Pleeeeease Come Back Next Year, Josh?

I've been putting it off for a few days now, but I guess it's time to comment on Stanford's loss last Saturday. I was more dumbfounded than anything. It was not necessarily that we lost, but the way we lost that made it so hard to swallow. I have never ever seen us blow a double-digit lead late in the game like that. It was the type of meltdown that our smart players are usually immune to.

Immediately after the game, I thought "man, this is gonna overshadow the entire year." But in the past few days I've been thinking about what I told my friend while on the Maples Pavillion court in the moments after we beat Arizona: "No matter what happens in the tournament, nothing can erase this." And that pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter: you just have to separate what happens in the tournament from everything else. The regular season is a controlled, sane, structured process where games are played against familiar opponents in front of raucous student sections. The tournament is an entirely different animal, with its single-elimination format, neutral courts and unknown opponents. Teams that earn a high seed in the tournament and lose early deserve more respect. You just can't judge a season based on what happens in the NCAAs. It would be like a college football team basing its season on whether or not it wins its bowl game. But in reality, its much more prestigious to earn a trip to the Rose Bowl and lose than it is to win the GMAC Bowl. I wish the public at large viewed college basketball regular seasons with the reverence it gives college football regular seasons.