Over the weekend it was reported that former Pittsburgh freshman Khem Birch was going to announce on Sunday night, but after giving it a little more thought he decided to postpone his decision until today. According to reports, Birch is deciding between Florida and UNLV. Both programs would appear to be a good fit for Birch as he could potentially pair up with either Patric Young or Mike Moser for the next two seasons. We are not sure what the real reason was for Birch’s decision to leave Pittsburgh, but either school would be just about as good of a landing spot as you could hope for when you are a transfer.
After initially suspending Keala King for its games at USC and UCLA, Arizona Statedismissed King, its starting point guard and leading scorer. Playing out of position due to Jahii Carson being academically ineligible, King averaged 13.7 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 3.7 assists per game, but as Doug Haller points out he had not fully adapted to running the team as he averaged 3.9 turnovers per game and often held the ball too long. We are assuming that was not the reason for his dismissal and the fact that the other two players (Kyle Cain and Chris Corvin) who were suspended with King remain on the team suggests that King did something in addition to his prior “unacceptable conduct” that led to his dismissal. Like Birch, King should have no shortage of suitors as he was a top-50 recruit coming out of college and plenty of Division I schools would be interested in a high-level point guard who can score and will have at least two years of eligibility remaining.
Less than two years after transferring from Illinois (he left the team once before deciding to rejoin them then finally leaving the school), Jeffrey Jordan has decided to transfer from UCF citing “personal reasons”. Neither Jordan nor anyone affiliated with the school has gone into further detail about what those reasons are, but this appears to be the end of his college basketball career as this was his senior year and we doubt that the NCAA would grant him another year of eligibility. It appears that his younger brother Marcus, who is the more talented of the two and leads the team with 17.2 points per game, will remain with the team. As for Jeffrey we assume he will continue working on his website along with his brother and some friends called Heir-Jordan.com and whatever other business possibilities are open to an heir.
Since the Crosstown Shootout Brawl Xavier has been in a freefall going from a Final Four pick by some to out of the top 25. While many people have been perplexed by the precipitous drop, Luke Winn thinks the Musketeers need to embrace their old mentality. We are sure that some people are going to take this the wrong way like they do with some of Winn’s statistical work, but in essence what he is saying that the team may have become too passive after all the criticism it received. As usual, we tend to agree with Winn on this and it reminds us of how the old Miami Hurricane football teams used to talk about playing with swagger. Playing with too much gets you in trouble by picking up fouls or penalties (or having brawls), but playing without it makes you vulnerable especially if you have grown accustomed to playing that way.
Looking for football analysis after the Wildcard Round of the NFL Playoffs? Well you came to the wrong place. If you were trying to get it this weekend at the Siena–Niagara game you were also out of luck. After Siena initially told fans that they would simulcast the New York Giants game on the scoreboard during their game against Niagara to enable them to follow their favorite college team and favorite NFL team and getting the green light from the local FOX affiliate, Siena was informed by the NFL that doing so would violate the league’s copyright interest so they had to cancel the promotion. As for the actual game, the Saints won 72-60 while the Giants won 24-2. Unfortunately, this could be an issue again next week as the Giants game, which starts at 4:30 PM on Saturday, will probably run into Siena’s next game, which is at Manhattan and starts at 7 PM.
Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences.
Reader’s Take
A Look Back
This past week in the Mountain West wasn’t exactly jam-packed full of great match-ups. New Mexico had a couple of very important games against quality opponents and came through with wins in each, but elsewhere there were relatively uninspiring games everywhere you looked. Air Force and Colorado State each played a couple games in four-team tournaments against middling competition (CSU won its tourney – the Sun Bowl Invitational in El Paso), TCU hosted a decent Tulsa team, UNLV went halfway across the Pacific to face Hawai’i, and Boise State traveled all of 22 miles to face Idaho, but there were also whitewashes against Central Arkansas and Redlands.
And, the bad news is, with teams across the country already up to their ankles in conference play, Mountain West teams have the likes of Johnson & Wales, Houston Baptist, Utah Valley, San Diego Christian, Nebraska-Omaha, and Cal State Bakersfield on the schedule next week – truly only a schedule a mother could love.
Fun Fact of the Week
No Mountain West team has had a sub-.500 record at any point this season. Only New Mexico has been as low as .500 at any point on the year (twice) after alternating wins and losses in their first four games of the year.
Team of the Week
New Mexico – Easy choice here, as the Lobos beefed up their NCAA Tournament credentials this week by knocking off Saint Louis (RPI #59) in Albuquerque on Saturday after having gained revenge on in-state rival New Mexico State earlier in the week. They still are only #50 in the nation in RPI, but should have a chance to bolster than number against a strong conference this season. And, more importantly, they are playing better as a team than they were early in the season. In recent weeks, Drew Gordon has been a monster on the glass, while he and Tony Snell, Kendall Williams, Jamal Fenton, Chad Adams, and Phillip McDonald have all scored in double figures at least once in their last four games. Read the rest of this entry »
Khem Birch has started to set up visits before deciding on where he will transfer to after his departure from Pittsburgh. The McDonald’s All-American will visit Florida today, New Mexico State tomorrow, and UNLV on Friday. Adding a big man of Birch’s abilities would obviously be a big deal, but typically players who transfer in a way that Birch did transfer down from a program of a higher caliber. In Birch’s case it appears like that will end being the case unless he ends up at Florida who may be so desperate for a big man to pair with Patric Young that they are willing to take on Birch so they are not quite as guard-heavy.
We didn’t think that there would be much of a storyline going into tonight’s Connecticut–Seton Hall game other than George Blaney coaching in the last game of Jim Calhoun‘s three-game Big East suspension. Then the Huskies met with the media after their Monday morning practice and Andre Drummond revealed that he didn’t know who Herb Pope was before that practice. While this didn’t make a lot of waves in the mainstream media you can be sure that Pope was made aware of Drummond’s comment. While Blaney and the rest of the Connecticut coaching staff is very familiar with Pope’s work (18.6 points and 10.9 rebounds per game), the Pirates will probably be using this as motivation. For his part, Drummond replied on Twitter stating that he meant no disrespect, but he had never watched Seton Hall play before.
Ken Pomeroy followed up on Matt Norlander’s piece from last week discussing the decrease in scoring this season. Pomeroy goes a little deeper into the numbers breaking it down into offensive efficiency, pace, and effective field goal percentage while also offering up three potential solutions. All of Pomeroy’s suggestions seem reasonable and are not really radical departures that most college basketball fans would object to although we can see some people having a hard time getting used to an Olympic-style trapezoid lane. If you are looking for more detail on Pomeroy’s work on the subject of Division I scoring we encourage you to take a look through some of the older articles he links to in yesterday’s piece.
With the New Year upon us many people are taking a look at their portfolios and deciding whether or not they should reallocate their assets into different investments. For those of you with college basketball portfolios (both literally and figuratively) Seth Davis is here with some investment advice in his annual stock report. While Seth is no Jim Simons, we tend to agree with most of his buy/hold/sell ratings although we are a bit confused by his decision to “Buy” the top three teams in his rankings. If you have been slacking a little bit on your college basketball viewing this season and are trying to get back into it after being devoted to college football, you could a lot worse than reading Seth’s report.
For a freshman who had minimal impact in his one semester on the court Khem Birch is making quite a bit of news. Birch, who decided to transfer from Pittsburgh at the end of the fall semester, has released the list of the schools that he is considering: Florida, UNLV, Gonzaga, Washington, Xavier, and New Mexico State. Birch also attempted to clear the air on his departure saying that he “didn’t think it was the best place” for him and that his departure was not due to disagreements with Jamie Dixon or what people around him were telling him to do. One school that is noticeably absent from Birch’s list is Missouri after there were rumors circulating that the school had “tampered with” Birch before obtaining a release based on tweets from Jeff Goodman (#1 and #2) earlier in the day. Frank Haith denied these allegations, but it is interesting that Missouri was mentioned as a leader for Birch on December 19 and now they are not even on his list.
Pat Forde published an excellent column yesterday on St. Louis coach Rick Majerus discussing the program he inherited and how he helped build it up into the borderline top 25 team that it is today as well as his difficulties dealing with the declining health of his mother. Surprisingly one thing that Forde did not touch upon was Majerus’ health including the cardiac surgery he had over the summer in Salt Lake City. Outside of that missing element this is a good review on Majerus and the St. Louis program in case you have not been paying close attention to Majerus after his stint at ESPN. If the Billikens continue to perform at the level they have so far this season, this will be the first of many pieces on Majerus that you will be seeing in the coming months.
Those of you who remember the 1994-95 Duke season will remember the name Pete Gaudet. A long-time assistant to Mike Krzyzewski, Gaudet took over midway through the regular season when Krzyzewski took a temporary leave of absence to deal with back issues. Gaudet guided the Blue Devils to a 4-15 record, which included the memorable double overtime loss to North Carolina, during his temporary stint as head coach. Duke eventually had the NCAA assign these wins and losses (mostly the latter) to Gaudet. St. John’s appears to be taking the opposite approach with Mike Dunlap, who is acting as an interim coach while Steve Lavin, as the NCAA and Big East have advised the school to continue adding the victories and losses under Lavin’s name even if Dunlap is coaching. We are not sure how the NCAA will handle this at the end of the season, but we imagine that there are large groups of people in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Lexington, Kentucky, who will not view this favorably even if it is only temporary.
It is a little late for Christmas, but we think that Connecticut will be happy with a belated $4.5 million gift from Peter and Paula Werth towards the construction of a new basketball practice facility. The donation puts the school halfway to its goal of raising $30 million for the new facility. This isn’t the first major donation that the school has received as you may remember the Burton family donating several million dollars to the school then sending a scathing letter to the school demanding their money back before eventually agreeing to let the school keep the previously donated money. The Werths made their family fortune through Chemwerth, which manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients that are sold to pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Interestingly, neither Peter nor Paula attended UConn, but all three of their children did and the Werths have been season ticket holders for football and both men’s and women’s basketball. We are assuming that they will get their season tickets comped by the school from now on.
Since this is the last Morning Five of 2011 it is a good time to look back at the past calendar year and look forward to the coming year. Luke Winn recaps the past year by ranking the top 10 stories of 2011 and as usual is right on the money. We are sure several people will argue that “Jimmertime!” should be higher on the list, but when we believe that when we look back on this year in 20 years at least three of the four stories above it will definitely be more memorable (perhaps not #3). While Winn is looking back, Seth Davis is looking forward to the new year and offers up 10 bold predictions for 2012. As you would expect these are not as detailed as Winn’s recap stories since they are basically just educated guesses, but Davis does make some predictions that will certainly get a few fan bases worked up.
It’s been a relatively quiet week around the Mountain West as teams took a bit of a break to celebrate the holidays. However, despite just eight games in the past week, we’ve had three fairly significant injuries. Boise State was the team hardest hit, as it lost freshman wing Igor Hadziomerovic to a broken foot and will likely play the rest of the season without him, while fellow freshman Anthony Drmic, the team’s leading scorer, missed the Broncos’ visit to Iowa with a sprained ankle. Meanwhile, Air Force lost is leading scorer, Michael Lyons, early in its visit to Spokane to face Gonzaga to a sprained ankle of his own. He never returned to a game in which the Falcons possibly could have challenged the Bulldogs, and the worst-case scenario for Lyons is not a good one. Since he sustained a high-ankle sprain, he could miss as many as six weeks, but a lot depends on how he reacts. It is possible he could be back as soon as this weekend, but ideally he would be back by January 14 when the Falcons travel to Boise State to open the conference season.
Another prominent MW player missed a game this week for a different reason, however, as New Mexico’s Kendall Williams sat out the Lobos’ Thursday game against UMKC as punishment from head coach Steve Alford for a poor academic fall semester. Williams is not in any way academically ineligible, and certainly the Lobos did just fine without him against middling competition, but give credit to Alford for laying down the law.
Team of the Week
UNLV – The Runnin’ Rebels take this honor down for the second straight week on the strength of its demolition of California on Friday. UNLV used a 31-12 run to close the first half to build a 20-point halftime lead, then led by as many as 27 in the second half before coasting home to a 17-point win. Anthony Marshall led the way in style with 22 points, nine rebounds, and three steals, while Oscar Bellfield handed out 11 assists and the Rebels dominated every facet of the game. UNLV still has to travel to Hawaii and Cal State Bakersfield in their non-conference (along with hosting Central Arkansas), but if everything holds up, they should enter conference play with a 16-2 record, including wins over North Carolina, Illinois and California and a good shot at a solid seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Dorian Green Had A Career Game For CSU Against Northern Colorado, Knocking Down Eight Threes (photo credit: Sam Noblett, The Rocky Mountain Collegian)
Player of the Week
Dorian Green, Jr, Colorado State – Green caught absolute fire Thursday night for the Rams, hitting eight-of-ten three-pointers and 11-of-16 from the field while exploding for a career-high 36 points in a win over Northern Colorado. After an excellent freshman season in Fort Collins, Green took a step back last season, seeing his scoring and shooting numbers take a healthy dip. But in his third season, Green has been rock-solid shooting the ball, hitting 58.7% of his three-point attempts this year. He’s also picked up his rebounding numbers for the third year running, (even adding his first-career double-digit rebounding game against Duke a couple weeks back) while helping out with the ballhandling duties and providing an explosive offensive threat in a Ram backcourt made up of multiple excellent shooters.
No matter how established the program, every college basketball coach eventually takes a chance on a transfer. Jim Boeheim, for example, plucked Wesley Johnson from Iowa State and turned him into the Big East Player of the Year in 2009-10. Tom Izzo and Mike Krzyzewski’s current rosters both include transfers with Brandon Wood (Valparaiso) and Seth Curry (Liberty), and in 1979, a former Indiana Hoosier named Larry Bird nearly won a title with Indiana State just a few years after quitting basketball (and Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers) altogether.
Hoiberg and Haith Are Recruiting Transfers Heavily to Their Programs
Normally, coaches take one or two transfers at a time to fill immediate holes, but that’s not everybody’s philosophy. Meet Missouri’s Frank Haith and Iowa State’s Fred Hoiberg, a pair of coaches who have abandoned traditional recruiting methods at their new schools in favor of Division I transfers. Haith, hired in April to replace Mike Anderson, is using three open scholarships in 2011-12 on players who will not appear in a single basketball game this season by signing Keion Bell (Pepperdine), Earnest Ross (Auburn) and Jabari Brown (Oregon). Hoiberg, on the other hand, has four transfers on his roster in his second year with the Cyclones: Chris Allen (Michigan State), Chris Babb (Penn State), Royce White (Minnesota), and Anthony Booker (Southern Illinois). The two coaches have energized their fan bases by signing big names from major schools, but Haith and Hoiberg’s recruiting tactics cannot be accurately judged at this point. Iowa State’s Fab Four will begin Big 12 play next month, and Missouri’s three transfers will not all be eligible until December 2012.
Instead of speculating as to whether the two teams will suffer from dreaded chemistry problems with so many transfers, why not crunch the numbers to see if The Transfer Effect really exists? Although finding aggregate data for Division I transfers is virtually impossible, recent anecdotal evidence shows that the recruiting strategy is an enormous risk for both coaches. Seven teams from both the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons welcomed three or more transfers to their programs at the same time, and only two teams (San Diego State and UNLV) finished above .500 in league play. Seton Hall, the only power conference team in the group, missed the NCAA Tournament.
Since the last Pac-12 Morning Five, we only had two games featuring conference teams. In the biggest of those, California got straight embarrassed by UNLV on Friday afternoon. After toying with the Bears for seven minutes or so, the Runnin’ Rebels ripped off a 31-12 run to end the first half, took a 20-point lead to the locker room and never looked back from there. Justin Cobbs had 20 points in the game, but the other three Golden Bear guards who started the game combined to shoot 8-of-31, turn the ball over nine times and just generally get outclassed by the UNLV guards, leaving Cal with wins over Denver and Georgia as their non-conference highlights. Meanwhile, Friday evening, UCLA knocked off Richmond for its fifth straight win and its best win of its non-conference stretch. In short, neither of these teams – both of whom were considered Pac-12 favorites prior to the season – should count on being able to earn an at-large NCAA Tournament bid barring a spectacular run in the Pac-12 season.
With non-conference play all but over (three non-conference games of marginal interest remain) and conference play on the doorstep, Percy Allen at The Seattle Times handed out his awards for the non-conference season, with Jared Cunningham taking down the Player of the Year award, Tony Wroten the Freshman of the Year, and Johnny Dawkins the Coach of the Year. No real surprises there, but we’ll have our own choices up tomorrow with which to compare these.
Looking ahead to the conference season, this may be obvious, but the chase for the title is completely up for grabs. Teams like UCLA, California, Arizona and Washington – considered prior to the season to be the four teams who would have the best chance at a Pac-12 title – all faltered to one degree or another in non-conference play. Oregon State and Stanford, middle-of-the-pack teams in the preseason, have impressed thus far, while Oregon, Washington State and even Colorado have shown some reasons for optimism. While this is admittedly not a great conference by a long shot, it could still be a great race for the title this year.
Oregon State sophomore center Chris Brown announced at the end of last week that he would be leaving the program and transferring elsewhere. If you were among those who were unaware that somebody named Chris Brown played for Oregon State, don’t beat yourself up: Brown played a total of 38 minutes last season and had yet to see the court this year, despite several games in which the Beavers blew out their opponents.
Lastly, an interesting piece on coaches who use some advanced statistics to help analyze their team’s performances, with Arizona State head coach Herb Sendek getting special attention. Sendek likes to chart things such as defensive deflections and defensive efficiency in the last 10 seconds of the shot clock as a way of improving his team’s performance. ASU found earlier in the year that teams were scoring against them 57% of the time that they took the shot clock inside of 10 seconds, and since that time Sendek has been emphasizing the importance of defending opponents for an entire 35 seconds.
It’s not often you get a game of this magnitude on the day before Christmas Eve, but there is definitely one this afternoon in Vegas. California came into the season as one of the favorites in the Pac-12, and they lived up to those expectations in their first four games. However, things would turn sour when they faced Missouri in a virtual home game for the Tigers. Missouri blitzed the Golden Bears from the tip and would eventually win by 39, meaning Cal would drop from national relevance for the next few weeks. They have responded well since the devastating loss, with their only other slip-up coming in a one-point heartbreaker at San Diego State. Now they come to a crossroads in a pre-Christmas game just off the Vegas Strip. A win would mean an 11-2 record going into Pac-12 play, and most importantly, getting back onto the national radar. But a loss will just reaffirm the thoughts that most people around the country have about the Golden Bears; as a one-and-done type team that just can’t win the big game.
Senior guard/forward Chace Stanback leads #23 UNLV with 14.5 PPG. (credit: Sam Morris)
If the Golden Bears are to win this one they will need to contain UNLV big men Chace Stanback and Mike Moser. Stanback is the leader of this team, both on the court and in most statistical categories. The thing about Stanback is, he just finds a way to get it done in big games. Chace had 28 points against #1 North Carolina, 19 against UC Santa Barbara, and 16 against #16 Wisconsin. Cal Forward Harper Kamp will get the honor of keeping him in check.
Perhaps even tougher to defend will be Moser. The scary thing about Mike is that when Stanback is having an off-night, he always turns it up a notch. Moser is averaging 13.6 PPG, but take a look at his performances when Stanbeck scores in single digits: 14 points, eight rebounds against Cal Poly, six points, 11 rebounds against UTEP, and 17 points, 11 rebounds against #19 Illinois. With Cal’s arguably best defender taking Stanback, look for seldom-used freshman David Kravish to see an increase from his usual 20-25 minutes. If both Kamp and Kravish hold the Rebels two main offensive sources to single digits, the Golden Bears have a great shot of getting the win. While this is a deep, talented team, the Rebels have relied on the Stanback-Moser combo a little too much, and that’s going to hurt them sooner or later. Read the rest of this entry »
Brian Otskey is the Big East correspondent for RTC and a regular contributor. You can find him @botskey on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.
Las Vegas is the place to be on this Friday night before Christmas. Sin City hosts three quality basketball games at two different venues this evening .
California @ #20 UNLV – 5:00 PM EST on CBS Sports Network (****)
Moser Has Been Outstanding in a UNLV Uniform (LV Sun/S. Morris)
Chace Stanback was simply fantastic for the Runnin’ Rebels on Monday against Louisiana-Monroe, scoring 29 points on 10-13 shooting (including 8-9 from downtown). UNLV needs its swingman to have another solid game against a very good California team. The Rebels play fast and shoot lots of threes but Mike Moser can have the biggest impact on the game in the post. When Moser is playing well, it’s so much easier for Dave Rice’s team to get open looks from deep. Playing that inside-outside game with good distributors at the guard position in Anthony Marshall and Oscar Bellfield, UNLV has no problem getting into an up-and-down game where it’s often easier for them to make shots in transition. The Rebels are a well-balanced team capable of hanging plenty of points on the opposition.
California has been dealing with plenty of health issues recently. Senior leaders Jorge Gutierrez and Harper Kamp have been fighting illnesses while Richard Solomon is out with a stress fracture. Gutierrez and Kamp should play tonight and that will be important as the Golden Bears need to show poise in a tough environment on the road. Guards Gutierrez and Justin Cobbs need to play smart and control the tempo by protecting the ball and running efficient half court sets. Cobbs had 25 points on 10-12 FG against UC Santa Barbara on Monday for the 10-2 Golden Bears. California doesn’t shoot many threes but Allen Crabbe is a big time deep threat for Mike Montgomery. The budding sophomore hits on 45.8% of his triples and represents a major threat to a UNLV defense ranked #205 against the three-ball.
Cal’s two losses have come against the better teams on its schedule. This is another chance for the Golden Bears to prove they’re the best team in a watered down Pac-12, something they’ve yet to do in convincing fashion. California has a strong interior defense led by Kamp and freshman David Kravish, although the absence of Solomon could cause problems if Cal’s big men get in foul trouble. Cal needs to control the backboards against Moser and company. If Gutierrez and Cobbs can control tempo, Cal will have a good chance to pull off the road victory. One area to watch is if Cal can keep UNLV off the foul line. The Golden Bears have the #4 defensive free throw rate, an important statistic against a Rebels team that shoots 73.4% from the stripe. With all of that being said however, it’s hard to predict a Golden Bears victory in what should be a raucous Thomas and Mack Center. California hasn’t proven it can win a big game yet and until they do, UNLV has to be the choice.
#5 Baylor vs. West Virginia (at Las Vegas, NV) – 9:00 PM EST on ESPN (****)
I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will bring you his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences each Friday during the season. Follow him on twitter at @IRenkoHoops.
The biggest and most impressive result — but also most perplexing — of the past week was Davidson’s 80-74 win versus Kansas. The Wildcats are a genuine contender in the Southern Conference this year, but they haven’t proven to be one of the best teams in the TO26. Indeed, the win in Kansas City was sandwiched between a 23-point drubbing at Charlotte and an eight-point loss at UMass, two teams that are hardly the caliber of the Jayhawks.
Nik Cochran Led Davidson to a Truly Shocking Upset
Yet for one shining moment in their non-conference schedule, Davidson went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the country in one of the toughest road environments and in the process, managed to avenge their loss to Kansas in the Elite Eight in 2008. Nik Cochran led the way with 21 points on just six field goal attempts. He was 4-5 from three-point range and 7-8 from the free throw line. But it was a fairly balanced effort for the Wildcats, who also received double-digit scoring from Jake Cohen, De’Mon Brooks, and J.P. Kuhlman. Perhaps most importantly, they were able to contain Thomas Robinson on the defensive end. Although the Kansas star notched 21 points, it took him 18 field goal attempts and 12 free throw attempts to get there.
More on the week that was after the updated Top 15 rankings, after the jump.
