Scottie Wilbekin, Florida’s starting point guard, has been suspended indefinitely by Gators’ coach Billy Donovan for an undisclosed reason. And now might not be the best time for Florida to lose a starting point guard as Donovan isn’t the type of coach to take it easy in the early going of the non-conference schedule. Florida plays in the Carrier Classic on the USS Bataan on Friday, November 9, against Georgetown.

Gametime experience is crucial for Florida in adjusting to Scottie Wilbekin at the point.

“Scottie is a great kid who made some choices and did some things that I am not going to have him be a part of (this team),” Donovan said. “How long it lasts, I don’t know. But right now, I just felt like he didn’t need to be here.” When asked whether or not this was a serious violation involving NCAA violations or anything illegal, Donovan responded that, “Not, right now, nothing criminal or anything like that.”

The loss of Wilbekin could be a major setback for the Gators. Donovan was in the process of breaking in his new point guard with an otherwise experienced roster that went to the Elite Eight last year. Wilbekin is taking over the reins for departed senior Erving Walker, who was a three-year starter at point guard. A proper adjustment period during the early non-conference schedule could be crucial for Florida’s development as a team and for its trust in a new leader.

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1.  Yesterday was 2012 National Signing Day, and unfortunately the SEC didn’t fare well as it did last year. The league only landed one five-star recruit, Kentucky’s Archie Goodwin, according to Scout’s Evan Daniels. In Daniels’ conference breakdown, the SEC finished last out of the six power conferences one year after bringing in the most talent. Kentucky landed an additional top 30 prospect in Willie Cauley, while Florida was the other big winner grabbing two top 100 guards — #39 Braxton Ogbueze and #87 Michael Frazier. Auburn hauled in a surprising four-man class, good enough for third place so far in the conference rankings. There are still plenty of unsigned prospects available, so most teams will continue rounding out their classes during this signing period.
2. Mississippi State played another hard-fought game against a mid-major team, but went down 68-58 to Akron. The Dogs shot 34.5% from the field, and failed to get much production from Renardo Sidney. Sidney seemed winded throughout the game, and most troubling for Bulldog fans, he again sat on the bench during crunch time. Head coach Rick Stansbury did not play Sidney in the final four and a half minutes of last night’s game. “We were trying to fight from behind defensively,” Stansbury said. “They went small. You knew the answer to that.” Sidney’s production is a big key to the Bulldogs’ success, but it looks like he is coming undone at the seams well before even his biggest critics would have predicted.
3. Tennessee Volunteers head coach Cuonzo Martin has not only been impressed with his team’s hard work on the court, but praised their behavior off the court in his latest press conference. “They’ve done a good job, especially from the first day until now of just taking care of business on and off the court,” said Martin. “Doing the right things in the classroom, being consistent in going to class — which shouldn’t be an option, but just making sure guys go to class every day, with their tutor assignments — making sure they’ve been better.” Win/loss records are ultimately what head coaches are measured on, but it is refreshing to see a head coach who seems to genuinely care about his players’ well-being and success off the court.
4. We all love statistics. Admit it. There’s nothing better for basketball-crazed fans like ourselves than to sit down and analyze graphs and charts of tempo-free statistics. Luke Winn at Sports Illustrated (with the help of David Hess from Audacity of Hoops) noticed a gap in the statistics for defensive rankings for players and teams, and they have taken on the monumental task of measuring five championship contender’s possession by possession defensive prowess. Great stuff here, and one of the five teams analyzed happen to be the SEC’s Vanderbilt. The gist of the article is that Vandy needs to step up its’ defense with a need for “turnover creators and defensive rebounders. Vanderbilt ranked 308th nationally in turnover percentage last season (17.5), and 168th at protecting the defensive glass (67.9 defensive rebound percentage).” If the Commodores are to make a run at the SEC title or anything past the round of 64 in the NCAA Tournament, improvement will have to take place on the defensive end of the court for Kevin Stallings‘ club.
5. The SEC announced its 2012 SEC Men’s Basketball Preseason Awards on Wednesday. Thirty-two different players received votes, while seventeen players were honored. Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Vanderbilt each had three players named to the First or Second Team. Vanderbilt led the way with three All-SEC first team selections with reigning SEC Player of the Year John Jenkins along with teammates Jeffery Taylor and Festus Ezeli.

Every July, college basketball fans obsess over the July recruiting period where summer AAU legends are made and scholarships are won or lost. While most of the buzz this summer was over the superstars (particularly Shabazz Muhammad and class of 2013 recruit Nerlens Noel), the more interesting action was happening further down the ranking list. While ESPN’s decision to move Muhammad above Andre Drummond in their new rankings is interesting at some level, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean much. For the purposes of recruiting and scholarship offers, it is the guys that won’t be getting headlines on the front of ESPN.com or trending on Twitter who are more useful to look at. To that end, we took a look at the pre- and post-July recruiting rankings for the class of 2012 from ESPN.com and Scout.com to see which players were climbing up the ranking list and which ones were plummeting.

Shabazz and Drummond May Have Dominated the Headlines, But We Aren't as Interested in Them

To do this, we looked at where certain players were ranked before the July recruiting period and where they were ranked afterwards. The obvious caveat here is that rankings are subjective and some fans have accused scouts of a form of confirmation bias where they tend to rank players higher if they are recruited by certain schools (particularly Duke in basketball and Notre Dame in football) than if they were  being recruited by similarly powerful programs, but not the de facto face of the sport. Still, it seems reasonable to think that two independent scouts ranking players would be fairly reliable (assuming Dave Telep and Evan Daniels aren’t cheating off each other).

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