'College Basketball Right Now Is At An All-Time High' - Rick Pitino Is 100% Right And Delivered The Perfect Message To People Constantly Shitting On The Sport

I love everything about this from Rick Pitino, because he's right. Now, do I miss the old conferences? Of course. Conference realignment is stupid. Do I think they need to do something about the transfer portal, most notably give everyone 1 free transfer and then you can transfer without sitting out again if your coach leaves? Yeah, seems like a no-brainer. But, the talent in college basketball is as high as we've ever seen it. 

You have all these fringe late first round picks/second round picks coming back to the sport. That's where NIL has paid off. A bunch of big names returned because they don't feel like they have to chase money with a 2-way contract or go to Europe. Just look at last year's All-American teams. Out of the 10 names, 5 of them graduated and moved on. Cooper Flagg is Cooper Flagg. RJ Luis left early and he's the only other one. We got back JT Toppin, Braden Smith and PJ Haggerty. That's a huge win. 

Then you get to throw in this freshman class. It's been talked about, but this is on pace to be the best freshman class we've ever seen. Just some names of guys going nuts early - Cam Boozer, Koa Peat, Caleb Wilson, AJ Dybantsa, Nate Ament, Kingston Flemmings, Darius Acuff, Brayden Burries, Matt Able. Then you still have Darryn Peterson (hurt) and Braylon Mullins (hurt, hasn't played all year). 

If you don't want to argue just talent, we're finally getting coaches with balls. We're not getting all these shitty early games that we got so used to. Still think we need to save the Maui Invitational and fuck the Players Era for trying to kill those fields, but everything else has been awesome. Arizona just played at UConn, Kansas went to UNC, Purdue went to Alabama and we've had a million awesome neutral site games. Let's get those on campuses and we're really working with something.

So, yeah, you can bitch about stuff with the game and conference realignment, but you can't argue this year hasn't been awesome. The talent is delivering, the games have been delivering. Rick Pitino is right, as usual.