Morning Five: 03.13.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 13th, 2013

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  1. The swag that college football teams get at bowl games may garner plenty of attention, but they are not the only college athletes to receive significant amounts of swag. Participants in the NCAA Tournament will receive an estimated $750,000 in gifts with the value of the gifts escalating if teams make it to the Final Four. Unlike college football (at least to our knowledge) the gifts are not limited to just teams that make the equivalent of a bowl game (the NCAA Tournament) as players in nearly every conference tournament will be taking home gifts ranging for t-shirts to televisions. We won’t try to argue that this is comparable to a stipend that many are advocating, but it is a nice bonus.
  2. All programs are subject to up and down periods, but mid-majors are more subject to these extremes than most teams in power conferences and Siena is a prime example. It was not that long ago that the Saints made three straight NCAA Tournaments (2008-10), but once Fran McCaffery left things went downhill quickly as they went 35-59 in the following three seasons and yesterday that led to the firing of Mitch Buonaguro, McCaffery’s lead assistant and replacement. Given the sudden drop-off that the program experienced and the lack of progress the team showed in regaining its former glory the decision should not be too surprising. We doubt that we will see Siena reach the heights they saw under McCaffery, but the initiative the administration has shown and the tradition that McCaffery built should make it an appealing destination for a long-time assistant looking for his first job or a coach at a mid-major looking to move up in the college basketball world.
  3. We wish we could say the same about UMKC, which fired Matt Brown yesterday, but we are must more skeptical that the Kangaroos (yes, that is actually their nickname) will become a real mid-major threat. Even that lowered expectation was not enough to save the job of Brown, who went 64-122 in six seasons including 8-24 this season. Looking through Brown’s record at UMKC it is not hard to see why Brown was fired even with what we would expect are fairly low expectations at a school that has the misfortune of being surrounded by three basketball powerhouses.
  4. We have not seen many significant recruits opt to go the overseas rather than head to college (Brandon Jennings is the most notable exception), but Seton Hall commit Aquille Carr appears to joining that small group. The decision is not exactly shocking for people who have followed Carr closely as the 5’6″ guard had previously mentioned playing in Europe and his arrest last summer for assault and reckless endangerment raised further questions about whether he would end up on a college campus. Still Carr’s decision is the latest in a series of blows for Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard, who went 3-15 in the Big East this season and now has lost two of the guards he was looking forward to bringing to campus next season (both also already carried criminal charges).
  5. With the regular season winding down every analyst’s rankings becomes a little less hot debated as we are finally getting to the point of the season where teams control their “ranking” based on what they do on the court rather than how impressive they are in doing so. That does not mean that Luke Winn’s Power Rankings are not as useful as ever with their usual wealth of information. Winn decided to go a little heavier in terms of subjective rankings than usual to offer his Player of the Year, Coach of the Year, and Freshman of the Year ballots, but he still has plenty of other interesting data including an analysis of how unique Gonzaga’s offensive distribution is and showing just how badly Florida’s guards are shooting.

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Morning Five: 03.12.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 12th, 2013

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  1. One of the undersold stories of March is that for every Cinderella that surprises in their conference tournament to earn an automatic bid there are nearly as many dominant teams that suffer crushing defeats that relegate them from being potential threats in the NCAA Tournament to the NIT. As Jeff Goodman points out there are a number of people who feel that the system is unfair. Goodman points to the example of top-seeded Middle Tennessee State (won its conference regular season by five games before losing in the conference tournament) and Stony Brook (won its conference regular season, but lost in the conference tournament playing a lower seeded team on the road). Although we can sympathize with these teams this sudden change of fortunes is part of what makes March so memorable and to undermine it with Goodman’s strategy of having the tournament champ play the regular season champ in a playoff undermines the appeal of March to a degree. Now if they want to offer the regular season champ more advantages such as hosting the conference tournament we would not mind that, but it should not take away some of the randomness that makes March so tantalizing.
  2. By now you have all seen and heard about Tom Crean‘s exchange with Michigan assistant Jeff Meyer (a former Indiana assistant under Kelvin Sampson) where Crean yelled “You helped wreck our program!” at Meyer after the game. Like everybody else we are all familiar with the back story of Sampson committing NCAA violations that put Crean in the place to rebuild Indiana. What we are not sure of is what triggered Crean to unleash his wrath on Meyer at this time. Crean and Meyer have since spoken on the phone about the incident and Crean apologized so it would probably be best to consider the incident closed, but it is unfortunate that this unseemly incident took away some of the spotlight from Indiana’s impressive road win (aided of course by some late mistakes by Michigan).
  3. Teams across the country may be fighting for spots in the NCAA Tournament, but at least the field for one tournament–the 2K Sports Classic (benefiting the Wounded Warrior Project–is set. The Gazelle Group announced yesterday that the semifinals (this is one of those fake tournaments where they have regional rounds where the winner does not necessarily advance) would feature Indiana, Connecticut, Boston College, and Washington on November 21 with the winners (we are going to pencil in Indiana and Connecticut even though we don’t know what the semifinal match-ups are) playing on November 22. The other 12 teams that will complete the 16-team regional rounds will be announced at a later date.
  4. With Victor Oladipo‘s rise from a complementary piece in Indiana’s machine to a legitimate national player of the year candidate we have seen plenty of columns analyzing his growth as a player and how he went from a relatively lightly recruited prospect to the star at one of college basketball’s premier programs. The one thing we had not seen was an in-depth feature on him until The New York Times profiled him on Sunday. Outside of the usual inane comments about how Oladipo “fills a stat sheet with the zeal of a locavore at a farmers’ market” the piece is actually filled with interesting information about Oladipo’s background and his relationship particularly with his father who has never attended an Indiana game.
  5. One of the biggest driving forces in the popularity of college basketball and college sports is the passion its fans have for the games. Usually that passion is directed in a positive way (camping out for games, etc), but sometimes that passion is based in hate. That hate can go too far sometimes (see European soccer fans), but at times that hate (or intense dislike if you are into semantics) can make the games more interesting. With the NCAA Tournament just around the corner the folks at Grantland created their Hate Bracket, which is comprised of 32 players (perhaps longing for the 1975-1978 NCAA Tournaments), with regions for Duke, the 1980s, the 1990s, and 2000s (actually post-2000 for the last group). The field is fairly evenly split in terms of race with 15 Caucasians and 17 African-Americans even if the former is probably too heavily represented given their relative impact on college basketball during the period being voted on, but we will leave that discussion to someone else.

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Morning Five: 03.11.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 11th, 2013

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  1. We know that March started 10 days ago, but for college basketball fans the month really gets going once teams start to receive automatic bids for the NCAA Tournament — over the weekend, the first handful of bids were handed out. The first entries into the field of 2013 NCAA Tournament are Belmont, Creighton, Florida Gulf Coast, Harvard, and Liberty. While none of these schools are traditional powers in the sense that the person who wins your office pool will know about them, they do represent a pretty wide range from a “mid-major” power that is the envy of many athletic directors at bigger conferences (Creighton) to a team with 20 losses that up until Sunday was probably most notable for being the former school of Duke’s Seth Curry (Liberty).
  2. One of the schools that earned an automatic bid was Creighton, which made it back to the NCAA Tournament after a hard-fought victory against Wichita State that should have showcased the high level of basketball being played in the Missouri Valley Conference. Unfortunately, much of the country was unable to watch the conclusion of the championship game as CBS cut away from the end to show the start of the Indiana-Michigan game. This will not approach the level of infamy of the famous “Heidi” game, but this is a pretty big slap in the face of basketball fans across the country who are not only enticed by big brand names, but who like watching quality mid-major basketball — especially in the closing minutes of a game with an NCAA Tournament bid on the line.
  3. With Creighton seemingly on its way to the new Big East, the dominoes in conference realignment have again begun to fall with some analysts speculating that the MVC could go after Belmont or Denver as a replacement for the Bluejays. Of course both teams are new to their current conferences (OVC for Belmont and WAC/Summit for Denver), which would mean that the move would inevitably trigger another cascade with the aggrieved conference pursuing the next biggest fish in the pool. At this point we are just hoping that the Catholic 7/Big East-Big East/America 12 split is the last major move of this cycle.
  4. Speaking of that split, there are still a few pieces adrift in that wreckage as Notre Dame has been looking for a way out of the “old” Big East to head to the ACC. Now it appears that they may have a way with the league reportedly asking for at least $2.5 million as an exit fee. The at least modifier gives us some pause, but if that is what the sources are anchoring the discussion on, we doubt that the number would be much higher without football involved in the negotations. If true, it is interesting how far the price has fallen from the previous bargaining where the conference was asking for future football games against its schools, which would bring in much more money than $2.5 million through direct ticket sales, advertising, and television contracts.
  5. While on the subject of all these Big Easts, the conference in its current form will holds its final conference tournament beginning Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. We don’t care who carries on the name in the future — a league tourney that doesn’t have Syracuse, Georgetown, UConn and Pitt in it just won’t be the same. The NYT uses the prism of a block that St. John’s star Walter Berry made on Syracuse star Pearl Washington to win the 1986 Big East Tournament to tell the history of the league, and it’s well worth the next 10 minutes of your time. The two former Big East legends, each now approaching 50 years old, plan on attending the event this week — we suspect that they won’t be the only ghosts of Big East past who will be around to relive past glories and celebrate the lifetime of a league that redefined major college basketball.

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Morning Five: 03.08.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 8th, 2013

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  1. What appeared to be a historic season for Akron could be on the verge of going down in flames after Alex Abreu, its starting point guard (10.3 points and 6 assists per game), was arrested on drug charges and suspended indefinitely. Abreu was arrested on third-degree felony drug trafficking charges after receiving a shipment of marijuana from undercover officers. With Abreu out the Zips will be susceptible to an upset in the MAC Tournament. Although their record suggests that they could be in the conversation for an at-large bid if they were to lose late in the MAC Tournament, the ongoing absence of Abreu would most likely put them on the outside of the bubble looking in.
  2. Akron is not the only school that will be missing a key piece for a potential March run as Colorado announced that Andre Roberson is out indefinitely after being diagnosed with mononucleosis. The loss of Roberson, the leading rebounder in the country at 11.5 per game, is a big one as he had grabbed over 30% of the team’s total rebounds heading into last night’s game. Like Akron, Colorado is already on the bubble, but thankfully for the Buffaloes they have a bit more wiggle room than the Zips as nobody on the NCAA Selection Committee would have been expecting the Buffaloes to win the Pac-12 Tournament even before Roberson’s illness.
  3. We hear coaches make  ridiculous comments about how important each game is, but we still find Rick Pitino‘s statement that Louisville’s game on Saturday against Notre Dame is the most important home game the school has played during his 12 seasons there amusing. Pitino’s rationale is that not only are the Cardinals playing for at least a share of the Big East regular title and that they will be ” saying goodbye to two really, really special young men.” We can appreciate Pitino’s desire to win the school’s second Big East title since he got there, but we don’t quite get what makes this game so much more important than the others that led to the one that put them in position to win the Big East regular season title. As for the “two really, really special young men” that he is talking about we are assuming he means Peyton Siva (senior) and Gorgui Dieng (a junior, but assumed to be leaving) who the school will be honoring before the game. Again we do not get what puts these two ahead of the other significant players who were played their last home game for the Cardinals during the past 12 seasons. Having said that we wish Pitino the best of luck in their most important home game ever. Until the next one.
  4. It seems like almost every year a handful of writers churn out columns suggesting that there is “parity” in college basketball citing anecdotal evidence. Peter Tiernan decided to take a semi-scientific look at it and based on his analysis of how often non-power conference teams make the NCAA Tournament and how they perform against seed expectation and it is not that clear that there is as much parity as some would think. Breaking the past 28 NCAA Tournaments (when it expanded to 64 teams) into distinct 7-year eras he notes that the most recent era has the fewest non-power conference teams in the NCAA Tournament although those teams do tend to perform much better than their seeding would suggest. Tiernan does point out that the latter is aided by the fact that non-power conference teams tend to have significantly lower seeds than power conference teams making it relatively easier to outperform their seed. We are not sure we buy Tiernan’s assertion that this argues against the idea of parity as it might actually suggest that non-power conference teams are not getting the respect they deserve from the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee although that would probably need a matched-pair analysis of performance of teams with similar seedings from power and non-power conferences.
  5. The Super Bowl halftime show is a much bigger announcement, but we doubt that they have a more eclectic mix of musical talent than the Final Four based on the announced line-up–Dave Matthews Band, Sting, Muse, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Flo Rida, Ludacris, and others–for this year’s Final Four. We won’t pretend to be fans (or even that familiar) with all of the acts, but we have to give the NCAA credit for picking a diverse group of bands as the listed line-up seems to cover most of the music genres we think that fans at the Final Four might be interested in outside of country music, but we are pretty sure you can find that in or around Atlanta if you are really looking for it.

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Morning Five: 03.07.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 7th, 2013

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  1. Maybe it’s the extra week in March before Selection Sunday this year or maybe it’s something else, but the last couple of nights of basketball have brought us a handful of bizarre incidents that seemingly have little to no relationship with common definitions of sanity. Everyone is already well-aware of the peculiar net-cutting ceremony that Indiana held for sharing a Big Ten title after a tough home loss to Ohio State on Tuesday night. That seemed to set the train to crazytown rolling. Last night, Syracuse‘s official Twitter account made this rather interesting statement: “Did I just watch Jim Boeheim’s last game in the Carrier Dome? One source says yes.” That source claimed that the school was in trouble with the NCAA and Boeheim had been asked to step down, and, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard, turned out to be a 19-year old student at a local community college who stood by his story. He claimed that he was also correct about the Bernie Fine case and Dion Waiters turning pro. Syracuse, for its part, deleted the volatile and widely mocked tweet and later issued a statement that said the tweet was “inadvertently and mistakenly sent out. Nothing contained in the tweet or the blog link is accurate or true.” Smoke/fire or the nonsensical writings of a kook? Nothing would shock us at this point.
  2. The other weird thing that occurred during last night’s action went down after most people in the country were in bed, but with about five minutes remaining in the game and Stanford holding a 19-point lead on the road at rival California, a scuffle ensued during a loose ball situation. Most of the players on the floor got involved in one way or another, but the real problem arose when three Stanford assistant and one Cal assistant came off the bench to help break things up. A bunch of technical fouls were handed out (three on each team’s players), but in a rule application that only makes sense in some alternate universe, the four assistants who left the bench to act as peacemakers were summarily ejected from the game. It turns out that the head coach is the only person allowed to leave the bench under any circumstances, which means that the NCAA’s seat belt rule clearly needs some further modification to account for situations such as these. All we can wonder is: What’s on top for tonight?
  3. The state of New Jersey is back in the NCAA’s good graces — at least for the time being — with a US District Court judge’s decision to provide a permanent injunction upholding a law that bans sports betting within the state. You may recall that last year the NCAA enjoined the state from hosting any of its championship events as a result of its passage of a law allowing sports gambling despite a federal law preempting it. The NCAA as a result on Wednesday released a memo stating that Garden State universities may again hold NCAA championship games and events within its borders. For many sports this academic year, the change comes too late, as several schools were not allowed to host home games and were forced to play elsewhere instead. Additionally, the 2015 East Regional of the NCAA Tournament was awarded to Syracuse’s Carrier Dome rather than Newark’s Prudential Center, which is potentially a major loss in revenue as a result of the NCAA’s ban. Of course, an injunction is just that, an injunction. It does not carry the force of law if the case is ultimately adjudicated and comes out in favor of the state. At that point, we presume that New Jersey will once again ban its championship events there. Cat and mouse, anyone?
  4. The much-discussed split between the Catholic 7 and the Big East is expected to happen today. Reports from late last night suggest that the seven schools will leave the conference on June 30, keep the Big East name, and have the right to play their conference tournament at Madison Square Garden. [Ed. Note: Who is negotiating on behalf of the Big East? Billy Hunter?] The addition of other schools (reported to be Butler and Xavier as well as probably Creighton) to the Catholic 7 would make a ten-team conference for next season with the possibility of the addition of two more teams (possibly Dayton and St. Louis) for the 2014-15 season. As we have stated before, the basketball power of the original Catholic 7 seems to have been blown out of proportion (only Georgetown is a great program with the others ranging from solid such as Marquette and Villanova to DePaul, which is DePaul). The addition of the other schools will have a significantly bigger impact on the overall quality of the conference and should make it one of the top conferences in the country.
  5. With the Catholic 7 and the Big East (or whatever we are supposed to call them) on their way to forming earlier than expected it appears that Notre Dame might be able join the ACC next year if it can find a way to exit the Big East. The Irish are able to do this because unlike Louisville (headed to the ACC) and Rutgers (headed to the Big Ten) they are not joining for football allowing the new conference more flexibility in scheduling games. Notre Dame had previously indicated that they intended to stay in the Big East until the end of the 2013-14 season if the Catholic 7 remained part of the conference, but with the reports that that group will leave on July 1 it now appears that Notre Dame will try to follow suit in departing the crumbling conference early. As it currently stands Notre Dame needs to provide 27-month notice to avoid an exit fee (yes, Notre Dame doesn’t have to pay an exit fee; shocking that the Irish are given a different set a rules to play by). The Big East has offered Notre Dame the possibility to exit even earlier if they agree to schedule football games against Big East schools, but their commitment to join the ACC in sports other than football already required them to commit to play five games annually against ACC football teams making any further commitments unrealistic. We are not sure what Notre Dame can do to do get out of the Big East any earlier, but if they need to pay some money that contract with NBC would go a long way to paying the exit fee although it may not make financial sense since their football program would not be impacted.

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Morning Five: 03.06.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 6th, 2013

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  1. One of the fundamental signs of intelligence is being able to learn from your mistakes so you can imagine our surprise when it came out that USC was interviewing Tim Floyd for its coaching vacancy. For those of you who may have forgotten Floyd resigned in 2009 amid accusations of his players (see Mayo, OJ) receiving improper benefits. It hasn’t been four years since that fiasco, but if you need a refresher you can check out our post from June 2009 on Floyd’s departure. In Floyd’s defense, the NCAA did clear him of any wrongdoing even if many nonpartisan observers remain skeptical. Outside of the obvious strange circumstance of USC interviewing a coach many feel it forced out the door a few years ago we also have to question the timing of the announcement as Floyd’s current team, UTEP, is doing well at 16-12 overall and 9-5 in Conference USA with two more regular season games remaining. It is beyond us why Floyd would admit to an interview with his team still playing meaningful basketball.
  2. Floyd may steal the headlines from that story, but we might be more interested in the second to last sentence of the story, which mentions that long-time Syracuse assistant Mike Hopkins has also interviewed for the job (confirmed to a local radio show). Although Hopkins is widely acknowledged as the eventual successor to Jim Boeheim the actual date that Boeheim leaves the Syracuse does not appear to be that close no matter how many cantankerous post-game press conferences Boeheim has. While we are disappointed that our #DausterForUSC campaign has failed to take off, Hopkins would appear to be an ideal candidate for the job with his experience at Syracuse and southern California roots. As we have said many times USC seems like it is the type of program that is just waiting for the right coach to make it a competitive national program again.
  3. We are a little over a month away from the Basketball Hall of Fame and while this year’s class will not generate the controversy that the baseball class will one potential inductee-Jerry Tarkanian–will raise plenty of issues for voters. We have already discussed the case for and against Tarkanian in this space in the past month and now at least one prominent sportswriter (Dave Kindred) is voicing his support for Tarkanian’s induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame. We are sure that there are some members of the selection committee will hold Tarkanian’s renegade reputation against him, but perhaps the NCAA’s recent public relations struggles will make Tarkanian a more sympathetic figure now.
  4. It turns out that the NCAA Tournament is not just big business for the NCAA and television networks. As Chris Smith of Forbes points out John Calipari could make up to $700,000 in bonuses depending on how Kentucky performs in the NCAA Tournament. In Calipari’s case, he is unlikely to collect on those bonuses as the Wildcats are not expected to make a deep run (or possibly not make the NCAA Tournament at all) and the more significant bonuses come in the later rounds. We do not have access to the contracts of other coaches out there, but we would guess that many of them could see a substantial raise above their base salary with deep runs in the NCAA Tournament (Calipari added 21% last year).
  5. One of the more heavily discussed topics in March is that of the bubble. There are countless forecasters who give predictions on who will make the NCAA Tournament through their secret formulas, but if you are looking for something more transparent (and simple) then the Easy Bubble Solver might be for you. Created by Drew Cannon it simply adds together a team’s RPI and Ken Pomeroy ranking then takes the 37 highest ranked teams as its at-large selections. Its 94 percent success rate over the past six seasons is impressive so even you think it is too simple it is worth taking a look at to see where there may be some disparities between what the analysts expect and what the EBS predicts.

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Morning Five: 03.05.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 5th, 2013

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  1. One of the many traditions of March is the avalanche of columns on a couple dozen coaches that are probably already living legends, but Kevin Armstrong’s great article on Steve Konchalski may be one of the few that you read on one of the great underappreciated coaches in college basketball having already piled up 826 wins. If you are wondering why you have not heard of Konchalski it is because he coaches in Canada and frankly very few people in the United States are even aware of Canadian college basketball. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if you were more familiar with Steve’s brother Tom, a New York City scout who has been the subject of several articles recently. Still it a worthwhile read on Canada’s Coach K, who might be a tad bit more fiery than the American version as the finger-biting story will illustrate.
  2. Over the weekend Ben Howland created a mini-firestorm when he said that Shabazz Muhammad would be leaving for the NBA after the season. The idea that Muhammad would be turning pro was not exactly groundbreaking, but the fact that his coach would say that at the beginning of March raised more than a few eyebrows. Yesterday, Howland backed off those statements and apologized for saying that without having discussed it with Muhammad, who later said he is still deciding. We are not exactly sure what made Howland come out with those statements (or play beer pong over the weekend with UCLA students), but while it was a questionable decision we are glad to hear a coach open up every once in a while even if he is only stating the obvious.
  3. We have seen plenty of straw men arguments over the years, but this column by David Woods on whether Butler could miss the NCAA Tournament is pretty high up there. We are willing to acknowledge the fact that Butler’s play as of late would be considered spotty at best and the possibility that a program of Butler’s caliber might miss the NCAA Tournament is not exactly unique (see last year), but we doubt that a team that has knocked off the #1 and #2 teams in the polls (like Butler did with Gonzaga and Indiana earlier this year) would ever miss the NCAA Tournament. Although Woods acknowledges that the possibility is far-fetched we think he is underselling just how unlikely it is.
  4. One of the best parts of March is watching an unheralded team shock a powerhouse program and make themselves known to the nation. We would be hard-pressed to include Lehigh in that category this year after their stunning upset of Duke last March, but they had the potential to play the role of Cinderella this March if they were able to get C.J. McCollum back from injury. Unfortunately it appears that McCollum may not be back in time for the Patriot League Tournament, which would most likely mean the end of his college career. Lehigh fans can hold out hope for a surprise run to the Patriot League title without McCollum (they are still tied for 2nd without him), but if this is the last we have seen of McCollum it was a pleasure watching him play in a Lehigh uniform.
  5. We don’t appreciate the competition, but we do appreciate the thought behind SI.com’s new basketball blog “One and One” spearheaded by Andy Glockner. Although it is early in the blog’s life we are interested to see what writers who have traditionally focused on writing magazine-style pieces will produce in the more modern blog format. We aren’t sure how many of Sports Illustrated‘s other writers will join in (Luke Winn has produced his own blog in the past), but if Glockner’s “68 Reasons We Love College Hoops in March” is any indication we are hopeful that they can create insightful/humorous pieces.

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Morning Five: 03.04.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 4th, 2013

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  1. With top ten teams falling everyday it seems like we are the verge of finally seeing Gonzaga rise to #1 in the rankings. As we pointed out nearly a week ago Gonzaga’s likely rise to #1 will be met by skepticism in many corners as evidenced by the fact that they might not get a #1 seed even if they enter the NCAA Tournament as the #1 team in the polls. However, that shouldn’t diminish how impressive the program’s rise from the archetypal mid-major power to one that has become such a national force that even The New York Times stopped by Spokane for the annual story about the program with a piece by Greg Bishop appropriately titled “Nothing ‘Mid’ About Gonzaga”. We tend to find the “mid-major” label argument tiresome, but the growth and continued excellence of the program has been nothing short of remarkable regardless of whatever moniker you want to afix to them.
  2. Gonzaga might be reaching their post-Casey Cavalry peak later today, but their West Coast Conference rival Saint Mary’s certainly is not after the NCAA handed down some substantial sanctions on Friday (full report PDF here). We have a longer breakdown of the story from Friday afternoon, but the primary charges against the school and its coach, Randy Bennett, are that they failed to monitor an assistant coach in his recruitment of three international prospects as well as Bennett conducting impermissible training and coaching sessions. The assistant coach who was not named in the report, but is believed to be Keith Moss, was hit with a two-year show-cause.  The school was hit with four years of probation, a reduction of scholarships from 13 to 11 in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons, elimination of foreign trips until the 2017-18 season, no skill instruction during the next two seasons, and they cannot participate in multi-team events for the next two seasons. Bennett will serve a five-game suspension next year (doesn’t make any sense to us why this should wait until next season) and is prohibited from recruiting off-campus next season. We are sure that St. Mary’s fans are having difficulty finding anything positive from the situation, but this should guarantee them that Bennett will not be leaving them for a higher profile job in the very near future. Of course that is operating under the assumption that administrators care about NCAA violations, which may not be the case.
  3. If Moss is looking for hope after his show-cause he can look to Steve Forbes, who shook off the NCAA’s one-year show-cause (part of the Bruce Pearl investigation) in an unusual way–going to the NJCAA. Forbes’ route is an unusual one in that he did not sit out at all and went straight into another college coaching job. Given his recent coaching success and his success at recruiting at the Division I level we would not be surprised to see his name mentioned in another month when more than a few positions. Still if Forbes is able to make it back to the Division I level (especially as a head coach) he would be joining a very short list of coaches to have done so (Todd Bozeman is the only head coach to have done so, but we are not certain on assistants making the leap).
  4. The decision by St. John’s to suspend D’Angelo Harrison for the rest of the season is one of the more interesting ones we have seen as the Red Storm were still on the bubble when they made the announcement on Friday and we still have not heard a good explanation for why Harrison was suspended for the rest of the season. Having said that we have to give Steve Lavin some credit for making the tough call as it would have been much easier just to put up with whatever Harrison was doing (assuming he isn’t in legal trouble) and finish out the season with a potential NCAA Tournament trip on the line. On top of that there is always the risk that this move will help push Harrison out the door at St. John’s whether that is to another school or (a dumb) decision to enter the NBA Draft.
  5. The University of San Diego bribery case appears to be nearing an end (at least for those of us concerned with the basketball aspect) as the school’s all-time leading scorer, Brandon Johnson, was sentenced to six months in prison for his role in the scandal. Johnson was charged with fixing four games, but continues to deny everything except that he unsuccessfully tried to recruit another player to throw games despite the fact that the FBI has a recorded conversation where Johnson stated he wished he had thrown every game and even offered to throw a NBA Developmental League game. Johnson will begin serving the sentence on May 31 after being granted a delay in sentencing so he could finish out the rest of his season as a youth league coach in Houston. Johnson says he hopes to play professional basketball again at some point, but given the evidence against him we cannot imagine any league taking him with his background.

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Morning Five: 03.01.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on March 1st, 2013

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  1. It seems like we will never be rid of the seemingly constant conference realignment storylines and the latest one is a pretty big one–the group formerly known as the “Catholic 7” is looking to keep the Big East name and expected to add Xavier and Butler this coming season. The move would be a swift change from what had previously been reported and would likely mean that Notre Dame might also join the ACC this summer instead of for the 2014-15 season as previously expected. As for the Catholic 7/9 or Big East or whatever moniker they are going by these days is expected to add Creighton the following year and possibly also Dayton and St. Louis. While these changes would trigger some early exit fees the reported cost is far from the staggering sums that some conferences had sought from departing members.
  2. One of the more contentious points of debate between the advanced metric community and the old guard is that of luck. Led by Ken Pomeroy the advanced metric community has long advocated that a team’s ability to win close games is primarily dictated by luck while the old guard believes that this is a learned skill. As you might expect Pomeroy decided to take a look at the data and found that a team’s ability to win a close game is essentially a coin flip no matter what their prior record in close games is. With the old guard being what it is we are not sure that they will believe the numbers, but hopefully they will at least look at them.
  3. In an effort to make sure that they have actual classes for the courses that students are enrolled in North Carolina has begun conducting “surprise inspections” to verify that the classes actually exist. While this may seem absurd at first glance (ok, it is just absurd) this is the school’s attempt to try to not be embarrassed when an outside review team comes this spring to assess whether the school has made any improvements since its academic scandal. The fact that the school has had to resort to literally walking by classes and looking through the window to make sure that there are students being taught by an instructor is a good indication of how pathetic the school has been made to look by the academic scandal. As the article notes many of the instructors have expressed their distaste for the practice and how they are being affected by what they call an athletic department issue even if the school continues to insist it was not confined to just the athletic department.
  4. The NCAA executive committee may have given Mark Emmert a vote of confidence last week, but that doesn’t mean that its members do not think that the organization does not need some changes. Michigan State president (and NCAA executive committee chairwoman) Lou Anna K. Simon came out yesterday and said “there is an embedded culture and set of processes and approaches that need to be changed.” We remain skeptical as to whether the NCAA will make any meaningful changes without the threat of a lawsuit in front of them, but it is refreshing to see someone within the organization exhibiting at least a modicum of introspection.
  5. Proving that it doesn’t always take two years for them to conduct an inquiry the NCAA is set to release the outcome of its investigation into Saint Mary’s recruitment of foreign players later today. As investigations have gone this has been one of the lower profile ones we have seen as we have heard very little about it since it was first announced. Still there is a possibility that the NCAA could hand down some potentially damaging sanctions, which might even have an effect on this season for the Gaels. The timing of the announcement is interesting for the school as they have quietly put together a strong case for an at-large bid. Given what we have heard about the case, which is admittedly not much compared to the higher profile cases that have dominated the news, we would be surprised if this affected this year’s postseason, but with the NCAA you never know.

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Morning Five: 02.28.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 28th, 2013

morning5

  1. It seems that Maryland athletics has had more than its share of controversy regarding how to recognize some of its legends. We discussed the case of Lefty Driesell last week and this week the media focus is on former Terrapin great Len Bias. In this case, the controversy is not around the University of Maryland’s decision on whether or not to recognize him, but instead his old high school where a state senator (also a graduate of the school) wanted to spend $50,000 to erect a status honoring Bias. Despite Bias’ on-court accomplishments the idea has been withdrawn to a combination of controversy honoring a person who died of a cocaine overdose and spending $50,000 of public funds to do so.
  2. We will likely never be able to read the full notice of allegations the NCAA sent to Miami, but some details are leaking out including the fact that the NCAA is accusing Nevin Shapiro of “only” providing $170,000 in impermissible benefits between 2002 and 2010. While nearly $20,000 per year is certainly a decent amount of money it falls well short of the “millions of dollars” that Shapiro claimed to have given Miami players over the years (of course, this is coming from someone who perpetrated a $930 million Ponzi scheme). Interestingly more than half of that was spent on trying to get two football players to sign with a sports agency that Shapiro was affiliated with so most of the reported violations involved relatively small sums of money on an individual basis.
  3. With Indiana falling at Minnesota on Monday there is a new #1 in Luke Winn’s Power Rankings. As usual Luke has a smörgåsbord of interesting facts and trends, but the two that stuck out the most to us are (1) how much more efficient Victor Oladipo is this year from the perimeter and (2) why Michigan State might be better off getting the ball more to their star freshman guard. However, the most interesting part of the column might actually be the link to TeamRankings’ simulated Bracketology that simulates/predicts the NCAA Tournament seedings based on what it predicts will happen the rest of the season. We are not sure how well this simulator has done in the past, but it might be something worth checking up on over the next weeks if for no other reason to kill some time during the middle of the day.
  4. Over the past few years posters of celebrities and the occasional random person have become fairly common at college basketball games, but we were not aware of the origins of the trend before George Dohrmann’s article on the birth of the “big heads”. We never quite understood the use of celebrities to distract shooters unless they are unusual such as the original big head of Michael Jackson. The use of coaches, players, and even the occasional poster of yourself all seem like they would be much more effective. Of course, this is probably some college kid that is trying to figure out which faces have the biggest effect on free throw shooting.
  5. We have seen a lot of interesting uniform designs in college sports recently most notably in college football, but it looks like adidas, the company that brought you the atrocious alternate uniforms from Louisville, Cincinnati, and others is planning on bring short-sleeve jerseys to the NCAA Tournament. We still don’t know which schools will wear whatever monstrosity adidas can dream up, but to their credit both Michigan and North Carolina State have come out and said they will not wear the short-sleeve jerseys.

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