Originally Posted by
yancem
i have mixed feeling about this. On the one hand Memphis, Kansas, UCLA and UNC are very strong teams and it might be a little bit of an over statement to say that Duke '99 or '01 would roll past them. On the other hand as talented as this years UNC squad is, how would you rank them against their '05 group?
Personally, I would take Felton over Lawson, McCants over Ellington, and Jawad Williams over Thompson (although not by near the margin I would have at the beginning of the season). I would call Manuel and Ginyard a wash. This leaves me only taking 1 starter from this years squad (Hansolo) over his '05 counter part (Mays) and even that really isn't a blow out (Mays was a stud in his own right). As for the six man, Green has proven much better than I thought he would be but I still think that I would rather have Marvin Williams (I have to admit that Green is one of my least favorite UNC players so my judgment may be a little biased).
Again as good as the '05 UNC team was, it wasn't considered one of histories greats so if if they have a fairly sizable advantage of the #1 team this year, what does that say about the strength of this years field? I would say that while I don't think that any of this years teams are "great" it is a pretty deep field. The 4 #1 seeds are all well deserving and Texas might be on par. Then you have Duke, Tenn and G'town who all finished the season earlier than expected, but all played some really good basketball at times this year. You also have Stanford and Wisconsin who are/were dangerous on any given night. I'm also not sure anyone wants to play Davidson right now.
Anyway, my .02