nate jonesacc Wrote:Terpy Wrote:Would someone please explain why a sweet 16 team which lost their leading scorer is the number 2 team in the country?
It doesnt make any sense to me.
Because everyone else did much worse than that... Duke also got by far the best college bound prospect... getting rid of Dahntay will hurt... but not as much as you might expect... and the fact that ALL Duke lost was Dahntay is why they are #2... I believe that right now Duke is #1... The fact that UConn struggled with YALE AT HOME last night is pretty pathetic.
Of the sweet 16 teams from last year...
Kentucky lost 3 impact players and are ranked 9 this season*
Wisconsin lost 1 impact player and are ranked 14
Marquette lost 2 impact players and are ranked 23*
Pittsburgh lost 3 impact players and are ranked 22
Arizona lost 3 impact players and are ranked 4*
Notre Dame lost 2 impact players and are ranked 19
Duke lost 2 impact players and are ranked 2
Kansas lost 2 impact players and are ranked 5*
Texas lost 1 impact player and are ranked 11*
UConn lost 1 impact player are ranked 1
Maryland lost 4 impact players and are ranked 25
Michigan St. lost 2 impact players and are ranked 3*
Oklahoma lost 3 impact players and are ranked 15*
Butler lost 4 impact players and are not ranked
Syracuse lost 2 impact players and are ranked 7*
Auburn lost 2 impact players and are not ranked
The teams with the asterick advanced to the next round (ie further than Duke).
Of the sweet 16 teams 10 lost the same number of "impact players" as Duke.
Only one of these teams is ranked ahead of Duke, UConn (also predicted to go undefeated this year :rolleyes: ) The difference is the Huskies did not lose their leading scorer from last season.
Now there are another few teams I would like to point out who are in a very similar situation as the Dukies...
Wisconsin much like Duke lost their best player from the previous season, they also got a very heralded recruit in Brian Butch. Now, before you *****, I know that Brian Butch is no where near as good as Deng is supposed to be but Wisconsin returns all but one player from a team which accomplshed the exact same thing as Duke did last season.
The next team would be Michigan St., they actually went further in the tournament than Duke did last season, and return a lot of very talented players. Michigan St. also landed a heralded recruit in Shannon Brown.
I see no reason why Duke should be ranked ahead of Michigan State. Michigan State has just as much talent than Duke at every position other than point guard and maybe the 3 depending on how good Deng turns out to be.
There is no doubt that Deng is a good player but is he really good enough to turn a sweet 16 team into an undefeated National Champion?
I think not.
Other than Carmello I cannot think of a single player in recent memor who has been able to have that much of an impact on a team all by himself.
If Deng is really as good as Carmello he would be in the NBA right now.