Hear that? That faint sound, off in the distance? It's March Madness. And it's on its way.
The college basketball season tips off for most teams this week or next, and even though many people don't start paying attention to NCAA hoops until at least the day after the Super Bowl, this blog is not many people. You could make a legitimate case, and I might agree with you, that men's college basketball is the best organized team sport on the landscape. When you combine the experience of going to the game itself, watching it on TV, following it over the course of the season, and, of course, its peerless postseason, you've got a heavyweight. The only thing it doesn't have that the other main contenders for best sport (NFL, MLB) possess is a gripping way to play Fantasy NCAA Hoops during the season. The March Madness brackets are a close alternative, though.
That said, it's time to unveil my preseason preview. Each of the last two years, I've accurately forecast the national champion in November. Two years ago Connecticut seemed like an easy pick (although I chickened out when Okafor got injured and picked them to lose to Stanford when it came bracket time - I know,
Stanford! Not doing that again.) Last season I had my best preseason success yet, accurately predicting three of the Final Four (UNC, Louisville, and Illinois) and the national champ. (My fourth predicted Final Four team, Oklahoma State, advanced to the Sweet Sixteen.) So who are my Golden Four this year, and who's my pick to win it all? You'll have to read on to find out.
The conventional wisdom says Duke is the overwhelming favorite this year. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right, other times it's way off. If you know me, I try hard to be neither conformist nor nonconformist in my picks. Duke is certainly loaded. The other preseason Final Four consensus among the prognosticators I've read seem to be Texas, Michigan State, and Connecticut. I think this year, the consensus is half right. Before I get to my actual picks, though, you'll have to wade through a little discussion about what I'm looking for when I make my selections...
The GoalThe aim here is to predict who the best teams will be at the end of the season - to pick the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA Tournament, the Elite Eight, the Final Four, and the National Champion. I'm not trying to prognosticate who will look good early on, or who will be the #1 seeds. Because of that, there are some characteristics I'm looking for in a team I'm picking, and some that are just overrated:
Characteristics of a Title ContenderTalent - In spite of what you may hear on ESPN from the likes of Digger Phelps or Dickie V, talent is the single most important ingredient in a successful sports team. And it's probably more important in college hoops than any other sport. Because of the nature of the game of basketball (where one or two players can take over a game) and the sheer quantity of NCAA teams (325+ in Division I), great talent rises to the top. Look at the recent NCAA champions, and you'll find a common denominator: players on those teams were just flat out observably better basketball players than most of their competition. North Carolina last year was as loaded a team as I've seen in a long time, and UConn the year before that was almost as good. Find a team with two or three legit superstars, and you've found a team that could go far.
Diversity - While talent is important, talent alone is not enough to automatically make a team great. Ideally, your talent will be spread around enough so that you can do different things well on the court. If everybody on your team shoots lights-out from three-point range, but you can't defend the post, then you might have a team that can pull off an upset or two in the tourney (depending on how well you match up against your opponent), but you don't have a team built for a deep run against all kinds of teams. Run into a low-post scoring threat, and you're in trouble. Similarly, if all of your talented players are slashers, then an enterprising coach can scheme you right out of the tournament with a well-executed zone defense. Not every team is going to have a dominant center, a lights-out three point shooter, and a brilliant point guard. But you need to have more than one way to win a game if you're going to challenge for the Final Four. If one of your options is taken away (which happens to even the best players), you have to have other arrows in your sling. (There's a reason Cincinnati sucks every year in the tourney... every player they've had since Nick Van Exel left has been a 6'7" 245-pound power forward.)
A point guard - The closest thing to a critical position for a deep tourney run is a good point guard. Occasionally a team can get to the Final Four without one (Michigan State last year comes to mind), but in those cases it's usually because the coach is good enough to scheme his offense very specifically so that weakness is minimized. A great point guard is the glue that holds great teams together, makes the players around him better, and creates the shots that win games for his wingmen. If that point guard is a senior, even better.
Veterans - I used to say "seniors," but with more and more prep players heading straight to the pros (a trend that won't continue starting next season thanks to the NBA's age limit), now sometimes juniors and even sophomores can be considered "veterans" if they've been around longer than their opponents. Now I'm not saying the entire team has to be composed of sixth-year grad students, but a nice mix of a few vets is very important. No, not for silly "intangibles" or "leadership" or "that extra something" or "Billy Packer's Superstitious Way of Looking at the World." But because of the simple fact that most players get better the longer they play, and most teams get better the longer most of their players have played together. Basketball is a game of making split-second decisions and moves, and the more you play alongside the same group of people, the better you're going to get at anticipating each other, helping each other, and bringing out each others' strengths. "Senior leadership" may have some sort of value - I don't know if it does or doesn't - but stability and experience together on the court most certainly do. Show me a team with five senior starters who have played together for four years and improved each year, and I'll show you a legitimate contender.
And a few things that are not that important...Depth - Depth is nice if you can get it, but hardly a prerequisite for tournament success. I'd rather have two guys capable of scoring 20 points than eight guys capable of putting up five. Depth might help you withstand injuries, suspensions, or inexplicable nonimprovement (Winston Blake) throughout the course of a season, but come March, your team's best five to seven guys are going to be playing most of the minutes anyway. If there's a constant in the NCAA tournament, it's that the benches get shorter as March wears on. Good coaches will play their best players, fatigue be damned. How many times do you remember a team playing essentially six guys in the Final Four? Happens a lot. Remember the last time a coach played a nine-man rotation significant minutes late in the tournament? Me either. Consider depth a bonus, a feature of a team that helps minimize their risk of performing well below expectations. But don't take it into account when you're trying to predict title contenders.
Any single element of the game - A good point guard is the only thing that could be an exception to this rule. Any time an "expert" tells you that you absolutely
have to have (pick one: three-point shooting, solid man-to-man defense, a big guy who can rebound, etc.), he's probably just making that up. Truth is, teams can succeed without any one of those elements,
assuming they thrive in most of the other areas. A good coach will tailor his system to his strengths and try to minimize his weaknesses. If his players aren't good three-point shooters, but they run the break, score in the post, play good inside-and-out defense, get to the line and make foul shots, and create open looks for each other, then his team is probably going to be fine. Sure, they're not perfect, but few teams are. Every team is going to have an Achilles' Heel, but as long as they don't have two or three of those heels, they should be fine. (This is the flip side of the argument that diversity is important. It's important to do more than one thing well to be a contender, but it's not important that you do any one particular thing well. There are so many ways to play the game of basketball, that having a post man who can pass, for example, just isn't as life-or-death critical as ex-post-0players-turned-analysts-cough-cough-Bill-Walton-cough-cough might seem to believe.)
So with those guidelines in mind, here are my Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, and National Championship predictions as of November 10. Feel free to dig this post up later if I fall flat on my face. I'm sure I'll bring it to your attention if I achieve similar success as last year.
Sweet Sixteen(Just missing the cut: Nevada, Kentucky, Northern Iowa, Miami)16. LSU - Glen "Big Baby" Davis has one of the more puzzling nicknames in college hoops, but his game is for real. He's a load in the low post, and Darrel Mitchell and Tack Minor give LSU solid guard play as well. In the weak, overrated SEC, this is the only team that I can see going to the Sweet Sixteen. There are several teams just good enough to lose on the first weekend (Kentucky, Vandy, Alabama, and maybe Tennessee), but once again, it'll be an SEC March Madness flameout.
15. Stanford - They have many of the pieces of the puzzle for a contender - diversity and experience - in point guard Chris Hernandez, wing man Dan Grunfeld, and big man Matt Haryasz. If not for the name on the front of the jersey, I might pick them higher. But I've been burned too many times by this team before. Until they demonstrate they're tough enough to withstand a March Madness run, I'll keep them here at #15. With the Pac-10 about to get a lot tougher this year (most improved conference in the country, perhaps), this might be even a bit generous.
14. Gonzaga - Adam Morrison has talent; he's emerged as a true superstar in college basketball in just a year, the next Wally Szczerbiak perhaps. (Don't laugh - remember Wally when he was in college at Miami of Ohio? He was a legit superstar. The fact that he turned into a one-dimensional mild disappointment in the pros doesn't tarnish his college legacy.) Ironically, though, for the team that built its legacy on tournament success, the Zags have been early exits the last few years. If Derek Raivio can continue to improve at the point, they may buck that trend this year.
13. Michigan State - And so we see the first point at which I disagree with the consensus top four. Maybe I'm just not seeing what everyone else is seeing in Paul Davis, but I think I'll need to have it explained to me. He's disappeared time and time again in big games. Couple that with the fact that they don't have a very good point guard (though Neitzel has to be better than last year - doesn't he?), and I just don't see them going to the Final Four again. Then again, they took me by surprise last year, too. The biggest offseason question mark seems to be how much they're going to miss Kelvin Torbert's lower lip, which was (I think) the real heart and soul of this team for four years.
12. Louisville - Ah, my darlings of a year ago. From early November on, I cherished this team, defended them when no one else believed, and it was gratifying to watch them make their Final Four run. (The West Virginia game was one of the greatest games I've ever seen, and it was all the sweeter because I followed this team so closely last year as my own personal darkhorse.) But don't confuse my loyalty to the Cards of '04-'05 with a long-term commitment to the Louisville program. Up until last year, they were one of my frequent targets for early-round exits. And while I don't think they'll regress to their days of yore, you don't just replace Francisco Garcia and Ellis Myles overnight. Garcia especially was just a dynamic college player who really carried that team and made it possible for everyone else to fit into their niches. Taquan Dean especially will miss his running mate from a year ago, because even though Dean's 6'3" and Garcia was 6'7", Francisco was the de facto point guard. Now Dean will have to handle the ball a lot more. Still, Juan Palacios will continue to improve, and David Padgett will be a great addition. I like this team to do fairly well this year, and be primed for a big run in '06-'07.
11. Arizona - They lost a lot in Channing Frye and Salim Stoudamire, but they were loaded last year, and a lot of their reserves will step nicely into their shoes. Hassan Adams made a smart decision in coming back for his senior year; he should be their best player on both ends of the court and really improve his pro stock. Ivan Radenovic is also poised for a great year, and even though it's hard to know exactly what you're getting with freshmen, Tayshaun's cousin J.P. Prince should be a great backcourt addition. Lute Olsen may have had a meltdown in the last four minutes against Illinois, but he's a good enough coach to let his players excel and coach to the team's strengths. This team is probably not an upper-echelon squad this year, but they're a very solid three-seed that gives a two-seed all they can handle in a regional semifinal game.
10. Illinois - Yes, they lost a lot. Yes, now we get to find out whether Bruce Weber can actually coach. But I'm putting them here on the strength of Dee Brown. I think he finds a way to get them here. Before last season when everyone fell in love with Deron Williams, Brown was considered the best of the three Illini point guards. He can do just about everything well, and he's a guy who definitely makes his teammates better. James Augustine is a proven commodity at center, and they have enough talent coming in to maintain their high standards. Plus, they don't have Nick Smith anymore, so that's another point in their favor. Much as I'd like to pile on the Illini in a seeming down year (due as to my intense hatred of them), the objective me says they're still the best team in a deep but not dominant Big Ten. Guess we'll see.
9. Texas - They might be everybody's #2 team, but I don't buy it. Yes, they have a very good team. Yes, the Big Twelve should present relatively few obstacles. And yes, Daniel Gibson gives them a great young point guard. But something has always struck me as vulnerable in the Longhorns. Yes, they made a Final Four appearance a few years ago, but other than that, they've been largely unspectacular in the tournament. Rick Barnes needs to do more to prove to me that he can hang with the best coaches in the country. They'll probably get a #1 or 2 seed, but this team screams "third-round upset victim" to me.
Elite Eight8. Iowa State - Going out on a major limb here, perhaps. They lose Jared Homan, one of the best pudgy white post players nobody knew about last season, and don't really have anybody to replace him. But their backcourt might be the best in the entire country. I'm that sold on Curtis Stinson and Will Blalock. Stinson is a throwback player who does literally everything on the court well. He's 6'3" but plays like he's 6'8" when he needs to, or 6'1" if that's better. He's always hustling, rebounds very well for a two-guard, plays great defense, and makes his teammates better. He's my pick for preseason Player of the Year. I know he won't win, because nobody's heard of him, and Iowa State is getting zero love this offseason. But I think this is the team that shocks the world once or twice come March and makes a deep run as a 4-6 seed.
7. UCLA - Another team with questions up front but answers abounding in the backcourt. Jordan Farmar and Arron Afflalo are an absolutely sick one-two combination at guard, and they're just sophomores. Josh Shipp makes a nice complementary wing player, and oft-maligned ex-prep-superstar Cedric Bozeman returns to provide depth and matchup problems. Michael Fey and Ryan Hollins, the two enigmatic big men, need to keep getting better, but they have the right mix of talent, and a great coach, and I think this is a team that not only wins the Pac-10, but advances to the doorstep of the Final Four.
6. Villanova - A lot of similarities to last year's Carolina team, though on a less-talented scale. They have a lot of very good players who came in together when a once-proud program was at its lowest point in years, stuck together through the challenges, and now present a team that is experienced, talented, and poised for a deep run. Heck, they almost upset UNC in the Sweet Sixteen a year ago. I'd have them even higher if Curtis Sumpter weren't injured and Jason Fraser weren't such a question mark.
5. Oklahoma - With apologies to their Red River Rivals, this is the best team in the Big Twelve. Taj Gray was a revelation last year, and Kevin Bookout is a gamer. Losing Drew Lavender is addition by subtraction; he didn't really fit well as a 5'7" shooting guard in Kevlin Sampson's defense. Terrell Everett plays great defense and can light up the scoreboard. They may have been overseeded as a #3 last year, but this year they'll deserve at least that high.
Adam's Final FourThese are the teams I'll be paying special attention to as the season progresses. Two of them are on most short lists for the best teams in the nation; the other two are cons"dark horses" who didn't even make the NCAA Tournament last year...
4. Maryland - Were you wondering when an ACC team would show up on this list? Well here you go. The Terps have a lot going for them this year, and I was surprised to see how little hype they're getting. I know they missed out on the Field of 65 a year ago, but that was the first time in over a decade that had happened. Their coach, Gary Williams, is one of the best in the game, and they have talent at a lot of different places on the court. Travis Garrison should put it all together this year and be the best player on the team. Nik Caner-Medley, aside from contending for Strangest Name in NCAA Hoops all year long, gives them two legit post presences who can score, rebound, and defend. In fact, with Ekene Ibekwe and James Gist, their frontcourt is among the best and most versatile in the country. Chris McCray is a nice guard who can score but needs to work on his defense. D.J. Strawberry (yes, he's related to Daryl) is back from injury and lends some much needed perimeter defense. After an uncharacteristic down year, it's time to Fear the Turtle again.
3. Duke - That's right, I'm calling for this year's Blue Devils
not to win the National Title, in spite of what every single other prognosticator is saying. Yes, they have veterans in Shelden Williams and J.J. Redick. Yes, their recruiting class is absolutely sick with McRoberts, Boateng, and Paulus. Yes, they're going to be a dominant team. But, so help me, I cannot, cannot, cannot bring myself to picture J.J. Redick cutting down the National Championship nets. I just can't see it. He will find a way for them to lose. Mark my words. He will disappear in the last four minutes of the semifinal game, hoist up an ugly three at the buzzer, and the Dukies will lose by two to the eventual national champs. Shades of Trajan Langdon, the Alaskan J.J. Redick.
National Runner-up2. Memphis - Here's this year's Louisville. Like Louisville last year, I am not particularly fond of their coach. Like Louisville, they're a program that has been consistently overrated for the better part of a decade. Their recruiting has often been more hype than results, as John Calipari has been all too eager to spend his empty gesture budget on guys who end up turning pro straight out of high school. But somehow, in the midst of their overratedness, they managed to put together a great team for 2005-06. I'm unbelievably impressed with Darius Washington Jr., who I believe will be the best true point guard in the nation this season. He improved by leaps and bounds over the course of his freshman year, and even though the lingering image of him missing two free throws that would have sent Memphis to the NCAA tourney last year is what many will think of, I remember how scared I was for Louisville that they had to face him in the first place in the C-USA title game. He'll be a true stud NBA player and I think he can almost singlehandedly carry Memphis through the bracket this year. They should have no problem running away and hiding in the very weak Conference USA this year, but I think Washington and Rodney Carney lead them to heights this program hasn't seen in its history.
And the National Champion will be...1. Connecticut - It's going to be a good year to be Gay. Rudy Gay, that is. He's already atop some peoples' lists as the best pro prospect in college basketball, and I'm inclined to agree. Aside from the fact that he goes to a school and plays for a coach that
never turns out a dud (really, think about all of UConn's pros - haven't they all either lived up to or surpassed their college glory? Why does nobody talk about Calhoun's NBA factory?), he's just flat out an offensive dynamo. Like Ben Gordon two years ago and Rashad McCants last year, Rudy Gay is the dominant offensive scorer that proples me to pick his team to go all the way. Of course, every Ben Gordon needs an Emeka Okafor, and every Rashad McCants needs a Sean May and a Raymond Felton. Gay has a lot of help, too. Start with Rashad Anderson, a guy who I think just turned 34 this offseason. (Seriously, doesn't it seem like he's been around forever? I think he came into school the same time as Vedran Vukusic.) He's a terrific defender, an underrated scorer, and a guy who makes his teammates better. Josh Boone is developing into a dominant big man (he was already better than the more-heralded Charlie Villanueva). Denham Brown, Hilton Armstrong, and Ed Nelson are among the best role players in the game. But UConn's season and their title aspirations could come down to Marcus Williams and A.J. Price. If those guys can return from their suspensions and lead the team from the point guard position, there's no stopping them. If they both contribute next to nothing, then go ahead and hand the title to Memphis or Duke right now. I'm banking on Jim Calhoun, my pick for the best coach in college basketball, to right this ship.
And there you have it. Connecticut. Memphis. Duke. Maryland. My Final Four. Mark it down, remember it, and be sure to give me my props when most or all of it comes true.
Oh, and Go 'Cats! NIT or bust!
