The AP 25

I have two middle names.
It’s a long story. Well, it’s not actually a long story, just a boring one. Anyway, my full name is Christopher Arthur Peter Chase. Back when I wrote for my middle school newspaper I made a point of writing “Christopher A.P. Chase” as my byline and this led to the inevitable nickname of AP. It never really caught on except with a guy one year ahead of me in school who, to this day, will still give me the “AAAAAAAAAA PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP” treatment whenever I run into him. So, in honor of Heltz and The Churchill Observer, I present the first AP 25.

1) Duke is the best team in college basketball. They will not win the National Championship. The Blue Devils are far too dependent on J.J. Redick and will have a difficult time winning five games against top competition because of that. Shelden Williams might have a 25-15 day against a small team but The Slumlord is notorious for getting shutdown by similarly sized opponents like the one’s he’ll see if Duke plays the UConn’s and Texas’ of the world. Williams defense has been atrocious this season, as I’ve detailed many times before, and he simply can’t be counted on to perform well in big games.
Georgetown provided the template for how to beat Duke; guard Redick with a taller, more athletic defender and don’t let anybody else beat you. So far only the Hoyas have knocked off the Dukies, but teams like Virginia Tech, Boston College and Florida State have all been close.
For as great as he is, it’s too much to assume Redick can give Duke five great games in the Tournament against top-notch competition. He’s bound to have an off-night (as he did against Georgia Tech Wednesday night) and good teams will capitalize on it. Hell, a bad team almost did.
Without a solid third scoring threat, Duke will be in dire straits if Redick is cold or has a quick defender on him.
Make no mistake, the Blue Devils are a one-man team. If that man has an off-night, the Dukies will make a quick exit come March.

2) I’ve been on the Villanova bandwagon since last season and won’t be getting off any time soon. Guard-play wins championships and ‘Nova has the best set in the nation. Allen Ray and Randy Foye are excellent on both ends of the court and, unlike Duke, the Cats have four scorers who can light it up in any given game. If Foye is having an off-night, Mike Nardi can easily drop 20. If Nardi’s cold, Kyle Lowry can pick up the slack.
Villanova has been battle-tested this season, learning how to win close games in the brutal Big East. Being a veteran team doesn’t hurt either.
In the past two seasons the Cats have lost 10 games. With the exception of a 15-point loss at Syracuse last year, their other nine losses have come by a total of 25 points. Conversely, Texas lost by 21 points to Oklahoma State on Sunday. If not for a bogus traveling call against Carolina in last year’s Sweet 16, the Cats would have been one win away from the Final Four.
Everything feels right about this Villanova team. I think they’re the team to beat.

3) Note to Dick Vitale: J.J. Redick stayed at Duke for his senior season because he would have been a late first-round pick, at best, not because he wanted to stay true to the NCAAs student-athlete ideal. Vitale always does this; he automatically assumes any player who stays for his senior season does so for reasons other than necessity. Redick made a practical decision: He could have gone pro after his junior season, and possibly gotten a non-guaranteed contract as a second round pick, or he could come back, improve his game and move himself into the top-half of the first-round (where he should go; if he doesn’t NBA execs are even dumber than I imagined). This is not to say Redick’s return was all about draft position, but let’s not turn him into a martyr for making the only logical decision he was presented with.

4) Redick, and not Adam Morrison, is the National Player of the Year. Morrison’s awesome but Redick is better against better competition.

5) My dislike of Skip Prosser is well-known to readers of this site. So it might come as a surprise to many that I don’t think Prosser should be fired after this season, as many have suggested. Prosser is a terrible coach and the fact that he couldn’t get into the Sweet 16 with Chris Paul running the show is proof of this. Wake has peaked under him and can only go downhill from here. But, again, he shouldn’t be fired.
Wake Forest is one of the most difficult places to win in the country. They play on Tobacco Road and have to compete with Duke, UNC and NC State for recruits. They play in the best basketball conference in the country and generally adhere to rigorous academic standards for admission. The campus is small, the enrollment is smaller (the smallest among BCS-conference schools) and the basketball history is nearly non-existent. It helps that Wake has Tim Duncan and Chris Paul starring in the NBA (as well as Josh Howard. According to John Hollinger’s PER ratings, Wake has three of the top 29 players in the league. No other college has more than one player listed that highly), but Wake isn’t exactly at the top of most recruits wish-lists. Yet Prosser has made the school a destination. He won a regular season title, had the second-best start for a coach in conference history and helped invigorate Winston-Salem enough that Lawrence Joel Coliseum was totally sold out for the season before a game was played for the first time in history. So for Prosser to be fired after one bad season despite all the good he has done for the University sets a terrible precedent and would likely make prospective coaches very wary of going to Wake Forest. “If Ron Wellman got rid of Skip Prosser after winning a regular season title, leading two teams to #2 seeds in the Tournament, getting the school their first #1 ranking in history and recruiting the best point guard prospect since Isiah Thomas,” they’ll say, “what would I have to do in order to keep my job?”
That being said, I hope Skip Prosser bolts to Cincinnati and makes this a moot point. My health can’t deal with another season of inept offense and non-existent defense.

6) Beware of Tennessee. Or should I say, be wary of Tennessee. Bruce Pearl is a great coach and will turn the Volunteers into perennial contenders. But this year they’re winning with smoke and mirrors in a terrible SEC. Beating Florida twice might look nice, but the Gators are as overrated as Coldplay.
In Ken Pomeroy’s defensive efficiency stats, Tennessee ranks 77th in the nation. This is as big a red flag as there is in college basketball. (Last year some highly ranked teams with poor efficiency ratings were Wake Forest (#76, second round exit), Gonzaga (119, second round exit) and Washington (#1 seed, #58 rating, sweet 16 exit). These are not coincidences. Of course, West Virginia had a DER of 119 and almost made the Final Four.)

7) George Washington is a mystery, but to knock them for not beating down on A-10 competition, as some have done, is quite spurious. (I read something earlier today that said as much, but now can’t remember where it was, hence the lack of link.) Intraconference competition is difficult for every good team. Duke needed a prayer buzzer beater at home to beat Virginia Tech and got bailouts from the refs against FSU and Boston College. Those results take nothing away from the Blue Devils success. Every team in the ACC looks ahead to that game and gives Duke their best effort. It’s the same thing with GW this year in the A-10. The lesser teams in that conference, the Xaviers, the St. Joes, the LaSalles, have been gunning for George Washington. Beating the Colonials is a chance for those teams to get some love on the national stage. And GW, to their credit, has stayed undefeated in the conference. Only Duke, Bucknell, Gonzaga and Memphis have made it through their conference season with an unblemished mark and each have it just as difficult (with the possible exception of Memphis because Conference USA is simply terrible.) GW will drop one soon though; the loss of Pops Mensah-Bonsu is a killer. The Colonials would be wise to rest him until the NCAAs. There’s no use in rushing him back for the A-10 Tournament.

8) Very quietly, Florida has lost three of five and five of their last ten. One month ago people were touting them as a possible #1 seed. Now a #5 seed looks more realistic. (Back in January I predicted an even lower seed for UF: “In March, when Florida is a #6 seed and gets upset by Old Dominion in the first round, people are going to wonder how the hell the Gators ever got to be ranked #2 in the nation.”) The Gators marquee wins from the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament look a lot less special now. Beating Wake Forest and Syracuse seemed great in November but… not so much anymore.

9) Today it seems like there’s only three teams that have a realistic shot of winning the National Championship: Duke, Villanova and Connecticut. Memphis hasn’t played a good team since December, Gonzaga always flames out and can’t rely on Morrison so heavily, championship teams don’t get blown out like Texas does and everyone else is just too damn streaky.
In recent memory only the 2003 Tournament was like this year is shaping up to be. Going into that Dance, everyone had either Kentucky or Arizona winning and everybody else was an afterthought. Of course, neither of those teams made the Final Four and Syracuse ended up winning on the strength of Carmelo Anthony. The moral of the story: The fewer great teams in an NCAA Tournament puts a whole bunch of teams in the mix. Conversely, if there are six or seven teams everyone is talking about, then the winner usually comes from those six or seven teams. I'm still going to pick Villanova, but don't be surprised if a team comes from out of the blue to win the whole thing.

10) Not having home-and-home matchups anymore in the ACC is just so damn sad and hurts the conference in so many ways. I get upset just thinking about it, so I’ll move on.

11) Rock Chalk Jayhawk! Behind freshman Brandon Rush, Kansas is amazingly tied for the lead in the Big 12 and could move into the top spot outright with a win over Texas this weekend.
On January 17 the Jayhawks were 10-6 overall and had lost back-to-back games against Colorado and Kansas State. Their season appeared over. Four wins later the Jayhawks were down 16 at home to Oklahoma before a furious comeback gave them a one-point win. They’ve rolled to five more victories since then (for ten overall) in a run that took them from receiving no votes in the AP poll to a #16 ranking one month later. Nobody wants to face Bill Self’s team come March.

12) Tyler Hansbrough is unstoppable and deserves every Freshman of the Year award out there, but Brandon Rush has been fantastic at Kansas and is getting about 1/10th of the pub.

13) If the Tournament committee has any sense (a big if, mind you) George Mason’s loss last night to Hofstra shouldn’t affect their Tournament status. Hofstra is 21-5 and has a 19-game home winning streak. To penalize Mason for a road loss to their conference’s second-best team would be unconscionable.

14) Maryland’s 2002 recruiting class sure didn’t turn out like Gary Williams expected. McDonald’s All-American Travis Garrison was an unqualified bust, Nik Caner-Medley’s game stayed stagnant during his four seasons as a Terp and Williams’ heralded backcourt of John Gilchrist and Chris McCray isn’t even on the team anymore.
Big things were expected out of the first Maryland class to follow the NCAA Tournament champs and they never delivered. It’s rare that a National Champion fails to make the Tournament four seasons after winning (when a completely new team is on the floor). Many programs fall a bit in the immediate years following their titles but almost always reload by the time their first post-championship class are seniors. The last school to win the Tournament and miss it four years later was, surprisingly, Duke. After winning with Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill in 1992, the Blue Devils missed the Tournament in 1996 with a similarly lackluster class that included the infamous Greg Newton and Carmen Wallace. (That’s also the year Coach K abandoned the team and left Pete Gaudet to struggle through the Devils worst season since the late ‘70s. You know, for a guy who went to West Point Coach K is sure… Alright, you’ve heard that one before.)

15) To me, watching Big Ten basketball is sort of like watching paint wait in line at the DMV. Yet there’s something unavoidable about any game that Brent Musberger is announcing. I swear, that man could call paint waiting in line at the DMV and I’d watch.

16) Everyone criticizes the BCS rankings and rightfully so. But why do we accept the RPI as gospel? Look at those rankings sometime, they’re ridiculous. Wisconsin is ahead of Illinois. Missouri St. is ahead of Georgetown. Creighton is ahead of West Virginia. Bradley is ahead of Kansas. Indiana is ahead of Hofstra. I mean, there’s no good way to rank these teams, but how can you trust something that says a ten-loss Arizona team is better than a one-loss George Washington one?

17) No need to explain why George Washington is rated so low. I see their 324th ranked non-conference strength of schedule. But still. Arizona is just terrible.

18) Wake Forest has an RPI of 104. Among the schools ranked ahead of them: Samford, Winthrop, South Alabama, Murray State, Montana and Houston. Man, that’s depressing.

19) The Wolfman once picked Southern Illinois to go to the Elite Eight.

20) What kind of tool do you have to be to get Bible verses tattooed on your body. Oh. And why am I not surprised he has an Asian character tattoo. What an unoriginal bastard. For somebody who the press always makes out to be an intellectual and a free thinker, Redick has sure chosen the most conventional (and clichéd) ways to express himself.

21) I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: The NCAA needs to change the rule that allows players to call timeout as they’re jumping out of bounds. Frankly, I’d support a rule that says a timeout can never be called when possession is in question, but baby steps.

22) How did Connecticut get two first-place votes in the coaches poll while Villanova, fresh off a victory over the Huskies, received zero? Normally I’d go on a rant about the worthlessness of the coach’s poll, but in the AP rankings UConn got four first-place votes while ‘Nova nabbed just three. In a word: Whaaaaaa?!

23) I like GW (#6) and dislike Texas (#7), but there’s no way the Colonials are a better team than the Longhorns.

24) I forgot to mention this back in November, but me and my Jake Plummer petition were featured in the aforementioned Churchill Observer in an excellent article written by Greg Reutershan, a Churchill sophomore I’ve known for years through swimming. Keep up the good work, Greg. And my bad if you're not a sophomore.

25) If everything goes according to plan, I’m going to be an uncle on March 7. Here’s hoping my niece will bring the Deacs some much-needed good luck in the ACC Tournament.