The (hopefully enduring) legacy of Butler

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*** NOTE: I don't care how late this is. I had some lingering thoughts on the NCAA title game and I wanted to express them. If you don't care anymore, I promise I won't be offended. ***

Much to my surprise, the 2010 NCAA Tournament kept up the thrilling pace right until the very end.

In a fitting climax to a fantastic two-and-a-half weeks, Duke held on for a 61-59 win and the championship when a buzzer-beating half-court shot by Butler's Gordon Hayward caromed off the backboard and then the front of the rim before tragically falling harmlessly to the floor.

This followed Hayward narrowly missing a Keith Smart-esque fade-to-the-baseline rainbow on the previous possession with five seconds to go and the Bulldogs trailing 60-59. With the camera right behind him, the shot looked dead-on, and visions of it going down as one of the greatest in college basketball history flashed through my mind, but it ended up being just a touch too strong.

Butler immediately fouled Brian Zoubek on the rebound, and with 3.6 seconds left and the Bulldogs out of timeouts, he made the first before intentionally missing the second, a strategy I disagreed with. Even though it meant Butler wouldn't be able to set up a play on the inbounds, and the running clock pretty much ensured frenetic disorganization, it also put Duke in position to lose if the Bulldogs hit a miracle 3.

Which they damn near did.

Immediately after Heyward's prayer rimmed out, I couldn't help but think of a bullshit charge that was called on him midway through the second half that erased two points, when it really should've been an and one. Could have been a totally different outcome had that sequence been called properly. Still, it could not take away from what was an absolutely riveting contest.

During the course of the game, I became so amped up and nervous as the massive tension continued to mount -- the differential between the two teams was never more than five points in the second half -- that I kept thinking, I cannot even imagine how badly I'd be freaking out if I was a Butler alum. I mean, seriously. You go to some tiny school in Indiana that no one's ever heard of, and then 10 or 15 years later they're playing for the NCAA title? I was completely losing it and I have absolutely no ties to the school; if I did, I'm pretty sure I would've had multiple heart attacks and/or aneurysms.

Still, in the end it was hard to be disappointed. It was such a great, exciting game and the finish was so close that I still had a goofy grin on my face long after it ended. I also thought about how Hayward came within a hair's breadth of immortality. I really think that if his half-courter had rattled in, it would have gone down as the greatest play in sports history. Think of all the legendary finishes in sports: Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard Round the World, the Lorenzo Charles dunk to win the '83 tournament, Bill Mazeroski's homer, The Play, Kirk Gibson's blast, Doug Flutie-to-Gerard Phelan, Jerry West's 60-footer in the '70 NBA Finals, Dwight Clark's catch, or any of Michael Jordan's buzzer beaters. None of them turned a certain loss into a title; most of them didn't even occur in a championship game (or a Game 7, as the case may be.) Charles' dunk and Maz's homer did, but both of those games were tied. Given the length of the shot and the magnitude of the upset, Hayward's heave would have topped them all.

I sincerely hope that he doesn't spend the rest of his life thinking about that. All of the kids from Butler should be exceptionally proud of what they did, and realize that the entire country (of non-Duke alums) was rooting for them. They might not have come away with the title, but I'll remember that team long after the championship is lost among the many in Duke's annals. So congratulations, Butler Bulldogs. That was a hell of a run.

Excitement becoming routine

A typical Mr. SKIA brainshart led to me saving this entry as a draft instead of posting it, which I just now realized. So up it goes, only five days late.

Another day, another Holy Crap game in the NCAA Tournament.

The Kansas State-Xavier tilt had everything you could want. Comebacks. Controversial calls. Overtime. Clutch baskets. Another overtime.

The most amazing part of Kansas State's 101-96 win is that they somehow did not get totally demoralized. Seemingly everything went against them. The end of both regulation and overtime had to have been just devastating for them, and the fact that they didn't crumble in the face of all that adversity really speaks well of their chances going forward. (Editor's note: Oops.)

A Jacob Pullen 3 with 28 seconds left in regulation put K-State up 70-67, and after a Jason Love basket Pullen hit a pair of free throws to regain the 3-point edge. And that's when the old foul-so-they-can't-launch-a-game-tying-3 strategy backfired.* Instead of the ref's calling the foul when Terrell Holloway was grabbed, they called it on Chris Merriewether when Holloway was in his shooting motion 40 feet from the basket, which he only did because he knew he had already been fouled and was hoping to get three freebies instead of the one-and-one. And it worked, because the ref totally blew the call.

* I should mention here that while I know it's conventional wisdom that the foul is the smart play, I still don't like it. I've seen it backfire too many times. For one, if you just allow the team to shoot the 3, in general the worst thing that can happen is overtime. But I've seen teams make one free throw, get the rebound on the second, and hit a 3 to win. And fouling elongates the game, which is generally what the leading team wants to avoid. I've seen the foul come too early, the opponent makes its two free throws to get within one, fouls on the other end and the guy chunks both, then they hit a 2 for the one-point win. Plus, there's always the chance of a glitch like this one, where the guy gets three free throws. An 79.4% free-throw shooter -- not a ridiculously high number for a guy handling the ball/itching to shoot a 3 -- has a 50% chance of making all three foul shots. Considering that at best the same guy is probably a 45% 3-point shooter -- and the 3, unlike the free throws is an all-or-nothing proposition -- I prefer to keep the excessive strategizing out of it, play tough D, and let the chips fall where they may. Plus, game-tying 3-pointers are among the most exciting plays in sports, and I selfishly want to see more of them, not less.

After Holloway drained three clutcher-than-clutch free throws, Pullen missed a long 3 for the win to send the game to OT. The Wildcats had to be stinging, and Frank Martin was about as pissed off as I've ever seen any coach, and I suspect if the game/moment weren't so huge that he would've picked up at least one technical.

K-State bounced right back though, and built a four-point lead with 2:30 left. But Holloway sandwiched a 3 and a layup around a Curtis Kelly basket to pull Xavier back within one. Down 84-81 with under a minute to go, Holloway hit yet another 3 to tie it, but Pullen responded with layup. Holloway then missed a 3, and Merriewether got fouled with 19 seconds to play and a chance to ice the game. Merriewether split the pair, which in retrospect seems like the only time in the entire game that a player failed to completely deliver in the clutch.

Speaking of which, Jordan Crawford -- best known for this PR-disaster of a dunk -- then drilled an insanely deep and equally clutch, minimum-30-foot 3-pointer that tied the game at 87 with 7 seconds left. K-State then missed a chance to win at the OT buzzer.

At this point, I was convinced the Wildcats would fold. How could they not? By my count, there were three completely devastating moments -- the BS foul and Holloway's and Crawford's 3s.

But K-State refused to yield. Trailing by two with a little over a minute left in the second OT, Pullen gave Xavier a taste of its own medicine. He hit a 3 to put the Wildcats up 94-93, then hit another after a Love free throw to give them a 3-point edge, and Pullen and Denis Clemente made all four of their free throws down the stretch to seal the win.

All in all, one of the best college basketball games I've ever seen. And I feel like I've thought that about 17 times in this tournament.

My bracket update

Because I know you're all dying wondering what is going on with my picks.

Incidentally, I have to post this right now, because with Ohio State losing yesterday, I'm going to start dropping like a rock.
I don't know if you can make that out, but I'm currently in 5,569th-place. I know I was joking about my standing the other day, but there are nearly 5 million brackets on ESPN.com, and because of that I"m in the freakin' 99.9th percentile.

Now who's Mr. Sports Know-It-All?

Wait. I guess it'd still be me. Anyway, here's the rest of my bracket, if you're interested and have unbelievably acute vision:

Stupid Midwest Regional. I've missed 11 games in that one alone; in the other three combined I've only gotten nine wrong. I knew there had to be a reason why I've always hated the Midwest. Damn you region of my birth/residence!

Just when I thought I was out ...

The NCAA Tournament pulls me back in.

You might remember this post from last year -- and I'm sure you do, as all of 11 people read it -- wherein I discussed the reasons for my nearly-nil interest in college basketball. But as play in the Sweet 16 begins today, I'd be remiss if I didn't write about the incredible opening rounds of the tourney, and how much I enjoyed them. I happened to be working out of the house last Thursday, and I can't imagine anyone not loving that day of basketball.

Huge upsets. Heart-stopping finishes. Buzzer beaters galore.

All of it in a twelve-hour period. And while Friday was a bit anticlimactic -- at least in comparison to the previous day -- the weekend might've even topped Thursday's excitement.
And sure, there would be a higher level of play if Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, Brook Lopez, Ty Lawson (seniors), Derrick Rose, DeJuan Blair, Blake Griffin, Kevin Love, O.J. Mayo, Michael Beasley (juniors), Tyreke Evans, Brandon Jennings (sophomores), et al were involved. But the games themselves really could not have been any more entertaining.

I loved every minute of it. Well, except for these 40.

But it's not like I expected Cal to knock off Duke again (that's right, it happened a mere 17 years ago), so the loss didn't take a whole lot of luster off of my enjoyment of the first two rounds. And so I present to you my Final Four countdown of the best moments of the tournament thus far:

4. The first four games
Two one-point upsets by double-digit seeds [(11) Old Dominion 51, (6) Notre Dame 50; (13) Murray State 66, (4) Vanderbilt 65], an overtime escape by a high-seed [(2) Villanova 73, (15) Robert Morris 70], and a double-OT thriller in which a recent-national power fell [(7) BYU 99, (10) Florida 92]. I mean, that was just the first four games! Jesus.

While I always revel in seeing Notre Dame die an untimely death in any sport, the highlight of this group was the buzzer-beating 15-footer by Murray State's Danero Thomas to beat Vandy. Watched it happen live and you just can't top that sort of thing. At least that's what I used to think (SPOILER ALERT!) ...

3. Overtime
(9) Wake Forest 81, (8) Texas 80
Just a remarkably exciting game, and it came in the final contest of opening day. Wake led by 10 early (20-10, 10:52 in the first half), only to find themselves down six (36-30) just 9 minutes later. At the half, the Longhorns led by one.

In the early going of the second half, Wake again built a lead, this time up to 54-42 with 13 minutes to play. But Texas chipped away at it, pulling within a point at the 2-minute mark. Following a pair of free throws by the Deacons Al-Farouq Aminu, J'Covan Brown hit a huge 3 to tie the game at 67 with 55 seconds left. After Wake's C.J. Harris hit one of two free throws, Damion James had a chance to put the Longhorns ahead with a pair of free throws with nine seconds left. But he also made 1-of-2 -- he did then force a turnover to prevent Wake from getting a game-winning shot off -- and the game went to overtime.

And that's when this thing got really exciting. With the team's trading misses on the first three possessions of OT, Texas finally broke through on a Brown 3 with 3:48 remaining. The Longhorns Avery Bradley then got a steal in the backcourt off the press, and Jordan Hamilton hit another 3. Following yet another Wake turnover, James hit a pair of free throws, and Texas was ahead 76-68 with 3:05 to play. Between Demon Deacon shots -- a miss by Ishmael Smith, the guy that had committed both turnovers, finally broke the string of FG-attempt-less possessions -- they had gone from tied to an eight-point deficit. It looked hopeless for the Deacs, to the extent that my friend Art stopped watching. But Tony Woods converted a putback of Smith's miss, and Wake went on a 10-2 run to pull within 78-76 with 35 seconds left. Brown then drained a pair of free throws, before Ari Stewart hit a huge 3 at 19 seconds remaining to get Wake within one. Texas then missed two free throws before Smith -- the very same guy whose turnovers put the Deacons into the huge hole -- hit a 17-footer with 1.3 second left to give Wake a 81-80 win.

And the perfect end to a great day of basketball.

2. Final two minutes
(5) Michigan State 85, (4) Maryland 83
This game was on in the background for me throughout -- I had one matchup on my TV, and was toggling between games on my laptop -- and MSU had a 16-point second-half lead; they were also up 74-60 with under seven minutes to play, and that's when I really started paying attention. Maryland was able to chip away at the lead, but when the Spartans' Korie Lucious hit a layup for a 80-71 lead with 2:09 left, the game appeared to be over.

To everyone to Greivis Vasquez, that is.

Vasquez responded with one of his emotionally-charged three-point plays, then stole the inbounds pass which led to a Sean Mosley layup, giving the Terps a quick five-point run and pulling them back to 80-76 with 1:48 to play. Vasquez then hit a 3 to get the Terps within one.

Ho-hum, right? Well, compared to what would follow, it actually was.

Off an MSU turnover -- their fourth in a 59-second span -- Vasquez hit a leaner to put Maryland up 81-80 with 39 second left. So that's lead change #1 (LC1).

Tom Izzo then called timeout -- which would be, shockingly, the last timeout called during the game -- and the Spartans Draymond Green responded with a 17-foot jumper at the 22 second mark for a 82-81 advantage (LC2).

At nine seconds, Vasquez hit another short shot -- that's 10 points for him in the last 2 minutes -- after wheeling into the lane (LC3) before Korie Lucious took a pass from green at the top of the key and drained a 3 at the buzzer (LC4) for an 85-83 win.
Four lead changes in the last 40 seconds. Only one timeout, and I relished seeing a game that completely lacked any over-coaching. When are more coaches going to realize that end-of-game timeouts to diagram plays end up helping the defense more than their offense? A free-flowing game keeps the D on its heels, and it also doesn't allow the offensive players a chance to over-think what they need to do. Without the unnecessary stoppages, it's all just basketball. And it's unbelievably entertaining to watch.

1. Ali Farokhmanesh 3-pointer, 35 seconds remaining,
(9) Northern Iowa 69, (1) Kansas 67
The most dissected play of the tournament, and by far my favorite moment. Farokhmanesh's UNI squad had seen a 12-point second-half lead whittled down to one, and its seven-point advantage (63-56) with 1:18 left had almost entire evaporated when Farokhmanesh found himself wide open at the arc after the Panthers had broken the KU press. Instead of dribbling out the clock in hopes of getting fouled, Farokhmanesh -- who you could actually see hesitate while deciding what to do -- went for the jugular, and buried the most audacious shot I've ever seen.

Had Farokhmanesh missed, he likely would've been a huge goat. Conventional basketball wisdom says to try to play keep away and burn off as much clock as possible before the inevitable Kansas foul. But Farokhmanesh -- showing absolutely zero fear of failure despite having missed seven consecutive shots to that point -- saw a chance to win the game and took it. I really admire his boldness, and wish I could have his mentality with the things that I try to do.

I thought ESPN.com's Pat Forde, not someone I read regularly, had a great take on Farokhmanesh's shot:

Consider this argument for why it should go down as the greatest early-round shot in NCAA tournament history:

When Bryce Drew, Tyus Edney, Ty Rogers, James Forrest, Drew Nicholas and Rolando Blackman hit their famous shots, there was no choice involved -- it was either shoot now or go home. There was no real risk of failure -- nobody was going to hold a miss against those players, given time and score implications. Greatness was thrust upon them.

Ali? He chose greatness -- and the potential censure that would have come with a miss. He made a completely voluntary decision to tee up a 3 with 30 seconds on the shot clock and 35 seconds in the game and his team holding a one-point lead. While on a personal seven-shot miss streak. With nobody there to rebound offensively. And the biggest tourney upset in years hanging in the balance.

What a badass. Which is why Farokhmanesh gets the number one spot on my list.

While I'm not expecting the same volume of thrills from the rest of the tournament, I will be planted firmly in front of my TV/PC. And that's something I never would've predicted just eight days ago.

Speaking of predicting, on Wednesday of last week, I filled out my bracket, the first time I've done so in I don't even know how many years. And, despite all the upsets, I think I'm doing pretty damn good; even though I only got 10 of the Sweet 16 right, I still have seven of my Elite Eight, and all of my Final Four. I mention this not to brag, but because I think this will mark the high point for my bracket. After seeing all of my Final Four teams play, I'm much less optimistic about Ohio State and Butler's chances. So I've got to crow when I can. Caw, caw.

March Madnessless, Part I

(Click here for Part II)

Confession time: I did not fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket. In fact, I can't remember the last time I did. It's kind of sad really. I used to be among the biggest college basketball fans out there.

As a kid, I thought Phi Slamma Jamma was one of the most amazing sequences of words ever, right up there with Akeem Abdul Olajuwon; I used to say both out loud to myself pretty religiously, just to hear how cool they sounded. Illinois' Kenny Norman, Doug Altenberger, Bruce Douglas, and Efrem Winters were my boys. So were Wayman Tisdale, Walter Berry, and Armon Gilliam. I hated Uwe Blab with every fiber of my being. My friend Adam and I -- a huge (fair-weather) NC State fan -- used to re-create the Dereck Whittenburg/Lorenzo Charles sequence from the 1983 title game in his driveway. And other than the Cubs' soul-crushing meltdown in the 1984 NLCS, the defining moment of sports-fan disappointment in my youth was the Flyin' Illini's last-second national semifinal loss in the 1989 NCAA Tournament.

As the lone No. 1 seed in the Final Four and facing a Michigan team they had beaten by 12 and 16 points during the regular season, the Illini were the prohibitive favorites to win the title. If memory serves, with guard Kendall Gill in the lineup -- he missed 17 games with a broken ankle -- Illinois was unbeaten going in, and 31-4 overall.* And yet they lost to the Wolverines 83-81. Damn you, Steve Fisher! If Bo Schembechler hadn't canned Bill Frieder for not waiting until the season had ended to accept the Arizona State job, which forced Fisher to step in right before the tournament, I am convinced that the Illini would have won it all. But the coaching change somehow galvanized the less-talented Wolverines and they caught fire, taking the title without looking back and stealing what was rightfully mine. I mean, the Illini's.

* You'd be amazed how tough this shit is to research. It's a shame that it all occured pre-internet, because the online archives for college sports from the 80s are somewhere between nonexistent and god-fucking-awful. In fact, I just had to edit most of the section on the Flyin' Illini on the Illini Basketball Wikipedia page because it was completely inaccurate. "Lost on a last-second shot by Rumeal Robinson," it said. It was Sean Fucking Higgins, and it was a putback of a Terry Mills miss. Jesus, do I have to do everything around here?

Other than possibly that undefeated UNLV team that threw the Final Four rematch against Duke in 1991, the 1989 Illini have to be the best team of all time not to have made it to the title game. With Gill, Nick Anderson, Kenny Battle, Lowell Hamilton, Stephen Bardo, and Marcus Liberty -- all of whom were between 6-foot-5 and 6-8 -- the team was a collection of almost entirely interchangeable super-athletes. Versatile, athletic, and exciting, they were certainly the squad that got Dick Vitale worked up into his most Dick Vitalesque frenzy. With the constant activity on defense consistently leading to breakaway dunks, they were almost ludicrously entertaining. It's a real shame that Fisher screwed them because they were such a memorable team, but without an NCAA title to validate them, they've been almost completely forgotten in the annals of college basketball history.

Of course, when I rejected the University of Illinois and chose to attend UC-Berkeley, I largely forgot them too, as my college sports fanaticism moved with me to California and the Golden Bears. If I hadn't had so many friends go to U of I, I likely would have remained an Illinois loyalist, but it was just so much more fun to create my own little rivalry between the schools. So Cal immediately became the lone object of my collegiate affection, and even though supporting your alma mater above all else is a given, I'm still a little sheepish about having shifted my allegiance. It remains the only time in my life that I have done so.

But oh was it worth it. While at Cal, I was lucky enough to witness the Jason Kidd era in its entirety.** The guy was just unbelievable with the basketball in his hands. The astounding array of assists was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Three-quarter-court bounce passes with crazy english on them... Oddly angled lobs on the fast break... No-look behind-the-backs threaded between two guys... His court vision was otherworldly, and he played the game on an entirely different level from anyone else out there. I was also lucky enough to watch him in the cathedral that was Harmon Gym. Going to a college basketball game is just so superior the NBA experience, and Harmon was one of the places to see a game. Tiny and cramped, and louder than shit.

* Incidentally, Kidd and I both dropped out of school following the 1994 basketball season. He left to make literally hundreds of millions of dollars playing in the NBA, while I, uh ...

Fuck.

During Kidd's first season (my sophomore year), he got the coach fired; led the nation in steals with an NCAA freshman-record 110; established single-season school records for steals and assists; led the team to just its second NCAA Tournament bid in 33 years; hit a crazy, contested, last-second pretzel shot to beat LSU in the first round; and knocked out two-time defending National Champion Duke to advance to the Sweet 16 (where the team lost to Kansas).

The next season, Kidd was just as brilliant, leading the nation in assists while breaking his own school record, earning first-team All-American honors, and becoming the first sophomore ever to be named Pac-10 Player of the Year. Unfortunately, the team battled injuries all year long and bricked its way out of the NCAA Tournament in the first round, after which Kidd bolted.

As did I, though I would return 12 years later to complete my degree. I suppose that brings the score to Jason Kidd $165,853,968; me 1.

*****

But I digress (for only 936 words). The point being that I used to be a HUGE college basketball fan. While I have remained a loyal Cal follower -- sticking by the team even during the mostly-dreadful Ben Braun era -- somewhere along the way, I lost my ardor for the sport.

So what has caused this to happen? Check back later for the shocking reveal!

March Madnessless, Part II

(Click here for Part I)

Reggie Harding.

Dun-dun-DUUUNNNN.

Wait, who? Reggie Harding. Yes, that Reggie Harding. He is the force that destroyed college basketball. For me at least.

So who is Reggie Harding? Just the first high school player ever drafted by the NBA (in 1962, by the Pistons in the fourth round.) And after him, the deluge. Over the next three decades a tidal wave of two players, Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby (both in 1975), continued the preps-to-pro onslaught.* So a total three guys in 33 drafts, all because every kid from every inner-city playground dreamed of being the next Reggie Harding. Forget Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Earl Monroe, and Elgin Baylor; Harding towered over them all in the minds of aspiring young players beginning in 1962.

* A handful of others, notably Moses Malone and Shawn Kemp, entered the NBA after bypassing college, but had some intermediate experience -- in Malone's case, the ABA -- in between high school and the Association.

And yet somehow in the mid-90s, things got even worse. Thinking that the 1-every-11-years torrent of high school players entering the NBA was somehow not enough, a Chicago high school kid named Kevin Garnett decided to do something about it. A scant 20 years after Dawkins and Willoughby, in 1995 Garnett was selected fifth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves. It was Garnett's relatively immediate success that proved to be the death knell of college basketball.

Shocking reveal #2: The first reveal (at the top of this entry) really should have been Kevin Garnett. But in researching Garnett I discovered Harding, and he truly is the early-entry Jackie Robinson. And yet unlike baseball free-agency pioneer Curt Flood, Harding has had absolutely no lasting legacy; before today, I had never even heard of him. Which is shocking when you recall that I am, in fact, Mr. Sports-Know-It-All.

Regardless, it was Garnett who proved that a kid with no college experience could thrive in the modern-day NBA, and he became the role model for other young players. And that, in turn, ruined college basketball. Look, I know that the early-entry-has-destroyed-basketball theory is hardly groundbreaking, but for me it rings entirely true.

Because Garnett's selection completely opened the floodgates. Hell, just the year before when Jason Kidd entered the draft as a sophomore, that was somewhat rare. But everything changed in 1995. Each of the four players chosen before Garnett -- Joe Smith, Antonio McDyess, Jerry Stackhouse, and Rasheed Wallace -- were sophomores; there was a total of five sophomores (Chris Jackson, Kenny Anderson, Chris Webber, Anfernee Hardaway, and Kidd) chosen in the entire first rounds of the previous five drafts combined. As recently as 1990, all but two picks in the first round were college seniors. But the year after Garnett, two more high school players were drafted in the first round, and both Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O'Neal became stars, albeit to varying degrees. Additionally in 1996, two college freshman (Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Stephon Marbury) were picked in the top-4, the first time that had ever happened.

In the succeeding years, there were generally two or three high schoolers who entered the draft, some of whom -- like Rashard Lewis, famously -- slipped out of the first round. But the tipping point came in 2001, when for the first time a high school player (Kwame Brown) was chosen first overall. With Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry going to the Bulls at Nos. 2 and 4, three of the top-4 picks were preps-to-pros. It was here that I believe David Stern decided he would impose a minimum age restriction on the NBA Draft -- only he didn't want to implement it until after LeBron James had entered the league.

So let's review. When I was growing up, just about every great player donned a college uniform for at least three years. (Two notable exceptions: Isiah Thomas and Magic Johnson, both of whom left school after their sophomore seasons.) This meant three years of Michael Jordan at North Carolina. Four years of Patrick Ewing at Georgetown. Three years of Akeem Olajuwon at Houston. Four years of Chris Mullin at St. Johns. Three years of Clyde Drexler at Houston (two of them with Akeem). Four years of Reggie Miller at UCLA. Three years of Shaquille O'Neal at LSU. Four years of David Robinson at Navy. Three years of Alonzo Mourning at Georgetown. Even without a point guard -- and you could have your choice of John Stockton, Kevin Johnson, and Gary Payton, all of whom played a full four years -- that's a pretty damn good collection of players. It's basically the bulk of the All-NBA team for most of the late 80's through the 90's, and they all played college ball for at least three seasons, within a 10-year period of each other.

Now compare that to this team of All-Stars: Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, Amare Stoudamire, and Dwight Howard. None of those guys went to college. Jermaine O'Neal, Josh Smith, Al Jefferson, Andrew Bynum, and Monta Ellis too. Isn't it hard not to feel cheated? Without a doubt, the quality of play in the NCAA, the level of competition, and even the excitement of the games themselves, all of it suffered.** Can you imagine Kobe at Duke (where he was slated to go) with the Cameron Crazies behind him? Garnett could've single-handedly brought DePaul back to relevance. And what if LeBron had shocked the world and decided to play for his hometown Akron Zips, doing for them what Larry Bird did for Indiana State? Christ, even lesser lights like Chandler or perhaps Shaun Livingston might have been transcendent as college players.

** I think the rivalries took the biggest hit of all. As a kid rooting for the Illini, I really grew to hate the players on the other Big 10 teams because you saw them so much and just got sick of them. Roy Marble? Despised him. Steve Alford? Couldn't stand the sight of him. Antoine Joubert? Jou-sucked. All of these guys faced the Illini a minimum of eight times during their careers, and the constant battles lifted the intensity level of the players as well, who really took those games personally. They remembered the slights from when, say, Indiana beat them by 27 points when they were a freshman, and every game was a chance to avenge some previous ignominious defeat. And while college basketball still has a few great rivalries like Duke-North Carolina, back then virtually all of your conference foes were truly 'conference rivals.' Now that's mostly just a term we use, a relic from days gone by.

Sports are always defined by their stars. So what happens when you excise the greatest players from a game? You know how people always discount the two titles the Rockets won because they came in the years that Michael Jordan was (mostly) retired? Imagine how it would be if there'd also been no Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone, John Stockton, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Clyde Drexler, and Shawn Kemp. You would've had Mitch Richmond scoring 40 ppg. That wouldn't have even been a reasonable facsimile of the NBA. And it's almost exactly what transpired with the college game.

Take the 2005-'06 college basketball season. The title that year was won by Florida, but the season was defined by the play of Adam Morrison and J.J. Redick. However, without early entry that would've been LeBron James' junior year, and Amare Stoudemire's senior season. Carmelo Anthony and Andre Iguodala would also have been seniors, Chris Paul and Luol Deng, juniors. Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, Al Jefferson, J.R. Smith, and Marvin Williams all would have been sophomores, Andrew Bynum a freshman. That's a 12-man rotation that neither Morrison or Redick could crack. So there's a reason that Morrison and Redick have struggled to be contributors in the NBA after being so successful at the NCAA level: they were the best college players simply because none of the best players were in college.

Not coincidentally, that '05-'06 season was the last in which the top high school players could just eschew college entirely, as Stern put in his "minimum age of 19/one full year out of high school" draft requirement, forcing players like Greg Oden and Kevin Durant to become "college students" for (at least) a season before entering the league. I believed at the time that it was first part of a plan to eventually raise the age to 20/two years out of high school, and it looks like that'll be the case. My guess is Stern didn't take the hard-line because of two factors: 1. The players' union might have resisted a measure as drastic as raising the limit by a full two years all at once, so he decided to ease it in. And 2. Immediately raising the limit two years would have completely decimated the draft*** for consecutive seasons and had a deleterious effect on the quality of play. It also would have considerably reduced the chances of a quick turnaround for any lottery team. And so he settled for 19. For the time being, at least.

*** Even the one-year increase completely screwed the Bulls, who had the #2 overall selection in the stripped-down, high school player-less draft of '06. They used the pick to select LaMarcus Aldridge, whom they immediately flipped to Portland for Tyrus Thomas. Now I am probably the biggest Tyrus Thomas apologist around; I believe with consistent minutes he will be a very good player in the league, and he has already taken a huge step forward this season with an increase in his playing time. But still... Had high schoolers been eligible, Greg Oden would have been the without-a-doubt No. 1 pick. Which would have left Kevin Durant to fall right into the Bulls' laps. And for as much as I like Thomas, KD over Tyrus is the very definition of a no-brainer. Of course, whether Paxson would have been too inept to realize that is a whole 'nother story.

So that's what happened. Yes, only the uppermost echelon of players went straight to the pros or left after only a season or two. But it's those very players that make the games worthwhile. It's the people that are four and five standard deviations from the norm that make the difference, and you can't lose the elite and not have it affect the product. I'm trying to conjure up an adequate analogy, but all the ones I can think of come from another sport, because athletics is the one arena where greatness is so clearly defined. So imagine the 2008 US Olympic team -- winners of 36 gold medals -- without its 12 best athletes. So subtract out Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Aaron Piersol, LaShawn Merritt, Angelo Taylor, Natalie Coughlin, Rebecca Soni, Dara Torres, Margaret Hoelzer, Katie Hoff, Nastia Liukin, and Shawn Johnson, and the US gold medal count is nearly cut in half, reduced to 19. Which is the exact same number as those uncordinated spazzes from not-so-Great Britain. We're a country of 300 million people, how can there be such a huge difference if you lose 12 people? Because the 12 are the truly exceptional, while Nos. 13-24 -- the ones you'd plug in to replace them -- are merely great. We watch sports to see the very best, and without them, why tune in? And that is why I stopped being such a huge college basketball fan.

There is a glimmer of hope, however. The college seasons since Stern barred high school players from entering the draft have been much improved, and it was great to see a player like Kevin Durant play a little college ball. Though I did become perturbed when even writers I really, really like -- such as Bill Simmons -- ran stories about Durant having the best freshman season ever. Of course it was great statistically; there was absolutely no competition whatsoever. It's not like when MJ was a freshman, and he had to fight legitimate players just to get minutes, let alone to put the ball in the basket. Durant faced essentially zero resistance. Argh. Anyway, players like him, Oden, Derrick Rose, and Michael Beasley really did help make the product noticeably better. If Stern can somehow get the draft age upped another year -- further improving competition while restoring luster to some of our forgotten rivalries -- I just might jump back into college hoops with both feet.

Maybe then, and only then, will I finally be able to forget about that rat-bastard Reggie Harding.