- Our fears from yesterday’s Morning Five were realized as an MRI revealed that Nerlens Noel had torn the ACL in his left knee and would miss the remainder of the season. According to the school’s press release they expect he will undergo surgery on his left knee within the next two to three weeks with an expected recovery of six to eight months, but as we all know much of that depends on how the surgery and rehabilitation go. Outside of the obvious impact on Kentucky (hello, bubble), this is a big blow to the young center who was a potential #1 overall pick in this year’s NBA Draft. The injury has also led several individuals to question the “one-and-done” rule suggesting that if it had not been in place Noel would at least have had a multimillion dollar contract in place. It has also led a few individuals to speculate that Noel might come back for another year since this hurts his Draft stock although many sources indicate that Noel will still be a top-5 pick. We will table both discussions for another day (the latter is ridiculous) and just wish Noel the best in his recovery.
- This week’s edition of Luke Winn’s power rankings are less GIF heavy than some previous versions, but as usual it packs a ton of information including an interesting analysis of team free throws rates at home and on the road. And it isn’t Duke that leads in disparity (ok, I guess you can argue that Duke gets calls both at home on the road). Outside of that perhaps the most interesting thing in this week’s column is that Winn questions the findings of the Ken Pomeroy analysis of late game situations that we linked to in yesterday’s Morning Five. As usual we tend to agree with Winn here although this “nerd on nerd” makes us wonder which side those on different sides of the analytic aisle will take.
- We normally find court case involving college sports extremely boring, but the case involving Dominic Hardie, who along with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is suing the NCAA challenging a rule that bars felons from coaching NCAA-sanctioned events, is somewhat intriguing partly because we never knew such a rule existed. Hardie and his team are claiming that the rule violates the Civil Rights Act and unfairly discriminates against minorities. [Ed. Note: We will leave the sociopolitical implications to others who want to open that can of worms.] Hardie was trying to coach in a NCAA-certified basketball tournament, but was not allowed to after a 2011 rule change barred all individuals previously convicted of felonies, which is a change from previous policy that only barred individuals convicted of violent felonies within the past seven years. The interesting part of this is just how far this would go since depending on the jurisdiction charges such as assault, fraud, and perjury could be felonies. Given the amount of trouble some coaches have been finding themselves in lately there could be some that would be barred although we aren’t sure if this rule pertains just to the youth events or also actual NCAA games.
- It must be something in the Connecticut media room that brings out the vitriol in some coaches as last night Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim called ESPN’s Andy Katz an “idiot” and “disloyal” (more details including a brief transcript of the interaction and some background). Outside of his team’s ugly loss we are not sure what set off Boeheim (there has been some speculation that it was related to some columns or information that Katz had released, but it should make for some interesting interactions between the two of them going forward. To be fair to Katz, he is not the first media member that Boeheim has feuded with; he is just the most well-known national media member that has felt Boeheim’s wrath.
- It wasn’t that long ago that we called out Andy Glockner for how stingy he was with handing out “Locks” for the NCAA Tournament, but looking at this week’s Bracket Watch we have to agree with him. When you look through the list the most jarring examples are in the Atlantic 10 and Missouri Valley Conference where he doesn’t have a single lock. A week ago we would have said he was crazy, but after some recent results we have to agree with him here. Having said that we think that there are more than a few of his “Should Be In” teams that are probably more like “Locks” at this point.