Morning Five: 01.05.15 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on January 5th, 2015

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  1. The biggest news in college basketball this weekend came from the sidelines as Cincinnati announced that Mick Cronin would not coach the rest of the season and serve in an advisory role while dealing with what has been described as a non-life-threatening arterial dissection. Cronin has been out since finding out about the condition on December 19. While it appears that Cronin expects to return to his sideline duties at some point, but in the interim associate head coach Larry Davis will serve as the head coach. At Butler, they removed the interim title from Chris Holtmann and made him the head coach officially replacing Brandon Miller, who took a medical leave of absence just prior to the start of the season. Very little information about Miller’s condition has been released, but we wish him the best in recovering from whatever he is dealing with. Holtmann has lead the Bulldogs to an 11-4 record this season and appears to have the program headed in the right direction after a disastrous first season following Brad Stevens’ departure.
  2. While the coaching announcements stole the headlines there were also quite a few major developments involving significant players. The biggest news comes out of St. John’s where sophomore guard Rysheed Jordan (14 points per game) is taking an indefinite leave of absence to deal with “personal and family matter” although some reports indicate that it might be related to disciplinary issues. At Stanford, freshman Reid Travis (7.5 points and a team-leading 6.9 rebounds per game) will be out indefinitely with a stress fracture. At Virginia Tech, Joey van Zegeren (9.8 points and a team-leading 5.3 rebounds per game) was suspended indefinitely apparently as the result of an incident (or incidents) at practice. As for Dayton, nothing seems to be going right for the Flyers this season with the latest misfortune coming in to the form of point guard Ryan Bass having to miss the rest of the season due to concussion-related symptoms following a concussion in an early November practice.
  3. It might have been a rough week for the SEC in college football, but things are starting to look a little bit better for the conference in basketball. We all know about Kentucky and Florida even if the latter has been awful this season, but we will have to start keeping an eye on LSU starting next year. The Tigers, who already have the consensus #1 player in the class (Ben Simmons) coming in, appear to have added another five-star guard to their backcourt with Antonio Blakeney‘s commitment to LSU. You may remember Blakeney as the recruit who committed to Louisville before backing out soon after in a move that some recruiting analysts publicly claimed was driven by shoe companies (Blakeney plays for a Nike AAU team; Louisville is an adidas school). If that was in fact the reason for Blakeney backing out of his Louisville commitment then LSU fans can feel safe. If not, they might not want to get too excited quite yet.
  4. Texas got a big boost this weekend with the return of point guard Isaiah Taylor, who had been out the past six weeks after breaking his left wrist. Taylor, who had been averaging 15 points and 3 assists per game this season before his injury, had 8 points, 4 steals, and 2 assists, but also showed his rust with 6 turnovers. Although Texas managed to go 8-2 without Taylor, they clearly were not the same team without him as evidenced by their losses to Kentucky and Stanford. With Taylor back in the mix, the Longhorns might be the favorites in the Big 12 and should be a Final Four threat.
  5. As you may have noticed this has been a rough year for Kobe Bryant, who is climbing up the all-time NBA scoring list while being on a losing team and setting all kinds of new standards for inefficiency. That didn’t stop Bryant from opining on the state of basketball in American and laying the blame on AAU programs and the culture around them. While we agree with many of Kobe’s comments, we don’t see him offering many solutions outside of scrapping it for a European-style club system, which we are certain wouldn’t fly in the US with the established interests. Mike DeCourcy, who has never been known to mince words, also went after Kobe pointing out that for all the shortcomings of the American system we still manage to produce the best basketball in the world by far.

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Morning Five: 12.29.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 29th, 2014

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  1. After a few bumps to begin the season, it appears that the Larry Brown experiment at Southern Methodist appears to be getting back on track. The latest addition to the Mustangs is Duke transfer Semi Ojeleye who committed to SMU over the weekend. Although Ojeleye only put up modest numbers–3 points and 2.3 rebounds per game–in limited playing time this season, he was a highly touted prospect coming out of high school and might flourish in an environment where he is not sitting behind multiple McDonald’s All-Americans. The 6’8″ sophomore will be eligible to play in December 2015 since he will have to sit out a year. When he does return, he could be part of a dynamic frontline that will probably have Markus Kennedy, Jordan Tolbert, and Ben Moore back next season.
  2. If you were expecting to see Dwayne Polee II back in a San Diego State uniform any time soon, you might want to reconsider that after Steve Fisher revealed that Polee had a similar event last season during a practice. Given this new information, we certainly understand why the school is not offering a time table for Polee’s return as he will now have to go a much more extensive medical work-up. Polee, a senior forward who is averaging 8.4 points per game, will likely be out for quite a bit more time and given the data in recent years about sudden cardiac death in Division 1 men’s basketball players we cannot fault them for being extremely cautious.
  3. It has been a rough few weeks for UCLA basketball. After the embarrassment of going down 24-0 and only scoring seven points in the first half against Kentucky, they lost to Alabama yesterday after only scoring 17 points in the first half and that is better than it seems because they only had scored five points with 5:15 left in the first half. Things will not be getting any easier for the Bruins who lost Wanaah Bail for the season after he was declared academically ineligible. On the surface, Bail’s paltry output of 1.5 points and 2.6 rebounds in 9 minutes per game might not seem like much (and it isn’t), but on a team with as little depth as UCLA has it only exacerbates that weakness even more.
  4. We tend to stay away from the AAU scene for a variety of reasons, but have heard plenty of horror stories involving the people who bankroll some teams. So when we heard about a a banker in Houston who financed a prominent AAU team, we we intrigued. Unlike the typical AAU stories we read, the key piece in this story–Steve Trauber–does not appear to have any intention of using the players for his own financial gain (and it appears that he is already doing quite well financially anyways). In fact, one of the players on the team last year was Trauber’s son, J.T., who is currently a walk-on Rice. We doubt that we will see many similar stories of rich individuals backing youth basketball teams, but it is nice to see it happen.
  5. For years we have heard arguments about which city produces the best basketball talent. We usually hear cities like New York, Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta thrown around, but it might be time that we expand our horizons. As Scott Cacciola of The New York Times notes Toronto is quickly becoming a basketball hotbed. Although they do not have the tradition of major cities in the US, the talent produced by Toronto (at least the very top tier) in recent years rivals that of any major US city. While we are not quite ready to get on board with the idea that Canada will be a legitimate threat to the US in the 2016 or 2020 Olympics, the spread of basketball outside of the US and its impact on the game and college basketball recruiting is certainly something to keep an eye on.

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Morning Five: Christmas Eve 2014 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 24th, 2014

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  1. San Diego State senior forward Dwayne Polee II, averaging 8.4 points per game, was discharged from San Diego hospital less than 24 hours after collapsing on the court during a game against UC Riverside. Polee was cleared to resume normal activities, but has not been cleared to play basketball yet. Polee presumably underwent the typical tests that a person who has a syncopal event undergoes (EKG, telemetry, etc) and might even have to wear an event monitor, but we are not sure how much more testing the medical staff at San Diego State will require before allowing him to play basketball again. Given the number of tragedies we have seen in college basketball in recent years, we cannot fault them for being conservative.
  2. The past few months have been rough for Michigan both on the football field and basketball court, but they did have at least one positive thing happen on Monday night when Austin Hatch scored his first point as a college basketball player. Hatch, who survived two plane crashes that killed his entire immediate family, had scored a point in an exhibition game earlier this year, but this was his first official point. Hatch’s free throw elicited a standing ovation and capped off a much-needed 72-56 win for a struggling Michigan team against Coppin State. Hopefully this is the first of many points and appearances for Hatch.
  3. Wake Forest picked up a minor victory as Mitchell Wilbekin had his suspension reduced to three games by the NCAA. Wilbekin’s suspension had been six games, but the decrease means that he will be able to play against Duke and Louisville, which frankly probably won’t affect the outcome of either game. Although the school had previously said they disagreed with both the infraction and the length of the previous suspension they did say that they were pleased that the NCAA was “willing to listen to our reasons for supporting a lesser penalty”. With the reduced suspension, Wilbekin will just have to miss one more game (Richmond) before returning on December 31 against Princeton.
  4. The case involving Oklahoma strength and conditioning coach Jozsef Szendrei probably won’t get much attention in the post-Nevin Shapiro/Penn State world, but the alleged violations seem pretty blatant. According to a report, Szendrei was caught distributing cash provided by a booster to the players while they were at the Battle 4 Atlantis. Szendrei was apparently caught before he could distribute the cash ($100 per player) to every player and the school compliance officer “got everything back” so it appears that neither the school nor the media consider it to be a serious issue. However, in much the same way that Shapiro paying for a player’s meal (or other minor expenses) could be construed as a failure at an administrative level so should this type of issue where a booster was able to do something like this. Szendrei claims this was a one-time thing and it appears that the school is sticking with the story that everything was fixed, but for a school with Oklahoma’s recent history of NCAA violations (under both Kelvin Sampson and Jeff Capel) you have to wonder if they might need to be a little more strict with who they let near their players.
  5. With the huge Kentucky-Louisville game looming on Saturday, Dana O’Neill took a look at strength of some of the biggest rivalries in college basketball. While we share her concern about losing some of the sport’s best rivalries we often think that too many people overlook the new rivalries that have been created with conference realignment. It seems like after all the complaining about significant rivalries being lost to conference realignment many of those games have managed to be rescheduled even if only temporarily for now.

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Morning Five: 12.22.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 22nd, 2014

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  1. Cincinnati‘s loss on Saturday took a back seat to the bigger news that Mick Cronin would be out indefinitely after being diagnosed with an “unruptured aneurysm” during a workup for persistent headaches. Cronin, who turned around a program that appeared to be in disarray when he started there, has led the Bearcats to four straight NCAA Tournament appearances after failing to do so in his first four years at the job. With Cincinnati being one of the top medical centers in the country we would assume this will be a fairly quick work-up although that does not necessarily mean Cronin will be back any quicker than he otherwise would be.
  2. After a rough past few months Southern Methodist finally got some good news when they found out that Markus Kennedy had been cleared to play prior to their game against Michigan. Kennedy, an All-AAC performer who averaged 12.4 points and 7.1 rebounds per game last season, had been ruled academically ineligible for the first semester. In his first game back, Kennedy had five points and three rebounds in ten minutes of action during SMU’s 11-point win at Michigan.
  3. If Rick Pitino was worried about keeping his Louisville team focused with two games remaining before their showdown on December 27 against Kentucky he may have found his solution with Montrezl Harrell‘s one-game suspension. Harrell, the Cardinals’ All-American junior forward who was averaging 16.7 points and 10 rebounds per game this season, was ejected from Saturday’s win at Western Kentucky for throwing a punch. While we never expected Harrell to miss the Kentucky game as a result of this suspension he got off about as light as he and Pitino could have hoped for given the circumstances.
  4. At this point we are ready to call Fred Hoiberg the John Calipari of transfers as he seems to be almost as successful in landing big-name transfers as Calipari is at picking up McDonald’s All-Americans. His latest addition is Marquette transfer Deonte Burton who committed to Iowa State. Burton, a consensus top-100 recruit, averaged 6.1 points and 1.4 rebounds per game as a sophomore after being expected to see more playing time this season. With Marquette’s strong incoming class it appeared less likely that Burton would see a big increase in his playing time in coming years so the decision makes sense. As for Iowa State, they seem to be reloading on transfers every year with no apparent end in sight.
  5. Mitchell Wilbekin, who had been averaging 7.6 points per game this season, has been suspended for six games for an undisclosed NCAA violation. Interestingly the first game Wilbekin missed was Saturday’s loss to Florida, his older brother Scottie’s former team. For their part, Wake Forest will appeal the ruling saying that they disagree with the NCAA both in terms of the violation and the length of the suspension. Wilbekin’s suspension means that he will miss the team’s first two ACC games, which are against Louisville and Duke that we would consider likely losses except that they are in Winston-Salem.

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Morning Five: 12.19.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 19th, 2014

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  1. Last season, Dayton was one of the Cinderellas of the NCAA Tournament and the team that cost me $1 billion (ok, it was the first game of the Tournament). This year that will be hard to replicate and they might not even make the NCAA Tournament after they dismissed their only two big men–Devon Scott and Jalen Robinson–on scholarships. While the school did not explain why the two had been dismissed, it was later revealed that they were caught stealing from on-campus dorms. After losing Scott, a 6’9″ junior who averaged 9.1 points and 7.4 rebounds per game, and Robinson, a 6’9″ junior who averaged 3.2 points and 2.4 rebounds per game, Dayton does not have a scholarship player who is taller than 6’6″.
  2. It seems like every year we read an article coming up with some back-of-the-envelope calculation about how much college players are worth. The article always gets passed around as “proof” that college players deserve to be reimbursed financially for playing for their team. The latest version of this article is a chart that tries to extrapolate the value of the average basketball player by multiplying the program’s revenue by 49% (to mimic the NBA’s revenue sharing plan) and dividing that by 13 (the number of scholarship players). The headline number is that the average Louisville player is worth a little over $1.5 million per year using this methodology. Of course, we have some questions about the methodology used in this analysis such how reliable those revenue figures are in terms of subsidies and how easily numbers/dollars can be moved around.
  3. Branden Dawson is expected to miss at least the next two games after fracturing his left wrist in Wednesday night’s win. Dawson, who is averaging 10.8 points and 8.5 rebounds per game, suffered a “non-displaced fracture” after missing 10 games last year when he broke a bone in his right hand. Fortunately for Michigan State, their upcoming schedule is pretty easy with their next two games coming against Texas Southern and Citadel before they open Big Ten play against Maryland (that feels so weird) on December 30. So while the injury could be a big blow for the Spartans at least it comes at a time when they can recover before starting Big Ten play at which point they need to start picking up quality wins because their resume thus far isn’t exactly inspiring.
  4. When Florida State declared Aaron Thomas ineligible for the rest of the season last week we figured that he might try to transfer, but now it looks like he is considering playing overseas. While the news is not completely unexpected since Thomas isn’t a NBA-caliber player, it is still a big blow to the Seminoles who might have hoped that the junior guard would return next season to anchor a team that was poised to add an excellent incoming class. Instead, it appears that Thomas, who was averaging a team-leading 14.8 points per game, will start his professional career overseas a year early.
  5. By this point you are probably aware of what we think of Luke Winn’s Power Rankings, which is consistently the best weekly column you will find. Like most power rankings, we could do without the actual rankings because frankly we find the order an individual writer thinks teams should be ranked useless, but Winn always has useful and timely information about the best teams in the country. This week our favorite stats are his breakdown of Kentucky‘s platoons (technically provided by Sean Lawless of GroupStats) and using expected value predictions on how to defend Jahlil Okafor. The analysis of Kentucky’s platoons are more of an interesting theoretical exercise and probably mirror something along the lines of what John Calipari should probably use. The Jahlil Okafor breakdown is a little more interesting from a practical perspective and might be something that should concern Duke fans going forward.

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Morning Five: 12.17.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 17th, 2014

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  1. We know that predicting the recovery time from a sprained ankle can be difficult, but the information from BYU about Tyler Haws‘ sprained left ankle is more nebulous than we are used to hearing. According to the school, Haws, the third-leading scorer in the country at 23.8 points per game, will be out for an undetermined period of time. Dave Rose seems to be targeting the team’s December 27 game against Gonzaga, which would mean that Haws would miss two weeks, but the school does not want to put a timetable on his return. We have even seen one local writer say that Haws could play as early as this Saturday, but that seems wildly optimistic.
  2. Illinois State suffered a big loss as DeVaughn Akoon-Purcell is expected to be out indefinitely with a broken right hand. Akoon-Purcell was the Redbirds leading scorer this season at 14.1 points per game and was second in rebounding at 5.5 per game. To make matters worse for the Redbirds, senior guard Bobby Hunter (fourth on the team at 8.9 points per game) is recovering from concussion-like symptoms. Akoon-Purcell is expected to miss four-to-six weeks, but it has not been decided yet if he will need surgery, which would obviously have a big impact on his expected recovery time.
  3. We have heard many people ask questions about the potential impact of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, but one possibility we had not consider was a state requiring that college athletes be paid. We might get our first example in South Carolina where a state senator is attempting to introduce a bill that would require state schools with at least $50 million in revenue (Clemson and South Carolina) to pay student-athletes in revenue sports in good academic standing a weekly stipend and set up a trust fund to pay those who graduate while providing a financial literacy course. The weekly stipend is expected to be around $150, which according to the bill should not be an issue for Clemson or South Carolina, which had budgets of approximately $90 million and $70 million respectively. While the NCAA might be willing to look the other way to a degree on the legalization of marijuana we doubt that they would be able to ignore this type of law.
  4. Yesterday, Creighton suspended junior guard James Miliken indefinitely for an undisclosed violation of team rules. While Miliken’s season averages–5.7 points and 2.4 rebounds in 17.2 minutes per game–are pedestrian, he did score 23 points in 34 minutes in a double-overtime win against South Dakota last week. While these suspensions for undisclosed violations of team rules tend to typically be merely a slap on the wrist, the school’s statement that “a decision on [Miliken’s] standing within the program is not expected until after the Christmas break” does seem somewhat ominous. If Miliken does not return, the Bluejays should be fine thanks to their depth.
  5. hile the Chris Herren story gets plenty of attention thanks to the 30 for 30 on him as well as his speaking engagements, there are countless other tales of similarly talented players who saw their careers and lives wrecked by drugs. One such player is Tommy Gaines, who was featured in an excellent piece on Grantland by Jordan Ritter Conn. To be honest, we don’t remember much about Gaines and the article doesn’t give a great account of his background mostly because it is so difficult to piece together information about a person like him back then (something we won’t have a problem with if it were to happen today). Still the story about his past and his attempt at redemption is certainly worth your time.

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Morning Five: 12.15.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 15th, 2014

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  1. Prior to Friday, this season had already been disappointing for Florida State, but things got worse on Friday as they announced that Aaron Thomas, the team’s leading scorer this season at 14.8 points per game, had been declared ineligible for the rest of the season. The exact reason for the decision has not been disclosed, but according to reports it is not due to academic reasons and it was made by the school not the NCAA. Thomas’ absence will put even more of an onus on Xavier Rathan-Mayes, who sat out last season as a partial qualifier. In reality, the season is probably over for the Seminoles who are 4-5 after losing their ACC opener at Notre Dame on Saturday.
  2. Missouri‘s season has not gone much better than Florida State’s so far, but at least they moved in the right direction this weekend as they added highly-touted JaKeenan Gant. Gant, a 6’8″ freshman power forward, was Mr. Basketball in Georgia in 2013 before transferring to a high school in Missouri for his senior year of high school. Gant, who sat out nine games while the school looked into reports that he had received impermissible benefits, was a four-star recruit rated #52 overall in last year’s graduating class. Although the Tigers lost in his first game back, he made quite an impact scoring 13 points in 15 minutes coming off the bench in a 74-58 loss to Xavier.
  3. Continuing the trend of teams off to poor starts, Memphis will be without guard Markel Crawford for at least four games after he injured his left knee in Saturday’s loss to Oklahoma State. While Crawford’s mother initially said it was “a torn ligament”, Josh Pastner says it is a “sprained knee”. If Crawford, who is averaging 5.5 points in 21.8 minutes per game this season, returns from injury as expected, his first game back would be the team’s AAC opener against Houston on New Year’s Eve. While Memphis might have enough depth on the perimeter to handle Crawford’s absence, they have much bigger issues as Saturday night’s loss dropped them to 3-4 against what has admittedly been a decent schedule, but one where they have not been close in their losses.
  4. There were also a couple of notable transfers from the weekend. Duke announced that sophomore forward Semi Ojeleye will be transferring. Ojeleye, who has 2.5 years of eligibility left, would typically be considered a highly-touted prospect, but at Duke he was the only member of the regular rotation (10.5 minutes per game) who was not a McDonald’s All-American. Having said that he was a borderline top 25 recruit coming out of high school so despite his meager production (3 points and 2.3 rebounds per game this season) we would expect to see him at a top-tier program in a year. Tennessee sophomore forward Dominic Woodson announced that he will be transferring citing a desire to join a program that is a better fit and one where he can play a bigger role. The 6’10” forward, who averaged 3.5 points and 2 rebounds in 12 minutes per game, has only been in Knoxville after transferring from Memphis this summer. Losing Woodson will hurt a Volunteer team that already had issues with depth on the inside. As for Woodson, we have no idea where he will end up. Obviously, there is a market for 6’10”, 280-pound players, but with Woodson’s background–initially committing to Baylor before going to Memphis where he was suspended and now leaving Tennessee–we aren’t sure how many suitors he will have.
  5. One of the more interesting trends in college sports (and sports in general) is the recent trend for people to prefer to stay home rather than go to games. There are many factors driving this with the primary one in our eyes being convenience (not having to drive to a game, deal with traffic or lines, and being able to sit on your own couch) as well as the ability to switch between games and having a great view particularly with high-definition televisions. The one thing that you definitely miss is the atmosphere at games (particularly big games) and that is what schools are counting on with their attempt to sell “experiences”. These experiences range from a few hundred dollars and stuff like playing golf with a non-revenue sport coach to several thousand dollars with sideline access and exclusive pre-/post-game access. As the article notes, these auctions are not that well publicized so they probably aren’t bringing as much money as they could. We will be interested to see if schools go to this well more as they face revenue issues.

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Morning Five: 12.12.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 12th, 2014

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  1. Iowa State senior guard Bryce Dejean-Jones will miss tonight’s game against Iowa after being arrested early yesterday morning on charges related to a noise violation and possession of marijuana. Dejean-Jones, a transfer from UNLV who is averaging 17.1 points and 6.9 rebounds per game, was released later in the day with the drug-related charge (at least temporarily) dropped for a lack of probable cause. Although he will not play tonight we would be surprised to see him much more time especially if authorities choose not to move forward with the drug charge. While some might try to make this into an issue about Fred Hoiberg targeting transfers this is hardly an issue that is isolated to transfers or players who carry the label of being a problem and probably shouldn’t be viewed as anything more than what it is on the surface.
  2. BYU senior forward Nate Austin will be “out at least two weeks” after tearing his right hamstring prior to Wednesday’s loss against Utah. Austin, who is averaging 3.3 points and 5.6 rebounds per game, had started the first nine game as the seasons for the Cougars and was their most experienced interior player on a team that relies heavily on their perimeter play already. He is expected to miss games against Weber State, Stanford, and Massachusetts before potential returning for their first West Coast Conference game against Gonzaga on December 27 although that might be stretching it if it is in fact a torn hamstring.
  3. For most teams potentially losing a player of Alex Poythress‘ caliber would be a devastating blow, but for Kentucky and its platoons it might end up just being a bump in the road. Poythress suffered a knee injury yesterday that is reported to be a torn ACL according to a local news source, but has not been confirmed by the school. While Poythress’ production this year has been relatively meager–5.5 points and 3.8 rebounds per game–part of that is due to how deep this Kentucky team is as he was still considered a potential first-round draft pick. His absence could affect Kentucky even with their depth because he is one of their better perimeter defenders and this could significantly alter the platoon system or force Kentucky to drop it completely.
  4. At this point we aren’t sure what to think of Mark Emmert. We have discussed his views on a variety of issues before on this site, but his latest comments that were made to CBSSports.com in a wide-ranging Q&A session indicate that he would be open to considering letting players go to the D-League then come back to the NCAA. Obviously this is a very long way from being a reality and there is no way that schools/athletic programs would let this happen, but it does make us wonder about Emmert in much the same way that some of Roger Goodell’s recent decision have made us wonder about how fit he is for the job. In what world would it make sense for an amateur athlete to get paid for the sport then come back to being an athlete given all the restrictions there already are on them at the NCAA level?
  5. In this week’s version of Luke Winn’s Power Rankings, he has his usual interesting stats and figures (we assume that “Who Provides Jah” will become a regular feature), but the two things that jumped out at us this week were Frank Kaminsky‘s shot chart and Myles Turner‘s production against good/bad teams. On the surface, it looks like it would seem like it would be fairly easy to game plan for Kaminsky, but of course that is ignoring the fact that he is 6’11” and moves around the court well. As for Turner, it isn’t surprising that he (or any player for that matter) would play better against weaker competition, but the gap is enough that it should probably concern Texas fans for March and NBA scouts in the future.

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Morning Five: 12.10.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 10th, 2014

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  1. Most people think of December as a time to spend with family, but it is also one of the most popular times of the year for players to announce that they will be transferring. This typically happens when players go home for Christmas break and presumably have friends and family telling them how much better they are than the starters. This year, a few players go an early jump on transferring as they aren’t even waiting for the end of the semester. at Marquette, sophomores Deonte Burton and John Dawson will be transferring leaving the Golden Eagles with just eight scholarship players. While Dawson is a seldom-used reserve, Burton was a top-50 recruit in the class of 2013, but has played less than expected and with Marquette’s highly-touted incoming class he probably felt it was best to move on. At Wake Forest, sophomore guard Miles Overton will also be transferring. While Overton, only averaged 3.4 points per game during his time there he did have a 14-point and 8-point game in the past two weeks.
  2. Louisville finally received word from the NCAA about freshman Shaqquan Aaron as it was announced that he will be suspended for nine games (30 percent of the regular season) of which he has already missed eight including last night’s win over Indiana. The NCAA ruled that Aaron’s family had received “extra benefits related to housing” along with other undisclosed things. Aaron, a borderline top-30 recruit last year, will have to sit out Sunday’s game against UNC-Wilmington before making his debut against Western Kentucky on December 20.
  3. Kansas junior forward Jamari Traylor (3.3 points and 3.9 rebounds per game) will not play in tonight’s game against Georgetown after being suspended following his arrest early on Sunday morning for interfering with a police officer. The details around the incident are unclear, but Traylor was arrested with a Kansas football player following a fight where someone was assaulted with the police still investigating the matter. Based on Bill Self’s comments it appears that Traylor was a bystander, who was arrested for essentially not complying with a police officer rather than being an active participant in the assault.
  4. One of the common complaints with early-season schedules is the fact that many teams play meaningless games to boost their records presumably to make both coaches (hello, bonus money) and athletic directors look better. Fortunately some programs appreciate the importance of playing big-name programs for the good of both their own program and the sport. So whenever we see schools scheduled is big-time match-ups we appreciate it. As such we have to applaud both Kentucky and UCLA, the two most historically significant programs in the sport, for agreeing to play a home-and-home in 2015 and 2016. The schools, which will play each other this season in the CBS Sports Classic on December 20 in Chicago will play at Pauley Pavilion on December 3, 2015 and Rupp Arena on December 3, 2016. While it is hard to believe, this will be the first time that either program has played at the other’s home arena.
  5. Speaking of Kentucky, one of the remarkable things about the team (outside of how talented they are and their platoon system) is just how dominant their defense has been. As Gary Parrish points out, this Kentucky team has a chance to be one of the best defensive teams in college basketball history. This is certainly high praise, but the numbers, which admittedly don’t go that far back, seem to support the argument. While this Kentucky team might lack the signature defender like previous Kentucky teams had with Anthony Davis or Nerlens Noel or looking even further back Georgetown with Patrick Ewing, they do have much more length (at least in terms of numbers/depth) than almost any team that we can remember. So while it is still very early to be asking the undefeated question, the one thing the Wildcats have in their favor is a defense that will probably require a team getting very hot from beyond the arc to make an upset a realistic possibility.

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Morning Five: 12.08.14 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on December 8th, 2014

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  1. It is beginning to seem like eventually every conference tournament will be held in the New York metro area. The latest conference to join the trend is the Big Ten, which hold its 2018 tournament at Madison Square Garden. According to the Big Ten, this is only part of a rotation as they will be going through different cities over the next four years:  Chicago (2015), Indianapolis (2016), and Washington, D.C. (2017) before going to New York City. While the conference is saying all the right things about this being part of rotation the need to play in New York City is apparently great enough that they were willing to move up their conference tournament that year by a week (Big Ten title game will be a week before Selection Sunday in 2018) that year. If you are a sportswriter you might want to go ahead and book a long-term room in New York City for March 2018 as that year the Big Ten Tournament will be followed by the ACC Tournament (Barclay’s) and Big East Tournament (MSG) going on simultaneously.
  2. Binghamton suffered a big blow on Friday as two-time All-America East selection Jordan Reed announced that he will be transferring at the end of the semester. Reed, who averaged 16.6 points and 9.5 rebounds per game as a freshman and 15.4 points and 8.9 rebounds per game as a sophomore, had been on leave from the team since November 26 with the reason reportedly being disagreements with head coach Tommy Dempsey. Given Reed’s production and his experience he should have no shortage of high-major suitors assuming whatever happened between him and Dempsey isn’t enough to scare off programs. As for the Bearcats, we don’t think they can get that much worse as they sit at 1-8 after a loss at home against Pennsylvania in their first game with Reed officially off the roster.
  3. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were writing posts asking when New Jersey Institute of Technology would actually win a game (it was actually six years ago, which in terms of this site’s existence is actually fairly long) so we have to admit that we were shocked when we saw that they have knocked off Michigan on the road. While much of this can be focused on just how bad Michigan was (hey, at least they have a bowl game to… oh, right) we would rather focus on the winning side, which as a 24.5-point underdog is the biggest such underdog to win since Gardner-Webb beat Kentucky in 2007 (favored by 26-points as part of the magical Billy Gillespie experience). We aren’t sure if there is a trend to have more bigger name programs losing to smaller-name programs in recent years (a little help, Pomeroy?), but it certainly seems that way with what we have been seeing recently.
  4. Gerald Hamilton, Skal Labissiere’s legal guardian and the target of quite a bit of criticism, finally responded to his critics. According to Hamilton, they have met with Kentucky, the school that Labissiere committed to, and discussed Labisserie’s history with the NCAA with all parties being satisfied. Of course, this is coming from Hamilton and neither Kentucky nor the NCAA so it obviously could be quite biased and given what we have heard about Hamilton we have to admit that we have a hard time taking anything he says at face value. Our guess is that Labisserie’s eligibility will be one of those cases that is not decided until next season starts.
  5. Speaking of legal guardians and questionable eligibility, Ed Smith, Thon Maker‘s legal guardian, has come out and stated that Maker (the top recruit in the class of 2016) will reclassify to the class of 2015 if he is academically eligible. This isn’t exactly a surprise given all of the movement that Maker has had in the past few years, but it is the first time we have seen them openly discuss it since Maker was moved to Canada. According to Smith, the issue isn’t so much Maker meeting NCAA requirements as he reportedly has a solid GPA, but instead the requirements of the school he just transferred to. While this isn’t the first time we would have seen a transfer backfire it might be the first time we see it backfire because of school-specific academic requirements.

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