One reason should suffice to care about college hoops, and it’s this: NCAA basketball betting. Notwithstanding that, ESPN Staff Writer Myron Medcalf went ahead and found other 25 reasons to not wait until March. A lot of it involves left-field stuff including “Earl at the barbershop and Tommy at the bar,” the Providence Friar mascot, Bill Walton in a tie-dye shirt, Miles Bridge hitting his head on a rim, Bobby Hurley yelling on campus like a homeless drifter, and lyrics from a song by Blake Shelton.
Don’t get us wrong, though; we love reading and producing content-free fluff almost as much as we love NCAA basketball betting – which you can do at this here sportsbook. However, Master Medcalf does make other, more interesting, and dare we say it, bold points. For example, he says that “we all picked Duke to win the title … and we’re wrong.” Including ESPN panel of 31 experts, of which 21 picked the Duke Blue Devils to win the national championship. As Medcalf points out, some of the best Duke teams in the past two decades did not win the championship, and the Blue Devils have not gone beyond the Sweet 16 the last three times (we also have a cousin who had like three Sweet 16 parties; the richer side of the family, see). However, Medcalf does concede that Mike Krzyzewski’s team is at least better than John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats.
Speaking of things that begin with the letter key, the Kansas Jayhawks have won 12 straight Big 12 titles, and if they win a 13th they will change the name of the conference to Big 13. Well, maybe not that last part, but it would match the UCLA Bruins’ record. And this is something that the aforementioned “Earl at the barbershop and Tommy at the bar” don’t care about/can’t remember because of Lil’ Jon, somehow.
On the rulebook side of things, a new rule allows coaches to call timeouts on inbound plays, and thus help “stranded players in critical predicaments,” because before this rule such players would be trapped in an inbound limbo/phantom zone kind of deal. In addition to that, coaches might begin to push for an NBA-style 24-second shot clock like they demanded and received a 30-second one. Though that would be more of a reason to be excited about next season or whenever that becomes effective if indeed it ever does. But here’s hoping.
There is some other stuff, let’s see, Villanova, Louisville, Jay Wright, Nigel Hayes, UCLA, the fact is if you’re a fan of college basketball you need no encouragement to start watching almost literally right now. If you’re not, then you’ll wait until March like most casual sportsball fans wait for the postseason. And if you’re gambling man, there probably is never any offseason for you, and you just switch from MLB to NCAA basketball betting while not taking an eye off college football or the NFL for a single solitary second.