Is there no chance at all Simmons gets in the tourney? This is one of those times, as a non-fan of college basketball, I'd like to see the selection committee put a team in on the strength of a single player.
The tourney will be much more interesting if Simmons is in it.
Sorry for this trollish question.
If Simmons is as good as everyone says, why didn't his team make the tournament?
I mean, Larry Bird took 4 guys named Joe to the finals.
I don't think it's fair to compare Simmons to Bird, though I'm sure somebody somewhere has done it by now.
But more importantly Bird was a 22 year old junior at the time, Simmons is a 19 year old freshman. It's not really the same situation. As a 20 year old freshman Bird put up killer numbers but lost in the first round of the NIT.
BUT, in Bird's time, it was a rarity when kids left school early as Juniors, nevermind the current 1-and-done parade to the NBA.
It's a fair point to make about Simmons. A player of his ballyhooed talents should have been able to beat enough of the middlint-to-poor teams his team played against with little other help from his teammates. Players on the LSU bench are likely good enough to start for a number of those middling teams.
As for the notion of the tourney selectmen picking a team just to showcase a team with a special player that otherwise wouldn't merit consideration, I say no thank you. No excuse for making another team that played hard all year without a superstar to get screwed just because they don't have a recognizable name come tourney selection time. give the no-name kids their due and let them enjoy their moment in the sun. Simmons will get more than enough limelight soon enough.
You're very much overselling LSU's talent, not to mention coaching. This is a team that made the tourney once in the last six seasons before this year. They are historically a mediocre-to-poor major conference team. They've gone 18-13 this year -- it's not like they've lost to a lot of teams with worse talent than them -- certainly not teams that LSU's bench players could start for. Their bad losses (below the RPI top 100) were to Marquette, NC State, Charleston, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Wake Forest. Those are all teams (with the exception of Charleston) that recruit the same level of player as LSU, and generally have as much success historically.
I think the real question is how often does the consensus #1 recruit go to a program of LSU's quality. I'd say not often, if ever, in recent years. It's disappointing, no doubt, that we won't see Ben Simmons in the NCAA Tournament, but I think this says as much about his team and even more so his coaches than it does about him.
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