2010 Final Four Home to Some New Faces

If you have not been paying attention the past 15 years, college basketball's playing field is becoming more balanced. The traditional powers are usually still left cutting down the nets when it is all said and done (like North Carolina last year) but there have been new contenders to emerge in the last decade-and-a-half that have brought parity to college hoops. The biggest reason for this is the drain of talent from the NCAA to the NBA. The powerhouse programs like North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, UConn and Kentucky are seeing some of their stars leave early for the professional ranks, which allows their opponents to compete with them by developing teams that play together for more than just one or two years. This has been the recipe for success for emerging powers Michigan State under Tom Izzo (6 Final Four appearances and a national championship in 15 years) and Florida under Billy Donovan (3 Final Four's and two national championships in 14 years). It is also how smaller schools like Gonzaga (have reached the NCAA Tournament every season since 1999), George Mason (Final Four appearance in 2006), and Butler (8 trips to the NCAA Tournament since 1998) are becoming the new stars of March. The Final Four teams this year illustrate the parity in the college game. Duke is the one traditional powerhouse but Coach K's boys - in the Final Four for the first time since 2004 - will not see any familiar faces in Indianapolis. Butler has now graduated from "mid-major" sleeper who you take in your office pool every March to the Final Four. The Bulldogs were the surprise winners of the Western Regional and will face Michigan State in the national semi-finals next Saturday. They will be joined by Izzo's Spartans - who are now officially a national power - and West Virginia, who has risen quickly under the leadership of Bob Huggins. The Blue Devils and Spartans will be fighting to represent the hierarchy of college basketball but the rest of the country will be pulling for the Mountaineers and the Bulldogs. They represent the hope that a school can win a title even if they do not have a Hall of Fame legacy.