Parity has best teams on edge

LAWRENCE, Kan. – The season was barely a week old when Michigan State lost to Kentucky in the Champions Classic, a defeat of the nation’s No. 1 team that could be written off easily as a highprofile battle of heavyweights on a neutral court early in the season that didn’t go the Spartans’ way.

Then the Wildcats rose to No. 1 and lost to Evansville. Duke took over and lost to Stephen F. Austin. Louisville climbed to No. 1 and fell to Texas Tech. Kansas ascended to the top spot and lost at Villanova.

Good luck finding excuses for all those losses, other than perhaps this one: There is a parity party in college basketball this season unlike any in recent memory, and not even the bluest of the blue bloods is safe.

“Yeah, I hesitate to talk about ‘best team’ right now,” said Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann, whose own team climbed to No. 3 before losing three of its last five, including back-to-back games last week. “Who really knows?” Indeed, who knows?

The Buckeyes’ loss to unranked Wisconsin on Friday night was merely one eyebrow raiser in a week that showed that those early losses by No. 1 teams were merely the start of season-long upheaval. Fourth-ranked Oregon lost to Colorado, while Saturday brought losses by No. 9 Memphis and No. 10 Villanova – all to unranked opponents.

Asked whether the Buffaloes’ win in their Pac-12 opener meant more because of the Ducks’ lofty perch in the Top 25, coach Tad Boyle eschewed coach talk for a more candid response: “I think it does to our team.”

“But again, we’re 1-0 in league play. We’re not 2-0. We’re not 1-and-a-halfand-0. We’re 1-0. It’s one game,” Boyle added. “I know the national ranking and the Ducks have a lot of respect nationally, so I knew our players would be ready for that. These are the games you don’t have to get your guys up for and ready.”

That might offer a starting point in explaining an avalanche of upsets this season. But the quaint notion of the plucky underdog rising to the challenge has existed since the earliest of time – think David striking down Goliath, or the fall of the Roman Empire. And such upsets always left a mark on college basketball, whether it was North Carolina State winning the 1983 national title or UMBC pulling off the first 16-1 upset in the NCAA Tournament by beating Virginia.

So what else could be behind the rise of the unranked? The stumbles of the superpowers?

For one thing, talent is spread more evenly across college basketball. The top three prospects in last year’s recruiting class committed not to Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina but to Memphis (James Wiseman), Washington (Isaiah Stewart) and Georgia (Anthony Edwards). Other offthe-radar programs that landed top-100 recruits included LSU (Trendon Watford), DePaul (Romeo Weems), Massachusetts (Tre Mitchell) and even Harvard (Chris Ledlum).

There are reasons for that, too. But the biggest may be that while playing at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Rupp Arena or Allen Fieldhouse will always have cachet, and big-name programs typically have better facilities, larger fan bases and far more resources, many prospects would rather play major minutes right away than enjoy other baubles.

Even if the best of the best – the top guns, if you will – still gravitate toward big-name programs, their ceiling isn’t a whole lot higher than prospects ranked well outside the top 100.