Scrolling through the news feeds again today we came across an article stating that Kansas freshman forward Markief Morris received 20 hours of community service for his assault of a Wisconsin woman with a plastic BB gun in a university courtyard last summer. From the AP report:
Campus police said shots were fired from a room in Jayhawker Towers. The 47-year-old woman was hit in the arm and slightly injured. Officers seized a 3-foot-long black Airsoft rifle and medium-sized plastic bag of BBs.
Nothing Says Manly Like a BB Gun and a Dead Sparrow
Normally we wouldn’t have put this up as a stand-alone post because it’s simply not newsworthy enough to warrant it. But that begs the question – why isn’t a kid shooting someone with a BB gun newsworthy enough? The answer is because it seems to happen all the damn time! The newsworthy part of this story is that athletes shooting people with BB guns is such a frequent occurrence that it’s become passe to report on it anymore.
Checking ourselves, we counted at least 3 other incidents in the past eighteen months where a big-time college basketball player was involved in a BB gun shooting situation. Here’s that list:
Al-Farouq Aminu, Wake Forest – arrested in April 2008 for shooting a BB gun at a woman in front of her home
Ryan Reid, Florida St. – suspended in June 2008 for “fooling around with a BB gun,” whatever that means
David Lighty, Ohio St. – pled guilty to misdemeanor assault for shooting a 55-yr old man with a BB gun in June 2007
What is the attraction of athletes with these toys – seriously, it’s like Kobe Bryant at a Colorado resort or Gary Williams at a Buffalo Wild Wings – they just can’t seem to help themselves. The urges are too strong. The little voices inside won’t release them from their torturous grasp.
Besides, when will these guys learn? You don’t shoot people! You shoot flaming teddy bears and creepy female mannequin heads! (god we feel very caucasian right now…):
Josh & Mike of Big Ten Geeks are the RTC correspondents for the Big 10 Conference.
Looking Back
The ACC won its 10th consecutive Big 10/ACC Challenge last wmichigan st, kevin coble, northwestern, indiana, acc/big challengeeek by a 6-5 margin. That’s actually a pretty decent result for the Big 10, as the ACC figures to be an elite conference this season. Also, take into consideration that the ACC played 6 home games (compared to the Big Ten’s 4, or 5 if you consider Detroit to be a home venue for Michigan State), the ACC’s worst team last season, N.C. State, didn’t participate, and three of the Big Ten’s losses were by 5 points or less (to be fair, 3 of the ACC’s wins were by 5 points or less).
Believe it or not, we’re already one-quarter of the way through the regular season. Most teams have played seven or eight of their allotted 28 regular season games, and as we head into the next two weeks of semester finals, things will quiet down a bit. Thus, now is a good time to stop, take a look back at the first month of the season, and reflect as to some of the things we think we’ve learned through the “getting to know us” portion of the schedule. Here’s your 2008-09 First Quarter Report. (all stats and records through Sun. Dec. 7th)
Top Storyline. Nothing could be finer than to be from Carolina. Right now, the top storyline is whether anyone can stop the North Carolina Tarheels before April 6th in Detroit. There’s no need to go over all the impressive stats in this space again (check here instead), but suffice it to say that UNC has looked absolutely dominant through its eight games, and the reigning NPOY has only played in half of them. It’s an absolute lock that UNC will hit ACC play undefeated and it’s very difficult to envision a scenario where the Heels drop more than a couple in league play by March Madness. The storyline from here on out will be if any other team(s) develop to the point where they can realistically challenge UNC.
Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series. Look, we really do like the idea of this series – two quality conferences providing juicy matchups such as UCLA-Texas, Arizona-Texas A&M, and Wazzu-Baylor (among others). But the promoters of the Hardwood Series need to figure a way to get this thing on national tv and make it a mandatory event over the course of two or three nights. Ideally, ESPN’s family of networks would pick it up during the same week as the ACC/Big 10 Challenge, and we’d get fantastic matchups from 7pm EST until past midnight every weekday. As it stands now, most of the games aren’t televised nationally, and there seems to be very little coverage of the games as an “event” of any kind. Furthermore, three of the games occur outside the most recent Thurs-Sun window (Stanford already defeated Colorado two weeks ago and has an upcoming tilt with Texas Tech, and KU’s game with Arizona is in another two weeks), which also sucked because it got completely lost amidst all the weekend football coverage. So whoever is in charge of this “event,” take our advice and actually take the proper steps to turn this thing into something that Big 12 and Pac-10 fans will look forward to on an annual basis (similar to ACC and Big 10… uh, well, ACC fans). Diatribe over. Now, even if we count Stanford’s win, the Big 12 has already clinched at least a push in the Hardwood Series this year with a 6-4 record and two games remaining. Nine of the twelve games were this weekend. Let’s take a quick look at some of the highlights (the first three games were already covered in Thursday night’s ATB).
Story of the Night. Is this the year, after nine straight emasculations at the hands of the ACC, that the Big 10 finally breaks through and wins the ACC/Big 10 Challenge? Well, considering that going into the last day of the Challenge in 2007-08, the ACC led 5-1, the previous year 4-2, and in fact, the Big 10 has NEVER gone into the final day deadlocked, we consider this a moral victory. Maybe they don’t, but we do. Looking at tomorrow night, the ACC still has the upper hand (Wake is a mortal lock at home vs. Indiana, and Georgia Tech will be heavily favored at home vs. Penn St.), but if Michigan St. and Northwestern can protect their home court/field, (big ifs) then Michigan @ Maryland could be the tipping point game. Maryland will be favored, but Michigan has proven that it can play with anyone this year, and you never know which Terp team will show up. If only the Illini had held on at home tonight, Big 10 fans!!
This Is What Duke Does. Duke 76, Purdue 60. The most hyped game of tonight’s Challenge, if not the actual best game, reminded us all of what Duke consistently does every year in November and December – beat all comers. Those of us who were fooled by Duke’s completely shameful avoidance of true nonconference road contests forgot what Duke typically does when they play those ACC-mandated games away from home – win them. Duke looked focused and ready to play from the tip, while Purdue was clearly over-focused, to the point of blowing wide open layups and showing an inability to make simple defensive switches. The Purdue jitters excuse quickly morphed into one involving Duke’s superior defense, though, as Purdue stars Robbie Hummell and E’Twaun Moore were held to a pedestrian 25 pts (six below their average), but 20 of those points were in the last eleven minutes of regulation, when the game was largely out of reach. The Devils held the Boilers to 37% from the field and a mere 2-13 from three. Equally impressive, Duke dominated the boards 44-26, including eight extra possessions from offensive rebounds. Kyle Singler led the way for Duke with a double-double (20/12), but Jon Scheyer (20 pts) and Nolan Smith (12 pts) contributed with timely threes, as Duke improved to 10-0 in the Challenge. Purdue Fan = not happy.
If you haven’t heard, the ACC – Big 10 Challengestarts continues tonight! We were certifiably swamped yesterday with catch-up, so we’ll sorta forget that the Wisconsin v. Virginia Tech game already happened (brought to you by Trevon Hughes), and spend a few minutes taking a sideways glance at the tonight’s slate of games.
The Challenge is usually an exercise in futility for the Big 10 (0-9 all-time), but we think this year they have a shot (just a shot, mind you) at pulling off a 6-5 upset for the first time in the history of the event. Remember, thanks to Wisconsin, the league already has a 1-0 lead in one of the key tossup games. We expect the league to come out of tonight at 3-3 (possibly 4-2) with two home games left.
Josh & Mike of Big Ten Geeks are the RTC correspondents for the Big Ten Conference.
Looking Back
Feast Week was somewhat of a mixed bag for the Big Ten. Illinois was the only team that captured the title of its tournament, taking home the South Padre Invitational title. Big Ten Geek favorite Mike Tisdale was named to the all-tourney team. Penn State, Wisconsin, and Purdue each finished runner-up in their respective tourneys. So far this season, Penn State sophomore point guard Talor Battle has been ridonkulous – converting on nearly 50% of this three pointers so far this season. That gives Battle an early lead on the other promising sophomore point guards in the Big Ten (Kalin Lucas, Demetri McCamey, and Michael Thompson).
Wisconsin didn’t look great in the Paradise Jam, looking outmanned against UConn. So far this season, Wisconsin’s offense has been fine, but the defense is a signficant step-back from last year’s outstanding version.
We felt bad giving such short shrift to Pete Newell yesterday in our ATB wrapup, so we wanted to take an opportunity to give our condolences to the Newell family and also educate young readers on just how influential a figure Coach Newell was in this game. The vast majority of Newell’s career was before our time as well, but his sphere of influence reaches down through the decades to this very day. Every time a young big man utilizes a drop step or seals his defender in the post, Newell’s innovations and techniques are showing their relevance and timelessness.
Consider some of the interesting facts and highlights of this man’s career:
Like the founder of the game, Dr. James Naismith, Newell was Canadian by birth.
He won an NIT championship at University of San Francisco in 1949, when that tournament meant something. He developed and instituted a successful zone-pressing defense at USF that was widely copied over the years.
He won four straight Pac-8 titles at Cal in the late 1950s (neat stat: the last eight times Newell faced legendary UCLA coach John Wooden, he was 8-0 against the Wizard of Westwood), culminating in trips to the championship game in 1959 and 1960, the former year of which he won the NCAA title against Oscar Robertson’s Cincinnati. In 1960, the Bears lost to John Havlicek/Jerry Lucas’ Ohio St. team, who employed a defense that Newell had taught OSU coach Fred Taylor the previous year. It’s widely known that Newell’s Cal teams were vastly inferior in talent to their F4 opponents, which belies Newell’s ability as a teacher who can get the most from his players.
He was the NCAA COY in 1960 and also led the US Men’s National Team to the gold medal in the Summer Olympics in Rome, making him one of only three coaches to have won an NIT, NCAA and Olympic titles (Bob Knight and Dean Smith are the others).
To reduce the stress and demands of coaching on his body, he retired from Cal in 1960 (at a mere age of 44) with a 234-123 (.655) lifetime record. He spent the next 16 years working as an AD at Cal, then as an NBA scout and later as a GM for the Lakers.
In 1976, he opened his Pete Newell Big Man Camp, which sought to provide training in footwork and fundamentals for professionals entering the NBA and others seeking to improve their post game. The camp was free, and it worked with such notable HOFers (and future HOFers) as Hakeem Olajuwon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton and Shaquille O’Neal (who said, “he’s the best teacher there is”).
He was elected to the HOF himself in 1979, and his legacy is that coaches and players alike believe his contributions to the game to be at the highest possible level. Bob Knight in particular has stated on the record that Newell had more influence on college basketball than any other person in history.
Since we never met Pete Newell, it would be an injustice for us to describe him, so we’ll leave you with a few of the better pieces we’ve found about his life and career in basketball. RIP, Pete.
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).
Some post-election madness in the college hoops world…
You’re my boy, Blue! RTC fav Ken Mink scored two foul shots in his debut for Roane State Monday night (which makes him 71% better than Ish Smith), for his first collegiate points in fifty-two years. Props to Deadspin for mentioning this, but we had the same thought – who fouls a 73-year old basketball player? Seriously, dude, move your feet a little.
Ohio St. forward Nicola Kecman will miss twelve games stemming from his association with a semi-pro team in his native Serbia. His first game back will be Jan. 6 at Michigan St.
The Daily Tar Heel reports that Tyler Hansbrough may only miss two weeks of practice relating to his stress reaction after all. We’re still not sure they’re getting through November unbeaten, though.
Nice, Arizona. AD Jim Livengood denied freshman center Jeff Withey’s request for release from his scholarship. We see no possible good coming out of this.
The legendary Gus Gilchrist received his waiver from the NCAA and will be eligible to play for Stan Heath’s South Florida team on Dec. 14 – set your Tivos now.
Interesting thought – will Barack Obama’s presidency help Craig Robinson’s recruiting efforts in any way at all? It’s worth tracking…
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.
