Now that the college basketball season is over, here’s a “hidden comparison” — no, not of team resumes (that’s before Selection Sunday), but team rosters.
One team was led in every statistical category as a freshman, with three of its top four scorers in the same class. That team also boasted of nine McDonald’s All-Americans on the season-opening roster. Outside of one week early in conference play, those nine standouts tore through the season like a hot knife through butter.
The second team started a junior, two sophomores, and a pair of freshmen. Freshmen comprised only two of this team’s top five scorers. This team also claimed nine McDonald’s All-Americans as it attempted to make history and won 38 games to start the season, while simply being better than everyone it played.
As you probably guessed, team one is the national champion Duke Blue Devils, and team two is the Kentucky Wildcats.
All you heard all season long is how Kentucky was evil and should be rooted against because the Wildcats won with one-and-done players. They are killing college basketball as we know it, everyone said. However, you never hear the same outcry about Duke doing exactly the same thing. If anything, Duke was more reliant on freshman this season than the Wildcats were.
The reason for this national double standard? The respect Mike Krzyzewski has earned. Like it or not, everything that Krzyzewski says and does is gospel in college basketball.
For example, with the Rasheed Sulaimon case, the media was in a frenzy for two or three days about Duke knowingly not reporting the case. However, Krzyzewski and the program simply said they were not going to address the matter, and the media dropped it like an anvil on Wile E. Coyote’s head.
This dynamic almost makes Krzyzewski larger than the game itself. It’s an honor he has certainly earned with hard work, but is that really a good thing for college basketball?
On a similar scale in the sport, you have to look no further than Jim Boeheim for an instructive example of what happens when a coach becomes glorified into a superhuman. Boeheim was allowed to run rampant for a decade with the Orange and did whatever he wanted. When the NCAA came knocking, he thought a one-year postseason ban would be the solution. I think not, and by dropping the hammer, the NCAA is leaving innocent players to suffer.
The even greater extreme emerged in the case of Joe Paterno in Happy Valley. He still has that entire community wrapped around his fingers. Not only that, the vacated wins were given back to him and his statue will rise again.
When this is allowed to happen, the NCAA and everyone else are powerless. I am not saying Krzyzewski is anywhere close to that kind of situation, but the larger pattern of withholding a spirit of vigorous (and appropriate) inquiry is the common thread. That lack of questioning, just because “Powerful Person X” is great at what he does and has a sterling reputation, is what we were supposed to have learned to prevent in our culture.
College athletics should bring about more vigilance — this doesn’t mean we presume that authority figures are wrong, but it DOES mean that healthy curiosity and critical inquiry are not smothered at every turn.
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While there is nothing wrong with taking one-and-done players to compete, simply because most teams are doing it, there is a clear double standard in relationship to programs, and more specifically, certain coaches. Kentucky caught the brunt of this reality, while Duke got away scot-free. It’s not as though Duke did anything wrong, mind you; it’s just that Kentucky and John Calipari received a tidal wave of criticism that was inconsistent at best, undeserved and unfair at worst.
Please national media and fans, I urge you to look at everything objectively. When you don’t, it never fails that things get ugly.
