In a recent interview with Jim Boeheim, the coach expressed frustration and confusion when asked how good his team is. “I don’t know if we’re top-20 team, or 60-70. We could be top-20, but I don’t know.”

Hey coach, isn’t that a fairly big range? Isn’t he basically saying, “we could be anywhere from the best team in the country to the 70th best?” I don’t mean to fault the coach for his comment—I think it’s a perfectly honest and legit observation. I’m wondering whether Boeheim isn’t onto something…the emergence, perhaps, of a new phenomenon in college basketball.

While it’s always difficult to judge a team’s strength at the beginning of the season, the coach’s consternation is not simply a function of a team trying to find its bearings in a young season—it’s a function of the growing trend in college basketball: parity.

OK, let’s get to the logic part.

The first factor to consider is that the number of Division I programs stays more or less constant. Sometimes a university will make the jump from DII to DI, but in general, you’ve got a set number of Division I teams. That number is always around 330, give or take one or two (the actual number was 334 last year, up from 332 the previous year).

Next, let’s assume that as the years go by, the players who enter college basketball are more talented and more athletic than the previous class that entered. Now, clearly there is no way to prove this assumption—that’s why it’s an assumption. You could argue that a bad recruiting class disproves that assumption rather quickly. However, if you take the entire population of college basketball players, on average the class of 2008 is going to be a tad bit better than the class of 2007. Why would this be true? Well, few would argue that the popularity of basketball has waned in the past decade. In fact, most would say just the opposite. The sport is enormously popular, and is growing not only nationally, but internationally. Similarly, access to basketball courts and quality coaches has been steadily increasing as high schools build better facilities, youth leagues become more structured and robust, former college basketball players set up youth camps, after school clubs use basketball as a focus—indeed, the only logical conclusion is that the crop of talented basketball players grows every year because more kids than ever before are exposed to basketball, participate in basketball, and learn how to play, and do so on a year-round basis. Albeit slightly, that talent pool grows.

Thus, when the number of programs stays constant and the talent pool grows larger, you get an increase in the amount of good teams. With each year, the distance between the best team and the worst team is shrinking, and all the teams caught in the middle are gradually clumping together—to the point where the teams in the 1-70 range are likely very, very similar. At one point not long ago, the top 40 teams may have been very similar. But now, the coach is right. The number of similar teams is more like 70.

So, what does this mean? It means that the selection of 65 teams for the tournament becomes more and more difficult every year. It means that going undefeated throughout an entire season will be almost unheard of (ludicrous, really). It means that superpower conferences (ACC, Big East, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, PAC 10) will be joined by other, upstart, high-quality conferences (The Valley, WAC, Atlantic 10). It means that good coaching and good floor leadership is at a premium: all of the players are so similarly talented and athletic, rather than using physical superiority to beat up on smaller and slower teams, executing a first-rate gameplan is the best way to win.

It means that indeed, Syracuse just may be a top 20 team. Then again, they could be a top 70 team. But realistically, they’re both…and they’re joined by about 69 others.

Categories: Commentary, Mister D