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Talk hoops all year long in Luke Winn's blog, a journal of commentary, news and reader-driven discussions about the college game.
11/12/2007 06:23:00 PM

The Strangest Things So Far

Kansas State freshman Michael Beasley has totaled 62 points and 38 rebounds in his first collegiate games.
AP
It's difficult to ascertain when, exactly, the college hoops season begins. Sports Illustrated's preview issue -- what I've been working on lately rather than blogging -- comes out tomorrow. The first real "tournament" of the winter, the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic, takes place on Thursday and Friday at Madison Square Garden. Some teams have already played two regular-season games. Others have yet to play one. Basically: we're right in the middle of the beginning. And already, there has been no shortage of surprises:

1. The Zestier Mayonnaise

University of Illinois-Chicago's Josh Mayo was a huge prospect coming out of Merrillville, Ind., in the Class of 2005. So huge that he was assigned two stars in a photo-less, news-less profile in Scout.com's recruiting database. So huge that he wasn't even in Rivals.com's recruiting database. USC's O.J. Mayo, meanwhile, was a slightly huger prospect coming out of Huntington, W.V.: five stars in every recruiting service, and the No. 1 overall prospect in Scout.com's rankings. O.J. also was on the cover of SLAM last month standing in front of a Bentley. They are neither brothers nor cousins, nor did they, coming into this season, appear to be operating in the same basketball universe.

Until they went and actually played the games, that is. When the first weekend of the 2007-08 season was said and done, Josh Mayo > O.J. Mayo. The pride of Merrillville -- now a junior at UIC -- dropped 34 points on 11-of-17 shooting in an upset of Bradley on Saturday. The Fresh(man) Prince of L.A. had 32 against Mercer -- but he needed 27 shots to get there, also committed eight turnovers, and his Trojans lost by 15. To Mercer! Prediction: When Mayo is still taking 20-plus shots a game in three or four years -- for a bad NBA team -- he will not care about this. And Josh Mayo will still have yet to appear in a national publication, standing in front of a Bentley.

2. The Yellow Tie ... and that other thing

Oh, does Billy Gillispie long for the days -- just a week ago, really -- when his yellow tie was the only thing Kentucky fans were worried about. (Seriously, there was enough buzz over Billy Clyde's sartorial decision in UK's first exhibition game that Lexington columnist John Clay was justified in discussing it in his new YouTube series. He paraphrased the reactions of a few fans as, "Why was Billy Gillispie wearing a yellow tie? Doesn't he know he's in Kentucky? He's supposed to wear blue.")

Now the 'Cats, who were to be one of the main attractions in this weekend's 2K Sports College Hoops Classic at Madison Square Garden, are stuck at home, game-less, for two weeks after a rather stunning collapse: an 84-68 loss, on Wednesday, to a Gardner-Webb team that won nine games the previous year, and drew fewer people to all of its conference home games combined than UK did to its Big Blue Madness. (Thanks to mid-major guru Bill Trocchi for that absurd stat.)

3. B-Easy There, Young Fella

First came the rumors, that Kansas State freshman Michael Beasley (nickname: B-Easy) had scored 42 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in a closed scrimmage against Marquette. Then came non-nationally televised confirmation of his dominance: Through the Wildcats' first two games, he's averaged 31 points and 19 rebounds. The opponents were Sacramento State and Pittsburg State, but do you see anyone else putting up those kinds of numbers? I ranked instant-impact freshmen in a gallery a few weeks ago and put Beasley fourth, behind UCLA's Kevin Love, Memphis' Derrick Rose and USC's Mayo. In hindsight, I'd revise the order of my top five to Beasley, Rose, Love, Indiana's Eric Gordon and O.J. Mayo. Rose will get the most wins of any of them ... but Beasley, as crazy as it sounds, could actually surpass Kevin Durant's freshman numbers of 25.8 points and 11.1 rebounds per game.



4. The D2 Invasion

Grand Valley State, the Division II team that sunk No. 8 Michigan State in the Spartans' first exhibition game of the season, appeared in this blog-space last Monday. When I asked the Lakers' L.J. Kilgore if he'd played in any environments as tough as the Breslin Center, he mentioned that the University of Findlay's Croy Gymnasium is rather intense, because "it gets so loud in there that it seems like a million people are against you." This was rather amusing, since Croy is more than 12,000 seats smaller than Breslin. I also figured it would be the last I heard about either Grand Valley State or Findlay all season. Four days later, Findlay upsets Ohio State in Columbus, 70-68. And much like the stunning Josh Mayo > O.J. Mayo development, we also have this: the Division II Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference > the big, bad Big Ten.

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posted by Luke Winn | View comments (6) |

6 Comments:

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Posted: 3:33 AM   by Anonymous Kendall
Sorry Luke, the real Prince of LA is another Luc...UCLA's Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who is an actual prince. And if Mayo's scoring can't beat Mercer, he might end up being the Jester.
Posted: 8:09 PM   by Blogger osuneer
oj mayo is a joke. he wasn't even the best player on his high school team last year. you put up enough shots you'll get your points and lose to mercer by 15. enjoy usc!
Posted: 11:35 AM   by Anonymous Anonymous
Gardner-Webb over Kentucky
Mercer over USC
Belmont over Cincinnati

Atlantic Sun > All other conferences
Posted: 5:20 PM   by Anonymous Anonymous
OJ Mayo is indeed NBA ready, right in line with Iverson and his ilk: 30+ points on nearly as many shots, and losing losing losing. Just let the punk into the NBA, to the Hawks or some other team with high picks and low expectations where I can go on not watching him.
Posted: 3:22 PM   by Anonymous Anonymous
If you want to keep referring back to the exhibition season, don't you think your analysis should look like this:

What we really learned, is that D2 > Big 10 in exhibition games.

To preface your statement by saying "it was an exhibition game, but a D2 team won" then apply it college bball overall by saying D2 > the Big 10 is misleading. That implies that the fact it was an exhibition game means nothing.

There's a reason you state it's exhibition, because it doesn't count on the overall standings since it's not counted as a recorded game. If you want to treat it like a win nonetheless, why don't you start writing your columns as if it wasn't an exhibition after all. Just start writing that GVSU beat MSU and Findlay beat OSU ....

Otherwise, get off the exhibition season, it doesn't count.
Posted: 5:08 AM   by Anonymous Anonymous
If Notre Dame joins the Big 10, there will be 12 teams... but there's already a Big 12.

Will we have to rename the conference the "Little 12" or the "Less Big 12"?
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