Four On The Floor
Something happened to the mighty super team, the Kentucky Wildcats, that stone cold lock of an odds on favorite that was absolutely going to waltz on through to the NCAA Basketball Championship. They almost lost. They almost didn’t even make the Final Four. But they held on to survive against a game Notre Dame team and they moved on. One extra shot that Notre Dame might have made during the game instead of missing it could have been the difference between THEM moving on instead of going home.
Four teams, of course, DID survive, move on and make the Final Four. If it seems like a case of deja vu all over again, it probably is. The four survivors, the Final Four participants this year will be were Kentucky, Duke, Wisconsin and Michigan State. If they all seem like they’ve been here before, they have.
Kentucky ALWAYS seems to be there. They recruit a modern day “Fab Five” almost every recruiting season, replacing the stars who turn professional, and replenishing an already good team with the future stars who will soon turn professional (in other words, the best of the high school All Americans). Success creates more success. Their coach John Calipari is both a great recruiter and a great in-game coach that is at the heart of this era’s Kentucky success.
The same thing about recruiting the best players to Kentucky can be said about Duke. They get all of the best players that Kentucky doesn’t get. Or Kentucky gets the ones that Duke doesn’t get. Or they each get pretty much their share of all of the best players. Coach Mike Krzyzewski is a coaching legend that has now made it to 12 Final Fours, tying the great John Wooden’s success at UCLA. The best players really like to play for legendary coaches that they see win all the time on TV. Thus, Duke has the necessary great talent pipeline that it takes to be a consistent NCAA championship contender. Like, every year.
Michigan State might not get the best players, but they sure do play well when NCAA Tournament time comes around. Michigan State wins more trips into the Elite Eight or Final Four with teams that aren’t seeded all that well than anyone in the entire country. The Spartans are also coached by “one of the best coaches in the country,” Tom Izzo.
And a lot of college basketball experts rave about how good of a coach Bo Ryan of Wisconsin is. They might not ALWAYS be in the Final Four, but they are in it for the second straight year. And the coach of a team that ends up in the Final Four is often able to capitalize on that season and recruit well and turn the “next season” into something special also.
Quick quiz, hotshot. What comes first, the coach being great, and then causing the team to be great? Or, the team winning a lot and then the coach being considered great? Whatever the answer, isn’t it funny how college basketball keeps having these same great coaches of these same particular teams always seem to get to the Final Four a lot though.
Kentucky will play Wisconsin, and Duke will play Michigan State, with the winners to play for the National Championship. The teams that have made it this far are too good to just roll over and let someone else beat them, so they are going to be competitive games. (The Notre Dame/Kentucky game sure taught me that) By the way, I hate experts that make predictions, and then, if they get it wrong, they blame the teams for losing, rather than blaming themselves for predicting it wrong. On the other hand, Kentucky and Duke seem to be the two best teams in the country this year.
So, let’s just say the four best teams in the country are going to play the games necessary to determine a national champion, the winner will be the team that deserves it, and we’ll sort the rest of the stuff out in the end.
