November. Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, and the first month of the college basketball season. With only six days remaining until the opening of the 2kSports Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, it’s time to get serious again, folks. If you’re the type of person who loves college basketball at your core — you possess the kind of admiration for the game that leaves you empty during its many months of summer hibernation, read this season’s first post from Kyle Whelliston at The Mid-Majority. There’s something in there that you will relate to — guaranteed. And if not, how many times will you read a college basketball article that slyly references The Sundays? Glad to have you back in action, TMM.
The AP released its preseason All-America team Monday afternoon, and the only surprise among the group was how completely unsurprising it was. The first team consists of UNC’s Harrison Barnes, Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger, Wisconsin’s Jordan Taylor, Connecticut’s Jeremy Lamb, and Kentucky’s Terrence Jones. Taylor is the only senior of the five-man team; the other four are sophomores, all of whom could have been high selections in the NBA Draft had they chosen to declare last spring. Barnes received 63 of 65 votes, leading Gary Parrish to suggest that the two voters who left him off the team should account for his omission. It doesn’t bother us that much — let’s be honest, Barnes is really good, but he isn’t Ralph Sampson after two consecutive NPOYs — but keep in mind that last year at this time, Kemba Walker was largely considered a talented but inconsistent gunner not on par with preseason first-teamer Jacob Pullen. We know how that turned out.
The Big East‘s magical mystery tour to irrelevance is set to continue today with multiple sources reporting that the conference will announce the addition of six new members at its annual meeting in Philadelphia. Prepare yourself for this murderer’s row on the hardwood: Central Florida, SMU and Houston will accept invitations to the conference in all sports, while Boise State, Navy and Air Force are presumed ready to accept in football only. With the league on the verge of losing powerhouses Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia, consider us rather unimpressed with the league’s “replacements.” If Louisville ultimately ends up leaving for the Big 12 and Connecticut finds its way over to the ACC, the serious basketball schools like Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette, St. John’s, Providence and Notre Dame would actually be better served to make a few calls to Butler and Xavier and initiate the dream of Dave Gavitt in a post-apocalyptic way.
Speaking of West Virginia, the Morgantown school has filed a civil suit in state court to get out of its contractual obligation to stay with the Big East for another two years as it transitions to the Big 12. WVU would like to leave as soon as next summer, and by taking its case to the courts under a specific claim of “direct and proximate result of ineffective leadership and breach of fiduciary duties to the football schools by the Big East and its Commissioner.” Ineffective leadership — ouch. Big East commissioner John Marinatto responded to the shot across his bow by citing the party line about his conference’s “legal options” and so forth. What the league’s insistence on keeping the three defectors around longer comes down to is that it needs to stay at a minimum of eight football schools in order to keep its auto-bid to the BCS — if the league loses Pitt, SU and WVU prior to making its replacements, then its bid becomes more tenuous (although the FBS rules state that any eight schools will do). If they all left tomorrow, the league would have five — UConn, Cincinnati, Louisville, South Florida and Rutgers. Big East football — the gift that keeps on giving… and giving… and giving…
Monday was a big day in the recruiting world, as we get closer to the early signing period later this month. Arizona received a commitment from seven-foot center Kaleb Tarczewski (how did Coach K not get this guy?), and the gurus are already projecting Sean Miller’s third class as the top-rated in the country. After a downswing in talent in recent years, the Pac-12 may be on the verge of a player infusion rivaling the draftable talent it had on hand in the late 2000s — as we discussed on our Pac-12 microsite Monday, Arizona, Oregon, UCLA and even new member Colorado are seeing returns on the recruiting circuit that have been missing lately. Will it pan out?
Kevin Doyle is the RTC correspondent for the Patriot League and author of The Other 26, an RTC columnwhich examines the teams from the 26 non-power conferences and their impact on the game at a national level. You can find him on Twitter @KLDoyle11.
Reader’s Take I
Top Storylines
From the Big Ten to the Patriot League—It is not all that often that Patriot League hoops is the epicenter of college basketball discussions, but this was the case in late May as Ed DeChellis departed as head coach of Penn State in favor of Navy. Yup, that Navy. The Midshipmen haven’t reached the Big Dance since 1998 and are only a small blip in the basketball world thanks to alumnus David Robinson, but DeChellis’ seemingly surprise move made Navy a household name for some of the summer months. Something tells me that playing in Hamilton, New York, on a Saturday afternoon will be a little different than, say, a rocking Kohl Center for DeChellis.
One Of The Most Interesting Coaching Changes In The Most Recent Carousel Was Ed DeChellis Leaving A Power Conference For Navy (Jonathan Daniel/Getty)
Stability at Holy Cross—Although Milan Brown greatly struggled as the Crusaders head coach in his first season—HC finished with a subpar 8-21 mark—there is the reassurance of knowing the program will be in the same hands for consecutive years for the first time since the 2008-09 campaign. When watching the Crusaders compete in the non-conference portion of their schedule last year, Brown struggled to implement his man-to-man defensive philosophy to a team that was more accustomed to playing a zone. It is safe to assume that after a full year under Brown, Holy Cross will have a greater sense of identity on both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor, something that was certainly lacking last season.
A Movement to Youth at Colgate—I doubt that there is a readily accessible statistic out there for this sort of thing, but I would venture to guess that Matt Langel and his staff at Colgate are the youngest in the nation. Emmett Davis never found success while coaching the Raiders, but Langel and his crew of young assistants may be the perfect recipe for success that it will take to win at Colgate. A spark of energy seemed to be lacking under the previous regime, and having four coaches who are young and looking to prove themselves should be the catalyst that jumpstarts Colgate.
If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.
Conference Expansion
John Marinatto’s Grand Solution Was Navy And Syracuse Fans Feel Better About Themselves: “The truth is, we just didn’t think John Marinatto had a plan. We didn’t trust that, at the end of the day, he could make the right decision and steer the conference in the direction it needed to go in order to survive. We assumed the worst, that he would hitch his wagon to some desperate quick-fix solution that solved nothing long-term and only serve to drive home the perception that the Big East is living in the past and unable to truly move towards the future. In unrelated news, John Marinatto almost invited Navy to the Big East as a football-only member.” (Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician)
UConn has some unlikely allies: Duke and Maryland: “On it’s surface this is good for UConn because the Huskies desperately want the ACC to expand, but the fact that Duke is pushing for this move says a lot about ACC priorities” (The UConn Blog)
SEC wants Louisville, Kentucky does not: According to Chuck Oliver the SEC is interested in Louisville, but the move is being blocked by Kentucky. (Card Chronicle)
Schadenfreude: West Virginia Already Applied to, Turned Down by ACC: “I mentioned West Virginia as a possible candidate for ACC expansion yesterday, but dismissed them as unlikely and not a great match. Being turned down by the SEC did nothing to make them more attractive in my book. Looks like the rest of the ACC agrees.” (Testudo Times)
Conference Realignment And Big Ten Expansion: What It Means To Purdue: A look at where Purdue might end up once at the conference realignment issues have been sorted out. (Hammer & Rails)
With the completion of the NBA Draft and the annual coaching and transfer carousels nearing their ends, RTC is rolling out a new series, RTC Summer Updates, to give you a crash course on each Division I conference during the summer months. Our latest update comes courtesy of our Patriot League correspondent, Kevin Doyle.
Reader’s Take
Summer Storylines
Colgate Cleans House —After posting just three winning seasons in his 12 seasons as the head man for the Raiders, Emmett Davis and his staff were released of their duties following the 2010-11 campaign. Davis never reached the postseason while at Colgate and his most successful season came in 2007-08, when he led the Raiders to the conference tournament final against American. As Davis moves on to an assistant job with the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, Matt Langel will make the journey to Hamilton to lead Colgate. A 2000 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, this will be Langel’s first job as a head coach, following a stint as one of Fran Dunphy’s lead assistants at Temple. By the looks of it, the Colgate coaching staff may very well be the youngest in the country as Langel—at just 33 years of age—is the oldest of the four coaches.
Two Top 100 Players—It is not all too often that the Patriot League can say they boast two of the better players in the country, but our friends over at Basketball Prospectus seem to think that Bucknell’s Mike Muscala and Lehigh’s C.J. McCollum are among the nation’s best. Muscala checked in at #82, while McCollum is #56.
C.J. McCollum Does Lehigh Proud—To continue the praise for McCollum, the rising junior from Canton, Ohio, was awarded the opportunity to try out for Team USA, currently competing in the World University Games in China. At only 19 years of age, McCollum was the youngest player to audition for the team. Although he was not fortunate enough to earn a spot on the roster, he did earn some nice praise from the coaching staff.
Billy Lange Departs for Villanova, Ed DeChellis In at Navy—In one of the most intriguing moves of the summer, former Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis elected to leave the Nittany Lions in favor of Navy. That is right, Navy. On the surface, this was a real shocker. How could a Patriot League bottom-dweller steal a head coach from a Big Ten squad coming off an NCAA Tournament appearance? It is purely speculation, but DeChellis ostensibly felt that his job at Penn State was not secure and that he would be joining the line of unemployment in the near future. Even with the NCAA appearance last season and winning the NIT in 2009, DeChellis compiled a less-than-stellar Big Ten record of 41-95 during his eight-year tenure. With graduation claiming the bulk of Penn State’s talent, next year looks awfully ominous for the Nittany Lions. In recent years, multiple reports have surfaced questioning Penn State’s level of commitment to its college basketball team, so perhaps all DeChellis was looking for was adequate support behind him.
Jimmer to the infinite power. Everyone has an opinion on where the RTC NPOY will be drafted and how he will do as a professional basketball player. NBADraft.net has The Jimmergoing at #13 to the Phoenix Suns; DraftExpress has him going at #7 to the Sacramento Kings; HoopsWorld has him going at #12 to the Utah Jazz. The mid-to-late lottery seems to be a lock, but the question that really matters is how good will he be at the next level? Two of our favorite writers did a little interplay on the topic Tuesday, with CBS’ Gary Parrish arguing that Fredette will become a solid, productive point guard in the NBA, nowhere near El Busto, while Jeff Goodman contends that The Jimmer will struggle mightily at the next level. Our take? A little more Parrish and a little less Goodman. Fredette’s knack for scoring and distributing in different ways will keep him on the court until such time in his career that he figures out how to become at least a competent defender. He doesn’t have to stop Derrick Rose or Russell Westbrook — nobody stops those players — but he’ll need to ensure to his coaches that guys like Jarrett Jack and George Hill aren’t going for 25 points on him on a regular basis.
It’s draft week so there’s a good amount of marketing of players going on right now. In one interview sent to us with Kemba Walker reppin’ for Axe Lounge, the national champion tells us who is the UConn Husky he most admires (hint: Jesus Shuttlesworth), the player in history he’d most like to run a pick-and-roll with (hint: 10,000 ladies can’t be wrong), and the team that UConn played in last season’s NCAA Tournament that he feels has a great chance to get to the Final Four in 2012 (hint: they’re in everybody’s top two). The link to a .wmv download of this interview is here.
There are currently 73 BCS schools in college basketball among the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Big East, Pac-10 and SEC. That number will soon increase to 74 with the addition of Utah to the new Pac-12. According to research done by the Wall Street Journal, there are only four BCS-level schools that have never been found guilty of a major NCAA violation in any sport. Can you name the four? If you said… Boston College, Northwestern, Penn State and Stanford, give yourself a fortune cookie. Four of seventy-four — that’s 5.4% for the schools the WSJ is calling “the Innocents.” We also like to call it completely pathetic.
Speaking of one of those “innocent” schools, former Penn State and current Navy head coach Ed DeChellisappears to be fitting in nicely in Annapolis. He’s met all of his players, hired his staff (a combination of assistants from PSU and retainees from Navy), and reached out to many people to learn about the culture of the place the locals call “the Yard.” Whether his first year will be successful at the USNA depends largely on the implementation of all-Patriot League rising senior Jordan Sugars and ROY JJ Avila into his system — the Middies were 6-8 in the Patriot last season, but possess two of the better building blocks in the conference going into next season.
Everyone knows that the 2011 NBA Draft will commence Thursday night at The Rock in Newark, New Jersey, but few are likely aware that the Harlem Globetrotters held its annual collegiate “draft” as an appetizer on Tuesday afternoon. Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t merit a mention on the M5, but this isn’t a normal “draft” class for the eponymous barnstorming troupe. For one, the Globetrotters picked YouTube dunking sensation Jacob Tucker, the 5’11 pogo stick from D-III Illinois College who inspired a generation of suburban shorties with his ridiculous 50-inch vertical leap. With another of its six selections, Harlem picked 7’8 former Mountain State (WV) center, Paul Sturgess, a figurative mountain of a manwho is believed to be the tallest college basketball player at any level in history. You see the obvious shtick here — having Tucker throw down Vince Carter-style with Sturgess playing the hapless foil of Frederic Weis. In case you missed Tucker’s original “mix tape,” here it is…
Monday’s announcement by Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis that he was resigning from his position in order to take another job isn’t the kind of thing that normally surprises anyone. After all, fifty or so Division-I head coaching jobs change hands in a given offseason, and DeChellis is coming off one of the best seasons of his coaching career. His Nittany Lions finished fourth in the Big Ten last season and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade (losing by two points to Temple in the Second Round). That he’s taking another job isn’t buzzworthy in itself; it’s that he’s not moving on to greener pastures as the new guy at Miami (FL) or Missouri, to name a couple prominent openings this year. It’s that he’s resigning from a Big Ten school to take the head coaching position at Navy. As in… the US Naval Academy, a Patriot League program that hasn’t been relevant since the Reagan Administration (and a gangly center named David Robinson was enrolled in Annapolis).
DeChellis Isn't the First Coach to Move Down the Ladder
It’s certainly an open secret among Penn State faithful and Big Ten watchers that DeChellis, despite PSU’s run to the NCAAs this season, was already on rather thin ice. His eight-year career in Happy Valley resulted in more losses than wins and his relationship with the Penn State AD, Tim Curley, had reportedly deteriorated to a breaking point. Still, by walking away from a Big Ten position — even one in the basketball wasteland known as central Pennsylvania — to take the helm at a struggling mid-major, he’s leaving at least a half-million dollars or more on the table, and essentially giving up on every coach’s dream to win and win big at the highest level of college basketball. We’re not about to sit down and perform an analysis of the last couple of decades of coaching changes to test the theory, but in at least the last couple of offseasons, there seems to be a growing trend of coaches moving laterally or even downgrading themselves for one reason or another. Here’s three who instantly came to mind.
The Zeller family (of Luke, Tyler, and Cody fame) runs “DistinXion,” which is, as they call it, “a basketball/cheerleading and character training camp.” Yesterday, new Indiana signee Cody posted on the organization’s website his 10 favorite NCAA recruiting rules, with personal tidbits on how he and his family have dealt with them as coaches have made their cases to the boys over the years. It’s definitely worth a read, if only to hear Cody explain how programs can get around the phone-call restrictions, how some schools sent him empty envelopes in the mail, how Old Dominion made a great impression, and why everything he’s written for his family’s site has to be removed after he enrolls at IU.
Yesterday it was player pinball, today it’s more of the coaching carousel. With Billy Kennedy off to Texas A&M, Murray State decided to promote from within and move assistant coach Steve Prohm into the honcho position. While we’re sure Prohm has his own way of runnin’ things, we’d say future Racer teams will look similar to those under Kennedy, since Prohm had a 12-season association with Kennedy over three schools. Why mess with success?
The move that turned some heads yesterday was Ed DeChellis leaving Penn State and going to…Navy. Yes, that Navy. Why would a coach at a major-conference program that made the Big Ten Tournament title game and the NCAA Tournament last season leave his alma mater for a place that has virtually no hoops tradition, offers a smaller salary, and possesses admissions criteria that make it near impossible to put together a team that can win at the D1 level? Despite this past season’s “success,” next year was going to be another tough one for PSU, a place that barely acknowledges its basketball program, anyway, so perhaps DeChellis was just getting out a little early on his own terms to a place that genuinely wants him.
Maryland, it’s your tax dollars at work. The Baltimore Sun offered a breakdown of the highest-paid state employees yesterday, an interesting discussion for a couple of reasons. Most of the people who make more than the governor (who makes $150K) work for the university system, or are doctors employed by the state’s (rather alarmingly named) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The highest-paid state employee in 2010? Gary Williams, who pocketed $2.3 million, though most of that came from endorsements/appearances, etc, added onto a base of over $450,ooo.
Let’s give a shout to Kenneth Lyons of the University of North Texas. Not familiar? Well, he’s the all-time leading scorer for the Mean Green and he’s in the school’s athletics hall of fame. He left the program after four years in 1983 without a degree, and the Philadelphia 76ers drafted him, but he never played a single game in the NBA. In 2000, he returned to UNT (it was North Texas State when he played hoops there) — not as a coach or a graduate assistant, but as a student. Tuition money has been hard to come by at times, but two weeks ago, 32 years after he started it, Lyons finished his degree in sociology. If you think college basketball has changed a lot in 32 years, just consider how different life in a classroom is now compared to then.
Any time two college basketball powers meet it is a hot ticket. It can be a traditional rivalry where the teams meet at least twice a year like Duke and UNC or a less frequent match-ups like the Kansas–Kentucky one that we will see next season. In either scenario you can bet that outside the lucky few who are able to land tickets through the school or the random lottery that is online ticket distribution, anybody who gets in will be paying a hefty sum. However, there appears to be one ticket next season that is even harder to get and one that is so exclusive that there will not even be a secondary ticket market.
There is one game where you won't be able to watch Harrison Barnes in person next year.
When Michigan State and UNC announced that they would be playing their inter-conference match-up on a naval carrier on Veterans Day in San Diego it added a special dimension to a match-up that would have had college basketball fans salivating even if it was played on a nondescript outdoor basketball court. It would serve as an enticing start to the college basketball season featuring two of the top ten programs in college basketball. While a loaded Tar Heel team will probably be significantly better than a rebuilding Spartan team there will be plenty of interest to see if Tom Izzo can find a way to counter the talented Tar Heels. In short it will be a ticket that every college basketball fan would love to have, but playing it on a ship raised those tickets to another level and made it so that it would be nearly impossible for college basketball fans to see in person.
Three more conference tourneys kicked off last night, and that meant more eliminations from the national title race. From the Atlantic Sun, OVC and Patriot League, let’s bid good tidings to Kennesaw State, Campbell, Tennessee State, Eastern Kentucky, Colgate, Holy Cross, Army and Navy — there are now 302 schools still alive.
Coming next: a big night, as thirteen more teams will be eliminated from the national picture this evening.
Kevin Doyle is the RTC correspondent for the Patriot League. The PL is among the first of this season’s conference tournaments to tip, with action set to start tonight.
Tournament Preview
If Holy Cross somehow wins the Patriot League Tournament and advances on to the NCAA Tournament, they would have the worst winning percentage ever of a team in the field. Their 11-20 record would give them a winning percentage of .355. Currently, the team with the lowest percentage that competed in the NCAA Tournament was George Washington who entered the 1961 Tournament with a 9-16 record (.360). It really is not all too farfetched that the Crusaders win the Patriot League Championship. Five of their seven league losses came by four points or less, and both of their games with Bucknell went into the final minute. Speaking of the Crusaders, junior guard Devin Brown has been one of the best scorers in the league as of late, and is just two points away from reaching the 1,000 mark for his career. In his last nine games, Brown is averaging 23.2 points a game.
In my “Other 26” column, I remarked that Army is the only team in the country who is in last place in their league to have defeated the team in first place. By virtue of this occurrence, every team in the league—even those in the bottom half—should feel like they have a chance at attaining the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Best chance for an upset in the first round: Colgate over American. I am really going out on a limb with this one, but Colgate is a team that is surging—their record would not indicate it—as they have been taking the better teams in the league to the brink. Aside from a disastrous 20-point loss to Navy, the Raiders lost to Holy Cross by two and Bucknell by eight; they had an opportunity to win both games in the final minute. May they catch American looking ahead to a semifinal date with Holy Cross or Lafayette?
Predicted Champion: Bucknell. How can the Bison not be the clear favorite heading into the tournament? Aside from a hiccup at Christl Arena, Bucknell has been the most consistent team in the league and has some impressive non-conference wins to boot. Assuming Bucknell does in fact win the Patriot League, they are most likely looking at a 14-seed in the NCAA Tournament. Many things would have to fall in Bucknell’s direction and other teams would have to lose in order for them to receive a 13-seed.
