Basketball Notebook: College, Pro Tidbits

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Flipping the channels around last night, I noticed a few things about the great game of basketball:

+ If Georgetown is the 11th-best team in the country, I don't think college basketball is very good this year. The more I think about rankings, the more worthless I think they are. Not because I think the ranking of a particular team is way out of line, but because there always seems to be a disconnect between the top tier of teams and everyone else. Sometimes that top tier can be six or eight teams, but this year, I think the cut-off separates just Texas, Kentucky and Kansas from everybody else. One of these three teams will win the national championship.

+ I like what Bruce Pearl continues to do at Tennessee, but for some reason I just haven't accepted the Vols as a serious threat in the national landscape. Sure they're an SEC power, and that league is better this year than last, but I just don't think they're there yet. UT is no better than a Sweet 16 team come March.

+ Gonzaga finally appears to have developed a nasty streak. I watched some of the Zags' game against a good Saint Mary's team, and as expected, Matt Bouldin had a nice night with 22 points. But although freshmen are a hot topic this year, one youngster not getting much hype is Elias Harris, who had 31 points and 13 rebounds. But overall, Gonzaga killed St. Mary's on the boards and played with a physical edge not typically seen from Mark Few's bunch or many west-coast teams in general.

+ On to the NBA, where the Jazz and Cavaliers played the best fourth quarter I've seen in a long time. Utah's 21-2 run gave the home team a 12-point lead, but Lebron James answered by scoring 18 of Cleveland's next 20 points, ultimately leading a 25-7 run that he punctuated with a pair of long-rang threes and a pair of foul shots. Cleveland led, 91-85 with 32 seconds left. But Utah clawed back and won at the buzzer with a three-pointer from Sundiata Gaines, a Queens, N.Y., native signed from the D-League last week, making just his fifth NBA appearance. The game-winning shot was his first NBA three-pointer. The Jazz scored 12 points in the final 32 seconds, a rate of 270 points per quarter.