over my beloved UC Irvine Anteaters losing the Big West Tournament finals and missing what would have been our first ever trip to the Big Dance. Man I would have loved to have seen us get destroyed by Miami instead of Pacific in that 2/15 game in Austin. 
I wouldn’t be at all surprised. These days even programs that seem to reload with ease, like the Kentucky’s and Duke’s of the world, will eventually have a combination of one-and-dones, injuries, and plain old-fashioned youth (e.g. Kentucky this year was a victim of all three).
I’d wager that it won’t be Calipari’s last NIT at UK. His approach lends itself to peaks and valleys. If he can recruit more second-tier players like Kyle Wiltjer that can play credible minutes, but aren’t NBA material, it would smooth things out. As it is, his teams tend to consist entirely of future pros and walk-ons who only see the floor in blowouts.
Pitino’s teams from 1996 and 1997 would have been like that today. As it was the 1997 team was LOADED with NBA players but they stuck around a little longer back in those halcyon days.
Absolutely. Every NBA offseason I hope they’ll raise the minimum age to 20 or 21, but with the success of one-and-done players like Kyrie Irving and Blake Griffin, I’m not holding my breath. Unless we get a stretch of busts, like the one that got them to raise it to 19, I guess they don’t seen any benefit in raising the age again.
Oh well.
Yes. Yes we did.
Yeah. I don’t think they can raise the age limit like they have in football as the sports have different physical requirements. But what the NCAA can do is make it obligatory for players under athletic scholarship stay for at least two years. But then they probably need to come up with something equally binding for coaches as well to make it fair…but the NCAA hasn’t really ever been about “fair”, has it?
I mean, I don’t care if a player skips college entirely…that’s their decision. But if you commit to a university make it mean something for a couple years rather than the ruse of the “student athlete” that we have now. It’s become so hard to follow college basketball with any level of enthusiasm anymore. Can’t keep up with rosters.
That’s the college baseball rule - you don’t have to go to college, but if you do, you aren’t draft eligible for 3 years.
How? You can’t force somebody to stay in college. The best you can hope to do is to have a rule along the lines of, if a “first counter” (somebody in their first year of any athletic scholarship) signs with a professional basketball team before the end of the season after his first one, then the school loses one basketball scholarship for one year. This would make schools think twice about signing too many one-and-dones. (Speaking of which, a frequently asked question about one-and-dones is, how many of them actually attend classes during their second semester - and of those who do, how many stop after their last basketball game?)
Besides - with all of the talk (and lawsuits) about allowing student-athletes (i.e. BCS football and major conference men’s basketball players) to accept money for licensing, there may not be too many scholarships in big time football and men’s basketball in the near future.
If they really wanted to make athletes stay for two years, then they would bring back freshman ineligibility. If things go according to plan, the final match of this year’s NCAA wrestling championships will be an example of why this is not about to happen.