The madness took hold early this year for basketball

With only one weekend left in the college basketball regular season, most fans have started looking forward to March and the madness that will come.

But as all fans know, it is just as important to take a look back at the past. The 2006-2007 season had many defining moments and shocks. Let’s take a little stroll down memory lane.

Biggest shock of the year: Washington State. Hands down. Rookie coach Tony Bennett has turned a pumpkin into a carriage that will take this team, which has about as much basketball talent as a block of cheese, deep into the NCAA Tournament.

After playing the role of conference doormat since about forever, Wazzou (23-5, 12-4 Pac-10) is suddenly No. 2 in the Pac-10 and No. 11 in the country. The Cougars’ expectations heading into this season resembled mine in a fight against five beavers with really big teeth ““ very low.

After putting together a few wins at the start, they realized something that has made their season ““ if they limit the other team’s number of possessions to less than 10, they will never get blown out. Although they have yet to do that because it is, in fact, impossible, the Cougars use this philosophy in their slow-down, crawling offensive mind-set that has worked wonders so far.

Player of the Year: Kevin Durant. Everyone knew this Texas freshman was going to be good, but nobody could have predicted this. Durant has dominated conference play and has played the Longhorns into the NCAA Tournament. He has more handles than Home Depot’s kitchen department and will win Rookie of the Year next season for the Celtics.

Biggest Drop to Mediocrity: Duke. It’s about time the Blue Devils are not at the top of the NCAA, much less the ACC. They are not a great team but still manage to be on national TV at least once a week. They dropped out of the AP Poll earlier this season for the first time in 201 weeks, falling a few months short of UCLA’s record.

To their credit, Duke has been playing better recently and will come just short in their efforts to blow an NCAA bid. They probably don’t deserve their No. 14 ranking right now and will definitely not deserve the No. 4 or No. 5 seed they will most likely receive.

The Blue Devils will lose early in the tournament to some mid-major school and millions across the country will laugh. Maybe next year they will realize that having Dick Vitale yell “Dukie, Baby!” all the time doesn’t automatically qualify them to be a good team.

Best “What Were You Thinking?” Moment: Ohio State coach Thad Matta against Wisconsin, with a close game winding down and pitting the two No. 1 teams from each poll. Ohio State center Greg Oden was called for traveling, thereby giving the ball back to the Badgers. Matta’s face contorted like an angry Ukrainian whose fur hat is on too tight. He started politely telling the ref what he thought about the call, and his piece of gum went flying out of his mouth and onto the floor of the gym. Don’t worry, though, without a second thought he picked it up and stuck it back into his loud mouth.

Thad, that’s just wrong. What were you thinking?

E-mail jfeder@media.ucla.edu if you think I could whup seven beavers.

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