Diving Into College Hoops

Football is coming to an end and while I had watched a good amount of college hoops already, I really threw myself into the action over the past two weeks beginning to gear up for March Madness. Here are some of my take-aways from the past couple of weeks and the season as a whole:

· The best team I have seen so far is Kansas. With all due respect to Duke and Ohio State, this Kansas team just has the look and feel of a great basketball team, similar to the Florida teams that won back-to-back titles a few years ago. The Jayhawks have size, shooting, guard play, depth, coaching and experience, pretty much all of the ingredients to make a deep run. One flaw that I did see was lackadaisical defense at times. A few teams, specifically in the second half against Texas and the game at Colorado, were given way too many open looks for my liking. If the Jayhawks can shore up the defense and keep teams off the offensive glass, Kansas could be cutting down the nets for a second time under Coach Bill Self.

· The one thing Ohio State has that nobody else does is Jared Sullinger. The freshman phenom probably reminds many Pitt fans of DeJuan Blair, only taller and a better shooter. Sullinger is an absolute beast on the boards and has an excellent feel for the game and touch around the basket. Despite his lack of top-end height, I haven’t seen a player yet that could stop Sullinger. The only problem I have with the Buckeyes, and it's more of a Thad Matta problem who is known to play a short rotation, is the lack of a bench. In the tournament if Sullinger, Buford or one of the other top six guys gets in foul trouble, or injured, they could be in trouble. The Oden/Conley team was fortunate enough to avoid injury/foul trouble on their way to the championship game four years ago.

· It is very hard to judge this Duke team without freshman point guard Kyle Irving. With Irving, the Dukies are every bit as good as the Jayhawks and Buckeyes and maybe even better. Without Irving, the Blue Devils become too reliant on Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler to score that making another run at a championship could be tough. It will be interesting to see whether Irving, who many expect to be the #1 pick in the NBA Draft if he declares, comes back from his toe injury and if he does how effective he can be.

· Kansas, OSU and Duke seem to be in the first tier and then a big group of teams sit right behind them in my make-believe rankings. At the top of this next group, however, is Pitt. This Pitt team is the best team in the Jamie Dixon/Ben Howland era in terms of talent one through ten. They probably do not have anyone as good as DeJuan Blair or Sam Young but their top seven or eight players are all as good or better than the rest of that team two years ago. The Panthers have depth, size, and the best pair of guards in Gibbs and Wannamaker that they have had during Dixon’s run as coach. Sure, the Panthers don’t have a Kemba Walker who can carry them for stretches at a time if the team is not playing well, but players of that magnitude don’t necessarily grow on trees. This Pitt team has a fine shot at making its first Final Four trip under Dixon and anything less than at least an Elite Eight appearance would be disappointing.

· Speaking of Kemba Walker, this Connecticut team continues to fly just a bit under the radar. I know the Huskies have been ranked highly for much of the year, but it still seems like many are waiting for them to fall off after beginning the year unranked. A team coached by Jim Calhoun with that size and that great of a player in the backcourt is a legitimate Final Four contender. I would put this Connecticut team on par with Villanova and just behind Pitt in terms of the Big East pecking order.

· As great as Walker and Sullinger have been, my player of the year would absolutely be Jimmer Fredette of BYU. I watched the BYU-San Diego State game the other night in its entirety and came away extremely impressed with both teams. San Diego St. is long, athletic and extremely impressive on both the defensive end and the offensive boards. The Aztecs feature a potential lottery pick of their own in Kawhi Leonard and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see this team make a deep tournament run. The star of the night, however, was Fredette who dropped 43 points on nearly 60% shooting making a variety of difficult three-pointers and lay-ups in traffic. The game was Fredette’s third 40 point effort of the year (and third in his last four games) and for the year the senior is averaging over 27 points per game while shooting nearly 50% from the field. The rest of this BYU team isn’t great, but they are good enough to hit open shots as a result of Fredette’s game and are going to be a team most of the big boys don’t want to see come tourney time.

· Other teams I have been impressed with or am high on include Texas (very physical inside and have very good guards), Villanova (great guard play as usual), Missouri (force teams to play at their pace), Kentucky (Calipari doing it again with freshmen), Florida State (defense, defense, defense) and Georgetown. The Hoyas faltered there a bit over a 2-3 week stretch but seem to be picking their game back up again. If the Hoyas are playing at the top of their game, they could be right there in the Big East with ‘Nova, the ‘Cuse and UConn.

· Teams that I think are overrated or getting a little too much love include Notre Dame (have looked terrible at times and still too unathletic for my liking), Purdue (too reliant on JaJuan Johnson), Illinois (seen them play four times now, no heart and just awful on the road), Louisville (very dangerous, but overly dependent on the three-ball) and Michigan State. I keep expecting Tom Izzo’s bunch to straighten things out but as evidenced in last night’s loss at home versus a bad Michigan team, something just seems to be missing from this team. I think we have all learned not to dismiss the Spartans too soon, but if they don’t get things turned around in a hurry it could be a short trip to the expanded tournament this year, if they get there at all.