Morning Five: 02.27.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 27th, 2013

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  1. The announcement by Mike Krzyzewski that he would no longer coach Team USA was not really a surprise to those who have been paying attention as he has been saying for quite a while that he would be giving up the position after the London Olympics. Given Krzyzewski’s age (66) his decision to stop coaching internationally is really not much of a surprise and it should allow him to focus on coaching Duke for the next few years although the way things are going it is hard to imagine him leaving the sideline at Cameron any time soon. It will be interesting to see how Krzyzewski’s international coaching credentials (two Olympic gold medals, one World Championship gold medal, and one World Championship bronze medal while reinvigorating the Team USA experience) impact how he is rated historically when he retires.
  2. The recruitment of Andrew Wiggins, the #1 recruit in the class of 2013, appears to be winding down as he is planning on taking visits to Kansas, North Carolina, and Kentucky. We are sure that those three schools, which along with Florida State are the four finalists for Wiggins’ services, will bring out all they can to woo Wiggins (presumably within NCAA limits). The most interesting experience for Wiggins may be at Kentucky where the school will honor the 1996 championship team with rings. We doubt this was planned to coincide with Wiggins visit, but given Calipari’s recruiting wizardry we wouldn’t put it past him.
  3. Jim Boeheim‘s post-game rants are becoming more regular these days, which might reflect his team’s struggles. His latest rant came at the expense of Jeff Goodman, who did not seem to mind Boeheim’s vitriol. As Goodman points out Boeheim’s rants are nothing new and in fact are part of who he is. For our part, we don’t mind when a coach goes off like this as we find it more amusing than anything else and even when we witness it firsthand (never on the direct receiving end yet) in the media room it doesn’t bother us. We will give Boeheim some credit here as he at least went after experienced reporters rather than lighting up some college kid who might have struggled with it more.
  4. It is not often that you see a conference come out and admit that its officials messed up, but it is not often that you see officials make as many glaring mistakes in crucial situations as the officials in Monday night’s game between Kansas and Iowa State did. In a terse statement the Big 12 admitted that mistakes were made and that the officials who made those mistakes would see a change in their schedules. While a few individuals have called for more specifics on what will be done with those officials we are just happy to see an organization associated with college sports admit that they made a mistake with the promise of trying to rectify it in the future. Now if they could just get the governing body to follow suit.
  5. We have heard of a lot of questionable decisions by the NCAA, but it appears that they are not the only national college sports organization making strange decisions. The latest example comes from the NJCAA, which declared Indian Hills Community College (26-4 and #3 in the NJCAA) ineligible for the postseason after its president posted bail for one of the team’s players. The tale of how the school and the player got there is fairly complex, but essentially the school played a game about 80 miles away from its campus that featured a large brawl that resulted nine players and one coach getting suspended. One player–Ronald Ross–was arrested for punching the opposing coach’s son, who was neither a coach nor player. Ross was charged with assault and taken to a local jail before being bailed out by the school’s president, who did not want to leave a player/student in jail 80 miles from campus. Unfortunately, when the school reported this to the NJCAA they were hit with probation and banned from this year’s postseason.

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Morning Five: 02.26.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 26th, 2013

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  1. It has been a week since the NCAA released the external report it received regarding its lack of institutional oversight the misconduct of a few individuals, but Dennis Dodd is one the first national media member we have seen who took the time to pick it apart to point out the sheer ridiculousness of some of the stuff that the NCAA did. While this information is embarrassing for the NCAA and points to the fact that some more people than just Julie Roe Lach should have gotten fired, the NCAA always makes us cynical and we have a hard time believing that the NCAA revealed all of the bad stuff it did and exactly how high up the chair this type of behavior went. Unfortunately in the end the administrators at the NCAA will probably walk away unscathed.
  2. While many writers watched the Oscars on Sunday night, Dan Spears was busy putting together his mock bracket, but unlike nearly every bracket you will see his is tailored around storylines. We are not sure that this would necessarily boost ratings since it seems like a large portion of the country shuts down for the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Still we suspect that every writer would love for this to happen for the overload of storylines to choose from.
  3. We have mentioned the peculiar case of Ryan Evans‘ free throw shooting as the Wisconsin senior has gone from a fairly reliable (70%+) free throw shooter to an awful one (40%). It appears that Evans and the Wisconsin staff are experimenting with all kinds of potential solutions as he may even start taking jump shots for his free throw attempts. If Evans were do so he would not be first player to take such an approach as the article points out that NBA legend Hal Greer took a similar approach and in more recent times Nick Van Exel who opted to shoot his free throws from 17 feet instead of the customary 15 feet. Of course both Greer and Van Exel were outstanding free and we doubt that even a normal method of shooting would have made either of them 40% shooters.
  4. After becoming a media darling with their early domination of the SEC Florida has fallen under the radar following losses at Arkansas and Missouri. However, several analysts still consider the Gators to be on the short list of top contenders to cut down the nets in Atlanta. The likelihood of that happening may increase on Saturday when they are expected to get Will Yeguete (knee) and Michael Frazier II (concussion) back. The news of their return will be overshadowed by the imminent return of Ryan Kelly (as all non-Duke news does), but in terms of the national title picture the impact could be similar. Yeguete gives Patric Young some much needed support on the inside and Frazier is actually the Gators’ best three-point shooter connecting 48.9 percent of the time. The Gators finish the regular season with a relatively easy stretch (and yes, we are counting the SEC Tournament) so they should have plenty of time to get these two back into the regular rotation without too much difficulty.
  5. With Kansas’ win at Iowa State last night Bill Self won his 500th game as a head coach, which is an impressive total, but still leaves him outside of the top 20 winningest coaches in Division I history. That doesn’t stop Jeff Goodman from joining Andy Glockner in pointing out that Self may have the best chance of any current coach of breaking Mike Krzyzewski’s eventual wins record. It is worth pointing out that Self has mocked Glockner’s idea when it was mentioned to him some time later. As Goodman points out with (basic?) statistics, Self has won 33 games per year over the past six seasons and if he does that for “just” 15 more seasons he would be approaching 1,000 victories. While we appreciate Goodman breaking out the calculator it is worth pointing out that the run Self has been on the past six years is one of the more impressive runs in NCAA history (Krzyzewski has never had a six-year run that was as successful if we are just going by overall wins as his best six-year stretch averaged 31.667 wins per year). Honestly the only way we see Self or any other current coach approaching Krzyzewski’s record is if the NCAA adds more games to the season.

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Morning Five: 02.25.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 25th, 2013

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  1. As Seth Davis noted on CBS on Saturday we finally have a target date for Ryan Kelly‘s return to action. The 6’11” senior forward has set March 5, Senior Night against Virginia Tech, as the target for his return to the court. It seems strange that a player who is at best the second best player on a Duke team without a surefire NBA star and a player who is at best a borderline second round pick could change the entire national championship picture, but that is the reality of college basketball this year. While most analysts expected the Blue Devils to miss Kelly’s outside shooting and length it was in fact his interior presence on the defensive end that Duke missed the most. If Kelly can make a return and be back near 100% by the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament the Blue Devils could be serious title contenders.
  2. If you thought that the Miami investigation fiasco would finally lead to changes at the top of the NCAA, you would be wrong as the “Executive Committee unanimously affirmed its confidence in Mark’s leadership as president”. At this point we don’t know what exactly would make the NCAA’s leadership acknowledge that there was a problem with the organization and more specifically its upper levels. Obviously any organization is fallible, but most organizations eventually own up to their mistakes. The NCAA’s continued lack of self-awareness never ceases to amaze us and
  3. After suspending its leading scorer DeMario Mayfield indefinitely at the end of last month for a violation of an athletic department policy, Charlotte finally dismissed Mayfield from the team on Friday. Mayfield, who had transferred from Georgia, has had his share of disciplinary issues over the years as he was suspended for one game last season for a misdemeanor charge of marijuana possession (later dropped) and two games at the beginning of this season for another violation of team rules. While the 49ers managed to win at Butler in Mayfield’s absence they are only 2-3 since he was suspended indefinitely and his dismissal makes them a less dangerous team in the Atlantic 10 Tournament.
  4. Over the year we have heard about several coaches using advanced statistics when planning for games, but we have seen relatively few profiles on Ken Pomeroy, who is basically the leader of the revolution in college basketball. The profile of Pomeroy and his influence on college coaches by David Teel is one of the better ones that we have seen. We were aware of Pomeroy’s background as a meteorologist, but had no idea about his time at Virginia Tech watching some awful basketball that eventually led to his creation of his popular site. With the rapid growth of competing websites we will be interested to see how long Pomeroy can keep his place as the leader in the field or whether some upstart will eventually take over.
  5. One of the interesting aspects of running any university with a top-tier athletic program is managing the dichotomy of having a mission to be a world-class educational institution and being full of people who are probably a little too involved with their team as most fans are. In his essay in The New York Times Bill Morris examined the challenges in doing so at Duke and found that the balancing act can be challenging for administrators. While we would agree with Morris we would also push it beyond the Dukes of the world and expand this question to any university administrator that wants to provide the best educational opportunity for his or her students, but must balance that with the wishes of the students and alumni who often are more interested in the on-field/-court product.

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Morning Five: 02.22.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 22nd, 2013

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  1. We have already talked about the mock brackets in this space quite a bit, but Seth Davis offered one of the better summaries of the more detailed aspects of how the brackets come together (based on geography more than the imaginary S-curve, etc) in his weekly Hoop Thoughts column. Even if you have had more than enough information about a fake bracket, the column also has quite a bit of other interesting information including an update on the potential return of Ryan Kelly for the ACC Tournament and why conference realignment might help push Shaka Smart towards a new job.
  2. We seem to see multiple columns coming out everyday for the past week hyping Victor Oladipo as a potential player of the year candidate and now we actually have some proof of his legitimacy as a candidate with the voters as he has moved up to #2 in Michael Rothstein’s straw poll. We aren’t quite sure what the sampling error is with this poll, but it seems like Trey Burke has a fairly comfortable lead. Still with Indiana in excellent position for the #1 overall seed (if there was a #1 overall seed) and a potential showdown with Burke on the last day of the regular season looming Oladipo is still within striking distance. We don’t particularly care about regular season awards, but given how under-the-radar Oladipo was at the beginning of the season it would be a remarkable turn of events.
  3. While we will be sad to see some traditional rivalries go we are more ambivalent to change in rivalries that conference realignment will bring, but there are a few rivalries that we will particularly miss. One of those is Syracuse–Georgetown (or Georgetown-Syracuse depending on your perspective). With the last game at the Carrier Dome coming this Saturday, Syracuse.com took a look back at the top ten moments of the rivalry. We are guessing based on our demographics that the vast majority of you saw less than half of these moments and because the rivalry isn’t promoted to the degree of another rivalry two teams wearing different shades of blue most people are not as familiar with these moments.
  4. With seven African-Americans occupying the fourteen heading coaching positions in the SEC the conference has  tied the ACC during the 2008-09 season for having the most African-American coaches in one conference at any one time. When you include Frank Martin, a Cuban-American, the conference actually has more “minority” coaches (eight) than Caucasian coaches (six). While we still have a long way to go as a country with race relations and hiring even with something as seemingly trivial as men’s college basketball coaches it is worthwhile praising a conference that has long born the stigma of having a strained racial history.
  5. Our last item is a bittersweet congratulations to Dick Kelley, the assistant athletic director of media relations at Boston College, who along with Beckie Edwards received the US Basketball Writer’s Association Most Courageous Award. Edwards has her own harrowing story (coming out about the sexual abuse she suffered as a young child at the hands of her father), but for the purposes of this column and the fact that we know Kelley and not Edwards we will focus on his story. Kelley, who was the first person to credential our site as a media entity in 2008, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2011, which has confined him to a wheelchair. Although we have not seen him recently due to our relocation we want to send him our best wishes.

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Morning Five: 02.21.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 21st, 2013

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  1. After nearly two years of investigations and countless missteps the NCAA finally sent Miami and people who left the school their notice of allegations. All of the reports that we have at this point are from sources as nobody outside of the school’s administration has access to the official notice, but the primary allegations are for “lack of institutional control”, which is amusing given the lack of institutional control that the NCAA has shown in controlling their own investigators. While most of these allegations are around the football team, at least a few of them involve the basketball staff under former coach Frank Haith, who has moved on to Missouri. According to reports Haith is facing a failure to monitor charge rather than the more serious unethical conduct charge that could have carried a show-cause penalty.
  2. When NCAA Selection Committee Chairman Mike Bobinski claim that the RPI was the best computer predictor of NCAA Tournament success we were stunned, but unlike many of us who just laughed at the suggestion John Ezekowitz decided to take a look at the data and found that Bobinski was wrong. As you would expect Ken Pomeroy’s rankings outperform the RPI (of course every college basketball fan knows that Pomeroy is the most amazing thing ever), but what is more interesting is how much Ezekowitz’s Survival Advantage model (explained here) outperforms both the RPI and Pomeroy in predicting the NCAA Tournament. This is something that you should remember in a month when you are filling out your bracket.
  3. As usual Luke Winn’s weekly power rankings have their usual wealth of great information packed into the most concise format this side of Twitter. While Luke always makes great use of graphics and charts his weekly column typically focuses on one or two major themes. This week’s themes (outside of enraging every single college basketball fan in the state of Michigan) are Winn’s analysis of three players (Trey Burke, Tyler Zeller, and Kelly Olynyk) having exceptionally efficient high-usage seasons and two players (Kenny Kadji and Erik Murphy) who have become much more perimeter-oriented later in their college careers.
  4. The success of a few individuals (most notably Mike Leach in football before his closet fiasco) has led some to speculate that there could be a change in the way that sports are played. One of the latest examples to make the media rounds is the style of play from West Liberty, a Division II school, that has been highly successful in playing an up-tempo style of basketball. While we have had our issues with gimmicks in basketball (see our takedown of Malcolm Gladwell from 2009), but this attack and others like it are obviously more nuanced than what Gladwell espoused. We doubt that any power conference schools (read: athletic directors) would be willing to try it, but we would love to see a mid- or low-major try it out.
  5. Since the Fab Five, which technically didn’t exist (we’re still going with that, right), Michigan has experienced relatively little success in the NCAA Tournament. However, this season the Wolverines have realistic Final Four aspirations and with the NCAA’s dissociation of Chris Webber and the school ending in May, the school has been reaching out to the former members and with Juwan Howard now on board it seems like only a matter of time before the school has some big event to celebrate the group. Frankly we cannot see the downside of it other than irritating the NCAA, which will still leave a black mark next to the team’s accomplishments. However the administration has expressed some reservation in celebrating the group so it will be interesting to see what they decide.

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Morning Five: 02.18.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 18th, 2013

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  1. On Friday the Naismith Hall of Fame announced the 12 Finalists for the class of 2013. Almost by definition there are plenty of big names on the list, but three stand out for us as a college basketball site: Guy Lewis, Rick Pitino, and Jerry Tarkanian. Pitino’s induction should almost be a formality with his national championship and being the only coach to lead three different schools (Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville) to the Final Four. We are not sure why Lewis has not gotten in yet with his 592 wins (all at Houston), five Final Four appearances (separated by a generation) as the only thing we can see missing from his resume is a national championship, but it seems like five Final Four appearances would make up for it. As for Tarkanian, we pointed out his omission from the Hall of Fame thus far may be the most notable omission that we can think of. Based on his credentials–729 wins and a national championship–he is more than qualified, but his off-the-court (sometimes in court) issues might make a few voters squeamish. We hope that the voters can look past that and finally put the original Shark (sorry, Mark Titus) in the Hall of Fame.
  2. Many of our younger readers may not be familiar with George Raveling, but those of us who have followed the sport for years are no doubt familiar with his contributions. And on Friday he was recognized for that work as he was awarded the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award. Named after John W. Bunn, the first chairman of the Basketball Hall of Fame Committee, the award as its name suggests is given to recognize an individuals work in the game of basketball anywhere from the high school to the professional or international level. For those of you who are not familiar with Raveling’s work his website has an excellent biography that is worth checking out including his involvement with Martin Luther King Jr. that led to Raveling owning the original “I Have A Dream” speech.
  3. It seems like we talk about conference realignment and the Catholic 7 too frequently in this section, but John Feinstein’s article detailing the Catholic 7’s expansion plan is one of the better inside looks we have read. Outside of the usual posturing about the relative strength of various conferences Feinstein points out why if the conference decides to stay completely “Catholic” it would mean going from adding Butler to adding Detroit and why Creighton is not even in the discussion at this point. There are also a few interesting notes on the leadership of the budding conference, which may be of interest to those of you into the behind the scenes action that is going on before the conference officially forms.
  4. If you were on Twitter this week you saw a lot of tweets originating from Indianapolis where a group of writers gathered for the annual mock bracket selection. As you can see the from the mock bracket the mock committee had no issues handing the number #1 seeds to ACC and Big Ten. Of course, this may have changed with this weekend’s results from the ACC. One of the most amazing things about the process is the anger it creates in some fan bases that feel that they have been wronged. With one of our co-editors having taken part in this (last year) we can assure you that it is much more complex than in looks. Plenty of people can try to poke holes in the mock bracket for individual teams, but it any move creates a ripple effect and in general it is there for a reason.
  5. This weekend (actually the entire week) was filled with countless articles on Michael Jordan both on the man, his accomplishments, and his impact on the game. Outside of the outstanding inside look at Jordan by Wright Thompson, the one piece that really caught our eye was from Luke Winn, who took a look at Jordan the college player through advanced statistics. One of the things we feel has not been talked about enough is how good of a college player Jordan was. He was obviously an excellent player having won a Player of the Year award, but looking back at the era he was hardly the force that he became in the NBA even early in his career. While Winn’s piece does not exactly answer that question it does provide a better glimpse at the type of player he was in college even if the comparison players may make some critics roll their eyes.

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Morning Five: 02.15.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 15th, 2013

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  1. It appears that our #DausterForUSC campaign may have hit a stumbling block as Tommy Amaker has emerged as the top candidate for the coaching vacancy at USC. On the surface the USC job may seem more glamorous than coaching at Harvard with its significantly higher ceiling, but there is something to be said about being able to coach with reasonable expectations, which are not found across the country. In the end, what may end up keeping Amaker in Allston is his wife, who is a clinical psychologist at a Harvard-affiliated hospital. We are guessing that she could find a similar position in Southern California, but we are not sure how easy it is to work a basketball-psychology department package deal with various schools.
  2. It seems like more and more of the news surrounding college basketball and college sports in general are based around what happens in a court instead of on a court. The latest example–New Jersey legalizing sports betting at casinos and horse tracks–is thankfully one that will not make a significant impact on the on-court product, but may have a bigger impact on the landscape of American sports than many of the conference realignment court cases that we have talked about over the past few years. At the heart of the matter is the constitutionality of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) of 1992, which only allows four states (Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware) to offer legal sports gambling. We have discussed our thoughts on this case before (we think New Jersey should and will win), but with arguments in the case starting yesterday we could get our answer relatively soon. Or not since some legal analysts point out that given the high stakes the loser will probably appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which might not hear the case until 2015. Of course, this is not so much of a New Jersey issue as a national issue because you know as soon as one more state is allowed to have sports gambling the other 45 states will quickly follow suit.
  3. Over the years the number of high school all-star games has grown, but for many college basketball fans the only one that holds any real weight is the McDonald’s All-American Game. Yesterday, the rosters for this year’s game were announced and as you would expect Big Blue Nation is well-represented. Outside of the heavy Kentucky flavor of the event we are also looking forward to the possibility of Andrew Wiggins matching up against Jabari Parker. We don’t follow the recruiting scene that closely any more, but it seems like they hit all of the major recruits this year so we cannot point to anybody who was snubbed. Julius Randle is the only possibility we can think of, but he has had injury issues.
  4. With the regular season winding down there is plenty of talk about awards and honors, but they are mostly focused on the players. We would usually support a Coach of the Year discussion as Seth Davis has in this week’s Hoop Thoughts, but in our opinion Jim Larranaga is the only choice right now. We guess a late season tailspin by the Hurricanes could make the race close, but with the way that Larranaga has energized the Coral Gables campus and turned a borderline top-25 team in the preseason into a legitimate national title contender in the middle of March. As Seth notes there are many worth candidates, but this year they are all battling for #2.
  5. The Jim Boeheim-Andy Katz saga appears to have some shelf life as new details surrounding their feud have come out and appear to center around a 2011 interview where Boeheim claims Katz attempted to badger him with Bernie Fine questions even after Katz told him that he would not ask questions about Fine. For his part Katz denies this. Despite both parties coming out apparently citing this as the inflection point in their relationship others have speculated that the dislike is related to what were supposed to be off-the-record comment from Boeheim regarding James Southerland’s eligibility. One of the interesting, but not surprising aspects of this feud has been how many reporters came out saying that Boeheim owed Katz an apology. We are not sure we would go that far, but this should make for the most awkward halftime interviews since Billy Gillispie and Jeannine Edwards were crossing paths.

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Morning Five: 02.14.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 14th, 2013

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  1. Our fears from yesterday’s Morning Five were realized as an MRI revealed that Nerlens Noel had torn the ACL in his left knee and would miss the remainder of the season. According to the school’s press release they expect he will undergo surgery on his left knee within the next two to three weeks with an expected recovery of six to eight months, but as we all know much of that depends on how the surgery and rehabilitation go. Outside of the obvious impact on Kentucky (hello, bubble), this is a big blow to the young center who was a potential #1 overall pick in this year’s NBA Draft. The injury has also led several individuals to question the “one-and-done” rule suggesting that if it had not been in place Noel would at least have had a multimillion dollar contract in place. It has also led a few individuals to speculate that Noel might come back for another year since this hurts his Draft stock although many sources indicate that Noel will still be a top-5 pick. We will table both discussions for another day (the latter is ridiculous) and just wish Noel the best in his recovery.
  2. This week’s edition of Luke Winn’s power rankings are less GIF heavy than some previous versions, but as usual it packs a ton of information including an interesting analysis of team free throws rates at home and on the road. And it isn’t Duke that leads in disparity (ok, I guess you can argue that Duke gets calls both at home on the road). Outside of that perhaps the most interesting thing in this week’s column is that Winn questions the findings of the Ken Pomeroy analysis of late game situations that we linked to in yesterday’s Morning Five. As usual we tend to agree with Winn here although this “nerd on nerd” makes us wonder which side those on different sides of the analytic aisle will take.
  3. We normally find court case involving college sports extremely boring, but the case involving Dominic Hardie, who along with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is suing the NCAA challenging a rule that bars felons from coaching NCAA-sanctioned events, is somewhat intriguing partly because we never knew such a rule existed. Hardie and his team are claiming that the rule violates the Civil Rights Act and unfairly discriminates against minorities. [Ed. Note: We will leave the sociopolitical implications to others who want to open that can of worms.] Hardie was trying to coach in a NCAA-certified basketball tournament, but was not allowed to after a 2011 rule change barred all individuals previously convicted of felonies, which is a change from previous policy that only barred individuals convicted of violent felonies within the past seven years. The interesting part of this is just how far this would go since depending on the jurisdiction charges such as assault, fraud, and perjury could be felonies. Given the amount of trouble some coaches have been finding themselves in lately there could be some that would be barred although we aren’t sure if this rule pertains just to the youth events or also actual NCAA games.
  4. It must be something in the Connecticut media room that brings out the vitriol in some coaches as last night Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim called ESPN’s Andy Katz an “idiot” and “disloyal” (more details including a brief transcript of the interaction and some background).  Outside of his team’s ugly loss we are not sure what set off Boeheim (there has been some speculation that it was related to some columns or information that Katz had released, but it should make for some interesting interactions between the two of them going forward. To be fair to Katz, he is not the first media member that Boeheim has feuded with; he is just the most well-known national media member that has felt Boeheim’s wrath.
  5. It wasn’t that long ago that we called out Andy Glockner for how stingy he was with handing out “Locks” for the NCAA Tournament, but looking at this week’s Bracket Watch we have to agree with him. When you look through the list the most jarring examples are in the Atlantic 10 and Missouri Valley Conference where he doesn’t have a single lock. A week ago we would have said he was crazy, but after some recent results we have to agree with him here. Having said that we think that there are more than a few of his “Should Be In” teams that are probably more like “Locks” at this point.

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Morning Five: 02.12.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 12th, 2013

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  1. One of the many contentious points around Maryland’s programs in recent years has been its perceived slight of Lefty Driesell. Many of Driesell’s supporters have pointed out how much more Gary Williams has been recognized by the school despite their fairly similar credentials (obviously, Williams’ national championship puts him on a slightly different level to some). In truth, a large part of this may be due to the circumstances surrounding Driesell’s departure (following the death of Len Bias). Maryland appears to be doing something to rectify this as they will honor Driesell at a game against Clemson on February 23 and then on April 16 will unveil a bronze relief that will hang at the Comcast Center. Given all of the vitriol that has flown through the Maryland athletic department in recent years we hope this will go a long way to repair some of those relationships.
  2. Grantland’s feature on Larry Brown is almost a week old, but we just stumbled upon it yesterday and it’s well worth a read to get a better sense of one of the most complex great coaches the game has ever seen. When Brown landed at Southern Methodist our first question was probably the same as many other’s had for him: Why? We aren’t sure if we fully comprehend why it was Southern Methodist out of all of his potential destinations, but Brown may provide some insight with the last quote in the article: “I just want to be relevant.”
  3. We normally link to Luke Winn’s weekly power rankings, but yesterday Winn showed a little versatility with his analysis of VCU‘s vaunted Havoc defense. By now most of you have probably heard of it, but few have actually seen it in effect. With the way that the Rams are playing there is a decent chance at least one team from a power conference will experience it for the first time and if they aren’t prepared for it you will be hearing a lot more about Havoc in March.
  4. After finally breaking into the top 25 of a few unenlightened polls, Memphis was dealt a setback when it was announced that Antonio Barton would be out for 4-6 weeks after breaking his right foot. Fortunately for Barton and the Tigers it is a hairline fracture, which will not require surgery. Barton, who is averaging 6.2 points in 19 minutes per game with all of his numbers going down with each season he has been at Memphis, broke the foot in Saturday’s win at Southern Mississippi. With the Tigers finally starting to play well late in the season under Josh Pastner losing Barton would be a fairly significant blow, but given his timeline for returning there is a realistic possibility that he could play in the Conference USA Tournament and definitely the NCAA Tournament (assuming the Tigers don’t fall apart first).
  5. Connecticut doesn’t have any NCAA Tournament aspirations this season thanks to their poor APR scores, but they were quietly putting together a very respectable season in year one of the post-Calhoun era and had been managing to stay out of the headlines for negative media attention. That is until Enosch Wolf was arrested on campus ar0und 6 AM yesterday in what has been described as a domestic dispute. As a result he has been suspended indefinitely and will not return to the team “until the legal and university process is finalized” according to Kevin Ollie. Wolf, who is averaging 3.4 points and 3.4 rebounds per game in greatly increased playing time, is one of the few big men the Huskies have and their only legitimate center. Given the circumstances involved (“grabbed the victim’s hair, pushed her head and knocked off her glasses”) we don’t expect to see him back on the court any time soon.

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Morning Five: 02.11.13 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 11th, 2013

morning5

  1. The big news of the weekend was the reinstatement of James Southerland. The Syracuse senior had been declared ineligible for what was presumed to be an issue with a term paper from the fall semester. The Orange had managed to keep their head above water without their leading scorer for nearly a month, but Southerland’s probably moves them from a likely Sweet 16 team to a Final Four contender. In his return yesterday against St. John’s, Southerland scored 13 points including three three-pointers, which should come as a welcome relief to Syracuse fans who have missed outside marksmanship (he was still the team’s most prolific three-point shooter even after missing the previous six games).
  2. On Friday we heard about a feature that The New York Times was doing on Jason Williams (we’re a college basketball site so he is still Jason to us just like Kareem is Lew Alcindor around these parts) and expected it to be an interesting read, but never expected it to be quite as in-depth and revealing as what was published. For those of you who forgot or might have been too young to remember (writing that that makes us feel so old), Williams was one of the best college basketball players of the past decade and that is even counting the one-and-dones. When he was at his best he was as dominant a force at guard as you will see (just ask USC, Maryland, or Kentucky fans about that). After Williams essentially ended his career with a motorcycle accident he disappeared from the public eye before reemerging as a college basketball analyst for ESPN. The article does a great job detailing what happened during that period including a suicide attempt by Williams.
  3. In a drop in valuation that would make MySpace investors blush the latest reports indicate that the Big East is set to agree upon a six-year deal with NBC Sports worth $20-23 million per year, which doesn’t sound too bad until you consider that they had been seeking a $300 million per year deal from ESPN, which the network not surprisingly declined. That offer may have been ridiculous, but it is amusing to note that the conference turned down a $1.17 billion offer for nine years from ESPN, which would have worked out to $13.8 million for football schools and $2.43 million for non-football schools compared to the $3.12 million and $1.5 million for the two groups respectively now. To pour a little salt in the wound, the so-called Catholic 7 are reportedly looking at a deal worth $30-40 million per year from Fox Sports depending on how many teams they add to the conference.
  4. Speaking of the Catholic 7 and the Big East we didn’t think it was possible, but it looks like they may have a somewhat amicable split as both sides are agreeing to separate following the 2013-14 season. We expected that to be the date that they split, but it sounds much cleaner than we expected to be. We guess this means that people will still pretend that the Big East is a relevant conference for another year although the big moves from the conference (Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Louisville, and Notre Dame) are already set in motion so this move is really delaying the inevitable.
  5. After winning their first two games in the SEC it is possible that Mississippi State fans got their hopes up. Unfortunately those two wins may have been the highlight of their season as they lost their next seven SEC games before suspending junior guard Jalen Steele indefinitely for violating undisclosed team rules. [Ed. Note: They lost their eighth straight on Saturday against Florida.] Steele, who missed eight of the team’s games earlier this season with a broken wrist, was among the team’s leading scorers (one of the few positives for the Bulldogs is they have a balanced scoring attack with seven players averaging between 7.8 and 10.5 points per game). Normally we would say the loss of a player of Steele’s caliber would be a big loss, but in the case of Mississippi State they don’t have much further to fall.

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