The House of Blue

Great games all around, and teams are starting to wilt and/or sprout. God bless March!!

Wrong. It's great for college bball! The season is garnering interest! Between conference alignment, and all the other factors, people are just realizing how fun and open this season will be... But, the older we get, the worse we think the teams are lol

This UL game is a microcosm if the season. Great game!

Temporarily, I'm just hoping the Irish can win in quadruple OT.

Doubtful. Still only have one quality win. Beating South Carolina and Auburn isn't going to convince anyone of anything. Need to play well at Florida.

5 overtimes....

If you think this is a great, or even good, basketball season you must be too young to know of the 80's and 90's or too old to remember.

Are the finishes in 2013 exciting...yes. Is the season very unpredictable....yes. Will the tourney be wacky this March...yes.

Is the basketball good....heck no.

It's a freaking shame what they have done to this great sport with the one and done rule. It's a freaking shame what they have done to this sport with their insistence on letting them play the game like it's a soccer match or game of hockey. It's a freaking shame that most people don't know what good college basketball looks like because its been so long since it has been played.

Do you want to know what good basketball looks like??? Go to the NCAA tourney last year, Indiana vs. UK. That was great basketball. That's what we used to get to watch every weekend. Now we get 2-3 games a year like that....maybe less. College basketball used to be a thing of beauty. Now, it's a scrum, actually it's just a shame.

The quality of college basketball has declined steadily over the last several years. There are still a few good games during the season but they can be far apart. I watched the UL and ND game tonight and although it was exciting to watch the quality of play was bad. If it had been good quality ball it would have never gone 5 OTs. It took both teams 65 minutes to score 100+ points otherwise it would have been a 50s to 40s game, where is the great play in that. The 1 and done and the way the refs call the games are both responsible for the poor games these days. I will still watch the games they have on but they certainly arent as entertaining as they used to be.

No down vote. Go cats! Good physical win, and as we see, tough losses all around the country.

I gave you +1...

even so i disagree.

The basketball is down, because you don't have combined super athletes and Skilled players. By the time they show any sign of skill, they leave.

Look at Davis. We say he is once in generation type player. However, he is still far raw from where he could be. He played 5 at UK, but reality is he is more of a 3/4/5 at collegiate level. Just the thought of semi developed Davis playing at UK would have been so amazing to see.

Think about this line up...

1. Teague / Harrow
2. MKG
3. Davis
4. Wiltjer / WCS
5. Noel

Many will say this team can't shot, but that's not true. With second year Teague/MKG/Davis, their shooting would be far better. Mix Wiltjer in the group, at which point MKG/Davis/Noel can EASILY cover his errors, it becomes absolutely insane team.

I wish we can WATCH this team play. Even teams like Uconn would be interesting to see. Drummond would be monstrous next year, and would be fun to watch.

For much of the country, the game has devolved into a 4 week sport that starts in March. Outside of watching UK, my interest in college basketball has fallen off the face of the earth. In fact, aside from a couple of "guys night out" games at ETSU, I couldn't tell you the last time I watched an entire game from start to finish that didn't involve UK. I still watch bits and pieces of many games, but never an entire game, including the national championship game. I still love tournament time, from the low-mid major tournaments to the opening of the Big Dance, but after UK is eliminated, I'm pretty much done. Why? A myriad of reasons (most, if not all already listed) I suppose.

*Quality of play. The athletes have never been better than they are right now, but the fundamentals of the game have taken a huge drop. Everybody wants to make the Sportscenter top 10 plays.

*Physicality of play. This goes down to the high school level as well. There is little flow to the games when the game is this physical, which leads me to.....

*Too many stoppages of play. In a 40 minute game, you have a total of 10 team timeouts and 8 media timeouts for a total of 18 possible timeouts which is ridiculous and when you top it off with physical play and inconsistent officiating, it kills the flow of a game.

* Inconsistent officiating. You never know what you're going to get from minute to minute, let alone game to game.

*The one and done players. I've always cheered for the name on the front of the jersey, but the one and done has hurt the overall quality of the game and robbed us of some potentially great basketball. I've quit becoming emotionally invested in guys who hope to be gone in less than one year after stepping on campus.

*Little drama to the regular season. This is a sport where technically you could go winless in the regular season, put together a 4 game win streak in your conference tournament, then be eligible to win the national championship. And the reverse is that if you are in a conference like the Southern or A-Sun, a great season could fall to the wayside if you don't win your conference tournament.

JDHoss, you are spot on! Football has surpassed basketball as my favorite sport. Perhaps the title of the thread hints to what is wrong with college bball, "NCAA". It may be best to reinvent the game excluding the NCAA, into a game that we can enjoy, addressing the issues you listed.