In this weeks installment, we have Florida's NCAA tournament-preparation checklist, Acie Law's knuckleball shot and a heavy dose of Craig Ehlo.
| NCAA Basketball Power Rankings |
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Joakim Noah/AP |
Sometimes I wonder if the Gators are taking this month to run through a top-secret, NCAA tournament-preparation checklist. Spot Alabama an 18-point first-half lead, just to see if our underappreciated point guard, Taurean Green, can shoot us to a comeback win.. Check. Get All-Americas Jo Noah and Al Horford in early foul trouble and play them only 21 minutes each at Rupp Arena, just to see if the reserves can help engineer a road victory. Check. Get Noah's annual cheerleader incident out of the way before March -- by having him swipe at a Kentucky girl's pom-pom on ESPN -- to minimize future distractions. Check. Last year's altercation was a lot friendlier, though; he blew UCLA's cheerleaders a kiss during the title game, because they were "taking crazy to me, like 'You're so ugly.'"
"It hurts when you have so many beautiful girls out there just telling you how ugly you are and stuff," Noah said after that game. "The best thing I could do was just blow a kiss by, and maybe [then] they like me."
Judging from that swipe, the Gators no longer care if they're liked.
Next three: 2/17 at Vanderbilt, 2/21 vs. South Carolina, 2/24 at LSU. |
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The question is not if, but rather how soon the Badgers' Alando Tucker will break Michael Finley's record for all-time points scored at UW. After Wednesday night's 29-point effort at Minnesota, Tuck has 2,049 career points, leaving him 98 shy of Finley, who played with a limited supporting cast in Madison and went to just one NCAA tournament in four seasons. With four regular-season games left, and his scoring average hovering around 20 a game, Tucker could very well break the record in the first round of the Big Ten tournament. Then, by his measure, he'll have at least seven more games left as Badger to blow it into oblivion. When asked about how long the record chase would go, Tucker told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "The Final Four, I'm definitely counting that."
Next three: 2/17 vs. Penn State, 2/20 at Michigan State, 2/25 at Ohio State. |
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A strange thing in NBADraft.net's latest mock for 2007: There are zero point guards in the lottery, and only two in the entire first round (Texas A&M's Acie Law, at No. 17, and Marquette's Dominic James, at No. 29). Meanwhile, the Bruins' Darren Collison is listed as the No. 8 pick on the 2008 draft board. D.C. hasn't given any indication that he's itching to leave Westwood, but if he leads the Bruins to a deep tourney run, you wonder if he wouldn't at least consider making the jump. The '07 talent pool is loaded, so the lottery would be unlikely, but Collison also wouldn't have to wait behind Derrick Rose and O.J. Mayo in the draft-a-point-guard line. (And yes, I'm aware the Bruins lost at West Virginia, but seeing that they were without Collison -- who was injured -- on the road, there's no point in dropping them too far in the rankings.)
Next three: 2/15 at Arizona State, 2/17 at Arizona, 2/22 vs. Cal. |
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I pulled the plug on the Buckeyes' win at Penn State with OSU up 17 in the second half ... and then saw the final score of 64-62 a few hours later. I think coach Thad Matta was just as bewildered that the Bucks would let Big Ten bottom-feeders mount such a late comeback, as he asked his team afterward if they perhaps needed a loss as a wake-up call. Matta also hinted that the veterans who have become the supporting cast to the Oden-Conley show -- presumably Jamar Butler, Ron Lewis and Matt Terwilliger -- didn't do enough to help stop the onslaught. "We need more leadership from the guys who have been through it," Matta told the Columbus Dispatch. "I don't say that in a negative way; those guys are just a little bit more quiet or different and have never been thrust into that role. But I do know this, [ex-OSU guard] Je'Kel Foster would have busted somebody upside the head at some point today."
Next three: 2/18 at Minnesota, 2/21 vs. Penn State, 2/25 vs. Wisconsin. |
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Craig Ehlo |
Pullman might be the only place where Craig Ehlo is most famous for something other than his work as Michael Jordan's highlight-enabler. The Cougs are now three wins shy of surpassing the 1982-83 Wazzu team to become the schools winningest squad in 60 years. The '82-83 bunch, with Ehlo as the third-leading scorer and George Raveling as coach, had 24 wins but for some reason were not B.M.O.Cs, judging from a quote Ehlo told the Seattle Times. "We were a close team because we were all that we had," Ehlo told the paper. "We were the only people we knew on campus, so the time we spent out of the classroom was usually in the gym playing together." This, strangely, will not be your only dose of Ehlo in this week's rankings. Read on.
Next three: 2/22 at Oregon, 2/24 at Oregon State, 3/1 vs. UCLA. |
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