Parity or Mediocrity?

• Prescott

  5 of the 8 teams that have advanced to the Sweet 16 were seeded 6 or higher. It makes for great TV, but is it great basketball? Is it parity or mediocrity due to the "one and dones" ?
• hoops23

  

  Parity.
  
  These teams that are advancing have some very nice players that play as a team. Couple that with good defense and the efficient offense, and you'll have this.
  
  Besides, Kansas is usually good for a second round loss. Their national championship was the exception, not the rule.
• Mulva

  

  Both. The bottom is getting better, and the top wasn't as good.
• karen lotz

  

  Parody for sure.
• centralbucksfan

  Parity without question IMO. I think there is some very good talent, along with very good teams out there. As I stated before the NCAA though...there was no "UNC" in this group. In terms of talent AND experience. I think there are teams are close in talent...but not with the overall experience.
  Right now...UK has to be the favorite now. Their youth has yet to show up. I think it will at some point...question is, will it cost them?
• Swamp Fox

  Parity seems to be the more likely answer. There are a lot more attractive schools with great programs out there than ever before, and we have a lot of kids in this country who are excellent basketball players. It seems pretty logical to me. I do believe, however, that the very top of college basketball will still draw the best players first.
• Prescott

  Both. The bottom is getting better, and the top wasn't as good.

  I tend to agree with this. The bottom is better because mid-majors are made up of 4 year players. That lends itself to consistency and familiarity. The top teams have guys leave early and sometimes experience trumps talent.
• trackandccrunner

  Prescott wrote:

  Both. The bottom is getting better, and the top wasn't as good.

  I tend to agree with this. The bottom is better because mid-majors are made up of 4 year players. That lends itself to consistency and familiarity. The top teams have guys leave early and sometimes experience trumps talent.

  I'd agree with both these posts but I also think that its more closer to parity than mediocrity. These mid-majors are very good teams and just got terrible seeds. UNI a 9, Cornell a 12, and Murray State a 13 and then a couple of the others but these mid-majors need to start getting more respect and better seeds than what this crap selection committee is giving them but honestly I feel those 3 teams should have had seeds of anywhere from 4-7.
  
  Its pretty much like how the mid-majors get screwed in the BCS in college football.
• krambman

  

  In a lot of ways parity leads to mediocrity. It used to be that the top programs used to get all of the top players. There wasn't parity because there was very little dispersion of talent. Now, with things like cell phones, cable television, and the internet, the top talent is more spread out and coaches are able to find that diamond in the rough that was difficult to find before. Since the talent is more spread out, it may make the teams at the top a little bit more mediocre, because they aren't loaded with all of the top players like they used to be. So, parity may have made the top teams a bit more mediocre, but only because the talent is more evenly distributed throughout the country.
• Heretic

  

  trackandccrunner wrote:

  Prescott wrote:

  Both. The bottom is getting better, and the top wasn't as good.

  I tend to agree with this. The bottom is better because mid-majors are made up of 4 year players. That lends itself to consistency and familiarity. The top teams have guys leave early and sometimes experience trumps talent.

  I'd agree with both these posts but I also think that its more closer to parity than mediocrity. These mid-majors are very good teams and just got terrible seeds. UNI a 9, Cornell a 12, and Murray State a 13 and then a couple of the others but these mid-majors need to start getting more respect and better seeds than what this crap selection committee is giving them but honestly I feel those 3 teams should have had seeds of anywhere from 4-7.
  
  Its pretty much like how the mid-majors get screwed in the BCS in college football.

  I'd agree with that. It seems for smaller-conference teams to get respect from the seeding committee, what they do during any given year takes second stage to their bulk of work over many years (with some exceptions, such as New Mexico this year). Northern Iowa and Cornell were obviously underseeded this year because they aren't perennial "Cinderella" picks. Teams like Gonzaga and Butler started out as underseeded, but after gaining respect and showing they were perennial Sweet 16 possibilities (and not flashes in the pan), they started getting better seeds more in line with what they deserved.