FanHouse MarcusThornton

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Time at the peak isn't supposed to be this short.

The Hornets jolted the West in 2008, nearly taking the first seed in the conference one season after missing the postseason entirely. After waxing Dallas in what would become Avery Johnson's final playoff series there, the Hornets went all the way to Game 7 against the defending champion Spurs. The Hornets lost, and didn't get close in 2008-09.

You can believe one of three things. The Hornets' short triumph could be over, more flash in the sky than formation of a new star. The Hornets could have experienced just a brief setback, a defeat at the hands of a bad match-up and an injury-riddled season. Or, the Hornets could have just ran into some structural problems in need of fixing, which they possibly have this summer.

A major topic of discussion this past week was how mistreated the mid-majors have been in recent years by the NCAA tournament selection committee. Butler is definitely one of the best teams in the nation not from the so-called BCS conferences. The Bulldogs were slotted against LSU, a team from the most maligned BCS conference, the SEC.

Not only did Butler lose to LSU in the first round of the tournament on Thursday, but they came out completely flat and seemed noticeably overmatched in the first five minutes. Sure, things settled down and Butler was in the game to the end, but this game did nothing but reinforce the supposed under-representation of the mid-majors when it comes to at-large berths.

---

---

This week, FanHouse is taking a look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted Poseur of the And The Valley Shook blog to break down the LSU Tigers.

Let me first speak for about three-quarters of the LSU fanbase first: thank God John Brady is finally gone. I don't think I have ever loathed a coach as much as I loathe Brady. Eleven years of doing just enough to not get fired, Brady finally got shown the door as he followed up a fluky Final Four appearance with two last place finishes in the SEC West. OK, that's cheating, LSU was in last when Brady got canned, but rallied down the stretch, going 5-5 with an interim coach. So excuse us if we're a little shell-shocked, LSU fans have learned an important lesson over the past decade: don't get your hopes up.