Somewhat expected that college basketball would have a down year after all of the attention given to the sport as the result of Zion-mania last year. Jordan Nwora and Vernon Carey will be pros, but it's not like watching either of them, or anyone else in college basketball (now that James Wiseman is done for the year), is appointment viewing.
Also agree that the birth of the mega conferences has made it more difficult to get to know a conference really well, but we aren't going back to the 8 team leagues. All that said, March is always compelling.
Will be interesting to see if the NBA decision to end the one and done rule (likely starting with the 2022 draft) and the moves to make the G League more inviting for HS players who lack an interest in college further reduce the public's appetite for college basketball or have no impact. The best college hoop players may stick around for more than one year, but with a few exceptions, college basketball won't have the transformative next great players any more.
Even despite the issues that impact all of college basketball, to the group of fans that post on this board, the biggest adverse impact on our lack of collective interest in college basketball has been the implosion of the WF program. A decade of horrendous basketball for our team of choice makes it difficult to care about other CBB teams and players when you know that WF will never play a significant game against any other team or player in the sport. Really think that there would be far more interest in college basketball generally here if there was a glimmer of hope that WF could be a factor.
Hard to care when we all know from the opening tip in November that WF has no chance to make the NCAA tournament. WF (and possibly BC and couple of other crap teams in high level conferences) is essentially in a worse position that almost any of the 353 teams in the sport, because we are mediocre (currently #100), and totally outclassed by the teams in our top-tier conference. So, WF fans can't even cling to the glimmer of hope held by awful teams in terrible conferences of making an unlikely March conference tourney run. Everyone here knows, and has known for 10 years, that WF's season is ending either the Tuesday or Wednesday (if we are super-lucky) that the ACC tournament starts, and with one exception (2017), it has been that way since Ish Smith, Chas McFarland and LD Williams were seniors. All of those guys are now in their 30s. Just numbing.
