When a college basketball fan thinks of the sport, it\u2019s hard not to start with the Blue Bloods.<\/p>\n
Kentucky. North Carolina. Duke. Kansas. UCLA. All of these programs together \u2014 with possibly the recent surge from UConn \u2014 write most (if not all) of the history of college basketball.<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s head coach Rick Pitino \u2014 a two-time national championship winner at Kentucky and one-time national championship winner at Louisville* \u2014 attended a media conference in Washington D.C. ahead of his team\u2019s matchup against the Duke Blue Devils that\u2019s scheduled for this evening.<\/p>\n
In the media conference, he claimed that the Blue Bloods no longer control college basketball. He believes that the combination of the increased traffic of the transfer portal along with NIL (Name, Image & Likeness) has allowed non-traditional schools to up their game and compete with schools that once might have had an advantage in recruiting\/facilities\/coaching staffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no difference anymore. There\u2019s no difference between Michigan State, who is a blue blood, to any of the other teams from the conferences, from Mississippi, when they get it going. It\u2019s all going to be the same\u2026 There\u2019s no such thing as a blue blood anymore,\u201d said Pitino.<\/p>\n
The \u201cBlue Blood\u201d programs, though, have done pretty well themselves since NIL began in 2021. Kansas and North Carolina met in the 2022 NCAA title game, with UConn winning both the 2023 and 2024 championships.<\/p>\n
Florida winning last year was a change in that trend, but so far this year, Duke, UConn, and even Michigan State remain, with Duke being the tournament\u2019s No. 1 overall seed.<\/p>\n
With the likes of Arizona, Illinois, Iowa State, Michigan, Alabama, Purdue, and others competing at the same or an even higher level than some of the Blue Bloods, Pitino does have a point.<\/p>\n
But the Blue Bloods are still a force in today\u2019s game and should still continue to be as the sport continues to evolve. UK fans can only hope that Kentucky finds its way through the turbulence that is NIL, recruiting, and the transfer portal.<\/p>\n
Major clash this weekend.<\/p>\n
Can they pull off a magical upset?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a college basketball fan thinks of the sport, it\u2019s hard not to start with the Blue Bloods.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,38124,244,8582,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-681900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-kentucky-wildcats-basketball-news","11":"tag-kentucky-wildcats-basketball","12":"tag-kentucky-wildcats-news","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-basketball","15":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116300733700632501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}