After Sampson, fans, it's time to focus on basketball

North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough had to change his cell phone number after Clemson fans put it on a sign last season. Greg Nelson/SI

MAILBAG Grant Wahl will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

The 'Bag feels like he's covering the cell-phone industry instead of college basketball at times these days. First came the Kelvin Sampson mess, with the Indiana coach finally falling on his cell-phone antenna and resigning last Friday. Then came our story in this week's issue of Sports Illustrated on the recent rash of fan abuse in college hoops.

UCLA's Kevin Love told me that he had received death threats from Oregon fans on his cell phone the day before the Bruins met the Ducks in Eugene last month. (Love's cell number had been distributed by the Pit Crew, the Oregon student fan group.) North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough didn't receive death threats, but he was the subject of several prank calls after he saw a sign at Clemson last year with his cell number on it.

"It said, 'This is Tyler's phone number,' and it actually was my cell number," recalls Hansbrough, who has since changed his number. "People were calling me at 2 o'clock in the morning and waking me up."

It's enough to make you become a Luddite and lose your cell phone altogether. Anyway, we're ready to cover some actual hoops for the first time in a while. Let's dig in:

I think we would all agree that there are six truly elite, upper-echelon jobs in college basketball (Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, and UCLA) that combine tradition, excellence, resources and consistent championship expectations from their fan bases. Also, college basketball would undoubtedly be the No. 1 sport at each school. Which five to 10 teams would qualify for the next level? Syracuse, Georgetown, UConn, Arizona, Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Florida? Most of these next-level schools have only recently become basketball powerhouses (i.e., Florida) and are identified with one coach who built up the program from nothing (Jim Calhoun with UConn, Lute Olson with Arizona, Jim Boeheim with Syracuse).

Can another coach sustain what these coaches have built in these cases? For the other schools, while they may have large state school resources and significant basketball traditions, they face the problem of always being the second sport behind football (Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Florida). While this has clearly not held back a school like Florida from winning national championships, is there anything any of the next tier of schools can do to elevate itself to the top elite six?
-- Vinay Kini, Norwalk, Conn.

I'll agree with you on the top six. As for the next 10 after that, I would include (in no particular order): Maryland, UConn, Syracuse, Georgetown, Louisville, Ohio State, Michigan State, Arizona, Florida and Texas. It remains to be seen whether the successors of Jim Calhoun, Jim Boeheim, Lute Olson and Billy Donovan will be able to keep it going in the programs that they built. (Georgetown's John Thompson III seems to be well on his way to building on his father's achievements with the Hoyas.) As far as football schools are concerned, Ohio State, Florida and Texas have ridiculous amounts of resources for their basketball programs, which you can see when you visit their remarkable facilities. But being "football schools" will indeed make it hard for them to ever join the top six. Doing that will require an extraordinary amount of effort over a period of decades.

I don't think Indiana will hire Tony Bennett, even though I think it would be an excellent fit. IU has already hired and parted ways with a Bennett: Tony's sister, Kathi, as its women's coach. I am guessing that there will be too much sour grapes on one side or the other.
-- Sheldon, Hazelhurst, Wis.

I disagree. From everything I understand, what happened between Indiana and Kathi Bennett wouldn't prevent IU from considering Tony Bennett or vice-versa. Kathi Bennett resigned from the Indiana women's job in 2005 after five seasons citing personal reasons, but no sour grapes or bad blood has ever surfaced publicly. I'm just reading the tea leaves here, but it appears that Indiana AD Rick Greenspan is going to keep his job, and this time he might have even more power over the hiring of a basketball coach than he did with Kelvin Sampson (who was the favorite of former Indiana president Adam Herbert).

Keep in mind, Greenspan was also the AD at Illinois State when Kevin Stallings coached there, and Greenspan is also a huge fan of Mark Few at Gonzaga. Two years ago Greenspan wanted to send a plane to Spokane to bring Few to Bloomington for an interview, but Few declined the offer.

Enjoyed your story on the Dribble-Drive Motion offense. I'm sure I'm not alone in asking this, but does Vance Walberg have grounds for some kind of suit against Herb Welling? At the very least, Welling should be sending Walberg a cut. He's totally ripping Walberg off!
-- D.P., Washington D.C.

Thanks D.P. While it seems unfair on the face of it, I don't think Walberg has a case for a lawsuit. Sysko's, the instructional video retailer, asked Walberg if he wanted to do the videos, and he turned down the offer. And when I asked Sysko's executive Jim Blaine about intellectual property issues, he said, "There's no patent on this stuff." Which is true. Maybe the lawyers out there can help me out with this one: Would it even be possible to patent a basketball offensive scheme? Part of me thinks that sounds ridiculous, but another part of me remembers that Pat Riley copyrighted the word threepeat and John Calipari copyrighted refuse to lose.

How does the does the Mountain West Conference's lack of exposure due to a terrible television deal hurt a team like BYU come tournament time?
-- Jackson Dunbar, El Monte, Calif.

I really don't think BYU is hurt that much by the league's TV deal, not with the NCAA tournament committee, at least. The committee has done a pretty good job in recent years when it comes to being aware of good teams that don't get as much publicity nationally. If anything, I think many of the TV talking heads are too unaware of the Mountain West. UNLV's run to the Sweet 16 last year shouldn't have been treated with as much surprise as it was in many precincts. That said, BYU's win over Louisville and down-to-the-wire loss to North Carolina in Vegas last fall did draw the Cougars attention from some TV folks who tend to act like the only team west of the Central Time Zone is UCLA.

Why does it seem to be a foregone conclusion that Texas A&M should be in the NCAA tournament? Aside from a win over Texas, has it beaten another tournament team?
-- Jay Thomas, Houston, Texas

Good point, Jay. The only obvious NCAA tournament team the Aggies have beaten is Texas; the only two bubble teams they've beaten are Ohio State and Oklahoma. And with three straight losses (including at home to Nebraska and Oklahoma State!) Mark Turgeon's team is clearly on the ropes, considering the tournament committee looks at how you're playing down the stretch. A&M's regular-season schedule ends this way: Texas Tech, at Oklahoma, at Baylor, Kansas. I think the Aggies need to win three of those games, with preferably one of them coming against Kansas, to be in the conversation for an at-large bid.

In last week's mailbag you limited the POY race to two players (Michael Beasley and Tyler Hansbrough), both of whom are great, but I don't think it's time to rule out Indiana's D.J. White just yet. He is averaging a double-double, he leads the Big Ten in rebounding and is second in scoring. If the Hoosiers win the Big Ten outright and win their conference tournament, I think he deserves some serious consideration. He's certainly a better player than Hansbrough, but I agree with you that Beasley may be a step above everybody else.
-- David, Minneapolis, Minn.

Sorry to burst your bubble, David, but I don't think White is even the best D.J. in the country this season. I'd consider Texas' D.J. Augustin as Player of the Year before White, although both could be having first-team All-America seasons. I'm not sure how you came up with the idea that White is "certainly a better player than Hansbrough," but that won't fly if you've seen them both extensively this season -- and how could we not with all the national TV time that Indiana and UNC get? Remember, college Player of the Year has nothing to do with a player's NBA prospects. It's about performance during this college season. White has to be the favorite for Big Ten player of the year, but nationally I think it's a two-horse race between Beasley and Hansbrough, with the winner dependent on whether you place more value on raw statistics or team performance.

Remember last week's question wondering if Gonzaga's Austin Daye had a chance to set the single-season free-throw percentage record for a player 6-foot-10 or taller? We knew we could count on Charlie Hart of Noblesville, Ind., to help us out:

When I first saw the reader question about which 6-10 (or above) player had the highest single-season percentage, I immediately thought of Austin Croshere (88.8 percent in 1997). However, determining height was the difficult part of the assignment. Many releases list him as 6-9 and others say 6-10. In his particular case, it became moot as I found a few others who had a higher percentage. I tried to identify people who, for the most part, are usually listed as 6-10 or above. Also, to qualify for the season FT percentage list, the NCAA says one has to make 2.5 FTs per game played and the individual has to have played in 75 percent of the team's games.

With that I am pretty confident that 6-10 Michael Smith of BYU had the highest single-season big man FT percentage. He shot 92.5 percent (160-173) in 1988-89. UCLA great Don MacLean (6-10) shot 92.1 percent (197-214) in 1991-92. Honorable mention goes to Marquette's Steve Novak (6-10), who had freshman through senior averages of 93.9, 91.2, 90.5 and 97.4 percent from 2002-03 to 2005-06 respectively, for a career average of 93.1 (243-261). However, Novak never quite had enough makes in a given year to qualify for the NCAA crown.

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