Best Team Wins Mens BBall Championship
Gonzaga and Baylor were 1 - 2 all year. Michigan battled to #3, but in the end, Baylor was clearly the best.
C'mon man.
C’mon Dan.
C’mon Fan.
In other shocking news, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were named the Best Team in the NFL.
Dan does not win best post or best fan
Profound. Let's just make sure we get the point. So the winner of the national championship is the best team in the nation? Better make a thread.
Baylor just has a stable of guards and wings that can all shoot, defend, and score off the dribble. And some serious NBA bodies on a couple of them. Kispert as an All-American is a joke, and Baylor showed why. He didn't belong on the same floor as the Baylor guards/wings. Suggs was the only guy who could keep up athletically with Butler/Mitchell/Teague
Sadly, I think Michigan would have beaten that team in the semi by 5 (15 if Livers was available).
For all the Gonzaga love out there that was a 6 loss team in the B1G.
Yeah I think Gonzaga shows they don't really play good defense. We held UCLA in check and Gonzaga got in a shootout with them. Baylor last night shot awesome, but Gonzaga's defense was also kind of a joke. I think us at our best could handle Gonzaga, but I don't think we would've done well vs Baylor
Yup. They exploited Timme too. I was surprised when I first watched him given that the talk was he's one of the best players in the country. He's crafty. He's like an upper middle class man's Austin Davis though. Not that tall or strong or long or athletic. He doesn't shoot from 3. In fact the whole Gonzaga team doesn't shoot as well as from 3 as I expected. Suggs only like 33%. They've lived inside the paint, which is a lot harder against an athletic team that can stay in front of you. I figured Baylor was going to win, wasn't surprised it wasn't close either. I felt bad knowing we could have been in the title game. Felt better knowing that Baylor is a better team than Michigan, even with Livers. Of course Michigan would always have a shot in a 1-off though. But oh well.
I thought Baylor would win simply because of their defense. Their ability to stay in front of Gonzaga was phenomenal; Gonzaga frankly looked shocked in the first half that they couldn't shake defenders to get the one-on-one shots that they wanted.
Plus, on defense Gonzaga had to go zone simply because they had no way to contain Mitchell and Butler from shaking and driving past their guards. Baylor then spread it out and ran plays to get open shots at the elbow. Those shots from the elbow aren't much different than a free throw and Baylor seemed to knock almost all of them down.
Last I saw, Butler was projected at the bottom of the 1st Round of the draft. He sure helped himself.
Yeah Baylor are sort of a Michigan-like team with great defense, great ball movement, patient unselfish shot selection, but with guards that are more skilled and athletic.
I think Gonzana believed they could win in another offensive shootout, but they looked really unprepared to handle Baylor's defense.
I think their zone was the result of multiple early fouls on Suggs and Timme.
Timme did his mustache celebration on a transition dunk while down 15 points. I wanted Gonzaga to win, but I'm not mad Timme got schooled yesterday
i thought timme in particular got exposed. slow feet, unathletic, and my goodness, but did he get pushed around. he just looked physically outmatched against everyone he saw.
it's pretty easy to flex when you get to play portland and san diego every night.
I thought his offensive skill would be a factor but couldn't have been more wrong. His defense was a big reason why they lost.
His inability to deal with Baylor's bigs was evident early in the game, when Baylor ripped off one offensive rebound after another. Gonzaga looked lost and intimidated as Baylor jumped out to that big early lead.
On Timme's behalf though, he did draw a ton of fouls against Baylor's bigs. The problem was they had two tons of fouls to give and Gonzaga had only Timme. The athleticism gulf was huge though as there was no dropoff when Baylor swapped centers.
Yes, if we beat UCLA we also beat Gonzaga (because UofM is unbeatable in the F4 and Gonzaga wasn't all that) and then we lose in the championship (because UofM is the worst championship game team). It was all setting up so nicely until we missed 8 good quality shots in a row to lose by 1. Argh.
Not according to RCMB.
Can we stop referencing the mouth-breathing horde at RCMB? A lion does not concern himself with the opinions of a sheep.
Hey! Sheep >>> RCMB.
So if a sheep (MSU) is injured (ie. missed the tourney), a wolverine will eat it (next few years projection?).
"Wolverines are opportunistic; eating about anything they can find or kill. ... Throughout the year, wolverines feed on small and medium-sized animals such as voles, squirrels, snowshoe hares, and birds. In the right situations, wolverines can kill moose, Dall sheep or caribou, but these occurrences are rare."
When you go to a barber shop in Waco Is the Robert Griffin cut the most popular choice?
i think most of robert griffin's nfl cuts resulted in knee injuries.
Baylor was not 1 or 2 the *entire* year (depending on which system is used).
Simply winning a 6 round tournament doesn't necessitate being the *best* team - what if UCLA had won (they almost made it there)?
Personally, I think that beating garbage West Coast Conference competition is the true measure of greatness.
The point was not to say Gonzaga is the "best" (I also believe their weak conference schedule inflated their rankings). The point is that 1) the post-season tournament isn't a good measure of the "best" team since a team just needs to be hot at the right time (and/or lucky) to win it, yet could have been mediocre or worse in the regular season and 2) Baylor wasn't as dominant through the season as the OP claims.
They were 28-2. Other than Gonzaga, who had a better record?
And they did that in a real conference.
Simply winning a 6 round tournament doesn't necessitate being the *best* team - what if UCLA had won (they almost made it there)?
It's a false dilemma because UCLA needed to be better to win it all. They could have beaten Gonzaga, but wouldn't have beaten Baylor.
People talk about how random the tournament is, but look at the list of national champions. Not many slouches in that group. In the end it shakes out.
Again - it matters to be better (and luckier) at that point in time. How can we say that ucla wouldn't have beaten Baylor? They weren't "supposed" to beat a number of teams in the tournament, yet did (or almost did at the end). Illinois was "supposed" to be able to go all the way (and Virginia in 2018), yet floundered out early.
Winning the tournament means a team is good, but not necessarily "the best".
But the point is, this year, the best team won, which I agree isn't always the case.
If you take the entire body of work from Baylor, they were the best team in the regular season and also the best in the tournament so it just makes for a clean finish.
Michigan was right there in terms of best regular season so you could make an argument there but bottom line, Baylor was the toughest team to match up with and so that translates to best team imo.
There is a lot of parity in the college game. Maybe they should play down to the elite 8 and then switch to double elimination.
Illinois says, "make it round of 32, and you've got a deal!"
That could be fun. I've wished hockey would adopt the double elimination model for a while (not sure how practical it is there either)
I usually go to ESPN for expert analysis like this.
Interesting.
Please tell us more
So thought provoking. So insightful. +1 to you OP.
When I watched the game last night, you just saw the difference (physically) between who Baylor trotted out there and who Gonzaga had out there. Gonzaga has a great, very well-coached team, but Baylor was sending out grown-ass men who each looked like they had at least 20-30 lbs over their Gonzaga counterparts. They were just flat out bigger and stronger, and they were hitting threes all night.
Gonzaga is full of well-coached, gritty, gym rat coaches' kids who bring their lunch pail to practice. Scrappy, with a motor that never stops. Fan favorites.
Baylor is full of long, athletic, talented blue chippers, with innate ability that you just can't teach. They look so effortless out there.
(We'll ignore that Gonzaga was ranked #1 all season long and hyped to death by every media outlet.)
The best tweet last night was:
"We're Gonzaga, and we're undefeated!"
"We're Baylor, and we lift with the football team."
As always, single-elimination basketball games played in football stadiums with few fans around during a pandemic are the true crucible for determining the objective best team in a sport.
Im probably biased because I hate when the media hypes up small conference teams like UCF or Boise St in football and Gonzaga in basketball. If you aren't playing in a major conference and playing good teams regularly, you really don't deserve to be mentioned with the best teams.
Gonzaga got a taste of what it is like to be in a major conference. Play a tough game and have to turn around a play a great team on short notice. They are a eight loss team in the B1G or Big 12 this year. The WCC literally has no one team in it that that would be in the top half of the B1G other than the Zags. Plus they had the easiest run ever getting to the national championship game beating a 16,9,5,6, and 11 seed. Baylor was better. Michigan was a better teams as well this year.
Living in Boise, so I deal with this every day. BSU in Fall and Zags in the Winter.
I will say this for BSU: in Chris Petersen's heyday there, they did beat several very good teams.
1) Oklahoma in that classic 2007 Fiesta Bowl
2) Oregon in 2009 (won the Pac-12, went to the Rose Bowl later that year)
3) Virginia Tech in 2010 (won the ACC, went to the Orange Bowl later that year)
4) Georgia in 2011, who went to the SEC title game.
I'm not sure BSU would've ever beaten Alabama, and they are certainly a far cry now from the program that they were 10-12 years ago, but I commended their mindset of "we'll play anyone we need to so we can get the respect we think we deserve."
Gonzaga looked soft and not really prepared for the athletic, stay in front of you and in your face defense that Baylor played. The offensive rebounds, defensive intensity and the onslaught of points really took their toll early and Gonzaga wasn't strong enough to bounce back. And I have said this many times before that year in and year out they play about as easy a conference schedule as any top ranked team. This is poor prep for the post-season which is why they get exposed on a yearly basis. Probably the best thing Gonzaga could do is move to a tougher conference and get more battle tested throughout the year. The Pac 12 would be a big step up.
That said, I echo what others have said that I think Michigan could have beaten Gonzaga even without Livers. Michigan is strong defensively, maybe not quite as strong as Baylor, but Michigan's D would have kept the game close. Then it's all about making buckets which has been the crap shoot all year. However, I don't think Michigan would have beaten Baylor in the championship game. Just not quite enough athletic weapons to stick with them. Next year will be a different story.
Curse you stress fracture!!!
M at 100% was a legit contender to win it all. Damn.