- GROAN… our post on this will be forthcoming immediately following this M5, but if your attention span is much shorter than our longwindedness requires, suffice it to say that the possibility of the NCAA Tournament expanding to 96 teams is a complete, unmitigated abomination. If you can find anyone in support of this idea other than coaches at mediocre programs and network executive types who are greedily trying to destroy the best event in all of sports, please send them our way for drawing, quartering and compulsory re-education.
- This great piece by Luke Winn comparing offensive production as freshmen with recruiting rankings confirms what we’ve been saying for a long time — that the relative dropoff in talent between top 10 recruits and top 50 recruits is much larger than the drop between top 50 and top 100 recruits. The next step is to crosstabulate that data with team success to see just how impactful those numbers are with respect to wins and losses. Great stuff.
- William & Mary, the nation’s surprise middie this year? According to Basketball Prospectus, TSN and Andy Katz… possibly.
- Jeff Goodman takes a look back at the last week with his Weekly Wrap. Mike DeCourcy takes a look at the week ahead. Seth Davis gives us his weekly Hoop Thoughts.
- Former UCLA forward Drew Gordon did an interview with Fanhouse, and although much of this interview is whimsical, he did mention that “pigs will fly” before UCLA would keep the star player over the coach (Ben Howland) – an absurd question in its own right. Still, Gordon did confirm that he and Howland had serious differences which led him to leaving the program, and he didn’t let on where he might be headed next.