- Coming into the season we knew that the only thing that DePaul fans had to look forward to was debates over the proposal by Rahm Emanuel to build them a new stadium. What followed has been a 10-14 record overall and 2-9 in the Big East. To be fair they are tied with Butler and we suspect that any DePaul fan would have taken that part coming into the season. Now the Blue Demons will have to complete the rest of the season without Cleveland Melvin, who is no longer enrolled at the school. Melvin, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, has been suspended since January 25 for unspecified reasons so perhaps his departure should not be viewed as much of a surprise. We would suspect that Melvin’s next stop will be a trip to an international destination out of O’Hare.
- Toledo was dealt a huge blow in what should be a very big game in the Mid-American Conference as it announced that it had suspended Justin Drummond, its leading scorer, for one game after he was arrested for a DUI on Saturday night. Drummond will be held out of Wednesday night’s game against Ohio, which is in second in the Eastern Division of the MAC (Toledo is in first in the West). Drummond is averaging 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game. Toledo will still have a shot at winning the game particularly since it is at home and fortunately for the them they will still be in control of their destiny with regards to getting an automatic bid with a favorite seed for the MAC Tournament so hopefully Drummond can learn from this mistake.
- We have heard a lot of takes on the Marcus Smart incident. Many of them have been good. Some of them have been ridiculous, but we are not sure that we have heard one quite like Tom Izzo‘s where he puts part of the blame on social media. If you have seen our Twitter feed you should be aware that we are not against social media so our view might be slightly biased, but to pin (at the very least) some of the blame for the actions of Jeff Orr and Marcus Smart on social media is borderline ridiculous. Do people say dumb stuff online? Of course. They also say dumb stuff in person. Players today might get bombarded with more direct criticism via online access, but to use that as a crutch for Smart’s action(s) is really letting him and others who have behaved badly in the public eye off the hook way too easily.
- The long-awaited renovation to Rupp Arena was unveiled yesterday when Lexington mayor Jim Gray revealed plans for the $310 million renovation. Gray is defending the expense as a key piece of economic development for the city. One interesting aspect of the project is that the city still has not revealed how it intends to pay for it. While Big Blue Nation is certainly passionate about its basketball it is interesting to see how apprehensive the quoted residents are about the project and how it will be funded. Having said that we have not seen many municipalities reject a stadium being built or renovated, but the Lexington residents do have the benefit of the school not being able to move.
- We are just about a month away from fans starting to look at their rosters and try to figure out who is coming back. In general fans view a high percentage of returning players as a good thing and it certainly seems like sound logic, but as Dan Hanner points out experience is not a guarantee for success. Given the state of college basketball where most of the top programs lose players to the NBA after a year or two it should not be surprising that most of Hanner’s examples involve lesser-known programs, but it is still interesting to see how many teams have struggled despite returning so much from the previous season.