Question: Why Can’t Gonzaga Make Another Serious Run in the NCAA Tournament?

It seems like a strange question to ask. Every year ESPN hypes up Gonzaga as a Cinderella team, but a strange thing happened between 1999 and 2011–the Bulldogs failed to advance past the Sweet Sixteen. While the school has had its share of stars in the intervening 12 seasons (Adam Morrison being the most notable) much of its NCAA Tournament reputation is built on the work of Casey Cavalry from the 1999 NCAA Tournament. It is a fact that lost is lost on many casual college basketball fans and college basketball analysts, who at best choose to ignore it to help build a compelling narrative. Much like Duke has been made out to be the symbol of all things right in college basketball by certain media outlets there has been a tendency by many in the media to paint Gonzaga as the perennial Cinderella that always makes a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. That may make for a nice story line and the video of Cavalry flying in to tip in the game-winner against Florida makes for a nice clip (as well as creating the name for the best Gonzaga blog out there), but recently they have been surpassed by Butler as the mid-major du jour. The question is what happened to Gonzaga and what can it do to get back to the Elite Eight and beyond?

Few Has Racked Up Regular Season Accolades, But Not In The Postseason Yet

To start off, we should point out that Gonzaga has been far from a total failure during the Mark Few era, which also happens to coincide with the stretch where Gonzaga has been unable to get beyond the Sweet Sixteen, a fact that is probably not lost on Gonzaga fans. During his 12 seasons as head coach at Gonzaga, Few has compiled a 315-83 record (79.1%, which is 6th all-time in Division I and 2nd among active coaches trailing just Roy Williams) while winning the West Coast Conference regular season title 11 consecutive years and making the NCAA Tournament every season he has been a head coach. However, that success has not translated to the NCAA Tournament where after two consecutive trips to the Sweet Sixteen in his first two years as head coach Few has only been able to guide the Bulldogs out of the opening weekend two out of ten seasons including three years where they lost in the opening round.

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1. UNLV will be down to seven scholarship players for its season opener against Division II Grand Canyon after it suspended Anthony Marshall for the game for violating a NCAA rule that only allows a player to play in one summer league each summer. Marshall, who apparently did not know the rule, played one game in a second summer league, which the school reported as a secondary violation. Normally, we would go into our “a rule is a rule” spiel now, but when you consider that senior Chace Stanback has a similar one game suspension for a DUI we would shift our focus to the relative weight of the penalties. Like we said over the weekend, it isn’t the NCAA’s job to enforce criminal laws, but when the school is making the decision about who plays and who sits they should exercise more discretion in levying out punishments.
2. For years, the general consensus among basketball fans was that Michigan State started slow and tended to round into shape at just the right time, but there had been very little formal analysis of it. Like our link yesterday, the people at The Basketball Prospectus have tried to put some statistics behind the commonly held belief and this time they looked at Michigan State and its progression throughout the season using Ken Pomeroy’s famed four factor analysis. The analysis breaks the seasons into parts (non-conference play, conference play, and NCAA Tournament) and compares how the Spartans do on various metrics. Some of the results are what you would expect while others are surprising.
3. It didn’t take Bruce Pearl long to find another job in basketball after leaving Tennessee. Just a few months after taking a job as Vice President of Marketing at H.T. Hackney, a wholesale grocer, Pearl has signed a contract with Sirius XM to host a college basketball show with Jeff Goodman of CBSSports.com. Pearl claims that he will continue to work at H.T. Hackney while doing the show, which is expected to start on November 14 and then run twice weekly for three hours each starting in January. It will be interesting to see how guests interact with Pearl, who is currently under a three-year show-cause penalty from the NCAA. Our guess is that Pearl will be treated like Michael Milken, a man who should be a pariah in the financial community, but is still discussed with a strange reverence by those in the field and called upon for advice.
4. If you are like us you probably already know quite a bit about Harrison Barnes, but it is mostly about his game and not about what makes him tick. For answers to the latter question we suggest you check out a fairly interesting feature from ESPN The Magazine on the North Carolina sophomore. It features some interesting pieces about his mother’s obsession with some former Tar Heel named Jordan as well as an amusing quote from John Calipari about how one-and-dones are “bad for basketball”.
5. Finally, today is the first day that high school basketball players can sign their National Letter of Intent so schools can officially begin to count up the number of sealed commitments for next year’s teams. The issue has been discussed ad nauseum over the past few years and we don’t feel that it is as much of a plantation issue as some others do, but we do feel that the entire signing process is a bad idea for recruits because it is a contractual commitment to the school, which the school and coach can get out of, but the player cannot even if the coach leaves or the school’s situation changes significantly (like a school in Happy Valley, PA). The intelligent thing for a top recruit to do would be to commit, but not sign a Letter of Intent and just enroll at the school without sacrificing the high ground. Unfortunately, current tradition dictates that most players will end up signing a Letter of Intent no matter how dumb it is.

We will be unveiling a new feature this season where we look behind the scores each night to find some statistic from the previous night’s games that was particularly illuminating on how that particular game was played and the way it factored into the outcome.

Tonight’s number is 66.7%. That is the percentage of field goal attempts taken by William & Mary that were three-point attempts in their game last night against Saint John’s. Out of 48 field goal attempts, the Tribe took 32 of them from beyond the arc. While this might not be unusual at the Division III level where many teams take a ridiculous number of three-point attempts (22 schools averaged more than 17 made 3-pointers per game for an entire season since 1995), it is far from the norm in Division I basketball where teams tend to be much more conservative with their offenses. Last season, the Tribe were among the more prolific three-point shooting teams in the country as they finished 40th in the nation in three-pointers made with 250 made in 32 games (7.8 per game), but even then they only averaged 21.5 attempts per game, which was “only” 43.5% of their total field goal attempts. Even the most prolific three-point shooting team in the country, VMI, who averaged a Division I-leading 11.3 made three-pointers per game (next best was 9.4) only took 31.6 three-point attempts per game or 47% of their total field goal attempts.

In the end, it was one of those “live by the three, die by the three” situations as the Red Storm were able to withstand the Tribe’s barrage thanks to some poor marksmanship (and the 21 turnovers certainly didn’t help the Tribe’s cause either). The Tribe finished the game 11 of 32 from three-point range going 7 of 21 in the first half and 4 of 11 in the second half so they were fairly consistent with their poor shooting, but it reflected in other areas of the game where they were not attacking the basket as they attempted a measly four free throws all night compared to 25 for the Red Storm. While three-point shooting can be a boon for teams trying to pull off an upset, we doubt that many teams will be able to get away with such a heavy reliance on three-point shooting and walk out with the victory.

1. Paul Hewitt hasn’t coached his first official game at George Mason, but he already has his first minor crisis to deal with as senior guard Andre Cornelius was suspended 10 games by the school for his role in a credit card fraud case in which he was arrested in September. Cornelius, who started every game last season for the Patriots and averaged 9.5 PPG as a junior, pleaded guilty to credit card fraud, a misdemeanor, and received a six-month suspended sentence, but had a felony larceny charge dropped. Cornelius will be allowed to practice with the team, but not play in games for them until the fall semester is complete (December 20), which would allow him to return for the game against Duquesne the following day. In the meantime, Hewitt will have to find someone to replace Cornelius and his outside shooting and veteran presence.
2. Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy, who recently announced that he would be taking time off to deal with his new diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, has not set a timetable for his return yet according to interim head coach Glynn Cyprien. However, Cyprien noted that Kennedy has been stopping by to watch practices and even attended a team meeting yesterday. With no date set for Kennedy’s return, we expect that Cyprien will be coaching the Aggies in their season opener against Liberty on Wednesday. When Kennedy returns (and we expect that he will based on what we have heard) it should be a big boost for the spirits of this team and could help them go on a quick run.
3.  As part of its ongoing college basketball preview, Grantland asked Mark Titus to preview the Big East. It is a sort of odd selection since Titus “played” at Ohio State, but he knows basketball and it is a solid preview even if we disagree with his selection of the conference champion. He does make a good point about how we may be viewing Connecticut incorrectly based on how they ended last year on a hot run rather than considering the entirety of their season. Overall, it is a solid primer for the non-hardcore college basketball fan, who Titus notes he is aiming for in the post.
4. We have already shared our thoughts on Tyshawn Taylor and Kansas with regard to his potential as a leader. The fine gentlemen over at Basketball Prospectus put together an interesting analysis on Taylor and how he has evolved during his first three years in Lawrence by looking at how he is portrayed in articles by comparing the ratio of positive to negative words used to describe him. We are sure that someone will criticize the methodology and we certainly don’t consider this a rigorous analysis by any means, but it is interesting to see how the perception of Taylor has changed over the years. We would be be more interested in seeing a similar analysis of another player who was controversial or had legal issues, but ended up playing well for his team later in his career just to see if a bad reputation can be changed in the media by playing well and staying out of trouble.
5. One of the more interesting aspects of college sports is the passion of the fans particularly the student sections. No group of fans is more well-known for this than college basketball fans, who thanks to the the seating arrangements of most college arenas can play a surprisingly big role in the game by throwing off the opposition. Over the years fans have offered up some rather amusing taunts and today’s students are no exception. The first example of the season came from Ohio where Ohio University-Zanesville was taunted by fans of opposing Mount Vernon Nazarene University as the fans dressed up as exotic animals and sheriffs in reference to the surreal event in Zanesville, Ohio last month. While some may question the taste of the taunts, you have to admit it is fairly creative.

1. It’s finally here. It has been a little more than 7 months since Connecticut defeated Butler to give Jim Calhoun his third national championship. In the interim, we have been forced to talk about the NBA Draft, a ridiculous amount of conference realignment, an even more ridiculous amount of NCAA violations, and some recent exhibition games (we will get to the latter three in a bit). Tonight, the actual games start with three games on the docket: William & Mary at St. John’s (the first game of the season and also the first RTC Live of the year), Eastern Kentucky at Mississippi State, and Valparaiso at Arizona. We are hoping with the season starting we can get back to focusing on the sport we all love. Just remember your team is still undefeated right now.
2. Connecticut freshman Ryan Boatright continues to be in limbo with the NCAA during its ongoing investigation into his eligibility regarding a plane ticket purchased for him by Reggie Rose, his AAU coach who happens to be Derrick Rose‘s brother. According to a NCAA source, Boatright could miss between three and six games depending on the value of the ticket. [Ed. Note: How do they figure this out? Use the highest possible price like it was purchased day of or do they see what you could get on Priceline?] For his part, Reggie Rose is declining comment “out of the respect to the Boatright family” while a source close to him calls the entire thing a “witch hunt”. While the Huskies will miss Boatright in November because of their lack of depth at point guard given the relatively short length of the potential punishment we doubt that this will affect UConn in the long run unless the NCAA drags its feet in announcing the punishment because Boatright will have to sit out during that period too.
3. We have known it was coming for weeks, but on Sunday the SEC made it official–Missouri will join the SEC for the 2012-13 season. We have already discussed in depth the impact this and other moves will have on the landscape of college sports so we will spare you all the details and moralizing. For the SEC fans who may not be familiar with Missouri and its sports teams, Alabama Live has provided a nice primer on the school and its athletic department. Our personal favorite part is the ranking schools by number of major NCAA infractions.
4. Bob Huggins would probably like to forget West Virginia‘s last second 77-74 loss to Division II Northern Kentucky on Saturday night when Eshaunte Jones hit a three with one second left. As we have said before these games aren’t particularly helpful although some people will make a big deal out of Northern Kentucky winning its first exhibition game against a Division I opponent in 19 tries. The reality is that the Norse shot lights out going 13 of 25 from beyond the arc and shooting 54% from the field overall while the Mountaineers came out flat falling behind 42-29 at half after trailing by as many as 17 points in the first half. After the game Truck Bryant, who led the Mountaineers with 24 points, said, “I didn’t see this coming. I mean losing to a D-II school, not to take anything away from them, that’s embarrassing.” We are assuming that Huggins and Bryant will use this as motivation for the regular season opener against Oral Roberts on Friday night.
5. Chuck Klosterman put out a list of his 50 favorite college basketball players of all-time and it created a brief controversy on Twitter on Friday afternoon as people harangued him for his selections. As we mentioned at the time the list should not be taken as a top 50 list despite its title. Klosterman lays out his criteria at the top, which is fine since it is his list, but makes some questionable interpretations of those criteria when ranking players. Overall, we sort of like his list with its mixture of players that everybody remembers as being great along with a few that only serious basketball fans would know unless they had some special connection (fans of that school, etc) and have already admitted that it is much better than what we could probably do off the top of our head for indie rock bands, Klosterman’s area of expertise.

To most people today’s decision by Bill Self to suspend Tyshawn Taylor and Elijah Johnson for the team’s two exhibition games would seem to be a non-issue as the games do not really count and even if Kansas were to lose one or both of those games it would not mean much in the grand scheme of things as the recent past has shown us. Self even tried to pass off the suspensions as not worth discussing when he issued the following statement:

Tyshawn and Elijah have both been terrific since school began in August. They’ve not only performed well, they have been very responsible and disciplined the first few months of the school year. But during the offseason they violated a rule that I told them, because of some past experiences, their punishment was going to be severe and I was going to hold them out of the two exhibition games. They have been aware of this for several months and also are disappointed, but have had very positive attitudes about it. I will not comment about this further. Losing two players and Thomas being questionable for Tuesday’s game probably changes the look of our team as much as anyone in the country. This gives a chance for our young guys to play under the lights and see how they react.

Do You Trust This Man To Lead Your Team?

The fact that two upperclassman (a senior and a junior, respectively) on a young team would break rules that would merit a suspension raises larger questions for the Jayhawks this season. Coming into the season, many analysts questioned whether the Jayhawks could continue their dominance over the Big 12 despite losing most of their scoring from last season particularly when they lost several highly touted members of their freshman class due to NCAA Clearinghouse issues, but in the end the general consensus is that Kansas has a solid chance of winning the conference again due to a combination of solid veteran play (specifically Taylor and Thomas Robinson), Self’s coaching, and weakened competition within the conference. While the last two are still valid reasons, we have to question the leadership within the team. Self continues to talk to the team and media about instilling discipline, but when Taylor, who has had this fair share of run-ins with the law (point plankn, anyone?), is one of your leaders we would have serious concerns about your team. We might have been able to excuse Taylor for his idiotic behavior (and typos) if that had been an isolated event, but there was also a much less publicized incident last season that resulted in a brief suspension.

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1. Coming into this season we figured that Mark Turgeon was going to have a difficult time with a team that lacked a solid inside presence to the degree that there was quite a bit of speculation that he might play four guards. Yesterday he lost one of those guards for a significant part of the season when Pe’Shon Howard broke a bone in his left foot and is expected to be out for up to 3 months recovering. Howard’s injury leaves Maryland with just seven healthy scholarship players and to be honest those seven are not that good, which means that this could be a very rough start for Turgeon even if Howard comes back midway through ACC play.
2. When the NCAA announced that it would be adopting an APR minimum of 930 (two-year average) or 900 (four-year average) for inclusion in the 2013 NCAA Tournament quite a few writers immediately noticed that defending national champion Connecticut probably would not be eligible. This was based on the assumption that the school would not be able to achieve a two-year average over 930 between the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons after it scored 826 in 2009-10, which would bring the school’s average down enough that even a reported unofficial 975 in 2010-11 would only get them up to 900.5 for two years and 888.5 for four years. It turns out that the decision may be more complex. Essentially what it boils down to is that in February the NCAA will have another series of meetings to decide whether to use scores from those years or 2010-11 and 2011-12 for inclusion in the 2013 NCAA Tournament. If they were to do the latter, they would have to move up the release of APR scores from the traditional date of May. If they stick with the current measurement, then the Huskies and other programs in a similar situation would have to rely on an appeals process or hope the NCAA creates a waiver. We would say stay tuned, but there is no way that the NCAA would risk losing a school like UConn to a new rule when the Huskies could very well be playing for a three-peat at that point.
3. The NCAA announced another interesting policy change yesterday, but this was involves recruiting. The major change is that coaches can call or send text messages to recruits as much as they want. It also allows increased messaging on social networks and changes the recruiting periods. As nearly everybody on Twitter noted yesterday, it is somewhat amusing that Kelvin Sampson was essentially kicked out of college basketball for something that is legal just a few years later making him a pioneer of sorts.
4. We would  like to send along our best wishes to Billy Kennedy, who revealed that he was diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s disease in a statement he released through Texas A&M. Kennedy had taken a leave of absence earlier this month to recover from what can best be described as fatigue and other non-specific symptoms. During that time he was seen by physicians, who diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease. We will not get into the effect this will have on the Aggies (that can come later) other than to note that Kennedy will be taking an extended leave of absence to attend to his health, which is certainly more important than basketball. We also will not delve into the progression and treatment of Parkinson’s disease other than to note that there are several medications and treatments that are available, which should hopefully help Kennedy deal with the condition.
5. Uber-recruit Mitch McGary has narrowed his list down to Duke, Florida, and Michigan after taking Maryland and North Carolina off his list and will commit to one of those three schools next week according to his blog post on ESPN.com. Most of the speculation we have heard so far is about Duke or Michigan and we are not sure how UF fits in here, but they have obviously done something to attract McGary’s attention. At any rate, you can expect Twitter to explode next week when he makes his announcement particularly if he decides to become a Blue Devil as he may very quickly become Public Enemy #1 for the rest of the college basketball world.

1. Yesterday we mentioned the report that West Virgina‘s potential Big 12 application was essentially pre-approved. In the words of Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!” It turns out that the Big 12 is looking at either West Virginia or Louisville as a replacement for Missouri if/when it leaves for the SEC. Amazingly, it appears that this has become such a hot-button topic that United States Senators are getting involved because you know there aren’t more important things they should be worried about right now. As more than one analyst commented on Twitter yesterday, conference expansion seems to be spiraling into something akin to pledge week where schools are strung along and asked to do increasingly humiliating things to join a frat (in this case a conference).
2. With the Big 12 most likely poaching one of those Big East schools, the attention shifts to the Big East, who is losing members at an alarming rate. Rick Pitino, who appears to be assuming the role of “Godfather of the Big East” even if he might not be there much longer (see above), has two teams–Memphis and Temple–on his radar. Both are interesting choices and although Memphis has a higher profile basketball program (even if they are overrated) Temple has a much better football team right now. We find Pitino’s interest in Temple particularly amusing because the Owls were once a part of the Big East as a football-only member before they were essentially kicked them out for not being good enough. It is sort of like a husband dumping his wife then losing his job and his mistress and begging his ex-wife to take him back.
3. North Carolina picked up its fourth commitment for this year’s recruiting class when Brice Johnson tweeted, “I will be a UNC Tar Heel”. Johnson is a 6’9″ power forward who is a consensus top 50 player overall and compliments a well-rounded class for Roy Williams. The one thing that this UNC class is missing is a superstar and it appears that they will have to wait on Mitch McGary to make a decision as their other top target, T.J. Warren, appears to have eliminated the Tar Heels from his final two (NC State and Georgetown) from which he will announce his decision next week.
4. Last week we Tumblr’d what we believed to be a picture of the uniform that Michigan State would be wearing for the Carrier Classic. Yesterday, UNC released images of its uniform for the game and it appears to be very similar. While we appreciate the gesture including the decision to replace player names with USA on the back our feeling on the uniforms is indifference as we are not huge fans of all these alternate uniforms and neither of these are particularly attractive especially the UNC uniforms which would only serve as camouflage on a Teletubbies set.
5. Secondary violations are becoming almost as irritating as conference expansion. The latest near-victim was Washington, who had to cancel a scrimmage between current players and alumni after coach Lorenzo Romar mentioned the scrimmage on a local radio station because that would violate NCAA rules. Just to clarify, the actual scrimmage between current and former players would not have been a violation, but playing it after it had been “publicized” would have been a violation. Two former player–Spencer Hawes and Nate Robinson–expressed their displeasure with the decision more specifically with the NCAA being so rigid that the decision had to be made. We are assuming current players felt the same way, but were advised to refrain from saying anything. While some claim that the rule (14.1.8.1.6 of the NCAA handbook) is intended to limit teams from essentially holding exhibition games in this case it seems asinine.

1. The big news of the day came in the world of conference realignment as Oral Roberts announced that it would be leaving the Summit League and moving to the Southland Conference next year. The move is big for the Southland Conference because the addition brings it back to 10 teams after three schools (Texas State, UT-Arlington, and UT-San Antonio) announced that they would be moving to the WAC next year. The Golden Eagles should be one of the better basketball teams in the Southland as the move will be a major step down in terms of the quality of basketball played in the conference even before those three teams left the conference.
2. Oh, you were expecting the “other” conference realignment news to lead off today? I guess we will get to that too. Yesterday, an anonymous source reported that the Big 12 was set to offer West Virginia an opportunity to join the conference when Missouri completes their move to the SEC, a move that has not become official yet, but seems to be a near certainty. Before the past few months we would have looked down on this move by West Virginia from a basketball perspective because the Big East was a much better basketball conference, but the way things are going we are not even sure if the Big East will exist in a recognizable form in five years.
3. One team that appears to be staying in the Big East for now is defending national champion Connecticut. As we mentioned yesterday, the Huskies appeared to have trouble headed their way with a potential (ridiculous) ruling by the NCAA related to APR scores that turned out to be a miscommunication by the NCAA. While the Huskies avoided the NCAA’s wrath for now they need to step it up because their graduation rate of 25% is appalling especially when compared to the increased graduation rate nationwide where 82% of all student-athletes and 68% of men’s basketball players graduate. The full data set is available here and is pretty interesting if you have the time to browse through it.
4. DaJuan Coleman decided to stay close to home for college as he committed to Syracuse yesterday in a press conference at his high school. Coleman opted to play for the Orange over Kentucky and Ohio State. Although Coleman listed those three schools as his finalists it was pretty clear to most observers that he was staying home as he went to Big Blue Madness then Syracuse this weekend at which point he called the press conference and never even went on an official visit to Columbus. In a move that is symbolic for the current state of college sports Syracuse celebrated his commitment by announcing it on two of their official Twitter accounts, which is a secondary violation (the tweets were deleted before any screencaps were taken).
5. ESPN’s Diamond Leung had a nice feature story on College of Charleston freshman Adjehi Baru and the path he took to become a Division I basketball player from the Ivory Coast. Last year, Baru shocked many observers when he chose Charleston over several other higher-profile programs including North Carolina, but from Leung’s piece it seems like Baru felt a connection with the program and Bobby Cremins. We are sure that Baru’s story will be told many times over the next few years and he should be featured prominently on this year’s telecasts as he could play a significant role for a team that will be adjusting to life after Andrew Goudelock although the team does return a solid supporting cast.

1. Over the past few months there has been a movement in some parts of the media to pay athletes money in addition to their scholarships with Taylor Branch and the NCPA being the two most prominent voices. Now it appears that the NCAA might actually be considering paying athletes a stipend although it may not be to the level that some are hoping for. According to reports, NCAA president Mark Emmert plans to finalize a proposal that would pay student-athletes $2,000 per year that he would send to the NCAA Division I Board of Directors for their approval. That $2,000 per year would be in addition to the scholarships that already cover tuition, fees, room, board, and books. As the NCPA study notes student-athletes currently receive funds that are $3,222 short of covering the average university’s stated full cost of tuition so even this extra sum would leave the athletes $1,222 short. Of course, even the initial payment opens up a whole other can of worms, which we delved into yesterday, but we have to say that for the pro-pay people this appears to be a step in the right direction.
2. In an unrelated move, but one that ties in to the previous story a group of more than 300 players sent a petition to the NCAA asking for a portion of TV revenues to supplement scholarships to cover the full costs of attending college and for an “educational lock box” that would help cover additional education if their eligibility is up or just be a cash payment to the players after their careers are over. While many would be willing to agree with most of the request the last part is where you start to get on the slippery slope of professionalism. We haven’t seen the actual petition yet because it was just released to the Associated Press so they could get their stories up before everyone else, but we found it interesting that this based off the signatures from players at five schools (Arizona, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Purdue, and UCLA). As we mentioned in our aforementioned interview with Taylor Branch one of the problems that college athletes will run into is creating a strong union when the lifespan of the college athlete is so transient (typically four years). Perhaps if they can organize on a smaller scale (like these five schools) they can build some momentum to push for change in a relatively short time. That said we expect the NCAA to crush this petition given the amount of money that would be involved.
3. It should not come as much of a surprise that the SEC and national media has selected Kentucky as the preseason pick to win the conference even if one site predicted that another team may end up taking home the title. What is surprising, or at least interesting to us, is that a Kentucky player was selected as the SEC Preseason Player of the Year and it was not Anthony Davis. That honor went to sophomore (yes, there are still a few left) Terrence Jones. Davis ended up as a preseason second-team All-SEC selection despite being one of only four players to receive a vote for preseason Player of the Year. The rest of the selections were about what you would expect as they were dominated by players from Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Florida.
4. While expectations are high as usual at Kentucky they are much more muted at Kansas where Bill Self is apparently trying to temper what was already lukewarm expectations for a program of that caliber. Self decided to take some jabs at the media for pegging the Jayhawks as the co-favorites in the conference even though his Jayhawks have won at least a share of the Big 12 regular season title the past seven years and, to be brutally honest, the conference is pretty weak. Self does have a point that the Jayhawks will be much weaker this year than in previous years especially with their depleted freshman class, but the only other team in the Big 12 that we have any faith in is Baylor and they are questionable with their point guard play although they may have enough talent at the other spots to overcome that deficiency.
5. Coming into the season we expected St. Mary’s to have a difficult time replacing Mickey McConnell and now that task appears to have become even more difficult as Paul McCoy, a transfer from Southern Methodist, injured his right knee and might miss the upcoming season. McCoy, who already had his sophomore season at SMU end after he tore his ACL, will undergo arthroscopic surgery on the knee today with a second operation to repair the damage after three months of rehabilitation. For McCoy it is another significant setback in what appeared to be a promising career after he averaged 13.4 PPG as a freshman and now he is looking at a second medical redshirt. As for the Gaels, the injury will place even more pressure on Matthew Dellavedova, who has very little support around him in the backcourt with only two other scholarship guards on the team. Despite returning Dellavedova and Rob Jones the Gaels may struggle to play to the level that we have come to expect of them in recent years.