Penn State 93, Illinois 81 Postgame

Ramrod2010 said:

I know of people that prefer college sports to pro because you typically would have the chance to know the players for at least one, and usually two plus years as they ingrained themselves as part of the school. It made a connection that's no longer there.

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I find myself in this camp. The high turnover and the way people leave the program has definitely affected how I view the sport. I don't see anything changing in the near term either. I think every good program is struggling with how to keep promising bench players happy, and schools don't seem to want to make multi-year commitments. Seems like it would be way easier to build culture with a roster that isn't made up of half or more new faces each season.

Calvin said:

I think every good program is struggling with how to keep promising bench players happy, and schools don't seem to want to make multi-year commitments. Seems like it would be way easier to build culture with a roster that isn't made up of half or more new faces each season.

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College Ball today is the ultimate meritocracy. You have a short window to show what you’ve got on the floor and you need to produce or someone is getting in ahead of you next time out. And if you’re not happy with your playing time... there is always a REASON WHY you aren’t getting that playing time. No coach is going to sit a player who is producing what’s needed on the floor.

And if a player isn’t happy that’s OK. There is a short window to play College-level ball and you have to make the most of it as you see fit. And thankfully, now the rules let you pick up and go when you feel you need to.

While the yearly musical chairs of player movement takes some getting used to as fans – this makes for a more exciting brand of ball from year to year. You can get good – or not so good – in a hurry. And if you became not-so-good one year... you can be good again quickly the next.

While something can be said for longer-term consistency and players learning to play together... there is not a player at any level that isn’t used to mixing things up on the court. We all grew up with playground/blacktop ball and that was all about who showed up and mixing and matching and making it work on the fly.

This is a beautiful game where individual talents are blended together to make a cohesive heart-beat sound of music of balls bouncing their staccato beat on the floor and the net twines singing their sweet tunes on either end of the floor canvass being painted on by roundball magicians with lightning hands and feet and split-second decision-making.

College Ball won’t be that chaotic since individual players with certain skill sets are sought out and recruited. But mixing things up is just a feature of this game more than the other major sports.