The official start of college basketball tipped off Friday night with celebratory practices, scrimmages, dunk contests and other silliness from campuses across the nation.  While we’re on record that this collection of events now misnamed as “Midnight Madness” has lost its way, we’re not enough of a stick-in-the-mud to chasten anyone over what amounts to a bunch of good, clean fun.  The important thing is that for 345 Division I basketball schools, another journey has begun.  Your hungry eye are telling you that the returning players look a little quicker; the new recruits jump a little big higher; and, your belief that once again anything is possible is as certainly ingrained in fans in October as it is that the orange, yellow and red leaves on the trees will no longer be there soon.  Welcome to next year, everyone.

On Friday night we took a real-time look at some of the interesting things going on around the country; yesterday we published the best 13 dunks from Midnight Madnesses around the land.  Today, let’s review how some of the bluebloods from around the sport rang in the new season.

A Gym, A Spotlight, and a Basketball (credit: genevievebabyyy)

Kansas.  The neatest thing that the Jayhawks have made into a tradition is their annual Aerosmith “Dream On” montage as a part of Late Night in the Phog.  This year’s version was no less spine-tingling than some of the others — they do a great job with it, and one thing we hadn’t seen before was KU superstar Danny Manning dunking all over the Russian national team (CCCP) after they tried to muscle him around back in the day.  The fact that a program as storied and historic as this one is considered “irrelevant” in conference realignment nonsense really ticks us off. Read the rest of this entry »

ESPN.com had an interesting series of stories that went up today regarding various folks’ favorite college basketball arenas to visit and the toughest ones to play in.  As always when you read blurbs of primary source information, it’s enlightening to see the reasoning behind their choices.  For example, we never knew that NC State’s old home was such an ACC snake pit, but ESPN commentators Jay Bilas and Hubert Davis both independently cited Reynolds Coliseum as the toughest arena they ever played in. Davis even claimed that he never scored “on the opposite basket away from our bench in the first half” due to the flustered situation he found himself in all four years he visited Raleigh.

A number of media types also weighed in with their favorite places to experience a game, and several of the old faithfuls represent well here — Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium (3 votes), Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse (2 votes) and the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden (2 votes) — along with a few other tried-and-trues including Oklahoma State’s Gallagher-Iba Arena, Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, Penn’s Palestra, and UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion (1 vote each).  But it was the list provided by Dana O’Neil (excellent usage of “sepia,” by the way) from her interviews of several head coaches back in July on the recruiting trail that really caught our eye. First, here’s her list:

Fifteen prominent coaches chose nine different arenas between them.  Three of those are already retired to the dustbin of history, and three others are clearly a personal house of horrors to specific coaches.  Not many people in this business will choose a place like Murray State Arena over somewhere like the Kohl Center or Breslin Arena, but Big Ten coach Bruce Weber did.  The remaining joints are again places we’re all familiar with as incredibly difficult to walk out with a win, but we quickly noticed that there was something peculiar about the responses among O’Neil’s interviewees.  Take a closer look — of the 15 coaches, only one of them gave an answer that includes a site where his team must regularly play games.

Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Murawa is the RTC Pac-12 and Mountain West correspondent and a frequent columnist. 

It’s that time of year again. Off in the distance, it could be a mirage, or it could be the start of college basketball season. It’s probably a mirage, but the Great Sports Desert (you know, that time of year between the end of the NBA Finals and the start of college football when normal American males actually have time to get stuff done) ends Thursday, as college football kicks off its 142^nd season. And given the offseason that college football has had, it couldn’t come any sooner. Unfortunately, given all the scandals and arrests and the like, according to my source at the NCAA, it appears that literally every college football player will be ineligible for the coming year (at least I assume that is true – it’s not a very good source). As a result, football programs across this great nation have been scrambling for some last minute replacements. And, since we here at RTC are nothing if not diligent, we’ve spent the last few weeks scouring college football camps across the country while other lesser outlets have been reporting on things like a little scuffle in Baton Rouge and something-or-other about Miami (I’ll admit, I never got through that whole article, but I think I got the gist of it – Miami is a nice place to go to school, right?). Anyway, since we’re the only ones who seem to be on top of this sea change in college football, we’ll let you all in on some of our wisdom as we preview college basketball’s richer, more-spoiled sibling, with RTC’s official 2011 College Football All-American team.

Offense

High School Star Aaron Craft Will Fill In Nicely for Terrelle Pryor at OSU

• QB: Aaron Craft (6’2″, 190 lbs), Ohio State: In light of the Buckeye football program’s recent troubles, new head coach Luke Stickell turns the reins over to the sophomore Craft. He’s not the quickest or fleetest of foot, but he is accurate, he’s tough and he’s a leader. There has been plenty of talk about the Heisman Trophy campaign of North Carolina’s Kendall Marshall, but until he takes better care of the ball (last year, he turned the ball over on almost 30% of all possessions), we’ll give the nod to Craft, who at least has the advantage of having played QB for three years in high school.
• RB: Jordan Taylor (6’1″, 195 lbs), Wisconsin: The newest Badger tailback may not have the size of former greats like Ron Dayne and John Clay, but Taylor is a tough and smart runner who excels at finding a crease and finishing through contact.
• Read the rest of this entry »

The second major international basketball event of the summer involving collegians is set to tip off on Saturday, and Team USA appears that it will take a heavily perimeter-oriented team into the World University Games in Shenzhen, China.  Of the twelve-man roster of mostly rising juniors and seniors, the Yanks appear to be at a serious size disadvantage with only Greg Mangano (Yale) standing at 6’10” and the beefy but 6’8″-ish forwards Tim Abromaitis (Notre Dame), Trevor Mbakwe (Minnesota), JaMychal Green (Alabama) and Draymond Green (Michigan State) likely to be giving up several inches against many of their opponents.

As discussed when the tryout roster was released in June, the WUG hasn’t been kind to Team USA over the last decade of competition.  Only the 2005 team featuring Duke’s Shelden Williams brought home the gold medal, and even a 2009 team that had the pending NPOY Evan Turner on its squad could only merit a bronze.  Apologies to Ashton Gibbs (Pittsburgh) and Abromaitis, but it’s unlikely there’s a 2011-12 NPOY hiding on this roster, which means that Matt Painter‘s team will need to take advantage of his cadre of three-point bombers that he has at his disposal.  Gibbs, Abromaitis, Marcus Denmon (Missouri), John Jenkins (Vanderbilt), Darius Miller (Kentucky), and Orlando Johnson (UC Santa Barbara) all made better than 40% from distance last season.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. In a somewhat shocking turn of events at the FIBA Under-19 World Championships in Latvia, Team USA lost 79-74 Friday to Russia in a quarterfinal game where the Yanks simply could not throw the ball in the ocean from outside the arc (0-9).  Nor, apparently, could they defend it, as Russia dropped 12 threes on its end, making it virtually impossible for a team lacking much of an inside presence to win the game.  The American team regrouped to throttle Poland on Saturday before finishing the tournament by beating Australia, 78-77, Sunday to take the fifth place trophy (USA’s worst showing since 2003, also a fifth place finish).  Connecticut’s Jeremy Lamb was the undisputed leader of this team, averaging 16/4 in taking 53 more shots than anyone else on the team, but the surprise of the squad may have been Creighton’s Doug McDermott, the 2010-11 MVC ROY but someone that most national fans haven’t yet heard of.  The rising sophomore went for averages of 11/6 in the tournament and proved the only player on the roster capable of reliably hitting threes (39.3%) — keep an eye out for this future March Madness hero in coming seasons.
2. So what happened to cause a disappointing fifth place finish (Team USA was expected to win gold or silver) in Latvia this year?  Luke Winn writes that the hordes of A-list stars who opted to stay stateside this summer — from UNC’s Harrison Barnes to Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger — had an obvious impact; but he also mentions some of the chatter from NBA GMs and scouts who openly suggested that some of the players didn’t take the competition seriously enough.  Whether this is yet another indictment of the infernal AAU system in America, or simply a matter of players foolishly failing to recognize that the rest of the world can play too, we’re not sure.  But the fact remains that USA Basketball is nowhere near as fearsome of an entity as it once was — especially at the younger levels.
3. We always talk about ranking the programs on the measure of how well they put players into the NBA, but that doesn’t always give us the entire picture.  For example, a school might have ten players in the League, but they may all ride the pine.  Another school might have half that many total players, but three or four of those could be All-Stars.  Dollars for Ballers took a stab at this problem by considering player salaries.  While @SportsGuy33 persuasively argues that NBA salaries are not always commensurate with talent and productivity (hello, Rashard Lewis!), it’s a better proxy than none at all.  So given this, would you believe that Michigan State’s five players — Jason Richardson, Zach Randolph, Morris Peterson, Shannon Brown, and Charlie Bell — had the highest salary average at $7.76M than any other school with at least three players?  Duke, with its 13 total pros, many of whom have been around for a while, collected nearly $90M in salaries last season.  Really, the only way to do this kind of analysis accurately is to tie programs to individual and team outcomes, but this is a decent start.
4. Some players get tattoos and carve messages into their hair to rep for their families; incoming Kentucky freshman Michael Gilchrist decided to change his name.  According to his tweet on Friday afternoon, one of the best freshmen in the country has officially changed his name to Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.  He chose to add Kidd to his existing surname to honor his deceased uncle, Darrin Kidd, a mentor who suffered a fatal heart attack on the same day MKG signed his letter of intent last year; and, of course, his father, Michael Gilchrist, Sr., was shot and killed fifteen years ago.
5. On a sad note, former TCU head coach Neil Dougherty died last Tuesday during a jog in Indianapolis.  He wasn’t carrying identification and is not a local resident — he was in town as part of his current job with iHoops, an NBA/NCAA joint initiative — so after passing during the run, his body was kept as a “John Doe” until last Friday when his identity was revealed.  Dougherty was a long-time assistant throughout the 80s and 90s, most notably at his home-state school of Kansas under Roy Williams, and his age of only 50 years has many folks in Lawrence and Fort Worth shaking their heads.  He leaves a wife, Patti, and three children.  RIP, Coach Dougherty.

1. From the In Case You Missed It file, late last week we published a piece analyzing the weird NCAA/Kentucky/John Calipari love triangle that occurred as a result of the school honoring Cal’s 500th win last season.  If you were on vacation or otherwise pre-occupied last week, the synopsis goes like this: Everyone is aware that the NCAA has vacated  42  of Calipari’s wins at UMass and Memphis because of the use of ineligible players (Marcus Camby and Derrick Rose).  Recently,  though, the NCAA learned from a “rival fan” that Kentucky’s official media materials still included the 42 wins as a part of Calipari’s aggregate total, thereby resulting in a “500th win” celebration that occurred late last season after a game against Florida.  The NCAA requested that Kentucky make good on reconciling its win total with their own, and, after some lawyerly back-and-forth over the issue, Kentucky eventually acceded to the governing body’s request rather than face a hearing in front of the Committee of Infractions.  As we stated on Friday, this is all fine and well — the win total should be the one recognized by the NCAA — but we’re not sure that the NCAA recognized the bag of worms centipedes it was opening with this very issue.  In our analysis, we found three examples of active coaches who “boast” vacated wins themselves — Steve Fisher at San Diego State, Todd Bozeman at Morgan State, and Mike Jarvis at Florida Atlantic — as but three more situations where their schools’ media guides represent a picture different than one warranted by the NCAA.  Will the NCAA begin knocking on those schools’ virtual doors in coming weeks as well?  We can’t imagine that the NCAA really wanted to waste its scarce and valuable resources on something so fundamentally trivial, but if the organization doesn’t step up and take responsibility for the mess it’s created here, then what little credibility it might have had pertaining to accusations of selective enforcement will be completely lost amidst a pile of balloons and confetti.
2. They all come home eventually.  Former Indiana superstar Calbert Cheaney, still the Big Ten’s all-time leading scorer nearly two decades after his graduation, will return to Bloomington to become Tom Crean’s Director of Basketball Operations next season.  Arguably the last great player Bob Knight coached, Cheaney was a three-time All-American at IU, culminating in becoming the consensus NPOY during the 1992-93 season.  When the old-timers talk about “Indiana Basketball,” Cheaney’s Hoosier teams are the most recent version of what they have in mind — during his junior and senior seasons at IU, Indiana went 58-11 while making a Final Four (1992) and Elite Eight (1993) under his on-floor direction.  Cheaney spent 13 seasons playing in the NBA and the last couple of years working as a special assistant in player development to the Golden State Warriors, but with a strong sense that the Tom Crean era in Bloomington is reaching a now-or-never point, Cheaney may be well-positioned to move up the ladder there quickly if he shows any coaching acumen at all.
3. Bill Self picked up an impact player over the weekend who should be able to contribute to his Jayhawks immediately next season in the form of 6’7 Kevin Young, a former Loyola Marymount wing who spent last year getting his grades in order as a volunteer assistant coach at Barstow (KS) Community College.  The bouncy swingman is a great last-minute addition for Kansas, who even with its prolific depth of talent will still have some trouble absorbing the loss of seven players next season.  Young presumably could step right into a starting role next year, having performed at a high level (10/6 in two seasons) at LMU and possessing more experience than anyone else on the 2011-12 roster at his position.  KU fans are likely feeling considerably better today about their upcoming squad than they did just a few short days ago.
4. We mentioned a little over a week ago that USA Basketball’s World University Games training camp roster included 22 current collegians in the hopes that next year’s NPOY wouldn’t end up riding the pine as former Ohio State superstar Evan Turner did on 2009’s team.   We’re still waiting to hear how those selections turn out, but the USA Under-19 three-day training camp concluded this weekend, and a lucky 13 rising freshmen and sophomores will represent the United States in international competition beginning in June 30 in Latvia.  The roster includes:  Keith Appling (Michigan State), James Bell (Villanova), Anthony Brown (Stanford), Jahii Carson (Arizona State), Tim Hardaway, Jr. (Michigan), Joe Jackson (Memphis), Jeremy Lamb (UConn), Meyers Leonard (Illinois), Khyle Marshall (Butler), Javon McCrea (Buffalo), Doug McDermott (Creighton), Tony Mitchell (North Texas), and Patric Young (Florida).  The two biggest surprise omissions were the reigning Pac-10 ROY, Allen Crabbe (California) and all-ACC rookie Travis McKi (Wake Forest).
5. It now appears all but certain that the November 11 Veteran’s Day game between Michigan State and North Carolina will take place on the USS Carl Vinson, the same aircraft carrier that — how should we put this? — disposed of Osama bin Laden’s body a little over a month ago.  The game will take place on the flight deck, and since it’s usually 70 degrees and clear in San Diego regardless of the time of year, the odds are that this thing will go off without a weather hitch.  Still, it would be amusing if a few light breezes blew in during the second half to make the shooters adjust on the fly, a little like this.  We can always dream.

Much of the talk last week about Gary Williams’ replacement centered on the relative attractiveness of the Maryland basketball head coaching position.  It was interesting to see where people fell on this.  Some folks viewed the job as a borderline top ten slot, citing its rabid fan base, its top-tier facilities, its conference affiliation and its location in a recruiting hotbed as evidence supporting that contention.  Others suggested that the position was really more in line with a top 25 ranking, a place where fans have unreasonable expectations and league affiliation (read: Duke and UNC) actually hinder the program’s status more than it helps.  It’s an interesting debate, and it got us thinking about how we would rank the top twenty or so jobs in college basketball as of today.

It Says Here That Duke is the Top Job in College Basketball

After thinking about it for a few days, we broke the twenty out into five groupings, as shown below.  We view the jobs within each grouping as roughly equal to each other, using the inexact criteria that coaches would be unlikely to jump ship within a grouping, but would be heavily enticed to do so in a grouping above theirs.  Note the word, “inexact.”  Each individual has different motivations and will make professional decisions on criteria distinct and separate from ours (e.g., Billy Donovan turning down Kentucky twice, and Jay Wright/Jamie Dixon turning down Maryland).  But this analysis doesn’t take the current coach into consideration; this is meant to be an examination of the attractiveness of the job itself.  Feel free to tell us how stupid we are in the comments below.

Coaching Pinnacles

These five positions are destination jobs that guarantee big paychecks, huge followings, and, unless an elite NBA job comes calling, an expectation of long-term stability.  They represent all but one of the top six programs of all-time, and the daily pressure on each of these fellows to succeed at the highest level is among the most excruciating in collegiate sports.

1. Duke. Possesses unbelievable facilities with a national brand synonymous with long-term, sustained success.  Every college coach in America would give this job a glance if offered.
2. Kentucky. The only reason UK isn’t #1 is because dealing with the expectations of the always-rabid/sometimes-insane fanbase turns some coaches off on the job.  Otherwise, everything you need to succeed is in place.
3. North Carolina.  Only slightly less rabid of a fanbase than UK, but equally remarkable in resources, national support and pedigree.  The only negative is a prevailing sense of the coach having to be a Carolina “insider” to succeed there.
4. Kansas. Certainly few complaints here, buf it the top four jobs were available in the same year and three elite coaches were in the running, KU would be the odd school out of that musical chairs equation.
5. UCLA. Sigh… this job is still elite regardless of a juxtaposed fan base that on one hand is apathetic while on the other expecting Final Four and national championship banners every year.

The Football Schools of Eternal Comfort

Don't Worry, Be Happy...

These three jobs are roughly interchangeable.  They represent most of the amenities and professional respect of the above five positions with approximately 1% of the same pressure to perform.  Their coaches make massive amounts of money, have great facilities and enjoy fertile recruiting bases, but basketball remains a distant second banana on these three campuses and is unlikely to change soon.  So long as their teams don’t completely tank, they have better job security than just about anyone.

6.  Ohio State. OSU moves ahead of the other two in this grouping because the fans are generally more supportive of its program than at UT or UF and everything else — resources, recruiting, etc. — is pretty much a wash.
7.  Texas. Retirement job.  The pipeline of talent is such that the Texas coach can win 20-25 games every year in perpetuity with an occasional NCAA run and the vast majority of UT fans will be satisfied, even happy, with their program’s success.
8.  Florida. Why take a Kentucky job with ridiculous levels of expectation and pressure on an annual basis when you can coast with good teams year after year after year after year at Florida?  The theme among all of the schools in this grouping is long-term comfort without constant pressure to win a national title.

The Third Tier of Hope & Optimism

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Well, this is certainly interesting.  According to this piece from wralsportsfan.com, the aircraft carrier on which public enemy #1 Osama bin Laden was buried at sea could be the same one used for the Veteran’s Day event featuring an outdoor game between North Carolina and Michigan State next November.  One of two ships will be used for the game — either the USS Ronald Reagan or the USS Carl Vinson — and the Vinson is the carrier which received  and disposed of the body of the world’s most wanted terrorist last week.  If we get to cover this game on November 11, we’ll definitely do some looking around for evidence of this — perhaps a marker of some kind, or a Kilroy Was Here insignia.  Oh, and ESPN will carry this game — no surprise there.
2. Minnesota’s Tubby Smith on Tuesday announced that he has been dealing with prostate cancer for the last year, but his most recent check-up revealed that he is now 100% free of the disease and he is “feeling great” as a result.  This is great news, of course, and Tubby joins a number of prominent head coaches who have been treated for this illness in the past several years — names including Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, UConn’s Jim Calhoun, and most recently, St. John’s’ Steve Lavin.  We’re pretty sure that this is not something confined to Big East coaches and Tubby Smith, but it does prove again the necessity for men over the age of 50 to have regular testing in this area, as it could ultimately save your life.
3. More on this later today, but the $200,000 raise that Rick Barnes received after his second straight disappointing season (and fourth in five years) proves that the Texas head coaching job is a plum position for someone who can simply tread the water of reasonableness year after year.  His new salary will be $2.4M per year now, but a 6-5 NCAA record in the last five years considering the number of top prospects that have passed through Austin is somewhat shameful.  At a basketball school, he would have already been run out of town for this level of performance; but at Texas, it’s worth a  9% raise.
4. Now that rosters are mostly set for the 2011-12 season (knuckleheads over the summer notwithstanding), Luke Winn is ready to present us with his Power Rankings for next saeson.  How awesome is it that he dropped some Belmont on us in the #16 slot.  Keep workin’ it, Luke.  While on the topic of rankings for next season, Jeff Goodman also came out with his Top 25 yesterday.  He, however, shamefully did not rank the Bruins from Belmont.
5. And now for something completely different.  Remember that Venoy Overton story from the latter half of the season that involved him being investigated and later exonerated for a sexual assault?  Seattle Weekly dishes the details from the 227-page police report that paints a somewhat different picture than the one bandied about the Seattle area for the better part of two months last season.  It’s well worth a read, especially with respect to holding our tongue the next time we roll our eyes when a player gets accused of some kind of sexual assault — you just never know.   Read it.

1. Some transfer news was made Tuesday, as Michigan State sophomore center Garrick Sherman announced that he would be heading to Notre Dame for his final two seasons, while NC State freshman guard Ryan Harrow and new head Wolfpack coach Mark Gottfried agreed to part ways.  The 6’10 Sherman averaged 3/3 while shooting 70% from the field for Tom Izzo last year, and he actually started half of the team’s 34 games — Mike Brey is picking up a potentially solid offensive contributor when Sherman becomes eligible in the 2012-13 season.  As for Harrow, the former five-star recruit has not indicated where he intends to transfer yet, but NCSU said it will release him to any non-ACC school he desires.  He was clearly disappointed in last month’s firing of Sidney Lowe, and although the talented guard averaged 9/3 in 23 MPG last year for NC State, he’ll take his services elsewhere over the summer (hot rumor, later denied: Kentucky).
2. Keeping with the NC State theme, this is stupdendous.  In four years of doing this, we may have never come across a more pointless article than this one from Andrew Jones on FoxSports.com.  Apparently the relatives of NC State’s new live mascot, Tuffy the dog (a Tamaskan), were poisoned by being fed fish laced with antifreeze.  Not Tuffy himself, mind you, but the relatives of Tuffy, both of whom reside 170 miles away from Raleigh, the city where Tuffy lives and will next season begin work as the Wolfpack live mascot.  You’re probably wondering how someone could come up with 500+ words on this story, but we encourage you to read the full article where you will learn that Tamaskans are Finnish dogs, that they resemble wolves but do not share ancestry with them, and that NC State AD Debbie Yow, who proffered the original idea for a live mascot, thinks that poisoning the parents of Tuffy is “sick.”  Oh, and you’ll also learn some enlightening information as to why actual wolves cannot used at NC State games (y’know, because they’re wolves).  We’re 100% certain that somewhere Gary Williams is loving all of this.
3. That John Calipari/Dominican Republic thing from last year might come to fruition after all, as the DR apparently has an offer on the table for the Kentucky coach to lead its team in the 2011 Tournament of the Americas. The country is attempting to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and so far, Calipari is playing coy by asking “why are [they] calling me?”  If he decides to take the job, he would work with the team for a six-week period in August and September, giving his cadre of new blue chippers just enough time on campus to cause all sorts of mayhem before the head coach returns for the start of practice.
4. We hope that if Calipari takes the new summer job opportunity, he doesn’t expect to get the same kinds of crowds he enjoys in Lexington.  The NCAA released its attendance numbers yesterday, and Kentucky had the highest average home attendance with 23,603 fans jammed into Rupp Arena every night.  Syracuse was second last season with an average of 22,312 fans per game, and the sport as a whole totaled 27.6 million fans for the entire year.  Across the entirety of D1 basketball schools, that comes to an average of roughly 80,000 fans per school per season (or around 5,000 per home game).  Two Mountain West schools, BYU and San Diego State, had the largest attendance increases over last year, both averaging more than 4,000 more fans per game in 2010-11.  The full NCAA report is here.
5. In a blockbuster expose piece on Monday, the New York Times’ Katie Porter blows the cover off the sham known as Title IX and how schools manipulate their team rosters to ensure compliance with the federal law.  From discussions of female cross-country runners at South Florida stating that they didn’t know they were on the team to male fencers acting as female athletes at Cornell, it’s clear from her investigation and analysis that the original intent of this law (equity in sporting opportunities) has been bastardized to a point where reform is not only badly desired, it appears necessary.  Great read — check it out immediately if you have not yet seen it.

From Jimmer to Kemba to a Blue Devil toe that wouldn’t heal and a Rocky Top saga that wouldn’t end, it’s been another wild season for college basketball fans from coast to coast.  As we bask in the afterglow of 68 teams down to UConn’s championship, let’s take a look back at the top 15 storylines (in no particular order) of the 2010-11 season.

In an Epic Season-Long Battle, Kemba Smiled Last

1. Kemba vs. Jimmer.  The national Player of the Year race hasn’t been this exciting since Adam Morrison of Gonzaga and JJ Redick of Duke took turns outdoing each other from opposite ends of the country back in 2006.  Yet these two one-name guards, Kemba from the Boogie Down Bronx and Jimmer from a tiny town in upstate New York, electrified fans nationwide with their unique ability to take over games at Connecticut and BYU, respectively.  Kemba Walker, the cocksure Husky guard with the ball on a string and a crossover dribble to make defenders cry, carried UConn to 32 wins, a sterling 14-0 record in knockout games and the school’s third national championship in what was supposed to be a “down” year.  Fredette, the nation’s leading scorer at 28.9 PPG and owner of a deadeye jumper pure out to 30 feet,  inspired fans to call their cable companies to add The Mountain to their channel lineup.  While it was The Jimmer who swept the NPOY awards (which are based on regular season performance only), we here at RTC factored Kemba’s Big East Tournament MVP and NCAA Tournament MOP performances into our selection of the UConn superstar as our 2010-11 Player of the Year.
2. A Tourney to Remember, a Championship to Forget.  On the opening Thursday of the NCAA Tournament, still the first “real” day of the Dance to most people, five of the first eight games of the day ended on the final possession.  In addition to close games, there were upsets aplenty in the first weekend, as Butler (knocking out #1 seed Pittsburgh), VCU, Marquette, Florida State and Richmond all broke through as double-digit seeds into the Sweet Sixteen.  The fun didn’t stop there, wither Arizona and Kentucky beating #1s Duke and Ohio State, respectively, in the Sweet Sixteen, followed by VCU shocking the world with its destruction of #1 Kansas in the Elite Eight.  The combined seed total of #3 Connecticut, #4 Kentucky, #8 Butler and #11 VCU was the highest ever in a Final Four, and although the two semifinal games were hard-fought and exciting, the 53-41 championship tilt between UConn and Butler was widely regarded as an ugly finish to what had been a tremendous tournament.  Butler’s 18% shooting for the game was the worst-ever in a championship, and the meme that the national sports media was that such a dud represented some kind of fault in the sport itself.  Last year’s Duke-Butler championship and 2008’s Memphis-Kansas games were awesome — where were those people then?
3. Kyrie Irving’s Toe.  In early December, there was some talk that preseason #1 Duke, with All-Americans Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler returning to join wunderkind point guard Kyrie Irving, could go unbeaten this year.  All of that discussion ended on December 4 when Irving sprained his toe during what appeared to be a routine play in a win over Butler.  The young player with an explosive extra gear in the open court suffered damage to a ligament and bone that made cutting, running and jumping without pain very difficult.  Subsequently, after sitting out over three months resting and rehabilitating the unusual injury, Irving returned to the court during the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament.  While at first it appeared that Irving could be the x-factor needed to put Duke into the driver’s seat in a crowded field of national title contenders, there was some question as to whether his return to the lineup threw off the delicate chemistry that Coach K and his players had engendered throughout the season.  The Devils were thoroughly dominated by Arizona and Derrick Williams in the Sweet Sixteen — Irving played well with 28 points against the Wildcats, but his backcourt mate Nolan Smith only managed eight points while committing six turnovers. Read the rest of this entry »