Depending on whether your team’s on the inside looking out or outside looking in, the best or worst day of the college basketball season arrives seven weeks from today.
That’s when the NCAA will unveil its 65-team men’s field on Selection Sunday. That’s when the college game briefly takes hold of the entire country’s sports radar for three fantastic, frustrating, heroic, heartbreaking, unforgettable weeks.
But who will be in or out seven weeks from today? Will the Big East again be the selection beast? Will the SEC once more be least among BCS leagues? Will North Carolina, fresh off its second national title in five years, even make the field?
And what of Kentucky, now 19-0 after drubbing Arkansas 101-70 on Saturday — a rout that, if possible, wasn’t even that close? Can the Wildcats become the first team since Indiana in 1976 to go undefeated on its way to a national title? Or will the Kittens’ three freshman starters finally play that way, done in by inexperience, fatigue or both?
Moreover, if Kentucky isn’t the ultimate No. 1, then who? Kansas, the preseason favorite? Syracuse? Texas, despite losing its second straight game Saturday?
Seven weeks out, Kentucky, Kansas and the ‘Cuse should all receive No. 1 seeds, though not necessarily in that order. Give a shaky nod to undersized but vicious Villanova for the final top seed.
On the second line place Michigan State, Georgetown, West Virginia and Texas, though the Longhorns could still return to a No. 1 spot if they fall only once or twice more before the Big 12 tournament.
After that, who knows? Duke, Purdue and Kansas State appear dangerous, as do Georgia Tech and Wisconsin. By March no one may want to play Oklahoma State or Vanderbilt, which may yet keep Kentucky from winning the SEC.
Then there’s Connecticut, which has appeared to sleepwalk at times but looked posistively Final Four-ish in Saturday’s 88-74 victory over Texas. In fact, given the team’s 2-0 record with head coach Jim Calhoun on a medical leave of absence, the Huskies might want to encourage their boss to sit out the rest of the season.
Far closer to home, Tennessee looked like anything but the No. 8 team in the country in its 78-63 loss Saturday at Georgia, but if you can knock off Kansas with just six scholarship players and win at Memphis, you’ve got game.
Beyond that, what of Georgia? Yes, the Bulldogs are just 9-8 overall and 1-3 in the SEC. But they now own home victories over ranked Georgia Tech and ranked Tennessee, and their three SEC losses were by an average of just five points — one of those to Kentucky.
And how to explain North Carolina, which has dropped two straight home games and should fall out of the Top 25? Yes, the Tar Heels lost most of their firepower from last year’s national champs, but they also returned taller and arguably more athletic. They may yet turn it around, but this team could be in real danger of missing the NCAA tourney for the first time since 2003, the year before coach Roy Williams came home from Kansas.
What is crystal clear is that no one, not even UK, looks like a certainty even to reach the Final Four. This is a year with great balance and great depth. After all, Auburn, arguably the second weakest team in the SEC behind LSU, played Kentucky to a five-point game last week in Auburn and led Vanderbilt at halftime Saturday in Nashville.
Texas is on a two-game losing streak. Villanova may be too small. Kansas may not have the right chemistry.
It’s all so liquid and uncertain and delicious, and unlike football one loss isn’t likely to cost you a championship unless you lose your last one, whenever that is.
But come Monday, the uneasy position of No. 1 will fall to Kentucky, the sport’s winningest program all-time and its last unbeaten this winter.
Said Cats coach John Calipari on Friday: “If (beating Arkansas) helps us get the No. 1 seed, that’s fine. But it’s not life and death.”
As we have all painfully learned again the last week, real life and death is Haiti in all its horror and hurt. College basketball remains a game, a momentary escape from such disasters.
But seven weeks from today, 65 teams will be granted tournament life for at least one more game, and two words will hit the lips of seemingly every American with a television and a pencil: Office pool.