Madness: Please Stop Talking About Pro Prospects During the NCAA Tournament

March Madness will run into early April this season, with the national champion scheduled to cut down the nets into the wee hours of April 2. Three weeks from now, two teams out of a deep field of 68 schools will play to see which squad will be crowned this season's best.

Sixty-eight teams, made up of just over 1,000 players of all shapes and sizes, are vying for the title of college basketball national champion. Not one of those 1,000 players will lace up a competitive NBA sneaker until next October.

For three more weeks, can we just let them be college players?

One more conversation about how Anthony Davis will transition to the NBA while Kentucky is battling in a close game is enough to make a person scream. Davis is likely the consensus Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year and potentially national Player of the Year.

In just his first season in college basketball, the kid has lived up to all the hype surrounding him at Kentucky. Now, with no more than six games left in his first—and perhaps only—college season, much of the talk surrounding Davis is where he projects in the NBA.

We have just a handful of games to watch Davis be one of the great dominant forces in the history of college basketball, and we're muddling that conversation with talk of whether he's strong enough to play power forward in the NBA? It stinks.

Eventually, we can dissect where Davis will end up, projecting which teams will be looking to use his unique skills in the NBA. We don't even know the order of the draft yet, so how can we even begin to project—during the NCAA tournament—who will be the top pick in the draft?

For now, Davis and his Kentucky squad are an amalgamation of future lottery picks trying to win a national title. Let's focus on the quest for the title, not the NBA lottery, for just three more weeks, please.

The fact is, a lot of this is John Calipari's fault. Clearly, Calipari is better than any other coach in the country in his ability to recruit a consistent stream of great one-and-done talent.

When Calipari lost five underclassmen in the first round of the 2010 NBA draft—four freshmen and one junior in the first 29 picks—he called it "the greatest night in Kentucky basketball history." 

Calipari recruits players who use college basketball as a means to an NBA end. No, it isn't fair to blame Calipari for working the system to his advantage, but it is disappointing to remember that a guy who coaches at a school with seven national championship trophies tried to pass off a day when five of his players got drafted as the best night in school history.

It's the nature of the sport now. A few years ago, some of these players would have skipped college altogether to go straight to the NBA. At least college basketball fans (and March Madness maniacs) get to watch some of the game's best young talent for one year before going off to play in the NBA.

Now, that one year is truncated to just three more weeks and a maximum of six more games. Let us have those games. 

I understand that it's hard to avoid the immediate comparison to the "next level." In football, when a wide receiver makes a leaping grab over a defensive back or a linebacker goes sideline to sideline to keep a running back from getting a first down, the first thing an analyst says usually resembles, "This guy will be doing that on Sundays next season."

Talking about a player in general "next level" terms is more of a tool (crutch?) for analysts to put into context how great a player is in comparison with those before him.

To say a guy is the best player on the field or the most dominant force on the basketball court frankly isn't hyperbolic enough to explain to the average fan just how good the player is. Putting the player's ability into the "next level" conversation elevates our expectations of greatness and gives what we are watching better context.

"Oh, this guy is NBA good? He should totally dominate this college tournament game." 

I can understand that use of context. What I can't understand is an ongoing discussion in the middle of a tournament game about a player's projection into the NBA. It happened in nearly every game during the conference tournaments, and it will certainly happen during the NCAA tourney, too.

What I refuse to understand is why even one minute of studio time is dedicated to projecting players into the NBA while the tournament is still going on. There is so much to discuss with each tournament game. Where the players project at the "next level" should be last on that list. 

Is Harrison Barnes a lottery pick? According to most NBA draft experts, he is. Barnes is also one of the most talented players on one of the top four teams in this year's tournament.

It shouldn't matter if he needs to tighten up his mid-range game for the next level. It matters if he's taking quality shots for Roy Williams' squad for six more games. 

We should focus more on defending national-champion Connecticut wearing dark jerseys in its opening game (as a nine seed) than how their two potential lottery picks—Andre Drummond and Jeremy Lamb—will translate to the next level.

If Connecticut gets out of the first round to face Kentucky for a chance to go to the Sweet 16, NBA heads will be salivating at the chance to see Drummond and Lamb against Kentucky's six potential NBA draft picks. 

College basketball heads will be more excited to see if Jim Calhoun can out-coach Calipari and get UConn back to the second weekend of the tournament. If this game does happen on Saturday, let's hope the coverage focuses on that. 

I truly do understand the projections are inevitable. Many NBA fans (and most writers) loathe the overall quality of play in the college game, picking out the few players they project as professionals to watch and dissect.

NBA people only care about, say, Kentucky because of the pro prospects on the floor, not because they're the top overall seed, and certainly not because Calipari, wherever he coaches, continues to put together talented rosters that can't seem to win the national title. 

If the top eight seeds all advance to the Elite Eight, we could see Kentucky facing Duke, Syracuse taking on Ohio State, North Carolina squaring off against Kansas and Michigan State playing Missouri.

Some of us want to see Austin Rivers face Doron Lamb and the Plumlee boys play against Kentucky's vaunted frontcourt. We want to watch Fab Melo face Jared Sullinger in the low block or see if Thomas Robinson can dominate John Henson in the post. For three more weeks, we don't want to worry how any of them will handle Blake Griffin or Kevin Love next year.

Three more weeks. There are just three weeks until the greatest tournament in sports is completed and the NBA draftniks can dissect the pro prospects of every single one of the 1,000-plus kids we watched create 67 games full of madness. 

You can have the next three months. Heck, you can have the next three years. Give us three more weeks.

You can listen to us talk about this and other bracket-related topics on our Monday podcast here.