|
|
 |
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE | |
Recharging our basketball jones
The clock has come 'round at last. For hoopheads like us, summer is for hibernation, winter for renewal. And no star in America's- sporting firmament renews itself quite so nicely as college basketball. This idea is completely lost on all the Chicken Littles who every spring watch the annual exodus to the pros and proclaim that the sky is falling on our game. Start with the freshmen, for example. The NBA has its rookies, but for the most part the people who dominate any given pro season will be the same graybeards who dominated the year before. College football has its newcomers, too, but with 22 players in the starting lineup, the impact of one or two prized arrivals is considerably diluted. In college basketball, a couple of big-time recruits can completely change the personality of a program -- and a season. So as Midnight Madness arrives, we giddily anticipate our first collegiate glimpses of baby-faced guys like Rick Rickert (Minnesota), Kelvin Torbert (Michigan State), Dajuan Wagner (Memphis) and James White (Florida). And I promise you, there will be others who will surprise and delight us. Midnight Madness also brings the promise of dramatic improvements from returning players. (Yes, there are plenty of returning players.) No sport better affords us the chance to calibrate the growth of players from year to year. As these youngsters grow into their bodies and minds, they become different players before our very eyes. Sure, the truly elite will bolt for the pay-for-plays before they take those steps, but we also get treated to cases like Western Kentucky center Chris Marcus, who didn't even take up the sport until he was a senior in high school but who will be the nation's premier pivotman this season. Personally, I always look forward to seeing the sophomores because the biggest leap usually occurs between a player's first and second years. Guys like Caron Butler (UConn), Chris Duhon (Duke), Jared Jeffries (Indiana), Arthur Johnson (Missouri) and Darius Rice (Miami) went through growing pains last year. Now they're ready to step out. Finally, there's the greatest promise of all -- the promise that next March, some charming little school that's so out of the way you don't know where it is will elevate itself into the national consciousness in a way that we'll all be talking about for years. We don't know which school or schools will do it, but we'll be looking for them, beginning Friday night. The midnight hour is usually associated with an ending, the moment when the coach (the equine kind, not the Lute Olson kind) turns into a pumpkin and the princess has to go home. When that clock strikes midnight, hoopheads, it will indeed be time for us to go home. The party, however, will be just beginning. Midnight Madness Hoop ThoughtsSports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers college basketball for the magazine. His Hoop Thoughts will appear each Tuesday once the regular season begins.
| |||||||||||||||||||||
