Headline on ESPN front page...

[tommyuf21]

Originally Posted by InstiGATOR1

Do you think the average person watching ESPN or reading their website cares more about the NBA draft than the final four? I just checked and last years national semifinal had a 9.0 rating and last summer's NBA draft had a 1.9 rating. Despite this do you think more people care about the NBA draft right now and thus are more likely to read a story about an injury to a potential top pick than an injury that make keep a team out of the final four?

ESPN cares, since they televise a lot of NBA games.

They're trying to protect their investment in pro hoops, which can't be doing all that well, by using their product that performs well and has the most viewer loyalty of the two.

[InstiGATOR1]

Originally Posted by keefer

Dude, you gotta take off the orange and blue glasses every once in a while. You are WAY off base on your assumptions. There are 30 teams out there with final four possibilities and talent. Do you know who is injured right now on everyone of those teams?

The fact is there is only ONE possible No.1 pick in the upcoming draft and he may have just suffered a possible career ending injury. Can you not notice the difference?

Well I came back to this thread because I found this in Luke Winn's weekly power rating article where he has UF at 4:

Florida Gators (20-3)

Kentucky's loss of Nerlens Noel to that horrific knee-buckle on Tuesday night will be talked about far more than Florida's loss of 6-foot-7 forward Will Yeguete to a knee injury a week earlier. Noel had a reasonable claim to being the national defensive player of the year, but Yeguete stood to make a bigger impact on the national title race, and although he's expected to recover from arthroscopic surgery in time for the postseason, it's uncertain how much he'll be able to contribute. When he was healthy, he was making immense contributions to the Gators' defense -- as a long-armed trapper/interceptor in the press (with a team-high 3.3 steal percentage); a great backline defender in the 2-3 zone; and the team's best defensive rebounder (with a 22.9 percent DReb rate). As coach Billy Donovan told the Orlando Sentinel, "Any time you lose a guy like Will Yeguete your defense is going to be different. Will adds a different dimension down there in terms of covering up a lot of things."

The key will be how well 6-8 junior Casey Prather defends in Yeguete's absence. As colleague Andy Staples wrote from Gainesville, the early returns were solid, although Prather won't be the same kind of interior enforcer that Yeguete was.

Here is the link:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/col...ngs/index.html

He has Prather's height wrong, but he is making the same point I made.

Now perhaps REM08 has it right and I am wrong to try to measure interest in who makes the final four by number of people who watch it compared to interest in the NBA draft by the number of people who watch it.

I will say, I suspect more people watched UF v. UK than watched UF v. UAR. If I am right in that supposition, then more people needed to be informed of the Yeguete injury after the UF v. UAR game than needed to be informed of the Noel injury after the UF v. UK game.

Of course there were those very graphic images I have mentioned before in this thread. TV is a visual medium and Noel screaming on the ground and then being carried off by teammates attracts more interest in viewers I think than Yeguete simply limping of the court. Also Noel started and Yeguete does not so it take more serious fan to understand how important a player like Yeguete can be.

Finally, if you look at this mock draft data base:

http://walterfootball.com/nbadraftdata.php

only 5 of the 10 prior to the date of Noel injury listed him at the top pick. [Ignore the one 2014 mock that shows up in the database.] So in fact, unlike last year when everyone had it as Davis by now, there are several potential top picks in the draft this year.

[fox]

On national radio the headline was about Noel. One head literally said, "and as a footnote, Florida destroyed Kentucky."

[rtgator]

Originally Posted by InstiGATOR1

Well I came back to this thread because I found this in Luke Winn's weekly power rating article where he has UF at 4:



Here is the link:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/col...ngs/index.html

He has Prather's height wrong, but he is making the same point I made.

Now perhaps REM08 has it right and I am wrong to try to measure interest in who makes the final four by number of people who watch it compared to interest in the NBA draft by the number of people who watch it.

I will say, I suspect more people watched UF v. UK than watched UF v. UAR. If I am right in that supposition, then more people needed to be informed of the Yeguete injury after the UF v. UAR game than needed to be informed of the Noel injury after the UF v. UK game.

Of course there were those very graphic images I have mentioned before in this thread. TV is a visual medium and Noel screaming on the ground and then being carried off by teammates attracts more interest in viewers I think than Yeguete simply limping of the court. Also Noel started and Yeguete does not so it take more serious fan to understand how important a player like Yeguete can be.

Finally, if you look at this mock draft data base:

http://walterfootball.com/nbadraftdata.php

only 5 of the 10 prior to the date of Noel injury listed him at the top pick. [Ignore the one 2014 mock that shows up in the database.] So in fact, unlike last year when everyone had it as Davis by now, there are several potential top picks in the draft this year.

Good find. I think Winn is right that Yeguette's injury will have a bigger impact on the national title race.

I think it's understandable that the media has made this a big story:

* Noel is a much more heralded player.
* He's a potential #1 draft pick.
* He's Kentucky's top player.
* His injury was more catastrophic (and was caught on video).
* The national debate about a catastrophic injury to a player who could have a pro contract now.

I'm just disappointed that Noel's injury completely overshadowed our performance. Kentucky may not be great this year, but they are very talented and have been getting better. The fact that we beat them convincingly was, as one poster said, a "footnote" to Noel's injury.