- It’s been 217 days and nights since Duke and Butler thrilled us for two hours on a warm Monday night in Indianapolis, but ladies and gentlemen, make sure that you have your affairs in order because starting tonight college basketball shall be lovingly (re)welcomed into our homes. For the next 147 days until we convene in Houston on another warm spring night for a championship, our season is back in session. Twenty-one pending weeks of squeaking sneakers, packed gyms, ridiculous finishes, burgeoning controversies and “fear the beard” chants. You know us — we’ll be right there from start to finish with the high-quality analysis and coverage you’ve come to expect. But you know what might be the best part of all? The silence. We will not be talking about the BCS, Brett Favre or the LeBron James Nike commercial. Here you won’t find Randy Moss analysis, Hot Stove rumors or coverage of whatever Phil Jackson/Jerry Buss fracas develops this year. If you want that kind of coverage, we’re quite sure you can find plenty of it elsewhere. No, we’re happy to put our fingers into our ears and descend back into the college hoops bubble; and, frankly, we really aren’t all that interested in resurfacing again until April. Our invitation to join us is open and can be executed at any time — won’t you be our hoops neighbor?
- We already know that Washington’s Isaiah Thomas has a lot to say, and he often reaches to his Twitter account to express himself. On Friday the talented Husky guard went after Fox Sports’ Jeff Goodman for his preseason all-Pac-10 selections which did not include he nor any of his teammates (we think Thomas should have been chosen too, actually). Thomas specifically called out UCLA’s Tyler Honeycutt and USC’s Nikola Vucevic as players who shouldn’t have been chosen on the team, which means that there are at least three opponents now on the UW schedule whom he has provided bulletin board material for (Kentucky is the other). Lorenzo Romar’s Huskies are quickly becoming must-view television this season.
- If you consider yourself at all a hoops prognosticator, you need to get over to Vegas Watch this week and submit your preseason picks for the top four seeds in each region of the 2011 NCAA Tournament. The person who is closest to the actual seed placements on Selection Sunday will win a cash prize, and surely the majority of our readers will be interested in this, right?
- Former Cornell guard Jon Jaques writes in his “Blue Chips” blog that UCLA fans shouldn’t be throwing themselves off the nearest rooftops with the news late last week that prep star Quinn Cook committed to Duke despite the obvious need and a promise from Ben Howland that he could have the starting point guard position. While everything Jaques says is true about UCLA competing in the Pac-10 this season and the deep and rich pool of talent that Howland has at his disposal in Los Angeles, he doesn’t seem to recognize that goals such as finishing second in the Pac-10 and winning recruiting battles are not appropriate analgesics for the Bruin faithful. That program measures itself not even by Final Four appearances but by championships, and right now UCLA seems quite a few years away from competing for that kind of hardware again.
- We rarely like to mention exhibition games because they simply don’t hold much predictive value as coaches experiment with lineups and different sets, but there were two notable events from the weekend. First, Xavier lost to D2 Bellarmine (Ky) 63-61 on Saturday night as the Musketeer frontcourt laid a giant egg (1o points). XU of course lost leading scorer Jordan Crawford along with big man Jason Love from last year’s Sweet Sixteen team, so it will take some time for the Musketeers to adjust. Make no mistake, though; with Tu Holloway outside and Chris Mack on the sidelines, XU will be dealt with this season. The other notable exhibition news from the weekend involved the first preseason AP All-American ever chosen, UNC’s Harrison Barnes. Citing a case of what Roy Williams called “freshmanitis,” the freshman wing shot 2-9 from the field for seven lackluster points while committing six turnovers. Don’t get used to it, though — he may not end up in single-figures again this season.