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Indiana is winning over this skeptic Posted: Wednesday November 27, 2002 1:38 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl answers your college basketball questions every Wednesday. Click here to send him a question. We'll start this week with a recent directive from Tom Biggs of Ft. Wayne, Ind.: "Just a few days now before Indiana proves that you made a major miscue by not including them in your top 10." Well, Tom, I don't know if the Hoosiers are a top-10 team, but they may not be far from it. A few weeks ago IU assistant John Treloar asked me over the phone, "So where does Sports Illustrated have us?" When I told him they weren't in our preseason Top 20, you could hear his wheels turning. Just consider it fuel for the fire, Coach. Anyway, I had concerns about Jeff Newton and George Leach inside, questions that were emphatically answered in Indiana's win Tuesday in Maui over Gonzaga -- particularly on the defensive end, where the Hoosiers hosses shut down one of the nation's best interior attacks. What's more, Newton had 16 points against the Zags, while Leach scored 19 against UMass the day before. Combine that with the perimeter threats of Tom Coverdale, Kyle Hornsby and freshman Bracey Wright (nice 25-foot range there, pal), to say nothing of A.J. (Adrenaline Rush) Moye, and you've got a team that should be ranked anywhere from No. 8 to No. 15. Other first-week thoughts: It's hard not to wonder if Kansas (at 17-0) and Arizona (at 15-0) might have spotless records heading into their showdown in Lawrence on Jan. 25. It's still early, of course, but both teams appear way ahead of anyone else I've seen so far. The Jayhawks clearly have the tougher schedule until then, with games against North Carolina, Florida (most likely), at Oregon, at Tulsa, UCLA and Wyoming. Meanwhile, 'Zona's toughest games in that stretch are both at home, against Texas and UCLA. ... Speaking of the Bruins, UCLA's annual let-the-vultures-start-circling loss in Pauley already happened on Tuesday, when Oklahoma State transfer Jason Keep scored 30 points in San Diego's 86-81 overtime win. This is an actual strategy on Steve Lavin's part, isn't it? ... I keep thinking Monday's upset score DREXEL 71, PENN 62 is going to be reversed once it's revealed that three Drexel frat brothers hacked into the Palestra scoreboard through the Autotote system. ... Vultures Circling II? Talk radio will be humming in Lexington after Kentucky's 75-61 loss to Virginia on Tuesday. Who would have thought the Cavaliers, of all teams, would give somebody lessons in how to play together? 'Bagward we go ... Do you think the NCAA is wrong for the way it is handling the Mario Austin situation?
Got a boatload of questions on this topic. Based on the facts that are out there, the NCAA is subjecting Mississippi State star Austin to the kind of double jeopardy that's forbidden in the saner precincts of this country's justice system. At issue: Even though the NCAA Clearinghouse signed off on Austin's eligibility for his freshman season in Starkville -- and did so again a year later -- another NCAA committee has determined that this certification was "erroneous" based on further examination of Austin's high school transcript. That's not double jeopardy; it's triple jeopardy. If this mistake is the only thing keeping Austin out of the Bulldogs lineup, then the NCAA investigators have some serious explaining to do in a public forum. A quick rules question: It seems that in the recent past, it was a good move to fake the outside jumper to get the defender in the air, then lean in to draw the foul while putting up an awkward shot. This was a staple for many players just five years ago. Now it seems to have turned into a no-call. Has there been a rules change on this issue?
Referees have begun cracking down on offensive players who try to draw fouls this way, particularly when the defensive player is set or stays in his own vertical plane. In fact, one of this year's points of emphasis is to prevent offensive players from initiating such contact close to the goal. As one Pac-10 assistant coach told me, Oregon's Luke Jackson has a real habit of doing this, and the coach wonders if the letter-of-the-law Pac-10 officials will enforce the directive more so than their brethren around the country. Is it too early to get excited about the young guns at North Carolina? What will the Preseason NIT final four tell us about them? And even if they play up and down like most freshmen, do you still think the Tar Heels will finish seventh or worse in a rather weak ACC? Is it OK to talk Big Dance three games into the season?
When you've already won almost half as many games as you did all of last year, it's OK to get excited. Granted, Penn State is terrible and Rutgers easily could have finished off the upset in the Dean Dome, but the Heels' three freshman starters (Rashad McCants, Raymond Felton and Sean May) are getting valuable experience right from the start. We'll see how things progress. I could see UNC finishing anywhere from third to seventh in the ACC. Many years ago SI ran an article listing the best 12th grader, 11th grader, etc. The senior was Marcus Liberty and I believe the sophomore or freshman was Alonzo Mourning. Can you find out who the rest were? I want to know if any of the predictions were on target.
In SI's 1986-87 season preview, we featured one star player from each grade, 12th down to sixth. Here was the breakdown: 12th grade: Marcus Liberty (Chicago)
Liberty through Bailey are names we know. Do any readers know what happened to the youngest three? Or should we look into them for WATN? Play time This next one comes from Jeff Lewis in Plymouth, Minn.: "You asked for a new time-consuming hoops parlor game. Here's one for you. Among those who played post-1985 (same parameter as the "Best Starting Five From A School" from last season), who is the best college basketball player to have worn a given jersey number? This is a tough one that will generate some apples-and-oranges comparisons from different seasons, regions and positions. Here's a preliminary list my fellow hoopheads and I came up with after some discussion and high-speed Web surfing. No guarantee that the player-number matches are 100 percent, but most of them are solid: 0/00: Mookie Blaylock
10: Kirk Hinrich
20: LaPhonso Ellis
30: Scotty Thurman
40: Calbert Cheaney
50: David Robinson
Jeff, this is really and truly disturbing -- and brilliant, of course. I'm not even going to attempt to modify this (citing exhaustion after watching too many Jay Bilas action movies -- see below), but I do want to create a master list for next week. Readers: Send any suggestions, changes, additions for the above list here. Station break: Three random thingsWell done, Jay. And to answer your hoops query ("Is this year's Stanford last year's Arizona?"), I'd say not quite. While I've been impressed with the Cardinal's 3-0 start (and its upset of Xavier), Stanford doesn't have a third-year starter at the point like Arizona's Jason Gardner last year, nor does it boast perhaps the nation's best passer (Luke Walton). I could easily see the Card making some noise in the Pac-10, though -- particularly when PG Chris Hernandez returns from a broken foot -- and (if it can finish in the top four) earning an NCAA tournament bid.
Best $4.28 the 'Bag ever spent (or, let's be honest, expensed). Quick plot summary: Lundgren is Jack Caine, a bad-ass Houston cop who -- along with his FBI-agent partner (Benben) -- has to solve a string of perplexing murders. Turns out that a "Bad Alien" from another planet is subduing Houstonians, injecting them with heroin and then harvesting the resulting endorphins from their brains to sell as high-grade smack back home. (At last, an answer for what's happened to the Houston Cougars post-Phi Slamma Jamma!) For reasons never explained, the alien always prefaces his attacks with the greeting "I come in peace" (hence, the title). When any cops, samaritans, etc., try to get in the Bad Alien's way, he mows them down with a weaponized compact disc that ricochets around a room, using its razor-sharp edge to decapitate everyone in the vicinity. But Lundgren has help! A "Good Alien" cop (Bilas) has pursued the perp to Earth in an effort to stop its murderous rampage. With his shaved crown, floor-length ponytail and opaque white contact lenses, Bilas looks like a 6-foot-8 Hare Krishna on a bad trip. Regrettably, he doesn't speak for the movie's first hour, preferring to grunt and groan and shoot his flame-throwing "spacegun" while Lundgren steals all the best lines. (Our favorite: "I think we're dealing with aliens -- and not from Mexico.") There's plenty of entertainment value here, from the soundtrack by Jan (Miami Vice) Hammer to the gratuitous nudity to the way Bilas appears to be bleeding yogurt from his gut when the Bad Alien lands a shot with his own spacegun. (There's nothing sadder, of course, than alien-on-alien violence.) Critics, however, clearly missed the genius of I Come in Peace, whether it was the San Francisco Chronicle ("A big, dumb, cruel action picture"), the Los Angeles Times ("Drenched in violence and devoid of so much as a whiff of real life") or The New York Times ("Much more mundane than its outrageously clever premise"). The problem: None of the critics noticed Bilas' first-rate performance. It's no coincidence, the 'Bag thinks, that ICIP's dramatic high-water mark comes when Bilas, hemorrhaging Dannon, crawls into Lundgren's car and delivers a sudden bolt of Method acting in his first -- and last -- lines of the movie: Jay: [gasping] He ... must ... be ... stopped! Lundgren: He's on our side. Who are you? Jay: An officer ... of the law. Like you. Benben: He speaks English, huh? Jay: Stop ... him! Lundgren: What does he want? Jay: Bar C -- a priceless drug ... where I'm from. Rare ... and illegal. What you call ... endorphins. Lundgren: A dealer. Just a lousy dealer! Benben: I can't believe any of this is happening. Jay: He'll kill your people ... by the thousands ... to get it cheaply. Benben: Where did you say you were from? Jay: [more gasping] Stop him! If he returns ... others will come. It will be a ... slaughter. He's at the ... storage place ... near a waterway. Lundgren: That could be the Flagship Building! Jay: [wheezing now] Must ... promise ... me! PRO ... MISE ... ME! Lundgren: I promise! Slowly, Bilas' head falls back onto the car seat. He's limp. The Good Alien ... is ... dead. And then, just when Lundgren and Benben think all is quiet, Jay's head explodes! It's easily the best scene of the film, one that will leave Bilas fans like me forever wondering: Was ESPN's gain Hollywood's irretrievable loss? Then again, Bilas is the game's Renaissance man, a guy who has 1) played in a national title game for Duke, 2) been an extra on The White Shadow, and 3) won a case against Barney (yep, the purple one himself; Bilas is a practicing lawyer in Charlotte). If he ever stars in a rap video -- and we won't put it past him -- his life will be complete. In the meantime, I'll never be able to look at the guy again without picturing his head exploding like a water balloon hitting the pavement. For any serious hoops fan, I Come in Peace is 93 minutes well spent. Jay Burson found!Had a nice talk Tuesday with Burson, the 6-foot, 150-pound dynamo who averaged 22.1 points a game for Gary Williams' Ohio State Buckeyes in the 1988-89 season. If you'll recall, Burson broke his neck with seven games left in his senior year and for the next three months wore a halo brace that was screwed into his skull. These days, he's in Columbus working in team sales for Nike while serving as a pregame radio host for Buckeyes basketball. "I've been very fortunate," said Burson, who still owns the Ohio state high school career scoring record. "I've got a great family" -- three boys, ages 2 to 11, and wife LeAnne -- "and doing radio keeps me around the Buckeyes." The amazing thing is, Burson actually rallied to try out with the Houston Rockets the autumn after his injury, and he lasted until the final week of the preseason before being cut. After one year in the CBA, he decided to go back to school and get into business. "I still had some back and neck problems," he said. "Do I think I could have played at that level? Yeah. But the injury just came at a bad time. You just have to live and learn and try to get better, whatever you're doing." Burson said there's no bitterness, though. And if he conducts sales the way he used to sacrifice his body out on the court, well, he must be doing pretty well in that department, too. Which brings us to this week's WATN: Where in the world is former Loyola Marymount hustler Tom (The Human Bruise) Peabody? 'Bag contest!Want to win the 'Bag's personal copy of the action classic I Come in Peace? Then take part in the 'Bag's first Reader Writing Contest! This week's topic: What's up with all the Raymond Carver references in The New York Times? On Sunday, Maureen Dowd wrote that Eminem has become "the Raymond Carver of hip-hop." A week before that, in The New York Times Magazine, Pagan Kennedy wrote that songwriter Conor Oberst "has created a Raymond Carver story in 4/4." That followed Ben Brantley's recent argument that the works of theater artist Richard Maxwell suggest "what it might have been like had Raymond Carver ... chosen the Schubertian song cycle over the short story." Which brings us to our contest. To win your copy of I Come in Peace, all you have to do is submit (in 100 words or fewer) the best answer to the question: Who is the Raymond Carver of college basketball? Submissions will be judged by the 'Bag on creativity, humor and/or parodies of Carver's writing style. (I think there's a joke in here somewhere about the school with the nation's best creative writing program -- Iowa -- naming its arena after a great American novelist. But I'll let you guys take it from here. Good luck!) Separated at BirthThanks once again for all your SAB suggestions. This week's winners: Virginia's Travis Watson and comedian Mark Curry.
UConn's Jim Calhoun and The X-Files' Cancer Man, William B. Davis.
And, finally, from me: Gonzaga's Mark Few and Kevin Bacon.
Have a good Thanksgiving! Click here to send your college basketball question to Grant Wahl.
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