Several news outlets this morning are reporting the massive college basketball upset that occurred last night: Un-ranked Michigan took down #4 UCLA at the Garden.
I don't buy it.
It comes back to the point I made a while back about college football. Preseason rankings mean absolutely nothing. They only take into account so-called "expert opinions" about teams that for the most part have never played all together. With the turnover in college sports, especially basketball, it's impossible to predict the cohesion of teams year in and year out. Therefore, we have all the early season "upsets" of teams that shouldn't have been ranked that high to begin with.
Who says Michigan over UCLA is such a big upset? If you want to base on the past few years- sure, huge upset. But I am talking about this year. And who knows just how good either one of these teams are? Now if in month UCLA is 9-1 and Michigan 2-9, sure- looks like a big upset. But I am not sure any game this early in the season deserves to called a "stunning upset" - short of a 1AA opponent conquering a division 1A foe. I just don't buy it.
As I said with college football, a lot of this could amended if they just do away with preseason rankings. Wait about 4 or 5 weeks into the season, and then vote based on where the teams stand at that point. At least with college basketball, there is a tournament at the end of the year, so ranking aren't truly the be-all and end-all, but it is still stupid to me- born of media hype and TV ratings.
Let them play. Let the players decide for us who are the contenders and pretenders.
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