College Season Becoming Boring
What has happened to the college basketball season? Oh, they still play games seven nights a week from Big Monday to Super Sunday, and you can’t keep up with the sport without a clicker, your Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, and the RPI power rankings, but what does it all mean?
College basketball during January and February has become like the NBA regular season: lots of action but not a whole lot of substance.
Take the Big East, for example. Name a significant regular-season game, one that you would pay to see, can’t wait to see.
We had one until Tuesday night: Connecticut at Syracuse next Saturday - the two top teams in the Big East meeting for the only time during the regular season.
But are you really excited about that, especially since Syracuse suffered a stunning loss to Providence in the Carrier Dome Tuesday?
College basketball during the regular season has become predictable and meaningless.
Other than the Duke-North Carolina games, name one matchup this season that anyone is really pumped up about.
Sure, you have some nice games in conference, but with each league getting multiple berths in the NCAA tournament, those are for seeding purposes only.
The NCAA tournament - March Madness - has become so big it has rendered the regular season meaningless.
It has also made the conference tournaments meaningless for all but the bubble teams.
The coaches will howl at that suggestion, talking about the pace of a regular-season race and how much is at stake.
But let’s be real here. What do you gain by winning in the middle of the season - or even in the conference tournament? Does anyone seriously think that if Purdue, which is arguably the best team in the Big Ten, loses to, say, Iowa in the final of the new Big Ten tournament, the Boilermakers will be negatively affected?
College basketball has been reduced to three weeks of intense single-elimination play in the middle of March.
The regular season has become too long, with too many games on too many nights, which has made all the games blend into one another.
And that is too bad.
Not the retiring type
In case you were wondering how former North Carolina coach Dean Smith is doing in his retirement, the answer is just fine. Smith is exercising more, playing more golf than in any winter in the past 35. He comes to the office each day he is in Chapel Hill, answers mail, makes calls, then goes home. Smith has switched offices to a smaller, low-key space in the Smith Center. At first, he tried to be informal about it, coming to work one day in a sweater. But that caused such controversy that he returned to his jacket and tie. Smith goes to Carolina home games that are not on television. He hopes to teach a class on basketball next fall and seems to be enjoying himself immensely as he watches his former team remain on top in the polls week after week…. until losing to Maryland.
Big East double-take
Is there any question as to who the Big East Player of the Year is thus far? UConn’s Richard Hamilton continues to draw rave reviews at each stop he makes in the league, validating coach Jim Calhoun’s what-were-people-thinking? comment after the 6-foot-7-inch sophomore was left off the preseason all-conference team ….
It’s big game No. 2
The UConn women get their next big test Monday when No. 2 Old Dominion comes to Hartford for a Martin Luther King Day matinee. No. 3 UConn, which lost to No. 1 Tennessee two weeks ago in Knoxville, has been venting its frustrations on Big East teams, including an eye-opening 126-48 win over Providence last week …. Despite that, PC’s rematch with UConn Feb. 7 is already a sellout at the Civic Center, with the game billed as the “biggest women’s athletic event in the state of Rhode Island.” …. UConn will get a boost when hot-shot sophomore Shea Ralph, who had two knee operations in six months after originally getting hurt during last season’s NCAA tourney, was cleared to resume practicing this week …. Kentucky, the winningest program in college basketball history, recorded its 1,700th victory Tuesday night against South Carolina. “I don’t know if 1,700 means that much,” said Kentucky coach Tubby Smith, “but having the most wins means a lot.” …. One of the hot topics of conversation, especially during March, is the ratings percentage index, a tool the NCAA tournament selection committee uses to select its 64-team field. Here’s the current Top 10, according to the RPI: (1) North Carolina, (2) UCLA, (3) Kansas, (4) UConn, (5) Marquette, (6) Stanford, (7) Kentucky, (8) Arizona, (9) Syracuse, (10) Michigan. You’ll notice that Duke, No. 2 in the polls and the likely No. 1 this week, is nowhere to be found; the RPI has the Blue Devils at No. 14. The Big East remains the second-ranked conference, according to the RPI, with the Atlantic 10 eighth.