Sweet 16

[RedEyedGhost]

As expected Mario Chalmers declared for the draft - no agent, but his presser was less than hopeful about him coming back. It will all depend on his workouts. No matter what he decides, I wish him the absolute bests.

[Rhom]

Here's one of those interesting "What If" debate's over on [url="http://www.askmen.com/sports/fitness_top_ten_150/166_fitness_list.html"]askmen.com[/url] discussing the best NCAA Champions of the last 24 years (since they expanded to 64 teams). They ran all the teams in a simulator 100 times and then took the winning percentages to make their top ten list. Its kind of an interesting read.

The top 3 are Duke 01, Kentucky 96, and UNC 05. My totally homerish comments are listed in the comments on that site, but I'll repeat them here for you folks:

[quote]Duke ends up winning 92% of the time and Kentucky's 96 team is 12 percentage points behind them at 80%??? I'm gonna blow the BS horn on the margin if not quite the result. Pitino's 96 team was so good that the benchwarmers and redshirts were good enough to make this list two years later (the 98 team). There were no significant recruits that contributed to that title.[/quote]

Honestly... the only recruit Pitino pulled in after his championship season was Jamaal Magloire. He went on to be a good player at Kentucky, but not until much later and had next to nothing to do with the 98 title. And the recruiting class coming in after the title game loss to Arizona that were the freshmen on the 98 team was Saul Smith (the new coache's son), Michael Bradley, Myron Anthony, and Ryan Hogan... none of whom contributed to the 98 title. (Incidentally... Saul was the only one of those four to finish his career at Kentucky. Bradley transferred to Villanova, Anthony to Miami, and Hogan to Iowa.)

Now, I try to keep my rampant homerism out of my posts on this board so as not to become overly boorish... but in this situation, I believe that I am justified in my belief that the 96 Kentucky team is the greatest team we've seen in the last 25 years. Its the last team you'll ever see where you actually had [i]great[/i] seniors and juniors who went on to be drafted. The progressive shift towards drafting high schoolers and freshmen over the last ten years has guaranteed us never to see a collection of experienced talent like that ever again.

Edit: While purusing a site on Kentucky's rosters to formulate this post, I got to looking at the old team pictures. Can you spot the back to back national championship coach in [url="http://www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/Statistics/roster1989-90.html"]this team photo?[/url] :rofl: That's the picture that Vitale liked to put on screen every time he called a Kentucky ballgame. Pitino's first staff was pretty impressive, Orlando "Tubby" Smith has obvious qualifications, Ralph Willard went on to a good coaching career and coached Pittsburgh, Herb Sendek was a decent coach at NCSt, and then there's the fresh faced graduate assistant by the name of Donovan on the back row.

[Rhom]

Look at me double posting... tisk tisk tisk. ;)

I was listening to the "Joe B and Denny" show this morning (features former UK coach Joe B. Hall and UofL coach Denny Crum) and they had an interesting conversation I thought. Somehow, Denny's days as an assistant coach under John Wooden out at UCLA came up. They asked him about the best players he coached there and recruited. He said his early years were with the Alcindor teams, then when that group left he was instrumental in recruiting Bill Walton and those teams. Everyone assumed that UCLA's string of titles would end when Alcindor left, but the team won the next year anyways. What I found most interesting is that he said the JV team of Walton and crew (freshmen were ineligible) used to routinely beat the Varsity team in scrimmages. The very same varsity that went on to win the national title!

I love those stories from back in the day. The concept of the best players being around for four years is just amazing. I really started following basketball in the early 90's before the mass exodus really hit full stride. Thinking of the fact that Dwight Howard would have been a college senior this year really puts things in perspective as you watch him dominate his way through the first round of the play-offs.

Edit: While I'm at it... here's an [url="http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/draft2008/insider/columns/story?columnist=ford_chad&page=DraftWatch-080428&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1&action=upsell&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fnba%2fdraft2008%2finsider%2fcolumns%2fstory%3fcolumnist%3dford_chad%26page%3dDraftWatch-080428%26lpos%3dspotlight%26lid%3dtab2pos1"]interesting analysis of the early entrants for the NBA draft.[/url] Its an ESPN insider piece, but its free (for now). I'm with them on most of their analysis, but I disagree with the Earl Clark as a "Should've Declared" selection.

[Gold Storm]

[quote]Earl Clark, F, Louisville
Clark has plenty of work to do on his game. However, his stock was very high after a great NCAA tournament. If he crosses Rick Pitino next season … you never know what could happen. Declaring early would have been worth a look.[/quote]

I do not see why a scout will make a big gamble on a guy just because he had a great tourney. The scouts are looking at the whole package not just what the player did for a couple games in March.