1. Most people rebalance their portfolios at the end of the year, but for some reason Seth Davis decided to file his annual stock report at the start of 2016 (maybe his CPA doesn’t believe in tax-loss harvesting). In any event, it is a good refresher if you haven’t been focused on college basketball with the college football season mercifully ending. We agree with most of Seth’s buy, sell, or hold recommendations although buying the #1 team in this scenario seems akin to buying a stock with a ridiculous P/E ratio.
2. Indiana will be without sophomore guard James Blackmon Jr. for the rest of the season after he underwent season-ending surgery on his right knee yesterday. Blackmon, who was averaging 15.8 points and 4.2 rebounds per game this season (similar to the 15.7 and 5.3 he averaged last year) had surgery on his left knee over the summer and appeared to recover. It is unclear if this injury was related to him overcompensating with the other leg or just a coincidence. In any event, the Hoosiers will have to find a way to make up for the lost offense although as we have seen their problems are usually on the other side of the ball. So far they are off to a good start with their win over Wisconsin last night.
3. One of the bigger stories of this season that has flown under the radar is the success of Southern Methodist as the Mustangs have started the season 13-0, but are banned from participating in the postseason. That ban is in large part due to issues around the recruitment of Keith Frazier, who had been averaging 11.9 points per game, but decided to leave the program because he feels that he is being blamed for the postseason ban. Given Brown’s history it is an amusing twist that the last stop of his coaching career will end with a player leaving him after the recruitment of that player led to the third time that a program run by Brown has been sanctioned by the NCAA.
4. Speaking of sanctions, it appears that San Diego State will not face any from the NCAA for allegations that they provided recruits with improper benefits. According to the original reports these could have potentially resulted in Level 1 violations. The full extent of the reported violations never came out publicly (possibly because there wasn’t enough evidence to substantiate them), but given Steve Fischer’s history of being fired at Michigan in the wake of the Ed Martin scandal we can understand if San Diego State fans and the administration are feeling a sense of relief.
5. It might seem early to be talking about impact transfers, but Louisville appears to have landed one for next season in Penn guard Tony Hicks, who led the Quakers in scoring the past two seasons. Hicks is sitting out this season and will graduate in May making him eligible to play next season for Louisville as a graduate transfer. We aren’t ready to start thinking of Louisville as another version of Iowa State, but Hicks will be the third significant transfer to Louisville in the past two seasons with Damion Lee (17.6 points and 4 rebounds per game) and Trey Lewis (14.3 points and 2.4 assists per game) leading them this year.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2016 at 7:30 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: indiana, james blackmon jr, keith frazier, louisville, san diego state, smu, southern methodist, tony hicks. 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.