1. Yesterday morning we said that we did not expect Luke Martinez to get a significant punishment since charges were only brought against him once additional information about the case came out. Well we were wrong as the additional information that came out suggests that Martinez kicked his possibly unconscious victim’s face “like it was a football”. As if things were not bad enough for Wyoming at least two other players were present including one (Derek Cooke Jr.) who reportedly punched the victim before Martinez kicked him. We would not expect to see Martinez donning a Wyoming uniform any time soon if at all.
2. Massachusetts faced an uphill battle in a strong Atlantic 10 this year, but appeared to be making a push for the NCAA Tournament, but those hopes took a hit when it was announced that Jesse Morgan will miss the rest of the season after tearing the ACL in his right knee last week. After the injury was initially diagnosed as a sprain, the Minutemen had hoped that he would return, but once Morgan was seen by a doctor on Tuesday it became apparent that it was in fact an ACL tear. At this point, a NCAA Tournament appearance seems like a stretch as Morgan is not only the  the team’s second leading scorer, but also their best perimeter defender. With a fairly deep Atlantic 10, the Minutemen are probably looking at a NIT appearance at best unless they can get someone to step up to provide additional scoring and perimeter defense.
3. We have seen a lot of weird stats when it comes to free throws, but never anything quite like what is going on with Wisconsin’s Ryan Evans, who has gone from a 73% shooter last year to a 38% shooter this year. Ken Pomeroy offers a variety of suggestions, but is not able to pinpoint a single identifiable reason. Looking through Evans’ game log from this season, it is apparent that a few atrocious games are having a large effect on his overall percentage, which is interesting because Evans has never had any poor performances from the free throw line during his three previous seasons at Wisconsin. It will be interesting to follow this trend and whether Evans is able to revert to his old form or if this becomes an issue for the Badgers who may be hesitant to use Evans in late game situations for fear that opponents will foul him intentionally to get him to the free throw line.
4. You won’t see Tom Izzo on Twitter any time soon as he appears to dislike it and other social media because of the negative feedback that some of his players get although he lets them have accounts on it. [Ed. Note: He appears to have an account that he has not used in nearly two years.] It is interesting to see that some of the players have followed his lead and stopped checking out Twitter or other social media sites. On the other hand, there are several that appear to use it as motivation, which is what we typically see from players who love to retweet hate messages that are sent their way. While each coach has to make a decision that is best for the program, Izzo’s approach appears to be among the more sensible ones that we have seen–telling his players that they can use Twitter and other social media if they want, but to be ready to either ignore or deal with anything they hear on there.
5. Andy Glockner is back with his latest bracket projection that includes the most tantalizing First Four game ever–Kentucky-North Carolina (a rematch of what was perhaps the best game of last season)–although at this point we would question if either team is even worthy of making the First Four. At least that was our initial thought until we started going through his Bracket Watch column where it became apparent how weak the resumes of some of the other Bubble teams are at this point. After looking at it one thing that we had been considering recently becomes apparent: some of the non-BCS conferences have a very good shot at getting more teams into the NCAA Tournament than they ever have before thanks to some of the BCS conferences having down years.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2013 at 5:30 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: jesse morgan, luke martinez, ryan evans, tom izzo. 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.