With little pro talent, Final Four might bore us

Here is the one guarantee I can make about the Final Four: Sportswriters will have no trouble meeting deadlines with this group. The storylines are endless. We’ve got the traditional powers in Duke and Michigan State. Three of the best coaches in the history of college basketball will be there – including Bob Huggins looking for his first National Championship. And of course, there’s always Butler’s Cinderella story as it tries to become the first team from a mid-major conference to win it all since UNLV did so two decades ago.

Only one thing will be missing in Indianapolis.

Talent.

For the first time since the inception of the NBA draft lottery, it’s likely that no one playing in the Final Four will be selected in the first 14 picks of June’s draft. In fact, NBAdraft.net projects West Virginia’s Devin Ebanks and Da’Sean Butler to be the only two guys playing in Indianapolis that will be drafted at all. When you combine the lack of NBA prospects and the amount of upsets that took place earlier in the tournament, this might be the most diluted Final Four in the history of college basketball.

So is it worth watching? Well, if you went to Duke, West Virginia, Michigan State or Butler, then sure. But be prepared for what could be the lowest scoring Final Four since the shot clock was implemented 24 years ago. You’ll see three defensive-minded, fundamentally sound games that should all remain close if for no other reason than none of the four teams have a guy who could take over a game and win it by himself. It will be the type of basketball you’ll want your 8 year-old son to pay attention to; but chances are he’ll want to change the channel to watch something with a little faster pace, like that P90X infomercial.

Me? I’ll keep track of the score, but without Kentucky involved, it’s going to be hard to keep me glued to the television. Any John Calipari-led program has replaced Duke as the most polarizing team in college athletics and something is just missing without him. He’s just so easy to root against. And Thursday night’s matchup with Cornell was the closest thing we’ll ever see to the 1980 USSR/USA hockey game. It was pro versus Joes. Future lottery picks and the guys who will represent them in court someday. Only the bad guys, led by Calipari, won.

It’s too bad those NBA-ordered mandatory minimum essentially become contract years for players, because as good as Kentucky was this season, they would have probably advanced further if they could have dropped that “I gotta get mine” mentality. And no matter how you feel about Calipari, the Final Four would be much more exciting with him in it.

Even without Calipari, this week will still be all about the coaches. Krzyzewski, Izzo, Huggins and the new kid on the block, Brad Stevens. College basketball has always been more about the guys who build programs than the kids who play in them. And this year, with the Final Four so big on heart and little on talent, will be no different.

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Random Rumblings

• As I write this, I’m flying Jet Blue to Vegas and if you’re asking “why the hell is he blogging when he has satellite TV?” the answer is simple: My screen is broken. I’m the only guy on the plane not watching Boise State.
  
  Anyways, I’ve come to the conclusion that the guy sitting next to me meets all five of the requirements to becoming a UFC fighter.
  
  !) Shaved head with a goatee. Check
  2) Be over 200 pounds. Check
  3) Drink Budweiser. Check
  4) Be very pale. Check
  5) Have tattoos that cover your arms. Check
  
  The strange thing about this guy is his choice of music. He’s blasting his iPod (apparently UFC guys think college football is for pussies) but the only song I keep hearing is that “To the left, to the left” song. Now everyone has their quirks, but this guy is supposed to be a Bud-drinking badass, the type of guy that refers to everyone as “boss” or “chief” and he’s listening to Beyonce.
  
  You tell me who the pussy is.
  
  Then again, I’m the one with Jonas Brothers tickets tomorrow night at MGM.
  
  
• At this point, the BCS’ approval rating makes George Bush look like JFK, but one guy loving the arguments caused by those faulty computers right now has to be new Big East Commissioner John Marinatto. Because everyone is so caught up arguing who should play for the National Title, no one seems to be paying attention to the fact that Marinatto’s league (Note – he doesn’t actually take over until July) is about to send a very undeserving team to a major bowl.
  
  And believe me, only calling the Big East undeserving is like calling the Knicks only mildly interested in LeBron James. If you asked the staff of Cincinnati’s student newspaper to pick the teams to play in BCS games, they’d opt for Ball State over the Bearcats any day
  
  If you ask me, the biggest disgrace about the BCS is that contract stipulations decide who gets to play and who gets shut out of the major bowls just as much as any computer. No matter how deserving, the Big 12 is restricted from sending a third team to a BCS Bowl game because the barely mediocre Big East is guaranteed a slot.
  
  But you won’t find too many people complaining about this mess; no one has time. And that’s just how Marinatto likes it. For Big East football, no press is the best kind.
  
  
• While I’m at it, Marinatto has another issue on his hands, this time in basketball, the conference’s crown jewel.
  
  The league is expected to place at least eight teams in the NCAA tournament this season and is widely regarded as the best in America, but it also is home to Rutgers, which lost to St. Bonaventure and Lehigh in consecutive games and Providence, which is only the second best team in Rhode Island.
  
  Couple that with the miserable St. John’s program and irrelevant ones like Seton Hall and South Florida, and you start to realize that there almost as many really bad teams are there are good ones.
  
  Thankfully, the Big East won’t be judged by its weakest links.
  
  
• There is a loud drunk girl on the plane (she’s not hot) and she keeps telling her friend she needs to find a black man in Vegas. An “Obama man,” she says. I think UFC guy is going to spear her.
  
  I wonder what his fight music is.
  
  
• Stephon Marbury once said he’d like to play in Italy after his NBA career is over. Now it looks like that statement could become a reality sooner than anyone thought.
  
  That is, until Mike D’Antoni decides to place a call to the old country and get Starbury blackballed.
  
  
• I’ve never hidden the fact that UConn basketball is the one team I truly care about, so by extension, I’m a huge college basketball fan. But I have to admit, I can’t blame fans for not filling the gyms for any of these preseason tournaments. The games have been hard enough to watch on television.
  
  Every team lets the shot clock run down and then throws up a wild, low percentage shot. I think a lot of people downplayed the extended 3-point line, but it looks like it’s going to be an issue for even the best teams (see UConn).
  
  
• Well, as I might have mentioned, I’m in Vegas now and won’t be posting until Tuesday or Wednesdays. Check back then for an updated podcast and all new posts!

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College Basketball is struggling in the Northeast

Nearly half of the 65 teams playing in the NCAA tournament this week have players from north Jersey or New York City on their roster, solidifying the argument that the best high school basketball is played in the northeast. And it’s not just the city kids that can play either. New England’s prestigious prep schools are home to just as many Division I recruits as they are to future senators these days.

Schoolboy basketball is thriving.

Yet somehow, college basketball in the region is dying.

Only Connecticut and Siena managed to qualify for the Big Dance this week, and only the Huskies have a reasonable chance to make it past the first weekend. It’s gotten so bad that even the Northeast Conference had to find a team from Maryland (Mount St. Mary’s) to represent the league in the tournament.

It wasn’t that long ago that St. John’s and Seton Hall were among the country’s elite teams and Providence was thriving. Even more recently, Boston College became a tournament lock every year, Massachusetts was in the Final Four and Rhode Island was able to recruit and land a future lottery pick named Lamar Odom. And of course there was UConn and Syracuse, who eventually went on to win three National Titles in six seasons.

But all of that seems forgotten now, especially since the Huskies are weaker than normal and the Orange have now missed the NCAA Tournament two years in a row.

The biggest problem, clearly, is that the schools have done a horrible job at keeping the region’s top players home. Next season, Connecticut will bring in New York’s top rated player, point guard Kemba Walker, but five of the next six prospects are all expected to leave the area. The same goes for Jersey, which is sending its best player to Louisville and three of its top five to Kansas to play for Bill Self. The top players in New England’s high schools are heading to Arizona, Ohio State and Louisville as well.

City kids are trading city life for cow tipping and pickup trucks.

And the future doesn’t look much brighter. Sure, Connecticut and Syracuse will always be fairly prominent, but the rest of the region (especially the New York Metro schools) seems hopeless. Until they figure it out, the kids will continue to thrive elsewhere.

And the schools will continue to fade.

*Correction* Cornell is the third team from the northeast in the tourney.

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Random Rumblings (On Favre, college basketball and Calhoun)

• Like all the legends in sports that have retired before him, Brett Favre used family as one of the main reasons why he retired from football this week. And we accept it–maybe more than we did from Michael Jordan- because of who he is and all he’s been through.
  
  But what if the Packers were able to sign Randy Moss? Would Favre have walked away then?
  
  The answer is no. Despite the success the team had this season, Favre didn’t believe he had the right pieces to win a Super Bowl, and he said as much when he talked about how getting there in losing wouldn’t be good enough.
  
  Family might have been the reason he retired. But he wasn’t talking about his wife and children. He was talking about Greg Jennings and company – his second family.
  
  The one he didn’t believe in.
  
  
• The NCAA Basketball Tournament might be the greatest event in sports, but it is going to be hard for most of the country to get excited about players they just don’t know, and that’s why the NBA forcing players to attend school for a year is going to hurt the college game in the long run.
  
  Last year, Kevin Durant and Greg Oden became household names because of the success their teams were having. This year’s best player, Michael Beasley, plays on an average Kansas State team that is barely ever on national television.
  
  The same goes for a lot of the big-name freshmen. O.j. Mayo’s USC team still needs to do work in order to qualify for the Big Dance. Eric Gordon at Indiana has been overshadowed but the Kelvin Sampson situation. And most people probably don’t even know what team Jerryd Bayless plays for.
  
  And the trend isn’t going anywhere. As long as the freshman classes are more talented than the juniors and seniors, the average fan will not get a chance to learn about the stars they are watching come tournament time.
  
  And interest will fade.
  
  
• Speaking of college basketball, The Big Lead asked who the coach of the year was going to be and didn’t include Jim Calhoun.
  
  The guy has won a National Title has a huge underdog (1999) and as an overwhelming favorite (2004), but if he can get Connecticut to the Final Four this season, it has to be his best coaching job.
  
  And he should be rewarded.

Get betting odds at the world’s best online sportsbook

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