ACC M5: 11.07.14 Edition

Posted by Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) on November 7th, 2014

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  1. Seminoles.com: On Monday night, Florida State won its first exhibition game over Embry Riddle, 95-73. The Seminoles trailed by six with about seven minutes left in the first half before ending the period with a 22-7 run to take control. Even though it’s only an exhibition contest, perhaps this will be a better Florida State team on the offensive end than they have been recently. Not only did they tally 95 points but they did so while shooting 59 percent from the field. Of course the traditional problems with ball-handling may once again be a trait of Leonard Hamilton‘s squad this season, as the Seminoles gave it away 19 times in this one.
  2. Sports Illustrated: Duke‘s Jahlil Okafor continues to get preseason love from the national media. This week, the big freshman is featured on one of SI’s College Basketball Preview regional covers. Last year the same magazine followed Jabari Parker around much of the year during his stellar one-and-done season for the Blue Devils. Like Parker, Okafor is a Chicago native that no one, including Mike Krzyzewski thinks will be around in college beyond this season.
  3. NBC Sports: The preseason watch list for the Bob Cousy Award came out on Tuesday. The ACC landed seven guards on the 36-man list, the most of any conference. Interestingly, only four of those have actually played in the league prior to this season: Duke’s Quinn Cook, Boston College’s Olivier Hanlan, North Carolina’s Marcus Paige, and London Perrantes of Virginia. League newcomers on the watch list include Terry Rozier of new ACC-member Louisville, Miami transfer Angel Rodriguez, and Duke freshman Tyus Jones. Cook and Jones are one of two teammate pairings to make the list, joining Kentucky’s Andrew Harrison and Tyler Ulis.
  4. SCACCHoops: Each year it seems more and more coaches, including some in the ACC, are opting to play other comparable schools in a so-called “secret scrimmage” before real games begin. The NCAA allows each program to have two preseason meetings with other college teams. Those games can be traditional exhibitions, played in front of the public and under regular game conditions (against non Division I schools), or they can be scrimmages against Division I programs. Note that it’s no longer allowable for NCAA DI teams to play touring national teams or AAU squads. The scrimmages must be non-publicly attended and can be conducted in any format agreeable to both coaching staffs. Since practically every head coach will take advantage of the chance to use both available meetings with other opponents, if your team is only playing one exhibition game, they probably are having a scrimmage with some DI school somewhere. Virginia‘s Tony Bennett obviously likes the scrimmage format better for preparation, as his Cavaliers don’t play any exhibitions. Instead they will tangle with Marquette and Georgetown in closed scrimmages.
  5. Yahoo Sports: In this era of college basketball, there’s no doubt that player transfers have become much more prevalent. Some schools, such as Iowa State have made a habit of bringing in significant transfers seemingly every year. In the ACC, N.C. State has become a popular landing place for perimeter players who leave other schools. Last year, former LSU Tiger Ralston Turner was a solid contributor for the Wolfpack and this year, Trevor Lacey is expected to have a huge impact. According to this list put together by Yahoo Sports last month, Lacey is the #1 rated eligible transfer in the country. Mark Gottfried already has another in the pipeline with Terry Henderson sitting out this season after leaving West Virginia. It’s worth noting that N.C. State has also been losing significant players via the transfer route, including a couple of 2012 McDonald’s High School All-Americans in Rodney Purvis  and Tyler Lewis.

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Morning Five: 10.24.12 Edition

Posted by rtmsf on October 24th, 2012

  1. It’s now been about 10 days since the beginning of practices around the nation and you have to figure that coaches have started to get a sense as to what kind of team they’ll be able to put on the floor this season. But running against yourself only gets you so far by way of learning about your squad, so the NCAA allows coaches to set up so-called “secret scrimmages” between Division I schools so long as nobody other than the competitors are invited and nobody ever talks about them. CBSSports.com‘s Jeff Goodman has mined his sources to put together a list of non-games for the next week and there are a few of which we’d like to see some surreptitious 47%-style tape released afterward — a Xavier-West Virginia battle on Saturday; a Georgetown-North Carolina tilt as well as a Creighton-Iowa contest on Sunday; and, a Stanford-St. Mary’s game late next week. How about we just tip off the season this weekend instead — these are good games!
  2. One of the few teams in America who would probably be better off from a competitive perspective playing five-on-five in its own gym rather than schlepping around to find its match is Louisville. Seth Davis reports from his time spent observing the Cardinals, and after describing in detail why he thinks that Rick Pitino truly is having the most fun coaching that he’s had in years (perhaps decades), he believes that Louisville brings back enough heart, defensive scrap and offensive firepower to make a return trip to the Final Four in 2012-13. While it’s true that outside shooting is probably going to remain a problem area and the Cards are prone to injuries, we really can’t disagree with him. With a healthy Wayne Blackshear and the continued improvement of Chane Behanan, we feel that Pitino’s offense will be quite a bit more fluid than the train wreck they often put on the floor last season.
  3. If you had to pick one college basketball team that was the most influential — not necessarily the best, mind you — in the history of the game, who would it be? The 1966 Texas Western team that shocked all-white Kentucky and blew off the doors of the stereotype that black players were undisciplined and couldn’t play championship basketball? Perhaps the undefeated 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, the last team to run the table with an undefeated season and become the archetype for “perfect basketball” forever more? These teams and many others are considered in Alexander Wolff’s latest SI piece examining this very question. His choice: the 1964 UCLA Bruins, John Wooden’s first national championship team, a group that shocked the college basketball world in how it redefined how the very game was played (did you know that this unbeaten team wasn’t even ranked in the AP Top 20 to begin the season?). It’s an interesting read, and one frankly we find more compelling than the tired debates over which teams were “better,” an impossibly futile question to answer.
  4. If you’re a college basketball junkie who loves mid-major hoops, you may want to considering finding the NBC Sports Network on your cable or satellite package this season. The network will show more than 50 games this season, but the majority of those will involve teams from four non-power leagues — the Atlantic 10, the Mountain West, the CAA, and the Ivy League. It is also the only place to find realistic television coverage of the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament in the Bahamas (apparently something called AXS.tv will cover two quarterfinal games), which for our money is by far the best of the various preseason tournaments this year — VCU, Duke, Memphis, Louisville, Northern Iowa, Missouri, Stanford and Minnesota will all be there this year. The network will also show both semifinals and the championship game of the CAA Tournament next March.
  5. Finally, we’ll end with injury news. If you still have some college eligibility left and possess some semblance of a passing game and floor leadership at the point guard position, give Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard a phone call. His only legitimate point guard, sophomore Aaron Cosby, has sprained the PCL in his right knee and will be out of action for the next four to six weeks. Although the news could certainly be worse, entering the first month of the season and facing games against the likes of Washington, LSU and Wake Forest prior to the semester break isn’t exactly a recipe for winning without someone to run the offense.

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