Well, as you all (should) know, the West Virginia Mountaineers beat the Duke Blue Devils this Saturday, stopping Duke short of the Sweet 16. One question keeps popping in my head; what if Josh McRoberts decided to stay with Duke instead of leaving early for the NBA? Right now if I'm correct he is in D-League. Duke has all year had the problem of no big guy. Before he left, McRoberts seemed to be the next Reddick-Williams combo in Duke, with Greg Paulus as guard in the duo. But he left, and I think it was a bad decision.

If he would've stayed, Duke could've made a huge run. They might have even been a number 1 seed team in the NCAA tournament. You pretty much need a big guy to win it all in April. The last 2 years Joakihm Noah has helped lead the Florida Gators to the championship. The year before that it was Sean May and UNC. If you subscribe to Sports Illustrated, they show all these charts about big guys on championship teams and height values of teams this year. Bottom line: the smaller teams in this tournament have almost all been knocked out of the bracket in the first 2 rounds. If you want a better idea of it, go find the SI with all of the college players on the cover.

So that brings in this question: should the 1-year-in-college-rule be extended? Kids used to be able to go pro right out of high school, and a year or two ago a rule was put in that one year of college must be attended before going pro. I think it should either a) be like college football, 3 years, or b) a full 4 years of college. Think about where Ohio State would be if they had Greg Oden. How far would Texas go with Kevin Durant this year compared to them actually not having him this year? Student-athletes leaving after only a freshman year hurts the team and digs a hole for coaches. I know it's hard to turn down that money, but draft stock should only get better if you improve in college.

Anyway, back to Duke. their biggest big man on the court most of the time is 6'8" freshman Kyle Singlar. He's good; he can take the long shots, but this is what happened against West Virginia. First of all, the Devils had a terrible shooting game. This is a team that lives and dies on the three point shot. So when they couldn't make the threes, they had to take it inside somehow. So Singlar's their big man, but he got into foul trouble. Now what? Exactly, the game slipped away from Duke's hands and West Virginia moved on. If McRoberts stayed, Duke would still have had an inside game, they wouldn't have had to rely on the three as much, and we would be seeing more of this:

...and less of this:

:'-(

Agree?