So the Maui Invitational ends tonight in an early-season blockbuster game – Notre Dame vs. North Carolina – and the CBE Classic and Paradise Jam are already finished, but fear not, hoopheads, there’s plenty more on the way this week..
Continuing tonight in MSG, we have the semifinals of the Preseason NIT. The finals will be on Friday night. Although the marquee teams aren’t as illustrious as some of the other names we’ll see over the next few days, the PNIT still holds a certain aura in terms of its prestige and respect among college fans. We like Purdue to wear down a spirited BC squad in the first game tonight, and Oklahoma to outlast Robert Vaden’s UAB team in the second game (Blake Griffin will have another monster game against UAB’s soft interior), setting up a top 10 showdown on Friday night between teams that you may not get to see much of this year (definitely must-see tv on Black Friday night). Read the rest of this entry »
Josh & Mike at Big Ten Geeks are the RTC correspondents for the Big Ten Conference.
Looking Back
The team that’s made the most noise in the Big Ten so far this season is Michigan. The Wolverines defeated UCLA 55-52 on their way to the Coaches vs. Cancer final, where Duke ran away in the second half. But it’s a long season, and we still can’t really say if Michigan is that good, or if UCLA is just that bad (probably a bit of both). What is encouraging, however, was the turnover situation for Beilein’s crew. The Wolverines have been forcing TOs while taking care of the ball on their end of the floor in this early part of the season, and what’s more, that trend continued against Duke, which is a difficult thing to do (last year, Duke was among the nation’s elite with respect to TOs on both sides of the ball). This was a staple of Beilein-ball when he was at West Virginia, so it’s more evidence that the players are adjusting to his system.
Oh, and Manny Harris has been unstoppable. He’s been taking about 29% of Michigan’s shots so far this season, and despite that high shot diet, he has maintained a superb efficiency (96 points on 49 shots). He’s also been rebounding like a SF and dishing assists like Mike Conley. He can’t, of course, keep this up. But the Big Ten is on notice – Manny is now MANNY.
Wisconsin has had a rough go of it early in the season. While they haven’t lost, they struggled more than they should have against Long Beach State, and Iona took them to overtime. There hasn’t been a glaring root cause, so this is probably not something to get too worked up over, but this is probably not a 30-win team.
Purdue and Michigan State have coasted in their early season schedules, but things will get more interesting soon.
Illinois posted a road win against Vanderbilt, and while the Commodores likely aren’t an NCAA team, the Illini weren’t exactly flush with road wins last season. One number that has been of great comfort to Illini fans is the 77% free throw shooting so far this season.
News & Notes. One piece of news worth reporting tonight. The NCAA denied USC transfer Alex Stepheson’s (from UNC) request to waive the requirement that he sit out this season. He petitioned to the NCAA based on the poor health of his father (similar to Tyler Smith at Tennessee last year), but the powers-that-be decided against him. This is a fairly big loss to Tim Floyd’s Trojans, but could we get some clarity and transparency from the NCAA on how these decisions are made?
Game of the Night.Kent St. 76, St. Louis 74 (OT). Tonight we check in on our good friend and epicurean Rick Majerus at St. Louis. Last we saw Majerus he was busily putting together some of the ugliest games in college basketball history. We hoped better for one of the seemingly nicest guys in the game this season. So far, we’re not sure things are working out much better. The Billikens scored 48 pts in a win against Missouri-St. Louis in their opener, but KSU’s Al Fisher ensured that Majerus’ team wouldn’t reach 2-0. Fisher scored 16 of his team’s 17 pts in the overtime period, including the game winner with 2.1 seconds remaining. He finished with 35/5 stls.
Upset of the Night.Mercer 78, Auburn 74. Are there any good teams in the SEC other than Tennessee? Granted, we didn’t expect much from Auburn this year, but for the second time in four days, Mercer has gone into an SEC gym in Alabama and pulled off a win (Mercer 72, Alabama 69). At this point, Mercer could lay a reasonable claim to being the best team in the SEC West. The difference in this game? Mercer outrebounded Auburn 36 to 18. Yep, you read that right. An A-Sun team with a front line that goes 6’6, 6’6, and 6’8 absolutely WHIPPED an SEC team on the boards. Heart, much?
Near-Upset of the Night. Michigan St. 70, IPFW 59. With 10:47 left in the second half, the score was IPFW 45-44 (what is it with Indiana and these infernal acronym schools???). A 13-0 MSU run over the next five minutes salted away the game for the Spartans. Somehow IPFW convinced Izzo to come to their place, and he almost seriously regretted it tonight. Raymar Morgan (22/6) led the way for MSU, who did not shoot the ball well (43% FG; 27% 3FG), and didn’t really defend all that well either (IPFW shot 46%). Props to former Hoosier Dane Fife’s team for throwing a mild scare into a top ten team.
Other Games of Mild Interest.
Wake Forest 120, UNC-Wilmington 88. Well, we know Wake can score (214 pts in two games). But can they defend (allowed 48% tonight)? Jeff Teague had 31, James Johnson 25, and AFA 11/12/5 assts in a blowout win.
Villanova 77, Niagara 62. Scottie Reynolds shook off a poor shooting night (4-14) by making almost all of his FTs (9-10) to help Villanova hold off a team that just wouldn’t go away. Corey Fisher added 15/6.
Butler 64, Ball St. 55. Butler’s Matt Howard contributed 15/6 in a typical home win for the Bulldogs, who are holding opponents to 35% shooting so far this season.
On Tap Thursday (all times EST). Sigh… another bunch of games we can’t wach b/c they’re on the U.
Virginia Tech (-10.5) v. Fairfield (ESPNU) – 11am (PR Tipoff)
Xavier (-4) v. Missouri (ESPNU) – 1pm (PR Tipoff)
Memphis (-21.5) v. UT-Chattanooga – 4:30pm (PR Tipoff)
Duke (-12.5) v. S. Illinois (ESPN2 & 360) – 7pm (CvC)
USC (-8) v. Seton Hall (ESPNU) – 7pm (PR Tipoff)
Florida v. S. Utah (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
Oklahoma St. (-7.5) v. Tulsa (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
A question that’s befuddled us for a long time now has been just how accurate are all these preseason polls that every media entity puts out each year are. Remember last season – all four NCAA #1 seeds made it to the Final Four, but what was equally interesting to us was that those same four teams – Kansas, Memphis, UCLA and UNC – were also the top four ranked teams (in a different order) in both the Preseason AP and ESPN Coaches polls. With an n=1, we know that the 2007-08 polls were extremely accurate in predicting last year’s F4 teams, but that only tells us part of the story – what we really want to know is how accurate are preseason polls in general?
To try to answer this question, we had to make some concessions. We believe that, generally speaking, most preseason polls are largely the same, whether AP, ESPN/Coaches, CNNSI, etc. Take for example, the blogpoll that came out this week. The top twenty teams that the bloggers chose were mostly consensus picks – no team was left off of more than one ballot, and a total of only thirty-six teams received at least one vote. That shows a relatively high consistency of thought – groupthink, if you will – about who the best teams in the country will be this season. So we feel that we can derive some strong basic principles (and save a boatload of time) by examining only one of the major preseason polls – the ESPN/Coaches Poll – because it is the sole major poll that does a postseason version (after the NCAAs) to enable a fair comparison.
We looked at the last five years where we could find the available pre- and postseason polls (the 2005 postseason poll is incorrect on both the ESPN and USA Today websites), and made some simple comparisons. Our findings are below the table.
Findings.
In a given year, there are between 50-60 teams receiving votes from the preseason pollsters. This tightens up to approximately 40 teams receiving votes in the postseason poll.
So how does a team receiving preseason votes equate to the postseason? Ehhh, not terrible, but not great either. Over the last six seasons (excl. 2005), if a team received votes in the preseason poll, there was a slightly better than half (54%) chance that it would also get votes in the postseason poll. That alone doesn’t tell us a whole lot, though. What if your team was in the preseason Top 25? Those teams receive votes in the final poll approximately three-quarters (76%) of the time, which at minimum, means that the takeaway is that a preseason team receiving votes will usually make the NCAA Tournament.
Looking at the distribution of the final postseason polls can tell us a little bit about how accurate preseason pollsters are at predicting how good a team will be. There appears to be a much stronger tendency to overlook teams that turn out later to be good rather than to overrate teams that turn out to not as good as pollsters thought. Over half of the teams in a given year (~23) in the final postseason poll will have moved up >5 spots in the rankings from their initial selection; but only a handful of teams (~7) will have moved down by >5 spots from the preseason. Another ~12 teams won’t move much from its initial standing. This is strong evidence that pollsters generally have an accurate sense of the abilities of about 30% of teams in a given year, but they’re far more likely to underrate teams (usually by not ranking them at all) than to overrate teams (by a 3:1 ratio).
Some of the more notable examples of the pollsters being right on the money were in 2004, when they rated UConn/Duke as #1/#2, which is exactly where they ended the season. Florida rated as preseason #1 in 2007 and Kansas as preseason #2 in 2003 were some other clear winners.
The swing-and-a-misses where the pollsters vastly overrated a team were Indiana in 2008 (#9 to #33), Duke in 2007 (#11 to #38), and Michigan St. in both 2006 (#5 to #34) and 2005 (#3 to #41).
The biggest misses where pollsters underrated a team was most obvious in 2003 and 2007, when preseason #31 Syracuse and #39 Florida, respectively, vaulted all the way to #1 by season’s end, and in 2004 when preseason unranked Georgia Tech made it to the F4 and #3 at the end of the year. The only other preseason unranked team to have made the F4 in the last six years was George Mason in 2006.
What does this mean for the 2008-09 season? Well, if your team was ranked in the Top 25, you’re more than likely going to make the NCAA Tournament. And if you’re already highly ranked, you should feel relatively secure in your position at or near the top – most teams simply don’t have huge drops in rankings from beginning to end of the season. The good news is that if your team was lower ranked or not ranked at all, but you feel like they’re extremely underrated, history shows that an awful lot of teams move significantly up the rankings as the season goes along. We’ll leave the guesswork as to who those teams might be to the rest of you guys.
Injury bug. Va Tech forward JT Thompson will be out 4-6 weeks with a hernia. Tyler Hansbrough appears “extremely doubtful” for UNC’s opener against Penn on Saturday. Ole Miss guard Trevor Gaskinstore his ACL and will miss the entire season.
Nevada’s sticky-fingered trio of Brandon Fields, London Giles and Ahyaro Phillips will be held out of the season opener against Montana St. on Saturday. Not sure why Fields is still suspended, his charges were dropped.
UCLA’s Nikola Dragovic got into a dispute with his girlfriend last week and was arrested for misdemeanor battery. He did not dress during last night’s game against Priarie View A&M.
Tennessee freshman PG Daniel West was ruled academically ineligible to play for the Vols this season, leaving juco transfer Bobby Maze and junior JP Prince as the only two legitimate ballhandlers to run Bruce Pearl’s attack this season.
Georgia Tech senior guard Lewis Clinch is also academically ineligible, but he can earn his spot back on the team after the semester ends. He’ll miss a minimum of seven games though.
Don’t expect any slicing or dicing of the current 16-team Big East arrangement on his watch, says newly voted Commish John Marinatto, who will begin next July 1. He takes over for uber-successful commisioner Mike Tranghese.
More meaningless exhibitions. Stephen Curry (41 pts on 15-19 FGs) appeared rusty in an 84-54 Davidson win over Lenoir-Rhyne. The defending champs, led by Sherron Collins (22 pts) and Cole Aldrich (17/10), handily defeated Emporia St. Wisconsin plowed through a slogfest to win 64-47 over UW-Whitewater. UConn’sJerome Dyson and his 18 pts led the Huskies past UMass-Lowell 82-63. Luke Harongody’s 21/10 helped Notre Dame to an easy win over Stonehenge Stonehill 79-47 last weekend. Pitt’s Sam Young filled the stat sheet with 18/7/4 blks in an 82-30 mauling of La Roche as well on Sunday.
Jeff Goodman gives his version of preseason bracketology, and he also went with the upset over UNC in the finals (Michigan St.). We see ya with your #15 Belmont (over Tennessee) and #14 Portland St. (over Purdue).
RTC correspondent Baker (he covers the A-Sun and the SoCon) has launched his new site, Mid Major Review, which got off with a bang this week with his podcast interview of Belmont head coach, Rick Byrd, and we expect will provide great substance and analysis of the mid-major world throughout the season. Welcome to the blogosphere, MMR.
Josh & Mike at Big Ten Geeks are the RTC correspondents for the Big Ten Conference.
Michigan State (29-6, 16-2)
Purdue (27-7, 15-3)
Wisconsin (24-8, 13-5)
Ohio State (20-12, 10-8)
Illinois (18-13, 9-9)
Minnesota (21-10, 9-9)
Michigan (16-14, 8-10)
Penn State (18-12, 7-11)
Northwestern (13-17, 6-12)
Iowa (12-18, 4-14)
Indiana (8-20, 2-16)
WYN2K. This is not your father’s Big Ten, or rather, it’s not your older brother’s Big Ten. Gone are dominating big men of the past, such as Greg Oden, DJ White, Kosta Koufos, and James Augustine. They’ve been replaced by guards such as Manny Harris, Kalin Lucas, E’Twaun Moore and Demetri McCamey. A solid big man (such as the perennially-underrated Goran Suton and incoming freshman B.J. Mullens) is a luxury that most Big Ten teams will not enjoy. You’ll see a lot of lineups featuring one player at 6’7 or taller. Some might hope this will spur the Big Ten into faster play, but, as Northwestern proved last season, guard-oriented teams can be every bit as slow as tall teams.
Predicted Champion.Michigan St. (NCAA #2). There are two things everyone can agree on for season predictions: Michigan State and Purdue promise to be the two toughest teams, and Indiana promises to finish in the basement. Beyond that, there’s a lot of uncertainty here. We like the Spartans to take the title. Part of that is talent (the roster features ten top 100 RSCI players), and part of that is schedule (MSU gets one game against the formidable Wisconsin, while Purdue has only one game against lowly Indiana). Also, in a guard-heavy conference, picking the team with the best frontline (Suton, Diaper Dandy Delvon Roe, and conference Player of the Year candidate Raymar Morgan – see below) isn’t a bad strategy. Sort of a “land of the blind” kind of thing. In our estimation, the Boilermakers feature the best starting five, but they have depth issues. Still though, it would not be a shock if Purdue came out on top.
NCAA/NIT Teams. We think this is a 4-bid league, but that fourth bid is hardly a shoe-in. Yes, the Big Ten is down (again), but we see a lot more parity in the middle of the conference. Fourth place through seventh is really up for grabs, and we think that makes for a lot of NIT teams. In fact, the Big Ten could send more teams to the NIT than to the NCAA tourney. We think the top 3 teams (MSU, Purdue(NCAA #4), and Wisconsin(NCAA #8)) are near-locks for the NCAA Tourney, the next three (Ohio St.(NCAA #11), Illinois, and Minnesota) promise to be bubbilicious, and the next three (Michigan, PSU, and Northwestern) figure to be in the NIT hunt.
Others.Iowa and Indiana almost certainly aren’t going anywhere, at least this season. Both teams are in the rebuilding mode, with Todd Lickliter still working to get “his players” into his system (does he really have a system though?). Indiana is sort of like how we look after a three-day weekend in Vegas – humbled, confused, full of regrets, and ready to move on. Coach Tom Crean already has several impressive recruits lined up for the next season – so get your licks in now, Big Ten, because IU will be back sooner rather than later.
Important Games. The biggest non-conference game on the schedule, without question, is on December 3rd, when UNC faces Michigan St. at Ford Field, site of this year’s Final Four. It might be the first of two meetings between those teams at that venue. We’re also interested to see the Davidson-Purdue matchup on December 20th (that Steph Curry is fun to watch), and the December 2nd Duke-Purdue contest that might be the best game between teams with so much talent concentrated on the perimeter. In conference, the two meetings between Purdue and MSU are the must-see events that likely will determine the conference champ.
Neat-o Stats.
Since 1980, no conference has had more NCAA Tournament appearances than the Big Ten (144).
In each of the past 4 seasons, Indiana has a better winning percentage as the underdog than as the favorite.
Since 1998, the Big Ten is the 3rd best conference by RPI.
The Big Ten is 30-56 in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, and has never actually “won” the event in nine tries. The only team not playing in the challenge this season is NC State – which finished dead last in the ACC last season.
65 Team Era. The Big 10 during this era has earned more NCAA bids than any other conference (133), and its record is fourth-best of the period (194-130, .599), including 18 #1 seeds (2d), 47 Sweet Sixteens (4th), 16 Final Fours (2d), and 3 titles (4th). Even in the 2000s, when there’s been a perception that the league has been ‘down’ relative to the 80s and 90s, the Big Ten has put six teams into the F4, including two in 2005. We’ve been guilty of ragging the B10 for its ‘boring’ style of basketball, but we can’t argue with its results – and there’s a strong likelihood of seeing another Big Ten team in the F4 this year.
Final Thought. The Big Ten will not be the best conference in college basketball, but it should be home to some of the best guards in the country. The conference received a big infusion of point guards last season, and the best of the bunch, Kalin Lucas, is one of the ten best PGs in the country. And while super sophomore Manny Harris gets a lot of deserved praise (a lot), we think an even better sophomore shooting guard plays in West Lafayette. And he might not even be the best sophomore on his team. We also like last-second–shot-specialistBlake Hoffarber’s chances to become a household name. Also, the increased parity should make for a lot of close games. Expect to see very few blowout wins. Except against Indiana (sorry, Hoosiers).
We don’t put any much stock in Exhibition Games, because, well, they’re exhibitions. But maybe we should – last year, Findlay defeated Ohio St. and Grand Valley St. beat Michigan St., and both of those teams had worse seasons than expected (OSU in particular – NIT). Someone should do a correlation on this. Anyway, here are some exhibition tidbits for the discerning fan…
Syracuse 76, Cal St. LA 55. Jonny Flynn led with 13/6 assts, as Cuse celebrated the returns of Andy Rautins and Eric Devendorf from injuries. Red Flag – SU was 10-26 from the foul line.
Florida 108, Warner 49. Alex Tyus led the way with 16/14, in a game that was a clear mismatch from start to finish.
Prediction: by the end of the first week of December, UNC will no longer be #1 in the major media polls.
No way, there’s too much pressure and they have too many good teams to handle before we even get our advent calendars. Oh, and did you hear, a small piece of their offense will be out for a while with a stress reaction? Even if this substantial piece never misses a game, which is extremely unlikely, he’s going to miss practice and be out of ‘game shape’ for a while. And no, we’re not talking about Marcus Ginyard, but his loss hurts too.
Here’s Carolina’s early schedule – you tell us how they’re going to come out of this unscathed…
v. Penn (11.15.08) – easy enough at home, right?
v. Kentucky (11.18.08) – this home game suddenly becomes extremely interesting if TH is out or still ailing – Patrick Patterson will wipe up the inside.
@ UCSB (11.21.08) – UNC fans will remember the west coast stopover game before Maui in 2004-05 well. Trap game.
@ Chaminade (11.24.08) – Maui Invitational first round – easy W.
v. Alabama (probably) (11.25.08) – UNC should be careful to not sleep on an athletic Bama team, but will probably win regardless.
v. Notre Dame/Texas (probably) (11.26.08) – either of these teams could defeat a less-than-full-strength UNC in Maui.
v. UNC-Asheville (11.30.08) – easy home win.
@ Michigan St. (Detroit) (12.03.08) – 40,000 people could watch this game at Ford Field, and UNC will absolutely need to be at full strength to win this game vs. MSU.
There are at least three opportunities for the major upset here, and if Hansbrough and/or Ginyard are out for any of those games, go ahead and mark it down. UNC will not enter the second week of December #1 and unbeaten.
Now, on to the polls, where UNC was a unanimous #1 in the AP Poll for the first time EVER (nope, not even 1991 UNLV, 1992 Duke or 2007 Florida), and also unanimous in the Coach’s Poll. No pressure or anything… FYI – UNC has been preseason #1 six times in its history (incl. this year) – the results of those seasons are: 1982 (Natl. Champs), 1984 (S16), 1987 (E8), 1994 (R32), 2008 (F4) – all that’s missing is a first-round loss or a title game loss.
Here are the polls.
We plan on doing some broader-based analytics of preseason polls in a general sense next week, but for now, here are a few things that we noticed right away.
Biggest jumps from AP to Coaches – Georgetown (+4) and Duke (+3)
Biggest drops from AP to Coaches – USC (-3) and Wake Forest (-3)
Coaches tend to vote by available talent + belief in other coaches’ abilities – what does this say about Tim Floyd and Dino Gaudio in relation to JT3 and Coach K?
More preseason conference predictions, this time from the Big 10 – Purdue, Michigan St., Wisconsin. Purdue’s Robbie Hummel is POY. A10 – Xavier, Temple, Dayton.
Indiana continues to clean up things in the wake of the Kelvin Sanctions fiasco, hiring Fred Glass as the new AD.
Ok, we’ve got some information flowing in tonight this weekend…
The production values on these things are unbelievable, considering they’re still just glorified practices… from Georgetown…
How about Tom Crean’s first Hoosier Hysteria (Indiana)…
It looked like a great time at the Kennel (Gonzaga) on Friday night…
From Michigan State – a nasty 360-degree left dunk from Durrell Summers…
The original venue of Midnight Madness (Maryland)…
Here’s some K-State footage… what happened to that Beasley kid?
How about a little George Mason love with Michael Jackson in the background…
Dunk you very much at UConn…
Some Mackey Madness at Purdue…
Here’s an excerpt from Corey Johns, our America East correspondent, at UMBC Sports Blog with a description of their festivities on Fri. night.
Then came the dunk contest. Freshmen Brett Burrier (6-6), Jake Wasco (6-9) and Chauncey Gilliam (6-2) and junior Matt Spadafora (6-4) all took the floor for the contest. The first round Spadafora was the only one to
make both dunks sending him automatically to the finals, and the next guy was up to fan vote, and they choose Chauncey Gilliam.The finals were set and Spadafora hit is first one sending the crowd in an uproar thinking he won it right there, but Gilliam made and even more impressive shot making the crowd even crazier. With the second shot at a dunk Spadafora barely missed hitting the back of the rim and shooting the ball back out. Gilliam went on the court with the contest on the line. He ran up did a 360 hook tomahawk dunk for the win and a floor storming performance as some fans and both the men’s and women’s team’s picked him up and carried him around as he celebrated.
Josh over at Big Ten Geeks, RTC’s Big 10 correspondents, was kind enough to allow us access to some live-blogging he did last night while watching the BTN coverage…
Live-Blogging Midnight Madness in the Big Ten
Josh here, from Big Ten Geeks, blogging the Midnight Madness festivities from…my living room. But hey, I have the Big Ten Network in HD, and if you’re not one of the 12 or so households that receive the network – no fear! – I’ll be here to give you the rundown. Looks like we have Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Minnesota, and Michigan State on tap.
…Jim Jackson just compared Wisconsin to the New England Patriots. I hope Marcus Landry has strong knees.
…Lots of dancing at the Night of the Grateful Red. Each of the players has a silly dance routine with a cute co-ed (dance team members? Does Wisconsin have a dance team? Does Bo Ryan coach that too?). Some are…better than others. Jared Berggren gave a rythmically-challenged dance to Vanilla Ice.
…Man, Wisconsin has a lot of tall white guys. Bo certainly has a type.
…Wisconsin fans hope Jason Bohannon has a better outside shot this season than pop-and-lock.
…Am I alone for thinking Bo Ryan bears a striking resemblance to Jon Voight? Everytime I see him, Coach Kilmer’s voice pops in my head.
…Yes, Bo danced again this year, but it wasn’t as good as last year’s Soulja Boy routine. But how can you top that?
…The festivities are tipping off in Mackey Arena. Purdue has a Mission Impossible theme going.
…Chris Kramer – not a dunker.
…BTN cuts away from the dunk competition as super-athlete Lewis Jackson starts his routine. That’s just bad scouting.
…Hey, Kramer threw one down, and it appears he’s worked his way into the finals. Well, hey, Purdue figures to rely on outside shooting anyways.
…JaJuan Johnson takes home the crown. No LewJack highlights to be seen. Color me disappointed.
…Coach Tom Crean figures that IU will shoot a lot of 3s this season. The talent certainly seems to be on the perimeter.
…Flipping over to ESPNU. It’s ex-Big Ten coach Bill Self with a blue microphone. He looks like he’s lost some weight.
…Scrimmage at Purdue. A lot of defense being played for a scrimmage. The Boilers will be tough to score on this season.
…Wild prediction time: LewJack will supplant Chris Kramer as the starting PG by the end of the season. He looks good out there.
…A lot of growing pains at Indiana. The fans are still figuring out how to cheer their coach. Right now, they’re adapting the classical two-syllable chant (“Mich-ael Jor-dan” clap clap clapclapclap) to an elongated “To-om Cre-ean.” Err, needs some work. A modest proposal: why not go with the two-syllable “TomCrean!” clapclap, or the “U-S-A! U-S-A” three syllable cheer (“Coach Tom Crean! Coach Tom Crean!”)?
..Out to the Barn now. You really have to like what Tubby’s done in a short time at Minnesota. I’m sure Billy Gillispie is a great coach, but I can’t help but feel that Kentucky chased away a good one.
…Announcers are debating whether or not Blake Hoffarber should come off the bench. Please – no! The Hoff needs minutes! It would be a mistake to relegate the best returning scorer to anything less than significant minutes.
…Why is Minnesota showing old footage of Flip Saunders runing some globetrotter-type drills?
…Every time I flip over to ESPNU to check out non-Big Ten festivities, I just get Andy Katz arguing with Adrian Branch in a studio. Madness!
…Cut to the Breslin Center, which is having a flashback night to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1979 championship season. Izzo hints that we might see some crazy 70s hair, mustaches, and short shorts. Hopefully Goran Suton does not partake in that last one.
…Minnesota scrimmage time! The Hoff is on the bench and…Tubby calls a timeout? He can’t help himself, he’s always got to be coaching.
…IU scrimmage time! Yeah, the Hoosiers will be short this season. Either Tom Crean is mic’ed up, or he’s just really loud. Chastising players for a lot of bad shots.
Well, that does it for the BTN’s Midnight Madness coverage. Fun night for the fans, and it means that the season is just around the corner.
From Greg Miller at S. Illinois –
Even though they’re coming off their first non-NCAA Tournament season since 2001, the 2008-09 Salukis had a good crowd on hand at the SIU Arena for this year’s version of Maroon Madness (despite it being a high school football Friday night). It was the first chance to really get a look at a big group of newcomers that have been highly touted as the best recruiting class in SIU history. From my perspective, a lot of them showed some serious potential. Kevin Dillard (2008 Illinois Mr. Basketball) didn’t score much, but his ball-handling skills show he will be able to help Bryan Mullins out a lot at the point this season. Ryan Hare is an explosive wing out of Chicago who can get the rim quick. Torres Roundtree put on a well-rounded display. He threw down an alley-oop from Mullins, drove hard to the rack for an easy lay-up and also did a good job running the break and finding the open man at the other end. He will be a welcome addition to the backcourt. Didn’t see a lot from fellow McCluer North alum Anthony Booker. But size alone, he is a monster. A legit 6’8 that will definately be able to bang in the Valley. Justin Bocot was a pleasant surprise. After sitting out last year with academic problems, Bocot is back and has some serious offensive game. He showed the ability to get the rim and knock down the long three (depsite having a knuckleball shot). All in all, it was a showcase for the freshman. And they showcased some skills. The one thing that remains to be seen is if these young ‘Dawgs can play that Chris Lowery-defense that has made SIU famous. Here is a link to some interviews from SIU Media Day and highlights from tonight’s Maroon Madness.
WYN2K. This is not your father’s Big Ten, or rather, it’s not your older brother’s Big Ten. Gone are dominating big men of the past, such as Greg Oden, DJ White, Kosta Koufos, and James Augustine. They’ve been replaced by guards such as Manny Harris, Kalin Lucas, E’Twaun Moore and Demetri McCamey. A solid big man (such as the perennially-underrated Goran Suton and incoming freshman B.J. Mullens) is a luxury that most Big Ten teams will not enjoy. You’ll see a lot of lineups featuring one player at 6’7 or taller. Some might hope this will spur the Big Ten into faster play, but, as Northwestern proved last season, guard-oriented teams can be every bit as slow as tall teams.
