College Hoops: More love 'em or hate 'em

I was planning on finishing all of these in one post but had to head out to Fright Night at the PNE. Scroll down to check the teams in my last post. Onto the other conferences.

SEC

Love 'em: Kentucky.

I've always hated John Calipari. Only on the grounds that he coached in the C-USA and I could never give a guy any respect that puts together an all-world recruiting class every year to play against nobodies. "Hey, come play for me. You won't lose a conference game." Seems pretty easy to me. But now he's in a relatively big-time conference with Kentucky. And once again he put together a sick class with Demarcus Cousins and John Wall. What I like here is that he took on a challenge. In his first press conference he pointed out that the only banners they hang at Kentucky are for national championships. Just making the NCAA tournament every year won't be good enough. I'm all about tradition and I'd like to see a big time program like this get back into the national discussion.

Hate 'em: Florida

This isn't just basketball. I hate Florida in every sport. So it's nice to see them falter, especially after those two national championships that they won in a row. Now they're just fighting to to win some games in the NIT. Here's hoping that the drop down the CBI this season. You can see how elated I was when ESPN had a big story on their fall. Really, basketball in the States is supposed to be about the middle states. The Kansas's, the Indianas, the Kentuckys. The deep south is about football. I just hate Florida. And you should too.

Big-10

Love 'em: Indiana

If there is anyone reading this that didn't fall in love with the movie Hoosiers, leave this blog right now. Now that they're gone, refer to my Kentucky entrance about tradition. I love it. Indiana has tons of it. If only there was a rule in place to keep Eric Gordon playing for Indiana. I really love everything about the tradition of that program from the candy-striped pants to their big stadium that feels like a little gym. Yes they had a bunch of troubles with idiot players messing with the law, but they do have some home grown talent coming in that will get them back to where they need to be in the Big Ten.

Hate 'em: Purdue

With a close second to Ohio State. But Purdue is the team that knocked Washington out of the tournament last season. Purdue is the team that stole a chance from UW to have a re-match in the Sweet 16 against Connecticut, which was one of the best basketball games I had ever seen. Also, some friends of mine went down to the states to play a tournament in California and Robbie Hummel stayed in the entire game and embarassed these poor kids from Maple Ridge. What a jerk. Purdue sucks.

More Later.