(Jones battles Chubb)
After watching UK play Auburn Wednesday night, I suddenly realized something about college basketball and about life. When the odds on favorite team to win the national title struggles for 35 minutes against a school that has players named after male anatomy parts at half-mast, something is up (pun not intended). How can it be that UK isn’t completely destroying teams that have far less talent? It really doesn’t have much to do with Kentucky as much as it does the ENTIRE college basketball landscape.
Modern day parity in college basketball first started when the NBA decide to implement the “one and done” rule. The nation’s elite in high school were jumping straight to the NBA and the players who weren’t quite ready for the league were the benefactors. Those 4 star guys now became 5 star guys and a player who was talented, not a star mind you, but a talented youngster was now coveted by the Kentucky’s, Duke’s, UNC’s and the like. The quality of basketball would get better, in college and NBA.
The NBA is now getting players who have had a year to mature mentally and physically. College fans now got to see those would-be one and done guys play for some of their respective teams for a year and other teams had a larger pool of elite talent to recruit from. Can you imagine the 2006-2007 season without Kevin Durant? In his one year at the collegiate level, he dominated and eventually won player of the year. The next year included multiple players that could have gone straight to the NBA: Mayo, Gordon, Beasley, Love, etc. With those players, college basketball became a higher quality game to watch.
Fast forward to today and you have teams like Butler, who are usually not in title contention, have now played in back to back title games. Uconn who was ranked ninth in its own conference tournament ends up winning the national championship in 2010. Any team can beat any team on any given day. [B]Actually, a top 100 ranked team could very easily beat a top 10 ranked team this year[/B]. How about Louisville? They are ranked 12[SUP]th[/SUP] in the RPI rankings, and they just lost by 31 points to a Providence team who has an RPI ranking of 97. It could happen to anybody, but it sure seems to happen to Louisville a lot lately, right?
Kentucky lost to Indiana, that right there should tell you something. Ohio State, arguably the best team in the nation has now lost to Indiana and Illinois in the past 2 weeks. The buckeyes have better individually talented players, but the overall quality of those 2 schools’ team talent can’t be overlooked anymore.
What can the Wildcats of Kentucky learn from this? Take every team in the SEC seriously.
UK’s next opponent, Tennessee, just beat a far more talented team in Florida. When the ball is tipped, those rankings go right out the window. [B]Everyone has enough talent to muster enough hustle and pride for 40 minutes to upset the bigger and better team[/B]. In the case of Kentucky the story stays the same: Top 5 opponent coming into town, possible resume’ building win, and oh yeah, and its Kentucky. It seems the other teams have all the motivation needed for an upset special. UK’s motivation last night was “Please Lord don’t let us lose to Auburn”. That will need to change to “We’re on a mission to go undefeated in SEC play” or “No one will get in the way of my dreams of a championship”.
Every SEC game from here on out will be a grind. The days of teams walking to the championship based on talent alone are gone….unless you’re Duke and you get the easiest bracket ever to get to a Final 4. The rest of the college basketball world will have to play every game like it’s their last, because nothing will come easy anymore, and that’s a good thing, I think.
