TEAMWORK WINS GAMES. Chris at The Wisconsin Sports Bar has an insightful description of Wisconsin's basketball team.

In some ways Wisconsin is like a Steroid version of a Mid Major kids who play as a team and play 3 to 4 years, kids who buy into the coaches system and execute it to perfection.

I guess I am going back to my the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts theory.

In chess terms, it's about the accumulation of small advantages. One can see the will of the individualists on other teams (frequently described by the ignorant as more "athletic", which is really a consequence of defensive breakdowns they can exploit in a showboaty way) crumble as the advantages accumulate, most recently in the Big (11) Ten title game where, at about eight minutes to go, it was clear that many of the members of the other team were ready to get back on the bus to whatever prison they'd been paroled from.

In other basketball oddities, consider this ordering: Northern Illinois - Akron - Ohio - Maryland - North Carolina.