Ahhhh... Gene Keady. LOVED the hair---if that's what it was. We always thought he had invented some new shade of Brown to color it that was DARKER than black-----which sounds like something that would break the space/ time continuim. We called it 'Keady Black' (don't know why it wasn't 'Keady Brown')...

He looked like the Thing from the Fantastic 4 with a bad toupee.

Seems to me Izzo prefers to get his teams playoff-ready by taking on tough opponents from the start, whereas others like to ease into the season by front-loading a lot of creampuffs. He doesn't mind hanging some L's on his record in the regular season if it means his team learns how to take a punch along the way. This results in a winning %age that is good enough to get in the tournament but not spectacular, and thus a lower seed than might have been expected with an easier schedule, and a crew capable of outperforming their record at tournament time.

2002 1 (lost in sweet 16)
2003 3 (lost in sweet 16)
2004 1 (lost in final 4)
2005 1 (lost in sweet 16)
2006 1 (lost in sweet 16)
2007 6 (1st rd exit)
2008 2 (2nd rd exit)
2009 2 (lost in sweet 16)
2010 1 (won title)
2011 1 (??)
An average seed of 1.9 & an average final round of 3.2... so despite being _very_ highly seeded they tend to go out in the round of 16. So Coach K's good for taking a #1 or #2 seed to the 3rd round, but not much further.

In other words, if you take the preseason #2 team and underperform down to, say, a 6-seed then beat, for example, seeds #11, 3, 2 & 4 on the way to the final, then you really haven't done anything that remarkable.

This year's College Basketball Prospectus book had an entire article on team success due to having lucky draws in the tourney.