Freshman Chris Taft may be the only player on No. 3 Pitt who's a sure-fire pro prospect. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Five years ago, Sports Illustrated published a story during the second week of the NCAA tournament under the headline "The NBA Factor." The piece, which was ably reported and deftly written by my very intelligent and handsome mail-reading colleague Grant Wahl, explicated on the theorem that in order for a team to win a national championship, it needed to have at least three future NBA players on its roster. To prove this assertion, the story revealed that every champ since 1976 had met this pro-rated standard.

It's amazing how much things have changed in just five years. If we were to weigh in on this same issue during the '04 tourney, we'd have to headline it, "The NBA Non-Factor." With the draft now dominated by foreign players and high school seniors (you could have as many as eight to 10 high schoolers in the first round this year), this season's best college teams generally feature guys who are less-than-surefire pro prospects. This, incidentally, is not a bad thing. Whoever the 2004 champion is, it probably won't overwhelm you with eye-popping talent, but it will have older, mature players who play a beautiful brand of team basketball rarely seen in today's NBA.

As far as I can tell, there are only three teams in the country who meet the three-pros criteria we laid out five years ago: Arizona, Connecticut and North Carolina. You already know Arizona and UConn won't win the title, because I included them in last week's Eight Teams Out column. I would have put the Tar Heels in there, but I thought they were too obvious a choice.

Looking at the 10 teams who were ranked at the top of last week's coaches' poll, I count only 10 players who I am reasonably certain will have NBA careers. They are: Josh Childress, Stanford; Jameer Nelson, St. John's; Luol Deng, Duke; Chris Taft, Pittsburgh; Lawrence Roberts, Mississippi State; Ronny Turiaf, Gonzaga; and Ben Gordon, Emeka Okafor, Josh Boone and Charlie Villanueva, UConn. There are undoubtedly plenty of other guys who will play in the NBA, but I wouldn't yet call them can't-miss prospects.

On the flip side, there are a lot of underclassmen across the country who probably came into this season thinking they would enter the draft but who are probably going to return to school. (Michigan State's Paul Davis, Kansas' Wayne Simien, Illinois' Dee Brown and North Carolina's Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants and Sean May all come to mind.) Of the non-seniors on the above list, I think Gordon is the only one with a 90 percent chance of entering the draft (though Childress is rising fast). Suffice to say, there are no Carmelo Anthonys out there -- great underclassmen who can carry their teams to a title and then light out for instant pro stardom. The guys who will turn pro early this year are more along the lines of Minnesota's Kris Humphries, who won't even be playing in the NIT, and Syracuse's Hakim Warrick, who certainly won't be hoisting another trophy this April.

If this is the natural extension of the post-Kevin Garnett-and-Yao Ming era, then I welcome it. So when filling out your tourney brackets, don't look for the can't-miss kids. Look for teams with older players who make smart decisions and understand how to work as a team. The Final Four might not be as interesting for NBA scouts as it once was, but if you like good basketball, it'll still be well worth watching.

Other Hoop Thoughts

• Great move on North Carolina's part to retire Bill Guthridge's "jersey" over the weekend. Coach Gut is a class guy who was an invaluable help to Dean Smith in building the Carolina legacy.

• It's impressive that Pitt is having such a good year even though Julius Page hasn't shot the ball well for most of the season.

• If you're like me (and I know you are), you're counting down the days to that Gonzaga-Stanford regional final.

• Marquette assistant coach Trey Schwab finally underwent his life-saving double lung transplant earlier this month. Here's hoping Schwabby gets well and gets back on the bench soon.

• Watching Illinois guard Deron Williams last season, I wasn't sure how good he was, but he has proved to be even more tough than he is talented. For him to be playing this well despite a broken jaw that caused him to lose over 20 pounds is all you need to know.

• Gotta be majorly bummed that Vermont's Taylor Coppenrath suffered a season-ending wrist injury. He was having a superb year and would have made the Catamounts a dangerous NCAA tournament team.

• Even Rick Pitino is saying these days that Lincoln High point guard Sebastian Telfair is turning pro. Telfair called Pitino a couple of weeks ago and informed him as much. Pitino gave Telfair his blessing, but asked that he refrain from hiring an agent until the last possible second.

• What a heartbreaking loss for Georgetown on Saturday. Coming off their humiliating loss to St. John's, the Hoyas had Syracuse all but beat until Gerry McNamara, who started the game 1 for 7 from 3-point range, made his last three trifectas, including the game-winner just before the buzzer.

• There's some chatter around the Big East that Notre Dame might be better without Torin Francis, the sophomore power forward who appears to be lost for the season because of a back injury. I can see how the Irish offense has opened up without Francis clogging up the post, but in the long run Notre Dame will miss having that big body up front. They might have beaten UConn if they hadn't gotten killed on the boards.

• John Wooden won his first NCAA championship at the age of 55. Just making sure you knew that.

• Julius Hodge gets a lot of credit, deservedly so, for N.C. State's surprisingly good season, but much of that should also go to Marcus Melvin, a quality rebounder who can beat bigger players on the perimeter.

• Keep your eye on Texas guard Brandon Mouton. He's been dealing with nagging injuries this year, but it looks like he's finally healthy and is once again scoring in bunches.

• I'm really hoping that both Kent State and Western Michigan get bids out of the highly underrated Mid-American Conference. But I ain't holding my breath.

Mail call

	MAILBAG Seth Davis will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his Hoop Thoughts column. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

It was fascinating reading through all the responses to last week's Eight Teams Out column. The emails ranged from the how-could-you-diss-my-favorite-team variety to fans of those teams who agreed with my ominous assessment.

Without question, my most highly contested selection was Arizona. Matt S. of Dallas provided a typical understated response by writing: "Arizona will make you eat crow! Salim will make you repent, as you bow to the great Wildcat in the sky and chant, 'There is no God but basketball, and Lute Olson is his prophet!' " And Chris Baker of Tucson promises, "I will be e-mailing you at the end of the tournament when Arizona wins it all."

However, I am apparently not the only one who believes that the consensus preseason No. 1, Connecticut, will not be cutting down any nets in San Antonio the night of April 5. J. Kim of Washington, D.C., writes, "I'm a fanatical UConn fan, and I completely agree with your assessment. Poor free-throw shooting and a lack of mental toughness are killing the Huskies." And this came from Dan Gerbasi of Baltimore, Md.: "UConn is my favorite team, hands down, and they are the most talented team in the nation. But they lack the mental toughness, passion and intensity that teams like Stanford, Saint Joseph's and Oklahoma State have. You're right that they will be a trendy pick come March, but this die-hard Husky fan won't be one of them."

Surprisingly, I also got some emails from Kentucky fans who agreed this would not be the Wildcats' year. Paul Evans of Louisville writes, "I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Kentucky fan and I am in TOTAL agreement with you. I'll be pulling for them, but I don't see it this year."

Tom Jones of Chestnut Hill, Mass., went so far as to provide his own list of Eight Teams Out: N.C. State, Pitt, Gonzaga, Stanford, Saint Joseph's, Wisconsin, Oklahoma State and UConn. Can't say I agree with most of those choices, but Tom did promise if he's wrong he'll send in a photo of himself and Sean Penn in priestly garb marked "Mea maxima culpa." It's worth rooting for one of those eight teams to win, just to see if Tom can pull it off.

Once again, a quickie throwaway item yielded a barrage of hey-you-forgots. In drawing attention to Louisiana Tech's Paul Millsap, I quickly fired off some other candidates for national player of the year. Lots of you wrote in to give me a deserving upbraid for leaving Wake Forest point guard Chris Paul off my list. (Paul Kennedy of Winston-Salem, N.C., points out that Paul and Minnesota's Humphries are the only freshman finalists for the Wooden Award.) Thanks also to Dan Fritz of Philadelphia for adding Pittsburgh's Taft, and Memphis' Jamie Vickers for pointing out Memphis' Sean Banks.

It continues to amaze me how fixated people are on the national rankings even though everybody seems to agree their importance is overblown. Still, Matt Machalinski of Chicago makes a good point when he writes, "Both Stanford and Saint Joseph's kept winning, but you say they should have stayed stuck behind Duke. According to your rationale, that means Saint Joseph's should be ranked ahead of Stanford because they started the year ranked ahead."

This is a very fair point. It goes without saying that there is a lot of subjectivity in the rankings, so I have no problem with voters changing up their order from week to week if certain teams pull off impressive wins. Still, I think voters should follow the basic rule that if they vote a team to be No. 1, that team should stay there until it loses.

That aside, many of my West Coast readers did not take to my diatribe against the whining regarding the so-called "East Coast bias" with the good humor I had hoped they would. Thus, it was refreshing to read Mountain View, Calif., native Mark McWhinney's answer to my rhetorical question of what West Coasters would complain about now that their beloved Stanford is No. 1 in both polls. Mark's answer: "The weather. It plunged into the 60's this week. And get this -- it rained today. Seriously. What's up with that?"

Brent Foster of Jefferson City, Mo., writes, "When is the NCAA's investigation of the Mizzou basketball program going to be finished?" Actually, Brent, there has been a lot of movement on this case over the last month or so. The NCAA has basically completed its investigation, and it is now processing the collected information along with the school. According to my sources, the NCAA will be giving the school an official notice of allegations in mid-to-late March. The school hopes to get in front of the infractions committee in June and have the case disposed of by the fall. Given that, and given that no coaches have been suspended and no players have been declared ineligible, my best guess is that Mizzou will be slapped with a bunch of secondary violations, but nothing real major. So stay tuned.

Jason Whitehead of Memphis, Tenn., asks, "Do you think that Mississippi State should play more of a national non-conference schedule like Kentucky does?" The answer, Jason, is absolutely yes. This program is too good to play the weak non-league schedule Rick Stansbury has set up for them. Ditto for Pittsburgh and Jamie Dixon.

Got a couple of opposing viewpoints on my hailing ESPN's Doris Burke as a rising, and potentially groundbreaking, color analyst. From Christopher Hayes of Brighton, Mass.: "I just graduated from Holy Cross last year and Doris did color commentary of our championship game against American. I thought she was outstanding." And from John Scally of New York, N.Y.: "Do you know why most men watch sports on TV? Because it's a refuge from the world of nagging females that we encounter at home, at school and in the workplace." Bet you get lots of dates with that one, John!

Finally, lots and lots of you wrote in and scolded me for ruining the end of Mystic River. My apologies, but the film's been out for so long I figured the statute of limitations had run out on that. (Speaking of which, you know that hot chick in The Crying Game? She's a guy.) But if my untimely revelation means you won't be seeing the movie, believe me I did you a favor. As Thomas Teach of Dayton, Ohio, put it, "People who thought this was a good movie probably thought Cop Land was a masterpiece."

Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers college basketball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Davis' first book, Equinunk, Tell Your Story: My Return to Summer Camp, is available through Chandler House Press.