- It turns out that the layup-line injury to Texas guard Varez Ward suffered Tuesday night was indeed as bad as it looked. He will miss the entire season with a ruptured quadriceps, and surgery is scheduled for next week. It’s a tough break for Rick Barnes’ team, but the good news is that he’s loaded in the backcourt with J’Covan Brown, Avery Bradley and Dogus Balbay all currently vying for minutes, and Jai Lucas becoming eligible at semester’s end. Texas will be fine.
- Bob Huggins announced on Wednesday that his star forward Devin Ebanks will make his debut in Thursday’s first round game at the 76 Classic against Long Beach State. The world may never know what ‘personal issues’ struck Ebanks over the last week, but we hope that whatever it was it’s settled.
- On a related note, UCLA forward Nikola Dragovic has also been reinstated to play in Thursday’s 76 Classic by head coach Ben Howland, but he is not expected to start in James Keefe’s place just yet.
- Jeff Goodman totally one-upped us on our recent tour de basketball by ending up in San Juan, PR, but he shares with us ten things he learned on this road trip. Major disagreement on one point, though. We didn’t find Evan Turner to be all that inconsistent in NYC last week — after all, he had 49/25/10 assts in two games on 18-28 shooting. We did have 14 turnovers, however, so we assume that’s what Goodman is referring to here. Sure, he may struggle as a point guard at times, especially in terms of decisionmaking, but we’re really not seeing him having many struggles in terms of a player — his average game on a given night is still better than all but about ten players in the country, in our humble opinion. And when he’s dialed in, we’re not sure there’s anyone better.
- One of our favorite annual columns from Seth Davis is when he predicts the top ten breakout sophomores for the upcoming season. Last year he was right on the money with several, including superstars Jeff Teague, Kalin Lucas and Chris Wright. This year’s column has a couple of interesting choices (Larry Drew II and Tony Woods come to mind), and we’re wondering how nobody among UCLA’s sophomore corps can be on the list, but it makes for interesting debate and discussion.
Finally, have a Happy Thanksgiving of Hoops, everyone!