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I agree that coaches too often fall in love with athleticism at the expense of pure basketball skill, which they ironically don't have enough practice time to correct. However, I disagree that this is just an SEC thing. Scoring is down in all of college basketball over the last several years. The reason mentioned by the previous poster is one of them; the defense can and should be there every night, but the ball doesn't always go in the basket no matter how well you run your offense. For some reason, we fans of SEC football applaud the "defense first" strategy that has helped establish the SEC's national dominance but don't appreciate the same kind of conservative, defensive-oriented strategy in basketball even though it is based on the same principle.

Other reasons given by Jay Bilas on a recent ESPN GameDay show were the annual departure of some of the best young offensive players to the pros--with the consequent necessity of developing team offensive cohesion and strategy around a team's CURRENT crop of early-entry pros--and the prevalence of the pick-and-roll offenses without enough good guards to run them. Others have pointed to the decline of fundamental training by coaches at lower levels. This may just be a cyclical thing that may well change if, for example, the NBA establishes a lower age limit of 20 to be drafted. Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith among others think this should and well may happen before long.