2008 Woodie Awards
First four meet in Final Four
Mark Rentfro
Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: Sports
This weekend, four college basketball teams will play for the NCAA National Championship in front of tens of thousands of fans who have already made the trek to San Antonio from every imaginable corner of the country.
For the first time in tournament history, all No. 1 seeds have survived to dance in the final two rounds. What's even more impressive is the fact that one of them, Memphis, is from the mid-major Conference USA.
Despite the fact that the second place team in their conference, University of Alabama Birmingham, is hardly a powerhouse, no one is discrediting John Calipari's squad's 37-1 regular season record.
After being a program on the rise for the last few years and losing in the Elite 8 last year, Memphis' Final Four berth seems almost overdue.
Not to diminish Memphis' accomplishment, I have to wonder if the year-old NBA regulation requiring all players to wait at least one year after graduation to enter the draft didn't give Memphis the final boost it needed to make a name for itself in the Tournament.
While the best high school players will still go to the elite programs, players who might have foregone college for a few years in the NBA Development league are now looking at schools like Memphis and Kansas State for their one-year hard court Associates Degree.
Still, the Memphis Tigers are not a slew of high school All-Americans cursing David Stern for standing between them and big money. Two seniors and four juniors (including stalwarts Robert Dozier and Chris Douglas-Roberts) join five sophomores and two freshmen (including the impressive Derrick Rose) to make up Calipari's squad.
However this weekend plays out, Memphis' run from Conference USA to a place among the four best programs in the country just might be telling us something about the future of college basketball. It might be telling us that the likes of Tyler Hansborough are seeing their last of college basketball glory. Duke's early exit from the Tournament suggests that a program built on four-year overachievers is a thing of the past. Or it might just be telling us that a team coached by John Calipari is a thing of the future.
For the first time in tournament history, all No. 1 seeds have survived to dance in the final two rounds. What's even more impressive is the fact that one of them, Memphis, is from the mid-major Conference USA.
Despite the fact that the second place team in their conference, University of Alabama Birmingham, is hardly a powerhouse, no one is discrediting John Calipari's squad's 37-1 regular season record.
After being a program on the rise for the last few years and losing in the Elite 8 last year, Memphis' Final Four berth seems almost overdue.
Not to diminish Memphis' accomplishment, I have to wonder if the year-old NBA regulation requiring all players to wait at least one year after graduation to enter the draft didn't give Memphis the final boost it needed to make a name for itself in the Tournament.
While the best high school players will still go to the elite programs, players who might have foregone college for a few years in the NBA Development league are now looking at schools like Memphis and Kansas State for their one-year hard court Associates Degree.
Still, the Memphis Tigers are not a slew of high school All-Americans cursing David Stern for standing between them and big money. Two seniors and four juniors (including stalwarts Robert Dozier and Chris Douglas-Roberts) join five sophomores and two freshmen (including the impressive Derrick Rose) to make up Calipari's squad.
However this weekend plays out, Memphis' run from Conference USA to a place among the four best programs in the country just might be telling us something about the future of college basketball. It might be telling us that the likes of Tyler Hansborough are seeing their last of college basketball glory. Duke's early exit from the Tournament suggests that a program built on four-year overachievers is a thing of the past. Or it might just be telling us that a team coached by John Calipari is a thing of the future.
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