Today's College Basketball

In two games this week, I watched the definition of a Top 20 college basketball team in the 21st century.

As the Innovator knows, I'm a huge Georgetown fan and knew with the loss of Roy Hibbert (now taking up space for the Pacers) and four-year point guard and floor general Johnathan Wallace, who is knee deep in trust fund fanny in the Georgetown Law School library, that things would be tough.

There were no men with size returning, JT III was going to ask senior Jessie Sapp to watch over the maturation of sophomores Austin Freeman and Chris Wright and with the transfer of Jerimiah Rivers (Easily the team's best defensive guard), it was going to be interesting to say the least.

But DaJuan Summers was coming back and we were getting a top big man prospect in Greg Monroe, a "silky smooth lefty from the Bayou". I don't know why I'm quoting someone but it seems like I should.

I won't mention the non-conference schedule, only to say that for Town to play Tennessee, Maryland and Memphis before the start of Big East play is a vast improvement. That and it got those kids ready for Monday's game at UConn.

No. 2 UConn with the ESPN The Mag cover boy Hasheem Thabeet, a tall boy who can block shots (He would finish with seven) but really has no offensive skills and yet is considered an All-American candidate.

I won't go into the game when you can watch the highlights here.
But what I saw was a very fast UConn team that can be taken out of their game with a little bit of patience at either end and I watched Town fall victim to the same thing that has been the bane of this team since JT III joined on board.

Yes, they shoot better but they can't rebound and while the Huskies' outrebounding Town 31-23 didn't hurt much, it would rear it's ugly head days later.

When they played Pitt and DeJuan Blair looked unstoppable. And while he's a decent sophomore talent, he's also a 6-7 college power forward with size, hustle and heart. Blair didn't need to showcase a 15-foot jumper to bring the taller Monroe outside. He just pushed him around in the paint, finished offensive rebounds and used his size to not allow the freshman position on the block.

Summers and Monroe were the only ones playing worth a damn in the first half, Pitt was going all out and yet they only were up 33-30 at the half. My point is while they're worthy of their No. 2 ranking when the polls come out Monday I think they are beatable.

The point of this is long gone are the days of completely dominant college teams and I don't think it has anything to do with kids leaving for the draft. It's got to do with the year-long season that youth sports have become. It's the amount of AAU teams and open gyms and the like that produces more and more players, meaning more and more quality teams and while there are exceptions like North Carolina (but while I type this, Boston College is up at the Dean Dome), gone are the days when there were about four teams clearly better than all the rest. More importantly, more teams will have the talent to exploit weaknesses and make March Madness even more fun, but make early season rankings about as useful as a wet sack of shit.

Speaking of sacks of shit, did any of you catch the Outside the Lines about Kevin Hart, the high school lineman who fooled his entire town into believing Cal and Oregon were recruiting him? This kid is my idol because while he was able to embarrass everyone involved with him and himself, he also shows just how stupid the entire high school/college recruiting process is. How a program like Utah can take their two-star athletes and beat the taste out of Alabama and their four-star studs, but this isn't getting through to kids, who feel the need to be ranked and read this and pay attention to that.

I hope Hart got a touch of 'tang after he declared, but it's really sad that he was able to lie for about 10 months time, all so he could have that one moment of shine in front of the camera's.