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Andrew Wiggins to Kansas was the best option for college hoops fans

Big 12 Media Day Basketball

Kansas head coach Bill Self speaks during Big 12 Conference NCAA college basketball media day, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/The Kansas City Star, Rich Sugg)

AP

Last month, after Russ Smith, Doug McDermott and CJ Fair announced their intentions to return to school for their senior seasons, I penned a column about just how great the 2013-2014 college basketball season is shaping up to be.

You can read it here.

Everything that I wrote in that post remains true today with the exception of one nugget. Kentucky is going to be the best team in the country, once again, but they’ll be challenged for supremacy in the Commonwealth by a Louisville team with the talent to repeat as champs. Michigan State is going to be up there, as well, but Michigan and Ohio State have their sights sets on bringing home the Big Ten title. The new Big East should be awesome, especially with Dougie McBuckets back in the fold, while UConn and Memphis should have enough pieces to challenge Louisville in the AAC. Syracuse will turn the ACC into a three-team race, alongside Duke and UNC, while Oklahoma State should have the horses to contend with Kansas in the Big 12.

And there lies the difference.

Kansas landed Andrew Wiggins on Tuesday afternoon, meaning that the Jayhawks are undoubtedly the favorite to win the Big 12. They will also be a favorite to make the Final Four and a legitimate contender to win the National Title.

And that is what Wiggins picking Kansas was the best decision he could have made from a college hoops perspective.

Wiggins was never going to North Carolina, so we’ll leave them out of the discussion for now. If he had ended up at Florida State, he would have toiled away in relative anonymity, playing for a team that he would’ve made good enough to potentially sneak into the second weekend of the NCAA tournament. At Kentucky, he would’ve starred for a team that already has too many stars, turning the college basketball season into a year-long race for an undefeated season.

But at Kansas, Wiggins not only makes one of the best fanbases, one of the top programs, and arguably the best head coach in the country a title contender, he allows everyone else -- Louisville, Michigan State, Duke, Florida, Arizona -- to keep their names in title contention.

That’s not to Kentucky would have waltzed their way to an undefeated season and a national title, but it would have been their title to lose, much in the way it was heading into the 2012 NCAA tournament.

But with Wiggins at Kansas, it means that this year’s national title picture will be as wide open as last year’s.

The only difference?

Last year, the title race was wide-open because there wasn’t a dominant team in the country. This season, the race is wide-open because their is a dominant team -- Kentucky -- but there may be ten schools that have enough talent to truly challenge the Wildcats.

So yeah, the 2013-2014 season is going to be awesome.

Is it November yet?

You can find Rob on twitter @RobDauster.