Kentucky Wildcats 3/14 Headlines: Wildcats and LSU Tigers Part III … oh my

As we head into March Madness, there is a lot of buzz about who will stay and who will go for the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team.  And it is just not the Kentucky fans who are obsessing over the NBA Draft status of players.  Kansas fans are worried about Andrew Wiggins and you will hear more about draft status that March Madness from some venues.  And that is a shame.

Mike DeCourcy says that the mock draft culture makes a mockery of March Madness.  And he has a great point.

"Moreover, the NBA Draft can be painfully empty, especially with the manner in which the talent development process has devolved. When you were sitting there on your couch in 1984 or 1985 and watching the draft unfold during the afternoon—no, it wasn’t always a primetime extravaganza—you were seeing players enter the league who were accomplished, mature and well-trained enough to make a substantial impact on the league, and probably to make it early. The mock-draft culture has seized control of too much of the process, with becoming better at the game and building a lasting professional career mattering far less to far too many people than tricking the league’s scouts into thinking you can play. Seven of the first 11 players in the ’84 draft scored more than 10,000 career points, and six topped 15,000. John Stockton was taken at No. 16. In ’85, it was six of the first 10 again going on to join the 10,000-point club, with Karl Malone going 13th, Joe Dumars 18th and Terry Porter 24th. We don’t see drafts like that anymore because young players have been convinced that time spent on the way to the league is wasted. The player taken first overall in last year’s draft is averaging 4.1 points. At that rate, Anthony Bennett will cross the 10,000-point mark in late February or early March of the year 2062. Nearly all of last year’s draft picks have disappeared into inconsequence. Only six of last year’s 30 first-rounders are averaging more than 6.0 points per game. It’s hard to imagine how, given this knowledge, anyone could obsess about what sort of NBA players this year’s collegians will become."

Auburn’s Tony Barbee has been the first casualty of March Madness among SEC coaches as he was axed on Wednesday night. Winning at Auburn will be tough, and one New Orleans columnist compares the Auburn basketball job with the Kentucky football coaching job and calls it “Mission Impossible”. Not saying I agree (about the UK football jabs), but here is part of his take.

"The SEC basketball equivalent of Kentucky football as a head coach career-killer is Auburn. Tigers’ coach Tony Barbee was fired at the team hotel Thursday night after the Tigers concluded a 14-17 season with a 74-56 loss to South Carolina in the opening round of the SEC tourney. It was Barbee’s fourth straight losing season in as many years in the job, and the fourth consecutive season Auburn lost its SEC tourney opener. He finished 49-75 overall and 18-50 in the SEC. Sonny Smith, a two-time SEC Coach of the Year, who coached the Tigers for 11 seasons and took Auburn to five straight NCAA tourneys from 1984-88, said there’s a few non-negotiable keys to winning on The Plains. “The coaches who have won at Auburn, and there’s not many, could get players out of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida,” said Smith, 77, who was at the Georgia Dome on Thursday watching the SEC tournament. “You need a coach that has to be competitive recruiting those states. “You also need a coach that can build a program without recruiting 5-star prospects. You need a coach who can build a program solidly taking a 4-star guy bordering on 3 stars, or a 3-star guy bordering on 4."