After Gordon Hayward’s last second attempt to beat Duke missed in the 2010 National Championship college basketball seemed to be heading in favor of whomever could recruit the best talent, and after Kentucky cut down the nets in 2012 it seemed to be a new staple of college basketball. However, too much talent now leads to destruction as college basketball has undergone a complete 360; talent only matters if it can be retained for more than one season, a result of the “one and done era” that Duke is learning the hard way.
Since 2010 the Blue Devils have enjoyed long stints of being in the nation’s Top 10 to only have their title run be thwarted in the round of 64 twice, first by 15th-seeded Lehigh in 2012 (the first time in 11 years that a 15 seed had won in the tournament, a feat that was also accomplished by Norfolk State that same day) and by 14th-seeded Mercer on Friday. Instead of these victories being a fleeting moment of ecstasy for college basketball fans they should be telling signs of more to come because the increase in “one and done’s” will lead to a proliferation of upsets.
For years, what made college basketball teams great were their abilities to play smarter, harder, and more collectively as the other team, and there were very few champions who won due to the work of just one star freshman. Consequentially, most of the teams that were able to win championships were indeed Goliaths because they were able to spend the most money on their programs and could then have the nation’s top talent locked up for four years to build with.
This isn’t to say that having Jabari Parker on a team doesn’t increase that team’s chances at winning a title, but not having a talented player stay for more than one year hurts a team’s chances. If every year the starting lineup completely changes then there is no consistency, and chances are that the team will be unable to win games late in March.
Talent was an advantage because that talent had been honed by great colleges for more than just year, whereas now players with large learning curves are off to the NBA before they can be fully adjusted. Goliaths such as Duke are becoming victims of their own greed; the more they strive for the top talent the more they corrupt upon their own chances for success. It may seem paradoxical, but the more talented a recruiting class becomes the more primed for an upset a team will be.
What this means is that a team of all freshmen and sophomore will very rarely be able to have the experience to make a deep run in the tournament, and the teams that are composed of mostly underclassmen are the big money programs such as the aforementioned Duke, if a team like Mercer is in the tournament it is likely attributed to the team’s experience together over the course of two, three, or four years.
Teams like Mercer that have five senior starters may actually have a better chance to win in the tournament than Duke because talent does not dictate the result of one game; defense, determination, and (sometimes) luck do. The reason why picking an NCAA champion is so much more difficult than predicting an NBA champion isn’t because there’s more of a talent gap between NBA teams than between college teams. Rather, it’s more difficult because — more often than not — the better team emerges from a best-of-seven format, whereas anybody can be victorious in a single game, but if a team is not fully accustomed to playing together their chances are diminished.
Often times the more experienced team wins when one game decides who advances, and when a team is led by a freshmen it is hard to be experienced. While it may be easy to assume that Duke was more experienced than Mercer because of their rich history, having players who had played more than 35 games with each other already alone suggests Mercer to be more experienced. Teams like the senior-laden Mercer will continue to become more successful in March as teams like Duke fall victim to their own ignorance of thinking talent, not experience, win games in March.
While upsets occurred in the past, they are undergoing a proliferation now because of the favored team’s lack of experienced players. For example, in 2010 Duke started two juniors and three seniors on their run to their fourth National Championship; they started just one senior and no juniors in their loss to Mercer on Friday. Duke, like many other teams that are falling victim to Mid-Majors, have lost their edge over their low-budget opponents — there exists no such thing as a Mid-Major underdog anymore, it truly is anybody’s game.
Further, the failure to secure talented players for more than one year will continue to be the Achilles Heel of top teams because it takes more than a year to cultivate a championship. Although Butler came up short in 2010, Mid Majors have a new place in college basketball, a place that puts them as almost equal to the Goliaths that dazzle with five-star recruits and hall-of-fame coaches.
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