 |
| |
|
 |
 |
A mixed bag of preseason picks Posted: Wednesday January 15, 2003 5:35 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl answers your college basketball questions every Wednesday. Click here to send him a question. As a public service, the 'Bag likes to take stock of its preseason picks this time of year, just to show you that 1) we may know slightly more than an untrained monkey, and 2) we're man enough to admit it when we don't. But before we get to our hits and misses from Nov. 6, I'd like to dispel one preseason fallacy that was perpetrated by much of the media, including us. We'll call it the Myth of Duos. Quick: How often did you see the phrase "best duo in the country" in season previews? A lot, right? Depending on the publication, you were reading about Arizona (Luke Walton and Jason Gardner), Kansas (Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich), Oregon (Luke Jackson and Luke Ridnour) or Xavier (David West and Romain Sato). How much does any of it really mean? Not much at all. Two months into the season, it's clear that we put far too much stock in twosomes when it came to our predictions. Not one of those four duos has produced results measuring up to expectations, which tells me those expectations probably were too high in the first place. At Oregon, Jackson (16.7 ppg/6.6 rpg) and Ridnour (18.9) are performing fine statistically, but they haven't prevented the disappointing Ducks (10-4) from being outrebounded like a bunch of grade-schoolers. Same goes at 11-4 Xavier, where West (19.1/11.6) and Sato (16.1/7.4) have been overshadowed by the Musketeers' lack of teamwork. Kansas (11-3) hasn't fully recovered from its early-season pratfall, even though Collison (19.2/8.2) and Hinrich (16.5) have put up numbers. And while Arizona is 11-1, Gardner's scoring is down six points a game (to 14.3) and Walton has been plagued by injuries. Moral of the story: Beware when you see hype about "the best duo in the nation." In a five-on-five game, it doesn't mean as much as you'd think. Moving on to our preseason Top 25, the 'Bag has done OK so far, with 11 hits, six misses and eight pushes midway through the season. Eighteen of my Top 25 teams are currently in the AP Top 25, and I still feel good about all of my Final Four picks (Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma and Florida). Let's take a look: 1. Arizona
2. Kansas
3. Oklahoma
4. Florida
5. Duke
6. Texas
7. Xavier
8. Pittsburgh
9. Alabama
10. Michigan State
11. Tulsa
12. Oregon
13. Connecticut
14. Wyoming
15. Marquette
16. Gonzaga
17. Georgia
18. Western Kentucky
19. Mississippi State
20. Kentucky
21. Missouri
22. Maryland
23. Creighton
24. Louisville
25. Virginia
SEVEN THAT SLIPPED UNDER MY RADAR Notice a pattern? The following teams are all from major conferences, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't pick some mid-majors just to mix things up. Still, you know the major-conference teams won't win all the games in the NCAA tournament. Illinois
Notre Dame
Indiana
Wake Forest
LSU
Oklahoma State
Syracuse
Four random thingsOn DVD: Boys Don't Cry. Unlike Halle Berry, Hilary Swank actually deserved the Best Actress Oscar for her entirely believable portrayal of a Nebraska woman impersonating a male. Much better than Insomnia, another Swank- (and Al Pacino-) headlined film I saw last week. On CD: Recline (Six Degrees). Want to play the same music SI swimsuit photogs use during their shoots? Check out this disc of chill music featuring 'Bag favorites Zuco 103 and Bebel Gilberto. Which reminds me -- I wonder which subject ace SI snapper Al Tielemans prefers shooting: sweaty football players on Sundays or Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders for their lingerie calendar? Nice work, Al! Question timeHas there ever been a sadder ending to a college career than that of Western Kentucky's Chris Marcus? Here is a guy who was a first-round lock had he entered the draft in 2001. Is this a case of a college player who stayed in school too long?
Marcus' college career isn't over yet, Jason, but it's awfully depressing to see him deal with so much injury trouble over the past two seasons. In hindsight, maybe he would have been better off financially if he had declared for the draft beforehand, but you can never predict such things. We wish Marcus the best in his recovery. Is it just me or does it seem like Jason Kapono has been playing college hoops for about 10 years? He kind of reminds me of Jess Settles, who went from playing ball at Iowa to collecting social security checks. Have you ever noticed this about any particular player?
Utah's Britton Johnsen, Princeton's Chris Mooney, Kansas' Collison, Florida's Nelson, Arizona's Rick Anderson, Ohio State's Brent Darby. You said that Creighton had a chance to break the 23-year drought of mid-majors in the Final Four. What about Memphis in 1985, Cincinnati in 1992 and Utah in 1998?
Conference like the Mountain West, Atlantic 10 and C-USA have some schools that are mid-majors and some that aren't. Those three schools don't qualify in my book. Since you were at the game with Sebastian Telfair and Demarcus Nelson, I wanted you to compare the two guards' overall games. I know Nelson already committed to Duke and is supposed to be a serious talent, but since he pledged to Coach K I haven't heard very flattering reports on his overall play. How did he do against Telfair?
I try not to base too much on one game, but from what I saw Telfair completely outplayed Nelson in every category: passing, shooting and defense. Still, Nelson is a rarity -- since when has Coach K sealed a commitment with a high school junior? -- and Coach K has a little more experience in recruiting than I do. In other words, I'll keep my mind open on Nelson. Ugly arena floorsGot lots of response to my query asking readers to name the worst-looking arena floors in the nation. Just so you know, the 'Bag prizes elegance and simplicity in its playing surfaces. Basketball courts are a lot like baseball caps in that regard. The best hats ever were the three-bar models made by The Game that had COCKS or TIGERS or TROJANS above a smaller line reading "The University of [fill-in-the-blank]." Nice, clean, simple. All you had to do was cut out the backing, roll the bill and sweat a lot in it, and you were set. But then in the mid-'90s hat companies started putting way too much junk on their products: on the side, the back, everywhere. It was terrible. The same goes with basketball courts, which is why readers served up Boise State's BSU Pavilion as the ugliest court in the country, closely followed by Colorado State's Moby Arena. Rudy Pacheco in Glendale, Ariz., calls Boise State's "a debauchery of a court." And as reader Joe Nicholls of Denver writes, "Can I go ahead and nominate Boise State to win hands-down the wackiest design? (This from a school with a blue football field, aka Smurf Turf, which birds have been known to dive-bomb, mistaking it for a lake.) It still retains the obnoxious blue/orange paint inside the 3-point arc, and last year officials turned the top of the key into a blue/orange/white pinwheel. The court, no matter the paint scheme, is always too busy!" We hear you, Joe. And so we called Boise State assistant Andy McClowskey on Monday night to ask him about it. He just happened to be watching the New Mexico-Colorado State game on TV, and he went off on Colorado State's court-sized ram's horns. "With all due respect to those guys, our court is far superior to theirs," he said. "It looks like they burned the wood. Talk about ugly. At least we paint ours. We may have the Smurf Turf football field and the pie shape in our keys, but we aren't that bad." Sorry, Andy. You are that bad. But we'll at least give BSU props for hosting its share of memorable NCAA tournament games. Separated at BirthPortland State coach Heath Schroyer and actor Andy Garcia.
Seton Hall coach Louis Orr and actor Michael Wright (of the show Oz).
Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson and celeb chef Emeril Lagasse.
Fired-up fansFinally, Kyle Ryberg of Chicago submits a challenge Web site from University of Dayton fans (udredscare.com)to last week's East Carolina fan Web site: "The University of Dayton Red Scare has a much better Web site than the ECU fans' (you will notice actual pictures and links, not just phrases like "coming soon"). In 1993, despite winning only four games all season, the average attendance at the University of Dayton Arena exceeded 12,000. That's right, 12,000! As a proud UD alum, I can vouch that some of that loyalty is probably attributed to beer being sold at home games. However, did you notice all the red that was visible at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Dec. 29? In the second half, the Cameron Crazies were actually drowned out by Flyers fans chanting, "We are UD!" By the way, this year we're actually good (just ask Cincinnati, Villanova and Marquette)." Have a great week! Click here to send your college basketball question to Grant Wahl.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
