1. After spending a year an a half at Virginia, James Johnson has decided to return home to play college basketball as he announced yesterday that he would be transferring to San Diego State. Johnson, who lived near San Diego during his junior and senior year of high school (the situation is more complex than that and is explained well in the article), went to Virginia originally, but was unhappy with how the team intended to use him even after he redshirted his freshman year. In announcing his decision to go to San Diego State he cited the coaching staff there as his primary reason for picking the school. With the dearth of size on the San Diego State roster, the 6’10” sophomore could be a significant addition to the team.
2. Last night, Indiana lost a tough game at home to Minnesota, but they picked up a big piece with the return of Will Sheehey, who returned for the first time since he injured his ankle  prior to Christmas. While the other perimeter players struggled from the field, Sheehey looked sharp in his return scoring 12 points (5-7 FG) and grabbing 6 rebounds in just 15 minutes. Although the Hoosiers played exceptionally well in his absence, Sheehey’s return adds to their depth on the perimeter, which will help on nights like last night where other perimeter players are not hitting their shots.
3. It has been a rough past few months for Steve Lavin with his prostate cancer surgery and his delayed recovery. He talked to Seth Davis earlier this week about his health and how the team has performed in his absence. Lavin gives us the usual spiel about how about his assistants are doing a great job while he is gone. Lavin also tells Davis that he is cancer free (expected after the type of surgery he had), but the most interesting aspect of the interview is that Lavin says he is not sure that he will return this season. We hope that Lavin is right and that his absence is just due to energy issues rather than post-operative complications and that when he does return he is in shape to do so consistently.
4. Just a few days after it lost Jeffrey Jordan to transfer due to “personal reasons”, UCF lost another senior after Dwight McCombs was suspended for the rest of the season for violating a university policy, which according to university policy (presumably a different policy than the one he got suspended for) the school cannot give additional details on. McCombs put up rather pedestrian numbers this season (2.5 points and 2.5 rebounds in 12.5 minutes per game), but his experience and size could have been useful for the Knights as the season progresses.
5. We will finish the week with another installment of Luke Winn’s power rankings. This week Winn moves away from his controversial defensive efficiency analysis and looks at which starters on top teams play the fewest minutes and uses a matrix to separate pass-first and shoot-first point guard as well as various other statistical pearls. We do find it interesting that he credits Kevin Willard for Seton Hall‘s improvement in a little over a season there, but discounts the job that Steve Prohm has done at Murray State because he is coaching players he inherited at the end of last season when much of Seton Hall’s rise has been due to the play of three players (Herb Pope, Jordan Theodore, and Fuquan Edwin) that Willard did not recruit.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 5:00 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: central florida, dwight mccombs, indiana, james johnson, kevin willard, murray state, san diego state, seton hall, steve lavin, steve prohm, ucf, virginia, will sheehey. 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.