After wins against Eastern Kentucky, Old Dominion, the Washington Mystics and the Connecticut Sun, the Badgers find themselves off to a 4-0 start in 2005 season. UW takes its unblemished record into Winston-Salem, N.C., tonight to (as far as I'm concerned) kick off the regular season against 24th-ranked Wake Forest in the seventh annual Big Ten-ACC Challenge.
Wisconsin's run in this year's NCAA tournament will depend on their performance against'and demystification of'the elite teams in the elite conferences. After all, that's who the Badgers have to beat in March. A road to the Elite Eight through Northern Iowa, Bucknell and North Carolina State is a lot like dying or seeing Haley's Comet: it only happens once in a lifetime.
If you a) live in Palm Beach County and got tricked into voting for Pat Buchanan or b) drink 'Ensure' then you probably think the Pac-10 is the elite conference. They lead in national titles with 15. But that was decades ago. Thanks to Mike (highest scoring Scrabble surname since ... never) Krzyzewski, Lefty Dreisell, Dean Smith and Michael Jordan, the Atlantic Coast Conference has been the most dominant and significant conference in the last 25 years. And you know what? The Big Ten is close behind. You could even argue it's ahead.
In previous years, Big Ten representation in the NBA's lottery has been noticeably scant while the ACC's has been noticeably large. Fortunately for the Big Ten, eventual NBA talent is no longer an accurate measure of a conference's excellence. This is, of course, because the NBA's three best active players'Kobe, LeBron and Amare'never played a college game.
So what is the most effective way to determine the legitimacy of a conference? You'd have to say tournament success. In football, nobody really remembers non-BCS bowl wins. They remember who won the rivalry game. In basketball, it's the complete opposite. A 25-win regular season means nothing if it precedes a first-round exit.
Did you know that since 1990 the Big Ten has officially sent five different teams to the Final Four, leading all other conferences? While the most die-hard Big Ten fans (or stock-holders) might act like they knew that'kind of like when someone told you 'A Tribe Called Quest' wasn't just a tribe called 'Quest''they probably didn't. What makes that even more impressive is that the NCAA only acknowledges Michigan State, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio State and Wisconsin. Do you notice a glaring omission? Because there is one: the coolest starting five in history. Apparently Michigan's Fab Five was never assembled. Crooked boosters can't change the fact that I cried when Webber called timeout.
So they've sent six different schools to the Final Four compared to the ACC's four. The Big Ten has also sent two teams to the Final Four in the same year four times since 1992'no other conference has even accomplished this feat twice in that span.
Big Ten basketball has ridden its hard-nosed, blue-collar (and any other euphemism you can think of for the combination of underwhelming talent and overwhelming work ethic) style of play to 10 national championships, which is second only to the Pac Ten. Big Ten teams have also accounted for 39 Final Four appearances (the most of any conference; ACC is second with 28) as well as the most NCAA tournament appearances with 172 (again, the ACC is second with 156).
This means that the Big Ten-ACC pairing, which has agreed to continue its partnership through 2010, features perhaps some of the most intriguing pre-March match-ups. The other four major conferences may field some contenders (and I still say the Big 12 produces this year's champion) but it's been the cream of the Big Ten and ACC crop that has consistently risen when the games count most.
The ACC can recruit and the Big Ten can coach. The ACC has flair and the Big Ten has faculty. The contrasting styles of play might be poetically reduced to the color of their respective collars or the stereotype of the region they call home'but it certainly seems primitive to do. Why say one style of play (which is derived from one region of the country) is any better than another, when history tells us the two different styles are equal?
I'll tell you why. You see, kids, the whole point of sports isn't to learn sportsmanship or teamwork'it's to be the best. And when it comes to college basketball, that's what the Big Ten is. Though it sure is boring. If only we could step up the tempo and at least play a little bit like they do out east. I mean have you seen how well the Mystics move the ball on the break?
Me neither.
