The reality that blew up the Big Ten is, quite simply, the reality in college basketball today.
Call it parity. Call it the new landscape. Call it the brazen new world. No matter what you call it, the facts are these. There are more good teams in the game now and none that can be called truly great.
That is true across the country and was surely true this season in the Big Ten, which had six teams bounced from the NCAA tournament on the opening weekend. It was a deep league. It was a competitive league that produced some compelling games and a race that often bordered on mayhem. But not one team in the league was a beast, which meant each could be readily slain.
The last of them to fall was regular-season champ Ohio State, which was embarrassed Sunday at the Dayton Arena during its 70-52 loss to seventh-seeded Georgetown.
The second-seeded Buckeyes had no answers for the Hoyas’ Roy Hibbert, the 7-foot-2-inch center who scored 20 points and collected 14 rebounds, and were regularly cut apart by the Hoyas’ patient offense, which produced open layups off backdoor cuts.
Often matched against Hibbert, 6-9 Buckeyes center Terence Dials did manage 19 points. But he got seven of those on free throws, managed to grab just four rebounds and hardly resembled the Big Ten player of the year.
Matched against the Hoyas’ quick athletes and active defense, the Buckeyes did manage to shoot 40.4 percent overall. But on their threes, which delivered them so many wins, they went a mere 5 of 16 (31.3 percent).
“Nowadays, when you get to this round of 32, you aren’t going to beat anybody when you don’t play well,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said after his third-seeded Tar Heels were shocked by 11th-seeded George Mason.
“I can remember a time when you are a one [seed], two or three, the first couple of games you could win without playing well. But I don’t think you can do that anymore.”
That was certainly true in the Buckeyes’ loss and even true in the opening round, which saw the demise of Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan State.
The Hawkeyes, champs of the Big Ten’s postseason tournament, forgot a game lasts 40 minutes and were beaten by Northwestern State on a last-second shot.
The Badgers, who had overachieved all season, were overwhelmed by Arizona, which had underachieved all season.
More Top Picks Best Downdraft Ranges
The Spartans, in turn, barely showed up, forgot to play defense, refused to rebound and were bounced by George Mason, which shot 59.2 percent and outrebounded Michigan State by 16.
The result of its tepid performance proved Williams’ point, and here’s a little fact that also shows the playing field is now more level: For the first time since 1989, the No. 1s’ wins over the No. 16s were all by less than 20 points.
Then consider this: Just to reach this week’s regional semifinals, UCLA, Villanova and Connecticut had to get second-round victories over Alabama, Arizona and Kentucky, respectively. Those losers can hardly be considered wannabes, and that is true, too, of Gonzaga and Washington, the conquerors of Indiana and Illinois.
Early exits to the NBA; more good coaches teaching more good players; the familiarity all players have with each other after crossing paths at summer tournaments, which means there is no longer any intimidation factor–those are some of the reasons for the brazen new world that wiped out the Big Ten, the same reasons that now make it fair to wonder just what is an upset.
Jim Larranaga, the George Mason coach, was asked if that is what his team achieved with its win over North Carolina and he said: “I read something in the paper. I’m not sure who said it, but they said, `In this tournament, there are no upsets. There are just good teams playing hard, playing well.’
“I would like to think that’s true, because the college game has changed dramatically over the years.”
———-