Coach Fred Hoiberg‘s team started quick in nonconference play during his first season, but his Cyclones eventually tumbled to a dismal last-place finish in 2010-11. After losing one of the league’s top point guards in Diante Garrett, Hoiberg’s job doesn’t get much easier this fall. However, he does have one of the more intriguing rosters in the Big 12 with four big-name transfers set to take the court. There are a lot of wild cards for Iowa State this season, but there may be enough talent for a surprise finish.
Fred Hoiberg's Team Could Surprise (AP/A. Heisenfelt)
The Stars: Scott Christopherson may be the most underrated shooter in college basketball. He shot a blistering 44.1% from three-point range last year, making 83 threes during a terrific campaign. Garrett got a lot of the credit as the star last season, but Christopherson was probably the second most important player on the squad. After playing sparingly as a freshman at Marquette due to injury, Christopherson finally emerged as a team leader when he became fully healthy and earned a starting job.
In news so shocking it’s hard to even comprehend, Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy announced Thursday night that he has Parkinson’s disease. He had taken a leave of absence earlier this month to deal with medical problems, and now we know why. Things are looking up for Kennedy and his family, though. He said he’s already started treatment and expects to continue coaching. In the meantime, associate coach Glynn Cyprien will continue to run the team. It’s impossible to know when Kennedy will come back, but that’s irrelevant at this point. Here’s to successful management and eventual recovery from the disease.
Somebody stop the madness: is Missouri joining the SEC or not? Not even the freakin’ league knows, for goodness sake. Last night, the SEC’s website posted a press release welcoming the Tigers — for about ten minutes. It may have been a hoax. Or, perhaps somebody accidentally clicked the wrong button. Either way, it’s a real fiasco for the SEC, and it’s not exactly the best way to interact with the public in this age of mass media.
Finally, some basketball news now… although it’s not good news. Kansas forward Thomas Robinson has hyperextended his knee, which may sideline him temporarily. Coach Bill Self doesn’t sound too worried about the situation, but he can’t afford to lose Robinson for any period of time. He and Tyshawn Taylor are the two known commodities on this team for the most part. It also may be an issue if the injury nags at Robinson during the season. Again, though, this doesn’t sound like too serious of an injury, so that may not be the case at all.
We brought you this story yesterday, but it’s important enough to worth mentioning again: A lawsuit by Michael Beasley may implicate Kansas State in recruiting violations. All of this is speculation at this point, but the suit claims Beasley’s mother received improper benefits while in Manhattan. The case is enormous and reaches all sorts of areas besides just Kansas State basketball, but there could still be trouble for the Wildcats. Coach Frank Martin and former assistant Dalonte Hill said they know nothing about the allegations. This story may drag out for awhile, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
Fran Fraschilla‘s got an idea: put Bill Selfin the Hall of Fame. Fraschilla said this week that Self, Tom Izzo and Rick Pitino should gain entry to the Hall as active members. He has a point. Self’s resume already stacks up with several of the all-time greats. He has close to 450 wins, he’s got his National Championship and he has countless conference championships to his name. Even if we don’t throw him in the Hall just yet, he’ll get there eventually.
With the the release of today’s ESPN/USA Today preseason poll and next week’s Associated Press preseason poll college basketball fans across the country can go into full-fledged sniping mode at where their favorite team is ranked or where a rival is ranked (that is unless you are North Carolina in which case your only complaint is that you did not get every single #1 vote). We thought it would be interesting to take a look at the historical trends of how teams perform throughout the regular season as compared to where the selected media and coaches rank those teams coming into the season.
You May Be Surprised With Where Tom Izzo's Teams Rank
Obviously, there are some limitations here like the fact that we are basing this off regular season results and ignoring postseason success and that we are relying on the opinions of those coaches and writers to determine how successful a team is. On the first issue, we will agree that most college basketball fans (casual and otherwise) will probably remember a team’s success based on their performance in March rather than the overall body of work. We like to think that we are a bit more nuanced in our approach to basketball and think that a team’s overall performance is more than just six games in March. Consequently, we feel that their regular-season performance is probably a better indicator of how good they were. If you feel strongly the other way, leave your reasoning in the comment section and we may reconsider our view. The second issue is more legitimate and we seriously considered using the end-of-season KenPom.com rankings as the basis for overall performance, but in the end we decided to compare apples-to-apples and include coach/media bias in the preseason and end-of-season rankings. Of course, we may go back and do this exercise with the Pomeroy rankings in the near future.
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.
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 »
Ed. Note: this column originally ran on October 15, 2010. We received such a positive response from it that we’re running it again this year, and quite possibly every year until changes are made.
Blasphemer. Defiler. Hater.
These are the words you’re going to use to describe us after you read this column. In fact, you may already be using them simply by scanning the title. What’s wrong with this joint, you might say? Isn’t Midnight Madness day a ritualistic celebration of the return of college hoops — a singularly original basketball-only event that juices up the masses of fans from coast to coast yearning for the shortened fall days where the lonely bounce of an orange ball in a far-away gym represents that all is right with the world again?
To this we respond: well, yeah… it was.
Charlie Brown Represents a Bygone Era of Midnight Madnesses
Forgive us for going all Charlie Brown Christmas on you, as we’re definitely going to sound like our dad when we say these things, but the “good old days” of Midnight Madness were simply better. What was once a localized phenomenon driven by student interest and an excuse to go crazy on a random Tuesday night has become an over-the-top, over-produced, over-compensated can-you-top-this Lady Gaga show filled with indoor fireworks, race cars, people dangling from the rafters and the rest of it.
This isn’t a Kanye concert or Cirque du Soleil, folks; it’s a basketball practice.
Give us Lefty Driesell and his car headlights illuminating a track at 12:01 am or hell, even Dick Vitale losing his mind after drinking so much coffee that his very DNA was jittery. Give us a countdown clock that actually counts down to something and a student body that’s had enough down time to get, shall we say, socially lubricated. Give us a grand introduction without all the peripherals followed by a high-wire dunk contest and a spirited scrimmage. Give us hope that we’re going to be in for a special year as we leave the arena at 1:30 am on a cool fall night, because hope always wears a little better with a group of buddies heading back to the dorms in the wee hours of the morning.
Until the season kicks off, we’re going to be taking weekly trips to the ACC and NCAA Vaults to look at classic ACC games of yore.
Rashad McCants' college career is sometimes overshadowed by his failed stint in the NBA.
In honor of the upcoming Carrier Classic between Michigan State and North Carolina, here’s a look back at the 2005 Final Four game between the Spartans and Tar Heels. Watching the game was also a great reminder of just how good Roy Williams‘ 2004-05 squad was (especially with regards to depth). The 2005 national championship team probably had a talent advantage over the current team at every position:
Point Guard: Raymond Felton over Kendall Marshall
Shooting Guard: Rashad McCants over Dexter Strickland and Reggie Bullock
Forward: Jackie Manuel, David Noel, Jawad Williams and Marvin Williams over Harrison Barnes, John Henson and James McAdoo (this is the most up-in-the-air position, but I’d give the 2005 team a slight advantage for going four players deep)
Yesterday, while most of the nation’s attention was focused on New York City and the variety of ceremonies honoring those who lost their lives in the horrific events of September 11, 2001, another tragedy occurred in the city. Early yesterday morning, Tayshana Murphy, one of the top female prep players in the country, was shot and killed in the hallway of her apartment building in what was believed to be a case of mistaken identity. Unfortunately, this one happens much more frequently in this country and often goes unnoticed. Our condolences go out to Murphy’s family and friends along with anybody else who has lost a loved one in a sadly “everyday” tragedy.
This year’s Carrier Classic featuring Michigan State and North Carolina is one of the premier games of the season even if the Spartans are not expected to be as solid as we normally expect of a Tom Izzo-coached team. Of course, this leads to the inevitable question of who will be playing in the game next season. Although the match-up has not been announced, Morale Entertainment Foundation, who is putting on the game, has announced that Connecticut would be one of the participants. The potential opponents for the Huskies next season are Kansas, Illinois, Florida, Arizona, and Texas. We doubt that this game alone will be enough to convince Jim Calhoun to coach another season if he was not already planning on it, but it would be an interesting environment for a new head coach to try to direct his team in if Calhoun does step down at the end of this season.
We briefly touched on Duke‘s decision to induct Mike Krzyzewski and Bobby Hurley into the school’s Hall of Fame last week when Krzyzewski stated that Hurley’s 3-pointer against UNLV in the 1991 national semifinals was the biggest shot in school history. They were formally enshrined during a ceremony on Friday night along with three other Duke athletes. We don’t have much to add here other than to ask the question: what took so long? On some level I can understand not wanting to induct an active coach into the Hall of Fame, but once you name the court after him I think that argument is moot. As for Hurley, he is the second of the championship-era Duke basketball players to be inducted with the first being Christian Laettner (an obvious selection who also has the perfect portrait that encapsulates everything about him right down to the sneer). We expect that there will be a couple more Blue Devils from their run of championships joining these three in the next few years.
One of the more amusing topics in college sports over the past few weeks has been the ongoing discussion about team uniforms, the fashion statements they make, and whether they can attract a coveted player to come to a school that he or she might otherwise not be inclined to do so. The football uniforms from Oregon sparked this discussion before the start of the football season and the uniforms (or whatever you call them) that Maryland unveiled in their season opener last week created a Twitter frenzy. Still, we didn’t think that the uniforms could make a big difference until we read an interview from highly coveted prospect Archie Goodwin that appeared to suggest he ruled out Baylor because he did not like their colors or their shoes. The person who wrote the article has updated it to lash out at a few site that he felt unfairly criticized Goodwin for this comment and there were other reasons listed for his dismissal of Baylor. While we won’t go so far as to say that aesthetics were the singular reason that Goodwin crossed Baylor off his list it is interesting that it is enough of a factor that he would even mention it and might be something that college coaches take into consideration the next time the school’s athletic director unveils a new uniform for the team to wear.
Finally, what would a Morning Five be without a comment on the ongoing ridiculousness that is conference expansion? Today’s submission comes from a little different perspective–the conferences trying to prevent teams from leaving via financial penalties. In this case, the ACC is reportedly looking to increase its penaltybuyout to $13 million from the previous figure of $10 million. Honestly with the size of the TV contracts being thrown around that extra $3 million is more symbolic than anything else especially if an ACC school would be looking to join, say, the SEC. We are not sure if there is a realistic way to limit schools from switching conferences (having a school “sit out” a year from conference play would never be politically feasible), but some administration has to come up with a way or stop with the pettiness against programs that decide to switch conferences.
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 Coliseumas 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.
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 Big Ten correspondent, Will Green.
Readers’ Take
Summer Storylines
Sully’s Back, But With Demands – In the year 2011, in the age of ‘now,’ in a profit-first educate-yourself-later society, amidst a flittering of teenage NBA draft picks, ferocious freshman phenomenon Jared Sullinger decided to stay in school. How quaint. Of course, there’s absolutely nothing quaint about Sullinger, his (rightly) assumed sense of on-court leadership, his brutally physical style of play, or that Ja Rule–esque snarl that makes him look like a squirrel who just ate a questionable nut. But seriously, it’s highly unlikely that anyone other than Jordan Taylor will stand in the way of Sullinger winning the Big Ten Player of the Year Award, and rightfully so. He has spent the better part of the off-season slimming down and getting faster. The best player on the best team in the conference simply can’t suffer a slump; he’s worked too hard and has clearly made a commitment to improving his game before leaving for the pros. The question is less about what Sullinger’s level of performance will be than it is about the effect his performance will have on other members of his team. Last year, his 17 /10 were a reflection of consistent contribution that was also part of a greater team-wide cohesion. Jon Diebler, David Lighty and even Dallas Lauderdale each had pronounced and vital roles on last year’s team. They’re all gone now. While some of the supporting cast and several new stars-in-the-making will join Sullinger, will increased reliance upon him make OSU more of a one-man show? Or will the Buckeyes continue to roll out a team-focused squad with four scorers in double figures and a core group of five guys who notch 30 minutes a game? Whatever happens, Sullinger will be back and he will be better than last year. Consider yourself warned.
Welcome, Nebraska – On July 1, Nebraska officially joined the B1G, an acronym whose ludicrousness we continue to subconsciously validate by pronouncing it ‘Bih-one-ggg’. If you’re scoring at home, UNL’s entry makes for 12 teams in the Big Ten, a conference that shouldn’t be confused with the Big 12, which only has ten teams now since Nebraska left it. Now that we’ve all scratched our heads for second, we should pause to consider how massive the amount of potential football revenue must have been to persuade the intransigent Big Ten to alter its ranks. The Cornhuskers’ inclusion marks only the second change in league makeup since the 1950s. So how will the other 11 schools adjust to the adjustment? Football-wise, they should all watch their backs. On the basketball court, though, it probably won’t have a big (or should we say, a ‘B1G’) impact. Sadly for Husker fans, their roundball team loses two of their top three scorers and has some major offensive issues to solve in a league whose tempo of play limits even the country’s very best offenses. Head coach Doc Sadler continues to recruit a healthy mix of transfers and high school players, but over his five-year tenure nine of them have left due to reasons other than matriculation or the NBA. Nebraska has had some encouraging moments in recent years, including a five game improvement in Big 12 play from 2009 to 2010 (from 2-14 to 7-9). The team’s defensive efficiency would’ve finished fourth and it’s adjusted tempo would’ve finished fourth slowest in last year’s Big Ten. In some respects, Nebraska feels like a perfect match for the conference. And yet, for many of those same reasons, it might be a little out-matched in its first few years.
Ed DeChellis Leaves For Navy – Nowadays, stories like these are rarer than that bloody slice of carpaccio you once had at a fancy restaurant: a coach leaving a higher paying, higher-infrastructure, higher strength-of-schedule situation for a middle of the pack team in a unambiguously low-major conference. Make no mistake: Ed DeChellis didn’t become the new head coach at Navy. He stopped being the head coach at Penn State. Unless they’re ousted via scandal or especially egregious results you simply don’t hear about power six coaches voluntarily leaving for a “lesser” job. And yet, that’s exactly what happened. Or is it? The answer to that question centers around just how much “less” of a job the Navy coaching position really is, and if anything DeChellis might have done warranted the move. The wink-wink nudge-nudge consensus is that while DeChellis didn’t necessarily knock anyone’s socks off, the school refuses to take basketball seriously. Some have lambasted the athletic department’s commitment to DeChellis and the program overall at a school that’s known best for intense linebackers and an 84 year-old Italian-American man. It will be interesting to observe new head coach Patrick Chambersin his first few seasons and see whether or not he runs into a similar set of struggles as DeChellis did during his tenure. If the holistic drawbacks of coaching in University Park really outweigh the benefits to the extent that someone would walk away from the position, then PSU has bigger problems to fix than figuring out how to win in the Big Ten this season. But if anyone can overcome whatever said “drawbacks” may or may not be, it’s Chambers.
The Buckeyes, led by big man Jared Sullinger, are easy favorites in the Big Ten.
In Andy Katz’s latest update on the David Salinas situation, he reports that the University of Houston has found nothing that would suggest any compliance problems regarding their basketball program and the late investment advisor. Sticking to his guns, he also repeats that the NCAA has not launched a formal investigation into the matter because it lacks the evidence to do so right now (perhaps the corpus of the departed, the coaches talking to the media about their squandered money, and the federal investigation aren’t enough). Because we know people are being called about this — indeed, Katz notes as much in his article — as we alluded to in yesterday’s M5, maybe this is the difference between a formal and informal inquiry. When the NCAA calls and you’re on the other end of the phone, though, it probably feels formal enough. Also, do they have to ask the same questions a seond time when they investigation goes from informal to formal?
Remember Tony Mitchell? He was a top Class of 2010 prospect who initially signed with Missouri, but, after an investigation into his high school transcripts, it was found that he had attended an unaccredited prep school for a year on the advice of an AAU coach. Ruled ineligible at Missouri, he’s been at North Texas attempting to fulfill his academic obligations and get back on the court. SI‘s Luke Winn spent some time with Mitchell in Riga, Latvia during the latter’s service on the USA squad that just finished fifth in the FIBA U19 World Championships. The entire article is great, but the part that really got our attention was when Winn showed, through tempo-free stats gathered at the U19 tournament, how Mitchell compared pretty darn favorably to the best player in the competition, Lithuania’s Jonas Valanciunas…who just got taken 5th in the NBA Draft.
What is it with basketball, the state of Texas, and Ponzi schemes? Totally unrelated to the Salinas matter, a San Antonio businessman pleaded guilty yesterday and could face up to eight years in the big house due to his involvement in a false investment scheme once led by Travis Correll — a former Southeastern Conference referee! Correll is already in prison on a nine-year stretch and gets to pay $29 million in restitution when he gets out.
The July evaluation period(s) — big opportunity for previously unseen prospects, or teeming, swarming cesspool of corruption? Maybe that’s taking it a little too far, but one has to admit that in the past it’s always seemingly been these summer recruiting periods where so much naughtiness happens. John Wall says his life would be drastically different if he hadn’t had the July eval period to show his stuff. Everyone knows it needs an overhaul, but getting rid of it entirely might not be the way to go. Change is coming, though, and that right soon. What results may be a paradigm in which the traveling recruiting analysts become some very important (and therefore popular and probably very rich) dudes. Interesting stuff from the Washington Post, including takes from the likes of Messrs. Pastner, Calipari, and Izzo.
Excellent and difficult question by CBS Sports’ Jeff Goodman: on the list of college basketball’s great accomplishments, where does Butler making consecutive title games rank? Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim both had pretty high praise, as you’d expect. We’re not going to tell you where Mr. Goodman listed it, so you’ll have click on the above link to find that out, but one thing we’re wondering is…what about next season? If Butler doesn’t have another great Tournament run (Bulldog fans, we’re not saying it won’t happen, this is a hypothetical), you know there will be people who will say that Brad Stevens should have cashed in and switched jobs when the gettin’ was good. If you hear such things, after you’ve rolled your eyes, please do it again on our behalf.
