- Last night’s scheduled game between Utah State and BYU was postponed after Danny Berger‘s collapse one day earlier. Given the circumstances of Berger’s collapse (occurring at practice requiring CPR and used of a defibrillator) this seems like a very sensible decision as Berger remains in what has been described as being in critical condition although he has been extubated and is reportedly talking with family and staff members. There has not been an announcement as to if or when this game would be made up, but frankly that should not really be a concern for either team.
- One of the few amusing things about conference realignment has been the fighting between conferences and schools about exit fees and the mandatory waiting periods before schools are allowed to leave their current conference. Apparently, the administrators at Rutgers do not find it that amusing as they filed a lawsuit against the Big East claiming that the exit fees and waiting period are arbitrarily applied to departing members while also claiming that the conference has failed to collect the $39.5 million it was owed by departing members. We can certainly get behind their issue with the 27-month waiting period and need to collect the exit fees from other schools, we don’t think that their issue with the different exit fees should be valid since the fee was raised to the current $10 million just before Rutgers left although if the argument is that the Big East doesn’t collect the fee in the first place from some schools then their case gets even stronger. While this will certainly drag on for months and likely lead to many news releases filled with legal jargon it does raise an interesting issue: If the Big East actually collects that $39.5 million it is reportedly owed it could go a long way to subsidizing the exit fee for Rutgers.
- With all of the movement going on with conference realignment we didn’t even notice that the WAC was on the verge of losing its automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament before it added Chicago State. The conference, which is described as “ever-changing” in the AP article needed seven schools in the conference to retain its automatic bid, but was going to lose it while waiting for Grand Canyon, a school that has its own issues as Deadspin detailed, to officially join Division I. Fortunately for the conference, Chicago State will join for the 2013-14 season, which is within the NCAA’s two-year grace period allowing it to retain its bid.
- As usual Luke Winn delivers with his always enlightening Power Rankings offering a variety of interesting stats that may change the way you view some of the best teams in the nation. For us, the two most interesting stats in this week’s edition concern the defenses of Duke and Florida (and we have vastly differing view on how long they will be able to sustain that performance). The stat that Winn cites for the Blue Devils is that the marked improvement of their interior defense, which has gone from mediocre to one of the best in the country through eight games. While they have already faced a tough early slate we have a hard time believing that they will able to maintain such a marked improvement. The statistic for the Gators regarding the frequency they use man-to-man or zone defense and how much better they are at both defenses. Given the change in players from last year’s defense (highlighted in the article) and their performance against FSU (a team that admittedly struggles at times on offense against mediocre teams) it seems like a stat that might hold up as the year goes on even if it tails off a little during SEC play.
- We are still a long way away from the NBA Draft, but Jeff Goodman is already looking forward to it and it doesn’t look pretty. According to Goodman (and we tend to agree with him here) this is one of the worst draft classes in recent memory and that is assuming that the talented freshmen leave instead of staying another year (or two or three) to work on their games. While there are a few notable players in this year’s Draft who seem like they are a cut above the rest of the class in terms of potential, but there is nobody that we see as a superstar yet and probably nobody that we see as a perennial All-Star.