Morning Five: 08.26.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 26th, 2013

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  1. The biggest news of the weekend was the announcement by Emmanuel Mudiay that he was committing to Southern Methodist. Outside of being a shock to the fans of the top schools–Baylor, Kansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State–that were reportedly in the running for his services, it is also surprising that he would choose SMU and may validate to a degree the decision by the school to hire Larry Brown, who may not even be there when Mudiay arrives on campus. Many in Big Blue Nation are still in shock that a second top recruit in a few months would spurn them (Andrew Wiggins being the other) as Mudiay had reportedly narrowed his choices down to SMU and Kentucky, but for us the bigger story (outside of the fact a top-5 recruit in the class of 2014 is headed to SMU) was the fact that Texas was not even a consideration for a top Texas recruit and it speaks volumes about the state of Rick Barnes’ program.
  2. For all of Gonzaga‘s success over the past 14 years they have often remained off the radar for many elite recruits for a variety of reasons (location, offers from bigger names, etc) so when Josh Perkins, a class of 2014 point guard who is ranked in the top 25 overall in his class, commits to Gonzaga it is pretty big news. Perkins, who was also seriously considering UCLA and Minnesota, has been Mark Few’s #1 target for this coming season and should fit in well when Kevin Pangos is ready to leave Spokane. Although there have been some other Gonzaga commits over the years who have been as highly sought after (Austin Daye comes to mind), but it is still quite a coup for Few.
  3. We are just a few weeks from the start of the college basketball season, but Texas Southern has managed to pick up one of the best available transfers on the market as the school announced that  Aaric Murray will be headed there. Texas Southern will be Murray’s third school as he transferred from La Salle, where he averaged 15.2 points and 7.7 rebounds per game during the 2010-11 season, to West Virginia, where he averaged 8.8 points and 5.9 rebounds per game last season, but battled disciplinary issues as he was arrested in December 2011 for marijuana possession and was suspended in a separate incident for an undisclosed disciplinary violation. Murray, who is eligible to play immediately as he graduated from West Virginia this past spring, should make Texas Southern, which went 16-2 last season, but was barred from postseason play, a strong contender for the SWAC’s automatic bid.
  4. Dave Rice’s job of keeping UNLV competitive this season despite the loss of several key players just got a little tougher as the school announced that Savon Goodman will not play this season after news surfaced that he was facing two felony charges of first-degree burglary and grand larceny. Despite Goodman’s paltry production last season–3.6 points and 2.4 rebounds per game–he was expected to be a much bigger part of the team’s game plan with the departures of Anthony Bennett and Mike Moser. Now Rice and the UNLV staff will have to scramble to find a replacement for Goodman, who would have been the team’s starting power forward. That role will probably fall to Jamal Aytes, a three-star recruit who committed to the school just one week ago.
  5. We are not sure how D.J. Haley, who averaged 1.9 points and 1.9 rebounds per game at VCU last season, will fit in with “Dunk City West” after it was announced that he will be transferring to USC, but we guess playing in the Havoc defensive scheme should be good preparation for a frantic style of play. The 7-footer will be eligible to play immediately after graduating early from VCU and will be enrolling in USC’s engineering school. Despite his limited production last season Haley does have quite a bit of experience and actually started for the Rams during their run to the 2011 NCAA Final Four and his experience should help a Trojan frontcourt that is not very deep and lacks experience.

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Morning Five: 08.23.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 23rd, 2013

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  1. With each passing day more and more of the college basketball schedule is revealed. Yesterday’s big news was the release of the ACC schedule (the full schedule is available in PDF format). The schedule is highlighted by the conference’s two ESPN GameDay match-ups: Duke at Syracuse on February 1 and North Carolina at Duke on March 8. Outside of that there should be considerable interest in match-ups involving the newcomers to the conference–Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and Notre Dame–as ACC teams travel to and host them for the first time. Other than that the one thing that really sticks out to is how Maryland does not get a single home game against any of its traditional rivals. Clearly this is the conference’s way of getting back at them for leaving for the Big Ten.
  2. Staying on the topic of the ACC and its schedule it appears that Syracuse will not be moving its basketball court to the center of the Carrier Dome for its game against Duke. Earlier this summer there was quite a bit of speculation that the school might do so in order to create the possibility of having 50,000 fans in attendance for the game, but after considering many of the logistical factors involved in doing so they nixed the idea. The school also noted that this would not preclude the possibility of surpassing the on-campus attendance record of 35,012 set this past February when Syracuse hosted Georgetown. It also has not ruled out the possibility of moving the court to the center of the Carrier Dome in the future although we have a hard time seeing which event there would warrant it if this does not.
  3. After a three week hiatus, Luke Winn is finally back and this time he is trying to pick six players primed for a break-out season as sophomores. The selections are based on playing sparingly as a freshman (not much more than 20 minutes per game), having a high usage rate (24% or higher), and having an offensive efficiency rating over 100. The selections–Przemek Karnowski, Michael Carrera, A.J. Hammons, D’Andre Wright, Mike Tobey, and Sam Dekker–are all players that the casual fan might not be aware of, but people who follow college basketball have been waiting to take the next step especially Hammons and Dekker. If you doubt the utility of this strategy, which is admittedly a little arbitrary especially when Winn bends the rules to get Dekker in, check out last year’s selections.
  4. In our interview earlier this week with Steve Alford we asked him about the need to regain control of recruiting in California and specifically the Los Angeles area. Alford suggested that while it was important they were also taking a national approach. However, as Myron Medcalf notes, if UCLA is going to become a national power again it needs to lock up its own backyard. We think it goes without saying that a national-level program needs to recruit nationally, but in the same way that Miami needs to control southern Florida in order to become a football power again, UCLA needs to become a major player in the movement of players from its own region (ok, maybe not to the same degree) if it is to even reach the heights it saw under Ben Howland much less John Wooden (the latter is never happening again).
  5. We will call yesterday’s edition of CBS’s Candid Coaches series the “Sean Miller question” as they asked coaches if they feel that their team has been targeted by an official or an officiating crew. The impetus for the question was clearly the controversy in the Pac-12 last season where there remains some suspicion that Ed Rush essentially directed a crew to give Sean Miller a technical so the results are somewhat surprising: 53% said yes, 38% said no, and 9% said yes, but not to that extent. Honestly, we are surprised by the 91% that either said that they felt like they had been targeted like Miller or that they had not been targeted at all. We don’t think that officials always target one team, but to think that they never do or that officials have specific agendas against a certain team seems a little naive. Now if we were forced to pick we would probably question the 38% who think they have never been targeted the most because that just seems to be a little too PC for an anonymous poll.

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Morning Five: 08.20.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 20th, 2013

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  1. You know the NCAA has done something incredibly dumb when it completely reverses a decision it just made, but when the public was made aware of the NCAA’s decision to take away a year of Steven Rhodes‘ eligibility because he participated in games on a military base while serving as a Marine it became clear that the NCAA had to reverse its decision. We are going to assume that the original decision made by someone who was just reviewing the case and following the letter of the law without looking at the bigger picture and definitely without consulting his or her superiors. We will give the NCAA some credit for reversing course quickly, but we suspect that there was some external pressure placed on the organization to reverse its prior decision.
  2. We are still anxiously waiting for the release of full schedules, but the powers that be have decided to release the schedules in bits and pieces. The latest part of the schedule to be released is ESPN’s Super Tuesday schedule. As you would expect given the relative strength of the two conferences the Big Ten slate is more compelling and the SEC one features a lof of Kentucky. Obviously the SEC slate is banking on Kentucky rebounding from last season’s collapse and the solid play of this year’s incoming freshman class, but it is hurt quite a bit by the lack of either Florida-Kentucky game since both will probably be featured CBS weekend broadcasts.
  3. When we saw that there was news about the First Four we were initially excited by the possibility that the NCAA had finally gotten rid of the farce that is the First Four. Unfortunately, the news was merely that the NCAA was considering alternatives to Dayton as the site of future First Fours. Dayton already has the rights to the next two First Fours secured, but the bidding for the 2016-18 iterations remains open. According to David Worlock of the NCAA, the issue is not so much that Dayton has not been a suitable host, but instead is reflective of conference realignment. Honestly, we have no idea what that means unless the NCAA is planning on changing the format of the NCAA Tournament because of the changes in conference structure since it should not affect the location of what essentially amount to play-in games.
  4. Yesterday we mentioned the ongoing issues around Chris Walker’s eligibility at Florida and how it remained one of the major outstanding issues heading into the season. While Jamal Aytes would not be classified in the same category as Walker he remained one of the top uncommitted players in the class of 2013. That is until he committed to UNLV yesterday. A 6’6″ power forward usually does not attract a lot of attention, but Aytes managed to crack the top 100 for most recruiting services. His addition will not be enough to make anybody in Las Vegas forget about Anthony Bennett or Mike Moser, but he could help ease the transition by committee.
  5. As those of you who are on Twitter are aware there are some coaches who seem to get social media and those who do not. With that in mind Sporting News put together a list breaking down the best and worst of college basketball coaches on Twitter. Most of the names on the best/worst lists should not exactly surprise you although the names on the worst lists might have such a minuscule presence online that you might not have even been aware that they were on Twitter. We have no idea if this type of stuff has any influence on potential recruits, but we will say it does not hurt to be able to speak their language.

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Morning Five: 08.19.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 19th, 2013

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  1. New Butler coach Brandon Miller was probably already facing an uphill battle replacing Brad Stevens. Not only did he have to contend with a conference change from the Atlantic 10 to the Big East and the departure of several key seniors, but he was also facing Stevens’ considerable shadow. Now he will have to do all of this without Roosevelt Jones, who was perhaps the team’s top returning player, is out for the season after tearing ligaments in his left wrist during the team’s trip to Australia. Butler was going to have a tough time dealing with all the changes and now doing so without Jones might be too much for Miller (or even Stevens if he had stayed) as the Bulldogs seem destined for the bottom of the Big East this season.
  2. The NCAA has found itself in quite few politically unpopular situations over the years, but they may have topped themselves with their latest act–taking a year of eligibility away from a Marine veteran for playing games on the base. The latest poster boy for the NCAA’s ongoing quest for bad publicity is Steven Rhodes, a 24-year-old freshman at Middle Tennessee State, who just finished a five-year stint with the Marines and was planing on coming back to play college football. Unfortunately his plans have been put on hold as the NCAA has ruled that Rhodes has to sit out this season. Although Middle Tennessee State is not the typical site for major NCAA stories, we have a feeling that this will turn into a national story in the near-future.
  3. The start of the college basketball season is getting very close, which you will be reminded of with the onslaught of college basketball previews that you will see online once the college football season starts and we are pretty much ready for the season to start, but one name–Chris Walker–remains in limbo. Walker, one of the top players in the class of 2013, is still waiting for clearance from the NCAA, but it appears that the NCAA Clearinghouse is reviewing his grades now. We have no idea how long it will take the NCAA to review his grades, but they will need to clear him by this coming week for him to be eligible to play this fall, but if he is eligible by December he could enroll at Florida and play the second half of the year. If neither of those options work, we get the feeling that he might pursue the Ricky Ledo option.
  4. When Shivaughn Wiggins announced that he was transferring from Mount St. Mary’s we figured it would not take long before he found a new home and it only took a few weeks as he announced that he was transferring to Coastal Carolina. Wiggins, the NEC Rookie of the Year, averaged 9.6 points per game last season and should be a huge pick-up for Coastal Carolina when he is eligible to play in the 2014-15 season. If you are looking for a more in-depth evaluation of Wiggins’ potential impact on the team, check out the breakdown put together by Big Apple Buckets.
  5. Out of all of the Candid Coaches questions that CBS has released the one about which elite 2014 prospect will struggle the most in college is certainly the most controversial. We won’t pretend to know much about any of the 2014 prospects at this point outside of recognizing a few names, but it will be interesting to see if these anonymous comments will affect their ranking at all and whether it might scare off a few coaches. We doubt that it actually will, but we imagine that several of the prospects listed here (and more specifically their parents) will be concerned about that. While this is interesting on some level and will certainly make its way around the message boards we are actually more interested in seeing this come out for the incoming freshman since we will be able to judge those evaluations right away.

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Morning Five: 08.16.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 16th, 2013

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  1. A day after Roy Williams declared that he was tired of talking about P.J. Hairston (news to us since he didn’t talk about it as much as many would have liked him to) Bubba Cunningham, the school’s athletic director, reportedly said that he expects Hairston to miss some time, but still play this season. We certainly understand that Cunningham would like to convey a hopeful message and probably expected that his comments (made at a faculty retreat) would not make national news, but it seems awfully optimistic to think that Hairston will play this season given the publicly available evidence against him.
  2. Losing your best player to an injury is never a good thing, but the staff at California has to be thankful that Justin Cobb sustained a fracture to his right fifth metatarsal during a Pro-Am game on Monday night rather than later in the year. Cobb, who averaged 15.1 points and 4.8 assists per game last season, will be out 6-8 weeks, which means that he will probably miss the start of practice, but should be back for the team’s first game. In a strange way Cobb’s absence during the early practices could be seen as a positive as it would allow the team to get his back-ups more practice and accelerate their learning with Cobb out of  way letting them work with the starters.
  3. When Robert Upshaw signed with Fresno State it was a surprise to many as the 7-footer passed on many more well-known programs. Now that Upshaw has been dismissed from the team for violating an unspecified athletic department policy for the third time we can see where Upshaw might have otherwise ended up going. Despite a mediocre season in which he averaged an uninspiring 4.1 points and 3.8 rebounds per game Upshaw should have plenty of suitors and it appears that his family is already reaching out to potential destinations. The family has not offered any hints about where Upshaw is looking at, but it is worth noting that he originally committed to Kansas State before backing out when Frank Martin left the school to coach at South Carolina.
  4. We hate to be jaded about news that an athlete has gotten into legal trouble, but at this point it takes a lot of surprise. So when we heard that Marshall forward Elijah Pittman had been indicted on misdemeanor battery charges we were not exactly shocked (this isn’t a comment on Pittman since we don’t know anything about personally, but is instead reflective on the number of arrests we have written about in this space). What is surprising is the fact that we had not heard about the arrest yesterday when the indictment occurred on July 31 and the incident in question happened on October 10, 2012. According to the police report Pittman knocked another Marshall student unconscious at an off-campus apartment. Given the fact that Pittman was allowed to play last season–averaging 16.1 points and 4.2 rebounds per game–we doubt that he will miss any playing ime unless it is the result of jail time.
  5. With all of the movement we have seen with conference realignment we have wondered what will happen to some of the notable conference challenges. Perhaps the most notable one is the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, which will be back in a similar format this year. While most of the 12 games have some interesting angle (sorry, we are having a hard time getting too excited about Boston College at Purdue), the three big-time games are clearly Indiana at Syracuse, Michigan at Duke, and North Carolina at Michigan State. Although we do think that winning these competitions is largely overrated we will be interested to see how the ACC’s newest members fare as the ACC has lost its grip on the Challenge going 0-3-1 in the past four years after winning it the first 10 years, which also coincides with the Big Ten becoming arguably the premier basketball conference in the country.

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Morning Five: 08.13.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 13th, 2013

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  1. Every year ESPN’s 24 Hours of Basketball feature is one of the highlights of the early-season schedule. This year’s version should be no different as ESPN has another loaded slate. Outside of the obvious appeal of both games of the Champions Classic the most interesting aspect of the schedule to us is that Wichita State is scheduled to play at home at midnight. It goes without saying that Koch Arena at midnight will be crazy and we understand the need for smaller programs to accept awful tip times to get on national television, but Final Four teams should not have to do that. Aside from that the thing that sticks out to us is that it seems like a waste to pair VCU–Virginia and Florida-Wisconsin against Michigan State–Kentucky and Duke–Kansas respectively since on any other night
  2. The latest question in the CBS Candid Coaches series asked which coach was most likely to be the next Andy Enfield. Unlike the poll that we linked to in yesterday’s Morning Five, this votes in this poll were more evenly distributed with Bryce Drew (15%), Mike White (12%), Will Wade (9%), and Steve Masiello (8%) leading the way. The selection of Drew as the top choice is not particularly surprising and you could argue that he might already be too well-known to be considered an Andy Enfield-type. The others are certainly less well-known and unless you follow mid-major basketball pretty closely you might not know about them. Of course, a year ago Enfield’s name probably would not have even registered in the “others receiving multiple votes” category so it is quite possible that the next Andy Enfield is not even on this list.
  3. Over the years AAU coaches have been accused of doing a lot of sketchy things, but we have not heard of any who were charged with drug trafficking. That is until Curtis Malone, head of the well-known DC Assault team, was charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin. After a year-long investigation, the DEA searched Malone’s home last Friday and uncovered a kilogram of cocaine, 100 grams of heroin, a handgun, and other related items. While we will acknowledge the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” it is worth pointing out that Malone was convicted of distributing crack cocaine in 1991 so this would not be a completely new endeavor if the charges were proven to be true.
  4. If you had any question as to why Texas has its own ESPN network the news that Texas led the nation in merchandise royalties for the eighth straight year for schools represented by Collegiate Licensing Company should clear things up for you. Clearly the majority of these sales are driven by the football program, which has historically been much more successful than the basketball program, but it speaks to the popularity of the program particularly when its two biggest sports (football and basketball) are going through what can best be described as a rough patch. The fact that seven or eight of the schools are in the South (depending on what you consider North Carolina) should come as no surprise given the fervor of their fans. It is worth noting that several prominent programs–Ohio State, Michigan State, Southern California, and Oregon–are not represented by Collegiate Licensing Company so those schools might approach Texas in terms of royalties particularly since they might be under a different payment structure than schools represented by Collegiate Licensing Company.
  5. For those of you who have short attention spans we suggest you check out Andy Glockner’s Twitter-style season preview where he goes through the most prominent teams in the 2013-14 season. As you would suspect the previews are not exactly comprehensive, but for the purposes of an early August preview this should suffice for pretty much everybody. And if you are in the mood for something a little bit more in depth, you can be sure that those previews are on the way.

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Morning Five: 08.12.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 12th, 2013

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  1. Early August is certainly a strange time for a team to announce that a player is transferring, but that appears to be the case for Mount Saint Mary’s, which granted Shivaughn Wiggins a release to transfer. Wiggins, the NEC Rookie of the Year last season, averaged 9.6 points, 2.2 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.2 steals per game last season. We have no idea where Wiggins is looking at transferring or what his reasons for transferring are, but we imagine there will be quite a few mid-major programs that will be looking for a player of his talents particularly with three more seasons of eligibility remaining.
  2. The news that the rental car that was driven by P.J. Hairston had received 12 parking citations over a two-month period should not necessarily add any more weight to the case against Hairston, but given all of the evidence–circumstantial or otherwise–building up against Hairston it certainly does not help his case. It should be noted that it is unclear if Hairston was in possession of the car at this time and given the fact that the people handing over the keys to this car did not seem to be screening the drivers too closely it might be difficult ever finding that out. Still given the noise around Hairston somehow this has turned into another “major” story about him. We are assuming that North Carolina and Roy Williams will see through this (one of the few times that we can say that about a recent scandal at North Carolina) and wait for more evidence to come out. Of course, with the way things are going for Hairston this summer it might not be too long before that evidence comes out.
  3. For the third part of their Candid Coaches series, the writers at CBS Sports asked coaches whether it is realistic to assume that they can prevent a player from accepting impermissible benefits. It is not surprising that 96% said they did not think it was realistic. Some of our more cynical readers might point out that this is somewhat self-serving in the event that the coaches get embroiled in a scandal, but we were more interested in the 4% (maybe one coach out of 25 since they do not specify how many coaches they talked to) who thinks that a coaching staff can prevent a player from doing so. We have read the reasoning behind his vote, but it seems incredibly naive. Coaches and programs can certainly do things to reduce the likelihood of these infractions, but it is ridiculous to think that it can be prevented completely.
  4. The rest of the country may have football (or Breaking Bad) on their mind, but we are still counting down to the start of the college basketball season. With that in mind Seth Davis spoke with five prominent coaches–Travis Ford, Josh Pastner, Cuonzo Martin, Mark Few, and Steve Alford–to discuss their off-seasons and thoughts about the upcoming season. None of them gave any shocking quotes (or at least ones that Davis printed), but it was interesting to see how publicly confident they all seemed to be. We are particularly interested in seeing how Alford and Pastner react to their new school and conference over the next few months particularly since they are both in the most precarious situations of any of the five coaches interviewed.
  5. Last week we linked to a story about former Northern Colorado assistant Christopher Craig and warnings that police had issued to local churches about the threat he posed. On Thursday, he was arrested for an outstanding misdemeanor drug possession warrant. Craig, who had been labelled an “Islamic jihadist”, was found with marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and shotgun shells. While this certainly is not the ideal outcome for Craig it is certainly a better resolution (for the time being) that what could have been envisioned when he was at large after having made threats against members of churches and was being pursued by authorities. We have no idea what was going on in Craig’s life, but we hope that he can straighten himself out.

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Morning Five: 08.09.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 9th, 2013

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  1. After Jay Bilas’ crusade against the NCAA’s online store and its use of players names to sell memorabilia the NCAA announced yesterday that it would no longer sell merchandise affiliated with specific universities. To do so the NCAA will shut down the site temporarily while it scrubs any vestiges of its use of amateur athletes’ names for its own profit. Now the NCAA will supposedly only feature merchandise related to its championship events. We are assuming that this merchandise will be allowed to feature the logos or names of the teams competing for those championships or we suspect that those items will not sell either. Having said that we are glad to see that the NCAA is willing to adjust at least a little bit when its hypocrisy is pointed out.
  2. In a somewhat cryptic tweet John Calipari both welcomed Steve Alford to Twitter and alluded to the possibility of UCLA and Kentucky playing in the near future. Although UCLA has been down recently they remain the most decorated program in college basketball history. Despite their storied histories the two schools have only met ten times with the Wildcats holding a 6-4 edge . A match-up between the two schools would certainly draw the attention of college basketball fans particularly if Alford is able to keep California recruits in state and make the Bruins a competitive team.
  3. As numerous reports have documented the past few years have not been easy for Dean Smith as he is suffering from what appears to be dementia. This has been particularly troubling for those who know him as more than just a legendary college basketball coach, but also a civil rights advocate. So yesterday’s announcement that President Obama would be honoring Smith along with 15 others with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is “presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” The date of the ceremony has not been announced yet, but we imagine it will be a star-studded event particularly with two of the other inductees being Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.
  4. With football just around the corner we have been anxiously waiting for the release of college basketball schedules and for the most part we have just been receiving bits and pieces of schedules from various teams that mostly revolve around a few non-conference games that are part of previously arranged events. So the Big 12’s release of this year’s conference schedule is the first real significant release we have seen. We may eventually do a post on this, but really the entire schedule comes down to two dates: January 18 and March 1. Those two dates are when Kansas and Oklahoma State play each other. Everybody in the conference office and ESPN might pretend that is not true, but realistically those are the only two games that matter. A few other teams like Kansas State and Baylor might be intriguing, but we need to see those teams prove something before we can trust them (especially Baylor).
  5. We have expressed our issues with how liberally the NCAA hands out transfer waivers, but in the case of Mike Poole we have no objection to his waiver being approved. Poole, a senior guard who averaged 4.4 points and 3 rebounds per game last season, transferred from Rutgers to Iona this off-season and was granted a legislative relief waiver so he will be eligible to play immediately. Given the video evidence demonstrating Mike Rice’s abuse towards his players the NCAA did not really have any option, but to grant Poole a waiver. It will be interesting to see how a change of scenery will affect Poole who had a higher scoring average (6.5 points per game) as a sophomore. The announcement should only further strengthen the Gaels’ position as the MAAC favorite going into the season.

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Morning Five: 08.06.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 6th, 2013

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  1. Coming into this season we were expecting big things out of Montrezl Harrell. The one-time Virginia Tech recruit played a pivotal role in Louisville’s run to the national championship last season and he showed signs of becoming a star with his play this summer. So when news broke that Harrell had injured his right knee in a collision at the Adidas Nations Camp we are sure that there were plenty of nervous people in Louisville, Kentucky. Fortunately, Harrell merely hyperextended his knee and did not suffer any significant structural damage. All of this should make Louisville fans sleep a little easier tonight knowing that their veteran inside presence should come into the season healthy.
  2. Louisville fans were not the only ones who had a scare come out of the Adidas Nations Camp as Will Sheehey also had his own injury scare. The rising senior sprained his right ankle, which had kept him out of five games as a sophomore, but it appears that the sprain was only moderate. Although Sheehey was largely overshadowed by his Indiana teammates/top-4 picks Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller as well as seniors Christian Watford and Jordan Hulls, he still managed to average 9.5 points per game and will be expected to carry a much bigger load for a Hoosiers team that will probably spend much of the early season trying to figure out its new identity.
  3. It might seem like an odd time to ask the question with the college basketball season drawing near, but CBS Sports took an informal poll of college coaches asking them which college coach they thought would be the best fit for the NBA. At first we were a little surprised to see Fred Hoiberg ahead of Mike Krzyzewski, but then we realized that these are people who actually know the game and realize the type of personalities that a NBA coach has to deal with. Now we are not going to say that Krzyzewski is not equipped to handle those personalities as he has shown that he can do for a short period of time in the Olympics, but we are not sure how that would hold up over an 82-game season. On the other hand, Hoiberg has more experience at the NBA level and based on these results we would not be surprised to see Hoiberg’s name come up when a NBA job opens up.
  4. Few recruits have had to deal with the adversity that Austin Hatch has. Hatch, a Michigan commit, may not be considered one of the truly elite prospects in this year’s senior class, but his story–having been involved in two plane crashes that took the lives of much of his family. Hatch has managed to come back from that and will be finishing high school in Los Angeles (hopefully Luke Winn will cut him some slack if he finishes as a top 100 recruit). Hatch has not played competitively since the most recent accident (in June 2011) so we will be interested in seeing how he performs, but more importantly to see how he is adjusting to his new life.
  5. With the off-the-court trouble that Wyoming had last season it should not be that much of a surprise that some of its players have decided to create their own club known as “624” to avoid the craziness of Laramie, Wyoming (I know I can’t believe I just wrote that either). The club is not really a club in the traditional night club sense, but is rather a symbol for a place (624 is the address of the apartment of some upperclassmen) where the players on the team can hang out without worrying that people outside of the team will create problems that will break up the team. The entire idea should not be novel although we doubt that many teams do something like this for a variety of reasons, but it seems like something that many programs would benefit from trying.

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Morning Five: 08.05.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on August 5th, 2013

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  1. One of the more secretive parts of college athletics (and there are many such areas) is how schools go about looking for coaches and administrators. In the past they were largely just given through what can best be described as an old boys network. Today, these decisions are largely made through executive search agencies. Dana O’Neil was able to go inside Parker Executive Search, the most well-known firm, to see what exactly it is that they do. According to Parker, they simply collect data and help arrange for meetings despite all of the rumors that they essentially pick out who should be the choice. While this is all nice in theory it should be obvious to everybody that they can only search so deeply and occasionally miss things that others might consider fairly obvious like the accusations against new Rutgers AD Julie Hermann.
  2. It will not be “The Decision II” in terms of being a media spectacle, but when Jahil Okafor and Tyus Jones announce where they are committing you can be sure it will be a big day at least in the college basketball world. Okafor, the #1 recruit in the country, and Jones, a top-5 player, are reportedly a package deal and according to Mike Irvin, Okafor’s AAU coach, Duke appears to be the leader for the pair. This is backed up by sources close to Jones saying Duke is the leader for him too. Of course, Okafor’s father denies that anybody is in the lead, but we doubt that he would come out and say that with so many schools in pursuit. The fact that Duke could land such a significant pair of recruits is not really shocking, but it has been a while since Duke landed two such highly regarded players in the same class.
  3. Jeff Goodman may have left CBS for ESPN, but apparently CBS got to keep his transfer list. Although he does not include every single transfer out there Jeff Borzello put together a summary of the biggest transfers separating them into those that can play immediately, those that will have to sit out a year, and those that are in limbo as well as those that just needed a change in scenery. With all the attention paid to the top high school recruits coming in a lot of people gloss over some pretty high-impact transfers and Borzello’s list does a great job at reminding you of the most important transfers so if you are unclear on where everybody transferred (and it is almost impossible to keep track of everybody) this is a great place to start.
  4. He may have not been a successful head coach (honestly, we had almost forgotten he was a college coach) so we cannot say that we are shocked that Corliss Williamson has left Central Arkansas to become an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings. Williamson is best known as the star of the Arkansas teams that made back-to-back national championship games winning the title in 1994, but he also went on to have a successful NBA career winning NBA Sixth Man of the Year in 2002. Unfortunately Williamson’s college coaching career was not as successful as he went 26-62 in 3 seasons. Still he will have his name to fall back on if and when he decides to move on from his new job in Sacramento.
  5. Normally this space is reserved for fairly light material, but when a former Division I assistant coach is labeled as “Islamic jihadist” it catches our eye. Such is the case of former Northern Colorado assistant Christopher Craig who has reportedly threatened Catholics and Mormons in both Arizona and Colorado. As a result authorities in Colorado are warning churches in the state to be on the lookout for Craig. Now we do not want to get into geopolitical/social issues and a loaded term like “Islamic jihadist” will certainly make this story become a bigger point of discussion than if they had chosen any other religion. Based on the reports it appears that Craig’s threats were limited to primarily verbal, which certainly does not excuse them, but hopefully someone reaches Craig before he goes beyond a point that he cannot come back from.

| morning 5, Regular Features | Tagged: , , ,

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