- The Mountain West has received a lot of attention this year due to the excellent play of top ten teams San Diego State and BYU and, of course, the NPOY candidacy of the Cougars’ Jimmer Fredette. Yesterday the attention on the league was of a different sort, though, as Wyoming, dead last in the league standings at 1-8, fired head coach Heath Schroyer after three-plus seasons at the helm. This move comes after the Cowboys lost its seventh consecutive game on Saturday, a three-point home loss to Colorado State. Schroyer was 49-68 during his tenure in Laramie, with his best season coming in 2008-09 as Wyoming went 19-14 (7-9 MWC) and made the NIT.
- Ugh. Oklahoma State forward Darrell Williams was charged with three counts of rape and one of sexual battery on Monday stemming from an incident in December where he allegedly assaulted two women at a party. The junior college transfer has given head coach Travis Ford a solid season, averaging 7/7 in twelve starts and around 21 minutes per game, but according to the coach, he will be held out of the lineup and practice until his legal issues are resolved. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for the first week in March, which probably means that Williams’ season is effectively over. OSU has been playing better of late, beating Missouri and Oklahoma to get back to the middle of the Big 12 pack, but any further push will be that much more difficult without the sometime-starter available to bang bodies down low.
- Dan Wiederer delves further into the phenomenon known as Kendall Marshall going for a record sixteen assists in UNC’s destruction of Florida State over the weekend. We didn’t know, for example, that Marshall has a tendency to pull a Bill Russell during halftime of games, but we do now and we’re quite sure that Roy Williams will provide the rookie with his own four-year supply of barf bags if he keeps dropping double-figure dimes the rest of the season.
- A new Monday meant another version of Seth Davis’ Hoop Thoughts. In this week’s edition, he deplores the fly-by-night departure of Larry Drew II from the program (blaming Drew’s mother more than his famous father), St. John’s as the most interesting bubble team at this point, and a Kyrie Irving update that you haven’t seen anywhere else.
- The ten final candidates for the Bob Cousy Award given to the nation’s top point guard were announced on Monday, and there were a couple of surprising omissions. The complete list is below, but as Mike Miller at Beyond the Arc points out, there’s really no legitimate excuse for leaving out Xavier’s Tu Holloway and Wisconsin’s Jordan Taylor. Both players have been outstanding for their respective teams, and outside of the NPOY candidates Fredette, Smith and Walker, arguably better than any of the other names on this list.
- Norris Cole, Cleveland State
- Corey Fisher, Villanova
- Jimmer Fredette, BYU
- D.J. Gay, San Diego State
- Brandon Knight, Kentucky
- Demetri McCamey, Illinois
- Mickey McConnell, St. Mary’s
- Nolan Smith, Duke
- Isaiah Thomas, Washington
- Kemba Walker, UConn
View Comments (2)
Yeah, as much as I love DJ Gay, he certainly doesn't belong on that list over Holloway and Taylor... Drop him and either McCamey or Fisher in lieu of Holloway and Taylor and that's a damn good list...
Ending the Darnell Williams bit with the line " ... bang bodies down low."
Really?