College Basketball Preview 2013-14: Teams With Best Chance to Win the National Championship
By Nathan Giese
Duke is the Hoops Habit favorite to win it all this season. (Image from sports-logos-screensavers.com)
Friday. Friday. Everybody get down on Friday.
Yes, the season is finally here. Shortly teams across the country will take the court and begin college basketball’s regular season. We will finally get to see all the players and teams that have been thoroughly discussed since last April, the end of last season, in our college basketball preview 2013-14.
Earlier this week we looked at some of the teams, the mid-majors that could spoil March Madness for some of the bigger schools, playing Cinderella during the 2014 NCAA Tournament and sneaking into the Final Four. Now, we will look at the teams with the best chance to win it all and walk away at the end of the season as the national champions.
Last season we witnessed an instant classic in the National Championship game when Louisville, the nation’s darling pick after the gruesome Kevin Ware injury earlier in the tournament, took down Michigan, a program looking to restore its historical success and escape the shadows of the Fab Five era and the aftermath that followed.
Who will be the next teams to duke it out with everything at stake under the bright lights in North Texas? Who will win it all? Our conclusion to the HoopsHabit college basketball preview for the 2013-14 season has the answer.
Michigan State Spartans
Michigan State, ranked either first or second in most all preseason Top 25s, kicks off the list. Tom Izzo is one of the best and most respected coaches in the country and always gets the best out of his players.
Izzo has the task of replacing Derrick Nix, a do-everything forward who provided on-court leadership and physicality for the Spartans during his career. Replacing Nix was made much easier when Adreian Payne and Gary Harris announced they would forgo the NBA Draft and return to East Lansing. Payne paired with Nix and made one of the most formidable frontcourt duos in the country last season. Harris started off his freshman season slow but came on strong at the end to give Michigan State the scoring threat they desperately needed.
Despite being knocked out of the 2013 NCAA Tournament in the Sweet 16 by Duke, Spartans fans have a lot to look forward to this season. Keith Appling also returns along with Payne and Harris. Together those three make up a well-rounded unit that will be hard to combat as the season goes on. Braden Dawson and Matt Costello will likely round out the Spartans’ starting five, both of which will be relied upon heavily on the defensive end.
Michigan State hasn’t had this much attention on them in the preseason since Kalin Lucas was running things for Izzo’s team. Now, with a mixture of youth and experience, the most dangerous team is the one most people didn’t see coming this time last year. Michigan State is for real and has a real chance at walking away as national champions.
Duke Blue Devils
Probably the deepest team in the country, Duke is looking to reclaim the national spotlight and get back to the National Championship game. Mike Kryzewski, like Izzo, has the luxury of youth and experience. Unlike Izzo, however, Kryzewski has some new faces on the team that already have playing experience on the Division-I level as well. Rodney Hood comes to Duke having played at Mississippi State before deciding to transfer. He’s big at 6-8 but is very versatile, not afraid to handle the ball in the open court if needed. Landing Hood is one of the biggest acquisitions the Blue Devils made for the up-coming season.
The most important acquisition, however, is that of freshman sensation Jabari Parker. Parker comes in having already had an enormous amount of media attention (only the second high school player other than LeBron James to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated) so that will be nothing new for him. Parker even had his HS number retired while still playing for that team. He’s talented and ready for the spotlight in Durham.
It’s not all about new faces for Duke, though. What makes the Blue Devils so deep is the talent they return from last season. Rasheed Sulaimon, Quinn Cook, Andre Dawkins and Tyler Thornton all return and all average around 40 percent from beyond the arc. One of the biggest problems last season for Kryzewski’s crew was converting on those three-point opportunities when it really mattered. That shouldn’t be a problem this season.
Duke has the talent, the coaching and the depth to have an extremely successful season. They’re not very big aside from Marshall Plumlee (Plumlee is 7-0, next tallest player is 6-9) but it’s a dynamic team Duke hasn’t seen in years with all the three-point scorers on the roster.
Don’t look now, but Duke is as dangerous as ever. A scary thought for anyone who is not a Duke fan.
Kentucky Wildcats
The “sexy” pick to win it all this year is the Kentucky Wildcats. John Calipari has once again pulled a coup by bringing in numerous McDonald’s All-American teams and has one of the best in-coming recruiting classes in the modern era. Julius Randle is star of this Kentucky class and deservedly so. The versatile forward has nice touch around the perimeter but can also dice his way into the lane and finish with ease. He’s the player most around the college basketball landscape expect to challenge Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins for the top draft selection in the 2014 NBA Draft.
Joining him are Andrew and Aaron Harrison and James Young, all three of which have potential to be future lottery selections in the NBA. The remainder of the roster is mostly freshmen but Kentucky does retain two sophomores from last year’s vaunted recruiting class in Willie Caulie-Stein and Alex Poythress. Caule-Stein and Poythress decided that they didn’t want to end their college careers on such a sour note (failing to make the NCAA Tournament after Nerlens Noel’s knee injury and losing to Robert Morris in the first round of the NIT). They know the hype surrounding Kentucky’s young team this year as they faced the same thing last season and they know the heartbreak of defeat when that hype leads to nowhere. They want to prove last season was a fluke and that they are real contenders for the national crown.
Calipari is not afraid to let freshmen run his team. He won a National Championship in 2012 with the same philosophy. It’s nothing new to him. As long as Calipari keeps playing freshmen at such a high rate and with so much success he’s going to keep getting these extremely loaded recruiting classes.
Will this year be the return of the 2012 glory days? Or will it be just about 2013 let down? Time will tell, but right now, it’s looking like a pretty good chance it’s the former instead of the latter.
HoopsHabit Pick to Win It All:
Duke Blue Devils def. Michigan State Spartans in National Championship Game
Join me this season on Twitter as we venture into the college basketball season together. @NathanGiese
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