Zion Williamson committed to Duke Saturday. So the rich get richer. My condolences to Clemson. And, of course, Matt Norlander and I opened this episode of the Eye on College Basketball podcast by discussing the weekend's biggest development.
Does this ensure Duke will be the preseason No. 1 for a third straight year?
(Not necessarily.)
We got into that and the fact that Duke now has commitments from the top three prospects in the Class of 2018, which has never happened since recruiting rankings became a thing. Then, at the 12:40 mark, I steered the conversation toward the column I filed Saturday about how Mike Krzyzewski is currently running his program as well as he's ever run his program. At the age of 70. And how many people in the world, throughout history, have ever been able to say they were doing what they get paid to do as well as they've ever done it at the age of 70? Answer: Not many. So we spent about 10 minutes on that.
Is Kentucky going to end up on the bubble?
It sure looks possible after Saturday's 68-64 loss at home to Florida. The Wildcats are now 14-5 overall, 4-3 in the SEC and outside of the top 30 at KenPom for the first time since they lost Nerlens Noel to a torn ACL and spiraled into the 2013 NIT. Kentucky is 2-2 against top-50 KenPom teams with two sub-50 losses. The Wildcats have zero wins over currently ranked teams. They're 3-4 away from Rupp Arena. And when you consider KenPom is projecting them to finish the regular season with a 20-11 record featuring just three top-50 wins, well, life on the bubble in early March for Kentucky isn't really that far-fetched.
We discussed that starting at the 23:13 mark
And then we moved on to Trae Young, who scored a career-high 48 points at Oklahoma State on Saturday. But he needed 39 shots to do it. And the Sooners are now on a two-game losing streak. Which makes it fair to wonder, like I wrote Saturday, if it's time to dial it back a bit. We talked about the fabulous freshman at the 36:24 mark. Then, at the 48:55 mark, we offered predictions for Tuesday's Kansas-Oklahoma showdown and again played #TraeYoungOverUnder.
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