TAI8 wrote:Brenice wrote:TAI8 wrote:No. He sucks. I'm going to enjoy watching him fail.
First of all, let me address this. That statement is a sad reflection on you. Has he done something to you?
No, I just think he has been ridiculously overrated when he hasn't done a damn thing. He couldn't even take his team to the Final Four and he had a bunch of NBA talent playing next to him (take a look at this year's draft, how many were from Kentucky?) when Rose led his team to the national championship game and were a few seconds from winning it barring a total team free throw meltdown. When you got guys saying that he has the potential to be the best PG in the league when he hasn't done anything except horribly underperform in the tournament, then you know something is wrong. He is athletic and can jump high we know that, but there is a lot more to the PG position than that.
Rose and Wall's collegiate situations were completely different, so comparing the the team success of each player is folly. IIRC, that Memphis team made consecutive ELITE EIGHT appearances before Rose had even stepped foot on campus. He was essentially the final piece to what many considered at the time a true National Championship contender. The prodigous freshman joining a talented, veteran laden NCAA powerhouse (at the time.) That's pretty much the ideal mix in contemporary college basketball. Rose played very well during the tournament for sure, but that was a VERY good and experienced college basketball team that he was on.
The year before Wall's arrival in Kentucky, the Wildcats were a NIT team. They didn't even make the big dance. Coach Cal enters the fold, has a tremendous recruiting class, and produced immediate results. That Kentucky team was stocked with NBA caliber talent, but it was also completely inexperienced, and ridiculously young and mistake prone. It's the primary reason that so many experts where hesitant to pick UK to win it all. Talent is an important component of championship teams, but so is veteran leadership, poise and experience.
It's also ridiculous to bash someone for not winning a tournament that consists of nothing but single elimination games. The best teams ROUTINELY lose in that style of tournament. It's part of the reason they call the thing March Madness (it's also why professional leagues generally use the series format to determine their champions; without it you have results like the University of Ohio advancing over Georgetown. Northern Iowa moving on at the expense of Kansas.)
If you watched the Kentucky/West Virginia game, the entire first half was an aberration (I'm a Georgetown fan who follows the Big East very carefully.) WV was a team throughout the season that won games through their defensive tenacity and offensive rebounding prowess. They were a very average to below average jump shooting team, and that's not even taking into account their troubles from 3 point range. Bob Huggins made the remark that the reason that they coughed up so many leads in conference play was because they were a lousy shooting team. In that Elite Eight game, their first 9 baskets were 3 pointers. Kentucky did exactly what they wanted to do on both ends of the court in the first 17 minutes of the game (force WV to shoot from range and defensive rebound), and because WV shot the ball better than they had all season by a wide margin, WV was right with the Wildcats. But you know what? That type of **** happens in the tournament. To hold a loss in the Elite Eight against a Freshman pg, on a team replete with other freshman is foolish.
