Last Remaining Undefeated Team Falls: Wisconsin Upends Ohio State's Hopes For Perfect Season

(Reuters photo: Wisconsin's Jordan Taylor [Left] and Jon Leuer [Right] celebrate their win over No. 1 Ohio State).



No. 1 ranked Ohio State was undefeated when they entered the Kohl Center in Madison, WI, for their Saturday afternoon game against No. 13 Wisconsin. But the Buckeyes exited the Kohl Center with their hopes of an undefeated season dashed after they were upset by Wisconsin 71-67. Wisconsin junior point guard Jordan Taylor scored 21 of his 27 points and dished out 4 assists in the final 13 minutes of the game, as he and the Badgers overcome a 15 point Ohio State lead en route to victory.

Ohio State will drop from No. 1 when the new AP Top 25 is released on Monday. Current No. 2 Kansas will, undoubtedly, overtake the No. 1 position. But Ohio State will be just fine. No one really expected them to finish the season with an undefeated record. As Drive and Dish opined when the previously undefeated and No. 1 ranked Duke Blue Devils lost their first game of the season in January, nobody goes undefeated in college basketball today. Bob Knight's 1976 Indiana Hoosiers delivered the last undefeated season in men's college basketball. In the ensuing 35 years, nobody else has finished the season with an unblemished record. And it's extremely unlikely that anybody will do so anytime soon, if ever.

The loss will have no bearing on Ohio State's prospects for earning a trip to the 2011 Final Four and a shot at the 2011 National Championship. They still must be considered legitimate contenders for both honors. However, it bears mention that teams which rely heavily on freshmen rarely win Championships--especially teams that start a freshman at point guard. And despite the leadership of talented upperclassmen David Lighty, William Buford and Jon Diebler, coach Thad Matta's Buckeyes are led freshman superstar center Jared Sullinger and start freshman Aaron Craft at point guard.

Drive and Dish considers the 2011 Ohio State Buckeyes to be the most talented, best balanced team in college basketball. But they face an uphill battle in their quest to reach the Final Four, if for no other reason than their heavy reliance on freshmen at the key positions of center and point guard. Jared Sullinger might be the best player in the college game, but he's still a freshman (despite the fact that he doesn't play like one). At some point in the NCAA Tournament, his inexperience--as well as the inexperience of freshman point guard Craft--is likely to catch up with the Buckeyes.

So who do we expect to win the 2011 National Championship? It's still too early to answer that question, or to even identify a short-list of likely teams. It's been one of those rare seasons in college basketball in which no team has distinguished itself as a favorite. Defending National Champion Duke still probably has to be considered the team to beat, despite the fact that the Blue Devils have lost several key players from their 2010 Championship team. But there's lots of room for an upstart to take the college basketball world by storm. Can Ohio State be that team? Possibly, but Buckeye fans shouldn't hold their collective breath waiting for that to happen. No freshman has taken his team to an NCAA men's basketball title since Carmello Anthony directed Syracuse to the 2003 Championship. And Anthony was a noteworthy exception to an otherwise near-ironclad rule: prior to 2003, Louisville's Purvis Ellison had been the last freshman to lead his team to a National Championship (1986). Michael Jordan famously hit the game-winning shot as a freshman for North Carolina in the 1982 National Championship game, but the young Jordan was far from the leader of his team--upperclassmen James Worthy, Sam Perkins and Matt Daugherty led the '82 Tar Heels.

Ohio State is very talented and should be considered extremely dangerous with regard to their potential for making a run deep into the NCAA Tournament. But the odds are still against them cutting down the nets in April.

Vintage NBA Trash Talk

Yours truly blogs here at Drive and Dish under the somewhat ignoble moniker "Trash Talk Superstar." The moniker came about in part because my original/official moniker, "Have Jump Shot Will Travel" -- which is a fairly accurate description of me -- is too long and isn't sufficiently catchy (blame the "suits" in the Drive and Dish marketing department with their graphs and flow charts).

But the moniker was appropriate in the early days of this blog. My then-blog partner, Mark Buckets, wrote fairly straightforward posts from the standpoint of the hardcore college basketball fan, and I contributed with a combination of straight basketball analysis and highly pointed (maybe even contentious and swaggering) commentary. I was, therefore, a pretty good trash talker. And people took notice ... often by calling me a douche bag or an asshat in the comments sections (which, by the way, I welcomed wholeheartedly -- being controversial certainly didn't prevent this blog from attracting eyeballs).

But some time after crossing over the threshold of the "Big 3-0," I started to mature, or at least tire of, the snarky, sarcastic, flame-throwing writing style that proliferates on sports blogs. So I started writing in more professional, almost newspaper-style prose. And I stopped talking trash.

Yet fret not, loyal Drive and Dish readers: although I'm older and my sensibilities are (arguably) more mature than they were in the early days of this blog, I can still enjoy the occasional exchange of verbal jabs. What's more, my trash talking skills are as sharp as ever -- I just refrain from utilizing them on this blog. Furthermore, I remain one of the foremost authorities on the art of trash talking on the North American continent. As such, it's my view that while there's a lot of decent trash talk out there today, the best trash talkers who ever lived roamed the NBA hardwood from the the mid 1980's to the early/mid 90's. That was the golden era of trash talking in the NBA, if you will. The following old school video, titled "NBA Freedom of Speech," offers an excellent snapshot of the legendary trash talk that flourished in the league during that time period (bonus: Dick Versace makes an appearance in the video, and Vinny Del Negro plays the "I'm Italian: I got family 'connections', if you know what I mean" card):

Update:

It appears that Youtube has removed the video. Too bad. It was reel to reel of vintage 80's and early 90's NBA footage. It really doesn't get much better than that. Oh well, it was great while it lasted.

Charlotte Names Larry Brown New Coach

Today, Larry Brown was named coach of the Charlotte NBA franchise. Michael Jordan, who owns part of the Charlotte franchise, offered the job to Brown. And that's hardly a surprise: Larry Brown played basketball for Dean Smith at North Carolina in the late 1950's and early 1960's, and Jordan -- perhaps the most famous Tar Heel of all time -- is notorious for favoring members of the Tar Heel "family" in his dealings as an NBA executive.

But, North Carolina loyalties aside, Jordan made an excellent choice by hiring the 67 year old Brown. Brown is widely regarded as a great basketball coach. But he's equally notorious for his habit of job-hopping. Charlotte will be the 10th professional team that Brown has coached. As the Charlotte Observer explains:

"After playing point guard for Dean Smith at North Carolina, Brown has a career record of 1,010-800 in 23 NBA seasons that has included stops with the Denver Nuggets, New Jersey Nets, San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Clippers, Indiana Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers, Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks."

And if Brown is known for being a great, if nomadic basketball coach, he's also known for being difficult to get along with. At least one ESPN scribe predicts a rocky road ahead with regard to Brown's and Jordan's professional relationship.

NBA All Star Game

By Trashtalk Superstar

The 2008 NBA All Star Game was played tonight. Drive and Dish's Trashtalk Superstar was suffering from a bad headache and was fast asleep when the game originally aired. Fortunately, TNT rebroadcast the game after 10:00 PM.

I'm glad that I didn't miss this game.

This year's All Star Game was exciting and fun to watch again -- unlike last year's game. Drive and Dish readers may recall the awful dreck that was the 2007 NBA All Star Game. The 2007 All Star Game was probably the worst All Star game of all time (which may have had something to do with the fact that the game was played in Las Vegas, and players probably weren't exactly 100% rested and motivated to play by game time).

But tonight, the NBA All Stars went out and put on a fast paced display of offensive skills and slick passing -- exactly what the All Star Game is supposed to be all about.

The NBA All Star Game is one of my favorite sporting events of the year. If I were an NBA player, I'd salivate at the opportunity to play in that game, since it allows players to have fun, forget about playing defense and put on a display of skills/clever passing. The NBA All Star Game is basketball played the way that every basketball player fantasizes about playing (if only once), but knows that he could never get away with playing during the season because no coach would ever allow it. Thus, the NBA All Star Game represents the mythical "perfect run" that basketball players dream about, as it's an up and down the court showcase of skills and fancy passing, played in a pressure free atmosphere.

And where Major League Baseball's All Star Game and the NFL'S Pro Bowl have fallen off in popularity and significance, the NBA All Star Game is still interesting and fun to watch. Although the game isn't as spectacular as it was in the NBA's Dr.J/Magic Johnson/Larry Bird/Charles Barkley/Clyde Drexler/Patrick Ewing days, or the Michael Jordan "golden era," it remains a showcase for the league's stars to go out and put on a show. NBA regular season games are often tedious, with their slow paced, isolation centered offensive sets and aggressive, physical defense. But the NBA All Star Game, by contrast, is a wide open, up tempo, loose affair in which players try to show off what they can really do (but could never get away with doing in a real game).

LeBron James was named MVP of the All Star Game. But several other players stood out as well. Steve Nash and Jason Kidd always drop jaws in the All Star Game, with their fancy passing and unparalleled court vision. Both players impressed again tonight.
And Chris Paul showed that he's got all the tools of an elite NBA point guard too.

Celtics Paul Pierce and Ray Allen looked great. So did Denver's Carmello Anthony. Big Dwight Howard, who plays in relative anonymity in Orlando, got the chance to introduce himself to a national audience. He showed that he's quickly becoming one of the most dominant big men in the league.

The NBA All Star game will probably never regain the luster that it had in the Michael Jordan era. Jordan always put on a show, gave 100% from tip off to the final buzzer, did his best to win the All Star MVP, and turned up the intensity in the fourth quarter in an attempt to win the game.

But tonight's game was fun again. And, like Jordan used to do, the players actually did dial up the intensity in the fourth quarter and actually did try to win the game.

After an awful 2007, The NBA All Star Game is back.