March Happiness

It's March, and that means the long college basketball season is reaching its culmination. For a lot of America, it means it is time to start watching college basketball in general. Not for yours truly, however. I've been watching since day 1, and I have some thoughts:

Sure College Basketball Means Dick Vitale and Billy Packer... It also Means Erin Andrews!

• The three best teams are, in no particular order, North Carolina, UCLA, and Kansas. My UNC homerism aside, these three teams are able to combine talent and depth, and do not really have an alarmingly glaring weakness aside from the occasional inconsistency, and it figures that such let down games will not resurface now that tournament time is here.
• Duke, Memphis, and Tennessee are all good teams, but I cannot put them in the same tier as the top 3. As mentioned before on this blog, Tennessee's weakness is that they can go cold from the line or from downtown, Memphis is absurdly awful from the line, and Duke has no inside presence and lives from three point range. If they go cold and start turning over the ball, they become quite beatable. All three of these teams are excessively talented, but in tournament time it is very tough to win when you have such glaring weaknesses.
• Other probable/ definite tournament teams wish they only had the problems of the aforementioned teams. Frankly, Vanderbilt and Kansas State suck. Michael Beasley is the truth, and is easily the most skilled player in the nation. Hell, even Bill Walker is talented sometimes. But the rest of Kansas State's team is so horrendous, I honestly feel they could legitimately go winless if they did not have those two players. And Frank Martin is an awful coach. I have seen games where large stretches of time have passed without Beasley touching the ball. Beasley double teamed is still a better option than the rest of Kansas State's crap Smörgåsbord. Vanderbilt has similar problems with suckitude. They have two good players- Ogilvy and Foster. If you lose to Vanderbilt (Talking to you Tennessee), it is because you failed to shut down these two individuals. The rest of this team is simply mediocre. Plenty of other potential tournament teams are not good, but these two happen to stick out.
• Two weeks ago, some people were arguing that Texas should be a number one seed. Sure, they are talented. They also lost to Texas Tech. Not only did they lose to the Red Raiders, but they lost to them between two games in which Tech lost by over 100 points combined. There is no way a team can be taken seriously as a contender when they lose to a team that got housed by Texas A & M, who in turn was housed by Oklahoma. Basically, everyone in the Big 12, except Kansas, are OK teams at best.
  
• Speaking of Texas A & M, I saw them play at the Preseason NIT, and they looked fantastic. Now? Not so much. I really cannot explain how a team with such talent up front can collapse so heinously. How do you go over 16 minutes without a point when you have DeAndre Jordan? It is inexplicable.
• The team the Aggies looked so good against earlier this year? Ohio State. The Buckeyes are probably on the outside of the bubble looking in right now, but they are also the 5th best team in the Big Ten. I bring this up because the Big Ten sucks. Wisconsin just clinched at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title, and they are not good. I was at Cameron Indoor to witness them getting absolutely decimated by Duke. Good teams do not get crushed like that. Moreover, the Big Ten style of basketball works against some teams, but quality athletic teams, like the teams of the ACC, Pac-10, and some of the Big East, dispose of such teams with ease. Maybe one of the Big 10 teams can make a run, but I highly doubt any of them can get past the Sweet Sixteen, let alone the Elite Eight.
• Plenty of more College Basketball thoughts will come as march progresses, don't fret!