1. If you thought that the legal issues around the Mike Rice case were ending soon, yesterday’s announcement that three more players are planning on filing additional lawsuits would argue otherwise. Rice, who is already facing a lawsuit from Derrick Randall, is now potential facing lawsuits from Dane Miller, Robert Lumpkins, and Jerome Seagears. While the four potential lawsuits might seem like a lot there is still the potential for many more players, assistants, and other staff members to join in so there might be a lot more to this nightmare for Rice.
2. Louisville’s defense of its national title has been much tougher than expected due to a variety of issues that we have discussed in this space multiple times. Now they will have to play without Wayne Blackshear, who will be out for at least tonight’s game against Houston due to a concussion. The timing of the injury is particularly unfortunate for Blackshear as he was just reinserted into the starting lineup. Although the one game absence might not seem like a big deal we have not seen a timetable for Blackshear’s return and as we all know the recovery from a concussion can be variable. With all of the injuries and attrition that the Cardinals have had this year we would normally question how well-equipped they are to make a run in the NCAA Tournament, but we have seen Rick Pitino pull off enough miracles in March to know better than to doubt him.
3. One of the things that we have often wondered about some of the best sixth men is why their coaches do not just start them. Ken Pomeroy took it one step further and looked at which sixth men play the most and which starters play the least. Although we can understand some of the rationale for why certain players start or come off the bench we are having a hard time explaining some of these splits unless the coach is trying to give a senior player the benefit of starting, but we cannot see how that would not end up being more embarrassing if that starter ends up on the bench most of the game.
4. We held off on linking to John Gasaway’s Tuesday Truths until this point in the season because we felt that it was simply too early in the season to link to the earlier version, but now that we are done with football season it seems like a good time to take a look. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this analysis it looks at how team’s do on offense and defense in a per-possession basis in conference play. One of the more interesting findings from this week’s edition is just how well Virginia is performing compared to the rest of the ACC. We still are not sold on the Cavaliers, but numbers like this suggest that they might be better than we have been giving them credit for being.
5. We mentioned Harvard earlier this week in reference to the loss of Kenyatta Smith for the season, but for the most part they have stayed out of the national spotlight this season due to their mediocre schedule and the fact that they did not win any big non-conference games. Still they should be a tough out in March and hence a big national story when the NCAA Tournament rolls around. With that in min Charles Pierce took a look at the Crimson and while there is not anything particularly groundbreaking in it there are few people who write about anything as well as Pierce so it is worth a read.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 5th, 2014 at 7:00 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: harvard, mike rice, virginia, wayne blackshear. 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.