Morning Five: 09.19.16 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on September 19th, 2016

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  1. The NCAA gets a lot of criticism for a lot of things (often warranted), but their decision to pull seven championship events out of North Carolina during the 2016-17 championship season in response to the HB2 law seems to be widely applauded in the mainstream media. While some have been critical of the NCAA for making this decision against the state of North Carolina, the NCAA did come out with a clear list of reasons for their decision. It is also worth nothing that North Carolina is not the only state to have faced a ban by the NCAA for non-NCAA-related issues (the state of South Carolina was briefly banned from hosting championship events because of its use of the Confederate flag). For their part, coaches and administrators from several schools in the state including Duke and North Carolina have come out in support of the NCAA’s decision.
  2. With the NCAA joining the NBA, which decided to move the 2017 All-Star Game in response on to HB2, the ACC also decided to move its neutral-site championship events from North Carolina for the 2016-17 season as well. Although it would be easy to take a shot at the ACC for making a move only after the NBA and NCAA did it is worth noting how significant the move is since the ACC is headquartered and was founded in North Carolina. The move isn’t that significant for basketball this year as the ACC Tournament is going to be held in Brooklyn, but among other things it does force the ACC to move its football title game (scheduled for the first weekend in December) out of Charlotte to a site that has not been announced yet.
  3. We figured that after George Washington did not do anything in July following allegations of verbal abuse against Mike Lonergan by some of his former players (refuted by other former players) we had heard the end of that issue for the foreseeable future. It turns out we were wrong as reports surfaced on Friday night that Lonergan had been fired by the school. Given the details surrounding Lonergan’s reported abuse and his disdain for athletic director Patrick Nero it should be no surprise that Lonergan will be challenging his dismissal. We still are not sure what led the school to dismiss Lonergan on a Friday night in September, but it certain puts the as yet unnamed interim coach in a very difficult spot.
  4. Although Miami lost quite a few players to graduation this past season, we expected Miami to have a solid team this season thanks to what might be the best recruiting class the program has ever had. Unfortunately for the Hurricanes, Dewan Huell, one of the most prominent pieces in that class, was arrested on misdemeanor battery charges last week. According to police reports, Huell, a 6’11” McDonald’s All-American, attacked a man who he found in a closet with his ex-girlfriend after Huell went to her apartment uninvited. Assuming this is Huell’s first such incident we doubt that he will get more than a slap on the wrist with what has been released.
  5. Davidson is best known for Steph Curry playing college basketball there (and that is unlikely to change any time soon), but it has also become a well-known program internationally thanks to Bob McKillop and his recruitment of foreign players. As Seth Davis point out, the fact that Davidson will have players from seven different countries on its roster this season is the result of years of dedication by McKillop. It is a rather interesting strategy and one that is more likely to pay dividends for McKillop than if he were to hope to have the next Curry fall into his lap.

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Morning Five: 09.12.16 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on September 12th, 2016

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  1. The biggest story in college basketball in the past week was Deandre Ayton‘s commitment to play at Arizona in 2017. Ayton, a 7′ center who is widely regarded as the top recruit in this year’s class, chose Arizona over Kansas and Kentucky in a move that surprised many recruiting insiders who expected him to go to Kansas. While Sean Miller has had a surprisingly good record at getting a top recruits to commit to play at Arizona recently (and getting them there is another matter) this is certainly his biggest pick-up yet. The big question now is whether Ayton, who is originally from the Bahamas, but moved around recently before apparently deciding to finish high school in Arizona, will be eligible (and want to play) in college in 2017 as there are questions as to whether he will be able to meet eligibility requirements.
  2. We have to hand it to Ben Howland as he continues to bring top talent into Starksville as he picked up a commitment from Nick Weatherspoon, a five-star point guard out of Mississippi, to play at Mississippi State in 2017. Weatherspoon picked Mississippi State over schools such as North Carolina, Louisville, and Ohio State. While landing an in-state recruit who has a brother already in the program might not seem like that big of a feat to some, it is a sign that Howland is making some progress with the program even if their record does not reflect it yet after just one season there.
  3. While Ben Howland’s first season at Mississippi State was underwhelming, he certainly has more room for error at this point than Richard Pitino has at Minnesota after going 8-23 last season including 2-16 in the Big Ten along with some well-publicized off-court issues for several of his players last year. That makes Isaiah Washington‘s commitment to play at Minnesota in 2017 even more important. Washington, a four-star point guard out of New York, who likely won’t have the immediate impact of some more highly touted prospects in the class, but could be a solid four-year player for the Gophers.
  4. One of the key points of contention surrounding the idea of amateurism in college athletics is the limitations on freedom of movement in transferring. In many cases when a student-athlete transfers, he/she has to sit out an academic year before being eligible to play. Now a lawyer is going to court representing two former student-athletes who say this restriction limited their ability to play college sports and consequently their college education. While many of the coaches in Jeff Goodman’s article seem willing to accept an easier out for student-athletes in special cases (like when the coach leaves the program), other coaches (not surprisingly ones who didn’t have their names mentioned in the article) take a less optimistic view with one even saying it would turn college basketball into “the wild, wild West”. We can understand the desire of coaches to keep the status quo particularly with their large salaries, but we tend to favor any change that would benefit student-athletes.
  5. Speaking of doing what is best for student-athletes, Goodman also had an interesting article on what coaches thought of the graduate transfer exemption (a rule we have mocked many times here) and what they do to prevent athletes from taking advantage of it. As in the other piece, the coaches most critical of it didn’t have the courage to put their names behind it, but several unnamed coaches admitted to essentially preventing a student-athlete from graduating early by slowing down that individual’s academic progress in order to eliminate the option of the graduate transfer. As Goodman says many of these transfers are for athletic purposes when they are supposed to be for academic purposes, but when you look at things from the bigger picture we would rather have 100 student-athletes transfer for non-academic reasons than prevent 1 student-athlete from transferring for academic reasons since this should be more about the student-athletes and their growth than supporting coaches to maintain the same job they have when it would be filled by someone just as qualified if they are fired (basically a zero-sum game unlike that of the student-athlete).

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