1. It was less than a five days ago that everything seemed calm at Indiana. Then early on Saturday morning, sophomore Devin Davis was run over by freshman Emmitt Holt, who was charged with driving under the influence. Davis, who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition and now appears to be on his way to recovering, was cited in the police report as being primarily responsible for the accident. Not much after news broke of Davis’ recovery, Tom Crean announced that sophomores Troy Williams and Stanford Robinson had been suspended for four games each in what has been reported as being the result of multiple failed drug tests. These incidents combined with a couple of earlier arrests for alcohol use led some individuals including former Hoosier guard and coach Dan Dakich to question Crean’s job security. We agree that Crean’s job shouldn’t be that secure after all these off-the-court issues, but doubt that this would be the primary reason for his dismissal as schools have shown on many occasions that they care more about the bottom line than the optics of their school.
2. With yesterday being election day across the country, there were plenty of political pundits voicing their opinion to anybody who would listen (and many who wouldn’t). What we did not expect was for Mike Krzyzewski to voice an opinion–that President Obama was mismanaging the ISIS crisis–that would make national headlines. To be fair to Krzyzewski, the comments were made last month in front of an audience of military officers, defense contractors, and others in reference to the President’s pledge to not use ground troops in the fight. This is not the first time that Krzyzewski has been critical of President Obama as he has chided Obama for spending time on a NCAA Tournament bracket (that doesn’t pick Duke to win) instead of focusing on fixing the economy. While those comments were more in jest we would be interested to see the interaction Krzyzewski and Obama have if the Blue Devils win the NCAA title this year and are invited to the White House.
3. It turns out that North Carolina might have more than just the NCAA to worry about in the wake of its recent academic scandal. While some UNC fans have been worried about the NCAA handing down its version of the death penalty, they (at least the ones who care about the institution more than just the sports programs) should probably care more about an upcoming review by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges. The group that does not deal specifically with sports had already issued a report about the academic scandal in 2012 suggesting that the school offer courses to make up for the fraudulent one many students took. Now with the findings of the Wainstein report public they are taking another look given the findings of the unprecedented scope. The sanctions can range from a warning (essentially a slap on the wrist) to removal of accreditation (a real death penalty that means a school can no longer receive accreditation). We are not sure how often the group has decided to remove accreditation, but it would typically lead to a school having to shut down. Now we doubt that the group would do something that would make such an institution as significant as UNC essentially die, but as the group noted the scope of the scandal is unprecedented.
4. With the season about to get started we will start hearing more from people like Ken Pomeroy since they will have new data to analyze, On Monday, we mentioned how useless preseason polls were. It turns out that we were only partially right. Looking back at the AP preseason poll since 1990, Pomeroy found out that the order of teams ranked above 15 matters to a degree, but below that the order is essentially meaningless in terms of its predictive value. The analysis compares a team’s preseason ranking to its NCAA Tournament seed, which is probably more reflective of the quality of their season overall than just how far they advance in the NCAA Tournament. So while we still question the degree of interest in preseason polls it turns out that they do have some value.
5. The hits just keep coming for Hawaii. Fortunately for the school’s athletic director and everybody associated with it they are still located in Hawaii. Less than a week after the school fired head coach Gib Arnold and assistant coach Brandyn Akana, star forward Isaac Fotu announced that he was leaving the school to play professionally after the school had ruled that he was ineligible to play pending the results of a NCAA investigation. Given how slowly the NCAA typically works on these matters we do not necessarily fault Fotu, a first team All-Big West player who averaged 14.9 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, for leaving rather than wait for the NCAA to hand down its judgement and look forward to playing for an interim coach if he was even cleared to play. We are not privy to the details of what Fotu is being investigated for (reportedly impermissible benefits), but Fotu has stated that he has hired an attorney to clear his name, which at this point is somewhat inconsequential since he will be off somewhere getting paid to play basketball.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2014 at 6:15 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: Devin Davis, duke, emmitt holt, hawaii, indiana, Isaac Fotu, mike krzyzewski, north carolina, stanford robinson, tom crean, Troy Williams, unc. 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.