1. Most people think of December as a time to spend with family, but it is also one of the most popular times of the year for players to announce that they will be transferring. This typically happens when players go home for Christmas break and presumably have friends and family telling them how much better they are than the starters. This year, a few players go an early jump on transferring as they aren’t even waiting for the end of the semester. at Marquette, sophomores Deonte Burton and John Dawson will be transferring leaving the Golden Eagles with just eight scholarship players. While Dawson is a seldom-used reserve, Burton was a top-50 recruit in the class of 2013, but has played less than expected and with Marquette’s highly-touted incoming class he probably felt it was best to move on. At Wake Forest, sophomore guard Miles Overton will also be transferring. While Overton, only averaged 3.4 points per game during his time there he did have a 14-point and 8-point game in the past two weeks.
2. Louisville finally received word from the NCAA about freshman Shaqquan Aaron as it was announced that he will be suspended for nine games (30 percent of the regular season) of which he has already missed eight including last night’s win over Indiana. The NCAA ruled that Aaron’s family had received “extra benefits related to housing” along with other undisclosed things. Aaron, a borderline top-30 recruit last year, will have to sit out Sunday’s game against UNC-Wilmington before making his debut against Western Kentucky on December 20.
3. Kansas junior forward Jamari Traylor (3.3 points and 3.9 rebounds per game) will not play in tonight’s game against Georgetown after being suspended following his arrest early on Sunday morning for interfering with a police officer. The details around the incident are unclear, but Traylor was arrested with a Kansas football player following a fight where someone was assaulted with the police still investigating the matter. Based on Bill Self’s comments it appears that Traylor was a bystander, who was arrested for essentially not complying with a police officer rather than being an active participant in the assault.
4. One of the common complaints with early-season schedules is the fact that many teams play meaningless games to boost their records presumably to make both coaches (hello, bonus money) and athletic directors look better. Fortunately some programs appreciate the importance of playing big-name programs for the good of both their own program and the sport. So whenever we see schools scheduled is big-time match-ups we appreciate it. As such we have to applaud both Kentucky and UCLA, the two most historically significant programs in the sport, for agreeing to play a home-and-home in 2015 and 2016. The schools, which will play each other this season in the CBS Sports Classic on December 20 in Chicago will play at Pauley Pavilion on December 3, 2015 and Rupp Arena on December 3, 2016. While it is hard to believe, this will be the first time that either program has played at the other’s home arena.
5. Speaking of Kentucky, one of the remarkable things about the team (outside of how talented they are and their platoon system) is just how dominant their defense has been. As Gary Parrish points out, this Kentucky team has a chance to be one of the best defensive teams in college basketball history. This is certainly high praise, but the numbers, which admittedly don’t go that far back, seem to support the argument. While this Kentucky team might lack the signature defender like previous Kentucky teams had with Anthony Davis or Nerlens Noel or looking even further back Georgetown with Patrick Ewing, they do have much more length (at least in terms of numbers/depth) than almost any team that we can remember. So while it is still very early to be asking the undefeated question, the one thing the Wildcats have in their favor is a defense that will probably require a team getting very hot from beyond the arc to make an upset a realistic possibility.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2014 at 6:15 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: Jamari Traylor, kansas, kentucky, louisville, marquette, shaqquan aaron, ucla, wake forest. 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.