Just a heads up here, the spacing is really strange and fixing it would be next to impossible, so for that I apologize.
More so than any other sport, college basketball is a sport
of perennial powerhouses.
Establishing an institution to be synonymous with a sport itself takes
years, and only a select few have been able to earn the right within the
basketball community including Duke, Indiana, UConn, North Carolina and
Kansas. In arguably the greatest
sports city on the planet, why do Boston-area college basketball teams seem to
fall by the wayside? Is there
something standing in their way or could it be something the team is lacking?
The 2012-13 season in underway, and Boston schools are
experiencing mixed results. Boston
College, Boston University, Harvard and Northeastern are a combined 5-8 so far,
and they each have their fair share of hurdles to jump before season’s end.
The Boston College Eagles have stumbled out to a 1-3
start. The beginning of their
season is really their time to shine, because once they get into the Atlantic
Coast Conference schedule, the odds are stacked against them. Teams like Duke, North Carolina and North
Carolina State prowl atop this premier conference, and the Eagles will need to
steal games against the likes of Maryland, Virginia and Virginia Tech to be a
player in the conference tournament.
The Terriers of Boston University are sharing the same
misfortune as the Eagles, starting 0-3.
The America East conference is not on anyone’s radar, but games against
Vermont, Stony Brook and out-of-conference Harvard will be necessary to give
their run a boost come tournament time.
And speaking of Harvard, amidst the cheating scandal implicating
co-captains Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry, the back-to-back Ivy League winners
appear to still have what it takes for a third consecutive title. Their biggest tests will come against
Princeton and Cornell, but their schedule is tailored for a deep Ivy League
run.
Finally, the black sheep of the Boston college basketball
family, the Northeastern Huskies may have the most reasons to cheer this
season. With a 2-1 start in a weak
Colonial Athletic Association now that Virginia Commonwealth University split
for the Atlantic-10, bringing their ‘A’ games for Hofstra and
conference-favorite Drexel will be paramount if they want to make the NCAA
Tournament for the first time since 1991.
These four teams have had very little success over the past
decade. Despite BU winning their
conference in 2011 and Harvard making the NCAA Tournament the past two years,
these teams cannot seem to make the leap to perennial players.
When you look at historically great college teams, you are
looking at a few things, the most obvious of which being past success. But what makes these teams great is
their basketball tradition – the names that have gone through the program, the
courts they play on and whether or not basketball has been and will continue to
be the institution’s number one sport.
For example, Duke plays under one of the greatest coaches to
ever hold a clipboard in Mike Krzyzewski and inside Cameron Indoor
Stadium. In Kansas’ 114 years of
men’s basketball, they have had just seven head coaches. These schools define tradition. The Kentucky Wildcats sent six players
to the NBA last season, including the top two picks in the draft. And when you think of the UNC, you
picture the Tar Heel baby blue uniforms atop a basketball court.
There is no draw for a big name high school player to come
to Boston. Many of the players
currently on the four rosters are from the northeast area already, because
without tradition, the draw to come in from another part of the country is
minimal. There are no big coaches,
no real success with players at the professional level (save Jeremy Lin, a ’10
graduate of Harvard) and when most people think of these schools, they aren’t
thinking basketball. BC has been
known as a football school and BU is a hockey juggernaut. Playing on the basketball teams at
these schools is like being an extra in the other sports’ movie.
Harvard has the greatest chance for future success in
college basketball, having already declared themselves a force in the Ivy League
for the past five seasons. Their
head coach, Tommy Amaker, is a former Duke Blue Devil star who has coached at
his alma mater, Seton Hall and Michigan before coming to Harvard in 2007. His name is known and respected in the
basketball world, a major key to a school’s success.
One miracle will not save a team. It takes years of success and the right pieces of the puzzle
to make up a college basketball powerhouse. The teams that first come to mind have a deep-seeded
tradition of success and a rich history to carry them from season to season,
even though a given player is only around for just four or five years.
Boston schools have an immense amount of work ahead if they
want to sit among the sport’s elite, but essentially starting from scratch in a
field of already-established titans will bound them to a life of the mid-level
opponent to the other 343 Division-I schools.
