College Hoops New Year's Resolutions

Herb Sendek:          Recruit more players like James Harden, fill the power void left by in-state rival Arizona, and schedule a home-and-away series with North Carolina State.

Jim Boeheim:          Construct more schedules where you play teams like Florida, Kansas, Memphis, and Virginia.  The fans like that much better than watching Syracuse drill Cornell and Colgate for the combined 942 time in a row.

Big Ten:                   Finally conquer the ACC and win the ACC/Big Ten Challenge so the conference isn’t a punch line anymore.

Arkansas:                Bring back the days of 40 Minutes of Hell. College basketball is so much more interesting when the Hogs make the rest of the SEC quake in their boots.

Indiana:                  Return your program to college basketball respectability so that you don’t look like you’d be run off the court by the local jock frat.

John Thompson III:    You’re not your father. We fans love it when you play teams like Memphis and Duke. Keep it up.

Derek Kellogg:        Recruit a few studs from the Class of 2010 to compliment your 2009 class so that UMass starts making regular NCAA tournament appearances again. That would certainly re-ignite the border war with Jim Calhoun and UConn.

Mid-Major Schools: Another Final Four run. George Mason captivated the nation. So can you.

Al Skinner:              Sign a one-and-done star so that the press can stop writing the same story every year of how Boston College always recruits diamonds in the rough.

Kentucky:                Look, you’re the all-time wins leader in men’s college basketball so start acting like it by competing for Final Four berths again and not simply NCAA berths.

Norm Roberts:         Lance Stephenson in uniform next October. You’re the coach of St. John's and you’re in the hotbed of hoops, New York City. The Johnnies need to be relevant again. So if you get Stephenson to stay home, that will open up the recruiting flood gates for you.

McDonald’s Game:    Sensibility in player selection. Exhibit ‘A’ is Duke players of the past decade: Casey Sanders, Sean Dockery, Shavlik Randolph, Michael Thompson, Josh McRoberts, Greg Paulus, Eric Boateng, Lance Thomas. Sorry, but we’re not buying it.

Gonzaga:                 A Final Four berth so you can stop answering the question about when you’ll finally break through.

College hoops fans:   Rejoice in the fact that on Selection Sunday we won’t have to listen to Billy Packer belittling the Selection Committee Chair as to why more ACC teams didn’t receive bids when they clearly didn’t deserve them.

And on that note, Happy New Year everyone. Selection Sunday is only 73 days away…