What’s this? Two days in a row with FBs? Indeed. There’s a lot to get caught up on…
Duke Downer. The biggest news today was the news that Duke point guard Elliot Williams (he of the happy, happy feet) will be leaving the Duke program so that he can move closer to Memphis, his hometown. Reportedly his mother is facing a life-threatening illness there and Williams wants to be nearby for support as she battles her disease. He plans on petitioning the NCAA to waive the one-year transfer obligation so that he will be able to play immediately at his new school (presumably Memphis). This is undoubtedly a major blow to Coach K’s backcourt in 2009-10, as he’ll now be left with only Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith to log minutes there. Big things were expected of Williams based on his insertion into the starting lineup at midseason and his excellent all-around play down the stretch. Duke fans are largely crushed by this news, given the unfortunate circumstances causing it as well as the huge, gaping hole in the backcourt it leaves (while, ironically, the perfect fix named Seth Curry can only wait and watch next season). In other Duke news that came out today, Coach K is the highest paid Duke employee by far ($3.6M last year) – no surprise there.
Like Father, Not Like Son. A bit of a surprise today is that Jeffrey Jordan (you know, that Mike guy’s son) is ending his basketball career at Illinois to focus on his studies. This comes on the heels of news from earlier this year that Jordan’s hard work and commitment to the program had resulted in a scholarship for the rest of his time at the school. Guess he’d had enough. Actually, we can totally understand this. Jordan was undeniably under more pressure to perform than any walk-on turned scholarship player in the history of college basketball, and although it made for nice copy, it’s safe to say that Jordan probably didn’t love the sport anywhere near the same as his famous dad. He probably reached a personal epiphany of some kind that included a heart-to-heart with pops, and once MJ gave him the blessing, he’s now free to pursue the activities he truly enjoys. Good for him. And good for him for working his tail off in his two years at Illinois to go from walk-on to scholarship to expected contributor, despite limited talent.
Vegas, Baby. The WAC has followed its mid-major brethren WCC and Mountain West Conferences by moving its postseason tournament to Las Vegas, where the Orleans Arena will host beginning in 2011. This comes on the heels of a very successful WCC Tournament at the Orleans last year, where a sold-out, raucous arena was shown on national television for St. Mary’s vs. Gonzaga. The MWC already holds its conference tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center down the street, and this move by the WAC means that Vegas will become the basketball destination for every legitimate conference (save the Pac-10) west of the Rockies every March. Sounds like a really fun environment for fans of these leagues.
No, No, No. Everyone got this wrong. Derrick Rose wasn’t flashing a gang sign in the below pic, he was practicing universal remote hand signals for the letter “B” on the SAT exam.
UCLA’s Drew Gordon may be slowed down by back spams in the Bruins’ next game at Arizona St. on Thursday night.
Pat Forde shows which schools are basketball-philic through an interesting analysis of attendance and success this season.
We give approximately a 1% chance that this girl is actually Duke forward Miles Plumlee’s girlfriend, and approximately 0.01% chance that she goes to school at Duke. Everybody knows all the Dookies do their chasing of tails over at Carolina (with good reason).
No Way She’s From Duke (photo credit: Uncoached)
Getting Down To Business With Rivalry Week.
Kentucky 68, Florida 65. This was the game of the night, by far. For a while it appeared that Nick Calathes’ “game face” (according to Jimmy Dykes) was going to carry the Gators to their eighth victory in nine tries against UK, but Jodie Meeks’ (23/5) ridiculous nearly-falling-down-then-recovering three from the left elbow, followed by Calathes’ (33/7/3 assts) “choke face” missing all three of his FTs (the last intentionally) that would have tied the game, ensured that wouldn’t happen. UK staved off what would have been another devastating home loss, and kept their NCAA hopes alive for a couple more weeks, whereas Florida is probably still ok unless they go on a severe drought (not impossible with this mentally fragile group). But several other interesting things happened in this game. First, Patrick Patterson was carried off the court midway through the second half with what appeared to be a sprained right ankle, and there’s no word on his status yet, but if he’s out for any significant amount of time, UK could be in serious trouble in the short term. Second, the call where Walter Hodge was ejected for stepping on Perry Stevenson’s arm in what was clearly (to us) an accidental mis-step was a clear example of the Aubrey Coleman Effect – a month ago he would not have been thrown out of the game for that “offense.” Finally, does any coach in American despise a sideline reporter as much as Billy Gillispie does Jeannine Edwards? Seriously, the contempt is palpable. In recent weeks, he’s spot-analyzed her question (conclusion: bad), pretended not to hear her and made a snide reference to she “would know better than him.” What’s wrong, Billy G – did Ms. Edwards turn you down for a date at Harry’s? (to be fair, Edwards is painful to listen to, but it just seems as if Gillispie has an elevated distate for her questions)
Michigan St. 54, Michigan 42. MSU gave one of its strongest defensive efforts of the year, holding its rival Michigan to 35% shooting and 17% from three on its home floor tonight. This was especially true because UM, who had lost six of its last eight, really needed a signature late-season win to showcase along with its early season victories over Duke and UCLA for the NCAA Tourney Committee. MSU’s Delvon Roe had 14/10 as he continues to make his way back from multiple offseason knee surgeries – if he, along with Goran Suton, Raymar Morgan and an assorted cast of Spartans, are completely healthy come March, this is a different team than the one we saw UNC emasculate at Ford Field back in early December.
Villanova 102, Marquette 84. Seems like a long time ago when Marquette was undefeated in the Big East, doesn’t it? Props to whomever we read today that predicted Villanova (not Marquette) would end up in the top 4 of the Big East Tourney (Katz? Goodman?). In a statistical oddity, Villanova hit between 54-59% of every shooting category, which is largely a good thing (except FTs, of course). The Cats hit 13 threes en route to 59% overall to score 100+ pts for the second consecutive game. Scottie Reynolds (27/4) and Corey Fisher (21/4) did the most damage, but this game was an offensive player’s paradise – nine players hit double figures. Marquette was led by (who else?) Jerel McNeal’s 23/4/7 assts, but the Golden Eagles suddenly look like a team with severe limitations defensively. They get a two-game breather before the crucible hits.
Other Games That Caught Your Fancy.
Florida St. 68, Virginia 57. Is there a Dave Leitao watch yet? If not, when will there be? Does 60-55 (24-33 ACC) over four years cut it? Regardless, UVa lost its eighth consecutive game, and FSU solidified its standing in third place in the conference (tied at 6-3 with Clemson).
Providence 77, South Florida 62. PC avoided the fate that befell Marquette at USF, and in so doing, continues to gum up the works in the second tier of the Big East for schools like Syracuse and Georgetown.
Texas 99, Oklahoma St. 74. UT easily avoided its first four-game losing streak in a long time by putting four players in double figures, led by AJ Abrams’ 20,and holding everyone except James Anderson (35 pts) down for OSU.
Clemson 87, Boston College 77. In a game that would potentially define the relative directions of both of these teams, Clemson played a strong second half behind Terrence Oglesby’s 21 pts (6 threes) and came away with a road win to go to 6-3 in the ACC. RTC Live was there.
Minnesota 62, Indiana 54. The Gophers avoided a letdown loss they couldn’t well afford behind reserve forward Paul Carter’s 22/6 off the bench. No other Gopher hit double figures.
Story of the Night. UCLA’s freshman class. Last year’s freshman class arguably boasted the best player in the country in Kevin Love, but this year’s version, while lacking in equivalent star power, may more than compensate for Love’s loss with its depth and diversity of skills. Jrue Holiday was the only rookie starter tonight in UCLA’s win against Prairie View A&M, but his four classmates (Drew Gordon, Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson and J’Mison Morgan) each came off the bench and contributed aplenty. The quintet accounted for 41% of the minutes, 44% of the points, 44% of the rebounds and 43% of the assists tonight in the 82-58 win. Ok, and 54% of the turnovers, but still, not a bad start for this freshman class of Bruins. As for the game itself, it appears that UCLA still knows how to rebound (41-18) and the defense is still stingy – Prairie View was held to a mere 23% shooting in the first half; the fact that they shot 42% for the game indicates that either UCLA lost focus in the second half or Prairie View settled down – we’re leaning toward the former as an explanation. Darren Collison led the way as he hit five threes en route to a 19/3/4 asst night. The Bruins will play Miami (OH) tomorrow night in the second round of the CvC in a game that should combine for about 50 total pts. Once again, ESPN isn’t allowing embedded videos so we’ll have to settle for linked highlights.
Other Games.S. Illinois 80, UMass 73. We thought this would be the best game of the night, and it looks like we were right, as S. Illinois got themselves down nine at halftime to UMass before storming back behind nine threes in the second half to pull away in the last few minutes to win another home game. Bryan Mullins had a huge night for SIU, going for 16/13/4 stls for the home team, but Kevin Dillard’s four threes in the second half didn’t hurt. UMass was led by Ricky Harris with 24/5, but the stat that jumped off the Minutemen’s page was starting PG Chris Lowe’s TEN turnovers (with zero assists). Michigan 76, Northeastern 56. Gotta admit that we thought this game had upset potential, and we couldn’t have been more wrong. Michigan’s Manny Harris followed up his impressive season debut with nearly a trip-dub (26/10/8 assts), as UM held Northeastern to 29% shooting (17% from three) for the game. UM Hoops points out that, if Michigan is going to threaten this year, they’ll need to shore up their work on the boards. Northeastern grabbed twenty offensive rebounds tonight (amazingly, they only had 29 total boards), and with UCLA looming on the horizon next week in MSG (probably), the Wolverines will need to repair that deficiency. Miami (OH) 70, Weber St. 66. So in the other half of the Westwood bracket, Miami (OH) won a game on a three by Kenny Hayes (24 pts) with 1.7 seconds left on the clock, despite losing nearly every major statistical category in the game. The Redhawks were outshot (by 10% FG), outrebounded (by 7), outassisted (by 3), and yet they still prevailed. How? Turnovers, kids. Seven additional TOs by Weber St. gave Miami just enough extra possessions to sneak by. Miami will play UCLA tomorrow night for the right to play at MSG, and we expect Charlie Coles to have something up his sleeve to make this game interesting for a while.
WYN2K. This is not the same Pac-10 conference as last year, plain and simple. Gone are lottery picks OJ Mayo (USC), Russell Westbrook (UCLA), Kevin Love (UCLA), Brook Lopez (Stanford) and Jerryd Bayless (Arizona). Gone are Robin Lopez (Stanford) and Ryan Anderson (Cal), also first-rounders. Gone are Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (UCLA) and Davon Jefferson (USC), who went in the second round and not at all, respectively. This year’s Pac-10 transition isn’t just limited to players. There are new coaches at Oregon St. (Craig Robinson), Stanford (Johnny Dawkins), Cal (Mike Montgomery) and Arizona (Russ Pennell). It’s safe to say that no other major conference will look as significantly different from last year as the Pac-10 in 2008-09.
Predicted Champion.UCLA (NCAA #1). Perhaps the only consistency in the Pac-10 this year will be he continued dominance of Ben Howland’s UCLA Bruins over the rest of this conference. After three straight Final Fours and another superb recruiting class matriculating in Westwood, Howland has built his program to the enviable point where he can lose two lottery picks and another starter as early entries to the NBA Draft and not expect his program to suffer major slippage. While we don’t believe that this version of UCLA will be as good of a team as the 2007-08 edition, the Bruins’ position relative to the rest of the conference may actually be stronger this time around. He returns an all-american PG, Darren Collison, who has played in three F4s and led the nation in 3FG% last year (.525, min. 80 attempts). More importantly, Collison has a chip on his shoulder after a miserable national semifinal performance against Memphis last year (2 pts, 5 tos, 5 fouls) – when he’s directing his team effectively, there are few teams in America that can overcome their bruising defense and efficient offense. The national #1 recruiting class is headlined by all-world guard Jrue Holiday, who is expected to start from day one. His talent, along with a cadre of perimeter (Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson) and inside players (J’Mison Morgan, Drew Gordon), will give Howland numerous lineup options to throw at opponents. Furthermore, UCLA returns a finally-healthy Josh Shipp and Alfred Aboya to provide experience and a steady hand at crunch time. As we said before, we don’t believe this UCLA team will be as good as last year’s squad, but it probably doesn’t have to be. The Pac-10 has dropped in talent significantly, and UCLA should be able to roll through to another fantastic record and possible high RPI rating to garner another #1 seed out west. Here’s a pretty good indication of why Darren Collison is so important for this team.
NCAA Teams. We’re not sure that we see more than four NCAA teams in the Pac-10 this year, which sent six to the Big Dance last season and arguably deserved seven (Arizona St.). In the best-case scenario, things come together for certain teams and the league hopes for five on Selection Sunday, but there’s a more realistic chance that there will only be three NCAA selections made on that day.
Arizona St.(NCAA #4) – Herb Sendek’s coaching resume shows that once he gets a program to the 20-win plateau for the first time, it typically stays there. In other words, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that ASU, who is returning its top eight players from a 21-13 NIT quarterfinalist, will regress this season. The key player, of course, is James Harden, a coulda-been-one-and-done, who lit up the conference for 18/5/3 assts, including 41% from behind the arc (and 53% overall). Harden is a future lottery pick in a league where the only other potential such picks are freshmen (DeRozan, Holiday). Pac-10 teams are not going to enjoy their trips to Tempe this year.
USC(NCAA #8) – We struggled in making this selection, but the thing that pushes USC into the top three of the Pac-10 is simply, talent. Other than UCLA, no other program has as much pure talent that it can put on the floor. Undisciplined, maddening talent – sure – but that’s Tim Floyd for ya. Demar DeRozan wll be a highlight reel for his one year in LA, but he has considerable help next to him, assuming they can all learn to share the ball and play together. Daniel Hackett, Taj Gibson and Dwight Lewis are all talented players, and if UNC transfer Alex Stepheson is deemed eligible to play for the Trojans this year, USC has enough talent to make a run at the Pac-10 title. We don’t expect that to happen because Ben Howland is Ben Howland and Tim Floyd is Tim Floyd, but the talent differential excuse doesn’t hold water anymore.
Washington St.(NCAA #10) – We’re taking a bit of a risk with Wazzu at fourth and a bubble team for the NCAAs, but we truly believe that Tony Bennett is a system coach. Like Bo Ryan at Wisconsin, the names on the backs of the jerseys are largely irrelevant to the success of the program. They’re going to run their slower-than-Xmas stuff no matter which faces are running around out there, and in so doing, dare the rest of the Pac-10 to figure it out. Now we’re not saying that the losses of Derrick Low, Kyle Weaver and Robbie Cowgill won’t hurt – after all, that trio was the most decorated group of players in Washington St. history; but with center Aron Baynes returning along with guard Taylor Rochestie and small forward Daven Harmerling, Bennett has more than enough experience to continue confounding skeptics up in Pullman.
NIT Teams.
Washington (NIT) – This program has seemed to be in a funk ever since Brandon Roy left the dreary environs of Seattle. If the Huskies are going to take advantage of a weaker Pac-10 to make a run at the NCAA Tournament (or the NIT), they’re going to have to get another superb season from PF Jon Brockman (18/12 on 54% FG). But that won’t be enough without improved performances from Quincy Pondexter and Justin Dentmon on the perimeter. Freshman Isaiah Thomas is getting some hype from Husky fans – perhaps he can push them over the top.
Others.
California – The story here is obviously Mike Montgomery’s return to college coaching at his former employer’s bitterest rival. Had Cal held onto star player Ryan Anderson, we would have considered the Bears as a bubble NCAA team. We do think Monty will get there eventually, as he did at Long Beach St. and Stanford (not exactly powerhouses when he arrived), but he’s not a quick-fix guy and it will take time to undo the culture of mediocrity left by Ben Braun.
Arizona – On talent alone, with Chase Budinger, Nic Wise and Jordan Hill, the Wildcats should be a top three Pac-10 team. However, with the fiasco that unfolded last month and the eyebrow-raising hire of the fomer Arizona State radio announcerRuss Pennell as the head coach, we’re not sure anyone will actually want to play for UA this season. Putting them seventh was a gift.
Oregon – We still can’t figure out how Ernie Kent got a big contract extension, but we suppose it doesn’t take much to satisfy people in Eugene. At least until Mark Few takes an interest in coaching in the Pac-10. With only one significant player returning, the 5’6 Tajuan Porter, and nine new faces, we just don’t see the Ducks making a return trip to the NCAAs this season.
Stanford – We think Johnny Dawkins is in for a surprise in Palo Alto this season. Nobody has any clue as to how good of a coach he will be, but we can say with a degree of certainty that the only thing keeping the Cardinal afloat last year was the interior presence of the comical Lopez twins. The guardplay was relatively abysmal (39.5% shooting), and oh, well, now the Lopezes are gone. Good luck with that, JD.
Oregon St. – Hey, did you guys hear that new head coach Craig Robinson is Barack Obama’s bro-in-law? Wehadn’teither. Screw Corvallis, with Robinson’s financial resume, he should be in DC helping Barry fix the economy. Seriously though, last year, OSU might have been the worst major conference team we’d ever seen (Indiana has a shot at bettering that this year). Ferguson had success at Brown, though, which is a herculean task in its own right, so maybe he can get a few Ws in Corvallis this season. Three or four would be miraculous.
RPI Boosters.
Washington v. Kansas (11.24.08)
UCLA @ Texas (12.04.08)
USC @ Oklahoma (12.04.08)
Arizona @ Texas A&M (12.05.08)
Gonzaga @ Washington St. (12.10.08)
Arizona v. Gonzaga (12.14.08)
Kansas @ Arizona (12.23.08)
Notre Dame @ UCLA (02.07.09)
Important Games.
UCLA @ USC (01.11.09)
Arizona St. @ UCLA (01.17.09)
USC @ Washington St. (01.24.09)
USC @ UCLA (02.04.09)
USC @ Arizona St. (02.15.09)
Washington @ UCLA (02.19.09)
Arizonan @ Arizona St. (02.22.09)
Neat-O Stat. The Pac-10, with only ten conference members, is the only BCS league that plays a true round-robin schedule of home/away games with every other team. We like this because it gives a true measure of the strength of each team relative to one another in the conference. There are no plans on the horizon to expand the Pac-10 to twelve members (for football reasons, the NCAA requires twelve teams to have a postseason championship game).
65 Team Era. The Pac-10 has traditionally been the weakest of the six major conferences in its NCAA Tournament performance, going 127-96 (.570) over the era. The league simply doesn’t put as many teams into the Tournament as its peers, earning 4.1 bids per year – the next lowest is the Big 12 with 4.8 per year, and the “Super Six” average is 5 bids per year. As might be expected as a correlation to that fact, the Pac-10 is also last among the six conferences in #1 seeds (12), S16s (36) and F4s (9). UCLA can’t do it all, folks!
Final Thoughts. UCLA has led the re-emergence of the Pac-10 conference as a basketball powerhouse the last several seasons, but turmoil among several previously consistent programs (Arizona, Stanford) has put the possibility of UCLA and the Nine Dwarves back into the conversation. One thing that we can be certain of is that Ben Howland will win and win big as long as he’s residing in Westwood. He hasn’t won a national title yet, but it seems a foregone conclusion that one of these years he’ll break through and win the brass ring. The rest of the Pac-10 is going to have to figure out a way to recruit on par with UCLA as well as perform in March before this league will be considered a national power again. We know that Pac-10 schools can attract star talent across the spectrum, but can they be coached up to taste national success?
