Shot at the Title

When I was driving in this morning, Mike and Mike brought up an interesting comment before the break. They were talking about what tonight's game means to the coaches. Both guys with accomplished careers, but no titles to show for it. Does tonight put them over the top?

Coach Calapari has had a great career in college basketball. He's won a LOT of games. So too has Coach Self. But who really cares about either of them if they don't have a title?

Greenie then posed the question, who right now are the top five coaches in college hoops, and while they were at break i was thinking about who I'd have in there. After about two minutes, it was really pretty easy: K, Roy Williams, Jim Calhoun, Billy Donovan and Pitino. After that I had a couple of 1A's, not myself, Pace and Pat Kelley in Bob Daman's eyes, but Izzo and Jim Boehim, then the hot coaches like Ben Howland, Thad Matta and probably Calapari and Self. What do the first seven guys have? Right.

So what does the regular season mean? I mean, Jim Boeheim has how many wins? A million? I guarantee you he would trade every one of those wins for another ring. I don't even think there's an argument. Great regular seasons solidify keeping your job for a while in most places minus UCLA basketball, Notre Dame football, and the New York Yankees. But when it comes down to it, in every other sport other than the three listed, what does the regular season really mean?

In college basketball, you can make the tourney if you're a big program every year. Look at Arizona this year. Even UConn had a terrible start but had the athletes to scavenge for a four spot. In the NBA, you make the playoffs with a losing record in the East. In hockey, the bottom three teams in each conference that make it are usually pretty bad unless they get a hot goalie at the last second.

Even in college basketball, the only thing that really matters is what your perceived ranking is at the end of the year. Example. RPI means nothing. Who had the #1 RPI? Tennessee. What are we doing now? Hoping Memphis wins tonight so we can tell everyone that we were the -1 in their record. RPI only means something if you are in the 50-60's and your fighting for an at large big, that means nothing because you'll be lucky to get out of the first round anyway. And if you do, have fun playing UNC in the second.

If the regular season really meant anything to anyone, people would still be talking about the 16-0 New England Patriots. A great accomplishment. Didn't win the big one. No one cares. Years later when we're talking about Super Bowl champions, we'll probably say, "2008 New York Giants. Oh yeah, that was the year the Pats were undefeated going in and blew it." They're an afterthought and now always will be. Dusty Baker is always referred to as one of the best managers in baseball. I mean, he's good at...having Barry Bonds almost win him a Series against a team that was better and had a superior coach. But again, an afterthought.

So what's really the point of a great regular season? Regular seasons are only very important in a number of sports: baseball, NFL, college football. The first two because of how difficult it is to get into the post season given the few spots and college football because you can go 9-3, win a conference title, but still end up at best 5th in the country. But with the title comes immortality. You're a legend. A coach that wins a title is one of how many in D1 history? That's a strong fraternity. There are a lot of good coaches out there. But to be great, and be a legend, you have to have a title. Period. And with that, you have great regular seasons. You get the wins. You win as many games as the great ones do, you're going to get your big one. Tonight, two guys have a shot at legendary status. I like Cal.