Corey Sanders came to Rutgers with a relatively solid pedigree. As a prep star at the point guard position, he was ranked #62 in ESPN.com‘s top 100 and checked in at #93 on 247sports. Not that anyone thought he was going to completely turn around Rutgers basketball in his freshman season, but the guard has had a bit of an uneven start to careeer. Some of this can be attributed to struggles in adapting to coach Eddie Jordan’s system of Princeton-like movements and cuts. An even bigger reason is that Rutgers has been decimated by injuries, as Deshawn Freeman, Shaquille Doorson and Ibrahima Diallo are all out for the season with various maladies. What that mean is that Rutgers, with only two players 6’8″ or taller, are playing small ball out of necessity. Correspondingly, that means it’s difficult to get a true read on how well Sanders is doing this season.

Corey Sanders is leading Rutgers in scoring despite an uneven first season for Eddie Jordan’s team. (Getty)

The freshman guard is averaging 13.3 PPG, 3.4 APG and 1.6 SPG while shooting 35.2 percent from behind the arc. His assist-to-turnover ratio is a solid if not spectacular 1.12. And when compared with some of the other notable Big Ten point guards’ freshman seasons, his efficiency numbers are generally comparable.

• Yogi Ferrell (105.3 O-Rating, 18.0 Usage, 45.4% eFG, 25.7% Asst Rate, 24.5 TO%, 1.6% Stls Rate, 30.3% 3pt)
• Mike Gesell (99.4 O-Rating, 20.2 Usage, 46.6% eFG, 22.5% Asst Rate, 20.5 TO%, 2.8% Stls Rate, 31.7% 3pt)
• Melo Trimble (116.5 O-Rating, 24.8 Usage, 53.4% eFG, 21.2% Asst Rate, 18.3 TO%, 2.3% Stls Rate, 41.2% 3pt)
• Derrick Walton (112.2 O-Rating, 18.2 Usage, 53.1% eFG, 19.8% Asst Rate, 19.9 TO%, 1.4% Stls Rate, 41.0% 3pt)
• Bryant McIntosh (101.4 O-Rating, 23.9 Usage, 48.4% eFG, 32.6% Asst Rate, 20.5 TO%, 0.5% Stls Rate, 36.4% 3pt)
• Corey Sanders (94.8 O-Rating, 25.0 Usage, 47.1% eFG, 23.6% Asst Rate, 21.9 TO%, 2.8% Stls Rate, 35.2% 3pt)

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Now a couple weeks into conference play, a few early observations can be made in the Atlantic 10 race.

Quick Hits From the First Fortnight

Patricio Garino (left) and George Washington should still be in the mix for the A-10 crown. (Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)

• Home vs Road — Home teams have won 69 percent of conference games, going 13-8 through Sunday evening.
• Most Surprising Win — St. Bonaventure’s 97-85 over Davidson to open conference play at the Reilly Center, as the 12-point margin raised eyebrows all around the conference. Davidson has lost four games away from Belk Arena by an average of 19.3 points. The Bonnies’ offense produced 1.29 points per possession, better than that which was produced by Davidson’s other three conquerors: North Carolina (1.20), Pitt (1.27) and California (1.16).
• Most Impressive Road Win — On the strength of a 28-12 run, Virginia Commonwealth erased a 13-point deficit with seven minutes left at Saint Joseph’s to post an 85-82 win.
• Knucklehead Loss, Part 1 — George Washington‘s loss at St. Louis, 65-62, on the first Saturday of conference play. The defeat cost the Colonials their spot in both Top 25 polls, as the Billikens limited Pat Garino and Tyler Cavanaugh to a combined 20 points on 9-of-21 shooting. GW should still compete for the conference regular season title, but the loss opens the door for other challengers.
• Knucklehead Loss, Part 2 — Dayton‘s loss at La Salle, 61-57, last Saturday broke the Explorers’ seven-game death spiral and gave them their first conference win. La Salle lulled the Flyers into an ugly 59-possession game, so Dayton attempted a long range assault with poor results. Three Flyers (Scoochie Smith among them) combined to go 0-of-10 from beyond the arc (the rest of the squad was 7-of-15). And in committing 14 turnovers, Dayton handed away over 24 percent of its possessions. Read the rest of this entry »

Kelvin Sampson walked into a postgame press conference last week and strangely had difficulty getting his words out. He appeared to be fighting a toothache or something like that, but he quickly explained himself. “I put a Tootsie Roll in my mouth,” Sampson said, smirking. “That was a bad idea.” As he puts together another college hoops reclamation project — this time at Houston — Sampson can’t help but feel relaxed enough to pop in a Tootsie Roll before a press conference. His Cougars had just finished off Tulane before 3,235 fans at Hofheinz Pavilion to move to 13-2 on the year. It was yet another easy win in the career of a coach who has tallied a lot of them, but it wasn’t always this easy.

Houston coach Kelvin Sampson watches his Cougars rack up another home victory over Tulane. Houston is now 10-0 at home. (Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle)

Sampson’s inaugural season at Houston in 2014-15 was predictably difficult. The Cougars went 13-19, good for a 10th place finish in the 11-team American. Many of their issues centered on a lack of consistent scoring (64.4 points per game — 234th nationally). During the offseason, Sampson was scouring the transfer market to improve his team’s scoring when he stumbled upon Rob Gray, Jr., a shooting guard from Howard College. Gray was in the midst of winding down his recruitment process and had just enjoyed dinner with then-Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall and his coaching staff on March 26. The next morning, Tyndall was fired by Tennessee. Sampson quickly pounced on the opening and got Gray to commit to an official visit before signing him in mid-April. Read the rest of this entry »

At Big 12 Media Day last October, the usual suspects sat at the top of the pecking order. Kansas was tabbed to once again lead the pack while veteran-laden squads at Oklahoma and Iowa State loomed as the Jayhawks’ primary challengers. West Virginia‘s revamped style and fourth-place finish in 2014-15 was a nice story, but the league’s coaches didn’t exactly bank on Bob Huggins pulling it off again, as the Mountaineers were picked to finish sixth in the conference’s annual preseason poll. After last night’s start-to-finish 73-64 win over Kansas, West Virginia has showed that it too should be viewed as a legitimate contender to win the Big 12.

“Press Virginia” is alive and well in Morgantown. (WVUSports.com)

While last night’s game in Morgantown never reached blowout status, the Mountaineers’ vaunted press generated 22 Kansas turnovers and they were in control for most of the night. Frank Mason and Devonte Graham, whose ball-handling skills have played a key role in the Jayhawks’ offensive success this season, were shellshocked by West Virginia’s defense. Wayne Selden looked good early, but six crippling turnovers reflected his status as a liability for the remainder of the game. Perry Ellis turned in another strong performance with 21 points and seven rebounds, but he could only do so much, especially after West Virginia started doubling on him. West Virginia sophomore Jaysean Paige enjoyed a career night for the Mountaineers with 26 points and some fantastic on-ball defense, while Devin Williams played a great all-around game, chipping in 12 points and 10 rebounds for his seventh double-double of the season. Late three-pointers by Mason, Carlton Bragg and LaGerald Vick made the score more respectable than it otherwise would have been, but this was no close finish.

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1. Northwestern kept its NCAA Tournament hopes alive last night when the Wildcats edged Wisconsin at home, 70-65, its best win of the season so far. They were led by Bryant McIntosh, who scored 28 points, dished out five assists and is emerging as one of the best guards in the league. The sophomore is averaging 15.4 PPG (10th in B1G) and 7.2 APG (first) this year. As for Northwestern’s at-large prospects, the Wildcats have yet to register a win against another likely NCAA Tournament team, so there’s still work ahead. A win at College Park next Tuesday would be a great place to start.
2. Michigan delivered Maryland its first conference loss of the season when the Wolverines squeaked out a 70-67 victory at home with star Caris Levert still sidelined by a leg injury. Zak Irvin stepped up in Levert’s absence by scoring 22 points on 8-of-14 shooting. This game could represent a season turning point for the Wolverines, a team that had previously been blown out by elite competition. Michigan’s guards were able to stymie the Terrapins’ perimeter offense, as Melo Trimble and Rasheed Sulaimon combined to score only 10 points. If John Beilein can get his guys to play that level of defense for the rest of the season, the 3-1 team will become contenders for a Big Ten championship.
3. On Monday, the Big Ten awarded Iowa‘s Mike Gesell its Player of the Week honors. The senior point guard registered the first double-double of his career in scoring 22 points and dishing 10 assists in a last week’s win over Nebraska. Gesell is playing the best basketball of his life right now — he is averaging 2.5 PPG and 3.0 APG more than last season while also improving his true shooting percentage by 11 percent. There’s no question that Jarrod Uthoff is Iowa’s most important player, but Gesell has emerged as the team’s Robin.
4. Indiana‘s Thomas Bryant was awarded Freshman of the Week for the second time this season after dominating Ohio State’s frontcourt on Sunday — scoring 18 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in the blowout win. Perhaps the biggest improvement the young center has made during the season is with his defense. During Indiana’s loss to Wake Forest at the Maui Invitational, Bryant was consistently exposed on the pick-and-roll by the Demon Deacons’ Devin Thomas. In Big Ten play, the young Hoosier has gotten better off those screens with the proof being his 93.1 defensive rating during conference games. Indiana’s defense, once thought to be a major liability hindering the team’s success, is now being anchored by one of its youngest players.
5. One of the most perplexing results of the season to this point is Purdue’s disappointing Sunday loss to Illinois. The Boilermakers were not able to take advantage of the Illini’s thin frontcourt and their top-ranked defense allowed Illinois to shoot 52.9 percent from the three-point line. Juan Crespo from SBNation identifies part of the problem, which is that they don’t have a lineup of five players whom Matt Painter can completely trust. Painter may still need to work on different lineups to prevent some of the offensive stalls that still arise too frequently for the Boilermakers. He’ll have a chance to straighten things out on Thursday night against Penn State.

1. Raleigh News & Observer: Kennedy Meeks is back for North Carolina. He’s not 100 percent yet, but it’s a good sign that he’s back and in stark contrast with those of Amile Jefferson (Duke) and Terry Henderson (NC State). The Tar Heels need the junior big man in the lineup to meet their National Championship aspirations. It also looks increasingly clear that North Carolina is the team to beat in the ACC this season. Miami doesn’t appear far behind, but the road to a conference title will go through Chapel Hill.
2. Slap the Sign: This is a decent Notre Dame primer, as the Irish are still searching for a leader after the departures of Jerian Grant and Pat Connaughton. Demetrius Jackson is very talented but his best games have come in losses rather than wins. The most damning statistic working against the Irish may be that of “good wins.” — their only one so far came against Iowa. All of its other top-50 opponents have resulted in losses. That’s something Mike Brey will have to change to avoid a disappointing conference finish.
3. Boston College Heights: Dennis Clifford is starting to look like his old self at Boston College. He’s still not consistent (he turns the ball over too much to be efficient), but he’s moving better and will likely be the reason the Eagles beat a team they shouldn’t. Boston College is horrid this season (the only two worse major conference teams worse are St. John’s and Rutgers), but its defense will give it a fighting chance a few times during conference play.
4. Duke Basketball Report: Amile Jefferson’s injury has made Duke worse in the short run because the team has no depth. Mike Krzyzewski has been using a six-man rotation (sometimes seven by playing Chase Jeter for a few minutes) since Jefferson went down. But Duke isn’t known for playing large rotations to begin with, and it’s unlikely that either Luke Kennard or Marshall Plumlee would have seen this sort of time without the starting center’s absence. It’s still hard to tell if this Duke’s team is fool’s gold thanks to nearly all of its recent opponents being helplessly outclassed, but all of that will change at the end of the month when the team travels to Coral Gables.
5. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Why is Pittsburgh getting no love from the national media? The Panthers’ only loss came against a very good Purdue team that’s frankly a nightmare matchup (size plus shooting). Sure, Pitt’s non-conference schedule was nothing to write home about, but it’s odd that Jamie Dixon’s group isn’t getting a little more publicity. Even if they go into the Yum! Center and beat Louisville later this week, many people may blame the inconsistent Cardinals.

EXTRA: GIF power rankings??? Don’t mind if I do. If you only look at one, look at NC State. It’s perfection.

When Arizona lost senior center Kaleb Tarczewski to a strained muscle in his foot more than a month ago, the Wildcats didn’t miss a beat. They won seven of the eight games that he missed and backup Dusan Ristic performed admirably in his stead. A little more than a month later, Arizona finds itself in a similar situation as freshman Allonzo Trier is expected to miss 4-6 weeks with a broken hand. This time, however, the Wildcats are going to have a much tougher time plugging the hole.

Arizona Will Have A Tough Time Replacing Allonzo Trier. (Chris Coduto/Getty Images)

In a conference full of talented freshmen, Trier has quietly been one of the best. His immediate impact has been a big reason why the Wildcats have been able to weather their talent exodus from last season. Not only does the Seattle native lead Arizona in scoring (14.8 PPG), but he is also the team’s most efficient scorer (64.0% TS%) thanks to his success scoring from inside the three-point line and his ability to make free throws at a near-80 percent clip. He is still a work in progress defensively, but he is the team’s second-best three-point shooter (35.1% 3FG) and has been borderline irreplaceable in the lineup. And therein lies the biggest issue for Arizona moving forward – it doesn’t really have anyone on the roster who can suitably replace him. Ironically enough, when Tarczewski went down, Trier was the primary beneficiary. Before the big man got hurt, Trier hadn’t yet eclipsed 30 minutes in a game and was averaging 11.6 PPG. Since that time Trier played at least 30 minutes in all but three games and was averaging a more robust 16.1 PPG. The problem now is that the perimeter-starved Wildcats don’t have another five-star freshman to take his place in the rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

The SEC began last week with the long-awaited Ben Simmons against Kentucky showcase and ended with the annual reappearance of John Calipari to the Nets rumors. Here’s what happened in between.

Team of the Week

It was an exciting first week for Andy Kennedy and Ole Miss in the Pavilion (uga.rivals.com).

Sign Andy Kennedy up for a few more weeks like that. The Rebels had loud, capacity crowds for their first two games in the Pavilion and the players on the floor didn’t disappoint. Ole Miss first overcame an eight-point halftime deficit to down Alabama, and then erased Georgia’s four-point lead with less than a minute to eke by the Bulldogs. As usual, Stefan Moody played a starring role in both wins, including a whirlwind game-winning layup against Georgia. The contributions of Sebastian Saiz shouldn’t be overlooked either, as he continued to be an active force in the paint with a pair of double-doubles. The Ole Miss program has some serious energy surrounding it right now.

Player of the Week

You could hand this to a number of guys — Moody, Saiz and (as always) Simmons come to mind. But this week’s honor goes to Anthlon Bell whose torrid three-point shooting and 51 points over two games led Arkansas to home wins over Vanderbilt and Mississippi State. Bell spent his first three seasons in Fayetteville as a solid but unspectacular option that Mike Anderson utilized in short bursts. With increased playing time during his senior season, he’s exploded in production. Bell leads the SEC in three-point percentage (47.1%) despite taking the third most three-point shots (104) in the conference.

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Much like the NFL Wildcard games, the road was friendly to visiting Big Ten teams over the weekend. Impressive home wins from Indiana and Illinois on Sunday halted a four-game visitor’s winning streak, but blowouts were also a common theme, as only one of the weekend’s six contests featured a single-figure final scoring margin. As always, there were several impressive performances individually and from certain teams. Here are the weekend’s superlatives.

Malcolm Hill proved he’s one of the best scorers in the Big Ten Sunday by scoring 30 points against Purdue. (Stephen Haas, Herald and Review)

Player of the Weekend: Illinois’ Malcolm Hill figured he would need to be a scorer when Purdue’s Raphael Davis started the game guarding his high-scoring teammate Kendrick Nunn. Hill did so to the tune of 13 points from a variety of different spots on the floor. When Davis moved over to Hill in the second half, Nunn went off for 18 points of his own. Hill, who had already by then found his groove, contributed 17 more as the juniors combined for 35 of the Illini’s 47 points coming after the break. Hill also led the team in rebounds (nine), tied for the team lead in assists (three), and added a pair of blocks. In a lost season in Champaign, Hill has been a bright spot in hitting for double figures in all 17 games. The total package that he brings beyond just scoring was on full display in Illinois’ impressive win, its first of the Big Ten season.

Super Sub of the Weekend: Maryland barely squeaked by Wisconsin in Madison on Saturday, and although it wasn’t to the level of his 39-point, 12-rebound performance against Penn State last week, Diamond Stone was quietly efficient in the victory. On a day when the Terps didn’t get much from Jake Layman or Rasheed Sulaimon, Stone went 4-of-5 from the field en route to an 11-point outing. In what was no doubt an emotional homecoming for the freshman from Milwaukee who spurned his home state school, Stone didn’t overdo it and was a key reason that the Terrapins remained perfect in league play at 4-0.

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We’re now through two weeks of Pac-12 play and Washington sits alone atop the conference with a 3-0 record. USC, Oregon State and Oregon are the next three teams, with only one loss. Teams among the conference favorites – for example, Arizona and Utah – sit with sub-.500 records. And Arizona State, a team expected to be in the mix somewhere in the middle of the conference race, is sitting alone in last place with an 0-3 record. Sure, given that teams have only played a fraction of the conference schedule, most of this is meaningless. But here are some more relevant facts. At halfway through the college basketball regular season, 11 of the 12 conference teams are ranked among the KenPom top 100 — only Washington State sits out at #122. If RPI is more your thing (for some reason), those 11 teams rank among the top 75 of that metric. If you want to throw out Stanford and Washington, the top nine teams in the conference rank among the top 66 in KenPom and the top 48 in RPI. The conference is listed as the #2 strongest collection of teams in the land by RPI, while KenPom puts the league third. Oregon is rated highest in RPI (#11), while Arizona tops KenPom at #16.

Two Weeks Into Conference Play, One Thing Is Clear: It’s Going To Be A Wild One (Gary A. Vasquez, USA Today)

Enough numbers for now; the important question is what do they all mean? To begin with, this is a conference that runs deep with good teams. In a season seeming to lack great teams on a national level, the Pac-12 will again be expected to extend its streak of seasons without a Final Four entrant to eight. However, because of that lack of dominant team on the national landscape, if this NCAA Tournament tends towards wild upsets (as sometimes happens), the Pac-12 has some teams in that next tier of strength that could either be the upsetter or take advantage of brackets thinned out by upsets.

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