More on the white guy, and a little about the 4yr college athlete

To add to the post below, yes, there are some great white players in today's game. Some of it due to what I will touch on later, but none the less, the fundamental portion of the game has been very obvious in this year's tournament. With Butler and Duke punching their tickets to the championship game last night, has there been a championship game in recent memory that involved two more fundamentally sound teams then Duke and Butler? Yes, Carolina and Kansas the last few years were great teams, I don't argue that; but without question I think it is safe to say they had superior athletes. The same could be said for the two Florida teams, with the hideous face of Joakim Noah, and the Syracuse team with Hakeem Warrick. Even the teams that finished runner-up in those years were full of "athletes", the Memphis Tigers with Chris Douglas-Roberts and Freshman star Derrick Rose, and Michigan State, though I would lump Goran Suton into the white-guy fundamental category.

All of that being said, growing up in rural eastern Washington, where we learned triple threat before we learned the alphabet, it is nice to see that while the game has gone global in its marketing, and the most successful athletes perhaps (with exceptions) are lose with the most god given ability to jump and run, it is just nice to see that the core fundamentals of the game truly do still matter, and beyond that can lead to an extroadinary amount of success.

Ok, now that I've touched on the presence of the white guy, I would like to talk a little about the respect and admiration that I have for the 4-year player in college basketball. Being a huge Duke fan, and in the wake of their recent victory I would like to focus on two major stories in that particular game. To start, who can deny the development of 7'1" senior Brian Zoubek, (see below).




As a huge follower of Duke basketball, I can remember when Zou burst onto the seen, well lets not get carried away, he lumbered onto the scene. As he lumbered around early in his career, plagued by lower body injuries including a broken foot, the story was the same. He is too slow, he is too lazy, he has no skill, he's just a big guy...At the time many of those things were probably true. But their may not be a larger tale of two career's than that of Brian Zoubek. Anyone who has followed the Duke program even moderately cannot discount the presence he has played with alongside fellow senior Lance Thomas. Watching how an athlete can disregard the comments thrust at him in the past, and make something out of a career that by Duke standards would have been viewed as a bust, is something that makes this game so special, and I think a great amount of admiration should be showed to those who are able to overcome adversity early in their career.

The second player that falls into this category is Da'Sean Butler, who suffered a torn ACL in the national semifinal last night. As a Duke fan, I most certainly wanted them to win, but not in the way everything shook out. To see a prolific player like Da'Sean go down late in the final game of his college career is heartbreaking. Butler, a senior who for four years made a steady positive contribution and seemingly carried the Mountaineers on his back all season that culminated with a victory over favorite Kentucky and a trip to the final four, is another story that I enjoy reading. And to top it off the compassion showed by coach Bob Huggins in the wake of the injury is also something to be admired. (See Below) Needless to say, the tournament brings out many great stories and I think for the purpose of great story lines there is nothing else close to what March Madness provides.