- If you missed last night’s game between Arizona and San Diego State in what was billed as the battle of the two best teams on the West Coast you missed an excellent game with a crazy finish. After what could be can most gently describe as a slow start where both teams struggled to make even basic basketball plays, the level of play increased significantly. We are not ready to jump on the Arizona bandwagon with both feet, but after their 68-67 win we are looking for an open space to hop into pretty soon. The Wildcats are still a work in progress and we are not sure if we fully buy into a team that relies on Mark Lyons as its point guard, but they have a solid combination of youth, talent, and experience to make them an intriguing team in March. Most of the country will probably forget about the Wildcats until March as they don’t play another ranked team the rest of the season, but they would be wise to keep an eye on what is going on in Tucson.
- We are pretty sure that we have never linked to a college football article in the Morning Five before, but the article by the NCAA (hello, propaganda) about how San Jose State turned around its APR by focusing on student academics at all levels caught our eye. While we certainly can appreciate the work that the school did to achieve this change we are sure that some will view this as nothing more than an attempt by the NCAA to get people to support its APR system that has been criticized by many as being ineffective in judging a school’s performance in educating its student-athletes. While we will leave you to ponder that, we found the last quote in the article amusing given the current economic/unemployment situation: “But if you have a degree, you are set for life.”
- While Syracuse has had to deal with its share of bad publicity over the past week there are still some good stories happening on campus including a basketball player–Baye Moussa Keita–and a football player from Senegal and the Ivory Coast respectively who are making a substantial impact on their teams. While they have somewhat similar backgrounds (coming from Africa to the United States in their teens, there are some key differences as the article illustrates, but they still managed to form a bond at the school. We don’t know much about the football player they talk about, but we can say that Keita has certainly improved over the years and plays hard. We doubt that he ever play in the NBA, but he should have a professional career overseas.
- As we near the start of conference play, we have seen some sensational freshmen performances even if none of them may quite match the impact that Anthony Davis had last year. In his weekly Freshmen of the Year column, Jeff Borzello takes a look at the top freshmen in the country. While the ranking should not come as much of a surprise, looking at it should serve as a reminder that even though this year’s freshmen class may not be as loaded as some in year’s past there are still several freshmen who could merit consideration for first team All-American consideration by the end of the season.
- Depending on where you live you have heard varying amounts of Christmas caroling over the past few weeks, but we doubt that you heard many carols from a college basketball team. We know it’s a little late now (or maybe a little early if you are already looking forward to Christmas 2013), but Jeff Eisenberg collected some of the best (or worst) renditions this holiday season. Now none of these approach the brilliance of a #DMXMas, but they are worth a listen if you are sitting around doing nothing today even if only to satisfy your curiosity as to how such a production would turn out.