Is it too early to look at 2009?

Apparently, the answer is no. Just today, I have stumbled on two top-25 rankings for 2009. The first, from Rivals.com, assumes that all those players that have not announced their intention to leave for the NBA will return next year. And while this is completely unrealistic, how much fun would college basketball be next year if Tyler Hansbrough, Derrick Rose, Chris Douglas-Roberts, D.J. Augustin, Brandon Rush, Darrell Arthur, Hasheem Thabeet, Michael Beasley, O.J. Mayo, and Joe Alexander all return for more year? Since this is so unrealistic at this point, it would be a waste of my time to analyze these rankings, so I will spend the time I would have spent analyzing these rankings dreaming of what next year would be like if this did happen.

The other 2009 top 25 comes to us from ESPN's Andy Katz. Katz attempts to take a more "realistic" approach to his rankings, making assumptions that many of those individuals who have not yet declared for the draft will eventually do so. And since he is trying to be realistic, I feel justified in criticizing his rankings, or at least one of his rankings. Now, maybe it is my anti-KU bias rearing it's ugly head, but I see no way that Kansas is a top 5 team with the losses of Robinson, Kahn, Jackson, Chalmers, and Rush. Katz states, "And there is a good chance that Brandon Rush and forward Darrell Arthur declare for the NBA draft, but there is still enough left, even with all of that, for the Jayhawks to be a factor in the Big 12 and nationally. A backcourt of Sherron Collins and Mario Chalmers is as good as it could get next season around the country." So according to Katz, Collins + Chalmers = Top 5 team. Maybe this would be true if we were talking about a 2-on-2, 6'0" and under league, but last time I checked there were five players on the court at a time and there was no height restriction. Don't get me wrong, I think Collins and Chalmers are both very good but the only other returning player who logged any significant time this year was Cole Aldrich and other than a couple rebounds over Tyler Hansbrough, Aldrich contributed very little (2.8 points and 3 rebounds in 8 minutes per game) to the Jayhawks' success this year.