Last Night, Duke Moved Up A Notch on the College Basketball Monopoly Board
With Duke’s victory over Wisconsin last night, the Blue Devils’ property value went up. There’s now really no arguing that Duke is the best property on the board that isn’t Boardwalk or Park Place.
To understand how the Dubsism College Basketball Monopoly board came to be, you have to understand this was analogy intended to illustrate the relative position of college basketball programs throughout history to Mrs. Dubsism, who just so happens to be a major fan of the classic board game.
The concept is rather simple. I started with the program with the richest history and worked backward. The key word here is “history.” That means all of college basketball history; my definition of “all-time” is exactly that, not the ESPN version which tends to mean “in the last thirty years.” 30 years ago, there was a fundamental change in the college basketball world with the addition of the shot clock and the 3-point shot. If this board were based a solely the “shot clock” era, Duke in the Mike Krzyzewski clearly becomes Boardwalk.
But in the grand scheme of things, there’s simply no way one could ever take UCLA off the top spot on the board. What the Bruins accomplished under legendary coach John Wooden will never happen again. Ten NCAA championships in eleven years, an 88-game winning streak, and scores of All-Americans and Basketball Hall-of-Famers is a legacy that rivals that of any other dynasty in all of sports, collegiate or professional.
As for Kentucky, the Wildcats’ eight championships are second-only to UCLA, but unlike the Bruins, Kentucky basketball has has remained a power player through the change in eras. Of the eight banners hanging in Lexington’s Rupp Arena, only four came under the tutelage of the Wildcat coach for which the building is named, Adolph Rupp. Kentucky has been a winner under several coaches since the Rupp era; Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith, and most recently, John Calipari.
Duke’s fifth title now makes them officially the “best of the rest.” In the aforementioned “shot clock” era, not only has Krzyzewski and Duke hung five banners, they’ve been in three other championship games besides that. Now, I’m no fan of Coach K; I’ve written about it time and time again. But I also have to give credit where credit is due. What Krzyzewski has accomplished at Duke is nothing short of legendary.
But he still needs at least five more titles before we start comparing him to John Wooden.
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On a side note, what’s the over/under on Bobby Hurley’s tenure at Arizona State?
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