WS Chronicle

The start of the 2018-19 college basketball season has been better than advertised thus far for me. With the Duke Blue Devils bringing in the top three recruits in the nation, the thought was they would run right through the season, but that hasn’t been the case.

Zion Williamson, R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish have been everything we expected from the talented trio from Duke, but the other teams in the nation don’t seem to fear them. The Blue Devils are 14-2 on the year, at the time this article was written, and teams are not backing down from them which is making for a great conclusion to the regular season.

I am glad that the season has unfolded this way. Duke still has one of the best teams in the country, but there are several other teams that could bring home the 2019 championship. Virginia, Tennessee, Gonzaga, Michigan and Kansas are all top tier teams in the country that could win it all.

This is one of the best aspects of college basketball, the unknown. Unlike the NBA, where barring injury, the Golden State Warriors are the betting favorite to win it all, in college basketball it seems that anything is possible.

I was worried that this season would turn out to be a foregone conclusion with Duke going wire to wire, destroying everyone in their path. I just didn’t give the other schools enough credit to think they would put up such a good fight.

Surprisingly enough, so far this season, the best team that I have had the pleasure of watching is not the Duke Blue Devils, but instead the Michigan Wolverines. Michigan has defeated Villanova, Indiana and UNC, so far. They look to be the most complete team in the nation that doesn’t seem to have many weaknesses.

The non-conference part of a team’s schedule is one part of a season, but everyone knows when conference play starts, that’s when the real season begins. Things get a bit more unpredictable during conference play due to the familiarity of the teams and especially the head coaches.

Conference play always separates the pretenders from the contenders. We should have a clear idea of the four or five teams that are championship material by the time the conference tournaments begin.

As we have seen time and time again, the NCAA tournament is probably the most unpredictable sporting event we have today.  We just saw Virginia lose as a Number One seed last year, so nothing is guaranteed.

I can’t wait to see where all the teams are seeded in the Big Dance. I hope this season continues to give us more unpredictable finishes and maybe even an unexpected champion that we never saw coming.