News from around the basketblogosphere…

• A couple of late summer transfers to report today. It appears Kenny Cooper is leaving Oklahoma St. to be closer to home (Louisiana) and Anthony Gurley (Massachusetts) is leaving Wake Forest for the same reason.
• Our new friends over at Plissken at the Buzzer put together a well-thought out and detailed analysis of the Pac-10’s non-conference schedules in an effort to determine how it will ultimately affect their postseason chances.
• Lion in Oil reports that the Final Four will embrace the BasketBowl approach to squeeze more fans into “distant view” seats on the final weekend beginning in 2009.
• Gonzaga’s Josh Heytvelt of psychedelic mushroom fame is set to return to the team after paying off his debt to society (no, it did not involve organic farming).
• NC State’s promising freshman Jonny Thomas is out for the season with a knee injury.
• Goodman reports Greg Monroe is down to his final eight schools (Duke, Georgetown, LSU, USC, Baylor, UConn, Texas, Kansas), and that KU’s Darrell Arthur is fully recovered from his stress fracture.
• Fluff Pieces. Parrish writes about Capel’s rebuilding project at Oklahoma, DeCourcy writes about Willie Kemp’s expected role at Memphis alongside Derrick Rose, and Goodman writes about Donnie Jones returning home to coach at Marshall.
• Shawn Siegel‘s teams that won’t make the NCAA Tournament (#144 – #72) are up, with some interesting comparisons to the preseason rankings from 2006.
• Finally, we have to mention that we’re excited to see what the combo of Ken Pomeroy and Baseball Prospectus can come up with in their new blog called Basketball Prospectus, which will focus exclusively on college hoops from a statistical bent beginning this fall.

We’re heading into the middle of September already, literally thirty days until Midnight Madness, and the first batch of preseason mags are already proliferating on B&N shelves like West Virginians on crystal meth at a swap meet (no offense intended to the West Virginians not on crystal meth, of course). We know many of our readers are asking, “what’s a magazine?” To which we reply, “it’s what old people read while they’re on the toilet.” For our few readers here over 30 (present company excluded), we offer the first installment of our continuing series of reviews of the preseason magazines.

First in line: Athlon Sports.

I. Covers (5 pts) – are they cool? inclusive?

• 34 regional covers seems like overkill, but we suppose having a Minnesota/Iowa/Iowa St. cover matters to someone.
• Coolest Cover – for some reason, we particularly like the elated yet menacing look Patrick Beverly gives the camera on the Arkansas edition.
• Say What? Athlon’s UCLA/USC cover (above) features Kevin Love and OJ Mayo in their Burger Boy unis – was it really too much trouble to shoot them with their correct jerseys on?
• Total Points = 4

II. Ease of Use (5 pts) – how hard is it to find confs/teams?

• Conferences and teams are arranged alphabetically, allowing for quick navigation assuming you know your conference.
• Standard format otherwise – features & predictions; analysis of teams; recruiting, in that order.
• Total Points = 4

III. Roundup (10 pts) – every mag has one – tell us something new!

• 10 Things to Watch is ok, but we didn’t learn anything new (i.e., the Pac-10 is great, keep an eye on Love/Mayo/Gordon, etc.).
• Hoops Madness is a little better, mostly because of its lists of emerging stars (hot sophs to watch), top transfers and coaches on the hot seat. Also enjoyed learning that Dayton’s band has become the band by proxy for the Niagara Purple Aces (since NU doesn’t have one).
• Cool Stat Award. Memo to Adam Lonon (VMI) – shoot more! (31 starts, 26 FGs)
• Total Points = 5

IV. Features (15 pts) – give us some insightful and unique storylines.

• Next Generation is a decent article about the young brigade of coaches who have been successful so far (Donovan, Matta, JT3, Howland, etc.). It wasn’t unique, as we expect to see a lot of this in the rags this year.
• The Fix relates the story of the Tulane pointshaving scandal two decades ago. Although the article briefly mentions the Tim Donaghy story, it focuses primarily (and misguidedly) on the people involved in the scandal. What we needed to see here was an article about the existence of gambling among college athletes and efforts to prevent it. Big swing & miss here.
• The Scoop is three one-page interviews with Ronald Steele (Alabama), Bill Walker (Kansas St.) and Drew Neitzel (Michigan St.), none of which are very interesting.
• Total Points = 5

V. Predictions (20 pts) – how safe are their picks? do they take any chances? are they biased toward the big boys?

• Athlon uses the 65-team prediction model, eschewing the traditional Top 25 (they get pts for that). But Athlon goes waaaaaaaaay safe by predicting six of the elite eight the same as 2007 (Georgetown, Kansas, Memphis, UNC, Oregon, UCLA with Louisville and Tennessee added for good measure). UCLA defeats Carolina in the championship.
• Big Conference Bias. 15 of its Sweet 16 are from BCS conferences – highly doubtful and incredibly LAME! NCAA Bids – ACC (5), Big Ten (5), Big 12 (5), Big East (9), Pac-10 (7), SEC (6).
• Mid-Major Watch. Only Memphis from a mid-major conference (CUSA) into the Sweet 16. Mid-Major bids – 2 CAA (George Mason, VCU), 2 MVC (Bradley, S. Illinois), 1 A10 (Xavier), 1 Mountain West (BYU), 1 WAC (Nevada). We’ll bet anything Athlon’s editors choose that those six conferences will get more than eight bids next March.
• All-Americans. Athlon really likes Drew Neitzel for some reason. He joins Psycho T, Chris Lofton, Roy Hibbert and Darren Collison (?) on their first team. They took a big flier on putting oft-injured Ronald Steele on the third team.
• Boldest Prediction. It’s sad that we had to dig this deep to find it, but it’s probably their pick for Cornell to win the Ivy League over Penn & Princeton. The last time a team other than those two won the Ivy Championship was in 1988 with (guess who?) Cornell.
• Total Points = 10

VI. Conference Pages (5 pts) – as a primer for the conference, how much can we learn here?

• The major conferences get a predicted order of finish, a brief recruiting roundup, and three teams of all-conference selections plus a “superlatives” section, which is fairly weak compared to others we’ve seen (POY, DPOY, most underrated, newcomer).
• The mid-major and small conferences only get a predicted order of finish, one team of all-conference selections and an all-time NCAA Tourney stat for the conference (which is interesting).
• Total Points = 2.5

VII. Team Pages (20 pts) – how in-depth is the analysis? where does it come from? is it timely and insightful given this year’s squad or is it just a rundown of last year’s achievements?

• All major conference and projected mid-major NCAA Tournament teams get a full page of analysis, including evaluations of the frontcourt and backcourt as well as a team roster (w/ stats) and a team-oriented stat.
• Non-NCAA Tournament mid-majors and low majors get at most a half-page analysis and roster, but most only get a paragraph with a very brief synopsis.
• Clearly much of the analysis is based on what coach’s interviews, which results in analyses from “glass half full” perspective. We would have liked to have seen more contrarian viewpoints.
• The depth of analysis is solid if not spectacular for the major conference teams, but largely lacking for the others.
• Total Points = 14

VIII. Recruiting (5 pts) – we want to know who the top players are coming into college bball, where they’re going and who to watch for next year.

• Four pages of recruiting information, including the top 100 (Scout.com) of 2007, the next 200 players, and the top 20 by position. Solid raw data.
• It also includes the top 25 classes, but only as a list, with no additional details.
• The top 100 in the class of 2008, top 25 in 2009 and top 10 in 2010 are also listed.
• Total Points = 3

IX. Title IX Guilt (aka Chick Ball) (5 pts) – the less the better…

• Only two pages worth, and at the very back of the magazine.
• Total Points = 5

X. Intangibles (15 pts) – what’s good and bad about the magazine as a whole?

• In the past, Athlon’s mag hasn’t always looked as professional as some of the others. This is no longer the case. Its layout looks great, the photos and graphics are solid, and the writing has improved.
• Because it comes out so early, the advantage it gains in being one of the first published is mitigated by other temporal factors. Most notably, there are no schedules within the magazine – for that reason alone, Athlon cannot be your “go-to” preview issue during the season.
• Additionally, its early publish date means that it misses late summer news involving injuries, transfers and coaching changes. While they did get the Skip Prosser news in there, they did not, for example, consider how Andy Rautins’ knee injury will impact Syracuse.
• As a nontraditional magazine (i.e., not Street & Smith or TSN), Athlon should have taken more risks with their predictions – going all chalk won’t separate it from the pack.
• Total Points = 8

RTC Grade for Athlon = 60.5 pts

Basis: Athlon is on the lower side of quality with the preseason magazines, but they have gotten better, and there is some value in their analysis. Its best use (given its early arrival on the newstand) is simply to refamiliarize yourself with the names and faces of the upcoming season. We wouldn’t recognize purchasing it unless you simply cannot wait for the better ones to come out.

Grading Scale:

• 90-100 pts – exceptional quality in all areas – must buy and keep on-hand all season!
• 80-89 pts – very good quality mag – worthy of purchasing and reading cover-to-cover
• 70-79 pts – average, run of the mill magazine – some value in certain areas but weak in others – tough call as to whether to purchase it
• 60-69 pts – magazine on the weaker side, but may still have some positive attributes – probably not worth the money, though
• 0-59 pts – such a low quality magazine that it’s not worth any more than the five minutes you thumbed through it at the store

We’re so far behind in news that this is a must-post…

• Huckleberry Hound Roy Williams and the entire 1966 Texas Western squad were the collegiate candidates inducted into the Basketball HOF on Friday.  No beef with the Glory Road fellas (although UK and Rupp’s ex post facto vilification is a story that still needs correcting), but has RW accomplished enough yet (five F4s, one title) to warrant inclusion?  Seems as if the committee jumped a little early on that one.
• Come see the new inclusions in your town this fall, as the HOF is making a 30-city tour around the country over the next year.  The spokesperson of the tour is the Human Highlight Film himself. 
• Stability in the Northeast – BC’s Al Skinner and Holy Cross’s Ralph Willard both had their contracts extended through 2013. 
• Calipari mobilizes the entire city of Memphis to watch his players, who apparently cannot be trusted out on their own without inciting a freakin’ riot.  We knew before it even came out that The Mouth of the South, Joey Dorsey, would somehow be involved in this.  Make it rain, Joey.     
• Not to be outdone, Mike Davis’s transfers at UAB decided to party without him, and all five were arrested on various charges.  The most disturbing in our eyes?  Walter Sharpe’s outstanding warrant for his arrest on a prior marijuana charge.  Not only did he already have a prior, but he didn’t even show up for the hearing?  And Davis didn’t know about this??  Now we know why IU fans wanted him gone.
• Oh, and former Terp star and NCAA Champion Lonny Baxter has an unhealthy interest in firearms likes guns. 
• From a while back, ESPN believes that nearly a third of D1 teams are eligible to become Bracket Busters.  (h/t to Awful Announcing)
• Louisville’s new arena (due in 2010) is already bidding for future NCAA Tournament games.  Possible beneficiaries:  Kentucky, Indiana, Cincinnati, Xavier.   
• Rivals weighs in with Alabama, Villanova, Illinois and others’ Labor Day weekend trips.  (takeaways:  Bama will struggle w/o Steele and Scottie Reynolds was on fire) 
• Andy Katz also contributes with reports (here and here) of his trip to Mexico with OJ Mayo and USC.  (takeaway: OJ is the real deal)  
• Goodman also has some summer excursion thoughts on Oklahoma, Duquesne, USC and Arkansas here; and Villanova, Marquette and James Madison here. 
• Apparently Ohio St.’s Kosta Koufos was offered but did not take a Christian Drejer deal in Greece last week. 
• Blue Ribbon’s preseason All-Americans are out – Drew Neitzel, Chris Lofton, Roy Hibbert, Tyler Hansbrough and Dominic James.  We’re lukewarm on Neitzel as a first-teamer. 

Perusing today’s blogroll, we came across another insightful ridiculous article from our favorite whipping boy Gary Parrish over at CBS Sportsline, er, whatever they’re calling it nowadays. His topic today was the Clemson Tigers, and how they were theoretically two plays away from an NCAA berth and overall fantastic season last year. He writes:

All the average fan remembers about last season is how the Tigers roared to a 17-0 mark before collapsing like an Iraqi government. After the best start in the country, Clemson closed the regular season by losing nine of its final 13, then dropped the ACC Tournament opener to enter Selection Sunday with a 21-10 record.

Goodbye NCAA Tournament hopes. Hello NIT.

So yeah, the 2006-2007 season was a big disappointment at Clemson, at least the roller-coaster aspect of it. But anybody who takes the time to take a closer look will quickly realize how close it was to being much different. In fact, if you’re willing to let me reverse two strokes of luck — just two moments from a season of countless moments — I can easily change two Clemson losses into two wins and transform a season of sorrow into one of celebration while making a convincing argument this is a program that could’ve entered this season ranked in the top 15 of every major poll.

Just hear me out. Take away the malfunction by the clock operator at Duke, and Clemson forces the Blue Devils to overtime on Jan. 25 and likely wins, if momentum is any indication. Take away a blown 16-point lead in the second half, and Clemson beats Virginia three days later.

I’m not asking for a huge leap of faith, am I?

Before we completely rail Parrish’s argument, let us make one point. We happen to agree with him that the Tigers have the third or fourth best returning talent in the ACC this year, and should be able to make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team. Does that translate to a top 15 squad? Probably not. Still, the 2007-08 Tigers should be Clemson’s most competitive ACC team in several years.

Don’t Get Your Hopes Up, Kid

Where we take issue with Parrish’s argument is that the media is somehow sleeping on Clemson because of last year’s collapse. He misses two key points.

First, he doesn’t discuss that the collapse was predicated once again on a non-conference schedule softer than Miss Teen South Carolina’s gray matter. According to Pomeroy’s RPI ratings, Clemson’s non-conference SOS last year was a paltry 214th in the nation. In its “roaring” 17-0 start, the best team Clemson played was at Old Dominion (CU won 74-70). When they finally got into the rigors of ACC play, their inevitable return to mediocrity occurred.

The second point is that Clemson seemingly does this every year. Is there another program in America that year after year has a great November and December, rises up the rankings, starts getting a little buzz, and just as quickly falls flat on its face in January? Bama has a tendency to do this too, but they also have good teams every couple of years. Consider the following:

• 2007 – Started 17-0, but finished 4-10 including 7-9 in the ACC. Went to the NIT Finals (4-1).
• 2006 – Went 11-0 to start the season, but closed 8-13 including 7-9 in the ACC. Received NIT bid (0-1).
• 2005 – Started 9-3 in pre-conference, but finished 7-13 including 5-11 in the ACC. Received NIT bid (0-1).
• 2003 – Went 10-0 in its pre-conference schedule, but finished 5-12 (5-11 ACC).
• 1999 – Started 11-1, but finished the regular season 5-13 including 5-11 in the ACC. Regrouped to go 4-1 in the NIT.
• 1997 – Started 16-1, but ended the regular season 5-7 (9-7 ACC). Made the NCAA Sweet 16.

In at least half of the past twelve seasons they’ve made everyone who starts hyping them in early January look foolish for doing so. Thank goodness that hype as a poll metric is virtually meaningless in our sport. But at the end of the day it should be easy to see why we roll our eyes when Clemson starts a season “hot,” as well as why we’re not ready to jump on the Clemson bandwagon for 07-08 just yet.

Ok, so thanks to an insightful UCLA fan, we realized that our exuberant reliance on NCSA data to justify our Athlademic Rankings posted last week was giving them way too much credit for properly vetting their data.  So to make sure we get it right this time, we spent the better part of today going through the 2007-08 US News rankings and the 2006-07 Sears Cup rankings ourselves.  Here’s the revised list, in Table A. 

Table A.  Athlademic Ratings – Division I (revised)

New Arrivals.  In addition to UCLA and USC, we also see the inclusion of Georgia, Texas A&M, Georgia Tech, Minnesota, Tennessee, Rutgers and Auburn onto our list – all driven by strong athletic programs.  High academic schools with relatively weak athletic programs, such as Army, William & Mary and Dartmouth, fell out of the top 50 due to the addition of the above programs. 

The Ivies strike a Nice Balance in Athlademics 

Ivy League Balance.   Speaking of Dartmouth, Keggy the Keg and friends are the only Ivy League school that didn’t make our Top 50.  The other seven did, with Princeton (no surprise there) leading the way at #16 overall.  Granted, the high academics of the schools drives their inclusion here, but we shouldn’t discount that these schools rate above many larger BCS schools in terms of the success of its athletic programs.  Cornell has the 55th most successful athletic program, but there are 73 BCS schools, which means Cornell, Princeton (#63) and Harvard‘s (#64) athletic programs  are outperforming bigger state schools such as Kansas (#66), Iowa (#68), and Connecticut (#82).

Big 10 – ACC Challenge.    As in, the Big 10 and ACC challenge the rest of the BCS conferences to keep up with it when it comes to athlademics.  We rated all 73 BCS conference schools, keeping those ahead of them in place, and Table B below shows the results. 

Table B.  BCS Conference Athlademic Ratings

Why is the Big East so bad?  There’s a pretty clear top tier of Big 10, ACC and Pac-10, a middle tier of the SEC and Big 12, and a bottom tier, where the Big East lurks like Gollum all by itself.  The Big East really gets killed on both sides of the equation – it has seven (of 16) third-tier academic schools, as rated by US News (more than the other 5 conferences combined); and seven schools that finished outside of the top 100 in the Sears Cup (Mississippi St. and Kansas St. are the only other two in BCS conferences).  This includes the dubious case of Seton Hall, who was the only BCS conference school of the 73 to not score a single point in the Sears Cup competition for 2006-07.  How is that possible?? 

Days Long Since Gone at The Hall

Haves and Have-Nots.  The Pac-10 is the greatest example of bifurcation within a conference.  It has five of the top twenty athlademic programs in America (Stanford, UCLA, USC, Cal, Washington), but it also only has five of the top fifty programs – its next highest ranked school is Arizona at #51.  Compare this with the Big 10, who has nine of its eleven members ranked in the top forty, with only Indiana (#53) and Iowa (#58) weighing it down.  Conversely, the Big 12 only has two of its twelve schools ranked in the top forty – Texas (#11) and Texas A&M (#23). 

Non-BCS Stars.  We already mentioned the Ivies, whose eight schools average a 29.9 rating on our list.  But who else steps up to challenge the BCS big boys as an athlademic school?  The Naval Academy (#28) and a couple of the smaller UCs (Irvine (#35) & Santa Barbara (#39)) lead the way.  One surprise inclusion is our Mormon friends at BYU, who used a strong athletic showing to come in at 39th on our list. 

You can do Better.  Not to harp on anyone in particular, but it makes no sense to us that football (read: revenue) schools like Cincinnati (#196 in the Sears Cup), South Florida (#133), Mississippi St. (#120), Kansas St. (#111) and Syracuse (#110) can’t do any better with their overall athletic programs.  Let’s throw in Villanova (#132) and Marquette (#127) for good measure – both schools are wealthy private Catholic institutions, which means they have the resources to spread around the non-revenue sports.  So what’s their excuse?