The recent USA Today/ESPN preseason college basketball polls show that Duke is ranked #7 while the Tar Heels is ranked #14. I was really surprised to find out about this since Duke has lost all of their star players from last season namely JJ Redick and Shelden Williams while North Carolina will lose one player only and that player didn't even matter. Furthermore, North Carolina has better recruits than Duke this coming year. Good thing Lance Thomas chose Duke. That narrowed the talent gap between the recruits of both schools.
But from my observation over the past few years, preseason polls tend to minimize the strength of the incoming recruits of any school. Instead, they factor in more on the previous season's performance and how many major talents are leaving the school. That is why Florida and UCLA are ranked 1 and 2 respectively while George Mason (sweet ol' George Mason) is ahead of North Carolina at 8. Of course, this is not a law and there will be deviations from it.
One thing that I'm excited is how Ohio St. will perform this coming season. Even early last year, sports analysts have been quick to predict that their batch of recruits led by Greg Oden and Mike Conley will probably be one of the best ever, if not the best. Could this be another season where a freshman will lead his team to the national championship just like what Carmelo Anthony did with Syracuse a few seasons ago? Only time will tell.
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The beauty of basketball is shown by the Detroit Pistons, The Chicago Bulls and to a certain extent, the Purefoods TJ Hotdogs. These teams doesn't have any certified top-5 or even top-10 players on their rosters yet they keep on winning and even making it to the finals ! Compare that to the New York Knicks that has a total player's salary that is more than double than the Charlotte Bobcats but with less wins to show. Their local counterpart? Talk n Text. Let's look at the current roster of Talk n Text: Taulava, Alapag, Washington, Cardona, Meneses, Allado, Ritualo, Juinio.
This is a certified powerhouse team. They even have one import in Taulava ! Yet if i'm not mistaken, they only sport a 5-7 record in the win-loss column. What a shame ! Compare that with Purefoods that has a 9-3 record with only James Yap as their certified star (both in the basketball and showbiz world) and a team full of role players.
Buti na lang purefoods ako simula nanood ako ng pba.
2 comments:
I don't really give a lot of weight to preseason rankings. After all, UNC was unranked preseason and look how they turned out. But you would think that people have learned by now. #14? that's a slap in the face! heh.
duke is #7? maybe it's cause they got new players from the lacrosse team
Oh, and Raja Bell and Steve Nash just won game 3 so suck on that, kobe!!!!!
Tsk tsk kawawang Eugene Tejada
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