A Smidge of Sanity in the Recruiting World?

We wanted to reflect on this before it got too stale.  Wednesday the NABC strongly recommended that the growing practice of college coaches targeting middle-school kids as prospects unconditionally end.  This is in light of the uproar that ensued in May when uber-recruiter Billy Gillispie at Kentucky received a verbal commitment from Michael Avery, a 6′4 eighth-grader from southern California who had not yet even picked a high school, much less a college.

Will This Kid Be Any Good in Four Years?

Gillispie took the brunt of the criticism in the national media, but he wasn’t the first or only coach who was using this questionable (but legal) strategy to ‘lock up’ young players who arguably have no idea what the concept of going to college means yet.  Anong others, Tim Floyd at USC and Bruce Weber (two mentions in one day!!) at Illinois have also made use of this practice.  The NABC, ironically led by Tubby Smith (the former UK coach who withstood increasingly harsh criticism, some legit, some not, based on his recruiting while in Lexington), asked all college coaches to hold off on offering scholarships or accepting commitments from prospects until mid-June after their sophomore year in high school, stating that younger players:

[They] have not yet displayed sufficient academic credentials or, in the vast majority of cases, basketball maturity to accurately project them as admissible students to the institution or impact players on the basketball team. [...] The academic and athletic profiles of these younger students are still very much works in progress. Coaches and athletes need to respect the process and allow development to occur in both areas prior to making commitments.

Already Committed to Maryland

While I often agree with and respect the reasoned discourse made by the esteemed Truzenzuzex at A Sea of Blue, the Kentucky blog of record as far as we’re concerned, we never could quite get over the smell test on this one.  Notwithstanding the arguments of caveat emptor and the lack of any enforceability of such early commitments, this whole situation just had a backroom feel of predatory extortion, an awkward taking advantage of kids (and parents) who may not know any better.  We view it as not dissimilar to the equally distasteful Sonny Vaccaro-bred fast-tracking of certain kids to certain schools based on implicit promises and subsequent shoe company representation.

Luckily, this may be a situation where coaches were doing it because they felt they needed to avoid a competitive disadvantage.  Now that the NABC has effectively disavowed this as a strategy (although it is still legal), coaches appear to be supportive of the line-drawing.  Billy Gillispie stated today:

I fully support anything the coaches’ leadership and governing body thinks is best for college basketball and high school-age basketball players.  It’s not like you’re not going to go out and evaluate young players. They’ve just strongly encouraged us not to seek a commitment, offer a scholarship, those kinds of things, which we definitely will adhere to.

What will be an interesting test of a coach shadiness factor (yeah you, Huggins, and you too, Gary) is to see who obliges the NABC with this directive to avoid recruiting the youngsters.  Nevertheless, we think this is ultimately a move in the right direction.

Tell Us How You Really Feel, Coach Weber…

Could it be that Illinois coach Bruce Weber is still a little miffed about Indiana committing grand larceny  ripping a player from his cold dead hands procuring Eric Gordon from his Muppet Show grasp last season?  We’re just wondering, maybe the guy is still a little bitter?  From Boiled Sports today (Bruce Weber speaking):

The league should be wide open and we can be right in the middle of it.  I do know one thing, though.  Indiana will suck. Don’t put that on the Internet.

Weber Seems Exasperated A Lot Lately (photo credit:  Daily Illini)

Of course, he’s absolutely right.  Indiana will suck.  Achieving .500 next season would with the talent they’ll have on hand would be an achievement that would catapult the name Crean into embarrassingly hushed conversations about Wooden, Lombardi and Bryant.  But that won’t happen.  As bad as the Big Ten is, the rest of that conference will mightily enjoy its territorial pissings all over the Hoosiers.

But in a couple more years, who knows?  We’re not sure that Weber really wanted to rile up the Indiana faithful any more than he already does.  Of course, with his recruiting woes in recent years, he’ll be back in the MVC by then anyway.

Memphis Chasing History?

If you’ve read this blog before, you know that we have an affinity for historical context when it comes to college basketball.  We like to think about how teams and players match up statistically in the NCAA Tournament given the parameters of greatness already set by precedent.  For example, much has been already written about this year’s F4 perhaps being the strongest of all-time, illustrated by the combined 143-9 record coming into last weekend and the four #1 seeds.  We love that stuff. 

To that end, we could be on the verge of another historic college basketball event the likes of which we haven’t seen for a generation.  Memphis currently sits at 38-1, which already gives the Tigers the record for most wins in a season, but if they win their 39th tonight versus Kansas they’ll be able to make a claim of greatness that only one team has been able to make since the UCLA run ended in 1975 - with a victory, they will become the first one-loss team in the post-UCLA era to win a championship.  Only the 1976 Indiana team (32-0) would surpass the final record that Memphis is contemplating tonight.

 

Memphis Tigers - All Time Great Team?

Now, why does this matter?  We think it is important because a 39-1 record would squarely place 2007-08 Memphis into the argument of one of the greatest teams of the post-UCLA era.  This is especially true given the caliber of opponent that they have beaten in the last three rounds (#5 Michigan St., #2 Texas, #1 UCLA) and how they have beaten them.  A 50-20 halftime score against Michigan St.; a clamping down of Texas and DJ Augustin in their home state; and rendering the vaunted UCLA defense completely ineffective on Saturday.  Additionally, Memphis’ scoring margin of +18.6 this season would rank it #2 in the last ten years of champions (Duke 2001: +20.2), so this team is all kinds of legit in historical terms.     

It’s also interesting to consider that outside of the unbeaten 1976 Indiana team, no other team in the modern era has managed to win a title with less than 2 losses!  Here are the results for the group of teams with zero or one loss entering the Tourney.

1977 - San Francisco (29-1) - lost first round to UNLV
1979 - Indiana St. (33-0) - lost title game to Michigan St.
1988 - Temple (29-1) - lost regional finals to Duke
1990 - Lasalle (29-1) - lost second round to Clemson
1991 - UNLV (34-0) - lost semifinals to Duke
1996 - UMass (35-1) - lost semifinals to Kentucky
1997 - Kansas (32-1) - lost regional semifinals to Arizona
1999 - Duke (37-1) - lost title game to UConn
2004 - St. Joseph’s (27-1) - lost regional final to Oklahoma St.
2005 - Illinois (37-1) - lost title game to UNC
2008 - Memphis (38-1) - ???????

Without question, Indiana St., UNLV, UMass, Kansas, Duke and Illinois were on the verge of greatness had they won the national championship.  We think Memphis is on that same plane.  While it’s true that CUSA sucks and doesn’t provide much in the way of competition for the Tigers during the regular season, Memphis challenged itself this year with nine OOC games against NCAA Tournament teams, including UConn, Arizona, Gonzaga and Tennessee.  They certainly have the talent to be in the argument with many of those other one-loss teams, and their performance to date (despite all the naysayers, ourselves included) substantiates its inclusion among the pantheon of great teams should they pull it off tonight. 

Not again. . .

Lost in the news of Tom Crean’s decision to go to Indiana is the possibility that the Kansas Jayhawks are once again going into the Final 4 with rumors that their head coach is going to leave them. The last time they were here in 2003, they went through this with Roy Williams, who initially denied any interest in the open position, but left Kansas anyways a week later. With Sean Sutton’s resignation after his ill-fated attempt to succeed his father Eddie, there is an opening in Stillwater for one head ball coach.

Although Bill Self, an OSU alum, has stated that he is not running in the running to be the Cowboys next head coach, his press conference left us less than convinced that he is definitely staying in Lawrence. As Seth Davis noted last week (scroll to bottom), OSU has some serious Boone Pickens money to throw around. That and the chance to go back to his alma mater (potentially ending their ceaseless requests for donations) may be enough to convince Self to leave the Jayhawks empty-handed once again.

I would have a hard time understanding why Self would leave Kansas. I know that he is an OSU alum and maybe I went to a school with absolutely no school spirit (stupid city campus), but it just seems like Self has fewer reasons to go from KU to OSU than Williams had to go from KU to UNC. I would consider KU and UNC to be on the same level in terms of historic significance and about the same in terms of ability to recruit (slight edge to UNC), but KU absolutely destroys OSU in any objective or subjective measure (other than number of fans in Stillwater).

I just hope the Roy Williams tearfest this week isn’t interrupted by this. Seriously though if Self leaves for OSU, who would Kansas trust after getting screwed over by 2 coaches who hadn’t won a title yet and left their team after/during (depending on your level of cynicism) a trip to the Final 4? Danny Manning?

I am sure this will hang over the heads of Jayhawk fans during what should be the best week of their year (unless they beat UNC/Roy and the winner of UCLA/Memphis) as will the memory of Roy high-tailing it out of town for Chapel Hill. The thing that should really bother them is that Self has a history of this having left a big-time basketball school (Illinois at the time) for another school (Kansas). The thing is that he may be leaving them this time.

“I Could Give a Sh!t About North Carolina”

I know the topic has been written about ad nauseum before, but I haven’t seen anything substantial written in the major news sources about it after the Elite 8 so I’m going to pretend that I’m breaking this story. . .

As most of you know after the 2003 season, Matt Doherty of 8-20 in 2001-2002 fame “resigned” from his position as head coach at UNC. Because Doherty resigned before the Final 4, much of the talk in the week leading up to the Final 4 that year (along with a freshman phenom Carmelo Anthony) was about who would take over the prized position as coach of the Tar Heels. After Dean Smith retired, he was succeeded for a brief period by Bill Guthridge, but that was only viewed as a temporary fix as, well let’s just say that Guthridge had a lot of “experience” by the time he became a head coach. UNC hired Doherty who was fresh off a great run at Notre Dame where he won a Big East Coach of the Year award. After a strong start, Doherty’s team fell apart the next year before entering the 2002-2003 season with a talented group of freshman that you may remember (Sean May, Rashad McCants, and Raymond Felton). They got off to a hot start that year winning the Preseason NIT with wins over then #2 Kansas (and Roy Williams) and a very talented Stanford squad. However, they fell apart when Sean May was injured soon after. Doherty’s resignation sparked widespread rumors with potential coaches ranging from the absurd (Dean Smith returning) to the more realistic choices (Williams and Larry Brown). Even Dick Vitale chimed in with his thoughts on the candidates.

All of this led up to the championship game, where after a week of questions about their coach leaving, Kansas fell to Syracuse 81-78 when Hakim Warrick came out of nowhere to swat away Michael Lee’s attempt to tie the game. In the post-game aftermath, Roy Williams was interviewed by Bonnie Bernstein. What followed was one of the great moments in sports TV history. Watch and enjoy:

It turns out that in some ways this “interview” became more famous or infamous (depending on your point of view) than the game itself. Some media members were quick to defend Bernstein. As for Williams, who late on April 7th denied even thinking about the UNC job for a second, he ended up leaving Kansas and his recruits and signed with UNC on April 14th. We won’t get into all the details of the process because it ended up being really convoluted, but Joe Posnanski covered it fairly well in his interview with Roy Williams soon after Williams decided to go to UNC.

The domino effect of this saga is pretty interesting in its own right:
- UNC hires Roy Williams from Kansas.
- Kansas hires Bill Self from Illinois.
- Illinois hires Bruce Weber from Southern Illinois.
- In 2005, UNC (Williams) defeats Illinois (Weber) in the national championship game.
- On Saturday night, Kansas (Self) gets a shot at revenge against Williams.

I can’t wait to see what the Kansas fans have in store for Old Roy on Saturday night. . .

Mulligan (Part 2)

Short recaps now since I’m running short on time before the selection show starts.

SEC
- This deserves a lot more attention because UGA should be the team of the day even if they got a huge no-call against Kentucky in their early game and Dennis Felton was whining before the night game about having to play 2 games in a day. UGA managed to beat UK and MSU in the same day, which is a pretty impressive feat. Arkansas beat Tennessee 92-91, which will cost the Vols a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
- Prediction: Arkansas. We think the fatigue will catch up with UGA the day after.

Pac 10
- UCLA overcame the absent Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (sprained ankle) and an injury to Kevin Love (back spasms) to beat Stanford 67-64. This time they used 28 points from Darren Collison instead of shady officiating to beat the Cardinal. The win wraps up the #1 seed in the West for the Bruins who should be good until the Sweet 16 even without Mbah a Moute.

Big 10
- Wisconsin used a big steal late and Michigan State’s inability/refusal to get the ball to Drew Neitzel late to beat Sparty, 65-63. In the other semi, Illinois beat Minnesota 54-50. Unfortunately, we don’t have much to add here because we took the same attitude Bobby Knight had when asked to predict the game on ESPN (”Who cares?”).
- I guess it goes without saying that we like Wisconsin this afternoon.

Big 12
- We could just use the recap of the previous 2 Big 12 tournaments for this. Texas and Kansas advance to the finals for the 3rd year in a row. The winner will most likely get the #1 seed in the Midwest.
- We’re going with Kansas here to get the #1 seed in the Midwest.

We’d also like to congratulate Coppin State for earning a spot in the play-in game as the first 20 loss team in tournament history.

Night in Review: March 14, 2008 (Part 2)

Back for the second part of the review after a short 2+ hour nap.

Pac 10
- We’ll get the late game over with first since it was past our East Coast bedtime (had to get up to watch a bunch of 9 year-olds “run” a 5k at 8 am). #11 Stanford beat #22 Washington State 75-68 behind Brook Lopez’s 30/12/3 for the third time this year. Basically the Cougars don’t have anybody who can match Lopez inside and not even a 12/20 showing from 3 could save them. Not much to say here except it sets up a rematch of the most controversial game we have seen this year.
- In the most exciting game we saw all day, UCLA hung on to beat USC 57-54 when OJ Mayo’s last second hesitation 3 was a little long. This was a pretty exciting game to watch and UCLA didn’t even need the refs giving them a 6th man to win this game. It was a back-and-forth affair all night. In the early going, USC controlled the game behind their freshmen (Mayo and Jefferson) who are almost as old as Dwight Howard is. Ben Howland’s vaunted defense looked terrible early as UCLA decided they didn’t want to defend off the screen. Down 6 at half, UCLA woke up and Kevin Love scored 11 of his team-high 19 during a Bruin 15-2 run coming out of half. UCLA built up a pretty good lead going into the closing minutes, but OJ Mayo took over and started to show flashes of what made him the most-hyped recruit in his class for most of high school as he beat up on UCLA and Pac 10 Defensive POY Russell Westbrook hitting a 3 and a tough left-handed layup. Then on the last 2 possessions, he showed us why he dropped off his perch as the next Lebron (not sure how anybody ever saw that) and fell to probably the #3 guard in his class behind Rose and Gordon. On the first possession, he dribbled into traffic and was stripped from behind by Westbrook. Then on the final possession, he had a good look at a 3 from the top of the key to tie it, but added an unnecessary hesitation which may or may not have thrown off his timing to cause a miss. Daniel Hackett grabbed the offensive rebound, but did not have enough time to get off another 3 as Mayo did not leave his team with enough time for another shot. Perhaps the bigger news for UCLA was the loss of Luc Richard Mbah a Moute who sustained a sprained ankle. I haven’t heard anything definitive about how long he’ll be out but I wouldn’t expect to see him for a while as he had a similar injury recently.
- Prediction for tonight: Stanford gets revenge for getting screwed on the call at the end last week at Pauley. The match-up down low should be one to watch as the Lopez twins battle Love who will be without Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (see above).

Big 10
- This seems like it was a pretty interesting set of games unfortunately I somehow missed all of them, but I’m making up for it today by watching MSU-Wisconsin as I am typing this. First, the routine stuff with Wisconsin crushing Michigan 51-34. We’re reserving judgement on the Beilein experiment for another year or two given how unique his offense is and the players it requires. Also Michigan hasn’t been Michigan the past few year, but this year wasn’t that encouraging. Now onto the important games. We’ll start with MSU beating OSU 67-60. It seems like MSU controlled this game as OSU only had the lead once at 32-30, but MSU could never really pull away with their biggest lead being 9 points. OSU will probably make the tournament (one of Lunardi’s last 4 in) unless some “locks” in small one-bid conferences lose and cost the majors a few middle-of-the-pack teams. The two other games were arguably the most exciting of the night not involving falling roofs (we can joke since nobody was hurt, right?). In one game, Illinois continued its push for an improbable auto bid with a 74-67 OT win over #17 Purdue. The Illini were led by Demitri McCamey’s 26 points and now stand 2 more win away from returning Bruce Weber to the NCAA tournament. This road was made slightly easier by the shot of the night by Blake Hoffarber pulling a Christian Laettner with a turnaround off a full-court pass at the buzzer to beat the up-and-down Hooisers 59-58. DJ White did his part for the Hooisers with 23 points, 13 boards, and 4 blocks, but super-frosh Eric Gordon was off as he finished with 16 on 4/13 FG and 5 turnovers. All-in-all, a very satisfying day for Illini fans who made the trip to Indianapolis. With the loss, Indiana might be positioning itself as the scariest #7 seed in a long time (probably a #6 now, but depending on how the other games work out they make drop a seed given their Jekyll/Hyde act the past few weeks). On a sidenote that I’m sure all of you have heard a hundred times already today, Blake Hoffarber is no stranger to miraculous last second shots as his most famous one makes the turnaround last night rather routine.

First, the ESPN highlights from last night:

Which gives me a reason to post the Laettner shot (and to piss off rtmsf):

And it was shown as a flashback in the first clip, but it won and ESPY and won a state title so here is Blake Hoffarber’s most famous shot:

- Since there is still 3 minutes left in the 60-57 MSU-Wisconsin game, I guess I can still make my predictions for the Big 10: MSU and Minnesota.

ATB: Weekend Wrap

Still Unbeaten. #1 Memphis and #2 Kansas remained unbeaten through the weekend, and until both lose a game, this will be the top storyline for the last six weeks of the regular season. This is the latest point in a season that two teams have been undefeated since 2005 (Illinois and Boston College), and there are no signs that either team is slowing down soon. Kansas, the top defensive efficiency team in America, knocked the stuffing out of Nebraska 84-49, but we figure the Big 12 (#2 conf in both KenPom and Sagarin) is too tough as a conference for the Jayhawks to go 16-0 this year (est. KenPom chances of running the table = 38.5%). The real intrigue is whether Memphis (#2 defensive efficiency) will run the table until March, and given that they handled Gonzaga 81-73 in a workmanlike manner on Saturday, we’re feeling like Calipari’s team has a great shot at getting into the postseason unblemished (est. KenPom = 58.3%). He’s no stranger to this kind of pressure, either; remember, in 1996, UMass was 26-0 and #1 deep into February before finally losing a late A10 game to GW. That year also happens to represent Calipari’s sole trip to the F4, before Marcus Camby’s “homemade” bling ultimately led to its vacation by the NCAA. Both teams face somewhat tough opponents on the road Wednesday, however (Memphis @ Houston; Kansas @ Kansas St.), but if they survive those tests we might have a situation similar to 2004 when both Stanford and St. Joseph’s made it to the first week of March unbeaten. It must be noted, though, that neither of those teams made it to the F4.

The Truth About Duke. We were absolutely sure that Duke was going to lose at Maryland yesterday. After watching the first half, where James Gist and Bambale Osby seemingly scored inside at will, we were beyond absolutely convinced that the Terps were on track to beat their second top five opponent in eight days. So what happened? Duke 93, Maryland 84. We’re not going to pile on Gary Williams and his squad for their typical carelessness with the ball, etc., here - that’s what they do, and they were still able to beat UNC in Chapel Hill last weekend. No, we’re going to give all the credit to Duke for their hustle, resilience and clutch play down the stretch last night. It was funny, once Duke got the lead with 12 minutes remaining, we knew in our gut that the game was over. Sure enough, Duke methodically pulled away by getting after the loose balls, battling on the boards despite being undersized, and forcing some of those poor Maryland turnovers. We generally try to avoid the stereotypical “Duke is smarter” BS that you hear the Dick Vitale and Mike Patricks of the world prattle on about, but this year we have to give it to them. Duke plays with a very high basketball IQ, they absolutely get after you defensively, and they simply don’t beat themselves. They just don’t have enough of an inside attack to win another national championship this year, but Duke haters everywhere should prepare themselves for another depressing February and a #1 seed for the Devils in March.

Conference Muddling. The middle of the six BCS conferences are about as wide open as we can remember. In the ACC, after Duke (5-0) and Carolina (4-1), who is the third best team? There are nine other teams with either three or two wins. The Big East is even worse - after Georgetown (6-1) and Louisville (5-2), there are eleven teams with four or three wins, including an absurd six teams with identical 4-3 records. The Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC are a little better, but it’s the Big 10 that is the only league exhibiting true have/have-not behavior. Five teams have five-plus wins, five teams have two or fewer wins, and poor Iowa sits in the middle at 3-5.

Saturday Games. Here are the games that caught our attention on Saturday.

• Notre Dame 90, #23 Villanova 80. As soon as we think we’ve got ND figured out, they do something like this.
• Connecticut 68, #8 Indiana 63. We watched this game and still can’t figure this one out.
• Texas-Pan American 54, NJIT 42. 0-21 now… Circle the home date v. 4-19 Longwood on 2/4 as the breakthrough win.
• NC State 69, Florida St. 66. This was pretty much a must-win for the Pack.
• #19 Texas A&M 59, Oklahoma St. 56. OSU continues to struggle in the Big 12 (1-4).
• Arizona 84, Washington 69. Arizona is starting to look like the third best team in the Pac-10.
• Louisville 67, St. John’s 57. Terrence Williams with triple 8s (8/8/8 assts).
• UNLV 72, San Diego St. 69. A key road win in the Mtn West for Vegas.
• Virginia Tech 81, Boston College 73 (OT). Would the real BC please stand up?
• Oklahoma 77, Baylor 71. BU’s first B12 loss is at the hands of the surging Sooners (Blake Griffin with 17/15).
• Purdue 60, #11 Wisconsin 56. Very nice home win for the young Boilers (6-1 in the B10).
• Mississippi St. 88, #15 Ole Miss 68. MSU is starting to look a little like that team SEC:TGTBTD predicted back in September.
• Rutgers 77, #17 Pittsburgh 64. Nice egg-laying by Pitt in this one.
• Kansas St. 82, Iowa St. 57. KSU continues to surge (Beastley 33/15).
• #18 Drake 58, Northern Iowa 54. The class of the MVC continues to roll…
• #6 Washington St. 56, #25 Arizona St. Heartbreaking home loss for the Sun Devils.
• #22 Stanford 82, California 77. Once again, it appears as if Cal is the odd man out in the Pac-10.
• Richmond 80, #14 Dayton 63. Two straight blowout losses for the Flyers - what happened?
• #10 Georgetown 58, West Virginia 57. GTown just keeps sneaking by…
• #3 Tennessee 85, Georgia 69. Lofton came out of his shooting slump with 7 threes.
• #12 Texas 73, Texas Tech 47. DJ Augustin with 19 as Bob Knight continues to teach mediocrity.
• #21 Marquette 79, Depaul 71. MU’s backcourt combined for 44 pts.
• Arkansas 68, LSU 52. The John Brady firing watch continues…
• USC 95, Oregon 86 (OT). Forget what we said last week about Oregon always winning at home - tough weekend for the Ducks.
• #7 UCLA 85, Oregon St. 62. What’s laughable is that OSU thought they were in this game at halftime (43-39).

Sunday Games. A few more…

• #20 Xavier (OH) 77, Massachusetts 65. UMass has really fallen off, but Xavier continues to look fantastic.
• Florida 86, #16 Vanderbilt 64. Let’s remove Vandy and Ole Miss in favor of Florida and Miss St. in this week’s blogpoll, shall we?
• #9 Michigan St. 77, Michigan 62. We just can’t get a sense as to how good this MSU team really is (6-1 in the B10, but that one loss was so hideous!).
• Miami (FL) 75, Clemson 72. Miami really needed this win to avoid a freefall in the conference race.
• Syracuse 71, Providence 64. Both teams needed this one, Cuse got it.
• Georgia Tech 92, Virginia 82 (OT). Tremendous ending in regulation in this one, but Virginia has now earned itself last place in the ACC.

Checking in on… the Big Ten.

When we started this post, we were thinking that the Big 10 was one of the better leagues.  What we were smoking?  Here’s our midseason check-in on our midwestern friends:

F4 Caliber.  Indiana and Michigan St. are the only two possibilities, and we believe that Indiana is the more likely of the two based on their unmatched inside/outside tandem of DJ White and Eric Gordon. 

Most Likely to Collapse.  Purdue.  It’s not that we think the Boilers are a bad team disguised with a solid record, it’s just that they’re so incredibly young and the Big Ten death matches can take a toll on anyone. 

Most Likely to Rise.  Illinois?  Surely they’re not this bad - we know Bruce Weber can coach a little bit, even if he can’t recruit his way out of a paper bag.  0-4 in the Big Ten is fairly pathetic. 

Biggest Disappointment.  Michigan.  Expectations weren’t high for John Beilein’s first year in Ann Arbor, but this team is a complete disaster.  When your best win after sixteen games is versus Brown, you have to be disappointed. 

Biggest Surprise.  Minnesota.  The Gophers won all of nine games last year, and with largely the same roster, they’re already 12-3.  Having found the right environment for his coaching style, he’s well on his way to another successful first season at a new job. 

ATB: Weekend Recap

12.11.07

Recap. Apologies to everyone, but we’ve had a serious family matter to attend to in recent days, so we’ve lost a little of our mojo in keeping up with the blog. The good news is that Saturday was really the only decent day’s worth of games over the last four days. So here are the highlights (some of which we saw) from last weekend.

Games We Watched. Arizona 78, Illinois 72 (OT). The big news surrounding this game was the re-emergence of Lute Olson on Friday long enough for his wife to notify everyone that she is a money-grubbing Republican operative and Olson are getting a divorce and he needs time (i.e., the rest of the season) away from the program to put his personal life back together. What we saw: for the second consecutive game, Kevin O’Neill’s Wildcats got themselves down big early (12-0 to start the game), only to gut out a second half comeback led by Jerryd Bayless (20/5 assts) to win against a tough opponent. Sure, it took a fortuitous no-call for UA guard Nic Wise, who quite obviously signalled for a timeout that his team didn’t have, to get them into OT, but a road (Chicago) win is a road win. Arizona sophomore forward Jordan Hill added 23/14 for the Cats, who we’re starting to think might have a little toughness in them this year after all. As for the Illini, they have only themselves to blame with their feeble 10-22 from the foul line for the game. #19 Pittsburgh 79, Washington 78. This was another fantastic game. Pitt picked up a hard-earned road win in a venue where UW simply doesn’t lose very often (33 straight against non-conference opponents). The game was close throughout, and it was ultimately decided with a five-minute video review of Washington’s Justin Dentmon’s runner at the buzzer that dropped through the net after bouncing around the rim several times. In the olden days before video review of buzzer beaters, UW walks off with that win and Pitt goes home 8-1, but not now. The officials concluded (rightly, although it was extremely close) that Dentmon’s shot was after the horn and therefore Pitt was the winner, much to the communal chagrin of the Washington crowd. Great non-conf win for Pitt. #14 Indiana 70, Kentucky 51. We watched this one out of a sense of history and tradition of the sport, but we wish we hadn’t, in retrospect. E-Giddy didn’t even play and still the Hoosiers rolled up the Cats and smoked them like a fat Cohiba. The story of the game was that IU guard Jordan Crawford (20 pts on 5-10 shooting) completely and totally outplayed his older UK brother, Joe Crawford (10 pts on 4-15), to the point where even Billy Packer was gushing. If any game encapsulated the frustratingly enigmatic career of former HS stud Joe, this was it. DJ White added 16/13 for the Hoosiers (his fifth straight dub-dub), while UK’s only legit player, Patrick Patterson, finished with 15/5. Oh, and we don’t have the time nor inclination to get into all the Alex Legion nonsense, but if you’re interested, he’s leaving UK (possible destination: Michigan?) and ASoB discusses it much more in-depth than we can.

Other Good Games. #15 Marquette 81, Wisconsin 76. Tremendous win for Marquette, because Wisconsin just does not lose in the Kohl Center (28 in a row prior to this game). Surprisingly, it was the undersized Marquette interior players who played with abandon on the boards and won that battle (37-29) against the taller, beefier Wisconsin front line. Marquette is awfully tough to beat when Dominic James (20/5/6 assts) plays well. #13 Michigan St. 68, #21 BYU 61. This battle of ranked teams had upset written all over it, but give credit to MSU, who was down ten at the half on the road but managed to regain its composure and stick it to the Cougars in the second half (67% shooting). If you want an upset specialist for March, keep an eye on BYU as a #5-#7 seed, especially if their draw is out west. They’ve played UNC, Louisville and Michigan St. very tough already (defeating UL), and Trent Plaisted (19/ is an interior stud. #5 UCLA 75, Davidson 63. Davidson must be getting tired of this same old song and dance by now: play a top ten team extremely well for about 30-35 minutes, only to have the other teams’ size and strength win out in the end. They have a really good team, but they probably should have scheduled more teams ranked in the 25-50 range in order to pick up a few more Ws (we still think they’ll beat NC State later this month). In this one, Davidson roared out to an 18-pt lead in Pauley Pavilion (32-14) before the Bruins awakened from their slumber and led by Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (21/ and Kevin Love (12/12), took over the game. Davidson’s Stephen Curry didn’t shoot well (6-19) in a 15/4 performance. UCLA is showing signs of boredom, and their next really tough game isn’t until the Pac-10 schedule begins in January.

Upsets. It was a good upset Saturday. Dayton 70, #10 Louisville 65. The enigma known as Derrick Caracter signed a good behavior contract on Saturday morning, put up 16/7 in a home loss to Dayton, then proceeded to break said contract (curfew) that very night after the game. After getting busted by the coaches, he then stewed in his room for an hour before sneaking out AGAIN. Wow. So with Palacios and Padgett out injured until who knows when, and Caracter seemingly unable and unwilling to stay eligible, the word is that Pitino is tinkering with the idea of a five-guard lineup. A once promising season is bordering on the edge of disaster in Louisville these days. Dayton’s Brian Roberts lit up the Cards for 28 pts, as the Flyers (now 7-1) won against UL for the second straight year.

Rhode Island 91, Syracuse 89. Staying with the A10 over Big East theme, how did Syracuse shoot 54% at home and still lose? Well, it didn’t hurt that URI was 12-18 from three and made its FTs down the stretch. This might be one of those games that doesn’t look like much of an upset a month or two from now (URI is now 10-1. with the one loss at BC). Jonny Flynn had 21/10 for the Orange. Wright St. 43, #9 Butler 42. Butler just can’t get past these guys, especially in Dayton. Three of Butler’s last six losses were to Wright St., and the MO for each one has been the same - stop AJ Graves. Graves was held to 6 pts on 2-11 shooting in the high -scoring affair (only three players combined reached double figures). Butler may get all the hype, but Wright St. under Brad Brownell has once again announced that it will be a contender in the Horizon. Stephen F. Austin 66, Oklahoma 62. OU’s losses to Memphis and USC are understandable, but how does the same team that blitzed Tulsa by 26 and TCU by 24 in its previous two games turn around and lose to SFA at home?

Other Ranked Teams.

• #3 Texas 80, Rice 54. Abrams, Augustin and James each with 18 pts.
  
• #4 Kansas 84, Depaul 66. Brandon Rush came off the bench for 13 pts and one bench warrant.
• #6 Duke 95, Michigan 67. Please, please, please end this series soon.
• #7 Georgetown 87, Jacksonville 55. steady as she goes for Georgetown (59% FG).
  
• #8 Washington St. 72, Portland St. 60. even more steady for Wazzu (69% eFG)
  
• #11 Texas A&M 109, Texas St. 73. We’re just amazed that A&M played 18 guys in this game.
  
• #16 Oregon 75, Utah 64. Another solid home win for Oregon.
  
• #17 Gonzaga 85, Cal St. Northridge 59. Micah Downs (19 pts) and Matt Bouldin (1 led the way.
  
• #23 Vanderbilt 90, Lipscomb 67. 26/10 for AJ Ogilvy as Vandy remains unbeaten. Could he be the next Bogut?
• #25 Villanova 101, Temple 93. Scottie Reynolds was huge (27/6/9) in this Big 5 matchup.

Other Notable Scores.

• Boston College 81, Maryland 78. BC is much better than everyone thought, Maryland much worse.
  
• Kansas St. 82, California 75. Cal shoots 51% and still loses their first game - three players with dub-dubs (Walker - 30/10; Beasley - 19/11; R. Anderson - 24/11).
• Illinois St. 62, Cincinnati 52. Hard to argue Cincy is better off w/o Thuggins at this point.
• Charlotte 71, S. Illinois 56. Make that three solid wins in a row for Charlotte.
• East Carolina 75, NC State 69. Sam Hinnant dropped 30 on the incredibly overrated Wolfpack. Anybody still got NCSU third in the ACC?
• St. Mary’s 69, San Diego St. 64. very nice road win for the Gaels (prior to tonight’s loss v. SIU)
  
• Kent St. 73, George Mason 55. Another solid mid-major win for the Golden Flashes.
  
• Georgia 72, Wake Forest 50. We still don’t think much of UGa, but Wake took it on the chin from the SEC last week.
  
• Fordham 88, NJIT 44. Stony Brook 62, NJIT 53. NJIT’s quest for winlessness continues (0-12). Avg. margin of defeat = 25.0 ppg. Next game: Thurs. at Rutgers.

On Tap Today (all times EST).

• Xavier (-19) v. Cincinnati (ESPN2) 7pm - we love the Crosstown Shootout - XU should roll this year, though.
• Maryland (-8.5) v. Ohio 8pm. the way the Terps have been playing, this could be interesting…
  
• Wisconsin (-13.5) v. Wisconsin-Milwaukee (ESPN FC) 8pm - the battle of Cheeseheads.
• Vanderbilt (-3) v. Depaul (ESPN Classic) 8pm - winnable road game for Vandy to remain unbeaten.
  
• Arkansas (NL) v. Texas-San Antonio (ESPN FC) 8pm - we still haven’t gotten a good feel for the Hawgs.
  
• Colorado (-5) v. New Orleans 9pm - the Privateers with another shot at defeating a BCS team.
• Boston College (-4) v. Massachusetts (ESPNU) 9pm - the battle of Chowderheads.