MORGANTOWN — Anyone who wants to analyze what West Virginia’s 62-60 victory against Cincinnati on Tuesday night means in the grand scheme of things, good luck.
You’d likely have a better shot at winning the lottery or curing cancer.
To WVU head coach Ross Hodge’s credit, he kept it pretty simple.
“Obviously, when you win a game like that, I think the first thing that just kind of comes to mind is just that you feel really fortunate,” Hodge said.
There is a ton of fortune and misfortune looming around college athletics these days, which brings us to one very simple point. Yes, there are a number of shortcomings when it comes to this WVU men’s basketball team, areas in which the Mountaineers (10-5, 1-1 Big 12) can be exploited and exposed.
Their next opponent on Saturday is one you may know, No. 22 Kansas, one of the most historical and tradition-filled names in the game. And if the people in Lawrence, Kan., were being completely honest today, they would agree there are probably just as many dissenting critiques that could be shot at the Jayhawks (11-4, 1-1) as there are with Hodge’s bunch.
Or maybe you didn’t hear UCF already beat the Jayhawks. TCU should have, too, on Tuesday.
You can add No. 1 Arizona to that list. No. 2 Michigan has holes. No. 3 Iowa State is not stocked with future NBA talent, and so on.
Whoever goes on to win the national championship this season won’t be hailed as one of those generational teams that needs to be remembered, it will instead simply be the one with the least amount of imperfections.
So long gone are the days of Phi Slama Jama. Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon are not walking through that door. The greatest team college basketball has produced over the last 25 years – the 2014-15 Kentucky squad – lost in the Final Four against Wisconsin of all teams.
There is no sticker shock or a sense of awe anymore in a team having the nation’s top-ranked player or soon-to-be No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, which the Jayhawks just may have in guard Darryn Peterson.
Why? Because the talent gap between the elite 5-star player and your average 3-star guy is probably the smallest it’s ever been. It’s been gradually shrinking, honestly, ever since the Fab Five all exited Michigan.
Maybe it was WVU center Harlan Obioha who put it best a couple of weeks ago when giving his opinion about competing in the Big 12.
“There is going to be a lot of outside noise playing in the Big 12,” WVU’s 7-footer began. “You’re probably going to have the top two draft picks, and there is going to be a lot of talk about that. Us, as a team, that isn’t going to keep us up at night. We came in here with a chip on our shoulders. We knew no one thought we could win this conference coming in here.
“We all have the same mindset and mission and chip on our shoulder. They wake up just like we do. They don’t have anything we don’t have.”
In 2014, Kansas arrived in Morgantown with future NBA All-Star Andrew Wiggins, who scored 41 points. WVU still won and put up 92 points in doing so.
When this Saturday rolls around, it will mark 1,038 days since Kansas’ last victory against the Mountaineers. That isn’t just some random stat. That’s a sign of how much parity has taken over the game of college basketball in the Power Conference leagues, because everyone has good players, even if they’re not all 5-star guys or projected lottery picks.
Today’s top echelon hoops players, sure, they might run a little faster. They may throw up a little more weight on the bench press than the top players who came before them.
They aren’t playing the game any better. They aren’t scoring, rebounding or shooting the ball any better. They may grab the headlines, but they certainly don’t dominate the college game like they used to.
And so, you may wonder how a WVU team with any number of shortcomings can hang with the likes of Kansas. It’s a fair thought, but is it crazy to not ask that exact same question of the Jayhawks?
