As another season of college basketball comes to a close, one point has become blatantly obvious – the face of the game has changed for the worse. And nowhere does the decadence of the game manifest itself more than the NCAA tournament.
Gone are the days when college basketball’s great stars played out their senior years, often with sustained runs through the NCAA tourney. Players such as Len Bias, Ralph Sampson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Glen Rice and Christian Laettner – all of whom starred in the tournament – played out their college eligibility before opting for the pros.
Today, the game’s best players depart to the NBA after their freshmen or sophomore years, leaving the NCAA with a dearth of truly outstanding talent.
As a result, the quality of play has diminished greatly.
Longtime CBS college basketball broadcaster Jim Nantz said recently, “The talent’s not there (this season). It doesn’t pass the eye test. This is not college basketball as we used to know it.”
The tournament began in 1939 with just eight teams and slowly expanded over the years until it reached 64 in 1985. And with the exception of the addition of one team in 2001, the tournament has remained the same over the past quarter-century.
What is so alarming is that the NCAA is planning on expanding the tournament field from its current number of 65 teams to possibly an unfathomable 96.
ESPN’s Jay Bilas recently had this to say about the 2010 tournament: “This is the weakest at-large field in the history of the tournament. If you can’t make it in this year, you probably can’t really play.”
One would have to be naive not to think that avidity is the impetus behind tournament expansion. Money talks, and in this case what it’s saying is quite rudimentary: more games equate to more dollars.
Money seems to have a nefarious effect on most things. And it will most likely engender mediocrity in college basketball two-fold. The quality of play in the tournament currently suffers from the large number of talented players departing to the NBA for big bucks. Expansion would further water down the talent pool.
“Our best teams are not as good, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves that they are,” said former Big East commissioner and NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee Chairman Dave Gavitt.
“The Duke of today, while they may be very good and competitive and fun and exciting to watch, are not as good as the Duke of 1999. They’re just not.”
What is most evident is the loss of talented post-up players who can play with their back to the basket. This season, there were no players taller than 6’8” on the All-Big Ten, Pac-10 or Atlantic Coast Conference first teams.
Missouri Tigers head basketball coach Mike Anderson said, “If you find one of those great post guys, they’re definitely one-and-done or at most two-and-done.” Meaning they defect to the NBA after one or two seasons of college basketball.
The Pac-10 has been particularly decimated in recent years by early departures. The past two years alone the Pac-10 saw 14 non-seniors leave early for the NBA. That is a telling statistic as to why the Pac-10 placed only two teams in this tear’s tournament.
University of Oklahoma – who made the Elite Eight in last year’s NCAA tourney – lost their top player, Blake Griffin, to the NBA after playing only two years of college basketball. This season, Oklahoma missed the NCAA tournament entirely.
It’s not just basketball experts who have taken notice. Even the casual fan can see that the level of play has declined. Statistics show that college players don’t shoot the ball as well as they used to. Two-point shooting percentages reached its pinnacle in 1981 and remained relatively level throughout the ’80s before slumping in 1990. Those percentages have yet to reach the level they once were during college basketball’s heyday of the 1980s.
It is disappointing to watch what was once a spectacle unmatched in all of sports diminish before your eyes.
Jim Nance may have said it best, “It doesn’t pass the eye test.”