Have you been so consumed by football for the last five months that you’re woefully behind on what’s been happening in the world of college basketball? Would you like to change that so you sound like you know what you’re talking about once March Madness rolls around in a month?
Once again, we here at SB Nation college basketball have you, the diehard football fan who is finally ready to start paying attention to college hoops now that the Super Bowl is over, covered.
Let’s hear your questions.
So tell me who’s good
Diving right in. All right.
This one is actually a little bit bit trickier than it has been in years past.
Since the first few weeks of November, college basketball’s defining narrative for 2019-20 has seemed to revolve around parity and the notion that there are no great teams this season. Here are just a few of the dozens of fairly ridiculous facts and figures to back that up.
— A total of seven different teams have sat atop the Associated Press top 25 poll this season, tied for the most in the history of the poll, which dates all the way back to 1949.
— With over a month still to play in the regular season, top-five teams have lost to unranked opponents a whopping 15 times. That only happened six times all of last season.
— Top-10 teams have lost to unranked opponents 28 times in 2019-20. It happened 27 times all of last season.
— If you’re looking for a perfect synopsis of this season, look no further than this past Saturday. Nine top-25 teams were handed losses, and three of those losses happened to ranked teams playing at home against unranked opponents. Three ranked Big East teams lost at home on the same day, the first time in the history of the conference that has happened.
OK, but, like, who’s gonna win the tournament?
Well, that’s an impossible question to answer in any year, but because of all the stuff we just talked about, it feels especially impossible to answer right now.
Why don’t you just tell me who’s No. 1 right now and we’ll go from there? Which traditional powerhouse is at the top of the polls?
The No. 1 team in the AP Poll at the moment is actually the Baylor Bears.
You’re shittin’ me.
Nope.
Well are they good?
Clearly.
How good?
Baylor is No. 1 in a season for just the second time in program history thanks to a sensational 19-1 start that includes home or neutral court wins over Villanova, Butler and Arizona, and road wins over Kansas, Texas Tech and Florida. Their only loss came on the first week of the season to Washington in a game the Bears controlled all the way up until a collapse in the final couple of minutes. Also, that game was played in Alaska.
Why?
I don’t know, man. I think Trajan Langdon turned 50 or something.
All that matters is Baylor is very good and is absolutely capable of making its first Final Four run since 1950. Point guard Jared Butler is the name to toss around if you want to make it seem like you’ve been watching the Bears since November. He’s their engine.
So if Baylor is 19-1 and ranked No. 1, I assume there are no undefeated teams remaining, correct?
Incorrect.
The mighty Aztecs of San Diego State will begin post-Super Bowl play with a flawless 23-0 mark. They scored impressive non-conference wins over Creighton (by 31), Iowa (by 10) and BYU (on the road), and have won their first 12 Mountain West Conference games by an average of just under 12 points per contest.
SDSU will be a solid favorite in each of its final six regular-season games. If the Aztecs win all of those and then win the Mountain West tournament, they’ll become just the second team since 1991 — joining 2013-14 Wichita State and 2014-15 Kentucky — to enter the NCAA tournament with an unblemished record.
Steve Fisher, man. I always thought he got a raw deal at Michigan. Guy can flat-out coach.
Fisher actually retired in 2017. His longtime associate head coach Brian Dutcher — with him for a decade at Michigan and 18 seasons at San Diego State — is now the head coach of the Aztecs.
Whatever. So we’ve got Baylor and we’ve got San Diego State in the top five. Who else is there?
This is actually the first time since the 2002-03 preseason poll that the top four teams in the current AP top 25 poll — Baylor, Gonzaga, Kansas and San Diego State — are all schools located west of the Mississippi River.
Hasn’t it been like a billion years since a West Coast team won it all?
Yep. No team west of the Rocky Mountains has cut down the nets since Arizona did it all the way back in 1997. Obviously, Baylor and Kansas don’t fit into this discussion, but Gonzaga, San Diego State, Arizona and Oregon are all teams that have legitimate shots at ending the West Coast’s run of futility.
Louisville rounds out the current top five, by the way.
Yeah I’d forgotten the question. Tell me some other weird teams that are good in this weird season.
How about Dayton? The Flyers have only lost to Kansas and Colorado, and both of those losses occurred in overtime. They have one of the best offenses in the entire country, a leading national Player of the Year candidate in the freakishly gifted Obi Toppin, and a legitimate chance to win the school’s first national championship.
The Flyers are one of a handful of teams that have never won the national title before that seem to have a serious shot in 2020. If one of those teams does win the tournament, it’ll be the first time college basketball has seen back-to-back first time champs since 2002-03.
So how much is Zion dominating this year?
Uhh, well actually he —
I’m just messing with you, man. I know he’s in the NBA.
Ha, ha. OK, good. For a second there I thought I was gonn—
Played his one year at Duke, got that national title, and then bounced.
You know what? Sure.
Who is the Zion of this season?
No individual player this season has or will be able to generate anywhere near the level of buzz that Zion Williamson was able to a year ago. In fact, this might be the strangest season of all-time in terms of college basketball’s relationship with the projected top picks in the next NBA Draft.
LaMelo Ball, a projected top-five pick according to pretty much everyone who does that sort of thing, never set foot on a college campus. Neither did projected lottery pick R.J. Hampton, who spurned Kansas in favor of joining Ball in playing professionally in New Zealand.
James Wiseman, another projected top-five pick, played three games for Memphis before the NCAA declared him ineligible because of a whole deal that we don’t have time to get into. Eventually the NCAA suspended Wiseman for 12 games, and in the middle of serving that suspension, Wiseman decided that none of this was worth it and he would start preparing for the NBA Draft.
North Carolina freshman star Cole Anthony, another potential top-10 pick, has missed more than half of this season with a knee injury. He just returned to the court this past week.
The highest-rated NBA prospect who is currently a healthy and active member of the college basketball scene is potential No. 1 pick Anthony Edwards. The only problem is he’s playing for a Georgia team that is 12-9 overall, has lost six of its last eight games, and seems to have little hope of making the NCAA tournament.
Team relevance is also an issue for potential lottery picks like Tyrese Haliburton (Iowa State), Jaden McDaniels (Washington) and Isaiah Stewart (Washington), who play on teams that are firmly on the wrong side of the tournament bubble at the moment.
The good news for star power in the sport is that it has Toppin. The bad news is that he plays in the Atlantic 10 and won’t be back under the sport’s brightest lights again until March.
Hey, show me some buzzer-beaters.
With pleasure.
Oregon’s Payton Pritchard is another national POY candidate, and he’s made a habit of hitting ridiculous shots in the final seconds of close games this season.
If you’re looking for a true buzzer-beater, how about NC State’s Markell Johnson from halfcourt to beat UNC-Greensboro?
Isaiah Stevens for Colorado State to beat Nevada was nice.
And finally, D’Shawn Schwartz of Colorado at the overtime horn to hand Dayton its second and still most recent loss.
There have been countless others already this season, but that should be enough to whet your palette before March.
What about bad-ass dunks? Any of those?
Sure.
Toppin is probably the closest thing this season has to Williamson. He’s been putting on a show since night one.
Washington’s Nahziah Carter can absolutely fly.
Greg Williams of St. John’s showing teammate Mustapha Heron how it’s done was nice.
Just like with the buzzer-beaters, there are tons more out there.
So even without Zion, is it safe to assume that Duke is still pretty awesome?
Despite an absurd early home loss to Stephen F. Austin, they’re definitely good. The Blue Devils are 18-3 and the No. 2 team in the country according to Ken Pomeroy.
Coach K also recently had a hilarious meltdown directed at the Cameron Crazies that is worth a few minutes of your attention.
Kansas rolling too?
They are. The Jayhawks won the Maui Invitational in November and have just three losses as we head into the final stretch of the regular season. A couple of weeks ago they were involved in a nasty fight with Kansas State that resulted in some hefty suspensions. Those two teams will play again Feb. 29.
And I guess North Carolina is just hammering fools too?
Ummm. Not exactly.
The Tar Heels are just 10-11 overall and a miserable 3-7 in ACC play. Star freshman Cole Anthony missing a lot of time with a knee injury certainly hasn’t helped matters, but UNC wasn’t exactly thriving before he went down. In its first game with Anthony back and available, North Carolina lost at home to Boston College on Saturday. Earlier in the season, they lost at home to Clemson for the first time ever. The Tigers had been 0-59 in Chapel Hill before the game.
Unless Anthony and company do something ridiculous at the ACC tournament, Carolina is going to not hear its name called on Selection Sunday for the first time in 10 years.
Which conference is the best?
In terms of overall quality, it’s probably the Big Ten. Northwestern and Nebraska are both very bad, but the other 12 teams in the league all have very legitimate shots at making the NCAA tournament.
If you’re talking top to bottom, the Big East has a case at well. Every team in the conference is at least two games over .500, and at least four teams from the league have been in the top 25 virtually every week this season.
So does that mean ... Rutgers is good?
It does. The Scarlet Knights recently cracked the AP top 25 for the first time since 1979 and are tracking towards making their first NCAA tournament since 1991. That drought is the longest of any power conference program.
And DePaul!?
Not so much. The Blue Demons had a fantastic non-conference run, taking down Minnesota, Iowa and Texas Tech on their way to a 12-1 start. They’ve since gone 1-8 in Big East play and are once again looking like they will miss the Big Dance for the 16th straight year.
I had so much hope this year.
We all did.
Give me your Final Four.
I don’t really like to do that before we get the actual bracket.
Why?
It’s a totally pointless exercise to pick a Final Four when so much of who makes up the Final Four is based on tournament draw. If you pick four teams right now, two or three of them might end up being in the same region on Selection Sunday.
Well I’d stay away from Virginia. I always forget what happens a few months after March, but the one thing I ALWAYS remember is that Virginia chokes.
This all feels like it may have been a massive waste of time, but yes, you’re probably going to be OK if you don’t have Virginia in your Final Four this March.
That’s all I needed to hear. Much appreciated.
Anytime.
Sports - Latest - Google News
February 03, 2020 at 11:00AM
https://ift.tt/2GP8p5e
College basketball’s most important questions as March Madness approaches - SB Nation
Sports - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Mbsnt7
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment