Player Name: Solomon Alabi

School: Florida State

Height/Weight: 7’1, 251

NBA Position: Center

Projected Draft Range: Mid-to-late first round

Overview: Solomon Alabi is was born in Nigeria, and grew up playing soccer. However, when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to stop growing, he was told he could earn a scholarship to play basketball in the United States so he took up basketball when he was 15. He came to the U.S. in 2005, attended the Monteverde Academy in the Orlando area (the same school that former UCLA star Luc Richard Mbah a Moute attended) and eventually wound up at Florida State. His freshman season was cut short when he needed to have surgery on a stress fracture in his right tibia, but in the last two seasons in Tallahassee, he has been a model of hard work and improvement. In nearly every area, Alabi’s numbers have improved over his career at Florida State, where he averaged a career best 11.7 PPG, 6.2 RPG and 2.3 BPG last season. He also improved his free throw shooting (which was an early weakness) to the point where he shot nearly 80% from the line last season.

Alabi is Very Raw But Has Great Potential

Will Translate to the NBA: It’s true that you can’t teach height, and of that, Alabi has plenty. Add to a legit 7’1 frame a monstrous 7’5 wingspan and decent leaping ability and Alabi is an intimidating presence in the lane. And, aside from improving his offense numbers on a yearly basis at Florida State, he also put on weight and strength every year. Given his height, he is a good shot blocker, able to block shots while defending one-on-one in the post or coming over on help defense. Offensively, Alabi is a work in progress, but with his improving free throw percentage as evidence, he is capable of knocking down a mid-range jumper on occasion when in rhythm. Aside from all that stuff, Alabi is also generally described as a gregarious personality, a great teammate and a hard worker.

Needs Work: A lot. If Alabi is drafted in the first round, it will be mostly on potential. While he constantly improves (he has only been playing the game for seven years), he still looks a bit wooden out there, lacking fluidity in his post moves. Though his turnaround jumper has improved, it still needs work and a jump-hook and some post moves would be necessary for him to become even a mediocre offensive talent in the League. Even more alarming is that despite his massive frame and decent athleticism, he is a dramatically poor rebounder for his size, something that will need to change before he’ll have a chance at serious NBA minutes. Defensively, Alabi can be exposed by perimeter-oriented big men who can pull him away from the hoop and then exploit his lack of lateral quickness by driving on him.

Comparison Players: Guys like DeSagana Diop, Hasheem Thabeet and Samuel Dalembert are reasonable comparisons, players with a lot of height who can patrol the middle and block shots, grab some rebounds and aren’t much of an offensive threat otherwise — that’s the expectation for Alabi. And, given Thabeet was a #2 pick last season, getting Alabi in the back end of the first round shows either that Alabi is a great value or that Thabeet was an extreme reach.

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Over the course of the next month until the NBA Draft on June 24, RTC will be rolling out comprehensive profiles of the 30-35 collegians we feel have the best chance to hear their names called by David Stern in the first round that night.  There won’t be any particular order to the list, but you can scroll back through all the finished profiles by clicking here.

Player Name: Quincy Pondexter

School: Washington

Height/Weight: 6’7, 215

NBA Position: Small Forward

Projected Draft Range: Late first round/Early second round

Overview: Washington’s Quincy Pondexter had a superb senior year apart from much of the national conversation due to the weakness of the Pac-10 and the fact that UW was written off very early — the Huskies in fact needed to win the Pac-10 Tournament just to make the NCAAs.  To their (and mostly Pondexter’s) credit, Washington was playing some of its best ball of the season during late February and March, ultimately winning nine of ten games to push through to the Sweet Sixteen before losing to Final Four squad West Virginia.  Pondexter was outstanding all season, though, as he waited for his teammates to jump aboard the express with him.  The undersized power forward went for 19.3 PPG, 7.3 RPG and 1.7 SPG while shooting a very high percentage and consistently getting to the line and converting opportunities.  Late in the season he was a lock as a go-to man in the clutch, most notably against a tough Marquette squad in the first round of the NCAA Tournament when he broke down his defender and got to the rim to give his team the lead with 1.7 seconds left.  Pondexter’s ability to create shots in the mid-post area and finish with authority makes him an interesting prospect as a small forward backup at the next level.  He will have to continue to improve the range on his jump shot, but the mechanics and intelligence are already there, so this shouldn’t be a big problem moving forward.  Whoever picks up QP will likely be pleased with how he turns out in the next several years.

We See QP as a Career Sub, But That's Not a Bad Thing

Will Translate to the NBA:  Pondexter’s work ethic and arc of improvement along with his athletic tools should translate very well to the small forward position in the NBA.  He put in four seasons of steadily improving work at Washington, adding more facets to his game each year and there’s no reason to expect that he has reached his peak as he only recently turned 22 years old.  In terms of athleticism and the ability to finish in traffic, Pondexter will do very well at the next level.  He was always a very efficient scorer, but it really came together for him last season when he shot a remarkable 53% from the field and 83% from the line.  As an NBA coach, you won’t need to worry about QP jacking up crazy shots outside the offense or his available skill set.

Needs Work: The 6’7 forward will have to become accustomed to playing more of a perimeter role in the NBA, which means his jump shot must become more reliable.  In college he was asked to use his athletic gifts to attack the rim, and although he was a solid three-point shooter at 35%, he knew that wasn’t his preferred shot and limited his attempts from deep (51 all season).  Mastery of the 18-22 footer in the NBA is absolutely essential to his playing time, because he will never be a primary option in the offense but will need to be ready for the kickouts and ball reversals that will come his way.

Comparison Players: The best comparison we could come up with would be Travis Outlaw in the sense that Pondexter’s probably looking at carving out a niche as a career backup who can come into the game and provide minutes at the small forward position.  Though not in bunches, he has the ability to score and with his length and smarts, he could potentially also become an excellent defender at the next level.

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Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Mountain West conferences and an occasional contributor.

With the news on Thursday that Utah has received and accepted the invitation to become the 12^th member of the Pac-10, it looks like the college sports realignment apocalypse has been averted for the summer. There may be further movement on down the line, but all signs point to a relative period of calm after weeks of frantic scrambling from all corners of the country. While it was a pale substitute for actual on-court play, we did have plenty of intrigue and suspense, action and strategy, and winners and losers. Now it’s just a matter of sorting out who was what.

The Greatest and Still Champion

Texas

A Lot to Be Happy about in Austin These Days

Texas definitely fits in the “winner” category, but I think lumping them in with these other schmucks below would be selling them short. And I’m sure they would agree. The Longhorns played this about as well as could be played, and they got everything they wanted out of it. The Big 12 keeps their television deal with ESPN (which doesn’t expire until 2016), but only has to share the proceeds among ten schools rather than twelve. The conference received a promise from Fox for a new deal when their current deal expires, with exponential increases in revenue on tap. And, on top of all that, Texas retains the right to sell local television rights and is free to explore its plans for a Longhorn television network. Bonus: in the process of trying to keep the Longhorns in the Big 12, there are reports that the neediest institutions in the bunch agreed to a plan that sent all of the money that Colorado and Nebraska owe the conference in buyout fees (reported to be somewhere between $10 and $40 million, depending on the source) to Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. So, in the span of a week, without losing any of their traditional rivals in the Big 12 South, Texas goes from generating somewhere in the $12 million range in television revenues to earning an estimated $20-25 million annually. And, that’s not even the best of it. In the process, it became painfully obvious that Texas is the big dog in the conference and the other schools (aside from Texas A&M) are in some manner, just riding coattails. Schools like Oklahoma and Texas Tech made it clear that they were just going to do whatever Texas did, while others, like Missouri, Kansas, Iowa State and Baylor, had their futures twisting in the wind, reliant on Texas to save them. If the Longhorns had gone to the Pac-16, they would have just been one of the sixteen there. By staying at home, they are clearly the kings of their conference.

The Winners

Texas A&M

The Aggies showed themselves as the one school in the conference that had plans of their own regardless of Texas. While Oklahoma and others were happy to just do whatever Texas decided, A&M talked to the SEC, and by all reports, actually had an offer to join that conference. But, in the end when they could have run off and forced Texas’ move west, the Aggies agreed to stick around and share in the league’s windfall, excellent news for an athletic department that was $16 million in debt, and even better for a school whose once proud football program has fallen on hard times in the past decade.

Big 12 Basketball

Without a doubt, the Big 12 became a better basketball conference overnight. Over the last nine years, both Colorado and Nebraska have had an average finish of around ninth in the conference. Nebraska has never won an NCAA tournament game. Colorado has only had two NCAA tournament berths in the last 40 years. So as far as the basketball side of the equation goes, this is addition by subtraction at its finest. As the conference makes the transition to an 18-game schedule in which each team will play a full home-and-home round-robin, they will no longer have to worry about games against the Buffs or Huskers dragging down their RPI. Every night in the conference will be tough sledding, but every team in the conference will also have a better chance to build their resume for postseason play.

Watch Out, Big East and ACC...

Chip Brown and Orangebloods.com

Chip Brown has been the point-man on conference realignment for about two weeks now. He broke the original story about Texas dragging five other Big 12 schools to the Pac-10, and when Texas blinked in the 11^th hour, it was Brown who had that story first as well, even in the face of ESPN reporting the opposite. In the process, Brown, a former writer for the Dallas Morning News, has seen his Twitter followers increase exponentially, and the profile of Orangebloods.com, a Longhorn Rivals site of which he is part owner, has jumped from something that was only known amongst the most attentive Longhorn fans to an important resource for those of us following this story.

Utah

The Utes received just $1.2 million in television revenue from their association with the Mountain West Conference. Presently Pac-10 schools earn somewhere in the $10-$12 million neighborhood from their television contracts, and with the Pac-10 set to negotiate a new television deal which will begin the 2011-12 season, the Utah athletic department stands to make a nice chunk of change for very little trouble.  While the basketball program is going through a rough patch presently, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see the Utes be right in the thick of things in the Pac-10 football chase immediately.

ABC/ESPN and Fox Sports

Both networks stepped in to help save the Big 12. ABC/ESPN agreed to keep their current contract with the Big 12, allowing the ten remaining members to split the revenues that had previously been divided amongst twelve. Fox Sports also agreed to large increases in their agreement with the Big 12 which expires next offseason. If Texas had bolted for the Pac-10 along with five other Big 12 members, both ESPN and Fox Sports would have had a major bidding war on its hands for the rights to the new Pac-16 conference television deal. The breakup of the Big 12 would likely have meant other moves by the Big Ten or SEC or ACC, moves that could have resulted in their contracts needing to be reworked. In the short term, both entities probably overpay for the Big 12 rights, but they saved themselves plenty of cash in the long term.

Big Ten

While it may have appeared to be the first rat on the way out before the ship went down, Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten makes a lot of sense, at least football-wise. Adding the Huskers gives the Big Ten four iconic football programs, the ability to hold a championship game and a fanbase that will eat up anything Huskers on the Big Ten Network. And, passing on Missouri is probably the right move as well. Picking up one Big 12 team brings the Big Ten to 12 schools, and allows them to take their time with any additional expansion they may be interested in, while getting the benefits of the 12^th team. If the Big Ten chooses to pursue further expansion, it will be mostly focused on Big East teams, including the great white whale, Notre Dame.

The Losers

Missouri

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1. Santa Clara head coach Kerry Keating is requesting that his fellow coaches go “hands-free” this summer (not texting and driving) in light of a recent accident where a young girl was killed on her bicycle by such a driver.  This is something we can get on board with, and we hope that other coaches (and readers) will take it to note.  If you must text, do it while the light is red.
2. Is the Big 12 sticking at ten for the time being, or will they look at adding someone like, say, Houston?  Texas legislators are pushing for this addition, and with the unbelievable power that the state’s flagship university now holds over the conference, we’d never say never.  But honestly, we’re not really seeing this as a realistic possibility.  UT wants all that Big 12 money for themselves.
3. As for the Mountain West, they’re sticking at nine for now after adding Boise State but losing Utah in the past two weeks.  Even with the loss of Utah, this league has really started to separate itself as the top mid-major league (if you can even call it that) in both football and basketball.
4. Bill Russell and KC Jones aren’t walking through that door.  No, this isn’t a reference to the Boston Celtics but rather the San Francisco Dons, who found themselves with a two-year probation that will not include a postseason ban.  The issue was that several athletes spent their scholarship money on non-required textbooks and school supplies.  And… we’re not sure what the problem is.
5. This article is an interesting look-back at the decision Billy Donovan made three years ago to stay at Florida instead of leaving for the Orlando Magic, but it hasn’t all been peaches and cream in Gainesville, while the Magic have become one of the better teams in the NBA (predictable three years ago given the Dwight Howard factor).  Many folks have Florida with all five starters returning as a top 10-15 squad next season, but this particular college-to-pro situation might have actually worked out.

Player Name: Jordan Crawford

School: Xavier

Height/Weight: 6’4, 198

NBA Position: SG

Projected Draft Range: Late first round/Early second round

Overview: Following a hectic summer headlined by an infamous dunk over LeBron James, Indiana transfer Jordan Crawford entered Xavier with the goal of becoming that go-to scoring option that would vault the Musketeers back to the Sweet 16 in Chris Mack’s first season at the helm. Crawford accomplished both goals with gusto. Crawford finished behind only UMass’ guard Ricky Harris for the A-10 scoring lead in the regular season, posting fourteen 20+ point performances during that span. As March rolled around, so did Crawford’s peak. The 6’4 sparkplug put up 62 points in Xavier’s three Atlantic 10 Tournament contests and carried that scoring prowess into the NCAA Tournament where Crawford tied BYU’s Jimmer Fredette for the tournament’s scoring lead at 29.0 PPG. No college hoops fan will soon forget his three-pointer from the cancer ribbon on the court in Salt Lake City to send the Kansas State Sweet 16 game into double OT (he scored 32 in that one). This late season shooting display resulted in Crawford peaking at the right time and earning the attention of numerous NBA scouts and evaluators. A player most assumed would stick around for another A-10 and Sweet 16 run was soon headed to the pros after just one season in Bloomington and one in Cincinnati. Crawford certainly left a lasting legacy for Musketeer fans, though, as one of the most exciting, inconsistent, heart-pounding and frustrating players to ever grace the floor of the Cintas Center.

Crawford Has the Ability to Blow Up Without Warning

Will Translate to the NBA: Crawford is one of the more polished and explosive scorers in the Draft. He knows he can score at any spot on the floor and shows it sometimes far too often. Crawford can spot up from mid-range or far behind the NBA three-point line and knock down the shot with proficiency. He was one of the more effective scorers in all of college basketball last year because of three reasons: 1) that unlimited shooting range, 2) craftiness and effort without the ball, and 3) persistence to penetrate and get to the rim. In isolation situations, Crawford is phenomenal at creating his own shot, even if it’s not the smartest one. He’s also tremendous off the ball reading screens, catching and elevating with his release high above the defender. Remember those old NBA video games where the player would literally catch fire when he’d make four or five shots in a row? That’s Jordan Crawford. The problem is that a series of misfires doesn’t deter the kid. He will shoot you in and out of basketball games.

Needs Work: Crawford’s shot selection and decision making must improve. He was in the perfect situation at Xavier because he was their only consistent scoring threat, so Mack could deal with Crawford taking twenty shots and dominating the ball on any given night. In the NBA, Crawford has to learn to utilize more discretion on his shots and maintain a level of effectiveness even as a role player. Crawford has the basketball IQ to bowl his way to the rim for free throws or layups when his shot isn’t falling, but we can’t recall very many times last season he decided to kick the ball out for open threes for teammates when the defense collapsed. Crawford is also a mediocre defender that tends to gamble and lose more than stick on his man, a sign of laziness on that end. More than anything, it seems to us his on-court ego needs to deflate just a tad, because Crawford can be a deadly complimentary player if he sets his mind to it.

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1. Kansas AD Lew Perkins unveiled the secrets behind the curtain when he explained yesterday that the five Big 12 schools facing life outside the BCS — KU, Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State and Baylor — came up with a ‘business plan’ to keep the Texas and Oklahoma schools from bailing on them to the Pac-10.  This business plan essentially amounts to these five schools paying for the privilege of having Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in their conference.  Whether the subsidy will come from their NCAA Tournament revenue or penalties levied against Colorado and Nebraska for leaving is unclear, but what is absolutely certain is that the dollars will end up in Austin, College Station, Stillwater and Norman.  Just.  Wow.
2. Jerry Jones has done some amazing things in his lifetime, so if anyone else was pitching the idea of adding Arkansas and Notre Dame to the newfangled Big 12, we’d immediately dismiss the idea.  With the billionaire Cowboys owner saying it, we’ll at least entertain the thought for fifteen seconds or so.  For what it’s worth, Arkansas AD Jeff Long said that the Hawgs have “no interest” in leaving the SEC.  And why would they?  They are making major bank where they are, and the Big 12 is still going to be fraught with uncertainty given its ridiculous revenue ‘sharing’ agreement.
3. Here’s a good recap of Tom Izzo reactions from around the blogosphere over at BiaH.  Izzo as professional coach just doesn’t feel right.  We like this move to stay in East Lansing.
4. An interview with one of the best in the biz, Jay Bilas, for your lazy-day summer reading.
5. We enjoyed this post by Braves & Birds, an Atlanta-area sports blog, but we need to make one clarification: if you add up the value of all of the separate conference television contracts as well as the BCS bowl game contracts, it still does not approach what the NCAA Tournament brings in an average year (~$700-$800M) from its television deal.  The problem isn’t revenue in college basketball; it’s where the revenue goes.  Since the NCAA Tournament collects all the money from CBS/Turner up front and metes it out to the schools and conferences as it sees fit while all the college football dollars go directly to the conferences/schools themselves, it’s easy to see why the gridiron game is the driver here.  It also explains why there won’t be a college football playoff anytime soon as administered by the NCAA — the big-ticket schools simply don’t want to share that revenue with anyone else.

As expected, the Pac-10 formally extended an invitation to the University of Utah this afternoon, sending shivers of teetotaling anticipation up and down the Wasatch Range for Utah trustees to sign the deal before Texas hears a new pitch and changes its mind again.  The Board of Trustees will meet on Thursday and a press conference is scheduled to announced the move at 1 pm MT tomorrow afternoon, signifying that Utah might end up being the biggest winner in this entire conference realignment process.  The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the school earned only $1.2M in television revenue from the Mountain West last year, while the Pac-10 under its previous television deal distributed $8-$10M each to its members.  The expectation is that Utah could with this move theoretically be looking at ten times as much revenue than it was previously earning , which probably explains why fruit baskets from SLC to Austin were in rapid transit this week and also why the trustees are falling all over themselves to get this thing confirmed. 

Utah Will Do Anything to Make This Happen

This addition (remember, this was the expected move prior to all the Big 12 implosion nonsense of the past few weeks) will with Denver (#18) and Salt Lake City (#31) give the Pac-10 footprint nine of the top 31 television markets in the country starting in 2011-12, more than any other major conference.  While Commissioner Larry Scott would have mightily preferred to add the lucrative Texas markets to his conference (Dallas and Houston are both in the top ten), these two additions ensure that the new Pac-12 will dominate college athletics in both the Mountain and Pacific time zones for the foreseeable future.

Speaking of dominance, how will the addition of Utah impact Pac-10 basketball?  Unlike former Big 12 bottom-feeder Colorado, Utah actually has a strong tradition of hoops excellence that it can bring to bear in its new league.  The Utes had a phenomenal program from 1989-2004 under Rick Majerus, going to ten NCAA Tournaments and the title game in 1998, but in recent years they’ve been passed by local schools BYU and Utah State for hardwood superiority in the region.  The Beehive State, however, is generally very supportive of basketball, and with the new recruiting inroads that Pac-10 membership will afford Jim Boylen’s team, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Utah to once again surge forward as a consistently competitive basketball program in coming seasons. 

Player Name: John Wall

School: Kentucky

Height/Weight: 6’4, 196

NBA Position: Point Guard

Projected Draft Range: 1st overall pick

Overview: John Wall has been listed as the first overall pick for the 2010 Draft at mock drafts since he started his senior year of high school. His year at Kentucky merely served to further cement that lofty ranking. Gifted at slashing to the basket, taking contact, and still getting a shot away, he also possesses a court vision and an ability to distribute the basketball that just isn’t seen that often in the college game anymore, let alone in a freshman. Pundits have been very careful when predicting what type of professional player he will be, and that’s understandable, since we’ve heard such hyperbole so often in the past. But here, indeed, is a rare talent to say the least. Let’s be honest, how many players (especially freshmen) are legitimately good enough to borrow a dance from a music video and make it their own? For the record, we hope he does the dance one final time on draft night, then retires it forever, or at least finds another one. But boogie or no boogie, John Wall’s going to be a hit in Washington. He’ll immediately put fans in the Verizon Center seats, and then he’ll make those fans jump out of them.

Wall Will Be the #1 Overall Pick Next Week

Will Translate to the NBA: John Wall has gears most college players don’t possess. He can blow by defenders with either hand and still make a perfect pass or get off a good shot, all at that breakneck pace. He’s going to take more and harder contact in the league, but he’s fantastic at absorbing it and getting the and-one opportunity. In a body that’s still actually maturing, he’s still a ridiculous pure athlete, and even though that athleticism will be diluted a little in the pro ranks, he’s light years ahead of the curve in that respect for this stage in his career.

Needs Work: Even with such speed, for the most part, Wall made good decisions with the ball at Kentucky. He occasionally tried to make what John Calipari called “the high school play,” meaning a pass or a move that would work in high school but would result in a turnover when he tried it against the superior college athletes. It would only be worse in the NBA, especially because he tended to do this more in half-court sets. He showed some improvement in this respect as the season progressed, but he needs to totally eradicate that from his game. He’ll need to develop his jumper, too, but the combination of the fact that he’s coachable plus his awareness that he still has room to improve means that he’ll eventually be fine in that regard.

Comparison Players: One comparison we haven’t heard much is to another Kentucky point guard who left early, Rajon Rondo. Both are slashing players who prefer to score by attacking the rim, but are just as comfortable setting up teammates. Both are incredibly quick and use their long limbs to pick pockets and be disruptive on defense. Both players constantly sacrifice their bodies and still find ways to score. He’s also similar to another Calipari product in Derrick Rose, an athletic, slashing scorer whose jumper left a little to be desired upon entering the league.

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Player Name: Lance Stephenson

School: Cincinnati

Height/Weight: 6’6″, 227 lbs

NBA Position: SG/SF

Projected Draft Position: Late first/early second round

Overview: Coming into his freshman year Stephenson was one of the most talked about recruits in recent memory. Unfortunately it was for all the wrong reasons as Stephenson was considered egotistical and there were even questions about his eligibility. As it turned out Stephenson was not the much-ballyhooed recruit that spent the season on the sidelines because of eligibility issues. Although he avoided the long arm of the NCAA, Stephenson had his own struggles on an inconsistent Bearcat team that mirrored their mercurial freshman star’s personality. Stephenson had the potential to develop into a top 10 pick. Normally we would be critical of such a decision (as college basketball fans), but Stephenson has stated that his primary reason for leaving school early was to support his 2 year-old daughter.

Will "Born Ready" Be Ready for the NBA?

Will Translate to the NBA: Even though Stephenson is a borderline first round pick his game is NBA ready (his nickname is “Born Ready” after all) and if he works on keeping his ego in check, which reports out of workout sessions suggest, he should be a solid NBA player. With his power, quickness, and a solid mid-range jumper Stephenson should have a spot on a NBA roster for the next decade along as he continues to be the new-and-improved Lance Stephenson instead of the malcontent who nearly turned the basketball recruiting world upside down in the spring and summer of 2009.

Needs Work: For all of his athletic gifts Stephenson lack the explosiveness (both with his first step and his vertical) that scouts expect in high draft picks. While there isn’t much Stephenson can do about that other than try to shed a few pounds and go to Tim Glover during the off-season a few times. As for the more realistic targets for Stephenson, he could work on his long-range shooting (21.9% from 3 last year), defensive intensive intensity, going with the flow of the game instead of making up his mind before the play develops, and going with the simple play instead of the “And 1” play. So Stephenson has a lot to work on over the next few years. . .

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1. Yesterday’s big realignment news was that if you can believe what Craig Thompson, the Commissioner of the Mountain West, has to say, the Pac-11 has yet to contact Utah about possibly becoming the twelfth member of that league.  Don’t worry, Mr. Thompson.  They will on Wednesday.
2. As for this new 12-team conference, how will the divisions be configured?  Dividing them up into two six-team divisions by geography (North/South) makes sense, but one idea that has some alternative support is the so-called “zipper” format in football (with rivals separated) and a three-division format in basketball.  Wazzu blog CougCenter explains these two ideas.
3. So… about the new Big 12/10.  We wrote yesterday that we think the league will become a much stronger basketball conference as a result of the loss of bottom-feeders Nebraska and Colorado, but we’re not the only ones who thinks that handing the keys to the conference almost completely over to Texas will result in storm clouds again a few years down the road.  The Pac-11 was smart to not allow UT to wield such disproportionate influence in its league for fear of upsetting the others members — how will this ultimately play in the rest of the Big 12/10 when the collective back-slapping and good tidings die down?
4. Remember Brad Stevens?  He says that the newfound fame that his Butler program and he personally enjoyed throughout March and April of this year is finally dying down.  Undoubtedly true, but it’ll pick back up again in December when people realize that Butler is 11-0 and in the top 10 again.
5. We wondered aloud about Washington’s Abdul Gaddy all of last season.  For a player rated out of high school as the second-best point guard behind John Wall, his season averages of 3.9 PPG and 2.2 APG on 41% shooting (15% from three) are completely ridiculous.  He’s playing in the U-18 men’s national team this week and Percy Allen of the Seattle Times caught up with him.  The problem?  Missing his swagger, apparently (translation: thinking he was better than he actually was).