- Coming into the season we were worried about the ongoing FBI investigation leading to some of the top freshmen in the country to miss considerable parts of the season, but yesterday we may have lost the best freshman in the country as Missouri announced that Michael Porter Jr. will likely miss the season after undergoing lower back surgery. It is a huge blow for a Missouri program that has struggled to be nationally relevant for the past twenty seasons outside of a pair of Elite Eight appearances and another that ended with a loss to Norfolk State. Even though we were more measured in our expectations for what Missouri could achieve with Porter (borderline NCAA Tournament team) his absence means that Cuonzo Martin’s first season at Missouri will likely end with a quiet Selection Sunday.
- Last Thursday, NBA commisioner Adam Silver and NBPA executive director Michele Roberts met with the newly formed Commission on College Basketball to discuss a variety of issues affecting the NBA and college basketball. The most important for the college basketball was the discussion of the one-and-done rule and the potential for changing it significantly. There has been some speculation as to whether or how the NBA will change the rule and there have been some criticisms of the Committee that the NCAA put together, but the reality is that they will have no say in what the NBA does.
- The debate around eliminating the one-and-done rule has been going on for sometime and the last Thursday’s meeting just reignited the debate on both sides. We tend to agree with Dan Greene, who believes that changing the one-and-done rule will make college basketball worse. While most people are focusing on the players who would be trying to skip college experience, Greene is also worried that some players will enter the NBA Draft rather than face being required to stay in college for two years instead of one year if they do not enter the NBA Draft immediately after high school.
- On Tuesday, Bol Bol announced that he was committing to Oregon in an article for The Player’s Tribune. Bol, a 7’2″ consensus top-five player in his class best known as the son of former NBA star Manute Bol, cited his relationship with the Oregon staff as the reason for picking them. While the Oregon class will never be confused with that of Duke or Kentucky (Bol’s two other suitors), Dana Altman does have a nice class developing with another five-star recruit in Louis King already committed.
- With Bol’s commitment there are only a few more top-25 recruits who remain uncommitted. One of the most prominent of those is Anfernee Simons, a consensus top-10 recruit, but you shouldn’t expect an announcement any time soon. According to a report from Jonathan Givony, Simons is considering skipping college and entering the NBA Draft. Simons would be able to do this because he is in a post-graduate year (his fifth year in high school) and will turn 19 in June, which would make him eligible for the Draft. We don’t expect his to become a trend, but if the one-and-done rule gets changed it is something that college coaches might have to worry about more in the future.