Twenty years after the Dream Team, the 2012 edition brought the story of NBA players in the Olympics full circle with a dominating performance in London. Team USA had been embarrassed in international competitions from 2002-2006, but those losses were as much a story of American arrogance and indifference as they were the rest of the world catching up. Once Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski modernized USA Basketball, the US went right back to its accustomed perch atop the world of basketball, going undefeated from 2008-2012.

While there were NBA players on nearly every team in London, the critical mass of talent the Americans had on hand was overwhelming. No other country could afford to cut players with significant NBA experience; Team USA had their pick of All-Stars. Spain, the silver medal team in Beijing and London, might have been able to upset the US in a one-and-done scenario, but no one would have given them a chance in a best-of-seven series. Twenty years after Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson brought basketball to the international stage, the Americans still don’t have a legitimate rival.

That doesn’t appear likely to change in the short-term. With Argentina's “Golden Generation” on their last legs and the Gasol brothers creeping into their 30’s, no other country has a core of elite players in place to challenge Team USA by 2016. The renewed American dominance has prompted calls to tweak the Olympics to make them more competitive, from removing NBA players entirely to imposing an age limit, but that may prove unnecessary in the long-term. Canada, the only other country with an NBA franchise, has steadily developed a basketball culture over the last generation, the fruits of which are taking shape in college basketball this season.

James Naismith is Canadian, but it took a long time for his native country to embrace the sport. The NBA didn’t expand into Canada until 1995 and no Canadian colleges play in the NCAA Tournament, so there was never a hometown team young athletes north of the US border could grow up rooting for. As a result, Steve Nash, the first great Canadian basketball player, never had a chance in international competitions, not with so little talent around him. The country has put others in the NBA -- Bill Wennington, Todd MacCulloch, Samuel Dalembert -- but the first noticeable wave of talent has emerged only in the last few years.

In 2011, 16 years after the Toronto Raptors played their first game, two Canadian players were taken in the first round. Both Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph benefitted from the sport’s broadened horizons, making a name for themselves in AAU competitions before eventually playing at Findlay Prep in Las Vegas and spending one year of college at Texas. Three more Canadians -- Andrew Nicholson, Robert Sacre and Kris Joseph -- were selected in 2012, although Nicholson, a promising young power forward for the Orlando Magic, is the only one certain to have a long NBA career.

In 2013, the wave of Canadian talent became a flood. There’s quantity, with 90 Canadian players on a D1 scholarship, and quality in the form of three first-round prospects -- Anthony Bennett (UNLV), Kelly Olynk (Gonzaga) and Myck Kabongo (Texas). Behind them, Nick Stauskas (Michigan), Jordan Bachynski (Arizona State), Khem Birch (UNLV), Kevin Pangos (Gonzaga) and Kyle Wiltjer (Kentucky) are all on the radar of NBA scouts as well. Sim Bhullar (New Mexico State) is a 7’5 355 human being who can run up and down a court, so there might be a place for him at the next level down the road.

Bennett is the unquestioned prize of this year’s crop. At 6’8 240 with long arms, a quick first step and great leaping ability, he’s the prototype small-ball power forward in the modern NBA. And while combo forwards who rely mainly on their athleticism have struggled to make the transition from college (Derrick Williams), Bennett is a surprisingly skilled player with a smooth jumper, deceptive ball-handling ability and great touch around the rim. He’s averaging 17 points and 8 rebounds game on 54/37/71 shooting as a freshman in the Mountain West, the second best conference in the country this season. He’ll need to improve his passing and defensive ability to be a legitimate franchise player on the next level, but he should be a borderline All-Star for the next decade regardless.

Olynyk has been one of the most surprising players in the country this season. After redshirting last year behind a glut of NBA prospects at Gonzaga, he’s emerged as an All-American candidate as a junior. He’s always had a great outside shot for a 7’0 240 big man, but he’s developed the capability to put the ball on the floor, finish through contact and post up smaller players this season. Olynyk is the go-to-player on the No. 1 team in the country, averaging 17 points and 7 rebounds a game on 66/38/79 shooting this season. It’s unclear whether he’ll have the defensive chops to be a starter at the next level, but his ability to space the floor at his size will ensure that he has a long career in the NBA.

Kabongo, thanks to an uneven freshman season and a capricious 23-game NCAA suspension to start his sophomore year, is still somewhat of an enigma after returning to action only two weeks ago. A 6’1 180 point guard with breathtaking speed and great floor vision, he’s been a highly touted prospect since his days at Findlay Prep. However, he still needs to answer questions about his perimeter jumper and decision-making ability before an NBA team will be willing to give him the keys to the offense. After what he went through this season, it would be hard to blame him if he declared for the draft, but he’s likely to spend the first few years of his pro career like Joseph -- riding the end of the bench and shuttling back and forth to the D-League -- if he is taken at the back of the first round in 2013.

Looming over all of them is Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 player in the class of 2013. There’s never been an international prospect like Wiggins, an athletic 6’7 205 wing who can beat American players at their own game. His ongoing recruitment has been one of the biggest stories of the college basketball season, while NBA teams are already dreaming about taking him with the No. 1 overall pick in 2014. It’s still way too early to know whether whether he can live up to the hype surrounding him, but if he can, he will be surrounded by a lot of talent on the Canadian national team.

By 2020, Canada could have a team with Olynyk, Thompson and Nicholson upfront, Wiggins and Bennett on the wings and Kabongo running point. Even if some of them don’t pan out, with so much interest in basketball in Canada, the country’s pipeline of talent won’t run out as abruptly as it did in Argentina. There’s already one Canadian, a 6’8 210 forward named Trey Lyles, among the top players in the class of 2014. For all of them, the biggest game of their careers may end up being a match-up with Team USA in the 2020 gold medal game. The future of basketball, both in Canada and around the world, is bright indeed.

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Final exams are here in college basketball, making this the quiet period of the season. After the excitement of the Champions Classic, the Holiday Tournaments, and the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, college basketball must make it through a relatively boring stretch on the schedule.

The marquee game last week was supposed to be UCLA taking on Texas at Reliant Stadium in Houston. But with UCLA losing a bunch of early games (including blowing an 18-point lead against Cal Poly), and with Texas struggling (including a loss to Chaminade in Maui), this game had lost most of its luster. In fact, it lost so much luster, that less than 3000 fans showed up to watch a game being played in a dome stadium.

Fittingly, the game lived up to its billing. Texas turned the ball over possession after possession down the stretch allowing UCLA to come from behind at the end. But UCLA couldn’t make free throws that would seal the game. Then Texas air-balled a three at the buzzer that would have won the game. UCLA prevailed, but neither team was able to shake its reputation as a disappointment early in the year.

(Quick side note about Texas. The Longhorns' defense has actually been shockingly good this season. No team has a better eFG% defense at this point in the season than Texas, meaning the Longhorns are forcing teams to miss both their twos and threes at an impressive rate. Rick Barnes simply doesn’t get enough credit for his ability to teach defense. Unfortunately, without point guard Myck Kabongo, Texas’ offense has been dreadful. Only Sheldan McClellan and Julien Lewis have shown a consistent ability to put the ball in the basket this year, and the Longhorns other four Top 100 prospects out of high school have been nothing short of horrible, sporting ORtgs of 61 to 83. No team can win consistently when only two players have ORtgs over 100.)

But the beauty of college basketball is that even on a weekend with few marquee games, the plethora of games ensures there are always some fantastic finishes:

- UNLV’s Quintrell Thomas caught the ball under the basket and put back in a lay-up that gave UNLV a last-second win against California. Both teams will be likely be in the NCAA tournament this year, so it was an important win for both UNLV and the MWC. UNLV’s Mike Moser injured his elbow in the game, and that bears watching.

- Elsewhere, West Virginia handed Virginia Tech their first loss of the season on a Juwan Staten lay-up in the final seconds. West Virginia had high hopes for the elite transfer Staten, but his debut was an ugly 0-6 two turnover performance against Gonzaga. Fortunately Staten had bounced back, scoring in double figures the last four games and living at the free throw line. And against Virginia Tech, Staten drove the lane in the final seconds and hit a lay-up that proved to be the game-winner.

- Meanwhile, Purdue and Mississippi were reminded why major conference teams hate to play at mid-major venues. Purdue fell 47-44 at Eastern Michigan. This is not a great Eastern Michigan team, but with Eastern Michigan turning the ball over only four times, while Purdue turned the ball over 18 times, those 14 additional possessions made all the difference in the upset win. Meanwhile, Middle Tennessee’s Kerry Hammonds made a jumper in the final minute to break a tie and give Ole Miss its first loss of the season. Unlike Eastern Michigan, Middle Tennessee has been playing pretty good basketball this season, and this loss might not hurt quite so much come selection Sunday.

Other notes

- Illinois was back to making three-pointers in Saturday’s win over Gonzaga, sinking 11 in the win. With over 10 made threes per game, I am very curious whether this will continue in conference play.

- Last season, Florida St. had a scatterbrained resume of puzzling losses to bad teams and amazing wins against Top 10 teams. It was largely because of their one-sided play. When you play elite defense, all you need is for a few surprising shots to fall and you can beat an elite team. And when you have lousy offense, all you need is for your opponent to hit a few surprising shots and you can lose to anyone. Georgetown looks like that team this year. They lost to Indiana in OT and have thus far pulled out close wins against teams like Towson. Still, the Hoyas have some head-scratching games ahead, given their great defense and poor offense.

-Michigan’s Nik Stauskas continues to be way more athletic than I anticipated. When the Arkansas game tightened up near the 12 minute market of the second half, Stauskas had the ball at the wing and I thought a turnover was coming. Instead he shook his man, drove all the way to the edge of the free throw line, and banked home a long-layup. To me, it was a game-changing play.

Of course, I have already learned to love Illinois’ three-point shooting, Stauskas’s game, and Georgetown’s defense.  In fact, I wonder if sometimes the computers learn more from these December games than the media. We all know that Kansas is going to be the favorite in the Big 12 in conference play, and that Bill Self’s teams play lock down defense year-after-year. But with ugly games against teams like Chattanooga and San Jose St., Kansas was no longer looking like a Top 10 team in most computer rankings. That changed on Saturday with the Jayhawks 36 point thrashing of a solid Colorado team. I tend to struggle with what to say about a 36 point loss, but in the grand scheme of ranking teams, all these games provide important information.

The other takeaway from the Colorado-Kansas game is that regional rivalries don’t have to die when teams switch conferences. Missouri and Kansas might not play again, but if they do not, that is a dumb choice by the teams. It is not a necessity.

Undefeated but Overrated

As the number of undefeated teams dwindles (we are down to 14 after Sunday), columnists tend to write about which teams with strong starts are over-rated. But I hate that tone. Nobody honestly believes that Charlotte is an elite team after a 9-0 start. But why rain on the parade of a team that has exceeded expectations.

It is one thing to say that you don’t necessarily expect a team to keep it up. If a team is winning close games, it is reasonable to ask whether they will still have a strong season in conference play.

It is one thing to criticize strength-of-schedule and say you wish that an elite team had played more quality competition. For example, I wish Arizona would have scheduled a few more marquee games, because until they play Florida next weekend, I still have no feel for how good this team can be.

But I hate it when people criticize a team for doing what they are supposed to do and winning games. Wyoming is my favorite example. Larry Shyatt had a disappointing run as Clemson’s head coach, but after joining Billy Donovan’s staff and helping Florida win two national championships, he finally got a second chance with the Cowboys. In his first season, he completely turned Wyoming’s team around by emphasizing defense, and now in his second season, his team’s offense is starting to come around. Wyoming isn’t an elite team, but after they came from 18 down to beat Illinois St. and preserve their undefeated mark, they deserve praise, not criticism for an undefeated start.

Do December games matter if everyone is focused on the NFL?

The NBA wants you to think its regular season is extremely important. But when San Antonio can choose to rest four key players at the Miami Heat, that undermines the NBA’s credibility. Chuck Klosterman wrote a fantastic piece recently asking some key questions about whether San Antonio owed it to NBA fans to play its star players against the Heat.

The beauty of college basketball is you never have to ask those questions.

- Almost every player is young, and even with some teams now playing 40 games, the season is still relatively short. The number of key players debating whether to play through a nagging injury is relatively small.

- For most of these kids, this is the moment. Was Louisville’s Peyton Siva really going to complain about playing three games in three days in the Bahamas and not want to give it his all against Duke? Of course not. This season is his moment in the sun and he wants to take full advantage of it.

-Every game matters for selection Sunday. I’ve long said that there is no resting your starters in college basketball because nothing is ever clinched. With so many teams with similar resumes at the end of the year, every loss counts for seeding. In the NBA, if San Antonio drops a game against New Orleans in November, it probably won’t matter much to the team’s ultimate probability of winning a championship. But if UCLA drops a game to Cal Poly in November, it is a critical red-mark on the Bruins resume, and it might be the reason the Bruins don’t play in the regional round in Los Angeles in the Staples Center in March.

The Dreaded Early RPI

Even if the loss to Middle Tennessee (discussed above) doesn’t cost Ole Miss an NCAA tournament spot, the sum total of these wins and losses does matter for the conferences. And at this point, the SEC might have needed that win more than Ole Miss.

Through Saturday, the conference RPI standings were as follows:

At this point the SEC is sitting 8th among all conferences in terms of RPI rankings, and the plethora of bad losses by teams at the bottom of the conference is going to make it hard to earn quality wins in SEC play this year. And as bad a measure of team quality as the RPI may be, it is still a very strong predictor of NCAA selection.

Rob Dauster noticed it earlier this week, but even if the Pac-12 has lacked signature wins in the early season, because its teams are chalking up fewer head-scratching losses this preseason, winning Pac-12 games will mean something this year. Right now it looks like a team that goes 11-7 in Pac-12 will be in the discussion for an at-large bid, something you couldn’t say last season.

The bigger concern might be how many teams can make the tournament out of the Big 12. I thought the Big 12 might be the deepest conference in the country this year, but none of the Big 12’s bubble teams have been coming through. Kansas St., Iowa St., and West Virginia certainly don’t look like terrible teams based on their margin-of-victory so far this season, and Texas probably won’t be a terrible team in January and February (assuming Kabongo plays eventually). But none of those teams have done anything in their marquee games. The Big 12 might have eight legitimate teams eventually, but unless the conference has a stellar last few weeks of non-conference action, the league may be capped at four or five NCAA bids.

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The game of the weekend featured Baylor ending Kentucky’s 55-game home winning streak. I’ve often described Scott Drew as an excellent recruiter, but without the in-season coaching ability of John Calipari. But for at least one afternoon, Scott Drew’s club ended up on top.

A couple of things fascinated me about the game.

First, John Calipari had Kyle Wiltjer on the bench for a long stretch in the second half. And he really had no choice. Wiltjer finished the day 1-for-11 from the floor, and he doesn’t have the defensive ability to stay in the game if his shot isn’t falling. Wiltjer has to find ways to provide value to his team other than just knocking down threes if he is going to be a true leader this season.

Second, I continued to be impressed with the all-around game of Baylor’s Isaiah Austin. I wish he would settle for a few less outside shots, but what I love about Austin is how he always looks extremely focused when on the floor. Even if he commits a turnover or takes a dumb shot, Austin doesn’t ever appear to get rattled.

Of course it is easy to describe an intangible like “quiet confidence” when a player is winning. And with Kentucky losing, it is easy to attack Nerlens Noel’s complete lack of an offensive game. But had Kentucky rallied to win, we’d instead be talking about all the little things Noel did to help his team win on Saturday. Noel had 16 rebounds and 6 steals in Kentucky’s loss, and Kentucky needed those defensive stops in a game where they shot so poorly. Watching so many freshmen play prominent roles made me want to do a quick update of how all the top recruits have fared this season. Here is a summary of the RSCI Top 80.  * = injured or ineligible for part of the season

Kentucky has had a problem with rebounding this year, but don’t blame Nerlens Noel. He needs some help from Willie-Cauley Stein and Kyle Wiltjer who are very poor defensive rebounders for their size.

If Kaleb Tarczewski and Steven Adams aren’t earning major minutes at this point in the season, it is hard to envisioning them becoming full scale stars later. When conference play rolls around, coaches tend to be less patient with their freshmen. Thus in many ways, percentage of minutes can be the most important stat this time of year.

Efficiency is also important, and Kyle Anderson’s 87.9 ORtg is terrible for an elite recruit. Point guards can struggle more than other players to adapt to the college game and Anderson was considered to have point guard skills out of high school. So perhaps Anderson’s struggles aren’t a complete surprise. On the other hand, Archie Goodwin and Marcus Smart weren’t really point guards in high school and they have adapted to the position. Goodwin’s turnover numbers are far too high, but he’s set up his teammates passably while setting up his own shot a lot. And Marcus Smart has made a tremendous transition to playing the point-guard position at the college level. Smart’s assist rate is much better than many players regarded as better passers out of high school.

I really think the problem with Anderson is that Ben Howland hasn’t figured out how to use him. Lots of coaches from Rick Pitino to John Thompson III have been able to feature great lanky passers, by positioning them at the high post and letting them see the whole floor. Anderson still has the potential to be that type of player, even if he has struggled early.

Grant Jerrett and Sam Dekker are the only players in the Top 20 who are not starting. Ricardo Ledo is ineligible. And Kris Dunn and Gary Harris are injured.

We start to see the typical drop-off when we get to recruits in the 11-20 range. DaJuan Coleman still has the profile of a player who will be a star in a future season, but right now he is having trouble earning playing time behind other quality big men on Syracuse’s roster. Meanwhile Cameron Ridley has been extremely disappointing for Texas. Certainly it hurts not to have Myck Kabongo eligible, but Kabongo’s absence doesn’t explain why a player like Ridley can be so passive against a team like Chaminade as he was in the Maui Invitational loss. The only good thing I can say about Ridley is that he has 19 blocks already, which is more than any other player in the Top 50 except Nerlens Noel.

Only Rasheed Sulaimon has become an undisputed crunch time star for his team. And Sulaimon’s efficiency is even more impressive when you look at Duke’s strength of schedule so far. Rodney Purvis has also played major minutes, but he is deferring a lot to his teammates at this point.

Glenn Robinson has been shockingly efficient at this point in the season, well above many of his peers on this list. But none of the players listed here are going to quite be in the national player of the year discussion because they are starting to become more passive offensive players. (I.e. the percentage of possessions used is now often below 20%) Only Danuel House is using a large number of possessions at this point in the rankings, and House plays for a Houston team that is in the process of upgrading its talent level in anticipation of joining the Big East.

This preseason I wrote how Marcus Paige would have some growing pains and be inconsistent this year, and the response I got was that Roy Williams had a ton of confidence in Paige and that I was being un-necessarily pessimistic. So far, with an 87.7 ORtg, neither Paige nor the Tar Heels are off to a great start. Paige has better days ahead, but North Carolina is also going to have a few more baffling losses before the season is over.

I was worried that Yogi Ferrell could have a similar negative impact on the Hoosiers because freshmen are often inconsistent. But Ferrell has thrived because he has worked within the offense. Instead of hogging the ball and needing to create shots, Ferrell has let his teammates work their isolation stuff, and provided key drives and dishes when needed. Ferrell has been happy to fill a role on the Hoosiers, and he has been everything Indiana needed.

Finally, Tony Parker’s minutes this year have been a joke, but with Josh Smith transferring, Parker at least has a chance of cracking the UCLA rotation now.

Notice how often a lack of playing time plagues players at this point in the rankings. I expected and still expect big things out of Kansas’ Perry Ellis and Iowa’s Adam Woodbury, but their coaches have only given them a taste of playing time at this point. The result is that some guys at this point in the rankings become unmitigated gunners. Hey Indiana’s Jeremy Hollowell, no matter how good you think you are, when the game with North Carolina was close late in the first half, Indiana didn’t want you bombing threes. They wanted Jordan Hulls bombing threes.

Xavier has played much better than many of us anticipated this season, and freshman Semaj Christon deserves a lot of that credit. Christon has out-played point-guards like Marcus Paige and realistically he’s been much more important than even Yogi Ferrell given his role in the offense. Christon is using nearly 30% of his team’s possessions, scoring at a prolific clip, and setting up his teammates without a rash of turnovers.

Most of Christopher Opekpa’s stats are pretty pedestrian, but not his block rate. Opekpa has 35 blocks at this point in the season, easily out-distancing any of the other freshmen in today’s column.

Nik Stauskas has been unbelievably efficient at this point and he is playing major minutes to boot. Some people expected Michigan to be a Top 10 team, but did they really expect Stauskas to outperform his peer level players by this much? His efficiency is due in large part to his teammates, and his shot-selection. But his performance is still notable. Stauskas has the most threes of anyone mentioned in this column (18 made) beating even UCLA’s super-aggressive shooter Jordan Adams.

Also give Adams credit. He’s shooting 26% of the time while maintaining a solid ORtg. Kyle Anderson may have been the third rated recruit for UCLA, but Adams has actually played like one.

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