It's still early ...

Illinois, Michigan St. still trying to break through

Sports Illustrated college basketball writer Seth Davis chatted with CNNSI.com about the goings-on in the national hoops scene:

CNNSI.com: Let's get right into it. Are the Illini pretenders or contenders?

Seth Davis: Well, I think they will be contenders, but as demonstrated by their loss to the Terps, they have a lot of work to do. First of all, they really miss Lucas Johnson, their 6-8 senior, a really physical player who hurt his knee at the start of the season. Bill Self tells me that Johnson is ahead of schedule but they still won't get him back before Feb. 1 at the earliest. And besides that, they need more production from the guys they do have. Frank Williams is obviously their best player but he's just not very vocal at the point guard spot. Junior forward Brian Cook may be the most talented player on the team, if not one of the most talented players in the country, but he's been very passive offensively and has been in constant foul trouble. I still think that Illinois has real potential to be a Final Four team and a national championship contender, but they do have a ways to go.

CNNSI.com: Staying in the Big Ten, Michigan State was expected to struggle this year, but is Tom Izzo frustrated by the Spartans' slow start?

Davis: I talked to Izzo this week and he seemed pretty sanguine about the situation. He did expect his team to struggle, which is often the case when you have to depend on three freshmen the way that he has. But he also pointed out that freshmen have a way of improving at rapid speed and he's really hoping that's going to be the case with Kelvin Torbert, who outside of Dajuan Wagner was one of the most heralded freshmen coming into the season. He just hasn't played with the kind of aggressiveness and great athletic ability that we saw from him at the high school level. In their early practices Izzo looked at Torbert and said, "This is not the guy I recruited." He actually showed Torbert tape of himself playing in high school to try and encourage him to relax and get into the flow. I still think that Michigan State has the chance to be a pretty good team by the end of the year. Not a great team, but a good team.

CNNSI.com: Give us some early surprises in terms of players, guys who didn't get a whole lot of preseason hype.

Davis: I'll give you three. First, there's Notre Dame freshman point guard Chris Thomas, who wasn't that heralded of a recruit, but he's already put up the first triple-double in school history and through the Irish's first seven games had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 5-to-1, which is amazing for a freshman. Now in Philadelphia, there's a very intriguing player at Penn, Ugonna Onyekwe, he's a 6-7 athlete, he's shooting 58 percent from three-point range and averaging 20 points a game. He's a great rebounder and shot blocker -- a legitimate pro prospect in the Ivy League. And in terms of pro prospects, also in Philadelphia, a lot of people are talking about Rasaul Butler down at LaSalle. He's a 6-8 senior playing the power forward spot but he does have some wing skills. He's not on a very good team but he's still putting up 21 points a game and he's definitely caught the eyes of the pro scouts.

Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers the college basketball beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.

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