A College Basketball Cheat Sheet for Football Fans and Those Just Joining the Season
I completely understand there’s a large majority of people that only watch the college basketball season for the next two months. I get it. Numerous people prefer football to basketball and now that both football seasons are over, you have college basketball on every day.
Do I wish more people watched college basketball the entire year? Absolutely. But, it comes with the territory. College basketball is viewed as a one month spectacle with conference tournaments, Selection Sunday and the NCAA Tournament.
I’m sure you’ve seen bits and pieces of this season through clips or reading the site. You know all about Grayson Allen, the villain college basketball so desperately needed. You’ve seen some of the crazy game-winning shots.
So what now? Well here’s the cheat sheet of stuff you need to know to get you prepared for the next two months (you may want to watch that Louisville at Virginia game tonight). I threw this question up on Twitter to see some of the things people want to know. We’ll start with a basic one from the most basic Blackhawks blogger out there:
The answer is simple here. Yes. We’re watching one of the best college basketball regular seasons in quite some time and there’s no hyperbole there. It has a little bit of everything for everyone. Want to scout out the lottery picks if you’re a Knicks/Sixers/Celtics/Lakers fan? Good news, there are plenty of guys to watch (more on that later). Want to watch seniors excel? Look at Josh Hart, Frank Mason and Alec Peters.
It’s one of the most intriguing seasons out there. There is no dominant team that has solidified itself as the best team in the country. You can make the case for about a dozen teams to be national title contenders. Every night we’re getting some sort of matchup that means something and it’s usually between ranked teams. Like I mentioned earlier, tonight we have Louisville at Virginia.
Scoring is up this year thanks to some rule changes, while there are still some things I’d personally change about the sport. However, you’re seeing more offense instead of games in the 50s like we got used to. So yes you should watch. Watch every night for the next two months, it will absolutely be worth it.
As I mentioned before we are seeing the most open field as we head into February in recent memory. So what teams are good and why is this happening as Brent here asks? Well the reason is simple to start. The talent across the country is pretty even. There are no freshmen busts this year as the group is the most talented group in quite some time. On top of that we had guys like Hart, Melo Trimble, Mason, etc stay for another year. It’s not like there aren’t great teams, there are a bunch of them. Gonzaga currently has the 3rd highest AdjEM on KenPom over the last decade. We’re just seeing the year where the mix of freshmen, transfers and guys staying are paying off. It reminds me a little of 2015 where we saw this but in a more condensed version with Kentucky, Duke, Wisconsin, Arizona and Virginia.
So what teams are good this year? I’d say your national title contenders are: Gonzaga, Louisville, Virginia, Villanova, Kansas, Kentucky, Baylor, West Virginia, UNC, Wisconsin, UCLA, Arizona, Oregon, Florida State and Duke. That’s 15 teams that all have the talent to win 6 games in March. This doesn’t include a team like Florida who could make a Final Four and it wouldn’t shock anyone.
This is one of the things a lot of people start to ask around this time of the year. They want to know who can be the next Butler, VCU, George Mason, etc. Then come Selection Sunday the question tends to come up about did mid-majors get screwed in favor of an average major conference team? The answer this year is mid-majors kind of suck. There really aren’t too many teams like Monmouth who you could have made a case for last year. The fact is the ACC deserves about 11 teams in the NCAA Tournament, Big 12 deserves six or seven. There are only so many spots and someone like Illinois State or Wichita State simply don’t have the resume to get in. I’ll bank on seeing very little mid-majors this year. Even the group between mid-major and major like the A-10 and AAC won’t have that many teams in. It’s going to be dominated by major conferences.
Ah, the Gonzaga talk that is getting asked daily on every network/blog/column/you name it. Is this the year Gonzaga is ‘legit?’ It’s a question I personally hate. The NCAA Tournament is a horrible judge to test if a team or program is ‘legit.’ Especially when you’re subjective about it. Is Gonzaga not a legit program because they never made a Final Four? In that case is Tony Bennett and Sean Miller not legit coaches? Was Michigan State a fraud last year because they lost in the first round? The NCAA Tournament is incredibly fluky and is based all on matchups. It’s not the best judgment for ‘best team’ or anything along that nature.
So back to Gonzaga. This is a program coming off an Elite Eight and Sweet 16. They are currently undefeated and have a good chance of being undefeated come Selection Sunday. I absolutely love this team. They are the No. 1 team in both polls and on KenPom and the reason is because of the balance they have. I wrote in depth about Gonzaga, which you can read by clicking this.
But to sum it up shortly, they have an offense that is made for the NCAA Tournament. A lot of that falls on two guys. Nigel Williams-Goss and Przemak Karnowski. Gonzaga likes to run the offense through Karnowski in the post and surround him with shooters. He’s an incredible passer out of the post and can beat you with post moves, so teams really need to decide what they want to take away. Do they play the best conference schedule? No. But they do get tested by going to BYU and St. Mary’s. On top of that they played a pretty decent out of conference schedule – better than most big name programs. They have wins over Florida, Iowa State, Arizona and Tennessee. None of those wins came at home. No matter what happens in the NCAA Tournament, this Gonzaga team is more than legit.
There’s a lot of Syracuse questions coming to me the last two days after their absurd comeback against Virginia, again. The fact is they still aren’t in the NCAA Tournament yet. They have work to do. This is what happens when you have a terrible nonconference. Luckily, Syracuse plays in the ACC where they can pick up a quality win almost every game. They are currently 15-9, 7-4 in the ACC and 47th in KenPom. They don’t have a top-100 win out of conference, but did pick up six so far in the ACC. They do have four bad losses – Boston College, St. John’s, Georgetown and UConn. Their remaining schedule is: at Clemson, at Pitt, vs Louisville, at Georgia Tech, vs Duke, at Louisville, vs Georgia Tech. Not the easiest thing in the world.
In order to get in on their own without help from others, I believe they need to go 1-2 vs Duke and Louisville. That puts them at 8-6 in the ACC with another quality win. Then if they split Georgia Tech and the two road games at Clemson and Pitt, it’s 10 ACC wins. That should be enough to get them in the field of 68. They may need to win an ACC Tournament game with that, but it’s hard to see 10 ACC wins get passed up. If they finish with 9 wins or less or don’t get that other quality win, they’ll need at least two ACC Tournament wins.
Here’s the thing Megan (who does a wonderful job) they are neither. This team has struggled and is nowhere near the dominant team everyone expected them to be. However, they have the talent to make a run, similar to the Kentucky team that was a No. 8 seed that made the championship. We saw some flashes of Harry Giles looking like 2014 Harry Giles against Pitt on Saturday. Frank Jackson is starting to get comfortable at the collegiate level and if he can limit turnovers he’s another playmaker. I still don’t love that they don’t have a point guard to settle down the offense and run something, but they have a handful of guys who can go make a play. They also have Luke Kennard, who is one of the best players in the country this year.
Defensively they need to figure out what they do when Amile Jefferson is out of the game though. Teams are just putting Harry Giles in high ball screen situations and he’s a mess. Against Notre Dame, the Irish attacked him in this and he was confused on how to hedge and often led to an easy look. They may want to go 2-3 zone with him in the game, because good teams will make them pay.
I’m going to limit it to one team here – a team that I talked about on a radio show in Paducah, Kentucky over the weekend. I think Oklahoma State is a team to keep an eye on as a potential darkhorse. The reason is simple. Jawun Evans. If you have a dominant point guard that can kill teams in the pick-and-roll and go get his own shot, you have a chance. Evans can do just that and is one of the 10 best point guards in the country. They are coming off a win at West Virginia and their style of play can lead to some upsets in the NCAA Tournament. They aren’t afraid to run and jump, they have shooters and depth. I really like what Oklahoma State has and can look past their slow start in the Big 12. They’ve won five in a row including road wins at Oklahoma, WVU and Texas Tech. They also have the second best offense in the country scoring 124.8 points per 100 possessions.
Finally my picks for the power 6 conferences – the Big East is a power conference in basketball. I’ll throw in my National Player of the Year, Coach of the Year and All-America team just for good measure.
Big East: Villanova is the most talented team and the best-looking team. Josh Hart is Player of the Year.
B1G: Wisconsin is the most talented and best-looking team. I’m giving Ethan Happ Player of the Year here still. The race between him and Caleb Swanigan is something to watch as it’s one of the more contested POY races we’ve had and a pretty even split if you ask people. What Happ can do defensively (there are two parts to the game) is just too much for me.
Big 12: I picked Kansas before the season as my national champion and I’ll stick with them here even with all the off the court shit they are dealing with. Frank Mason is the Player of the Year, though Josh Jackson is making a real push as is Johnathan Motley.
ACC: North Carolina is the best looking team right now, with Louisville really close behind them. I still think they need Theo Pinson to play to get back to the title game, but they have plenty of depth and talent. Duke probably is the most talented team on an individual level, but UNC is the best looking team. The Player of the Year race here is pretty open, but it’s got to be Luke Kennard right now with Donovan Mitchell a very close second.
Pac-12: You want to talk about three pretty even teams. UCLA just doesn’t have enough defense for me to fall in love with them, so I’m going to give the edge to Oregon with Dillon Brooks healthy. He’s such a mismatch and really opens up the floor for guys like Tyler Dorsey and Dylan Ennis. Lonzo Ball is my pick for POY here.
SEC: Right now the best looking team is Florida. They are No. 7 in KenPom and have rebounded after losing back-to-back games, including a bad home loss to Vanderbilt. Kentucky is the most talented team, but they need to figure out this rut they are currently in. Malik Monk would be my pick for POY with Sindarius Thornwell and Yante Maten close behind him.
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All-American Team: Josh Hart, Frank Mason, Lonzo Ball, Ethan Happ and Caleb Swanigan would be my first team. Guys like Malik Monk, Markelle Fultz, Luke Kennard, Lauri Markkanen, Johnthan Motley, Josh Jackson are all in the mix as well.
National Coach of the Year: Rick Pitino – look at what Louisville has done this year and he’s done it with injuries, off the court stuff still surrounding the program and yet here they are in the race for ACC champions and a No. 1 seed.
National Player of the Year- Josh Hart – Mason has absolutely closed the gap, but Hart is still the best player in the country right now.