Nation's also-rans have something to say ... and you better listen
AMES, Iowa
When teams are tossed about as potential Final Four contenders in this wide-open college basketball season, there are names you hear again and again.
There is North Carolina, the preseason No. 1 and the deepest, most experienced team in college basketball. There are Maryland and Kansas, who are the only other teams that can challenge UNC for that deep-and-experienced crown. There's Kentucky, which is Kentucky and therefore always a real contender. There's Oklahoma, which may have the nation's best starting five, and Virginia, which has become the nation's most reliable and consistent program the past few years. There's Duke, with another haul of freshmen to complement Player of the Year candidate Grayson Allen, and Michigan State, which on the shoulders of Denzel Valentine has deservedly become the top-ranked team a month into the season.
These are the teams whose names you hear again and again and again when pundits like me are prophesying about which four teams will still be standing come April 2 in Houston.
But this story is not set in the Land of the Bluebloods.
Instead, this story is set in the Land of the Overlookeds, in the Flyover Country of College Basketball, where teams reside whose names you rarely hear in the Final Four discussion -- but, after this unpredictable first month of the college hoops season, need to be there, and now.
This story resides in places like Cincinnati, the home of 9-0 and 12th-ranked Xavier. It resides in West Lafayette, home of 10-0 and 11th-ranked Purdue. It resides in Coral Gables, (8-1 Miami) and Salt Lake City (7-1 Utah); in Dayton, and Providence and Louisville, places where only the hometown fanatics believe there's a chance at a Final Four.
But in this season where no elite teams have yet to emerge, this is a time when those hometown fanatics may be right.
On an unseasonably warm December day in the cornfields, this is a story that resided in Hilton Coliseum, where the Iowa State Cyclones -- an undefeated team ranked fourth in the AP Poll but frequently unmentioned in talk of serious Final Four contenders -- found themselves down 20 points in the second half to their unseasonably hot-shooting in-state rival Iowa Hawkeyes.
Then Hilton Magic happened, and Iowa State pulled off the type of miracle that national title contenders pull off, winning 83-82 on a frantic end-of-game layup by the Cyclones' often-overlooked point guard Monte Morris.
As the court was stormed in Ames, the Cyclone message was loud and clear: "How you like me now?"
Don't believe this team was overlooked going into the season? Consider: Despite returning the most unique player in college basketball (Georges Niang), the best ball-control point guard in college basketball (Morris), the reigning Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year (Jameel McKay) and a bevy of complementary pieces, talk about Iowa State heading into the season was of the Cyclones being an unknown commodity. The reason was because the man who built this program, Fred Hoiberg, left for the NBA, and nobody knew how new coach Steve Prohm would handle the high-flying offense and the big-time pressure.
At the beginning of the season, 28 college basketball experts on ESPN.com predicted their Final Fours and national champion. In total, there were 112 Final Four spots available among the experts. Not a single one picked Iowa State. (I am proud to say that I did have Iowa State in my own preseason Final Four; you could point out that I am infected by a bit of homerism from spending a decade of my life in Iowa, and I suppose you would be right.)
But despite sometimes-atrocious defense on Monday night which contributed to Iowa's Jarrod Uthoff being allowed to channel Larry Bird in a 30-point first half, Iowa State made a statement with four of its upperclassmen scoring 16-plus points in an absurdly entertaining and telling comeback win.
As the court was stormed, Iowa State made a statement that could be echoed by so many teams in College Basketball Flyover Country in the first month of this season:
How you like us now?
"You knew the magic was going to happen -- you just didn't know when," McKay said after the floor cleared of thousands of delirious fans in McKay's first-ever court-storming. "I knew if we got a stop (on Iowa's second-to-last possession) -- I knew for sure we would win the game. There was never a doubt in my mind. We are too talented. We got the best player in the country, the best point guard in the country, and great role players."
"That's our goal, to make the Final Four," McKay said. "We know we have the talent, but we can't listen to what outsiders say. Right now we're ranked No. 4. If we were ranked No. 12, it wouldn't matter. In our heart we'd still be a Final Four team."
In the middle of the screaming fans, McKay was completely gassed. Niang had a bloody lip. Morris had cramped-up legs. Prohm just wanted to get to his wife and 9-month-old son for a hug. It was an ugly win for Iowa State, a game full of mistakes and matador defense, a home game they probably should have lost to an unranked team, a game that certainly exposed plenty of flaws. Yet it also exposed the things you can't see when you measure a team by blueblood status by and recruiting rankings: Heart, and confidence, and belief.
Those are the things you may not know about a team when the season began on Nov. 13 but you'll come to learn by April 2.
"That's a great moment," Prohm said. "Those college kids have been camping out here for three days. There's probably only 10 schools who do that in the country. I thought it was pretty cool. I probably should have enjoyed it more, but I was more just (thinking), ‘Thank God I don't have to come into this media session my first year and answer questions on why you lost to Iowa.'"
But instead, Prohm could breathe, because Iowa State didn't lose. And Purdue hasn't lost, not yet. Nor has Xavier. There's Miami and Louisville, Utah and Dayton: So many teams have already showed us so much promise we didn't expect.
Look: Nonconference basketball is still nonconference basketball. I get that. December ain't March. Things will change.
But what December is is this: A time to look at our preconceptions about College Hoops' Flyover Country and readjust them to a new reality. There's gonna be a ton of teams this season who feel worthy of a Final Four, and plenty of those teams are coming from places you never expected.
Follow Reid Forgrave on Twitter @reidforgrave or email him at ReidForgrave@gmail.com.
