1. If you watched the Texas–Oklahoma State game you probably heard the Tom Friend article about the Oklahoms State plane crash that happened 10 years ago today mentioned approximately a million times, and if you paid attention during the broadcast, you probably know what the article says, but we still highly recommend that you check it out if you haven’t already.
2. In light of last night’s Jimmer-fest on Twitter, it is worth taking a look at Michael Rothstein’s Player of the Year straw poll that was conducted before last night’s game. Kemba Walker is the runaway winner when these “ballots” were sent in. We are interested in seeing what happens with the voting after Jimmer Fredette‘s performance last night, but we are more interested in knowing which 4, 5, and 8 voters left Walker, Fredette, and Jared Sullinger out of the top three respectively. I think this might merit a Gary Parrish “Poll Attack,” particularly if someone left two or — gasp! — all three of them out of the top three.
3. Some of you may remember our recent post about Roy Williams criticizing callers on his radio show for questioning what the team was doing. We figured the entire thing would blow over in a few days and that the UNC administration would try to pretend that the incident never happened, based on the fact that they wouldn’t comment on it, and said they wouldn’t even contact Williams for a comment on it. It turns out that we were wrong, because apparently someone of enough importance was upset enough with the comments that Williams issued an apology. [Ed. Note: We really doubt that Williams did this without a significant push from someone higher up, and, at a school like UNC, there aren’t too many people with that kind of power.]
4. Even though most of the country has been focused on the Ohio States and Dukes of the world (ok, and the Jimmers), one of the most interesting developments this season has been Gonzaga‘s precipitous decline. Even though they have plenty of talent, Mark Few‘s squad hasn’t managed to put it together and now it looks like St. Mary’s might be the team to finally knock Gonzaga off, and, as Ann Killion points out, the next few games are going to be huge for the Gaels. If they win those games, the WCC crown might be moving down the Pacific Coast for at least one season.
5. Finally, we try not to link to ESPN Insider articles if possible because we know many of you don’t have access, but we enjoy some of these Conference Voices columns that they are putting out. Sometimes the execution doesn’t match the idea, but the recent column by Chris Singleton about how FSU views being ranked and whether or not they consider it important. His assertion that beating Duke was a bigger deal than losing to Auburn is interesting and worth reading.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2011 at 5:30 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: auburn, chris singleton, duke, florida state, fsu, gonzaga, jared sullinger, jimmer fredette, kemba walker, mark few, north carolina, ohio state, oklahoma state, roy williams, st mary's, texas, unc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.