Ides of March: Musical Chairs

With a resounding win at Louisville on Monday night, Connecticut looks to be on their way to holding the number one ranking for a second week in a row (pending the result of hosting Michigan on Saturday), which is more than a few other teams could say this season. But does it matter? In a playoff format involving 65 teams, does the subjective opinion of pollsters really matter?  If you’re a team, do you really want to be the number one team in the country and deal with the pressure and baggage that accompanies it? The answer to all of these questions is no. This isn’t college football where being the top team in a poll is your ticket to a national championship game. In college basketball, being the top team gives you a bulls eye on your chest, and less of a likelihood of even winning a national championship. Do you remember all the teams who were number one last season? Maybe one or two. Do you remember who won the national championship? It’s more likely. It was Kansas, who was never ranked number one. Did you remember that both Stanford and St. Joe’s were ranked at the top in 2004? Probably not, but you probably, at least vaguely, remember Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon beating up on Georgia Tech to win the national championship. Yeah, it’s cool to say you’re number one, but is it really worth the baggage and the expectations?

This last month at the top of the polls has been pretty interchangeable, like a game of musical chairs where not sitting down gets you the number one ranking, you get the top spot and you lose (and teams are getting the top spot mainly because nobody else wants to stand up and take it). Let’s take a peek at the rankings of the top six teams (in the ESPN/USA Today poll) since December 29, North Carolina’s last week at number one.


The same six teams have been in the top six for over a month, with five of them taking the top spot at some point, and five of the six teams positioned in five of the six slots over the course of that time period (Wake Forest and North Carolina skipped being #5 on the way in and out, while Pittsburgh, Duke and Connecticut haven’t fallen to #6). What’s even more fascinating is that all of the top ranked teams (so far) this year have come from one of two conferences, which is pretty remarkable between five teams.

So that chart’s a little dizzying to look at (just wait until you see the the chart that looks at ranked teams in the Big East that I'll be releasing later in February), so what’s its point? There are two.  The first is that no team really wants to be number one, and it may be to their advantage.  The other is that the top six teams this college basketball season are like naming your favorite movies, they’re all so good that you just can’t always put them in order, it just wouldn’t be fair, plus they’re all different genres anyway. If I want a superhuman-like solo performance, I look to Batman Begins, which is like watching Oklahoma and Blake Griffin. Sure, there’s a surrounding cast, but it’s just Commissioner Gordon and that guy Morgan Freeman plays.  He’s great and all, and get’s Batman all his high tech equipment, but like Batman, it’s Blake Griffin who does all the work and gets results.

UConn and their defense is like a Godzilla movie. Thabeet’s swatting skills are just a newer version of Emeka Okafor, like how the Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla is to the classic version, not as good, but effective in getting its point across. Although I’m sure Jim Calhoun hopes Thabeet doesn’t lay any eggs in Madison Square Garden like his movie counterpart come Big East Tournament time.

If I want to slow things down, I put on a long, but ultimately great, movie like the Shawshank Redemption. That’s like Pitt, grinding away at wins and spending years and years with a rock pick before finally breaking into the top spot in the polls.

Wow that’s great, I just compared some basketball teams to movies (and skipped 3 of the teams…Duke is Top Gun, it takes a certain personality to actually like [and get] it, North Carolina is Casablanca, people only like it because everyone says it’s good and has some old classic actors, and Wake Forest is that good movie that everyone tells me about but I never have the time to watch), but other than not being able to keep the same top team for more than two weeks, how do these movies references apply to it not mattering if you’re ranked at the top? Back to the movie references!

I’m going back to the Shawshank Redemption (I don’t even read Bill Simmons anymore, but this movie just has too many ways to parallel to college basketball somehow). Andy Dufresne breaks out of prison (remember: breaking out of prison is like breaking into the number one spot, but it’s not good for the long run) and escapes to Mexico. Meanwhile, Red (Morgan Freeman, not the version in Batman Begins) takes his time, gets by like he always has in prison, stays under the radar, and finally tells the parole board what he knows will get him out of prison. So he’s a free man, but without all the hoopla, and guess what? He ends up getting to the Pacific coast of Mexico too! Now let’s exchange the name “Mexico” for the name “Final Four.” Red is the equivalent of a good team, it’s a top twenty team, but it stays under the radar by not becoming a number one ranked team that has to play with a bulls eye on its chest and with the expectations that come with it. Like Dufresne, the top ranked team has to muck through a regular season sewage pipe just to make it to Mexico (the kind of muck that lets UNC lose to BC and Wake lose to Virginia Tech) while facing the pressure of not being caught and put back in prison (losing it’s number one ranking). Granted Andy and Red are both winners in the movie, but in basketball only one person can come out on top. So, I think it’s better to be Red, but is there historical precedent for this? Let’s have a look:


2007-2008 

Sequence of #1 Teams: UNC, Memphis, Tennessee, UNC
Final Four: Kansas, Memphis, UNC, UCLA
National Champion: Kansas (Red)

2006-2007

Sequence of #1 Teams: Florida, UCLA, UNC, Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio St.
Final Four: Florida, Ohio St., Georgetown, UCLA
National Champion: Florida (Andy)

2005-2006 

Sequence of #1 Teams: Duke, UConn, Duke
Final Four: Florida, UCLA, George Mason, LSU
National Champion: Florida (Red)

2004-2005 

Sequence of #1 Teams: Kansas, Wake Forest, Illinois
Final Four: UNC, Illinois, Louisville, Michigan St.
National Champion: UNC (Red)

2003-2004 

Sequence of #1 Teams: UConn, Florida, UConn, Duke, Stanford, St. Joseph’s, Stanford
Final Four: UConn, Georgia Tech, Duke, Oklahoma St.
National Champion: UConn (Andy)

2002-2003 

Sequence of #1 Teams: Kentucky, Arizona, Alabama, Duke, Arizona, Kentucky
Final Four: Syracuse, Kansas, Marquette, Texas
National Champion: Syracuse (Red)


With the exception of 2003, at least one, and at times as many as three, former number one team has made the Final Four in the last six years, but Red still holds a 4-2 national championship lead over Andy. Sure, you could make the argument that there are only handful of former number one teams going up against a field of 65, so the odds are against them.  So what?  Not all teams are created equal.  After all, these are the best teams right?  Skill should overcome most of that math.  So will one of this year's current or former number ones (or future, Oklahoma is included because I think they are destined to rise to number one at some point this season, considering UConn’s Big East schedule and Oklahoma’s toughest remaining game comes at home against Kansas) become national champion? The odds are increased, considering how many of them there are (there will probably be six this year, the last time there were at least five different number one teams in a season, one of them ended up national champion), but this “Red” concept certainly makes the Louisvilles, Marquettes, and UCLAs of the world feel a little more optimistic. For now we can talk about the interchangeable teams at the top of the rankings and debate who should be number one, that’s cool with me. But like everyone else, I could care less about subjective labels, I care about who’s proven to be number one at the end of March.  Just keep in mind that it’s not always who you think it’ll be.


This Week's Notable Performers

The 'Gody v. Griffin Battle
'Gody - Both players only had one game this week. Blake had 23 and 15 at lowly Iowa St. while Harangody had 27 and 11 in a loss at Pittsburgh. Time to stop penalizing Harangody for his poor support and rewarding him for his consistency against tough competition.

Gani Lawall (Georgia Tech) - The sophomore, who is averaging a double-double this season, had 25 points and 10 rebounds in Tech's upset of Wake Forest last Saturday.
Nic Wise (Arizona) - Wise had 29 points and doled out 8 assists in an upset of Washington last week. Arizona has since climbed to within a game of .500 in conference play.
Jeff Adrien (Connecticut) - Flying mostly under the radar, Adrien's numbers don't exactly depict his contribution. Adrien had 13 rebounds and 12 points against DePaul and 18 points and 7 rebounds in big win at Louisville, defending UConn's top ranking.

Patty Mills (St. Mary's) - The Australian national came into halftime of last week's game against Gonzaga with 18 points, a 6 point lead, and a broken hand.  St. Mary's came into the second half without Mills and ended up with a loss at the Zags followed by another loss at up-and-coming Portland.  If all goes according to plan, Mills should be back in time for the WCC tournament.

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