Well, we’ve reached the end of 2010 and are about to cross into the great unknown that is 2011. Of course, since college basketball is a two-semester sport, we tend to keep time a little differently. We play the end of a season, suffer through the always silly offseason, then begin again when the fall arrives. Now, we’re back in the winter and ready for the conference grind to begin again, and for new college basketball champions to be crowned.
College Basketball Stories Of The Year: Duke Wins, Wooden Passes And Plenty Of Controversy Lingers
The year 2010 was a mixed bag for college basketball, as the sport celebrated a vintage NCAA Tournament, capped by an epic final. But the NCAA struggled with eligibility controversy, sweated out tournament expansion and mourned one of the game’s most legendary coaches.
Before we put the 2010 calendar in the recycling bin and hang the 2011 version, it’s time to look at the biggest stories in college hoops over the past 12 months, starting with a list of topics that just missed my Top Five cut, presented in no particular order.
- Conference expansion (only because it was football-driven)
- UConn, North Carolina and UCLA all going through down years at the same time
- The Elgin Bailey-Renardo Sidney Holiday Title Fight in Honolulu
- Robbie Hummel's two ACL tears
- Virginia Tech's injury woes
- Kyrie Irving's toe
- Kemba Walker's Maui hot streak
- Arinze Onuaku's mysterious leg injury
- The underachieving Pac-10
- The debate over if there should be a real Opening Day
- Kentucky's recruiting prowess
- New York City hoops turmoil
With those preliminaries out of the way, here are my five college basketball contributions to SB Nation’s Best Of 2010 series.
5. The NCAA Police Are Invading Your (Championship) Dreams
Sure, you heard a lot about the NCAA cracking down on football recruiting over the past 12 months, but things were pretty crazy on the basketball side of things as well.
At the very beginning of the year, USC hoops was thrown under the bus in an effort to prevent the NCAA from dropping the hammer on the football program. (An effort which ultimately failed.) As December came to a close, Kansas State's Jacob Pullen and Curtis Kelly were suspended for accepting clothes from a Manhattan, Kansas department store, and Vanderbilt's Lance Goulbourne had to sit for two games after he purchased a parking pass, at full price, from a team manager. In between, we had the usual controversies over eligibility, with some players, like Kansas' Josh Selby and Mississippi State's Dee Bost and Renardo Sidney being cleared, and others, like Kentucky's Turkish import Enes Kanter not being so lucky. Plus, Connecticut and Oklahoma have also faced NCAA scrutiny over the past year or so.
Expect to see things become even busier as we head into 2011, thanks to new NCAA President Mark Emmert’s focus on enforcement. Punishments against schools found to be consistently in violation could increase, moving beyond postseason bans to TV embargoes, something not seen since the 1990s.
4. The Neverending Rollercoaster That Is Tennessee Basketball
No program looks to be a better test case for the new NCAA administration than Bruce Pearl’s squad. The year started with a nearly literal bang as four players were arrested on drug and gun charges on New Year’s Day, which led to a rash of suspensions and the dismissal of star Tyler Smith. Despite all of that turmoil, the Volunteers rebounded, missing a Final Four by just a single point.
Then, the bottom fell out during the offseason, Bruce Pearl admitted to lying to NCAA investigators, which led to a variety of punishments, for the program and himself, as the university canceled his contract. SEC commissioner Mike Slive later took it upon himself to suspend Pearl from coaching during the first half of the SEC schedule. And the NCAA hasn’t had its final say on the program’s future. It’s very possible that Pearl could receive the dreaded “show cause” penalty when the Association hands down its findings in the spring, at which point it would be very difficult for the university to retain him.
As if all this wasn't enough, the actual team's performance so far this season has been a mystery. First, they dropped an exhibition to Division II Indianapolis. Then, they opened the regular season with eight straight wins, including biggies over Big East contenders Villanova and Pitt, both on the East Coast. But not all of those victories could be called resounding. After dumping the Panthers in Pittsburgh's sparkling new downtown arena, the Vols managed to drop three straight to inferior opponents, before ending the skid with two very close wins, including a six-point win over a Tennessee-Martin squad who lost to Ohio State by 60 two nights earlier (SIXTY!). And things may get worse before they get better. Tennessee hosts Andrew Goudelock and the College of Charleston to close out 2010 (ESPN2, 2 p.m. ET).
3. The Passing of John Wooden
Back on June 4, the college basketball world was rocked by the news that legendary player and coach John Wooden passed away at the age of 99. Wooden was not only a Hall of Fame coach, renowned for a record win streak and national championship total, but a Hall of Fame player based on his college career at Purdue.
Yet beyond this, he was a national treasure, a philosopher and master motivator whose approach to teambuilding and coaching transcended athletics. (Please read Jon Bois’ top 10 list of Wooden quotes for a sampling.) Coach Wooden was a man who put people first and shared an amazing love story with his wife Nell. Even though he retired three years before I was born, his continued presence on the national stage far beyond 1975 and his legend made him a well-known figure to even the youngest college hoops fan. He was the best example of the good that can come from this game and it truly felt like he’d be with us forever.
And somehow Coach Wooden will be with us always.
2. Tournament Expansion: 68 Is Enough
Remember that amazing first weekend of the 2010 NCAA Tournament? Do you recall those four magical days filled with upsets and close finishes?
Do you also remember how the majority of us thought it would be a fitting end for the golden era of the Big Dance, thanks to all of the tournament expansion talk swirling around?
Back on April 1, after a contentious press conference in Indianapoli s-- famous for an exchange between NCAA point man Greg Shaheen and The Washington Post’s John Feinstein -- it certainly looked that way. A field of 96 appeared set in stone for 2011, and we’d have to all deal with it, no matter how miserable the result.
The funny thing is, just three weeks later, overexpansion was off the table, with a more sensible expansion to 68 taking its place. CBS and Turner would split the TV rights, with the deal lucrative enough to fund the NCAA’s activities for the life of the deal. Then in June, the NCAA finally announced how the three new teams would be integrated into the bracket. The one game Opening Round will be expanded to a new four-game First Round, titled the “First Four,” which will feature a pair of doubleheaders on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the Tournament’s first week. Two of the games will feature the four lowest seeded automatic qualifiers, while the other two will feature the Last Four In. Eventually, Opening Round host Dayton was tabbed to host the expanded festivities.
So, with the potential end of the greatest event in American sport averted in 2010, we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of a rare wise NCAA decision in mid-March 2011.
1. Duke Holds Off Butler To Claim The 2010 National Title
Of course, the primary aim of a sport’s season is to crown a champion. In many other years, the National Championship game may have fallen behind some of the other stories on a “Best of the Year” list, but not this one. The game between Duke and Butler that concluded what may have been the greatest NCAA Tournament ever simply ranks among the greatest National Championship games ever.
The storylines were obvious. Under Mike Krzyzewski, the Blue Devils had become one of the sport’s blue bloods, and his program was in search of its fourth national title. On the other hand, Butler represented all of the schools who had never gotten that far before, all of the teams who had provided a shock or two in the earlier rounds but were unable to pull it all together for four or five. Given the nation’s love of underdogs, and the disdain of many--not just those in Carolina blue--for Duke, the battle lines were clearly drawn.
In the end, Gordon Hayward’s shot hit the rim just wrong and bounced out (something commemorated by an eighth of an inch of blue over at The Mid Majority) and the Blue Devils captured their fourth crown. Hayward ended up declaring for the NBA draft, where he was selected by Utah in the first round. That seemed to put an end to the idea that the two teams could meet again in Houston for the 2011 crown. But an inspired showing by the Bulldogs in the two teams’ rematch at the Meadowlands on Dec. 4 showed that maybe that’s not so much of a pipe dream after all.
And we don’t even have to wait that long into 2011 to see if it happens.
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