There are a lot of ways that teams have won championships in the past, but many of them seem less formulaic than fluky. 2010 Duke - easy road, all other contenders fall flat, coast to the championship. 2011 & 2014 UCONN - a pesky guard(s) take over and get hot for a couple weeks. 2012 Kentucky - you recruit the best players at every position in the class, one of which happens to be an all-time great player, their skills blend perfectly together and you cruise to the title. So yes, I'm categorizing 4 of the last 5 title winners in the fluke category.
However, I would group 2013 Louisville and 5 of the 6 teams prior to 2010 as the more formulaic champions (2006 Florida is the exception) in that they followed a multi-year building curve to construct their team. If Wisconsin wins tonight, they'd certainly be part of that group.
The team I'm obviously most familiar with would be 2008 Kansas. Here's how they got to the championship:
Solid foundation class in 2004 (Kaun, Jackson, Robinson, Galindo, Giles)All-time great class in 2005 (Chalmers, Rush, Downs, Wright)Perfect pieces in 2006 class (Arthur, Collins)Undermanned team in 05-06 forces everyone into action sooner than they were ready.06-07 team falls short of the Final Four in stomach-punch fashion, vows to come back stronger.Wright leaves for NBA, opening up time for Arthur & Jackson who step up their games.Rush tears ACL preparing for NBA Draft, comes back strong for junior season.Early round matchups favor KU (UNLV, Villanova).Stephen Curry has off day shooting (KU's defense certainly had a hand in this).KU has a great day shooting and out-toughs UNC in every way.Calipari's team fails to make free throws.Chalmers has huge stones.
If you take away any of those components, it's hard to see KU winning the title in '08. Now, that was an exceptionally strong year for college basketball and the Final Four might've been the best ever, but it still took everything falling in line over a 3-year period to win the title. I don't think most teams need to be that good to win it all. For instance, I think if things fell right, our '10, '11, '12, '13 teams were good enough to win it. Actually, '12 was the worst of the bunch and if Tyshawn (or Elijah's) layup drops with a minute to go, we still had an excellent shot to win it. So anything can happen, but the '08 formula is pretty proven if you can execute upon it.
Here's how that might work for the '15-'16 Jayhawks:
Solid foundation classes in '12-'13 (Ellis, Greene, Mason, Lucas, Selden, Traylor) - checkGood class in '14 (Oubre, Alexander, Graham, Svi) - check'14 recruiting class gets more experience than they should due to massive defections - checkSome of the key pieces stick around - already missed on Oubre, one of Ellis & Alexander needs to return to make this a checkGreat class in '15 who is ready to contribute - Bragg is a nice piece but likely not a championship-winning one in '16. Jaylen Brown, Stephen Zimmerman, Cheick Diallo, might need two of those to even think about it. Key transfers could also address this need. Need 5 players from our existing roster who are ready to contribute at a championship level-Mason and Graham I'm pretty sure can get there. Ellis is ready. Svi looks promising and who knows about Cliff. If Greene was like midseason Greene then sure. Selden turning out to not be good has been the things that's held us back. Hope that changes this summer because otherwise we probably need 3-4 impact players from next year's class. That could be a challenge.
Basically, when Jones and Okafor chose Duke that's when our championship window closed this year. With those guys, we would have had a serious shot and that's the type of thing that fell our way during the lead-up to the '08 title. At the time, Arthur seemed like a pure luxury but when Wright left early it became a necessity. These next few weeks may well determine if we're hoping to win #12 or #4 (or #6 if you count Helms). Your thoughts?
However, I would group 2013 Louisville and 5 of the 6 teams prior to 2010 as the more formulaic champions (2006 Florida is the exception) in that they followed a multi-year building curve to construct their team. If Wisconsin wins tonight, they'd certainly be part of that group.
The team I'm obviously most familiar with would be 2008 Kansas. Here's how they got to the championship:
Solid foundation class in 2004 (Kaun, Jackson, Robinson, Galindo, Giles)All-time great class in 2005 (Chalmers, Rush, Downs, Wright)Perfect pieces in 2006 class (Arthur, Collins)Undermanned team in 05-06 forces everyone into action sooner than they were ready.06-07 team falls short of the Final Four in stomach-punch fashion, vows to come back stronger.Wright leaves for NBA, opening up time for Arthur & Jackson who step up their games.Rush tears ACL preparing for NBA Draft, comes back strong for junior season.Early round matchups favor KU (UNLV, Villanova).Stephen Curry has off day shooting (KU's defense certainly had a hand in this).KU has a great day shooting and out-toughs UNC in every way.Calipari's team fails to make free throws.Chalmers has huge stones.
If you take away any of those components, it's hard to see KU winning the title in '08. Now, that was an exceptionally strong year for college basketball and the Final Four might've been the best ever, but it still took everything falling in line over a 3-year period to win the title. I don't think most teams need to be that good to win it all. For instance, I think if things fell right, our '10, '11, '12, '13 teams were good enough to win it. Actually, '12 was the worst of the bunch and if Tyshawn (or Elijah's) layup drops with a minute to go, we still had an excellent shot to win it. So anything can happen, but the '08 formula is pretty proven if you can execute upon it.
Here's how that might work for the '15-'16 Jayhawks:
Solid foundation classes in '12-'13 (Ellis, Greene, Mason, Lucas, Selden, Traylor) - checkGood class in '14 (Oubre, Alexander, Graham, Svi) - check'14 recruiting class gets more experience than they should due to massive defections - checkSome of the key pieces stick around - already missed on Oubre, one of Ellis & Alexander needs to return to make this a checkGreat class in '15 who is ready to contribute - Bragg is a nice piece but likely not a championship-winning one in '16. Jaylen Brown, Stephen Zimmerman, Cheick Diallo, might need two of those to even think about it. Key transfers could also address this need. Need 5 players from our existing roster who are ready to contribute at a championship level-Mason and Graham I'm pretty sure can get there. Ellis is ready. Svi looks promising and who knows about Cliff. If Greene was like midseason Greene then sure. Selden turning out to not be good has been the things that's held us back. Hope that changes this summer because otherwise we probably need 3-4 impact players from next year's class. That could be a challenge.
Basically, when Jones and Okafor chose Duke that's when our championship window closed this year. With those guys, we would have had a serious shot and that's the type of thing that fell our way during the lead-up to the '08 title. At the time, Arthur seemed like a pure luxury but when Wright left early it became a necessity. These next few weeks may well determine if we're hoping to win #12 or #4 (or #6 if you count Helms). Your thoughts?
