NBA glamour slam dunks college game

Insight on the News, March 4, 1996 by Barker Davis

The college-basketball talent pool is at an all-time low as last season's poster boys play for pay.

Last spring, when the University of Maryland's All-America center Joe Smith joined a host of underclassmen declaring themselves eligible for the National Basketball Association draft, pundits predicted the college game would suffer. None could have imagined how much.

Gone are the days when Top 25 teams were loaded with superstar seniors. Today's college game is dominated by egocentric underclassmen and frustrated coaches trying to build dynasties with two-year commitments.

"Our talent pool is more diluted this year than ever before because of guys going into the NBA," says UCLA head coach Jim Harrick. "That's pretty clear when you look at who Arkansas and North Carolina could have had back this season. I'm not sure there are any teams out there as good as they would have been."

The statistics speak for themselves. Of the five teams that dominated the college game last season -- UCLA, North Carolina, UMass, Arkansas and Kentucky -- only Kentucky had a recognizable Achilles' heel: their heavy reliance on outside shooting, which burned them against North Carolina in the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament. Yet four of this year's top five have obvious weaknesses: Top-ranked UMass has no depth; No. 2 Kentucky has no dominant inside player; No. 4 Connecticut is vulnerable in the middle; and No. 5 Cincinnati lacks a strong playmaker. Only No. 3 Kansas looks solid on all fronts.

UMass unquestionably has a weaker team than last season, when it failed to reach the Final Four. Yet the Minutemen have remained undefeated despite losing last season's all-conference seniors Lou Roe and Derek Kellogg. North Carolina and Arkansas, after losing four All-Americans between them, still are on top in their conferences. Head coaches Dean Smith and Nolan Richardson look like magicians, but Richardson thinks his team's success has little to do with coaching.

"It's just an off year," he says. "We've got the best record in the SEC [Southeastern Conference] West. We didn't even win the division last year and we're leading it this year with two freshmen replacing All-Americans. The raiding of kids by the pros hurts college ball, but we'd better just get used to that. It's tough on coaches, it's a tough decision for kids to make and it's tough on the fans'"

Ironically, as college careers get shorter, the recruiting game becomes more important. Coaches have less time to develop a team, heightening the demand for talented and mature high-school recruits. "Chemistry means everything " says the University of California's head coach Todd Bozeman, who would be coaching Jason Kidd had the Dallas Mavericks' second-year guard remained in Berkeley for four years (see "Golden Bears Vs. Gold Bearers"). "It's much harder to develop good chemistry and a team concept when you only have kids for two or three years. With that in mind, recruiting becomes more important. If you don't have time to teach kids to play, you'd better get kids that know how to play before they set foot on campus."

RELATED ARTICLE: Golden Bears Vs. Gold Bearers

What's going on in Berkeley? If five games over .500 does not sound so bad, consider the talent the University of California puts on the floor every night. Pac-10 1995 Rookie of the Year Tremaine Fowlkes, junior college All-American Ed Gray and blue-chip recruit Shareef Abdur-Rahim. But head coach Todd Bozeman has not managed to shape them into a Top 25 team.

"Every night we shoot ourselves in the foot somehow," Bozeman say. "The way I look at it, though, Tremaine is only three games into his sophomore season, Shareef's a freshman and Ed is in his first season with us. Basically, we're a very young team, and we're playing like it."

The problem for Bozeman (known on campus as "Bozo" for his handling of the Golden Bears this season) is that his young team might not be around long enough to mature. fowlkes, who sat out he first semester because of academic problems, is considered the Pac-10's best NBA prospect after just one season. Gray averages 17 points a game, but he's a best-best candidate for academic casualty of the year. Abdur-Rahim, averaging 23 points and eight rebounds a game, also sorely tempts the NBA.