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Burning Questions: What top 25 team misses the NCAA tournament?

Ben Howland

UCLA head coach Ben Howland directs his team during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Arizona at the Pac-12 conference championship in Los Angeles, Thursday, March 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

AP

Real, live college basketball games start on Friday, and with all of our glorious preseason content finally finished, this week we will be providing you with water cooler fodder as we roll through a series of Burning Question. You can read them all right here.

Next up: What team in the AP Top 25 is the most likely to miss the NCAA tournament?

No. 13 UCLA:


  • (Raphielle Johnson): This is an immensely talented team, there’s no debating that. But who are the leaders? Who are the guys that when they speak in the locker room or on the floor in between plays, everyone else stops and pays attention?
  • (Daniel Martin): The Bruins got long-awaited good news when Kyle Anderson was cleared, but that doesn’t mean Ben Howland’s team is out of the woods yet. Star freshman Shabazz Muhammad has yet to learn his fate from the NCAA’s eligibility center, when leaves a big question mark in the starting lineup.
  • (Troy Machir): UCLA has no business being ranked in the top-25 right now. There are entirely too many “what ifs” with this team. Shabazz Muhammad may never actually play. Josh Smith has not gotten in shape, no matter how many times he tells us he has. One of the Wear twins is ALWAYS INJURED. Larry Drew II is the starting point guard. If that’s not a huge red flag, then I don’t know what is. This team has a whole lot of proving to do before we should anoint them as anything other than “a possible tournament team”.

No. 23 Wisconsin (Eric Angevine): You can’t just lose your starting point guard and carry on like nothing happened. Not in the Big Ten. Then again, Bo Ryan has NEVER missed the NCAA tournament since he moved to Madison. Not once. Still, no Gasser, no go.

No. 22 Notre Dame (David Harten): The fact that the no. 22 team in the Associated Press Preseason Top 25 might not make the NCAA Tournament shouldn’t be a surprise. It is the preseason and all. But there was a major drop off once Tim Abromaitis went down for his career last season. They do return Jack Cooley, but he’s strictly limited to matters under the basket, and Eric Atkins and Jerian Grant, the third and fourth leading scorers on the team. Turnovers will decide if this team is better than last season’s 22-12 record. They were 335th in the nation in committing them in 2011-12.

No. 11 North Carolina (Rob Dauster): Picking a team at the end of the top 25 would have been a cop-out, and seeing as there is nothing I could have added to the UCLA conversation to top was Troy already said, I’ll go with UNC. The Tar Heels are heading into a similar situation to the 2009-2010 season. They lost four players to the first round of the NBA Draft and are left with a roster that includes a freshman point guard (Marcus Paige), a promising-but-unproved sophomore big man (James Michael McAdoo), and a slew of role players that will be expected to provide a much bigger contribution this year.