Sportsfrog.com

For me, the 80s to the early 90s were a golden age of college basketball. Unreal talent flowed into college and stayed there long enough to make an impact. As the decade rolled on, ESPN’s collection of games were must see television to catch a glimpse of talent like Chris Mullin at St. John’s, Danny Manning at Kansas, the Len Bias Maryland teams, any of the Georgetown teams even post-Patrick Ewing; really, the list of teams worth seeing was lengthy. And the games outstanding.

Then, the 90s hit and the influx of the best of the talent fleeing high school straight for college set in, and while perhaps an argument can be made that college ball didn’t really suffer, from my perspective it wasn’t close to as interesting and well played a game (in general) as what we had seen a decade earlier. It was no longer really necessary as a sports fan to make time to catch a random night game on ESPN.

Now, in the first year where talent is forced into at least a year of college ball before heading to the NBA, it feels like regular season college ball is well worth a look again. Almost must see television. Yesterday I highlighted the freshman campaign being put together by Kevin Durant and last night he was again amazing, only to come up short because Mario Boggan at Oklahoma State matched him, hitting an Arenas-esque three with a hand in his face to lift Oklahoma State over Texas in the third overtime, 105-103. Luke Winn at si.com in his blog calls it the the best game of the year so far. Impossible to argue with that.

Boggan hung 37 points with 20 boards on Texas, with just one turnover for the Cowboys. The insane game winning shot. Durant, going for 37 of his own for the Longhorns, with 12 rebounds, 2 steals and 4 blocks for good measure. Durant hit his own huge shots, one three to tie the game in the first overtime, a sequence of block and release to dunk to force another tie. A rebound put back and foul to give Texas the temporary 103-102 lead.

Frankly, it was amazing and compelling to watch. And the kind of game that college ball used to offer on a regular basis back in the day. And appears to be ready to offer again, with really interesting and good teams littering the landscape of college ball ranging the entire west coast to the traditional hoops studs in the east. And checking the ESPN family of channels for the games being offered that night is again a must.