After watching countless hours of college basketball games and analysis and spending even more time reading about college basketball online over the course of the season, I have two questions. What makes these analysts and writers “EXPERTS”? And, do the people paid to watch and discuss college basketball for a living actually watch the games? There have been two things that have happened over the past two weeks that prompt me to ask these questions. The first is Memphis guard Derrick Rose being named as a 3rd team All-American. THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. Not only should he have been 1st team All-American, he should have also gotten serious consideration for National Player of the Year. I really don’t understand how these All-American teams are selected. The first team All-American point guard was DJ Augustin. I am in no way putting down DJ Augustin (It is not his fault that the people who selected him are idiots), but he’s nowhere near as good as Derrick Rose, as the NBA will soon prove. Don’t believe me? Let’s review the stats of their head to head match-up in the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament. DJ Augustine had 16 points, 3 assists, 2 rebounds, 1 steal, and 4 turnovers. While Derrick Rose had a stat line that read 21 points, 9 assists, 6 rebounds, 1 steal, 1 block, and only 2 turnovers. Oh, and by the way Memphis also won the game, which happened to be played in Houston Texas. As further proof of Rose’s dominance, we will look at the National Semi-Final game against UCLA and fellow 3rd team All-American guard Darren Collison. The box score for Collison read: 2 points, 4 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals, 5 turnovers, and five fouls (he fouled out). While Mr. Rose’s (I call him Mr. because although he is only 19, he has a grown man’s game) box score read: 25 points, 4 assists, 9 rebounds, 1 steal, and only one turnover. Are the so-called experts seeing what I am seeing? Apparently not, because THIS KID IS THE BEST GUARD IN AMERICA. I am not talking about a decent player having a great tournament; he has been doing this all season, and his team is currently 38-1. I guess we shouldn’t be that surprised at how stupid so-called experts can be, I mean Michael Jordan was drafted 3rd (behind Sam Bowie) and Sheldon Williams (the latest in the long line of Duke players to dominate in the NBA) was drafted 5th. And while watching those drafts (I saw a replay of the Jordan draft on NBATV), I noticed that most of the so-called expert analysts thought that those were good picks.
The second thing that has been bothering me is how little respect Memphis as a team gets from the National Media. THEY ARE 38-1 and were ranked #1 for a good part of the season. Yet once the tournament started they were picked by MOST experts to loose in the Sweet 16 to Michigan State (Yeah Right, Drew Neitzel can stop Derrick Rose), who they went on to beat 92-74 and led at one point by a score of 50-20. That impressive victory still didn’t make believers out of the “Experts”. Almost all of them went on to pick Texas to beat them in the Elite 8. Yeah, we see how that turned out (an 85-67 Memphis win). Surely UCLA would dominate them. Wrong again. They are now in the national championship game on Monday night. The funniest thing is that one “EXPERT” on ESPN said that the biggest surprise for him in this tournament was, “How good Memphis is.” This is why I ask the question, Do they actually watch the games? Again I say, any team that is 38-1 with victories over Georgetown, Arizona, Cincinnati, Gonzaga, USC, Texas, and UCLA is VERY GOOD. Oh wait, now I’m starting to sound like an expert, let me correct that statement, a team having a season like that is GREAT. Further, if your only job is to watch as many college basketball games as possible, you should be able to at least identify a good team. So I have decided that if they get paid (six and seven figure salaries) to watch and analyze college basketball, yet don’t know as much as I do, then I too am an expert, probably more so than them and someone should be paying me to do this (that is an official self-promoting plug to anyone at CNNSI or ESPN).
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