The NCAA Tournament…Invigorating, Infuriating, and Inconsistent: A Fan’s View

It is the event all college basketball fans await each year. There is great anticipation for the NCAA Tournament, partly because of all the outstanding moments it has provided in the last 20 years, and partly because it arrives at an energizing time of year with spring beckoning. Frankly, though, for all the games that take place in a three week period, there are painfully few tremendous games, and even fewer memorable moments, particularly lately.

Of course, there are unforgettable stories. Lehigh beating Duke, Ohio overcoming Michigan, and completely anonymous Norfolk State shocking Missouri, a team that needs a heart transplant for the NCAA Tournament each year, were all extraordinary accomplishments. But if you watch enough of this tournament, several issues will emerge:

Mediocre Play - For every amazing upset, there are about 10 games that are simply dreadful to watch. Much, of course, is due to the furious pace at which great players flee college. So you have teams with NBA-talented freshmen who play as if the ball was electrically charged, and other teams with upperclassmen who are poised but ordinary. This is a recent development, relatively, so great college games of years ago were far better than those of today. Jim Boeheim, Syracuse coach, said as much in an interview the other day.

Three-point shooting - There is no better moment in a college game than when one team is mounting a charge, and three-pointers are dropping at a furious rate. If you've ever been on a court which displays the college three-point line, you'll notice it's just not that deep a shot. Yet, very few of today's college players are proficient at it…at all. It does bear mentioning that college coaches do a much better job coaching defense of the three-pointer these days. Still, there have been so many clangs from long distance, it sounds like the front doorbell is always ringing.

CBS - The network and the NCAA finally did the right thing and spread all these games over four cable channels. But with all the commercial time, you can literally jump from channel to channel and not find basketball for up to five minutes. Seriously, is it really necessary to have THAT many advertisements?

Glenn Vallach's college basketball passion has very little to do with his own alma mater, Fordham University, that has wavered between disappointing and awful for the last generation or so. The few Fordham highlights in his memory were actually forged the season before his freshman year, when Digger Phelps was leading a pedestrian group of overachievers to a national ranking. But from Elvin Hayes through Tyler Hansbrough, he is a fervent student of the college game.

Sources:

• Yahoo! Sports Kansas Jathawks page
• Yahoo! Sports Duke Blue Devil page
• Beth Rucker, AP Sports Writer, No. 13 seed Ohio beats USF 62-56 in NCAA tourney
• Eric Olson, AP Sports Writer Gators top Norfolk St 84-50, head to round of 16

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