Preview: Minnesota Gophers vs. USC Trojans

So much to write about.  Between the Twins' moves, the Gopher game on Saturday versus USC, and this amazing Middle Eastern lunch I had today there's a lot to talk about it.  I'll save the Twins for the weekend or Monday and go with the Gopher/Trojan preview for now.  When will I talk about the kabobs though, you ask?  WHO CAN SAY?

USC has certainly disappointed this year coming into their game against the Gophers, but despite a 3-5 record the Trojans haven't been as bad as that sounds (despite a coach in Kevin O'Neil once regular reader of this blog believes to be the worst in college basketball).  Their losses are to Illinois (#42 ranked team by Kenpom), Marquette (49), San Diego State (26), Nebraska (179), and New Mexico (35).  None of which on their own is particularly damning (Nebraska is bad, but it was at Lincoln at least) but taken together, when the team's only quality win is against Texas who is starting to look worse and worse, and this season has certainly been a disappointment.  They still aren't a terrible team, just a completely mediocre squad who is currently playing like hell.

Maybe the biggest reason (outside of O'Neil, of course, and having returning leading scorer Maurice Jones flunk off the team) the Trojans are struggling is the play of Jio Fontan.   Fontan lit up the A-10 in his first two seasons at Fordham in 2008-09 and 2009-10, averaging about 15 pts and 4.5 assists in each season before transferring to early in the 09/10 season to USC.   He slotted in to that team well once eligible in 2011, helping play some point and scoring as well on a balanced squad which made it to the NCAA Tournament (the First Four, but still).  Last year was supposed to be his time to shine on an undermanned team, and unfortunately Fontan blew out his knee in a game during the team's Brazil tour, and the year ended in a disastrous 6-26 record and a 1-17 conference slate.  Thanks to couple more transfers and a talented sophomore USC's talent level is better, but they aren't going anywhere in March if Fontan doesn't turn things around.

Fontan was basically a decent outside shooter who used his superior quickness to get to the lane and either convert or get to the free throw line where he was pretty good.  This year, however, he's absolutely been dreadful shooting the basketball, hitting just 27% from the field.  He can still hit his FTs (career high 74%) but is drawing them at an all-time low rate, which to go with his horrible free-throw percentage and career high turnover percentage has him rated as the worst player on the Trojans (from an offensive efficiency standpoint).  I can't claim to be an expert in his play either before or especially after his injury because watching USC would be super gross, but I'm going to go ahead and say his injury is still really affecting him.  Unless something drastically changes, the Trojans are nothing but an also ran this year - not terrible, but no shot at the tournament.

It's not like Jio is all alone on an island of inaccurate chuckery either, because his backcourt mate is former Wake Forest transfer J.T. Terrell, who has taken about 30% more shots this year than Fontan but has hit at only a slightly better rate of 33%.  What that means is you have these two chuckerheads taking nearly 40% of the Trojans field goal attempts so far this year at a combined hit rate of 30%.  Good way to get your team ranked as the 262nd overall best shooting team in the NCAA.  At least Fontan contributes in some way (5.3 assists per game).  Terrell may be completely worthless, he of the 2-to-1 TO/A ratio (yes that's 2-to-1 TOs to Assists).  Not Will Wilson of North Florida worthless (seriously how bad was that guy) because he can at least do something like score 21 against Marquette (which he did).  There's almost no way he can do that against the Gophers because they play really, really good defense, but I suppose you can't completely rule it out.  Except that you can.

As far as the rest of the squad it's a boatload of transfers:  Ari Stewart (WAKE), Aaron Fuller (IOWA), Renaldo Woolridge (TENN), Omar Oraby (RICE), Eric Wise (IRVINE), and James Blasczyk (TAMU) all started their careers elsewhere and all play roles for the Trojans this year in to varying degrees.  Wise is the team's second leading scorer (10.4 ppg) and rebounder (6.4 rpg) and starter at a wing while Oraby plays just 12 minutes per game but puts up 6 and 3 with almost 2 blocks per game thanks to him being 7-2.  Stewart and Fuller are standards while in the rotation while Woolridge and Blasczyk get a little bit of run, but basically the team is put together the way you'd think a team with 800 transfers that isn't a premium transfer destination (think UNLV or Fresno in the past, Iowa State now - which, incidentally, is where the aforementioned Jones has transferred to) would be put together - mish mash of parts that may or may not fit and don't know each other well.

The last guy I'll mention is Dewayne Dedmon who is worth discussing because he's a seven-footer with some size (255 lbs.), but may be the ultimate definition of project.  He made his high school basketball team every year but each time was forbade by his loony tunes Jehovah's Witness mom to actually play.  He ended up at a JuCo before finally signing with USC where he redshirted his first season and is now a 23-year old junior who has played basketball for like four years.  Pretty bizarre stuff.  He averaged 7.6 points and 5.5 rebs per game last year (not bad, really), but hasn't really progressed averaging 7 pts and 8 rebs this year while shooting a lower percentage.  He'll probably be pretty interesting to watch, especially if he goes up against Mbakwe just because it would be an interesting case to see Trevor go up against someone who might be more athletic than him (especially post injury) and just as strong, but ultimately it doesn't really matter because the Trojans aren't very good.

If this was a home game it would be Gophers by 20, easy.  Since it's on the road things are always a little bit dicier, but this year's Gopher squad is different and I'm barely even worried about this.

Gophers 71, USC 64.

Also I'm just kidding.  I'm not only worried I'm terrified.  This kind of thing never works out for Minnesota teams.  Totally panicking.

NCAA Hoops Preview: Teams 68-60

As the college basketball season approaches, you're no doubt wondering to yourself, "Hey, when is DWG going to start in with those needlessly long college basketball conference previews that nobody really reads anyway but come with hot pictures?"  Well, I have news for you:  I'm just too busy these days to write that much about the bottom teams of Conference USA, sorry.  I can't, however, go into a college basketball season without at least writing something, so instead I will write short previews of the top 68 teams this year by my estimation, in reverse order.  Why 68, you ask?  Because when I first wrote down all the interesting teams I had 73, and 68 seems like a nice number for college basketball so I chopped off four (sorry Wichita, North Texas, Central Florida, and South Florida).  I will be posting these in chunks of however many I feel like at a time.  So here we go with #s 68 through whatever I get to.

This is an average Utah State girl.

68.  UTAH STATE AGGIES.  I understand nobody really cares about Utah State, but other than Williams Arena it's the place I've seen the most college basketball games, that arena is awesome, and the chicks there are as hot as I've seen anywhere outside of Target HQ, so USU will always get a bump from me.  Plus assuming they can find a way to replace point guard and horrible first name guy Brockeith Pane at the point they should walk to the WAC title (again).  Preston Medlin will be in the running for WAC player of the year and fellow wing Kyisean Reed might be the most athletic player in the conference since Magnum Rolle or at least from what I've seen which admittedly is not all that much because the WAC is never on TV.  In any case it should be a bounce back year for the Aggies, which will make it much more enjoyable if I'm out there for a game this year.  Well, that and the chicks, man.

67.  IOWA HAWKEYES.  It's looking like Iowa might be back, and by back I mean back to the mediocrity we've become accustomed to rather than this laughing stock status I've thoroughly enjoyed the last few seasons.  McCaffery snagged one of the better recruiting classes in the conference this year, and Roy Marble and Aaron White look like they're going to be major factors even if Aaron White doesn't look like he should be any kind of factor at all.  If Melsahn Basabe can bounce back from a sub-par sophomore year the Hawkeyes could be better than this, but I wouldn't count on it because Iowa sucks and everybody knows it. 

66.  USC TROJANS.  Good news for the Gophers, this is the only non-Battle 4 Atlantis non-conference opponent who appears on this list.  Bad news is that they might not even belong this high but I mean come on, we have to at least have the chance to believe there's a decent opponent on the slate, right?  Actually the Trojans would have probably belonged right about here, but leading scorer Maurice Jones transferred after being declared academically ineligible, and that's a bit of a ding right there.  Still, there are a couple decent returning guys and if guard Jio Fontan is fully recovered from last season's ACL injury he's really, really good.  There are also a bunch of transfers from places like Wake and Tennessee and UC-Irvine so who knows, the Trojans could be good enough to surprise.  And by surprise of course I mean surprisingly make the NIT, not the NCAA Tournament.  Make no mistake, a loss by the Gophers to these guys is a disaster. 

65.  NEVADA WOLFPACK.  The move to the Mountain West will hurt Nevada a bit short term since that conference is pretty good whereas the WAC would have been Utah State, Nevada, and that's it, but I'm sure long term it'll be good or something.  Still, Nevada has some serious fire power and should score an upset or two.  The Deonte Burton and Malik Story back court combo is the type that can win a game on it's own if they're both hot, or could completely shoot them out of a game if not.  One thing is for certain with that kind of guard tandem - I won't touch a single game bet of theirs the whole season.  Unless it's the late game.  On TV.  Ok fine, even if it's not on TV, but it WILL have to be a late game.  Probably.

 64.  MANHATTAN JASPERS.  The Jaspers haven't been relevant since the glory days of Luis Flores, but now they're back and Bogart can break out his Manhattan Jaspers t-shirt again.   They return last season's leading conference scorer and last year's Conference Defensive Player of the Year along with a few other starters and should be good enough to tangle with Loyola in the MAAC.  I'd write more but really that's all I know but I really wanted to rank Manhattan in here because god it was so much fun wagering on Manhattan on Friday nights when Flores was there.  I think they covered ever single night.

I agree with these girls.

63.  IOWA STATE CYCLONES.  Another team I may be ranking too highly but I like them and it's my blog and my rankings so screw you fascist.  Anyway, the losses will be tough to deal with especially since Royce White led the team in basically every category including assists (and Chris Allen and Scott Christopherson were scorers #2 and #3), but I have a feeling Hoiberg's transfer system is going to work out well (coming in this year:  Korie Lucious from Michigan State and Will Clyburn from Utah) in the short term, and the team's success is already paying dividends in recruiting with one ESPN Top100 recruit coming in this season and two more on-board already for 2013, which if you're scoring at home is only one fewer than Tubby's signed in his entire time with the Gophers.  That's it, I'm moving to Ames.  Plus they have a really kick-ass sandwich shop there (West End Deli, maybe?) and a "strip club" where the girls strip down to bikinis which is weird but whatever.  All that plus actual D-I level basketball.  Sounds like nirvana.

62.  UMASS MINUTEMEN.  Can UMass finally get to their first NCAA Tournament since 1998?  No, probably not since the only time that school was good was when cheater Calipari was there, but at least they should be in the mix.  They have a good start with apparent 1980's movie bully Chaz Williams back, who led the A-10 in assists last season, and if you start with a great distributor you never know how things are going to fall.  They also have basically the same entire squad back from last year's NIT Final Four team, which is both a positive and a negative, and it's a very experienced team.  Sort of the opposite of Nevada, UMass is a solid, experienced, and quality team who should be able to hang with pretty much anybody without getting blown out.  They don't play anyone particularly good this year, so I can see taking them in any game where they are +5 or worse.  Also I didn't intend for these previews to be gambling related in any way, but it turns out I have one hell of a gambling problem.

61.  MIDDLE TENNESSEE BLUE RAIDERS.  Remember last year when these guys blew through the Sun Belt like they owned the joint and were even a possible at-large team depending on how the conference tournament went?  And then they lost in their first conference tournament game to a shitty team and got bounced to the NIT where they won two games before the Gophers stomped on their heads?  Well this is basically the same team with more experience.  They do lose their leading scorer who also happened to be the conference player of the year, but should still be the best team in the conference.  The only team who should be able to challenge them is North Texas, so there's no reason Middle Tennessee shouldn't be making a trip to the NCAA Tournament this year.  You know, just like last season.

60.  ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE.  It's going to be tough to replace JaMychal Green and Tony Mitchell, although less so Mitchell because he missed the team's last eleven games after being suspended.  The biggest key to the season may be freshman Devonta Pollard, a small forward who is an absolute elite player from Day 1 (#28 overall on ESPN, #22 on Rivals).  If Pollard (who is 6'8) can play in the paint Alabama's two billion good guards could surround him and make this a very good team.  If he can't, they basically have nobody else and they will suck like that 2 Broke Girls show.  There is no in between.  I refuse to allow it.

Gophers vs. USC Preview

After that nice little surprise of a win against Virginia Tech, the Gophers now welcome the mighty Trojans of USC to the Barn.  I'll forgo making the requisite deflated condom or some such joke (I feel like I could work Magnums in there somehow) because I'm not 14, at least not today, but seriously USC is not good.  Mostly bad, even.

They did go to San Diego State and only lose by two, lost by just eleven at UNLV, and beat a bad South Carolina team on a neutral court.  So that's ok.  It's not, however, enough to mitigate that they lost to Nebraska (in 2 OT) at home, beat Morgan State by just three at home, and got beat by Cal Poly 42-36 at home.  If it was just the Nebraska loss that'd be one thing, but squeaking by Morgan State, losing to Cal Poly, and only scoring 36 points in a home game are all signs of a bad, bad, bad, bad team.

Looking at their team stats, they do a good job of slowing the game down (way, way, way down) and playing quality defense which is mostly predicated on defending the shot and causing turnovers using a pressure man-to-man style.  Offensively they're pretty awful overall.  They can't shoot the 3-pointer (thank god, although they are solid on 2-pointers), are horrid on the free-throw line, and rarely grab an offensive rebound.  They play a grind it out, ugly style that Big 10 fans are unfortunately far too familiar with, and assuming the Gophers don't get bored, sloppy, or stupid and remember to play disciplined smart ball and try to get the game uptempo whenever possible the Gophers should be able to come away with a comfortable win.  Should.

As far as players go, one of the Trojans' top dudes is a somewhat familiar face in Aaron Fuller, formerly of Iowa.  I say somewhat familiar because even though I recognized the name and knew he used to be a Hawkeye I barely remember him.  He's 6-6, 235 lbs. and there isn't much slashing or perimeternessitude to his game - he's just an undersized power forward.  I'd say the Gophers would squash him but well, you know, the injuries and shit.  The key will be how he and Rodney match-up.  Fuller is stronger, but on a scale of 1-10 of athleticism, quickness, and jumping Fuller is a 2 and Rodney is like pi to the power of pi.  I think Williams should be able to school Fuller on both ends of the floor, but that strength advantage has me picturing Fuller just overpowering him and killing the Gophers in the paint while rendering Williams irrelevant when the Gophers have the ball.  I don't think so, but I'm nervous.

USC's other main scorer is 5-7 point guard Maurice Jones.  He's really small, really fast, creates havoc on defense (thus the turnovers USC creates with regularity), and loves to shoot the rock.  Yes, that's right folks.  We're going to get to see a chucker extraordinaire.  Jones has taken 102 of USC's 386 shot attempts this year despite shooting just 37%, and taken 44 of their 106 3-point attempts despite hitting just 34%.  As with most chuckers he can shoot the Trojans right out of a game if he's not hitting or he can basically winning the game single-handedly if he's hot.  He hit 7-7 on threes against South Carolina (but was 2-8 on 2s) in a win, hit 7 of 10 shots against Morgan State in a win, but also shot 1-11 in the loss against Cal Poly and is 1-10 on threes in the team's other two games.  I have no idea which version shows up Saturday, but I am confident the Gopher guards have enough size and defensive ability to keep him in check.  Expect a wreckless good time, like doing a bunch of shots and then playing Mario Kart.

Graduation and injuries have hurt this team pretty badly from last year - they lost their would be best player to injury before the season on their trip through Brazil (it was probably a blowgun incident) - and looking at their roster I'm not seeing a whole lot else that's worthwhile to point out.  It's going to be a slow game with a few wild shots.  As long as the Gophers don't become stupid they should handle this.

Minnesota 64, USC 48

Yes, she will be at the Barn on Saturday

NCAA Basketball Preview - The Pac 12

Here's what you need to know about the Pac-12 this year - they're going to be bad again.  Once again, the Pac teams have been hit hard by attrition and although they continue to pull in a good share of stud recruits, the players are leaving more quickly than they can be replaced.  If there was an easy way to look this up without having to straight count it or if there was a page with bids by conference by year, but there's not, so instead I'll just point out how the Pac has struggled even getting 2-3 teams bids in the last few seasons.

They've done so crappy in the non-conference slate that it's hard to build a profile back-up in a conference where seemingly everybody has a bad early loss.  Last year Oregon lost to San Jose State and Idaho, UCLA lost to Montana, USC lost to Rider, Bradley, Nebraska, and TCU, Stanford lost to Tulsa, Oregon State lost to Seattle, Texas Southern, and Utah Valley, and Arizona State lost to New Mexico.  Those are RPI killers and bring down the whole league.  They'll stabilize eventually because of the level of some of the programs, but this might be another rough one.

Oh well, at least they have hot chicks.

1.  CALIFORNIA GOLDEN BEARS.  Unlike the majority of the team's in the Pac-12, Cal managed to avoid getting hit with the big curse of graduations/NBA defections and as such they should be the best team in the conference this year, despite the fact that Justin Cobbs is probably going to be their starting point guard.  And Cobbsy should have plenty of opportunity for assists with Cal bringing back a lot of fire power - Jorge Gutierrez, Harper Kamp, and Allen Crabbe are all back and all averaged over 13 points per game last season.  Of course, Cal was also a pretty terrible defensive team last year and lost their best inside presence, so it's not like they're going to run away with anything here.  And speaking of running.........

2.  UCLA BRUINS.  Just like Washington, UCLA was also hit pretty hard in the losing players department.  Replacing Malcolm Lee and Tyler Honeycutt won't be easy, but luckily the Bruins have plenty coming back and a bumper crop of newcomers to help ease the transition.   Interestingly, of the newcomers the only freshman is SG Norman Powell (#69 overall on Rivals), but he's been called a Jrue Holliday type athlete, so he should be pretty damn impressive.  The newcomers most key to the Bruins' season are the Wear twins, 6-10 former McDonald's All-Americans who transferred over from North Carolina.  Despite their identical size, their skill sets put one at the 4 and one at the 3, adding some extra flexibility.  As long as they get quality point guard play from Lazeric Jones they'll be at the top end of the Pac.  And I wrote all that without mentioning their best player, Reeves Nelson, who is like what Brian Cardinal or Dusty Rychart would have been if they had actual talent.  So yeah, UCLA is fairly loaded, much like myself (booze not money).

3.  WASHINGTON HUSKIES.  Washington was hit hard by graduations and early defections, losing their three best players in PG Isaiah "Captain Circus Ball" Thomas, Justin Holiday, and Matthew Bryan-Amaning.  No need to panic however, because with Lorenzo Romar still coaching and Abdul Gaddy still around the sweet Circus Ball days should continue.  And thank god.  Really, if you haven't taken in a Washington basketball game lately you owe it to yourself to.  Two of my favorite memories of the last 2 tournaments are watching them play New Mexico and North Carolina.  The tempo is just out of this world.  Oh, and Washington also signed another fast as hell guard in Tony Wroten, so fire up the band!    

4.  ARIZONA WILDCATS.  This sounds pretty familiar at this point, but Zona is yet another Pac-12 team losing a bunch of talent from last year with not only Derrick Williams but also Lamont Jones gone.  Fortunately they're bringing in an excellent class to help out, highlighted by the backcourt duo of PG Josiah Turner (#2 PG, #11 overall) and SG Nick Johnson (#4 SG, #18 overall).  Turner should keep Arizona's traditional of top PG play alive and I'd bet this is the best incoming backcourt in America, but Arizona's lack of impact returning players will hold them down, and their improvement will be the difference between the NCAA and NIT this year.

5.  STANFORD CARDINAL.  Stanford loses their leading scorer, Jeremy Green, to the NBA Draft even though he's a dummkopf and didn't get drafted, but luckily for them they have Chasson Randle (#78 recruit) coming on and ready to step in to his starting position after choosing the Cardinal over Illinois and Purdue probably because he's a nerd but didn't want to go to Northwestern because they're terrible at everything always.  Everyone else is back from last year's mediocre team, and Stanford will likely end up in the same mediocre position as last season unless somebody shows a vast jump in ability.  The most likely candidate is 6-8 PF Josh Owens, a fifth-year senior whose numbers nearly doubled last year.

6.  OREGON DUCKS.  I don't know if it's the attrition from other teams or improvement on the Ducks' part, but suddenly Oregon is looking a little frisky under second-year coach Dana Altman.  I'm just kidding - it's the attrition.  But things are looking up, starting with the end of last season's championship in the CBI. . What?  It counts.  Anyway, the Ducks lose their leading scorer and rebounder from last year and their starting point guard, but have a bunch of quality adds including guard Jabari Brown, the #19 freshman according to Rivals, and possibly the best incoming shooter on the West Coast who turned down UCONN, Kansas, and Washington to come to Eugene.  Of course, your boyfriend Devoe Joseph becomes eligible after the first semester and will add some scoring pop in a more uptempo system.  Of course, the smart move would have been to sit out this year so he could have played all of next season, when the Ducks will be better and, you know, he'd be eligible for the whole year.  Then again, I suppose Devoe has never been known for thinking things through.

7.  ARIZONA STATE SUN DEVILS.  There's nothing more fun than watching players from Minnesota light it up for other teams and this might be your best chance outside of Iowa State.  Trent Lockett led the Sun Devils in scoring last season at 13.4 per game, and with the team's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th leading scorers all gone ASU might look to Lockett to be less a part of the offense than the majority of the offense.  He doubled his scoring average from his freshman to sophomore year, so he could be up for the challenge.  The two guys who really need to step up are guard Kaela King and forward Carrick Felix.  King was a much heralded and celebrated get for the Sun Devils as the #26 recruit in the country going into last year, but really had a disappointing year scoring over 10 points in a game just twice.  Felix originally committed to Duke before pulling out and and coming to Tempe, and like King needs to live up to his pedigree if ASU is going to compete for an NCAA bid this year.

8.  WASHINGTON STATE COUGARS.  Losing a guy like Klay Thompson, who did everything for your team and led the conference in scoring, is always going to sting but you can try to prepare because it was pretty obvious odds were better than 50/50 he'd be heading to the NBA.  What makes it worse is when DeAngelo Castro - double-digit scorer, leading rebounder, and second in the conference in FG percentage - bolts as well to head play professionally in Turkey.  They still have some fire power with second leading scorer and noted chucker Faisel Aden returning to throw the ball at the rim, but the key will be to see if he and junior PG Reggie Moore can co-exist.  Moore looked like a future star in his freshman year, but after Aden arrived he regressed with both Aden and Thompson needing the ball constantly.  If Moore can figure out his role that could be the difference between my 9th place prediction and as high as 7th.

9.  OREGON STATE BEAVERS.  I thought last year the Beavers had a shot to return to relevance for the first time since the days of Corey Benjamin, but alas, it was not meant to be, but at least they had the decency to let everyone know right away by losing to Seattle, Texas Southern, and Utah Valley before the season was a month old.  Just like Gary Sinise I won't get fooled again, but it is hard not to like their guards in Roberto Nelson and Jared Cunningham who are about as athletic as can be with Cunningham averaging nearly three steals per game last season, good enough for fifth in the country.  Really though, this was a bad team last year who did almost nothing well (other than steal the ball), last year's leading assist man averaged just 2.4 per game and is a 280 lb. power forward, and they lost one of their best players from last season with nothing real impressive waiting to step in.  So yeah, not a sleeper.

10.  USC TROJANS.  Last year USC made the tournament on the backs of their twin towers Nikola Vucevic and Alex Stephenson and solid guard play from the trio of Jio Fontan, Maurice Jones, and Donte Smith.  Now both of the bigs are gone along with Smith, and Fontan broke his knee off during the team's trip to Brazil, leaving just Jones and 8 other scholarship players (they also have two transfers eating up schollys who won't be eligible until next year and a season-ending shoulder injury to another guy), only one of whom has played in more than 6 games in his career.  Jones will have a little bit of help coming in with former Iowa forward Aaron Fuller becoming eligible this year and a big JuCo center coming in to rave reviews, but the only way USC is going to do much this year is with their usual solid defense, but not even that will be enough to make them post season relevant this year.   

11.  COLORADO BUFFALOES.  Every so often things come together for even the most moribund of programs and unheralded players improve, diamonds in the rough shine, and for one brief year a school that rarely makes its mark on the basketball world has a huge year.  Unfortunately when that happened for Colorado they somehow managed to bumblefuck it up and ended up in the NIT.  Now their four leading scorers are gone, including two of the better players in school history in Alec Burks and Cory Higgins, and Colorado prepares for the basement once again, but at least it's a brand new shiny basement.  Andre Roberson is a great athlete who led the team in rebounding, blocks, and steals last year and that's pretty much where the positives stop.  I heard it's a fun town though.

12.  UTAH UTES.  Remember when Majerus had Utah running along as a major western power?  Well that's not really relevant here.  Utah fired their coach after four straight losing seasons, which then sent four major contributors from last year's team will eligibility remaining heading for the transfer door which, along with graduations, means a terrible Utah team will now be missing 5 of their top 6 scorers from last season.  They do get back #2 leading scorer Josh Watkins at 15 per game and have a couple of assets most teams don't in a pair of 7-footers in David Foster and Josh Washburn.  Neither is particularly athletic or skilled, but you can't teach size so they'll grab rebounds, block shots, and probably make at least 50% of their lay-ups.


Other previews:
Big 12
ACC
Atlantic 10

Week in Review - 12.27.2010

Merry Christmas and all that.  FYI - I'm off all week, so you can probably expect either a lot of posts or zero posts.  I'm probably going to be pretty busy watching Eastbound & Down, Community, and Parks and Rec DVDs or reading Pillars of the Earth, The Girl who Kicked a Hornet's Nest, or Moonlight Mile.


WHO WAS AWESOME

1. Butler Bulldogs.  Just as everyone, myself included, are questioning if Butler is any good this year they head out to Hawaii and take down the Diamondhead Classic.  They beat Utah, Florida State, and Washington State, and that's probably two wins over NCAA Tournament teams.  The only negative would be that they didn't get a chance to face Baylor, but they did beat WSU, the team that beat the Bears.  Butler needed good wins in the worst way after pissing away every chance, so this was huge for their at-large chances.  With Cleveland State looking pretty studly in the Horizon, Butler gots some competition, so they're going to need everything they can get to help them out in case they can't get past the Vikings in the conference tourney. 

2. USC Trojans.  I think it might be time to recognize USC as an actual halfway decent team, which, along with Washington, Arizona, and Washington State gives the Pac-10 four potential NCAA teams.  After a very, very shaky 4-4 start that included some embarrassing losses, they seemed to start to hit their stride by beating Texas and then Fordham transfer Jio Fontan joined the team and made them immediately much better, giving the Trojans an outside threat to go along with stellar inside dudes Alex Stepheson and Nikola Vucevic.  Fontan, who scored 15 points per game last year for Fordham, has scored 15, 13, and 21 in his three games. leading the Trojans to wins over Tennessee and Lehigh and a near win over Kansas.  Official Pac-10 sleeper here.  Which doesn't mean much, to be completely honest with you.

3.  Klay Thompson.  Ok, so I just assumed Thompson wasn't all that good and people were just all spazzy about him because of his dad, but I watched him play this weekend and the guy's pretty good.  He scored 28, 20, and 31 points in their three games in Hawaii, and he's not just a deadeye shot who can't leave open, although you can't, but he's also good with the ball, can drive and score, and also has a nice mid-range game.  In short, he's a really good scorer.  His zero rebounds against Baylor is a bit disconcerting since he's 6-6, but he's a pretty good defender overall from what I saw.  Very impressed by him  Believe the hype.

4.  Dwayne Bowe.  Confession time.  I traded away Bowe in a keeper league.  I really needed a young, franchise type running back and nearly had a trade in place for Maurice Drew, but the other owner couldn't quite pull the trigger.  After a couple weeks I put together a different trade with Snake for Ray Rice, but he insisted I include Bowe, who I didn't have to include in the trade for Drew.  I emailed the first owner to say I had a trade in place and if he wanted to move he had to make up his mind.  I waited four days, he never said anything, and so I made the trade for Rice.  The next morning I get an email from owner #1 who says "I came in to work today and was going to accept the trade for Drew, but I see you moved on."  Well, suffice it to say, every time Bowe has a good game (like this week's 153 yards with a TD) I die a little inside.  

5.  Colorado State Rams.  Well you can chalk this up as a pretty freakin' big surprise, because I was pretty well convinced this team was terrible, particularly because they lost to Sam Houston State, but they went to Cancun and ended up winning the Cancun Governor's Cup tournament which is a real thing.  It wasn't exactly a loaded field, but they did beat two pretty decent teams in Ole Miss and Southern Mississippi.  This is the part where I'd usually saying something smart about the players involved, but I don't know a god damn thing about Colorado State this year so I'll just post this picture instead:

 

WHO SUCKED

1.  Gopher Basketball.  Seriously, I'm so sick of this team right now I can't really even write any words.  If they keep doing this crap where they don't play defense or play hard and let the other team dictate the how the game is going to be played and fall behind early they are going to get absolutely destroyed in the Big Ten play.  It's been fine since they've played a bunch of crap schools over the last few weeks, but we're about to start conference play and I have zero confidence that they're going to do anything other than get destroyed.  I can't even talk about it right now.

2.  Michigan State Spartans.  Tom Izzo and the Spartans have earned quite a bit of latitude on slow starts, seeing as their MO seems to be starting slow, grabbing a 3-6 seed in the tournament, and then making the Final Four.  So when they lost to UCONN nobody panicked, especially seeing how the Huskies were playing at the time.  Then they lost Duke and Syracuse, and everybody was ok with it because those are two of the ten best teams in the country.  They struggled to a one-point win over Oakland, and we shrugged.  But Wednesday night they again faced a good challenger in Texas, this time in East Lansing, and they got completely and totally shredded.  And although Texas may be a good team this was not another case of a good team getting beat by a really good team.  This was a case of Michigan State playing like crap:  lackluster on offense, mediocre on the boards, and just all-out terrible on defense including getting beat down the floor for easy Texas lay-ups.  This isn't the same thing we've seen before, this is far more dire - like getting AIDS instead of the clap.  Both suck, but one is annoying while the other can really wreck your year.

3.  Baylor Bears.  This team is good enough and had a good enough year that there's no need to panic or call the Hawaii trip a disaster, but it was definitely a huge disappointment.  The won their opener against San Diego easily enough, but then lost a surprising one to Washington State and got beat by an unranked, but good, Florida State team as well.  Coming on the heels of a loss against Gonzaga and there are some warning flags being tossed about here.  One thing that would really help is if they could shoot from the outside.  In their last four games they've shot just 25% from behind the line, not helped at all by Lace Dunn who went 4-20 in their final two games in Hawaii.  Twenty three-point attempts in two games?  Hey Dunn, you do realize you don't have to just shoot behind the line, right?  You can actually get closer to the hoop.  Who do you think you freakin' are, Rick Rickert? 

4.  Northwestern Wildcats.  I've talked about it on here before, but I really don't get Northwestern's schedule.  In a year where they have a very good chance of making their first NCAA tournament, they schedule like crap out of conference (293rd strength of schedule in the nation, easily the worst in the Big Ten) and set it up so their only chance to get a decent non-conference game was this week in the MSG Holiday Tournament against St. Johns.  But they lost, and they lost bad.  So now they sit at 8-1, and it's a completely empty 8-1, and they are guaranteed that their best out-of-conference wins are going to be Georgia Tech, a bottom ACC team, and Creighton, a mid-level MVC.  And a bunch of wins against sub-200 teams.  In other words, all the other Big Ten contender type teams can aim for 9-9 and be assured of a bid, where Northwestern is going to need 10-8, or maybe even better.  Good luck, nerds.

5.  Renardo Sidney.  The #16 overall recruit last season and #5 power forward, Sidney is a 6-10, 250 lb. beast who by all accounts is extremely skilled.  The problem is he can't get on the court.  He had originally committed to USC, but late in the process there was a "mutual agreement to end the recruiting process" so he landed at Mississippi State.  Where he was then ineligible all last season due to receiving improper benefits while in Los Angeles, and had to sit out the first nine games this year.  He finally played against Virginia Tech, scored 12 points in 25 minutes, and was then immediately suspended for a violation of team rules.  He went out to Hawaii with the team, played in their second-round matchup against San Diego, put up 19 points and 6 boards in 20 minutes, and got in a fistfight with a teammate and was suspended indefinitely.  This guy is a complete mess.  Kind of what I imagine Zach Randolph's college career would have been like it he hadn't been under Izzo's capable watch.  Footage of the fight is below.  Pretty sweet.  Freakin' Buster Douglas and shit. 

Week in Review - 12.06.2010

 Back by popular demand - the week in review.  I would have had this up for your Monday morning consumption, however Comcast decided to make sure nobody in the midwest who uses their service was able to access the internet.  I was caught in their evil web of lies and evil.  Luckily, we're back, so let's go.


WHO WAS AWESOME

1.  Trevor Mbakwe.  I'm starting to think calling him Reign Man II was maybe the most accurate thing I've ever done.  Freakishly athletic?  Check.  Strong dunker?  Check.  Incredible rebounder?  Check.  Unable to score from further than 8 feet from the rim?  Check.  Commits dumb fouls?  Check.  Seriously, all he needs is a bunch of kids by different ladies and a bunch less IQ points and he'd be Shawn Kemp, and I mean that as a total compliment because Kemp was one of my all-time favorites.  Really maybe the lone bright spot in a pretty crappy week for your favorite team, Mbakwe put up 18 and 11 against Virginia, and nearly brought the Gophers back in that game, and then followed it up with 12 and 16 vs. Cornell.  It will be interesting to see how he fares against the other Big Ten bigs, but so far he looks like he's on a whole different level out there - something the Gophers haven't seen at PF since......Courtney James, I guess?

2.  LaceDarius Dunn.  The Baylor star guard has simply been on fire since being cleared on a domestic assault charge that was clearly a case of either mistaken identity or someone trying to frame him.  In his three games back he's scored 24, 20, and 24 and averaged 4.3 rebound and 3.3 assists to go along with that while shooting 53% from the floor and going 16-31 from three, including 6-12 in Thursday's win over Arizona State.  The Bears are looking good with Lace looking primed for a big year, stud recruit Perry Jones living up to the hype, and the guys the needed to step up (A.J. Walton, Quincy Acy) have played well.  They've had a candy soft schedule so far, but keep an eye open for their December 18th game against Gonzaga, that one should give an idea of just how good Baylor can be.  They're still 30-1 to win the whole thing.  I suggest you grab some of that action now.

3.  Jon Leuer.  Of all the Minnesota high school players who the Gophers have lost out on, Leuer might end up hurting the most.  He joins a nice list of high school greats who spurned Dan Monson and found success elsewhere (Troy Bell, Cole Aldrich, Cory Johnson, Ryan Amoroso, Kammron Taylor, Lawrence McKenzie (initially), and Isaiah Dahlman (just kidding) to name a few) but if his stats so far this year are any indication Leuer might be the best of the bunch.  He dominated in both games this week, both in the big win over NC State (22 pts, 11 rebs, 2 stls, 2 blks, 2 assists) and in the easy win over South Dakota (29 pts, 9 rebs, 4 blks, 2 steals, 2 assists), and his overall numbers are certainly Big Ten POY worthy (20/8/2/1/2 with 50% shooting).  Pretty depressing.  He's like Mike Bauer if he actually kept improving instead of falling in love with the three-pointer and ignoring everything else.

4.  North Carolina Tar Heels.  I wouldn't exactly say they're going to be alright, but the win over Kentucky shows they can at least beat a quality, if overrated, team.  Tyler Zeller looks like an absolute player and he absolutely dominated the Wildcats, putting up 27 points (on 8-13 shooting), 11 boards, and 5 blocks and teamed with John Henson to block 8 shots and force Terrence Jones, a super-stud as a freshman so far this, into 3-17 shooting, basically confusing him, not allowing him to get any clean looks in the paint, and basically winning the game for the Heels because their guards and Barnes are still meh.  I don't know if they can get into the NCAA Tournament, but every quality win they can get helps the Gophers' chances so let's go Heels. 

5. San Diego State Aztecs.  A couple of very solid wins this week for SDSU, who continue to cruise.  This week they played a couple of other quality mid-majors - St. Mary's and Wichita State - and had zero problems.  They beat both teams by 14, and now sit and 8-0 with a quality win over Gonzaga on their resume already.  They've got a pretty easy road until they hit Mountain West play, and the MWC should be strong enough this year that SDSU should cruise to a bid as long as they don't complete crash and burn, and there's no reason to suspect that they might.  They have enough balance (6 guys score at least 8 per game) to handle a bad night from anybody, and the star power in Kawhi Leonard to carry them far in March.  Consider them a solid sleeper.  And I have them at 100-1.  Holla.


WHO SUCKED

1.  Minnesota Gophers Perimeter Defense.  Once is a fluke, twice is a problem, and a season-long issue is a major major problem that is going to kill this team at some point.   Virginia shot 10-13 from behind the arc and Cornell followed that up going 14-33, and the Gophers are now allowing their opponents to shoot 38.8% from three for the season, which ranks 296th in the country and dead last in the Big Ten.  Making the alarm bells right a wee bit harder is the fact that Northwestern, Michigan State, and Illinois all rank in the top 25 in three-point shooting in the country, and every Big Ten team outside of Penn State, Iowa, and Michigan shoot better than the D-I average.  So basically we're looking at two choices - learn how to defend the perimeter, whether through scheme, hard work, smarter decisions, or some combination, or get shredded all season long.  Not exactly Sophie's Choice here.  And if Tubby can't fix this, we have to start questioning him a bit, don't we? 

2.  The Pac 10.   USC did manage to beat Texas on Sunday, but prior to that the Pac-10 was cruising towards a second straight year of terribleness.  Just this week USC lost to TCU, Oregon State lost to Utah Valley (and got crushed by Colorado), and UCLA lost to Montana - and you can find a handful of games just like that for the conference each and every week.  Washington is looking like a Final Four type team and Arizona looks solid, but that's pretty much it.  UCLA and Washington State each have a shot at a bid depending on how things go, but it's very likely we're looking at just two tournament teams here.

3.  Atlantic 10.  If you pay way too much attention to this blog you know I probably like the A-10 a little bit more than I really should (with the exception of Dayton, which is full of whiny poser pansies), so it is with great pain I must announce that the A-10 is most certainly down this year.  There were supposed to be four very strong teams (Xavier, Dayton, Richmond, and Temple) along with a handful of sleeper candidates (St. Louis, Charlotte, and Rhode Island) - unfortunately it's not quite looking that way.  Just this week, St. Louis got smoked by Portland, Charlotte was downed by East Carolina, Xavier got rolled by Miami (OH), East Tennessee State came into Dayton and beat the Flyers, and Richmond, the one team that's looking good so far, lost to Old Dominion.  With the exception of the ODU game those are all bad, bad losses.  I'm thinking two bids might be the best case scenario here.  Shame.  And it would be a double shame if one of them went to Dayton.

4.  Virginia Tech Hokies.  The past two years have ended the same way for the Hokies:  Coach Seth Greenberg whining and bitching because Va Tech didn't get an NCAA tournament bid despite a good conference season because they would schedule an insanely weak non-conference slate.  This year they finally scheduled up, but that doesn't help if you can't win, and they can't win.  So far they've lost to Kansas State, UNLV, Purdue, and Virginia - the last two this week alone - and are now just 4-4 with only a win over Oklahoma State to show for their efforts.  They still have shots coming up against Penn State and Mississippi State, but man, they better do something.  Special shout-out to Hokie star Malcolm Delaney for shooting 2-18 (TWO FOR EIGHTEEN!!lol) and committing the fourth of his turnovers on the final play of the game to lose the game.  Bravo. 

5.  North Carolina State Wolfpack.  Not so much for their loss to Syracuse on Saturday, because the Orange are a very good team and NC State hung tough until the end, but for their embarrassing destruction by Wisconsin in their Big-10/ACC Challenge match-up.  They lost by 39, shot 32% while allowing 50% from Wisconsin, were out-rebounded 40-26, turned it over 13 times to just 9 assists, and forced just six turnovers.  In short, a total disaster.  They are certainly a talented team, but still very young, so a game like this was probably inevitable, but they need to start grabbing some quality wins here in order to justify my faith in them.  They have a game coming up in a couple weeks against Arizona.  Better win that one.



Honorable mention to Old Dominion, who were basically following a perfect blueprint on how to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament as a mid-major until this weekend when they lost to Delaware in their conference opener.  The Fightin' Blue Hens are expected to be a factor in the CAA race or any race, really, so this loss is going to hurt.  ODU has probably done enough to buy themselves some breathing room, but this loss cuts that cushion way, way down.  Way to go, jerks!

Also, can we please calm down about Michael Jordan's kid?  Thanks.

Pac-10 College Basketball 2010 Preview

Last year was nearly a disaster for the Pac-10, where getting even two teams NCAA bids was looking like it might not happen even late in the year, but this year things should be a little better.  Washington and Arizona should be among the elite teams in the nation, and a number of other teams should be improved.  Of course, that's basically the scouting report from last year, just replace Arizona with Cal, and that was a struggle, so who knows.  These guys play their games so late that nobody is watching anyway.  Except degenerate gamblers.  Hi.

1.  Washington Huskies.  One thing is for certain, the Huskies play an exciting brand of basketball.  I remember being in Chicago for their game against New Mexico, and just being mesmerized by how fast the pace of the game was.  Me, Bogart, and Snacks had all bet the over, so each time little tiny Isaiah Thomas got the ball, sprinted down court past all the Lobos and made a layup we cheered and fell in love with him a little bit more.  The game ended up being a blowout, so the pace slackened and that over never cashed, but the moral of the story is that Washington is awesome.  Quincy Pondexter is gone, but Justin Holiday should step in fine, and their three guard lineup of Thomas, Venoy Overton, and Abdul Gaddy are as good as it gets.  Rather than fighting for a bid like last year, the Huskies should have theirs locked up by January.

2.  Arizona Wildcats.  Arizona's streak of 25 straight NCAA Tournament bids was snapped last season, but they should be back again after losing only the disappointing Nic Wise, who never made the leap they were looking for last season.  Derrick Williams was terrific in his freshman season, averaging 16 pts and 7 boards per game while shooting 57% and looking straight dominant at times, with 23 points or more five times last season.  Williams is surrounded by plenty of other talent, but replacing Wise, who might not have been great but was certainly good, at the point is going to be the real key to the season.  Lamont Jones came in last season with a good pedigree but struggled at times.  If he hasn't improved this prediction is going to look awfully silly.  Might end up being the first prediction I've ever whiffed on - ever.

3.  UCLA Bruins.  Despite what seems to be near constant defections, whether to the NBA or to other programs, over the last few years, UCLA does seem to be on the way back.  Looking at just the stats of the returnees you wouldn't be impressed, but these guys have talent.  Tyler Honeycutt (last year's Rivals #28 overall) is well on his way to becoming a do everything type stud, Malcolm Lee really started to come into his own last year (12 pts, 3 ast per game), and nerdy Reeves Nelson (11pts, 6 rebs as a frosh) is already showing an impressive array of low-post moves. Add to that group Rivals #18 recruiting class and they're looking to be in good shape, assuming people stop transferring.  Plus in the good news department, their top recruit, center Josh Smith (#23 overall) who weighed in at 305 lbs. has reportedly lost a bunch of weight and is in (relatively) great shape.  Plus, don't you just feel better when UCLA is good?  It's just icky otherwise.  

4.  Washington State Cougars.  They're getting an awful lot of press due to Klay Thompson, which makes sense because he's probably the only player in the league who might be better than Derrick Williams from Zona.  His low shooting percentage (41%) and high turnovers (3.4 TO to 2.3 assists) are the only blemishes on his record, but those numbers should improve with better/improved teammates in Pullman this year.  The real question is will he have better teammates, because outside of point guard Reggie Moore everybody is a questions mark.  In a normal year in a normal conference, one great player, one good player, and a bunch of questions wouldn't make you the fourth best team, but the Pac-10 is down once again, so Wazzou should be in play for an NCAA berth.

5.  USC Trojans.  They definitely have a great inside tandem, maybe the best in the conference, with Nikola Vucevic and Alex Stepheson in the paint.  Vucevic was called "the best true center in the conference" in an article I saw, and his numbers bear that out as he averaged nearly a triple double last year (10.7 pts/9.4 rebs per) and blocked more than one shot per game, while Stepheson was one of the highest rated recruits in the country coming out of high school and on his way to North Carolina in 2006.  He hasn't quite put it all together yet, but he's got one last chance.  This team will be especially interesting when Jio Fontan, an outstanding point guard who transferred from Fordham and will be eligible mid-season, joins the team to balance out the inside strength with a perimeter threat.


6.  Stanford Cardinal.  Losing Landry Jones, who led the conference in scoring and was second in rebounding last year, is definitely a bit of a buzzkill, but at least they have Jeremy Green back to soften the blow (16.6 ppg) as well as three other starters, and they're going to need every bit of that experience because everybody else on the roster is either a walk-on, a benchwarmer, or a freshman.  There is certainly some talent mixed up with these freshman - PF Dwight Powell is Rivals #25 overall recruit, while SG Anthony Brown is #65 - so there's certainly some upside here.  If the youngsters are ready to play the Cardinal could move up a few spots.  Plus this conference sucks, so anybody with a pulse could move up a few spots.

7.  Arizona State Sun Devils.  They certainly like to shoot the three, leading the conference last year in attempts by over 100 over the second place team, and they also lost both their penetrating point guard and their only inside presence, and are left with just five scholarship players from last year back this year, two of whom are dandies who only shoot threes.  With your #1 PG and #1 post player gone, how open are those looks going to be?  Now, some of the newcomers have talent and could step in - Keala King is the #8 PG in the country according to rivals and could step in at the point immediately - but there is still a distinct lack of big men that will limit how much ASU can accomplish.  But at least they still have the hottest chicks in the land.  Seriously, check out the internet sometime.

8.  Oregon State Beavers.  They looked to have a little momentum going into last year and were considered a bit of a sleeper in a weak Pac-10, but unfortunately couldn't capitalize, and now nobody cares again.  That center with the weird name is gone, the Tarvers (no relation to Miles) are gone.  Calvin Haynes is apparently a very good offensive player but I wouldn't know because I don't think I've watched an OSU game since the days of Corey Benjamin, partially because they're never on TV and partially because they're usually boring and/or bad.  I have, however, giggled about the nickname Beavers recently.  Because I'm 12.

9.  California Golden Bears.  I'm not sure any team, outside of Kentucky, lost as much from last year as the Bears, and this year is going to be rough.  Jerome Randle and Patrick Christopher might have been the two best guards in the conference last season, and they're both gone, as are third-leading scorer Theo Robertson and only viable inside presence (and fourth leading scorer) Jamal Boykin.  But, as Denise Fleming (who is not a tampon) said in Can't Hardly Wait, "Don't look back, you should never look back", so instead let's talk about what the Bears have going for them this year.  It's nothing.

10.  Oregon Ducks.  I'll say this about the Pac, it's easy to pick the last place team because the Ducks are an absolute disaster right now - like Iowa, but worse.  After Ernie Kent was fired there was such a mass exodus of players that I can't even keep up, which is made extra difficult because I don't pay particular attention to Oregon basketball.  Four of the players transferring were bench players with varying degrees of playing time, but Michael Dunigan - who just signed to play in Israel - would have been their top returning post player.  The lack of depth will be exacerbated by de-commits by incoming freshman (I can't find a list anywhere, but I know there have been some) leaving the Ducks with just 9 scholarship players, most of which are pretty mediocre.  New coach Dana Altman has already signed a very good class for 2011, but according to NCAA rules none of those players can play this year.

Other Previews:
ACC
Big 12

This Could be of Interest

Here is an email I received about some cool stuff happening before the Gopher/USC asskicking this weekend.  If you're heading to the game, it might be worth checking out.  Or not, what do I know?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey DWG,

 

Since I know you and a lot of your readers are likely heading to the Gophers/Trojans game this Saturday, I’m reaching out on behalf of Nissan to share some information about a really cool, free game day experience we’re sponsoring at the stadium in partnership with Sports Illustrated. I’ve included a rundown of what’s going on below (and you can find the full press release here), but let me know if you have any questions or would like more information.

 

Thanks!

David

 

Who: Meet University of Minnesota football legend Bobby Bell and Sports Illustrated senior writer Dan Patrick on game day!

·         10:30-11:30 a.m. – Autograph signing with College/Pro-Football Hall of Famer and Outland Trophy winner Bobby Bell

·         11:30 a.m. -12 p.m. – SI Chalk Talk with Bobby Bell & Dan Patrick

·         12-1p – Autograph signing with Dan Patrick

 

What: Sports Illustrated and Nissan have teamed up to celebrate the rich history of the Heisman Trophy and college football with a 10-stop national tour at marquee matchups this season. Admission to the tour is free, and fans are encouraged to pick up a special Sports Illustrated commemorative edition that showcases college football's most prestigious award, compliments of Nissan.

·         Chance to take photo with the Heisman Trophy on the cover of Sports Illustrated

·         Autograph signing and Q&A sessions with former college football legends

·         Interactive touch screen kiosks featuring

o   Heisman history and Sports Illustrated Trivia Quiz

o   Nissan Juke vehicle configurator

·         Fan giveaways including

o   Special edition copy of Sports Illustrated

§  A 92-page tribute to Heisman Trophy winners and all-time greats comprised of the work by current and former SI writers such as John Underwood, Alex Wolff, Grant Wahl, Roy Terrell and Sally Jenkins

o   Custom University of Minnesota t-shirts and other team swag

·         Opportunity for fans to experience the all-new Nissan Juke and Maxima, as they get a hands-on look at the 2011 cars

 

When:  Saturday, September 18th – Experience opens at 9:30 a.m. and runs until kickoff at 2:30 p.m.

 

Where:  4^th St. SE and SE 23^rd St., Minneapolis, MN 55414. Located on the south side of the stadium by the premium entry and ticket office. This is also located between gates E and D.

Week in Review - 12/28/2009

Wonderbaby^TM seemingly brought home what I can only assume to be the black plague from her day care, infecting everyone who got within a mile of her with a horrible stomach bug that attacked at both ends.  And yes, now it's my turn to have it - joy.  Yet I struggle through to still bring you, constant reader, your daily entertainment.  Some of these entries I wrote earlier in the week, and some I just typed up now while running to the bathroom every five minutes.  See if you can guess which are which.



WHO WAS AWESOME

1.  Mountain West Football.  Can someone tell me why the hell the MWC isn't included in this BCS garbage?  The Mountain West, after Utah killed Cal and BYU thrashed Oregon State this week, is now 3-0 in bowl games, and has just been destroying anybody foolish enough to accept a bid to play against them.  It started with the New Mexico Bowl, a game where Fresno was a 10-point favorite against Wyoming, but the Cowboys represented the conference well with an upset win in overtime.  Then it got really fun, with the BYU destroying an almost-in-the-Rose-Bowl Oregon State 44-20 in the Las Vegas Bowl (and it wasn't nearly that close) and then Utah winning their ninth straight bowl game in impressive fashion, stomping on Cal 37-27 in the Poinsettia Bowl.  Really folks, the Mountain West's continual success against other conferences, not to mention TCU's monster year, should be all the argument you need that these guys are every bit as good as any of the other conferences out there.  Time to expand the BCS agreement. 

2.  Elliot Williams.  You familiar with this kid at all?  He's the former Dukie who transferred to Memphis last season to be closer to his ailing mother who is now single-handedly making sure the Tigers are still the tops in Conference USA.  He was a top 20 recruit who didn't play much for Duke last season (although he did hit double-figures in four of their last 8 games), but his transferring to Memphis has made a world of difference.  After a monster game against SE Missouri State on Tuesday (20 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists) he's now averaging 20-5-4 on the season and has the Tigers at 8-2, and although I sort of think Memphis is a paper tiger this year (their best win is over Montana State), there is no doubting Williams is the real banana (perhaps even the famous "Kirk Cameron Banana").

3.  Old Dominion.  As badly as I wanted to include ODU last week after they knocked off Georgetown, I just couldn't find room for them.  Now, after they made a pretty good Charlotte team essentially clean their room and then give them a BJ, I can't possibly keep the Monarchs and their single-handed effort to make the Colonial relevant again out any longer.  These guys might be just 8-4, but they have played a bitch of a schedule and all four losses area to good teams - Dayton, Missouri, Mississippi State, and Richmond - and they had a huge week with wins over both Georgetown and Charlotte.  With VCU looking very good once again (wins over Oklahoma, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Richmond) and William & Mary looking relevant for the first time ever (wins over Wake Forest, Richmond, and VCU), the Colonial might be looking at another multi-bid year, and ODU will be right there all season long.  Ken Pomeroy agrees, his numbers have them ranked 8th in the country right now.  Obviously they aren't the 8th best team, but they are certainly looking like an NCAA caliber team, and would probably beat the Gophers by ten or so.

4.  USC.  Can one program redeem an entire conference in one week?  Of course not, that's ridiculous, but it was a great week for the Trojans who won the Diamond Head Classic and brought a little ray of hope and competitiveness to a so far pretty lackluster Pac 10.  USC beat Western Michigan (yawn), St. Mary's (pretty good), and UNLV (good win) to take the championship, and in a wide open (code for sucky) Pac 10 they've suddenly become the third best team in the conference. 

5.  Greg Monroe.  Put up an impressive 16 point, 16 rebound, 4 steal, 5 block performance in the Hoyas one-game this week, a 86-70 win over Harvard.  You know how people always draft guys like Roy Hibbert, Spencer Hawes, and Hasheem Thabeet early in the lottery and then act all shocked when they turn into either stiffs or nothing more than defensive players.  Watch Monroe - this is the guy you should be salivating over.  6-11, super athletic, and a good ball-handler, whoever drafts him is getting a super star.  He seriously reminds me a lot of David Robinson.  I would love to see the Wolves get him, even with Love and Jefferson; he could end up being a franchise changer for somebody.



WHO SUCKED

1.  Oklahoma.  Wow.  Capel is letting things fall apart all over the place in Soonertown.  They only had one game this week, one in which they got whooped by UTEP, and it did end a six-game win streak, but there are some unfortunate rumblings (and that loss to UTEP gives them four, three of which are to likely non-tournament teams which isn't good).  First, Capel came out and said he was "tired of trying to figure out" star guard Willie Warren.  Then, just two days later, he said he said, "It's amazing you have to tell him to be a good player" in reference to star freshman Tiny Gallon.  Third, that same day, Warren came out and asked "Does he not trust me with the ball?", despite the fact that Warren ranks 21st in the country in terms of % of his team's possessions he is involved in.  Like I said, the loss to UTEP isn't a killer, and even though the other three losses are not great none of them are killers, but there is some serious dissension in Oklahoma City.  I have a feeling they either get their shit together and go on a run and make the tournament (the talent level here is good enough to finish as high as third in the Big 12), or this thing is going to implode in a huge, huge way.  Stay tuned (note:  my money is on the imploding.).

2.  Tulsa.   Coming into this season the Golden Hurricane was thought to be a challenger to Memphis's throne in C-USA, but has gone from contender to "has no shot at an at-large at all" in a hurry.  They were in the Las Vegas Classic field this week, and essentially it should have been nothing more than an easy win over Nebraska to set up what would have been a very entertaining final against BYU..  Well, Tulsa clearly had no interest in that, instead choosing to drop that game to the Huskers and then by losing to Nevada by 30.  Yes, 30.  I mean it's not that the loss to Nebraska or Nevada is crippling (or their earlier loss to Missouri State), but they didn't exactly schedule themselves a whole lot of chances to get quality wins, so whiffing on these hurts.  Colorado is the only decent opponent left before the C-USA season starts (and there is an unwinnable game against Duke in late February), but as it stands right now they have a nice win over Oklahoma State and that's pretty much it.  Conference USA overall is better this year than it has been in the past, but Tulsa will have to have a very nice run to have a chance at an at-large.

3.  New Mexico.  Nothing quite like taking your school's highest ranking in ten years and just flushing it right down the toilet, eh?  The Lobos had ascended all the way to #12 in the polls on the strength of a 12-0 start to the season that included wins over Cal and Texas A&M, and with a very balanced (4 double-figure scorers) and efficient (#16 offensive efficiency) team they were looking likely the favorite in the Mountain West and maybe even a sleeper to do some damange in March, but last week's game against Oral Roberts was officially a suck.  The Lobos lost 75-66, thanks mainly to their two leading scorers (Roman Martinez and Darrington Hobson) combining to shoot 6-23. ORU is not a good team at just 7-6 with a couple of ugly losses mixed in their, but I'm not quite ready to dismiss the Lobos as frauds just yet.  We should find out pretty quickly - UNM plays Texas Tech and Dayton next week.  Stay tuned.

4.  New York Giants.  If you need to win out to make the playoffs, and all you have a home game against a crappy Carolina team, you probably should make more of an effort than getting steam rolled 41-9 - and once again, this was at home.  The Giants turned it over 4 times and allowed Jonathan Stewart to rush for a club record 206 yards.  They don't belong anywhere near the playoffs.

5.  Indiana, DePaul, Florida, Illinois, and Utah.  The Hoosiers lost at home to Loyola (Maryland), the Blue Demons lost to Florida-Gulf Coast, the Gators lost to South Alabama at home, the Illini got rolled by Missouri (following up a loss to Georgia), and Utah lost to Pepperdine (following up a loss to Illinois State) - take your pick for this last spot, too close to call (I'd go DePaul if I had to make a choice).


I hope to feel well enough to get a preview of the Penn State game up today or tomorrow, but just in case I don't, TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE TALOR BATTLE.