March Madness: 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Regional Semifinals (Round of 16)- Day 2

Meh, who cares? Except for this-

The Kentucky Wildcats are the only honest team in college basketball
DJ Gallo, The Guardian
Friday 24 March 2017 06.00 EDT

The NCAA tournament field is down to the Sweet 16 weekend of games, featuring 15 collegiate programs and the Kentucky Wildcats, a D-League team that is still officially unaffiliated with the NBA.

John Calipari’s team will take the court on Friday night featuring three freshmen starters in De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk and Edrice Adebayo – all of whom are expected to go in the first round in June’s NBA draft, with Fox and Monk slated to be selected among the first few picks. This one-and-lottery-pick approach is the way it’s been at Kentucky since Calipari arrived in 2009. He had sim players taken in both the 2012 and 2015 drafts, and five in 2010. Eighteen freshmen have left Lexington after a single season since his debut season, including some of the biggest NBA stars today: John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis and Karl-Anthony Towns. Five more players were a bit slower to develop and suffered the unique Kentucky humiliation of only being able to go pro after two years in college.
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“Coach Cal tells all his recruits – he told me – ‘I get guys to where they want to go. I like to make their dream come true,’” Davis said before the 2012 NBA draft when he went No1 overall. “He runs this program as if it were an NBA team. He lets us run up and down the floor … teaches us a lot of things that players in the NBA do. I would say we’re kind of getting a head start on what’s going to happen at the next level.” Today Davis is a four-time NBA All-Star and makes more than $30m a year on and off the court.

Kentucky is college basketball’s one open and unabashed NBA factory and recruits keep rewarding the program for its honesty. Five of the top 32 players in the 2017 class as rated by ESPN have committed to come to Lexington next year to replace Fox, Monk and Adebayo, and that many more will undoubtedly roll on through in 2018, as well.

The kids that go to Kentucky are signing up because they want careers as professional basketball players. Calipari isn’t forcing them away from their desired futures as school teachers or astronauts, demanding they don’t receive four-year educations. These are players who have worked their whole lives to be NBA-quality and are going to the college that gives them the best chance to go pro. It’s the same way the nation’s top-rated flute recruit is probably going to pick Juilliard over Kentucky.

This is exactly what I hate about NCAA Men’s Basketball and Throwball. The NBA and NFL should pay for their own damn development leagues just like Baseball does. Nothing but a bunch of freeloaders sucking at the public tit.

The essentials-

Actually I do care about this one. Wisconsin should win.