A year ago at this time, Wichita State basketball was the talk of the nation, as they were preparing to take an undefeated record into the NCAA Tournament. Those hopes ended with a crushing loss to Kentucky in the Round of 32. Wichita State is more under the radar this year, but don’t sleep on these Shockers—they still have what it takes for a Final Four run.
Gregg Marshall’s team still has the solid backcourt trio of Ron Baker, Fred VanVleet and Tekele Cotton that helped push them last season. Baker is the leading scorer at 15 ppg and the team’s best three-point shooter. VanVleet is the playmaker, and a good shooter himself, chipping in 13 ppg. Cotton is more the third wheel, but can step up if you lose track of him defensively. Baker and VanVleet were only sophomores last year and perhaps in retrospect, that lack of experience is something that should have been considered, with the heavy spotlight they were under. Now everybody is a little more toughened up, and the spotlight is down.
The big missing piece from last season is forward Cleanthony Early, a tremendous talent, who could play down low and also step outside. But while Darius Carter isn’t Early, the 6’7” senior is still pretty good, averaging 12 points/5 rebounds.
Wichita is coming off a 74-60 thumping of a good Northern Iowa team last Saturday, a game that gave the Shockers their second straight Missouri Valley Conference title and the third in four years. Both Wichita and Northern Iowa are headed for seeds anywhere in the 3-6 range pending the outcome of this weekend’s conference tournament in St. Louis.
I’m not suggesting that this year’s Wichita team is actually better than last year’s—the departure of Early and the fact that this year’s team has lost three games, preclude that claim. What I am suggesting is that they’re still awfully good, they’re experienced and they’re in a spot which is much more palatable to teams from lower-profile conferences, and it’s being able to sneak up on people.
We also know that Marshall can coach in March, having reached the Final Four in 2013. I don’t know where I’ll pick Wichita in my bracket, since so much of this year depends on where one is in relation to Kentucky. I can say that I’ve got them high on my list as the dark horse team to make the Final Four.
The ramp-up to March Madness is in gear, with conference regular season championships being finalized this week, the league tournaments going next week, fights for at-large bids and seeding in full-force and finally Selection Sunday going on Sunday, March 15. As we get set for another great college basketball run, here’s brief look back on the seminal moments in the development of March Madness history as we know it.
TheSportsNotebook.com sees the modern era of college basketball as essentially beginning in 1976. It was the first year after John Wooden retired. The UCLA legend had captured his 10th national title in 12 years in 1975, and his retirement opened the door for parity. Thus, we can consider the first non-Wooden March—won by Bob Knight’s undefeated Indiana Hoosiers—as the first step of the new era.
A forgotten point about Knight’s Indiana team is that they faced a stacked regional. The three opponents in the regional (Alabama, Western Michigan and Marquette) were all ranked in the final AP Top 10. We don’t know what order they were seeded in, because…well, there weren’t any seeds at that time.
The stacked bracket of the 1976 Mideast Region would certainly not happen today—Marquette was ranked #2 in the nation and we had a 1 vs. 2 battle in the round of eight. What’s even less remembered is that Alabama had Indiana seriously in the ropes in the final two minutes of their Sweet 16 game before Scott May rescued the Hoosiers.
That means the next step in the NCAA Tournament’s evolution is to implement seeding and bracket balance. That happened in 1979.
1979 was the most important year in the development of March Madness history. There was seeding and of course there was the legendary Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird showdown in the championship game. The highest-rated college basketball telecast ever didn’t live up to expectations, as Magic’s Michigan State team handled Bird’s Indiana State with room to spare. But the buildup to the game put college basketball on everyone’s radar.
Still two other things happened in 1979. The first is an occurrence that’s commonplace today, but was unheard of in ’79, and it’s a gutted bracket. The East Regional had North Carolina and Duke as its top two seeds. They were both upset in the second round on the same court in Raleigh, a day still called “Black Saturday” in the state. The two lowest-seeded teams in the bracket, 9th-seeded Penn and 10th-seeded St. John’s, ultimately met to go to the Final Four. Penn won.
The second is that the field expanded from 32 teams to 40 teams. By pushing past the five-round format, the NCAA had created the structure where eventually everyone would be playing on the Thursday/Friday of the first week.
It’s one thing to have a gutted bracket, but how about a gutted Final Four? We got that in 1980. While Louisville, a 2-seed, made it to Indianapolis and won the national championship, the other three participants were seeded #5 or lower in their respective regionals.
Even though we had seen one regional gutted by upsets and a Final Four filled with darkhorses, the whole notion of “the magic of the upset” that defines March Madness for so many, hadn’t yet taken hold. Let’s move on to 1981.
Eight of the nation’s top 16 teams lost on the first weekend, but it was the way it all went down that captured everyone’s imagination. DePaul, the top-ranked team in the country, lost to St. Joe’s on a last-second basket. The TV networks quickly moved to Louisville-Arkansas, where the Razorbacks won by a point on a half-court desperation heave from U.S. Reed. There was no time to catch your breath before NBC took us to the West Regional, where top seed Oregon State fell to Kansas State on a baseline jumper from Rolando Blackman with two seconds left.
In a matter of minutes, the country’s two best teams, along with the defending national champion, had been eliminated on last-second shots. That’s March Madness.
There was still one thing missing, and it was a Cinderella national championship. Enter Jim Valvano and N.C. State. The footage of Valvano’s 1983 N.C. State team winning on a last-second dunk is right up there with Christian Laettner’s game-winning shot in the 1992 Duke-Kentucky game as the most iconic image of March Madness. N.C. State concluded an improbable run from the 6-seed to win it all.
1985 completed the evolution. The field expanded to 64 teams, creating the bracket structure that we all know today. Villanova stunned Georgetown in the championship game, winning the crown as an 8-seed and further validating the notion that March was a place where everyone had a chance.
The decade of 1976-85 were the transformational years of March Madness. Wooden’s retirement paved the way for parity. The bracket was seeded, the field expanded, there was an epic Magic-Bird finale, and the magic of the upsets started rolling in at every level of the tournament. Our March would never be the same.
A recent poll of coaches regarding the college basketball shot clock showed that most of them want to reduce it from the current 35 seconds down to 30. In listening to the debate, all of it surrounds not whether to reduce the time allotted on the shot clock, but how far to reduce it—with 30 and the NBA’s 24 seconds being the options. I think this is completely on the wrong track. The clock should actually be increased to 45.
The reason most people want the clock reduced is to get more scoring. I understand the concerns—there are a lot of ugly college basketball games that have nothing to do with great defense. But the problem isn’t the shot clock, it’s that too many teams can’t run a legitimate half-court offense. And reducing the clock will only make that worse. College basketball has seen a drastic decline in the quality of talent, thanks to early entries into the NBA draft. What’s happened is that the talent that remains—on average throughout the country—is simply not good enough to run a good halfcourt set in a tight timeframe. When talent levels in basketball decline, you need to increase the amount of time they have to find a good shot.
Let me explain my view by illustrating the extremes. Let’s consider a possession in which team feeds its post player on the block. A double-team comes and the ball is kicked out to the wing, reversed to the backside, for open 10-footer on the opposite baseline.
If an NBA team runs this sequence, the ball gets from one side to the other very quickly. When the San Antonio Spurs are clicking, the ball barely sticks in anyone’s hand as it’s rapidly reversed. If you give NBA talent more than 24 seconds to find a shot, the defense will have no chance.
But what if a junior high team tries the same thing. It’s going to move very slowly, probably not make it there at all and they’ll have to reset the entire offense, if there’s not a turnover first. They need more time.
Obviously, even with the early entries to the NBA draft, college basketball isn’t that far behind the pros. But colleges are a lot further behind than they are used to. That’s why I advocate returning to the 45-second clock that was standard in college basketball from 1986-94.
No one complained about low scoring games in the era of 1986-94. You had a wide variety of styles, from Bob Knight’s halfcourt motion offense at Indiana, to the late Jerry Tarkanian’s ‘Running Rebels at UNLV, from Coach K’s own version of the motion at Duke to Nolan Richardson’s’ “40 Minutes Of Hell” at Arkansas. The 45-second clock kept games moving, while allowing each program to develop its own identity.
The problem in college basketball today is that very few teams run a good halfcourt set anymore. Patience on offense boils down to a point guard holding the ball on the top until the clock is down to 8-10 seconds and then somebody jacking up a three. I daresay even the most ardent advocate of a lower shot clock would prefer a 58-54 game that had quality halfcourt possessions rather than a 69-66 game that just had a higher volume of lousy possessions like these.
Now if coaches aren’t going to teach halfcourt basketball anymore, then reducing the clock is no big deal—I suppose if teams are just going to aimlessly toss the ball around the perimeter before shooting the trey, they can do that in 24 seconds as easily as 35. But even with higher point totals, it isn’t going to increase the quality of play. Perhaps giving coaches an extra ten seconds, and the encouragement to teach legitimate half-court offense will.
Sean Miller has had Arizona basketball knocking on the door of big things during his five first years in Tucson. The Wildcats have won a pair of Pac-12 titles and lost tough games in three of the last four NCAA Tournaments in either the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight. Arizona is positioned for another big run this year and they’ll be national TV twice in three days—tonight at Washington (9 PM ET, ESPN) and Sunday at Washington State (6:30, FoxSports1).
The Wildcats are 20-3 overall, tied with Utah atop the Pac-12 standings and projected as a #2 seed in the NCAAs by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi. They have a deep and talented frontcourt and a skilled playmaker that suggests the talent is there to be the team that can knock off undefeated Kentucky come March.
Stanley Johnson, a likely one-and-done at forward is the key, going 6’7” and averaging 15 points/7 rebounds a night. Brandon Ashley, a 6’9” junior provides more athleticism in the paint, with an 11/5 average. The same goes for Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (11/6) and then there’s big 7’0” Kaleb Tarczewski, who anchors the middle.
Miller, a former point guard himself in his playing days for good Pitt teams in the late 1980s, has his own senior quarterback in T.J. McConnell, a quality playmaker with six assists per game and chipping in ten points per game.
What Arizona lacks is a steady three-point shooter. To the credit of this team, they don’t force up a lot of threes and settle for doing their damage inside the arc. But in a one-game shot against potential NCAA foes like Gonzaga, or Wisconsin (who nipped the ‘Cats in an overtime regional final last year) that have size inside and good perimeter shooting, it could be what does them in.
The Wildcats make up for their perimeter shortcomings with defense, and a lot of it. It’s what drove them to a Pac-12 title, #1 seed and three tournament victories a year ago, and it’s what’s driving them again this year. Miller’s team ranks seventh in the nation in defensive efficiency.
It’s for these reasons—the defensive excellence, the ability to play to their strengths offensively and the quality and depth of the frontcourt that I consider Arizona to be the best challenger to Kentucky.
The question mark is this—given that just yesterday I panned Gonzaga for not having made a big NCAA run recently and for a schedule that makes it tough to have confidence in them, why does Arizona get a pass? After all, the Wildcats haven’t made the Final Four since their runner-up year in 2001under the great Lute Olson.
And the Pac-12 only has five serious NCAA Tournament contenders right now, with UCLA, Stanford and Oregon all on the bubble (Lunardi projects the first two to make it). Maybe Oregon State, at 16-8 overall could get in the conversation, but even so, no one is going to confuse the Pac-12 with the ACC.
Arizona does have some decent non-conference wins—they edged Kansas State and San Diego State, both of whom look NCAA-bound back in November and they beat Gonzaga in overtime at home. Ultimately though, my belief in the Wildcats is predicated on more than that.
While Miller hasn’t had the breakthrough in March, his teams have made significant advances into the NCAA Tournament and their losses have been tough ones to very good teams. In 2011, after crushing Duke in the Sweet 16, Arizona only lost by two to Kemba Walker’s UConn team that won the national title. In 2013, Arizona only lost by three to an Ohio State team that was on a roll off a victory in the Big Ten tournament. And last year’s loss to Wisconsin came against the best team in the Big Ten.
That’s why I think it all adds up to this being Arizona’s year. As of now, I’d slot them #2 behind Kentucky on my list of potential teams to pick for winning the national championship. And if there’s an all-Wildcats showdown in Indianapolis come April? Well, Arizona fans have fond memories of that—it’s Kentucky that Lute Olson’s team vanquished in 1997 to win the program’s only national title.
Gonzaga basketball splashed onto the national scene in 1999 when they made a surprise run to a regional final before losing to ultimate NCAA champion UConn. Since that point, the Zags have been in the NCAA Tournament every year, sometimes with high expectations. But they’ve never even reached the regional finals again, much less the Final Four. Mark Few’s team has a chance this year, thanks to some good size on the frontcourt.
The Zags have three players on the frontline who go 6’10” or higher and it starts with forward Kyle Wiltjer. One of the best players in the country, Wiltjer is averaging 16 points/5 rebounds per game, and at “small” forward, he’s got a significant size advantage on pretty much anyone he matches up with.
Przemek Karnowski and Domanta Sabonis do the dirty work down low, combining for 13 rebounds a night, and they each score in double digits. They come from Poland and Lithuania respectively, two of the Catholic nations freed when the Iron Curtain came down.
It would be appropriate, though hardly the most important historical development, if this Jesuit school finally makes the Final Four thanks to the work of John Paul II in breaking the old Soviet Union and opening the door for players like Karnowski and Sabonis to come to the United States.
Kevin Pangos is a senior leader at guard, who seems to have been around forever. Pangos can hit from behind the arc and keep defenses loosened up. Byron Wesley is another double-digit scorer in the backcourt and also a senior. As if this weren’t enough experience, Few has senior Gary Bell as his third guard, and Bell can both shoot and distribute.
Thus, Gonzaga has all the elements. They have the size to match up with anybody. They have the shooters to keep defenses from sagging back. They have scoring balance where anyone can hurt you. Yet within that balance, they still have the clear go-to option you need in big NCAA Tournament games, with Wiltjer.
All of this looks good, but the days of 1999 innocence in the eyes of the national media are long gone. Gonzaga now invites skepticism, at least as a #1 seed, which is where their 24-1 record has them projected by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi.
The skepticism is understandable—there have only been four additional Sweet 16 appearances in the ensuing sixteen years. Any lingering benefit of the doubt the Zags were getting was lost in 2013 when Kelly Olynyk led them to a #1 seed and they lost in the second round.
Nor does the schedule offer a lot of opportunities for Gonzaga to prove themselves before people have to fill out their NCAA Tournament bracket sheets. It’s not for a lack of trying—Few’s kids have beaten solid NCAA contenders SMU, Georgia and St. John’s, all by at least twelve points. They went to overtime at Arizona before losing. And they scheduled UCLA and Memphis and won decisively, even if neither of those programs have been up to snuff this year.
The problem is that the most significant of those games—the SMU, Georgia and St. John wins, along with the Arizona loss—took place between November 17 and December 6. It’s not Gonzaga’s fault that the West Coast Conference only offers St. Mary’s and BYU as viable competition. But this isn’t about assessing blame—it’s about asking whether there’s a reason to believe.
I like Gonzaga, I think they’ve got good talent and as long as they aren’t in a regional with Wisconsin, my favorite team, I’ll pull for the Zags. I won’t be shocked if they make it. But would I pick Gonzaga to get past other projected 2-seeds like a Kansas or Arizona? Let’s just put it this way—I realize this is a good Catholic school, but when the apostle Paul wrote that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, he wasn’t talking about one’s NCAA picks. And faith without evidence is what’s required to pick Gonzaga to reach the Final Four.
During last night’s Kentucky-LSU game, ESPN analyst Dick Vitale called Kentucky’s defense “the best I’ve seen in my 36 years at ESPN.” The ‘Cats defense is awfully good, worthy of being in such a conversation. But the best defense in the modern era of college hoops belonged to Georgetown basketball during the Patrick Ewing era from 1982-85.
Today’s Kentucky team has two distinct strengths—they come at you in waves, with nine regulars, and they have shot blockers at the rim, Karl Anthony-Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein. Georgetown could match the depth, the ability to defend everywhere on the floor and for all 94 feet, and Ewing was one of the great rim protectors of all time.
For readers who didn’t experience the Ewing era, the names I’m about to read will go past like a blur, but for those of us who watched them (I was in grade school at the time), they’ll conjure up memories. Gene Smith was a terrific on-ball defender in the backcourt. Michael Graham, the bald-headed enforcer, maintained order on opposing forwards.
From David Wingate, to Reggie Williams to Bill Martin to Fred Brown, head coach John Thompson could just keep up the pressure. And if Ewing needed a rest? Thompson always had a reliable big man on the bench, from Ed Spriggs in 1982, to Ralph Dalton after that. Neither was a shotblocker, but they could bang on the boards and clean up the misses the aggressive perimeter defenders keep forcing.
That kind of quickness and depth outside is why I believe the Ewing-era Georgetown teams would still be great in the era of the three-point shot. They had the speed to extend their defense and the big man was ready to wipe away any mistakes.
The other significant rule change in the ensuing three decades plus is the introduction of a shot clock, first at 45 seconds and then reduced to the current 35. This is a change that would benefit the old Georgetown teams. While the increased number of possessions leads to higher point volume, defense is also easier on a per-possession basis—you know up front you only have to guard the opposing team for a limited amount of time.
What if these Georgetown teams were playing teams with significantly less offensive experience, due to all the early entries to the NBA? That’s not a problem these Hoyas would likely have been afflicted by.
Ewing was the only one who was a serious prospect to leave early and even in the 1980s, the pressure on him year-to-year was already enormous and he stayed in school for four years. Thompson had the loyalty of his players, as he did throughout the African-American community.
So we can envision a Georgetown team playing against opposing offenses without the same kind of veteran cohesion as the opponents they really did face had. The Hoyas would only have to defend for 35 seconds and they would be able to extend to the three-point line. I submit that while their defense wouldn’t look as good statistically—simply because no team is going to look as good in the era of the three-pointer and shot clock—they would actually be better in practice.
Think about the opponents Georgetown really did have to face. This was the high point of Big East basketball, as documented in ESPN’s terrific 30-for-30 documentary Requiem For The Big East that aired last year.
St. John’s had Chris Mullin, a future Hall of Famer and NBA All-Star. Syracuse had Pearl Washington, one of the most electrifying point guards in the country and a future first-round pick, even though he didn’t make it in the pros. Boston College produced consistently good teams under Tom Davis and then Gary Williams. And Villanova? Well, Georgetown fans need no reminder of what Rollie Massimino’s veteran teams were capable of back then.
Here’s a brief primer on what Georgetown’s defenses did…
*In their three Final Four years (1982, 1984,1985), they played 16 games and held the opponent under 50 points ten times. Even allowing the lack of a shot clock or three-point line, 50 was still considered a basic benchmark that any offense wanted to hit, lest they be embarrassed. Against Georgetown, they were embarrassed a lot.
*In the six games they played in the regionals (Sweet 16 & Elite 8) in those years, the Hoyas, an opponent never shot higher than 41 percent from the floor and was held below 40 percent three times.
*In a game Kentucky fans who saw it would like to forget, the two teams faced off in a Final Four game in 1984. Georgetown held UK to 3-of-23 shooting and 11 points in the second half. In the 1982 Final Four, they had held Louisville to sub-40 percent shooting in another victory.
*The crown jewel came in 1985, when the Hoyas faced three successive great guards. It started in the Sweet 16 with Loyola-Illinois’ Alfrederick Hughes, the leading scorer in the nation. He was held to eight points. Up next was Georgia Tech’s Mark Price, a future NBA star in Cleveland. Price shot 3-for-16. And it finished in the Final Four against Mullin, merely the Player of the Year. He only got off eight shots, never reached the foul line and only scored eight points.
*And the bottom line—they won one national title and came within a basket of two more, in spite of having questionable offensive skills. That’s called defensive domination.
I don’t advocate for Georgetown because I’m a fan. I couldn’t stand them back in the day. I loved Chris Mullin—a fellow Irish Catholic and recovered alcoholic. I loved Akeem Olajuwon, then with the University of Houston, who lost the NCAA final to Georgetown in 1984—so much so that I wanted my confirmation name to be “Akeem” (It didn’t become “Hakeem” until he was in the pros). But that didn’t fly. And neither did opposing offenses when they faced Georgetown in the Ewing era. That’s why, love them or hate them, they were the best college basketball defense of the modern era.
In the long history of LSU basketball, their biggest win over Kentucky came in the regional finals of the 1986 NCAA Tournament. The undermanned Tigers, coached by master motivator Dale Brown, stunned the favored Wildcats and reached the Final Four as an 11-seed, unprecedented at the time and matched in future years only by George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth. Tonight’s LSU-Kentucky game (7 PM ET, ESPN) from Baton Rouge won’t match that, but it could take over the #2 spot.
Kentucky’s pursuit of the first undefeated season and national championship since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers is the biggest story in college basketball. LSU is a bubble team in the push for the NCAA Tournament and desperately needs marquee wins. The elements are in place for a max effort from the underdog and a packed house going crazy, but do the Tigers have enough for a victory?
LSU is built on good defense and excellent rebounding. They rank 34th in the nation in defensive efficiency—not spectacular, but pretty good for a bubble team. The Tigers have two sophomores down low, Jordan Mickey and Jarrell Martin, that clean up the glass hard and each can score. Mickey & Martin, the Baton Rouge version of the M&M Boys combine to average 33 points/20 rebounds per night.
The perimeter players all contribute, with Keith Hornsby and Tim Quarterman each averaging double figures and Josh Gray averaging four assists per game. But the problem is that no one shoots the three-ball very well. It’s why LSU is only 94th in the nation in offensive efficiency.
LSU’s advantage tonight is that Kentucky doesn’t shoot the three very well either, although Aaron Harrison showed us in last year’s NCAA Tournament run that he can get hot from out there. But if the ‘Cats don’t shoot the three, and LSU doesn’t turn the ball over in the face of that wave of nine Big Blue players attacking, the game can be close. And that can give the home team the chance for an upset.
This advantage though, is also LSU’s disadvantage. If each team is going to play a similar style, wouldn’t you naturally default to the one who has a demonstrated ability to do it a much higher level? It would seem that to upset Kentucky you have to be a different type of team and force them out of the comfort zone.
As far as tonight goes, I don’t think anyone can force Kentucky out of their comfort zone, though I make the usual caveats about this being the kind of atmosphere that will invite a big effort from the home underdog. I won’t be shocked if there’s an upset, and I’d probably take LSU with the (+10.5) points being offered at the window, but not to win outright.
What I’m more interested in from LSU’s standpoint is whether this Tiger team can make the NCAA Tournament. ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi presently has LSU in the field, at a #11 seed, the very definition of the bubble.
LSU’s overall record is 17-6, but they have some notable bad losses on their resume. Within conference play, they’ve lost to bad teams in Missouri, Mississippi State and Auburn. Outside the league, they’ve dropped games to Clemson and Old Dominion—neither team is bad, they are games you should at least split. Especially when the only marquee victory on the slate right now is at West Virginia. It’s a nice win, but it’s asking a lot to argue your way into the NCAA Tournament based solely on that.
The SEC is currently packed with bubble teams behind Kentucky. Lunardi has five other conference teams making the field. Arkansas is fairly safe for the time being at a 6-seed. Georgia is an 8-seed. Then you go to Texas A&M on the 10-line and LSU at 11. Tennessee and Florida are not currently on the field nor among the first eight teams to miss, but their records are good enough that a February run to contention is reasonable.
What that means is that LSU needs to find a way to separate itself. After tonight, they go to Tennessee on Saturday, to Texas A&M next Tuesday and host Florida on the Saturday after that. It’s a decisive stretch for the Tigers. When your resume is crying out for a marquee win though, nothing would be bigger than to stop Kentucky’s unbeaten season in Baton Rouge tonight.
Now that the Super Bowl and its aftermath are over, it’s time to settle in for February and college basketball, as teams race to position themselves for the NCAA Tournament and win conference championships. If you’re just starting to follow hoops seriously now that football’s over, here’s a brief primer on the college basketball Sweet 16.
The best sixteen teams are based on projected seedings by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, notoriously accurate in his assessment of where teams while wind up on the bracket come Selection Sunday. Note that Lunardi’s seeding, updated Monday morning are based on exclusively on their body of work to date, and do not attempt to predict who might finish strong or fade.
#1 SEEDS
Kentucky: The nation’s only unbeaten team doesn’t have a star, but they run a wave of nine players at you, all of whom play 20-26 minutes per game. The defense is the best in the country, aided considerably by the presence of Karl Anthony-Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein underneath to wipe away mistakes. The weakness is three-point shooting. Virginia: UVA is the second-best defensive team in the country and is another team without a star. Everybody plays defense and everyone rebounds. The Cavs are two games up in the ACC race and are led by wing player Malcolm Brogdon. They just got bad news in that the only other double-digit scorer, Justin Anderson, will be out until at least the conference tournament. Duke: Jahlil Okafor is as good as they come, and the freshman center (and likely #1 NBA draft pick next spring) is averaging 18 points/9 rebounds down low. The Blue Devils have good complementary rebounders and Quinn Cook can open it up from the perimeter. What they don’t do well is play good team defense, at least by national championship standards. Gonzaga: Is this finally the Zags year? Kyle Wiltjer is knocking down 16 ppg and guard Kevin Pangos seems to have been around forever, dishing the ball and draining threes. The team as a whole also rebounds well.
#2 SEEDS
Kansas: It’s not a vintage Jayhawk team. They don’t stand out on either end of the floor, but they keep winning games and lead the Big 12. Frank Mason runs the show well, and Perry Ellis is good down on the blocks. The ultimate key will be whether someone else—Wayne Selden being the most likely candidate—steps up and lifts his game offensively. Villanova: The Wildcats are well-balanced, but they aren’t particularly big, with none of their best rebounders being over 6’7”. Since their 2009 run to the Final Four, this is a program that’s dealt with some steady disappointments in March and they’re under scrutiny this year. Wisconsin: It’s not your usual Badger team, one that clamps down on defense but can’t score. This UW edition is the best in the nation at offensive efficiency, but rank a woeful 74th defensively. Frank Kaminsky, averaging 17 points/8 rebounds per game is a Player of the Year candidate and the lineup is well-balanced. But the defense has got to improve for the team that I live near and follow. Arizona: Sean Miller has the Wildcats playing some tough defense, and the front line is big all the way across. Stanley Johnson, averaging 15/7, is the best of the group. And Arizona has a skilled point guard in T.J. McConnell. The one thing they don’t well is shoot from behind the arc.
#3 SEEDS
Utah: The Utes are hanging with Arizona in the Pac-12 race, tied for first coming into this week. Delon Wright, the 6’5” senior, does it all with 14 points/5 rebounds/6 assists per game. And Jakob Poeltl, a 7-footer from Austria is cleaning up on the glass. Louisville: Rick Pitino’s team ranks fourth in the nation on defense, while struggling at 52nd on offense, including in last Saturday’s loss to Virginia. But the Cards remain interesting, because they have some high-profile scorers in Terry Rozier, Chris Jones and Montrezl Harrell. It’s reasonable to think Pitino can get them to gel and then integrate that into the smothering defense. North Carolina: Another ACC team that seems to be less than the sum of its parts right now, but has a coach with a track record you can rely on. Roy Williams has good guards in Marcus Paige and Justin Jackson, good interior pieces in Kennedy Meeks and Brice Johnson and an under-the-radar do-everything player in J.P Tokoto, who chips in scoring, rebounding and assists. Notre Dame: We know the Irish can score, as they rank second in the nation in offensive efficiency. Jerian Grant leads the way with 17 ppg and also sets up his teammates, with six assists per night. We don’t yet know if the Irish can defend—they’re the worst defensive team in this Sweet 16 and by a lot.
#4 SEEDS
Baylor: The Bears are loaded with talent at the forward position with Taurean Prince and Rico Gather. The latter is an absolute beast on the boards, his 13 per game being the highest of any player in this group of teams. Prince can fill it up. We need to see more consistency from this program, which tends to run on a roller-coaster. Oklahoma: OU does it with defense, the third-best in the country. The offense has the right blend of balance, yet with one standout player that you can rely on to take important shots. That player is Buddy Hield, a 6’4” sharpshooter who averaged 18 ppg, and whose size hasn’t stopped him from scrapping for six boards a night. Iowa State: Georges Niang’s injury in last year’s NCAA Tournament might have cost the Cyclones a Final Four trip—maybe more, since without Niang, they lost a close game to eventual national champion UConn in the Sweet 16 Niang, who goes 6’8”, scores, rebounds and distributes. Northern Iowa: It’s not Wichita State that’s the team from the Missouri Valley Conference seeded high, it’s Northern Iowa (although the Shockers are a projected 5-seed this week). Northern Iowa is not a good rebounding team, and if they make a deep March run it will because 6’8” senior Seth Tuttle became a household name. Watching Northern Iowa and Wichita State joust the rest of the season for the MVC title is going to be one of the fun storylines of the regular season.
That’s how the top of the projected NCAA Tournament bracket in early February looks. Kentucky is the story of the regular season right now and the clear team to beat. Las Vegas says the Wildcats are the 5-7 favorite to win the national title, with Duke the next team behind at 6-1.
If I were going to challenge the chalk—and right now, quite frankly, I probably wouldn’t—but if I were, the team that intrigues me the most is Arizona. They have the size to matchup with anybody, a quarterback to run the floor, a good coach and a sense of mission after losing a heartbreaker to Wisconsin in last year’s regional final.
Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski took another step into college basketball history yesterday when he won his 1,000th career game against St. John’s. Coach K is already the all-time wins leader and just keeps expanding his lead with this unprecedented milestone.
The question we’re going to ask here today is in the “rain on the parade” category a little bit, and it’s this—can this edition of Duke basketball be the one that will reverse what’s been a modest decline in recent seasons. With this week’s schedule showing road trips to Notre Dame on Wednesday (7:30 PM ET, ESPN2) and Virginia on Saturday (7 PM ET, ESPN) there’s no time for victory parties or historical reflection in Durham.
Coach K has set some almost impossible-to-hit standards, so even just churning out really good teams, as he continues to do, can still short of this program’s expectations, which are defined by championships. Here’s the rundown on Duke’s current droughts…
*They have not won the ACC regular season title outright since 2006, when J.J. Redick was leading the way. Coach K has won ten outright ACC crowns and shared two others in his tenure, and it’s shocking to realize it’s been nearly a decade since they won their league.
*Duke has not won the ACC Tournament since 2011. A less alarming trend, but people in ACC country live to win this event and for the conference’s pre-eminent program—who has won it 13 times under Coach K– to go three straight years without a title—at a time when North Carolina has also been down a bit—raises some eyebrows
*And the stage that college basketball fans care the most about, March Madness, has not been kind to the Dookies since Coach K won his fourth national title back in 2010. There were a couple modestly respectable runs to the regional weekend in 2011 and 2013, but both ended in decisive losses, to San Diego State and Louisville respectively. More important, there were two stunning first-round exits, to Lehigh in 2012 and Mercer in 2014.
Duke is essentially the New England Patriots of college basketball. There’s no denying their greatness in the big picture and not even any denying their excellence in recent seasons. But the numbers above for Duke are a little bit like considering the Pats haven’t won the Super Bowl in a decade. So what do prospects look like for this year’s Duke team?
The Blue Devils are currently 17-2, with both losses in ACC play. They trail Virginia by two games in the conference, and are one back of Notre Dame. Duke is tied in the loss column with Louisville, Syracuse and Miami. But Duke has quality non-conference wins over Michigan State and at Wisconsin, and consequently are projected as a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi in an updated bracket released today.
Jahlil Okafor, the outstanding 6’11” freshman center has gotten most of the attention and he deserves it. Okafor gives Duke an imposing presence in the middle, something they have often lacked. He’s averaging 19 points/9 rebounds per game, along with 1.5 blocks. He gets help on the glass from Amile Jefferson, a 6’9” junior who gets eight boards a night.
Okafor is just one of three freshmen playing a huge role for this year’s Duke team. Tyus Jones is an important element in the backcourt, leading the team in assists and Justice Winslow is a key wing player and double-digit scorer. The lineup is rounded out with senior Quinn Cook, good for 14 ppg a night and the main three-point shooter.
Normally good inside play has been the key to determining how far Duke will go. They won their 2010 title when Brian Zoubek consistently grabbed 9-10 rebounds a night. That was a case of role player stepping up. The best Duke teams—those that won back-to-back national titles in 1991and 1992 had a great college player in Christian Laettner. With Okafor and Jefferson on this year’s team, the Blue Devils would seem to have both a star and a grinder in place.
The problem is, the defense has not always been there, and team rebounding has been up and down, even if Okafor individually has not been. Duke was significantly outrebounded by Michigan State, but won because they shot 54 percent. The Blue Devils shot the lights out in Wisconsin, hitting 65 percent of their shots.
In the recent two-game losing streak in ACC play, Duke first failed to hit their shots against N.C. State, and lost by 12 in spite of Okafor going for 23/12 and Jefferson getting eight rebounds. Duke lost at home to Miami because they allowed 52 percent shooting. In the two games combined, Duke gave up 177 points.
It’s that lack of defensive focus that’s difficult to understand, given the presence of good interior personnel. Duke is 50th in the country in defensive efficiency, a stat that adjusts points allowed for tempo so faster teams aren’t penalized. That’s not terrible, but it’s not the stuff of a great team either. By contrast, the offense ranks 5th.
What this suggests is that Duke will look really good when the shots are falling, but be unable to grind out ugly wins. And you need ugly wins to win conference championships and make Final Four runs in March.
Of course the other side to this is that it’s still January, and this freshman-laden team is still learning to play together defensively. Some of the previous Duke teams that came up short simply didn’t have good talent in the post and that became exposed. This year’s team does, so perhaps it’s just a question of letting Coach K continue to mold this group and see if their defense improves.
There’s no better time to start than this week. You need your defense to win on the road and if Duke is serious about that first outright ACC championship since 2006—or first shared title since 2010—then trips to Notre Dame and Virginia are the place to get it going.
We’re about one-third of the way through the conference schedules in the college basketball season and the Big Ten has a big week ahead. Four teams have just one loss in league play and they all go head-to-head this week. It starts tonight with Iowa-Wisconsin (9 PM ET, ESPN) and continues on Thursday night with Maryland-Indiana (9, ESPNU). Let’s take this opportunity for a quick primer on the key players in the Big Ten basketball race.
Let me begin by saying that by no means am I dismissing Michigan State, which has two losses. Nor Michigan, who won last year’s Big Ten title in a runaway. But there will be other opportunities to discuss those teams. For now, we know that two teams will be tied for first by the weekend and those two will be the winners of the games above. Here’s a summation of Wisconsin, Maryland, Indiana and Iowa. Wisconsin (16-2 overall, 4-1 league, ranked #6): The top-heavy favorite when the season opened, the Badgers have mostly lived up to their press clippings. Their home loss to Duke was a great game against an extremely good opponent. Then UW dumped a game to Rutgers and lost point guard Traevon Jackson to a foot injury until the latter part of February.
Wisconsin still has a physical front line, with national Player Of The Year candidate Frank Kaminsky averaging 17 points/8 rebounds. Nigel Hayes, an immensely talented sophomore is coming into his own with a 12/7 average, and versatile Sam Dekker is at 12/5. Josh Gasser is a lights-out three-point shooter that loosens up defenses for the inside players.
This is clearly the most talented team in the Big Ten, but there are two concerns. First, we don’t know how the offense is going to function without Jackson running the show. Second, Wisconsin really hasn’t beaten anyone. Oklahoma is the most impressive win.
This isn’t incredibly alarming because the Badgers haven’t played the best teams in the Big Ten so saying they haven’t beaten anyone is really just a way of saying they lost to Duke. So the Badgers are still the team to beat, but if they don’t play well against the top contenders, something that starts tonight, keep this in mind. Maryland (17-2 overall, 5-1 league, ranked #13): Maryland has the most impressive resume of any Big Ten team right now. The Terps have swept Michigan State and beaten a good Iowa State team. One of their losses was on the road at undefeated Virginia.
Maryland has gotten a big spark from freshman Melo Trimble. The 6’2” guard is averaging 16 ppg, and he joins talented senior guard Dez Wells, who knocks down 14 ppg. Jake Layman, a 6’8” junior, bangs around underneath to the tune of 15 points/7 rebounds per game.
The lack of depth inside is a concern, but Michigan State is the most likely team to have exploited that, and the Terps met the challenge not once, but twice. The bigger challenge will be on February 24 when they have their lone meeting with Wisconsin.
Indiana (14-4 overall, 4-1 league, ranked #23): Tom Crean’s Hoosiers love to shoot the three-ball. A guard-heavy lineup spreads the floor and lets it fly from behind the arc. No one shoots from downtown better than James Blackmon Jr, averaging 17 ppg. And point guard Yogi Ferrell is as good a guard as there is in this league, averaging 15 points/4 rebounds/5 assists, as he does it all each time out. IU is a small team though, with only 6’7” sophomore Troy Williams (13/6) to play underneath. They’ve looked woefully overmatched by Louisville, and lost an overtime game to Georgetown because they couldn’t match up with the Hoyas inside game. There have been some nice wins—SMU and Pitt—but while the Hoosiers’ aggressive three-point shooting can make them a nightmare for a favorite to play, it also makes them likely to dump a few games when the shots don’t fall. Iowa (13-5 overall, 4-1 league, ranked #25): Iowa is the reverse of Indiana—the Hawkeyes find their strength underneath with Aaron White and Jarrod Utoff, while struggling in the backcourt. White and Utoff combine to average 29/14 each night, and they’ve been able to beat North Carolina and sweep Ohio State. Losses to Texas, Syracuse and Iowa State aren’t bad. But they’ve also lost to Northern Iowa.
Iowa plays exceptionally hard and they’ve been able to give Wisconsin a hard time in Madison, something not a lot of teams can say. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on tonight, but over the long season the lack of consistent guard play will likely doom any conference championship hopes.
If you could combine Indiana’s guards with Iowa’s frontcourt, you’d have a championship contender. Right now, both teams look more like spoilers. Wisconsin looks a lot more complete than Maryland, but the Terps have demonstrated more on the floor to this point in the season. I’m a partisan Wisconsin fan and am still picking the Badgers to win the Big Ten basketball race, but they face tough challenges ahead.
It’s been a long time since Arkansas basketball was relevant. You have go back to 2008 to find the last time they even made the NCAA Tournament. As the Razorbacks get set to tip off against Tennessee on Tuesday night (7 PM ET, ESPNU), they’re making noise. While the halcyon days of the 1994 national champions might be a ways off, this Arkansas basketball team has a core trio of players they can ride back into March Madness.
The talent starts with 6’11” sophomore Bobby Portis. In a college basketball world where there’s not a lot of great post talent, Portis averages 18 points/8 rebounds per game. He’s supported by 6’6” junior Michael Qualls, who averages a 16/5, and hits 37 percent of his three-point shots.
Rashad Madden is a nice all-around guard, averaging 10 ppg and dishing six assists per game. Beyond this core talent, Anthlon Jennings is another respectable three-point shooter who will be needed to keep defenses from collapsing down on Portis.
Arkansas is 15-2, and while the schedule hasn’t been great, they’ve got a nice win over Larry Brown’s SMU team back in November. The Razorbacks have also beaten Georgia and Vanderbilt to start SEC play, making Arkansas one of four conference teams to start league action 2-0.
The Razorbacks play at a rapid tempo. They average 84 ppg, seventh in the nation, and more impressive is that they do it with efficiency. Even if you take away pace as a factor and only measure points-per-possession, Arkansas is still the 11th-best offensive team in college basketball. It’s the kind of up-and-down tempo that the Hogs played under Nolan Richardson in the glory years of the mid-1990s.
But Nolan’s teams also knew how to play suffocating defense and it was that which gave birth to the nickname “Forty Minutes Of Hell.” This current team, under fourth-year head coach Mike Anderson, hasn’t performed on the defensive end nearly as well. Arkansas ranks 94th in the country in defensive efficiency and that’s even against a non-conference schedule with its share of cupcakes. They’re going to have to improve just to hold a mediocre ranking on the defensive end.
Anderson has produced winning teams in each of his first three years since coming to Arkansas from Missouri. The time has come to finally reach an NCAA Tournament. This Razorback team might not have overwhelming talent, the kind that’s going to make Kentucky tremble on February 28 when Arkansas goes there. But they have enough to finally return to the field of 68 come March.
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Notre Dame basketball is off to their best start in Mike Brey’s 15-year tenure as head coach. Monday night’s 71-70 road win in North Carolina moved the Irish to 15-1 overall and 3-0 in the ACC. With another big game against Virginia coming up Saturday night and then Duke coming to South Bend at the end of January, now is the time to ask whether this Notre Dame team is ready to compete with the big boys of the ACC.
The start is impressive, but issues regarding toughness linger. I should stress that I don’t refer to mental toughness or effort, but “basketball toughness” issues that pertain to defense and rebounding. Notre Dame ranks 161st in the country in defensive efficiency (a stat that adjusts for tempo, so teams that play at a quick pace with a high volume of possessions aren’t penalized). They play a four-guard offense that has an obvious effect on their ability to hit the boards.
Zach Auguste, the 6’10” junior that’s Notre Dame’s sole inside player does an admirable job, averaging 15 points/6 rebounds per game. But that’s not nearly enough to be a really good rebounding team. Notre Dame averages 35 rebounds per game. Duke, Virginia and Louisville, the Power Trio of the ACC this season, all average more. The defensive ranking is even more problematic, because two of the ACC’s best—Virginia and Louisville—are elite teams on the defensive end, each ranking in the top five. Duke is pretty good, ranking 17th. Notre Dame is nowhere in the ballpark.
And to make matters worse, the Irish schedule strength is 344th in the nation—only seven teams in the country have played a lower grade of competition. Thus, Notre Dame has had problems rebounding and defending against a soft schedule. Shouldn’t we be concerned about what happens when the competition level increases?
Perhaps, it’s certainly a red flag to keep an eye on. But before this turns into a requiem for Notre Dame’s ACC title chances, let’s consider the following…
*They beat Michigan State in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, a 79-78 overtime win at home. The Spartans are justifiably the poster child for Big Ten toughness and Notre Dame was able to win.
*In the first three ACC games—against Florida State, Georgia Tech and North Carolina—the Irish held their conference opposition to 41% or less from the floor. None of the three are great teams, but all—particularly Carolina—are pretty good, and that’s a strong defensive outing. Well-coached teams improve, especially on defense. Brey is a good coach and it’s very likely his team is getting better in this area.
At the end of the day, Notre Dame isn’t going to defend or rebound its way to a conference championship or even into serious contention for one. But if they do those things “well enough” there will be a chance for the Irish to shoot their way to one.
The four guards all shoot the ball exceptionally well, and they have the range from three-point land. Jerian Grant and Pat Connaughton are each seniors and combine for 31 ppg. Grant is the one least likely to hit a trey, but he distributes the ball and shoots 51 percent from the floor. Connaughton doesn’t have the height, but he averages eight rebounds a game. Demetrius Jackson and Steve Vastuna each hit 40 percent or better from behind the arc, the benchmark of a lights-out three-point shooter.
Will the Irish win the ACC title? Probably not. Duke and Virginia are both unbeaten and Louisville only has one loss. I suspect Notre Dame is the likeliest of those teams to lose a game they shouldn’t because shots just don’t fall on a certain night. But this is a Notre Dame team that appears to be getting better and has a chance to hang with the Blue Devils, Cavs and Cards into late February and early March in this conference race.
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Baker and VanVleet were only sophomores last year and perhaps in retrospect, that lack of experience is something that should have been considered, with the heavy spotlight they were under. Now everybody is a little more toughened up, and the spotlight is down.
