We Have Seen This Kind of Thing Before. The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is beginning to look an awful lot like the NFL in the early 1990s.  Back then, you just knew that one of a handful of teams was going to taking home the hardware every year:  San Francisco, Any Team in the NFC East Not Named Philly or Phoenix (read HERE for more info), Green Bay, Buffalo, Houston or Pittsburgh.  They were the teams that had the best chance to win because they spent the most money.  Well, it’s kind of like that in college hoops right now…in fact, it has been that way for a good long time.  In fact, let’s look at the most valuable college basketball programs, according to Forbes Magazine.

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First of all, thanks to John Calipari pulling a Brett Favre for a couple of days, I had to delay this blog post.  As any of you regular readers know, I am a huge fan of the “Random Thoughts” format, as that ensures that I only need to come up with a paragraph or two for each subject, instead of a whole post.  Truth be told, there are at least a couple of things that should warrant their own post, and when appropriate, I have so designated within this post.

Without further ado, here are the random thoughts:

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I saw Tom Crean speak at something called a “Power Breakfast” last week in Indy.  In case anyone does not know yet, he is the genuine article. 

Here’s the thing that struck me the most about his speech — I believed just about everything he was saying.  I believed him when he made no bones about this being a rebuilding year for the Hoosiers.  I also believed him when he said that he had lots of good players, and just because we have not heard of them before, we should not assume that they are going to lose every game.  I also believed him when he said that they might just have the right combination of youth and talent to surprise some people.

Well, the Hoosiers are on their way to Maui and they might just win a game or two.  There are virtually no expectations at all on this team, they are young, they have a top notch coach, and they have nothing to lose…as in, nothing at all.  Do not be surprised if they win a game or two in Maui this weekend and shock some people.

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Indiana University finally got their man when they hired Tom Crean.  All things considered, he was the absolute best they could do under the circumstances.  I originally thought that the “blue ribbon” panel was looking at the wrong level…if you want to send a message that you are a top 5 program, get a top 5 coach.  Seriously, my original opinion was that they should have a short list that included basically 6 of the coaches in the Elite 8 (all except Rick Barnes from Texas, who could not make it to the Sweet 16 with Kevin Durant and D.J. Augustin…start-to-finish the worst coaching performance I have ever seen, and Bob McKillop of Davidson who wasted 4 months of his team’s effort by not even calling a play at the end of the game against Kansas), Tom Izzo, Jamie Dixon and Billy Donovan. 

Well, that was my original thought…until I started trying to envision Rick Pitino fielding that call from the “blue ribbon” panel…wait, I can’t do that anymore.  I will just refer to that august group for the rest of this article as the League of Buffoons.  Sure, they made a good hire, but if history is any reminder, then I have just offended buffoons everywhere. 
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