Another week full of information to catch up on…

• Lute Olson is taking a leave of absence (not medically related) from Arizona (see video below). Asst. Coach Kevin O’Neill will take over during the interim (update: UA isn’t looking very good during its exhibition game vs. Concordia today).
• This is a very cool map of every D1 school – did you know there’s only one D1 school in Minnesota? We didn’t either. (h/t to Meaningful Collateral)
• Post Game Heroes breaks down the College Hoops 2K8 Sports player ratings (nice to see Bo McCalebb (#3 SG) and Kyle Hines (#2 PF) getting their due). EA Sports NCAA08 March Madness also lists its top 25 teams.
• Did you know that Davidson is playing at Texas today? Yep, a closed scrimmage. We’ll see if we can find a report of this game later.
• Everyone’s favorite play-in game is now worth the same amount as any other first round game.
• MTD plugged a college coaching simulation game that really sounds interesting – once we figure out how to quit our job and watch hoops all day manage our time more effectively, we’re all in.
• NCAA Hoops Today gives a sweet rundown of upcoming games on the tube.
• After whiffing on Greg Monroe, Duke got a commitment from Elliott Williams, a shooting guard from the Memphis area. Oh, and Duke’s three football fans were miffed when Coach K scheduled a scrimmage at the same time as their game vs. FSU last weekend.
• It turns out the college hoops fans are the most superstitious of all. Now excuse us while we arrange our chair just so in front of the tv.
• Injuries, Suspensions, Returns –
  • Washington three-point specialist Ryan Appleby broke his thumb and will miss 6 weeks.
  • UCLA guard Michael Roll tore the plantar fascia in his foot and will be out 3-5 weeks.
  • Sticking in the Pac-10, USC is battered and beat up.
  • Marquette’s Trevor Mbakwe is out for the season with a knee injury.
  • Wisconsin’s Michael Flowers has returned from a two-week leave of absence.
  • Auburn top returning scorer and rebounder Josh Dollard will miss the season for medical reasons.
  • Tennessee forward Duke Crews was allowed back on the team from his month-long suspension. His buddy Wayne Chism, however, was taken to the hospital with a concussion last week.
• Season Preview Materials –
  • In case you’re just tuning in…
  • Here are Jeff Goodman’s preseason all-americans. Here are MSN’s.
  • Here are some off the radar players to know.
  • M2M asks whether we should trust Vegas’s predictions. (answer: no).
  • Dan Hanner takes a unique look at doing a season preview through computer modeling (most interesting observation to us – Kentucky over Tennessee for the SEC title).
  • A non-blogpoll Top 25: Eric Byrnes Tries Hard (UT #1?).
  • MTD gives its F4 sleepers.
  • Gary Parrish previews: WCC, CAA, Mountain West, WAC, CUSA, A10, MVC, Big 12, Big 10, SEC, ACC, Big East, Pac-10.

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More news and notes from a busy first week of practice.

• Everyone is piling on Kelvin Sampson for his phone indiscretions.  AOL Fanhouse looks into the poor cell phone service excuse, while DeCourcy takes shots at IU’s compliance office.  One blogger wrote an open letter to Kelvin Sampson asking him to just go away.  Yesterday Sampson resisted talking about the issue at his press conference.
• Speaking of Indiana coaches causing trouble, the NCAA instituted a point of emphasis this year on abusive behavior by coaches on the sideline.   M2M has the definitive take on this.
• More IU-related content:  Bob Knight felt the need to talk about the MLB playoffs during his presser this week.
• Basketball Prospectus is up and running (woohoo!) – the first post that captured our attention was this one on what makes an assist an assist?
• MJ expects to watch his son sit the bench play at least once this year in Champaign.
• On Monday it was official that Mike Hopkins would succeed Jim Boeheim at Syracuse upon his retirement; by Tuesday, it wasn’t official anymore.
• So what really went down in practice between OJ Mayo and Daniel Hackett?  Was it an errant ‘bow or a flat-out haymaker to the schnozz?
• One of the underrated coaches at an underrated program, Randy Bennett at St. Mary’s got a two-year extension (through 2013). 
• Katz dissects the budding UCLA-USC rivalry, comparing it to UNC-Duke.  What he fails to mention is that SoCallers don’t care about college hoops nearly as much as the NCers.  That’s a Laker area, through and through.
• Injuries, Suspensions, etc.
  • Is Brook Lopez planning on playing this year?  He’s already out for the first nine games – now he’s indefinitely suspended for breaking team rules, which means he can’t even practice. 
  • Wisconsin starter Michael Flowers is going on a leave of absence for the cryptic reason of “medical problems.” 
  • Notre Dame super-soph Luke Harongody will miss 3-6 weeks with damage to his thumb ligaments. 
  • Mizzou senior forward Darryl Butterfield was arrested for domestic assault and suspended indefinitely by the team.
  • Remember our pal Frank Tolbert?  The good state of Alabama did not agree with local prosecutors that Tolbert was drunk while stealing driving his SUV away from the towing lot.  He is not expected to miss any games.
  • A bunch of UK players are injured in various ways.  Oh, and Alex Legion isn’t hurt, but his mom is some kind of prophet.     
• And more preseason chatter from various sources.
  • MSNBC has its preseason top 25 out (UNC #1).
  • Luke Winn spent the week slurping up whatever they’re selling in the RTP these days. 
  • Meanwhile, Jeff Goodman did a Tennessee three-step – Memphis, Vandy & UT. 
  • SEC:TGTBTD has it’s all-SEC teams ready – 3d Team, 2d Team, 1st Team (Chris Lofton, Jamont Gordon, Patrick Beverly, Richard Hendrix, Shan Foster).
  • Gary Parrish has his all-american teams + 10 ready (we like his balls to put Derrick Rose on the first team).   
  • Big 12 talk – apparently K-State is loading up on players, while KU is striking out on recruiting.  Yahoo asks if the Big 12 will ever win a title again, and oh yeah, Tom Osborne is the new AD at Nebraska.
  • Will Florida even make the NCAA Tourney this year?  Billy D. isn’t sure. 
  • Can UConn’s AJ Price stay away from the computer lab this year?  Jim Calhoun thinks he can. 

We’ve let the news accumulate for a while, so without any further delay…

• Tom Izzo porked the media by putting them through a “typical” 2-hr MSU practice last week.
• Ben Howland got a hefty raise and an extension through 2014 coaching his self-professed dream job.
• If you haven’t heard, Jim Jones’ grandson Rob Jones will be playing for the University of San Diego this year. There have been multiple takes on this, but we like Extra P.’s at STF best.
• Hoops Weiss has a scathing analysis of the Jim Calhoun / Holy Cross Coaches vs. Cancer situation.
• Kyle Whelliston contributed a really insightful article on espn.com about high majors playing road games at mid-major schools this year.
• Hard luck- former McD’s all-american Mike Williams ruptured his achilles tendon in a workout at Cincinnati last week and will the entire season (he sat out last year as a transfer from Texas). USC’s Daniel Hackett broke his jaw (on OJ Mayo’s elbow) last week and will miss up to six weeks. Vandy’s JeJuan Brown has withdrawn from school for personal reasons.
• Speaking of OJ, this video of him playing in summer league is making the rounds.
• AOL Fanhouse is continuing its analysis of all the Big East schedules.
• NCAA Hoops Today continued its analysis of last spring’s HS all-star games with the Roundball Classic and the Jordan Classic.
• The Big Ten Network’s twelve viewers will get to see several Midnight Madnesses next Friday, including Illini Madness, Hoosier Hysteria, Midnight Madness (MSU), Tubby’s Tipoff and Night of the Grateful Red.
• Gary Parrish lists his top points and combo guards (Derrick Rose – Memphis), top shooters and wings (Chris Lofton – Tennessee), and top bigs (Tyler Hansbrough – UNC) in the nation. He really likes freshmen.
• DeCourcy lists his top players the more traditional way – centers (Hansbrough), power forwards (Darrell Arthur – Kansas), small forwards (Chase Budinger – Arizona), shooting guards (Lofton), and point guards (DJ Augustin – Texas).
• And continuing our edification of various offensive and defensive schemes, here’s an explanation of Bo Ryan’s Wisconsin swing offense and a John Beilein-esque 1-3-1 trap.

We came across this table last week, but haven’t had time to properly analyze it until today.  An organization called the National Collegiate Scouting Assn. (NCSA) evaluated how schools are doing in their totality by ranking them in the classroom and on the fields of play, using the US News academic and Sears Cup athletic rankings as their evaluative criteria. 

If they’d just stopped there, we’d have no problem with their rankings.  However, they also felt a need to add a third criterion – the NCAA’s school graduation rates for student-athletes, which have been long derided as archaic, inconsistent and generally not useful as a tool for determining how well a school is serving and educating its student-athletes.  Use of these graduation rates as a performance measure ultimately results in a reductio ad absurdum situation where an elite academic and athletic instutition like Stanford is penalized because an obviously articulate and well-rounded athlete such as Tiger Woods did not formally graduate before turning pro.  

A Relevant Indicator?  Not Here

And not only that, the NCSA decided to weight graduation rates equally (each counting one-third) with the academic and athletic ratings.  We could probably live with its inclusion if its weight was substantially minimized, but not as it currently exists.  Nevertheless, here is the NCSA list.  See Table A below.

Table A.  NCSA Division I Power Ratings 

Ok, so we have no problem with many of the schools at the top – HYP, Duke, Stanford, Rice, the other usual suspects…  But look at some of the more dubious schools that piggyback a high graduation rate (and not much else) into the top 50 – UMass-Lowell??  Bentley??  Coastal Carolina??  The NCSA cannot be serious.

According to the NCSA, Bentley Does Better Than Cal & Texas as an Academic/Athletic School

Additionally, consider the schools who do not have athletes who would normally be inclined to leave school early for the pros, train for the Olympics or seek more playing time elsewhere (not even benchwarmers leave Harvard).  The NCAA penalizes schools with transfers under its current metric for determining graduation rates.  Therefore, the Ivies, W&M, Furman, Drury, etc., all fare well in Table A because of the disproportionate weight given by the NCSA to graduation rates.  The bigger state schools that have excellent academics and athletics, yet are more vulnerable to market forces and playing time considerations – Michigan, UNC, Virginia, UCLA, Cal – are all penalized using the NCSA method. 

So let’s take a look at what the NCSA should look like, by eliminating the graduation rates and simply comparing academic success and athletic success.  See Table B below.

Table B.  Division I Ratings (US News + Sears Cup)

That’s more like it.  Stanford is in its rightful place at #1 (how could the #4 national university and 13-time defending Sears Cup winner not be?), and all the schools we’d expect to be near the top of such a list are there.  Look at some of the highest risers – Johns Hopkins went from 59th to 3d; Cal from 88th to 5th; Texas from 78th to 14th; Wisconsin from 45th to 10th. 

This list is instructive in the sense that it shows which schools are getting the most out of its academic and athletic programs, but the NCSA flubs it my weighing graduation rates on par with the other two much more informative criteria.  Maybe they’ll do better next year.     

Update:  a UCLA fan rightfully questioned us as to why the Bruins and crosstown rival USC were not originally included on our list.  After a few moments of thought, we realized that the NCSA list didn’t have either school in its top 100!!!  This can only mean that the LA schools’ respective graduation rates were so low that its weight carried both schools outside the NCSA top 100 D1 schools, essentially proving our point about the ridiculousness of its weighting system.  UCLA (#25 US News and #2 Sears Cup) would earn a rating of 13.5 in our system, which would place the Bruins #4 on our overall list.  USC (#27 US News and #5 Sears Cup) would earn a rating of 16.0, placing the Trojans #7 overall. 

Update #2:  After reviewing NCSA’s data, we decided a whole new post was warranted.  We revamp the entire list and also take a look at how the BCS conferences stack up in our Athlademic Ratings – Revised. 

The real dog days of summer are here, and that can only mean one thing to hoopheads – international basketball.  Yes, we know that you’ve all missed the trapezoidal lane and goofy emblazoned unitards preferred by our international friends.  Harkening back to the days of our youth when we trotted amateurs out there and still actually won these events, we should take solace in the knowledge that, even though the world has indeed caught us in team basketball, we still own the patent on And1-style showmanship.  If only there was an international competition that allows four steps after picking up your dribble followed by random acts of dancing with the crowd.

A Team USA Led by S2ML Could Win This Competition

The Senior Men’s National Team will get most of the hype this summer (will Kobe play?  will Team USA qualify for the Beijing Olympics?), but there are two other international teams filled with collegians that we’re keeping an eye on – the Pan Am team and the Under-19 World Championships team (see rosters below).   

Pan Am Team USA Roster

The Pan Am team (coached by Villanova’s Jay Wright) begins play in Rio de Janeiro on July 25, and at least half of the roster is filled with players who will be NCAA All-Americans next season.  What’s most interesting about this roster is the names of some of the players who were left off the squad.  Preseason first-teamer Chris Lofton apparently counterbalanced global warming all by himself as he froze up the gym with his shooting stroke during the trials and was left home, as were Kansas guards Sherron Collins and Mario Chalmers and Duke sharpshooter Jon Scheyer.  It was also peculiar that Wisky’s Brian Butch was left off the team, as it leaves Roy Hibbert as the only true center available – let’s hope he stays out of foul trouble.  Jay Wright realizes that the four-guard offense that he employed at Villanova was out of necessity, yes?  Nobody asked us, but this team seems heavy on shooters and wings and extremely light in the middle.  That’s probably not a strong recipe to win in international competition against stronger, older and more experienced players.  We’ll see…

Seth Davis gave his insights after watching the trials here.      

Under-19 World Championships Roster

The Under-19 Worlds team, coached by the Undertaker, has already won its first five games in pool play heading into a showdown with 4-1 France tomorrow.  K-State’s incoming freshman Michael Beasley (14 ppg; 6 rpg; 70% fg in only 17 mpg) and Davidson guard Stephen Curry (11 ppg; 3 apg; 61% fg) have led a balanced attack for the high-scoring (99 ppg) American squad.  Arkansas guard Patrick Beverly is the only Team USA member earning more than 25 mpg thus far, while Donte’ Green and Damian Hollis appear to be the only two Americans not getting substantial minutes.  From what we’ve seen so far, it appears that Beverly, David Lighty and Deon Thompson are poised for breakout years at their respective schools, while Big 12 fans should just hang on for the one-year ride watching Beasley and DeAndre Jordan perform.  The eight-team medal round begins on Friday in lovely (especially as compared to Rio) Novi Sad, Serbia.

Michael BEASTley

We’ll be checking back in periodically with these teams to see how they finish in their respective competitions and, more importantly, whether any particular player(s) shows what to expect next season. 

Now that the all the recruits in the Class of 2007 have been tidily gift-wrapped for their respective schools (Patrick Patterson, the lone remaining unsigned star of the class, announced for Kentucky today), we can take a look to see how that impacts the public (read: Vegas) perception of how good teams will be in 2007-08. Granted, we won’t have a true snapshot until the early entry withdrawal deadline has passed next month (June 18), but this should give us a bit of insight into how each team is being evaluated in light of their existing losses and incoming classes (for entertainment purposes only, of course).

Source: sportsbook.com

Undervalued – with the two best bets at 11:2, it’s obvious that Vegas doesn’t believe there is a prohibitive favorite at this point. Still, getting those odds on UCLA or North Carolina seems like a solid play – we’d expect both of those to go lower as the season progresses next year. If you’re willing to bet that Hibbert & Green return to Georgetown next year, getting the Hoyas at 20:1 is a steal. Tennessee, with a maturing trio of stud sophomores (R. Smith, J. Smith, Chism) and everyone else – ahem, Chris Lofton, returning, is a joke at 40:1. Same with Oregon at 45:1 – yes, they lost Aaron Brooks, but the core of this elite eight team with Hairston, Leunen and Porter, is back. Texas at 60:1 is another steal – they lost Durant, but they keep a young and very talented nucleus of Augustin, Abrams and James in Austin. A couple of SEC schools – Arkansas and Alabama – also jump out at us at 100:1 because they each return a lot of young talent.

Overvalued – what was first noticeable was Ohio St. at 35:1, even allowing for the possibility that Daequan Cook returns to Columbus. Cook + Lewis and Lighty, even with another top five (but clearly lesser) recruiting class coming in, simply isn’t enough to substantiate odds this low. Duke and UConn at 40:1? Seriously? Yes, they’re both returning a lot and Duke at least has an excellent recruiting class incoming, but did anyone watch these teams this year? – this is a “name” pick all the way. We don’t mean to pick on the Big Ten, but Wisconsin loses several of its starters, including its all-american Tucker, and it’s at 75:1? Sell that one if you can. Same with Florida at 75:1 – no way on earth Billy’s kids make a run next year, but check back in 2009. Virginia Tech lost its best two players and its top recruit – 100:1 seems kind here. Another ACC squad – NC State – Vegas realizes this team was 5-11 in the conference last year, and loses its best player (Atsur), right? Maybe they got confused and were putting odds for NCSU winning the NIT, although I didn’t see South Carolina on the list. And everyone knows that no NIT list is complete without the Cocks. (correction: South Carolina is listed at 200:1 odds for the NCAA, not NIT, championship)