If All's Well That Ends Well, College Basketball Is Doing Quite Well, Thank You

Monday, April 4, 2016

If All's Well That Ends Well, College Basketball Is Doing Quite Well, Thank You

I could choose not to write this blog, and let the more standard blog posted this same evening/early morning on the incredibly dramatic final possessions that concluded one of the best NCAA championship games ever played be my only thoughts on Villanova's brilliant championship victory.

But since I have engaged in a diatribe about how awful this college basketball season has been, including a vicious critique of the semi-final games on Saturday, I feel the need to address my criticisms just after a championship game that could not have more starkly contradicted every observation I have made about the game based on the 2015-16 season and the NCAA tournament up until Monday night.

I would begin by asking if tonight's amazing game made the three previous weeks of "poorly played, non-competitive basketball" as I called it, worth the wait.

It's hard not to argue "yes."

It may be that the very reason we sit through long stretches of disappointing games and sub-par play is that sooner or later, one of the best games we will ever see takes place before our eyes.  And that's what it means not only to love sports, but to understand them and the humans who play and coach them.

The 2016 game between Villanova and UNC had it all.  Both teams got off to good starts, connecting from three-point range, and answering one another basket-for-basket right from tip-off.  Everybody came to play.  The early going showed that the championship game was going to be a refreshing relief from the really bad basketball 48 hours earlier.  The game was not going to be a blowout, and it was not going to be the display of bad shooting and dull play that was on display Saturday.

But the 2016 title game was far more than an improvement over Saturday's games: it was one of the best ever, including perhaps the most dramatic ending in NCAA championship game history, with each team hitting clutch threes in the final seconds:  UNC's Marcus Paige a double-clutch three to tie the game, and Villanova's Kris Jenkins a buzzer-beating three to win it just four seconds later.

If ever a game was meant for me to eat my words about the national semi-finals and the season that led up to it, this was it.

Even Indiana's one-point win over Syracuse in 1987, and UNC's one-point win over Georgetown in 1982  fall short of the 2016 title game, because those dramatic endings involved a mistake by one team rather than back-to-back clutch plays by both teams in the final seconds.  In '87, a missed front-end of a one-and-one by Syracuse's Derrick Coleman set up Keith Smart's game winning jumper for a one-point Hoosier win.  In 1982, Michael Jordan's clutch jumper to give UNC a one-point lead was followed up by an unforced, inexpiable turnover by a Georgetown player who just passed the ball to UNC's James Worthy as though Worthy were his teammate.  Even Villanova fans would probably agree that tonight's victory was even more amazing than the historic upset of Georgetown in the 1985 final.

No dramatic championship game I can recall ended with neither team making a mistake: a missed free-throw with a one-point lead or turnover when behind by one.  On the contrary, one team making an incredibly difficult, clutch shot, and the other following that one with a buzzer-beating three sets the 2016 championship game apart.  This game was college basketball's version of "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better."

I could nit-pick and find something to criticize.  But that would be in poor taste after such a great game.

I will give myself credit for ending my blog about Saturday's basketball debacle by pointing out that I did predict Villanova would win, and that I hoped the game had a chance to be well-played and would get the game back on track for improved play in the seasons to come.  Perhaps Saturday was a bottoming-out for the college game, and tonight was the night college basketball got its groove back, and then some.

It is worth noting, I think, that this championship Villanova team bares no resemblance to the pro-team blueprint of one-and-done players that have been the core of recent champions, in particular last year's Duke team and the 2012 Kentucky squad.  Villanova won because it could consistently score the ball, which was critical in a game when UNC hit a torrid 7-of-9 from three-point range in the first half yet only led 39-34 at halftime.  Without good shooters and front-line players who could score in the lane and knock down smooth baseline fade-aways, Villanova would have had a very rough night hanging with a UNC team that played as well as it could in the first half, and came back to earth in the second, when Villanova controlled the game until the Tar Heels' late rally.

Villanova got stops, rebounds, and loose balls when Carolina had chances to regain the lead in the second half as well.  And, of course, like any champion, when Villanova needed a big basket, or needed to make free throws, they came through time and again.  Villanova was not built around a single superstar but instead was a well-balanced team that had multiple offensive threats and could really shoot the ball.  Maybe this team will be the last of its kind.  Or maybe it is a timely reminder of what makes a great college basketball team--a team that plays to win the big games and make the big plays and is not put together to prepare for a lottery-pick press conference.  A team that reminds us the college game is a great game that can stand on its own and doesn't need to be a prep for the pros.

So the joke is on me.  I will leave it up to whatever readers are out there to decide what kind of shape college basketball is in, and whether or not tonight's game shows that I am too quick and extreme in my criticisms.  On the other hand,  I don't know how anyone could have watched college basketball this year up until tonight and not thought the game had seen better days.

I will say this, however.  The glory of championships fades quickly.  Hours before the game, a group of commentators including Jay Williams and Jay Bilas had an at-times contentious discussion about the ills of college basketball.  The issue of player compensation came up.  The argument was made that the college game needs to be more like the pro game, including a 24-second shot clock.  And the debate about the value of the college "experience," and how to keep players for more than one year was addressed.  These are difficult issues, and they will still be around when the euphoria of Kris Jenkins' game-winner and the rush of a truly great game have faded.

It is fair to say that this college basketball season featured a great many poorly played, non-competitive games.  Right now, just hours after one of the best college championship games ever played, it seems also fair to say that such games come with the territory, and if you really are a fan of the game, you don't give up on it, because legendary moments like Villanova's victory are the real marker of how great the game is.

I could say that my self-described "diatribe" about the game really means that I care about it so much and am pained to see the quality of play deteriorate and its institutional operations become such a farce.  But that would be a defense cop-out.  There is no denying that for all its faults and hypocrisy, college basketball gave us maybe its best game ever on Monday night.

But I do wonder: if it takes such a great game to equalize or even outshine a generally dull season, was tonight's championship game a clear sign the game is as good as ever, or was it college basketball's last hurrah?

 

Posted by Dr. David W. Overbey at 11:34 PM

What Would Anyone Miss About College Sports?

Sunday, April 3, 2016

What Would Anyone Miss About College Sports?

I awoke this morning to the sound of lawn-mowers, the breeze in the spring air, and the sound of the occasional motorcycle revving down a nearby road.  The sun came up, the grass has started to grow, and people apparently have things to do and places to go (even I have this blog to write).  And all of these glorious events have managed to happen after the single worst day of organized basketball in the history of the game.

Since I've been on a diatribe (apparently my natural style) about how awful college basketball has become, I thought, what the hell?  Why not keep it going?  Whatever I write can't be any worse than than the farce college basketball has become.

What prompted today's disgust, you ask?  After all, didn't I get that out of my system last night, eviscerating everything from the poor play to the historical non-competitiveness to the fact Syracuse was in the Final Four arguably because of a terrible officiating call?

ESPN commentator Jay Bilas, who does a fine job doing color commentary for college basketball games, recently posted two articles about college basketball and its problems.  Let's start with acknowledging that Bilas recognizes something is wrong with college basketball.  Where he and I diverge is that Bilas actually seems to think the game can be "fixed," or at least improved, whereas I argue it is a lost cause, and further tinkering serves no purpose.

First, Jay Bilas, and anyone else who makes a living talking about sports games, is not an "analyst."  He is, as I said above, a commentator--that is, he comments (note the etymological connection) about games and the state of the game.  An analyst performs tasks of intellectual rigor.  Talking about college basketball is not the same thing as--for example--figuring out how to engineer an aircraft carrier.

Bilas' two recommendations for the college game have been that 1) the game would be better if the games were played over four quarters rather than two halves, and 2) players have a right to boycott the Final Four over not being paid despite being the star pieces of a multi-million dollar performance.
If Bilas is somehow impressed by women's college basketball, which has adopted a four quarter system this season, I am confused.  Seeing Connecticut lead Mississippi St. 64-11 in the third quarter of a regional final does not seem to contrast yesterday's indescribably bad and non-competitive play in the men's national semi-finals.  As for paying the players, that argument has been around for a long time.  All that's happened is that coaches' salaries continue to skyrocket, along with that of athletic directors and university presidents.  How could the players be paid on par with all of the other people making millions of dollars off of a game that, if you ask me, has become worthless?  The better question after yesterday's shitty play: why pay  them--or anyone else involved in the operation?

What I find aggravating about articles and proposals like the ones Bilas has made is that they acknowledge major problems with college basketball but insist that the game is essentially in good shape since only minor adjustments are all that's needed to address its problems.  How will four 10-minute quarters improve perimeter offense and free-throw shooting?  How will that make the two two-thirds of games that are designed blowouts to pump up the win column less boring and predictable?

As for the boycott idea, let's say that happens.  Tomorrow (Monday) night Villanova and UNC decide that instead of playing for the national championship they've dreamed about and dedicated themselves to winning, the players will instead march onto the court and hold signs of protest at the financial absurdity of college basketball, form a circle at mid-court, announce they are not going to play, and then walk out, leaving a stadium full of fans and millions of TV viewers with nothing to do for the evening.  Game of chess, anyone?

So the games go to four quarters, and some arbitrary, cryptic formula is devised for paying the players.  Now what?  Suddenly everything is OK?

I wonder, after watching yesterday's carnage of basketball, why anyone cares at this point if another college basketball game were ever played again.  If you're good enough to be a professional player, then go for it.  If not, join a rec center and show everyone how good you are.  You got next, dawg.

The irony is that, of all things, low quality of play and non-competitive games--even at the Final Four--have proven that college basketball is an operation who's time has run out.  One would think that the millions of dollars poured into the game, the state-of-the-art facilities, and the "rule" that the few who really are good enough to play in the pros only have to play in college for one year would have made the game better than ever.  But rather than get into some complex discussion about why the opposite is true--college basketball has fallen apart--I would simply point out, yet again, the poor quality of play and non-competitive games as more than sufficient evidence that the game serves no purpose.  It was bad enough that the coaches, ADs, and presidents raked in millions while the laborers were forbidden a piece of the action.  Now the product itself isn't worth anyone's attention, let alone money.

Wouldn't it be great if, instead of the one-and-done "rule," universities announced that any students who got a 4.0 for their entire year as a freshman could go ahead and graduate?  You think that might get students to buckle down instead of spending their first year at State U. funneling beer, skipping class, and exploiting bullshit policies like "freshman forgiveness" that essentially program young college students to treat their education like their lowest priority?

Or how about if professors automatically got tenure after one-year of excellent student evaluations and classroom observations from colleagues, plus a publication?  How long does it take to figure out if someone with a PhD is smart and knows what they're doing?

Yet no doubt such ideas would be rejected as absurd.  Students and teachers need to do the hard work and prove their mettle through the euphemistic "endurance test" of higher education.  Meanwhile, one successful season as a coach--exceeded expected number of wins, a major upset win in the NCAAs--yields a raise that will be enough to live on for a lifetime. For the players, one season of good basketball means you're ready to be a pro.

College sports in general have become a toxin of the university.  Large numbers of students attend universities first and foremost to be immersed in the university sports culture, while those who attend primarily to pursue an education, or possibly an academic career, face an unending number of requirements and critiques no matter how much or how early they excel. The point is, there is zero connection between quality of performance and financial success.  Society has already decided before tip-off that the athletes will win and the intellects will lose, even when the athletic events have somehow exceeded the presumed dullness and irrelevance of intellectual pursuits.

Maybe more people would be impressed with the efforts of Aristotle and Plato if there were U-Tube videos of them bricking three-pointers and free-throws in front of a packed house at the Parthenon.

To make it even worse, students who excel academically and pursue graduate degrees are often saddled with debt, while college professors make meager salaries compared to that of coaches.  And for what?  So we can watch games like the ones played yesterday?  It would be impossible to attend a lecture that boring.  To extend the ironic comparison, yesterday's games did provide an epiphany: college basketball is no fun, and whatever pretense college sports may have had for existing can no longer prop them up.

It is bad enough to support a system of higher education that so blatantly promotes sports over education, where large portions of the student population live for the games, the pre-parties, after-game parties, all the while bemoaning the fact that next morning's class will interrupt their hangover.  So much for critical thinking as an essential part of higher education.  But such an inverted perspective on the purpose of universities did have, once-upon-a-time, well-played, competitive, exciting games to mask the hypocrisy and intellectual sabotage that was at the root of their business.  Now, a pickup game between faculty and staff would be more interesting to watch than yesterday's national semi-finals.

Even President Obama, a Harvard-educated, well-spoken, professorial figure, feeds this archaic and toxic sideshow by making it a point to fill out a March Madness bracket on national TV.  At least that is one thing he has been able to do without Congress getting in his way.

Even more demoralizing is that the combination of inattention to education and bad basketball result in a scenario where the college students, who camp out for days to get tickets and go ape-shit over the introduction of players are so poorly educated they don't even realize how bad the basketball they are watching really is.  Never mind their apathy about anything academic or intellectual; even the thing that they think is worthwhile isn't worth knowing anything about.

The financial hypocrisy, greed, and warped priorities that college sports cast on the university have been major problems that have gone on way too long.  But with the horrendous quality of play on display at yesterday's final four, along with the undeniable reality that most games are rigged to be boring, non-competitive wastes of time played in packed stadiums for national TV audiences, one has to wonder why the glaring question instead isn't why do people still think college sports have any appeal--rather than the long-standing criticisms of college sports that have always run into the obstacle of their entertainment value in spite of their ethical and intellectual validity.

There's an old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  But a basic truth is that lots of broken things either get replaced or simply thrown away.  Their value and duration is finite, as tends to be the human condition, save for the unending bullshit of everyday life, which doesn't need any deliberate reinforcement on the part of humans themselves.

Given all the problems of college basketball and college sports in general, there is no good reason to keep them going.  Young people who excelled in sports in high school but aren't good enough to be pros--and that's most of them--need to figure out what life has to offer besides doing something with a ball.  The college sports system serves as a cakewalk to lucrative financial success that is neither legitimate nor beneficial to society.  But the real source of bewilderment for me after yesterday, when basketball undeniably turned into something too boring and poorly performed to offer any excitement or entertainment, is why all of the fans behave as though there is anything of value in it for them.

If the financial hypocrisy, greed and warped priorities of college sports weren't enough to get rid of them, the fact that they don't even deliver the fleeting, superficial excitement they are supposed to is plenty of reason to bid them adieu.  It's worth it to fix something that still has something to offer; it's a massive waste of time to tinker with something that has never been good for higher education or college life and now is an exercise in poor performance and boredom.  In other words, if you would actually miss life without college sports, that is the best reason yet that the time has come to end them altogether.

  Posted by Dr. David W. Overbey at 2:33 PM

The Terrible Twos: Thoughts on the Final Snore

Saturday, April 2, 2016

The Terrible Twos: Thoughts on the Final Snore

This is how bad today's Final Four semi-finals were.

A seventeen point North Carolina win over Syracuse actually had moments of feeling like an exciting game.  The Tar Heels--who had twice beaten Syracuse in the regular season--clearly had their opponent out-manned.  But when the Orange twice managed to close the gap to seven in the middle of the second half, watching college basketball's showcase seemed for a moment to be more exciting than, well, listening to someone snore.

That's what happens when the first game is a record setting blowout: Villanova over Oklahoma, 95-51. In showtime terms, that was not a hard act to follow.

I blogged prior to today's train wreck in Houston that will be conceptualized as a pair of basketball games that the 2015-2016 season has been the worst I've ever seen in thirty plus years of being a college basketball fan.  I qualified that statement by admitting that being a UK fan has tainted my outlook on the year's tourney (UK played lousy and lost to Indiana in the second round).

But today's Final Four match-ups did nothing to counter my assessment of play.  On the contrary, the lopsided games and horrendous play on the whole by all four teams reinforces my claim that this year is an all-time low.

Villanova is a really good basketball team--one would expect that from any team that makes it to the Final Four--but the idea they are 44 points better than an Oklahoma team that beat them by 23 in December is wacko.  What happened in today's first game is that Oklahoma never showed up.  The game could have still involved two teams had the Sooners put on a display of functional basketball for more than two consecutive possessions.  But that was not going to happen.

Buddy Hield was a non-factor after playing lights out in the regional, especially in the regional final against Oregon.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, the locale in Houston did not have a shooter-friendly reputation based on the miserable offensive outputs from the 2011 Final Four participants.  While I give Villanova credit for playing good defense, I find it hard to believe that the venue in Houston had nothing to do with Hield turning from lights-out three point marksman to brick-layer in one week.

Again I will say:  for a college game where three-point shooting and even free throw shooting are making the game more difficult to watch one season to the next, it doesn't help the quality of play to have the Final Four played in giant domes where no one plays basketball until the biggest games of the college season come around.  Never mind the hundreds of large arenas designed and built as basketball stadiums, where crowds would still be enormous and outside shooters wouldn't be looking at a backdrop that looks like the Grand Canyon.

Hield and the Sooners were not the only ones who looked lost this afternoon.  At halftime of the second game, UNC and Syracuse were a combined 3-of-20 from long range.  The Tar Heels were 0-for-10, yet they still led by eleven at the half.  That's how inept and lopsided the second game also was.  The Orange made 3-of-10 threes in the first half, but were only 3-of-10 from the free-throw line.  In case you want to go on and on about how great the defense was this afternoon let me remind you: no one plays defense on free throws.

Neither game was well played, nor was it competitive, a microcosm of a season characterized by inconsistent play from even the highest ranked teams, and pre-conference schedules by the major programs that loaded up on blowout mismatches that obviously do nothing to add excitement to the game nor provide players and teams the challenges they need to improve from game one and be their best come tournament time.  It's as though the season doesn't start until January, and even then conference play has degenerated, as I said previously, into redundant contests and too many predictable outcomes.

So, fine.  Villanova played extremely well.  They played with energy, hit some threes early, had offensive balance, and took Oklahoma completely out of its game.  But no one in their right mind imagined that even with Villanova playing its best the result would look more like what one would expect of a first-round 1 versus 16 seed.  Oklahoma's inability to compete fueled the Wildcats' impressive play as much as Villanova made the Sooners look bad.  Again, for the basketball game to have been played in a basketball game arena would have helped--hypothetically--an Oklahoma team that relies on perimeter offense, especially from Hield.

But giving all the credit in the world to Villanova can't hide that today's first game was one thing: ugly.  The game was incomprehensibly non-competitive.  It's brain-racking to wonder how far the quality of play in college basketball has fallen that a team could make it out of an NCAA region and play like it had just been introduced to the game a week earlier.  The game was so bad, it was surreal.

The closest to such lopsided results I can remember was in 1990 when an awesome UNLV team blew out Georgia Tech and then a Duke team in the finals that went on to win back-to-back titles in the next two years.  So blowouts in Final Fours is not unprecedented.  The horrible play and historical non-competitiveness of this afternoon is.

Of course, as a UK fan, I won't duck from the comparison of Oklahoma's performance to UK's horrendous second-half against Georgetown in 1984.  But Kentucky actually led that game at halftime, if I'm remembering correctly, and still seemed to have a chance to win until the game got in the final minutes.  In any case, it wasn't a 40-minute, 44-point thrashing. At least that UK team waited until the second half to disappear.

As for the victorious Tar Heels, they controlled a game in which it wasn't until less than seven minutes remained that they managed to hit a three-pointer. It's hard to believe that in any other season against any other opponent that that kind of cold streak from three wouldn't have meant the team's doom.  But it's fitting for this season that UNC could shoot bricks nearly the entire game and it never felt for a moment they would lose.  After the Tar Heels' Marcus Paige finally connected for a three, his team did find some rhythm from behind the arc, snuffing out whatever remote chance Syracuse had of repeating its comeback effort against Virginia last weekend.

Speaking of, it is also fitting that a couple of days ago Gonzaga coach Mark Few announced that officials admitted they blew a 10-second backcourt violation call against the Zags that contributed to their late-game meltdown against Syracuse, who benefited from that officiating fuck-up to pull out a one-point win.  Gonzaga may have lost anyway--but as all sports fans know, one never wants to see a bad call late in a game turn out to be a pivotal factor in the outcome.  What's too bad is that Gonzaga had been playing extremely well--shooting the ball well from the three-point range and hitting their free throws, so it is somehow fitting--in a twisted way--that bad officiating had to derail them from at least making the regional final, in which case either they or Virginia would have had a chance to take on UNC.  Such a matchup would have been more competitive than today's second act--I guess.  Who knows.  The only reliable aspect of this year's season and NCAA tournament have been lopsided games and poor play.

In any case, while I'm bitching about everything else, I may as well point out that the average ten minute delay in games so the refs can look at monitor replays to determine how much time should be on the shot clock with 38 minutes to go in the first half or whether or not a hard foul is intentional or flagrant, it was not within their power to review a call that might have cost Gonzaga a chance to play for a Final Four birth.  If we're going to have a shitty season, let's let everyone get in on it.

Oh--wait, yeah.  The alarm clock in my head went off and I remember I can't end a blog like this without a prediction for the final.  And since in my previous log I said Oklahoma would actually win the whole thing, I will include myself in the matrix of college basketball ineptitude.  With that disclaimer, it's hard to tell if Villanova was that good or Oklahoma that bad.  But a team that wins by 44 points is my favorite over a team that didn't hit a three until late in the second half against a team that very well wouldn't have been there had they not benefited from the worst call of the tournament.  So my guess is that UNC is too one-dimensional for a Villanova team that beat a very talented Kansas team and proceeded to make OU look historically bad.  I hope to see a well-played, competitive game.  Maybe Villanova wins such a game, and sets college basketball back on track for next season.  Maybe. 

 

Posted by Dr. David W. Overbey at 9:25 PM

Hype is All That's Left for a College Basketball Game in Ruins

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Hype is All That's Left for a College Basketball Game in Ruins

by Dr. David W. Overbey

By this time next year, in-coming UK recruits D'Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, and three or four other All-Universe basketball players will be celebrating their declaration for the NBA draft and UK followers will revel in the likelihood that half of the lottery picks will be from UK's team--the team that of course will play one season together and then disband.

That's what happens when the games themselves and the season they comprise have become so boring--a consequence of their excessive importance and simultaneous meaninglessness.

Before I go further, let me make this point: the 2015-16 college basketball season was the worst ever in the thirty-plus years I remember being an avid college basketball fan.

Disclaimers:  As a UK fan, I lost interest after the woeful loss to IU.  At 47, my interest in watching college basketball can't realistically be what it was when I was 27, and playing basketball every chance I got; Generally speaking as a person, I find it increasingly difficult to find anything positive to say about anything.

But now that we have all of that out of the way, here are some observations in support of my main point.

This was the first year I can recall when there were no really, really, good or even great teams on the college landscape.  And I'm hardly the only person to make this observation.  The #1 spot in the rankings was a revolving door of teams that would look good for a week and then lose to an obviously inferior squad.  When the brackets came out, observers noted that cumulatively the #1 seeds collectively had more losses than at any time previously in the history of seeded NCAA tournaments.

There is a difference between parity and the absence of really good teams.  Sub-par basketball is not dramatic; it's dull.

Despite efforts to speed up the game, increase scoring, and create greater flow--which is kind of like saying "in an effort to make operas musical"--this season was characterized by low scoring games, dull play, tentative players, and controlling coaches.  I wrote in a recent blog that UK and coach John Calipari are prime examples.  Calipari makes it a point to recruit the very top talent at every position, and then plays as though it is somehow to his advantage to keep the scoring down and win with defense and rebounding--the strategy of lesser-talented teams.

This year's NCAA tournament has been so boring that the most interesting topic to discuss according to the media was the "controversy" over an Oregon player shooting, and making, a 45-foot three-pointer with less than a minute to go and the shot-clock running out.  Bad sportsmanship.  Duke had already lost the game.  Why was Duke losing and Oregon winning less important than some pseudo-Aristotlean discourse about the ethics of jacking up a 45-footer versus dribbling out the shot-clock?  Because that's how damn boring the games themselves have gotten, and how vapid the jackass talking-heads who "analyze" the game have become.  Bad basketball and bad pundits: made for each other.

A major factor in the deterioration of the game has been that the money/business side of an always somewhat-seedy operation has completely taken over the college game.  When young players already good enough to go straight to the NBA from high school are mandated to take a one-year layover to play for a para-professional "amateur" team, that is when the silly and dishonest status of big-time college players as "amateur" descends into the ridiculous and corrupt.

One sad consequence of the one-and-done trend that has marked college basketball for the last six seasons is the absence of joy and flow the players exhibit in playing the games.  The players will never have a chance to bond or even fathom that the time they spend together in "college" could be meaningful in and of itself rather than just a means-to-an-end.  Forget the predictable "feel good" stories about players bonding, and coaches bonding with teams.  My point is that the demeanor of the players during games gives away that the game has lost the joy and artistry that make it more fun to watch than someone putting up drywall.  The first five minutes of the Virginia-Syracuse regional final were so uptight that the players looked like the first person to miss a shot would be sacrificed at halftime.

College basketball has become a symptom of the very system that once made it great.  The availability of big money to give college basketball teams big arenas to play in, followed by the proliferation of cable, made college basketball one of the most entertaining programs around.  Not long after, the addition of the shot-clock and three-pointer made the game even better.  It was highly unusual that a player would leave before his four years of eligibility were up.  Michael Jordan--the best basketball player of all time--still did not depart for the NBA until after his junior season.  That's how meaningful the college game was a few decades ago.

Kentucky's super-talented and deep championship team of 1996 was led by two great players who stayed all four years: Tony Delk and Walter McCarty.  Ron Mercer even stuck around for a second season after that championship before he went to the NBA.  Kentucky's 1998 team was characterized by a group of players who I really believe thought winning a national title for UK was the most important thing in the world--when it came to basketball anyway--even more important than a possible NBA career.  Sure, those players were not the NBA stars-to-be that the current teams are, but there is no question that for them to wear the Kentucky jersey and win an NCAA title for UK gave them the joy and desire to play and win.  The players today know why they are there and it ain't "for the love of the game;" let's not pretend otherwise.

This year, no one has looked terribly interested in playing basketball--as though the entire season has been a four-month NIT tournament in disguise that will mercifully come to an end this weekend, so we can watch more exciting things like golf tournaments and spring training baseball games (yes, that's a joke).

That's because the big money and big-time media coverage that made college basketball so exciting not long ago have now made it a dull, mechanical, big-money operation that has zapped the joy and desire out of the games themselves.  UK fans once-upon-a-time would still be lamenting the loss to IU and insisting over beers that UK would have given UNC a much better game than IU did.  Not until late September came around, and Midnight Madness suddenly was right around the corner, would fans turn their focus to the upcoming season.  And the concern--believe it or not--would be how good the team would be--not how high the recruiting class was ranked or how many projected lottery picks would bolt from the program ASAP.  Nothing says "It's been my dream to play for UK and I love playing for the Big Blue" than "I want to get out of here as soon as I can because the only reason to play is for the big bucks."

Spare me the argument that it's good for the players and their families that the players get big-money pro contracts as soon as they can and that Calipari is some "genius" for figuring out how to use the one-and-done loophole to his advantage.  Calipari has done an excellent job recruiting and shown he can coach well in high-stakes, pressure-packed NCAA tournament games.  He and UK are hardly the sole sources of college basketball's demise.

In fact, it may be no one's fault: just a simple reality that nothing stays great forever.  What's too bad is that college basketball in its present form isn't going to go away:  the low-scoring games, the lack of chemistry and artistry to how teams play, and the overly-serious approach the coaches implement will only harden and further deteriorate the quality of play.  And on top of all that is the undeniable reality that the conflict over the "amateur" status of college basketball players and the tons of money swirling about the game has reached a point where the game is broken.  If anyone truly cared about the financial well-being of college basketball players, they would be paid like the young pros they are, and how soon they got to the NBA--if they were good enough at all--would not cast the giant, dollar-sign shaped shadow over the college game the way it does now.

Not that anyone will listen, but I have some recommendations:

The regular season has become incredibly dull because it is saturated with pre-conference games that are deliberately non-competitive followed by a conference schedule of redundant match-ups that tell us little about how good anyone really is because no one will play a competitive non-conference game unless it includes a week-long vacation in Hawaii or the Bahamas.  The point, of course, is to rack up as many wins playing at home against teams who have no chance of winning before the "grueling"conference schedule kicks in and teams have to go into hostile opponent's arenas to gut out tough wins over conference opponents.  Why?  Because the regular season is now nothing but a means-to-an-end for the NCAA tournament: three months of dull basketball is not the formula for a final three weeks of excitement.  But the formula is in place: win as many games as possible, get as high a seed as possible, get the easiest bracket as possible, and a Final Four birth has the highest odds of happening.  Yeah!  How exciting!

The most exciting weekend of this past season came in late January when the SEC and Big 12 took a break from business-as-usual and played games against one another in a day-long, inter-conference challenge.  It was refreshing to see SEC teams play someone besides someone from the SEC.  Florida upset West Virginia,  Oklahoma beat LSU in the final minute, and Kentucky took Kansas into overtime before losing.  Why can't the entire regular season be more like that?  Why can't both the regular season and the NCAA tournament be exciting, instead of neither?  For example, why does Kentucky play Illinois St. but no longer will play IU?  Why does UK play Arizona State instead of bordering Virginia?  Why does UK--like all other major teams--make it a point to play as few competitive games home-and-away as possible?  What does anyone --the fans, coaches, or players--get from watching Kentucky beat Illinois St. in Rupp Arena?  What cause for celebration!  The game is dull, the outcome is predictable, the players do not learn about the weak links in their games, they don't improve by playing such a game, and the coaches have nothing to work with in order to figure out how to make the team its best.

The dull play and super-serious, super-controlled approach of the coaches has led to once-unfathomable breakdowns in basic basketball plays.  How did taking all of the joy and fun out of playing basketball help Northern Iowa--a team that beat UNC--somehow not be able to inbound the ball to the point it blew a twelve point lead with 44 seconds to go?  My point is that making the game mechanical, predictable, and as non-spontaneous or artistic as possible does nothing for making the play more fundamentally sound.  Texas A&M's comeback against N. Iowa was less about anything amazing the Aggies did than a harsh example of how dysfunctional the game has become.  In-bounding the freaking ball is now something else to stress out about and dissect endlessly.

So, for whatever it's worth, make the pre-conference schedule more competitive, and in turn, shorten the conference season so that it isn't the hum-drum round-robin same old thing over and over again that it has become.  No need to play every conference foe home and away every year.  Play half of conference opponents only once, home this year, away the next, and play only half both home and away.  Then after two years, switch up who plays whom only once and which teams will meet twice.

Get rid of the worthless postseason conference tournaments.  Even coaches like Calipari have out-right said they don't like them.  How many times do teams have to play each other and beat other before something is settled?  Getting rid of the postseason tournaments would give teams more chance to rest and nagging injuries to heal.  Besides, the tournaments are worthless.  They serve no purpose but to make money, and when that is the only purpose to a human endeavor it becomes the worst version of itself it can be.  Winning a postseason conference means nothing.  Austin Peay was not going to beat Kansas, and Kansas would gladly trade its Big 12 Conference Tournament title for a re-match with Villanova where they might resemble the team that could score in the 70s as it did when it plowed through the Big Twelve regular season.

Imagine a UK season that begins with away games at Virginia and Indiana, (oh my God, UK could start 0-2?  Even the football team doesn't do that!) followed by home games versus Ohio State and Maryland, and then throw in some automatic wins before the annual showdown with Louisville.  Then go out west and play Oregon, or up east and play Syracuse on the road?  Why not a head-to-head versus West Virginia or nearby Butler?  An early season schedule like that would undoubtedly be more exciting than opening with Albany and New Jersey Institute of Technology, opponents who have no chance of giving UK a competitive game much less beating them.  Such a challenging early season schedule would seem to be just the thing for UK teams that for the foreseeable future will be comprised of "freshmen" who won't have four year to mature and improve.

And Louisville was just as bad as UK when it came to early season scheduling: the same idea was at work--rack up as many wins as possible before the conference season starts and play the odds to get the highest seed and best draw possible (assuming there is no self-imposed postseason ban).

In any case, the pre-conference schedule for UK that I humbly suggest would be more entertaining for a regular season dominated by two-and-a-half months of games against Georgia, Auburn, Arkansas, etc.--games either UK will win by blowout or lose to the confusion and consternation of the fan base.

As for this year's final four, the best thing about it is that this season will end.  The semi-final match-ups are appropriately dull and predictable.  Oklahoma already blew out Villanova in December, and while I'm sure the Final Four match up will be more competitive, Oklahoma will likely control and win a game Villanova will do everything to slow down and make as dull as possible.  UNC is talented but has underachieved, yet they are going to make it all the way to the title game without a seriously competitive game.

To make things worse, the NCAA has to schedule the Final Four in some giant sports dome in Houston that has shown itself to be shooter-non-friendly--just what the game needs for its jewel moment.  The last time this site was host to the Final Four--which obviously ought to be display of the most impressive, exciting, and competitive basketball of the season--UConn and Butler set a tournament record for offensive futility in the 2011 title game.  Maybe this year will be an inspiration if the four teams actually hit outside shots and play games that don't end in the 50s.  Personally, I think college basketball has gotten so bad the Final Four should be televised in black-and-white--or only broadcast over the radio.  Then the intelligentsia of America can debate the ethical and tactical variables that determined the games' outcomes while reminding us regular people how college basketball makes its players and coaches into the best versions of human beings the universe has ever known.

And then a football school, Oklahoma, beats a basketball school, UNC for the title in the last game of a season that can't end too soon.

Calipari heyday is over after miserable IU loss

Calipari heyday is over after miserable IU loss
21 March 2016

By Dr. David W. Overbey

The 2012 Championship season seems like a long time ago.

Last Saturday's NCAA Tournament loss to longtime border rival Indiana is without question the low point in the John Calipari era and one of the worst losses in UK basketball history.  No doubt this team was not one of Calipari's most talented but the issue here is the woeful performance, specifically the lack of offensive production and three-point shooting.  All season the question-mark for this edition was the frontline, while the backcourt of Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray was hyped as the best backcourt in college basketball.  Yet, it was that backcourt that floundered when performance mattered the most.

Ulis racked up a lot of points, but didn't get the rest of the team involved the way a highly touted point guard is supposed to.  And Murray had his worst game of the season, a sickening 1-of-9 performance from the three-point line.  The frontline reverted to the lackluster version we saw in UK's ugly losses to bad UCLA, Ohio State, Auburn, and Tennessee teams.  Before I go further with my observations on the status of the UK program, let me point out what I saw going wrong in the seasoning-ending, brick-laying loss to IU.

The disappearance of Derek Willis

UK became a more dynamic offensive team when Calipari finally realized he needed more than two players on the floor who were threats to score and inserted junior Derek Willis into the starting lineup.  Willis answered the call, hitting 44% from three-point range, and knocking down seven three-pointers in a home victory over Tennesssee.  Willis injured his ankle in a road game against Vanderbilt and missed a couple of games.  But he appeared recovered and healthy soon after, hitting a three-pointer to give UK the lead for good in overtime against Texas A&M in the SEC Championship game.

Yet for some reason, Willis was consigned to a reserve role come NCAA tournament time, while Calipari re-inserted the over-hyped and erratic freshman center Skal Labissiere as a starter for the most important part of the season.  Willis did not enter the game against IU until past the midpoint of the first half.  He took only one three-pointer, which he missed, and did not score.

But more importantly, it appeared neither Willis' teammates nor Coach Calipari seemed interested in getting Willis involved in the offensive.  I don't recall a single play where UK was looking to set up Willis for a good look from three--even when it was obvious that IU coach Tom Crean's defensive strategy was to smother Murray, something Calipari should have seen coming.  A big part of Murray's late-season scoring binge, I think, is that he was on the floor with Willis at the same time, giving UK two three-point threats plus a point guard who could score.  Opposing defenses couldn't take the simple strategy of focusing only on Murray, as Willis consistently knocked down open threes.

With his team struggling to score and get untracked from three-point range, the beginning of the second half gave every indication it was going to be UK's last of the season.  Willis began the half on the bench, and Calipari decided that UK would establish Labissiere down-low, a decision that obviously ignored how the two players had performed over the course of the season.  Fittingly, Labissiere missed a close-in shot; IU scored inside; Alex Poythress travelled; and IU hit a three-pointer.  A one-point UK deficit at halftime was now a 38-32 IU lead, and the Hoosiers had control of the game from that point on.  UK did rally with threes by Murray (his only one of the game) and Ulis, followed by a steal and layup by Poythress (his ONLY field goal of the game), but that was UK's last flash of good basketball.

To sum up: with a team that played its best basketball with Willis and Murray in the starting lineup, UK began the second half against IU with Willis on the bench.  With its obvious strength being its backcourt, Calipari's strategy to start the second half was to pound the ball inside with the result being a miss and a turnover, hardly surprising for a team whose frontcourt was never its strength and always inconsistent.

Not having Willis as a main option offensively made zero sense, and his absence as someone to establish offensively was compounded by the pipe-dream that Labissiere was finally going to turn into the all-world player he was touted as being.  These lineup choices ignored how Labissiere and Willis performed.  Labissiere woefully underachieved; meanwhile, when his chance came, Willis played as well if not better than expected.  Labissiere did have a good game agaisnt LSU in UK's regular season finale, but LSU was a woefully underachieving team, and that one-game performance alone should not have outweighed the season-long performance of a player who at best was inconsistent, and at times looked totally over-matched against opponents' big men and clueless about how to play basketball.

UK lacked confidence and energy

A coach cannot control how well his players play.  He can't make the three-pointers go in, or 6'11'' players hit shots within 10 feet of the basket.  But come NCAA tournament time, this UK team did not look confident or play as though it had the mentality it was going to win.  IU is of course a good team, but they were also beatable.  UK played timid, and during stretches of the first half when they had the lead, the Wildcats never showed the energy and consistency that would have given them command of the game.  IU, on the other hand, played with increasing energy and confidence in the second half.  Once it got the lead, IU played as though they knew they were going to beat UK.  I would attribute UK's lack of confidence and energy to the inexplicable absence of Willis as a main offensive factor, and the mounting pressure Murray faced as one three-pointer after another clanged off the rim, and no other offensive presence emerged.

Has John Calipari turned into Tubby Smith?

Discounting the formality of UK's first-round blowout of over-matched Stony Brook in the first round, here are the point totals of UK's last three meaningful NCAA games: 68 in a regional final win over Notre Dame; 64 in the stunning loss to Wisconsin, and 67 in the loss to IU.  Notice that in all three games, UK could not manage to break 70 points.  How has this happened?  When UK faced IU in its 2012 championship run, the final was a 102-90 UK win.  That team could score when it needed to and won a game that was an offensive shootout.  Defense alone does not win championships.  Winning teams shoot the ball well from three-point range, attack the opponent with multiple offensive threats, and score the ball in the games that matter most.  That means NCAA tournament games against opponents who are going to put points on the board.

But even with a roster loaded with NBA lottery picks last year, UK played like a team with modest offensive ability, a team that wanted to slow the game down and win with rebounding and defense, the forlorn style of play that characterized the Tubby Smith era.  Why make it a point to get the very top recruits every year who will go one-and-done to the NBA and then play as though if the score gets into the stratospheric 70s that puts your team at a disadvantage?

Next year is put up or shut up time for Calipari 

I've said before that the knock on Calipari that he can recruit but can't coach is unfair.  And--up until the disastrous loss to Wisconsin in an abrupt end to a dominant, undefeated season--I think Calipari had done an excellent job of coaching, especially in NCAA tournament games.  He won four high-pressure, close games against very good opponents to get UK to the Final Four in 2011.  He had to face arch-rival Louisville and beat them a second time in the Final Four en route to the 2012 NCAA title.  And in 2014, he took a talented but somewhat underachieving team on an impressive run to the NCAA title game--again winning four high-pressure, very close games against very good opponents.  And again he had to beat Louisville for a second time, this time in the regional semi-finals.  But in those three seasons, UK shot the ball well from three-point range and did not play as though a high scoring game was the type of game they wanted to avoid.  Aaron Harrison's clutch three-pointers in the last minute of wins against Louisville, Michigan, and Wisconsin in the 2014 tournament showed why it makes sense to recruit the most talented players in the country and unleash them as an offensive force, not a tentative unit that tightens up when the have the ball.

Maybe this year was destined to be a hangover year for UK after arguably the most disappointing ending to a season in the history of its esteemed basketball program.  But even making that concession, next year there will be no patience for the team if it underachieves and demonstrates a puzzling aversion to playing offense and a three-point attack that at best relies on a single player every game to get hot.  Calipari must take another heralded group of recruits and get them to be an offensive force that can win high scoring games and has the confidence to win when the stakes are highest.

But this year also showed that too much is made of players' hype and reputation before they've played a single college game, let alone faced the pressure of NCAA tournament play.  The group coming in next year is touted as one of Calipari's best classes--a collection of players who are talented and can score, an assortment of really good guards and front line players.  But that was the same reputation this year's team had, and Labissiere in particular showed how reputation and performance can be as far apart as a second-round loss and a spot in the Final Four.

UK teams have a rich history of home-grown players who went under the recruiting radar but turned out to be pivotal contributors to championship teams: Scott Padgett, Cameron Mills, and Anthony Epps all won titles, and Travis Ford lead UK to the 1993 Final Four.  None of those players were All-Universe recruits.  The Pelphrey, Feldhaus, and Farmer trio from 1992 nearly pulled off the biggest upset in NCAA history, were it not for the heart-breaking conclusion to the regional final against Duke.  I bring this up because the one thing all of these players had in common was they could really shoot the three.  They hit clutch threes in NCAA tournament games and always played with the determination and energy that shine on winning teams.  If UK is going to be a fixture in the Final Four for seasons to come, it will need to regain exceptional three-point shooting and offensive proficiency.  Those qualities have been lacking in the last two seasons--a bizarre reality given how deep and talented the 2015 edition was, and a disappointing reality given how obviously over-hyped and undermanned the 2016 team was, especially with a home-grown three-point specialist not getting involved in the offense when the team struggled to score.  

Whatever may be said about Calipari's recruiting and coaching, it doesn't hurt to have players whose forte is to drill three-pointers and score a lot of points.  A day after the IU loss, Kyle Wiltjer, who transferred to Gonzaga from UK after his sophomore year hit more threes against Utah in the first four minutes of the game than UK managed as a team the entire game against IU.  It's no coincidence that Gonzaga is a hot team streaking into the Sweet 16 while UK has nothing to do but talk about how great it will be next year.  We'll see.

Dr. David W. Overbey is co-host of the Modus Operandi podcast and the MoSports podcast along with Alan Miller and the Institute for Psychic Reform Studios.  Dr. Overbey can be reached at badteacher515@gmail.com.

http://psychicreform.com/mosports/160321-012-MoSports.mp3

http://psychicreform.com/mosports/