NBA top prospect braces for NCAA’s biggest party

MANILA, Philippines — The clock is ticking. The rest of college basketball has three weeks to figure out how to stop Duke’s freshman force of nature, Zion Williamson.

Williamson and the Blue Devils got the overall top seed in the tournament, while Gonzaga and two more Atlantic Coast Conference teams – North Carolina and Virginia – also received No. 1 seeds. Three teams in one conference on the top line matches a record, and offers the selection committee’s guess as to who has the best chance to slow down Duke.

The Blue Devils opened as a 9-4 favorite to win it all.

Williamson, the 6-foot-7 man-child averaging 22 points and nine rebounds and a near-certain top pick in the upcoming NBA draft, is putting his future on the line – along with hundreds of millions in potential earnings – all in hopes of adding his own chapter to the history of America’s most dream-indulged hoops extravaganza. He’s doing it only four weeks after wrenching his knee when his Nike sneaker blew out and sent him crashing to the floor. He missed five games. He wouldn’t dare miss this.

“Everybody has their right to their own opinion, but I knew I was coming back the whole time,” Williamson said in his return last week, when he led Duke to its 21st ACC tournament title.

Speaking of shoes ... the companies that make them are intrinsically, financially and, yes, toxically intertwined with the players who fill out Division I rosters. The tournament will once again be played against the backdrop of a long list of problems – most of them related to money – that plague the NCAA and college hoops.

LSU is the latest to have its name dragged through the mud, yet neither the NCAA nor the school appeared to think twice about placing the Tigers in a starring role of the drama, which begins Tuesday with a pair of play-in games, then gets going in full force on Thursday.

The Tigers were given the No. 3 seed in the East, a mere two weeks after details emerged about their coach, on a wiretap , talking to a recruiting middleman about a “strong ass offer” he made to a high schooler.

If true, coach Will Wade clearly violated NCAA rules – in fact, The NCAA Rule: Thou Shalt Not Pay Players.