Kentucky and Baylor Rule College Basketball

UK Basketball logo, recreated in SVG format, used colour code from main University of Kentucky article. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Two teams that have dominated college basketball this past season, Kentucky and Baylor, finished it with national championships in the men's and women's divisions, in that order.

The Kentucky Wildcats defeated Kansas 67-59 at the NCAA men's championship game in New Orleans Monday.  Sophomore Daron Lamb led with 22 points in a game that wasn't exactly close until the final minutes, when the Jayhawks got to within ten points before the Wildcats put them away for their first title since 1998.

For 38-2 Kentucky, this was Title Number 8 in their history, with the first four coming in the Adolph Rupp era.  That's second only to UCLA's 11, with most of them coming when John Wooden was coach.

This was also coach John Calipari's first national title, taking full advantage of recruiting players who are more interested in NBA glory than in getting an education.  Given his history of leaving schools behind before the NCAA posse imposes penalties for violations that take away their records, however, will this championship be a mirage in a few years?

Over on the women's side, Baylor defeated Notre Dame 80-61 to earn their national championship in Denver.  The Bears are the seventh team in women's college basketball to go undefeated, but the first of either sex to win 40 games

Junior Brittney Griner led the Bears with 26 points and 13 rebounds in a game they had led most of the way, but didn't fully put away the Irish until late in the second half.  Griner, you may have heard, is a 6'8 phenom who is one of the few women to dunk a basketball during a game.  She didn't do it here, but she didn't really need to.

Baylor has won its second national title, with the first one coming in 2005.  This represents something of a sea change in women's college basketball, after years of Coke and Pepsi (also known as Conneticut and Tennessee) dominating the sport.  As the talent gets better and better, they are less inclined to go to schools that stockpile the better athletes for future use.  Parity is getting closer all the time.  Now if they could only get more people to notice . . .