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Jalen Rose Misses on Villanova

Jalen Rose

ESPN’s new talk show “Get Up” debuted on Monday and it didn’t take long before co-host Jalen Rose dismissed Villanova when asked their place among college basketball’s elite.

After the Wildcats won their second national championship in three years on Monday night, Rose shared the following tidbits.

“They are a well coached collegiate basketball team, and just because you win the NCAA tournament that doesn’t mean that you are preeminent as it relates to programs in the country.”

“When you say ‘preeminent’, that means you’re projecting what they are going to do after college basketball. And I want to ask you all a question: who is the best player to come out of Villanova the last 10 or 15 years?”

“Jay Wright has more championships than Coach Cal, yet Coach Cal has a billion dollars worth of earnings for guys he’s coached.”

“The premier basketball team in America usually gets McDonald’s All Americans to sign on the dotted line. Like Duke and like Kentucky, Arizona, Kansas.”

Talk about moving goalposts.

Rose touches on everything but winning in his assessment of what makes a program elite. He even goes as far as dismissing national championships, in fact. Winning the NCAA tournament doesn’t make you elite, in Rose’s estimation.

Do two titles in three years suffice?

Three Final Fours in the past decade?

Becoming the second school in Division 1 history with four straight 30 win seasons?

I get it, this is a talk show that needs opposing viewpoints to draw viewers, but Rose’s opinion felt sincere — and it’s another reminder of what sports media has become in 2018.

Ten hours hadn’t passed and already Villanova was being shortchanged. “A well coached collegiate team.”

That team just ran through this NCAA Tournament, winning by over 17 points per game and not losing once this season with a fully healthy roster.

Their postseason run included:

  • A 24 point win over a bubble team in Marquette the Big East Tournament Quarterfinals
  • An 87-68 victory against a Butler team that lost by a bucket in the round of 32 to second seeded Purdue
  • An overtime win over Providence in the Big East Championship
  • Blowouts of Radford and Alabama to kick off the NCAA tournament
  • Three straight wins over the top three teams in the Big 12 (by a total of 40 points).
  • A 17 point victory in the national title game against a Michigan team that came into Monday night on a 14 game winning streak.

Rose, of course, starred for Michigan in back-to-back Final Fours, losing in the national championship both times.

The first came to a Duke team that was truly the preeminent program of the early 90s, having won consecutive national titles.

The second loss came at the hands of a North Carolina team that didn’t have any surefire NBA stars. Center Eric Montross and George Lynch went in the top half of the Draft, but both were relative journeymen.

Maybe it was the Michigan in him, or perhaps Villanova reminded him of the ’93 Carolina team that took out his more talented Michigan group, but Rose’s insistence of redirecting the conversation to everything but the scoreboard was yet another example of how hollow sports talk shows have become.

One Comment

  1. Rob

    April 4, 2018 at 12:13 pm

    When I draw a comparison between between coach Wright and someone like coach Calipari I compare Class versus CRASS! I see a person that has left more than one of the schools he has left to move to more prestigious jobs on NCAA probation for recruiting violations compared to a coach that does his job by the rules and still wins Championships. If Coach Wright and Villanova are not an elite program qnd coach no one is.

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