Final Four Weekend in men's college basketball in an appropriate time to be reading "The Magnificent Seven."
It's a book about the so-called "blue bloods" - the class teams that seem to be good year after year after year. Would it be a Final Four without them?
Not really. The history tells the story about Duke, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, North Carolina and Connecticut. In the 2000s, there have been exactly two years in which none of those seven teams reached the Final Four - 2013 and 2019. Footnote: No one reached that round in 2020, due to the pandemic.
Therefore, when picking up a copy of the book, there's a good chance that it's going to be relevant. Sure enough, Duke popped up in the Final Four this time around. The Blue Devils lost in the semifinals, but represented themselves well until the final minutes of a loss to Houston. It happens, especially against good teams.
Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiberii probably could have written a book on these seven universities that could have served as a major doorstop. They wisely cut the size down to have a breezy, often fun look at the teams, all of which won four NCAA titles in the course of three decades. (That was the standard for inclusion; Villanova, Michigan State and Louisville were the near-misses.)
If there's a common denominator besides winning on this list, it's a great coach that set the standard. Sometimes that coach is followed by other great coaches, once the tradition was established, and sometimes he is not.
Jim Calhoun set the stage for Connecticut's run after his arrival in 1986; Dan Hurley has followed in his footsteps nicely. Mike Krzyzewski's record at Duke puts him with the all-time greats. You might have heard about Bobby Knight at Indiana. Kansas' first basketball coach was James Naismith, who merely invented the game. He's also the only coach in Jayhawks' history to have a losing record. Roy Williams and Bill Self have done better. Adolph Rupp became a legend at Kentucky, Rick Pitino and John Calipari had success of their own there. North Carolina plays in a facility named after Dean Smith for a reason, and John Wooden set an impossibly high standard for success at UCLA - as his successors often discovered the hard way. Yes, they all had great players, but the coaches were the constant in their runs of success.
If a reader is particularly interested in one of the seven schools, a little digging should produce a library filled with possibilities. But that reader might not know that much about the other six universities. That's the fun part - it's not so in-depth that a reader can get lost in the weeds. You are almost sure to learn a few things about all of the programs included here, which is the idea. Mehler and Iberii also are willing to be judgmental when necessary. They've done plenty of research and talked to some people on the record in order to obtain some fresh perspectives.
Sure, a 240-page book like this on such history-filled programs might be Basketball Lite for some. The guess here, though, "The Magnificent Seven" will be a fun and informative read that won't overwhelm most people. That's the goal of a book like this, and it succeeds nicely that way.
Four stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.)
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