The usual suspects are in the tournament this year: Kentucky, Duke, Arizona, Wisconsin, Kansas, Louisville and North Carolina. This year has Villanova, Maryland, Virginia, Butler, Notre Dame, Iowa, Gonzaga, Georgetown and Baylor are top seeds as well. The real question people aren’t asking is who is going to win out of all of the teams, but rather if Kentucky can stay undefeated all season by winning through the whole tournament and if anyone can take them down.
There is a huge buzz that points to the Kentucky Wildcats winning it all.
“They’re ridiculously talented team and Coach John Calipari knows how to win,” said Andrew Fair. “They haven’t lost a singe game all season.”
He also said that they can field two starting lineups, and other teams can’t do that. Adding that Gonzaga is pretty good but also Wisconsin and Arizona could upset them and that you need to look out for Duke. “Arizona has some experience including three Senior All-Americans which takes you very far in the tournament,” said Matt Bray.
Duke is like NCAA basketball royalty and the most hated team, like the Yankees are in baseball. If they get into the tournament, then they can win the whole thing because they have one of the best male college basketball coaches in Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who can get the most out of any player, as seen with the men’s Olympic team.
Even the non-casual fan can watch it for the upsets and improbable runs such as Florida Gulf Coast and Butler with Gordon Hayward, who got them close two years in a row coming out of nowhere,and UConn’s men team with Kemba Walker and Shabazz Napier wining it all for them being with two of the shortest players in college basketball history.
The Wildcats have at least five first round draft picks, which points to them having a stacked team as they usually have high draft picks every year. For the past five years, they have changed how future players look at picking where they go because they have a high success rate in the tournament. It used to be Duke, UNC, Florida, Kansas, Syracuse and the big schools so in a few years they might be NBA ready and get first round pick money.
Coach Calipari has done a good job changing his coaching to be about “one and dones,” not three or four years building a team on upperclassmen leading the way. That is the reason they are stacked with talented players and make it every year.The talented players go there for the money they would get in the NBA.
But there is a downfall to that.Players are flawed going into the NBA without multiple years playing under a legendary college coach or getting enough minutes. They are using the model of the old school NBA having two twin towers in Karl-Anthony Towns and Willie-Cauley Stein. They also lead the league in longest names as well. So based on the noise going around, it’s Kentucky or bust no matter who meets them in finals,