Murray State at Austin Peay (Ohio Valley) Hot times in the OVC, the conference that loves conference play so much it drafted up a 20-game schedule, with all 11 teams playing home-and-home with each other. Good thing, too, because it's worth watching Eastern Illinois and Jacksonville State (4 combined wins) battle it out twice just to ensure we get this matchup more than once. At the moment, both teams are 9-3 with eight games to go before March. Murray has the upper hand in the season series (and the tiebreaker) because of a convincing 82-70 home win on Jan. 10, a game in which the Racers shot 56 percent and outrebounded the Govs by seven. But that was a single brick in the Racers' current eight-game win streak, which began on Jan. 5 and has officially made the past four weeks Murray Month(!). They've done it with efficient offense, stingy defense, and balanced scoring spookily reminiscent of the team's 2006 NCAA run, where they might have upset North Carolina if not for an early-game injury to star Shawn Witherspoon. The Racers lost by four. But Billy Kennedy's been the coach for the past two seasons after Mick Cronin jumped to Cincinnati, and the rebound from that senior-laden 2006 team has been quick indeed. Then there's Austin Peay, which you might remember from being crumpled on the floor after a devastating 2007 OVC title game loss to Eastern Kentucky, a 63-62 final sealed by a runner with four ticks to go by EKU freshman Josh Taylor. Everything APSU has done since has been guided by that heartbreak, and 6-5 junior Drake Reed has followed up his breakout sophomore season with more good numbers, scoring 15.8 ppg on nearly 50 percent shooting. Tonight at home, the 2007 near-champs will try to wrest control of the league from the 2006 champs, but recent history indicates it might be an uphill battle. MSU has won six of the last seven meetings. DENTON, Tex. -- While making the long drive up I-45, which is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about, I was pondering the names we give things. A lot of them don't quite fit, and bleed into general use because once people have agreed on a title for something, it's tough to get everybody to agree to think otherwise. Consider bloodhounds, one of the more gentle dog breeds around, despite the scary-spooky name. "Bombay duck" is actually fish, you know. And don't get me started on sweetbread, which is neither. There are a lot of cases of things that are so closely tied to their descriptors via word association that we never take a moment to reflect on the utter ridiculousness of their names. Then there's Our Game, basketball. It's a name left over from the peach-container era, and it no longer truly describes what it is. Baskets have bottoms and hold things, and net technology quickly evolved to allow the ball to pass through the goal and fall back to the floor, so the guy didn't have to go up there with a broom every time. And shouldn't it be the other way around, anyway? Ball-basket? That's the object of the game, as any coach will tell you, to put the ball in the basket. The name is going about it all backwards, literally, and this may be a reason why 1-26 teams look so confused out there on the floor. Plus, "basket" is the worst possible adjective for a rubberized orb. Doesn't make a lick of sense. I think "ball-cylinder" or "ball-net" are much better names for our favorite sport. The hyphen, usually useless, works perfectly as an arrow here, noting the logical progression of success in this game. Ball, net. Put the ball into the net. Got it? Good. But it's never going to happen. We have a better chance of renaming the sport "ball-net" than we would with eliminating the term "mid-major." Originally conceived as an offhanded term for Division II teams, it came to be known as some vague in-between, and has turned into college athletics' eight scarlet letters (plus hyphen), the label nobody wants to be labelled with... even though nobody can agree on what it means. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to find a better term, the name is stuck... on what, we aren't entirely sure. At least for now.
The 2007-08 season has proven to be interesting and important for the MAC, though. There's a standout 16-4 team at Kent State that's aiming for its tenth straight 20-win campaign. Ohio and Miami have notched big non-conference wins and have nabbed top 75 RPI's as a result, Akron's won 14 games overall, and the league's RPI rating overall is at 13 despite four rebuilding/retooling projects at the bottom. As a result, the MAC's "two-bid buzz" that's been quashed by Christmas in recent years is alive and well deep into conference season. And there's nobody better to discuss the current state of the league and its immediate future than Elton Alexander, longtime Cleveland Plain-Dealer reporter and purveyor of the fantastic MAC Insider blog on the P-D website. You won't find anybody with a more thorough and unbiased perspective of the league and its history, and Mr. Alexander has been known to talk MAC hoops for hours on end (we can attest to that). Let's go ahead and pick his brain for a bit.
Texas-Arlington at Sam Houston State (Southland) It's you, me and the Southland Conference tonight, here to witness the next chapter in the timeless Lone Star rivalry of Huntsville and Arlington. Huntsville is the state's prison capital -- one out of every three residents can't leave at the moment, and about 400 Death Row inmates awaiting execution won't ever leave. What's Arlington's counter-offer? Six Flags and Rangers baseball. I don't know about you, but I'll have to flip a coin before choosing which city to spend my next Texas vacation in. None of this has anything to do with host Sam Houston State's (15-3, 3-2, State No. 9) semi-patented "lockdown defense," which really has thrown away the key... and the post and perimeter too! The Bearkats allow only 37.4 percent of opponents' field goals to fall, which is the seventh-best mark in the entire republic (that's America, not just Texas). Efficiency-wise, opponents manage just .84 points per possession, which is No. 4 in the land. Rebounding-wise, Sam State scoops up an average of 38.4 per game and retrieves 58.5 percent of missed shots. Yep, that's nationally ranked too at No. 6. Nearly 11 of those per-game boards belong to Ryan Bright, a 6-6 senior who averages 10.7 ppg as well. They've lost twice in the league to Southeastern Louisiana and Lamar, but we maintain this is still the Southland's best NCAA upset candidate. In the other corner, the representatives from the land of Texas-sized fun and thrills. The Mavericks (14-4, 4-2, W4) are shooting the lights out -- Southland-best and national No. 9 49.5 percent -- and they feature four 12 ppg scorers. Only one (Jermaine Griffin) is a senior, so this team will be around for a while. The defense isn't half-bad either... only three teams defend the perimeter better (28.1 percent 3-point FG percentage defense), and UTA only gives up .87 points per opponent possession. So we've got two immovable objects, basically, two metaphorical defensive boulders colliding. Interesting side note: Arlington has not won at Sam State since 1998, a 125-123 barnburner. Home teams have generally had the better of this series, winning 16 of the last 20. HUNTSVILLE, Tex. -- We promised you a Badlands Conference logo winner, and by gosh, we are going to deliver. Finally. After three weeks. We were looking for a logo to replace the up-arrow that the former Mid-Continent Conference chose when it changed its name over the summer. We don't particularly like the new name, or the idea that "mid" is somehow negative (glass... half full!). We also believe that the Badlands Conference moniker shows off the actual region most of these teams are from, and it's kind of Bad-Ass as well. ("Summit" makes us think of Tennessee women's hoops, frankly.) All of this is why we provided our hivemind, unsolicited and free of charge.
There were some good entries, and some bad entries as well (no offense -- don't think you're going to win a Bally for putting the name in 16 point Times over a picture of a gopher). But Nate's entry really captures the spirit of the league. It's two-color, which makes it easy to reproduce on a gym floor, and the green is nice ('cause the BLC is money, baby!). And the rounded form is an echo of the rainbow logo of the past. A tiny bit old, a tiny bit new. A little bit country, and a little bit alt.country. The more we look at it, the more we like it. The re-branding may start immediately. The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final Four in a simulation of last season. For our purposes here, it gives the world's only hype-free, non-voting, computer poll of teams in the lower 22 conferences. This is the full 246-team chart (updated hourly), and this is a recording. As of 1/29/2008, 1 p.m. ET As promised last week, we've tweaked the name a bit because you don't want to be calling those people you know, that thing, and they've got half-a-point so we're just going to back the heck off, kthxbye. So we're supersized this week to fit the theme, and we'll be showing 22 instead of 20 from here on out. Oh yeah, Drake. We're running out of nice things to say about the Bulldogs since we talk about them every day, but consider this nugget. Drake has been downright gentlemanly on the court, averaging just 15.5 whistles against per game. Not fouling isn't a be-all and end-all stat, but it certainly makes good teams better. The shortlist of 20 with lower averages includes UCLA, Florida, Texas and Washington State.
Virginia Commonwealth at George Mason (CAA) Tonight, we have a rematch of a CAA title game that was so hot, John Feinstein handed an NCAA bid to the 18-15 Patriots after they lost. (Logic somehow prevailed.) Bally had both these teams going to the 2008 NCAA's back in November, and this stands as the only remaining, semi-realistic CAA two-bid scenario going. ESPN2 will televise it, so no excuse! You're watching this! Without your pants on! What you'll see is a VCU team that's risen steadily to the No. 2 spot in our index behind Drake. The Rams are 15-4 overall and 8-1 in the conference, and are on the same kind of seven-game win streak they were on this time last year. Only difference is that this team plays a whole lot of defense. The point we've been hammering on all month bears repeating. Last year's 3-point defense: 35.8 percent allowed, 10th in the CAA, 230th in the country. This year's: 25.5 percent, best in the nation, and perhaps the worrrrld. Head coach Anthony Grant's zen quote on the subject: "We guard the perimeter better becacuse our interior defense is much better." Last year's team beat Duke and stuff. What could this year's version do? And what of the Patriots (14-6, 6-3), those green and gold legacy-builders and 2006 wall-smashers? They sure looked like a team poised to go all kinds of New England on the CAA back in November (especially after this opening statement), and we hold fast to the theory that a Dec. 2 loss to East Carolina, in which they walked through the first half and expected to win anyway, was a psychological blow that took five weeks to completely reverse. And they're coming off a three-point loss to UNCW where they only got four free throws. But lately, they've shown themselves to be an efficient offense that refuses to turn the ball over, headed up by Final Four hero Will Thomas. And oh yeah, they're undefeated at home with a 9-0 record at the Patriot Center coming into tonight. Where was the game again? HOUSTON -- It's only of those slow post-Monday Tuesdays here in Hoops Nation, a perfect opportunity to get some site housekeeping done. We have one contest in search of a winner, for those of you with long memories... the Badlands Conference logo contest from earlier this month. We'll anoint the champion of that tomorrow, but I wanted to get this competition underway first. Just a reminder about what you're playing for: a real, live stuffed Bally, just like the one pictured here. Not for sale, only earned. Okay. Ready? You may have had the opportunity to fly through Houston Hobby
The 5-10 junior guard saw his basketball-playing week start on Wednesday against Houston Baptist, and he played a key part in an 82-68 beatdown of the transitional D-I re-entry Huskies. In 36 minutes, Stoll shot 7-for-9 from the floor, all of which were 3-point attempts. During time stoppages, he would occasionally step to the line and shoot some free throws... making all 16 of his tries. That's 37 points, and he found time to dish nine assists as well. Then, on Saturday against New Jersey Tech, he crushed the Highlanders' dreams of a first D-I win this year by showing off his skills on the other end. His nine steals were tied for the most against a D-I opponent this season. On the season, Stoll is ranked quite high in some key statistical categories. He's a marvelously efficient shooter, especially at the line, where he's made 94 of 110 (85.5 percent). In True shooting, a measure of how often shots find the goal in all game contexts (FG's, 3's and FT's), Stoll ranks 10th nationally with 71.4 percent. The guy can flat out shoot it, but he'd rather distribute. At 7.2 assists per ballgame (including five 10+ assist games), he ranks fourth in all of Division I on average, and number 1 in volume (165). He's from Michigan, he's Mexican, and is the son of a former Michigan State player with the same name. He attended Lansing Community College before transferring to UTPA last year (in the great Rio Grande Valley) and is now the little guy from the small school at the bottom of Texas who's at the top of his game. Congratulations, Paul, you're our 12th Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
Morgan State at Hampton (MEAC) Tonight, we have a real treat, a Chesapeake Bay battle at the top of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Representing Virginia is Hampton, the hottest team in the conference at 6-0, winners of six straight. In the dark blue, a Morgan State team (10-8, 5-1 MEAC) from Baltimore on a three-game tear. Morgan is tied for second at 5-1, but in the bigger picture, these here are the only two schools in this league that have double-digit victories in the overall win column. With the guarantee-game slogs that teams from this conference go through, it's always a major accomplishment when a team comes out of nonconference with a record near .500. That's what Hampton (11-6, 6-0 MEAC) did, winning five of its 11 non-league games, including two CAA victories over Delaware and VCU in November. They came close in a few others, coming within three of George Mason and with six of both Kent State and Maryland... all on the road. Even though the offense resembles that of any hard-luck MEAC team that you might have seen (averaging only 63 points per ballgame and near the bottom in every offensive category), what makes the Pirates special is their defense. In six conference games (all wins), they've yielded just 56.5 points allowed. You'll find them on the national charts in 3-point field goal defense (29.0 percent, 10th) and opponent turnover rate (25 percent, 15th) They're like the Southern Illinois of the MEAC. You really want to talk defense, though? You've got to talk Boubacar. That's right, The Boubacar, namesake of this site's daily update posts. The 6-9 Mr. Coly has been named the MEAC's defensive player of the week four straight times, and is the nation's tenth-leading glass-cleaner at 10.4 rpg. You might think that would translate into lots of double-doubles, but he's only had three so far despite 10 double-digit rebound games. He lets the little MSU Bears like 6-2 senior Jamar Smith and 6-4 freshman Reggie Holmes The man loves to serve... and by that I mean serve up his hot, tasty n' almost-famous open-face Boubacar Sandwiches. His hand is the slice of bread and you're meat once he blocks it back in your face... In addition to leading the MEAC in rebounds, he's the conference's blocks leader with 2.5 per game, good for 20th nationwide. HOUSTON -- I was thinking over the weekend, while I wasn't at any games, about all the games I go to. A total of 57 games so far this year, headed for yet another 100-game season. Having done 100 twice now, it's tough to find triple-digit motivation anymore. Need to turn it into some kind of contest.
All I can say is: it's on like pajamas. This is going to be the biggest, most amazing race between people with vaguely similar names since Dan vs. Dave. Welmer might have the edge by +13 now, and I'm going to stay pretty even through February. As long as I can keep it within 20, I think I can make a comeback in early March when I can get four games a day during conference tournaments. I actually lost sleep trying to figure this out. We'll be tracking this once a week for the rest of the season. And tomorrow, some long-overdue housekeeping, a Bally to be given away, and a new contest will follow. But first...
Quinnipiac at Sacred Heart (NEC) There are a lot of great games this weekend, but precious few mindbendingly awesome ones that will set tones for weeks to come. We're going to be tracking the Cleveland State at Wisconsin-Milwaukee clash in the Horizon, seeing that CSU dropped a game on the first leg of its Cheese State trip last night at Green Bay, and Milwaukee is pretty hot lately at 6-3 in the league, with eight wins in its last 10. App State at Chattanooga is suddenly huge in the SoCon, as both 7-2 squads (who've both been beaten silly by South leader Davidson) fight over the North Division. Saint Joe's at Temple: Philly phun with a pair of remaining one-loss Atlantic 10 teams. But none of these matchups thrill us half as much as the hot Nutmeg State battle between two candidates for the Northeast Conference championship. The Q is tied at the top with Wagner at 6-1 (10-8 overall), while Heart is a single beat behind at 7-2 (10-8). While Robert Morris got the big headlines for beating Boston College, don't forget that Sacred Heart played them within five on Dec. 28, then beat Holy Cross two days later -- the 52 percent shooting performance against the Crusaders still stands as the highest total against that compromised defense all year. The Pioneers lost a lot of the scoring that led them to the 2007 title game, but they've been excelling with the bread and butter of any undersized, underskilled mid-major bunch: ball control and perimeter defense. They lead the NEC in both 3-point field goal defense and fewest turnovers. Then there's Quinnipiac. With new head coach Tom Moore, the PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I tried to make it simple, I tried to offer the sound-bite answer. I tried to simplify things on the far side of complexity, because 'tis a gift to be simple. But I attempted to shave with Occam's razor, but ended up having to wear a small piece of toilet paper, attached with spittle, on my face all day. I hid something from you, Hoops Nation. Some very, very smart people called me out on it in my ESPN chat the other day, and my hand was duly forced. We talked about The Red Line on Monday, the Mendoza-like strip that separates Division I conferences into "haves" and "have-lesses." There are eight conferences (the Big Six and the two "money" leagues, the C-USA and Mountain West) with average athletic budgets over $20 million, and the rest are below. In case you think this too arbitrary, consider the performance gap: in nonconference play this season, schools from leagues above The Red Line beat teams from leagues below 91 percent of the time. Nine out of ten dentists is a toothpaste mandate, one out of ten in hoops is as painful as a root canal. But there's another Red Line. You can see it if you strip out just the men's basketball budgets and average them. (Those numbers are available from the U.S. Education department as well.) In keeping with the Mendoza theme, let's put it at $2 million. Are you ready for the shocking conclusion?
Bally really enjoyed his visit to the Lawlor Center, home of the Nevada Wolf Pack. Nearly every seat is a season ticket, and when the home team isn't around, it hosts events like big-time wrestling and the Bull-Nanza. Bally really wanted to go to the Bull-Nanza.
Dayton at Xavier (Atlantic 10) Like the new header? Yeah, it's come to this -- doing stuff just to see who complains. More about all of that tomorrow. For now, we have a hot game in the conference that gives fans 40 percent more than advertised, the best deal going. If you have CSTV -- and who doesn't -- you can catch it live, in color and maybe even in stereo. Dayton: birthplace of human flight, indie-rock stronghold, undisputed capital of Hoops Nation for its countless devoted fans of college basketball in all its forms. Home of the Flyers, 14-2 overall and 2-1 in the league. Big wins over Louisville and Pitt, and this is one of the most potent offenses you're going to find in college basketball. But people ask us why the national poll-ranked Flyers are rated so low in our computer index (144th), why we're idiots, and why we suck. First of all, there are two key injuries to super-freshman Chris Wright and now junior forward Charles Little. As a team, UD stands 14th in the league in free throws at 65 percent, has been ineffective at sealing the perimeter (35.6 percent 3FG%, almost 200 teams are better), and doesn't force a lot of turnovers. We humans get swept up in big wins, the computer fusses about the little things that make the difference in March, and tends to offer constructive criticism. Don't shoot the messenger... oww, that hurt, too late. The Flyers are incredible at home, were even during the down years -- they're already 10-1 there to clinch a ninth straight double-digit win total at UD Arena. Unfortunately, this game won't be played in Dayton tonight. Our hard-working virtual G!O!T!N! camera crew is headed from Kent to Cincinnati to sneak into the gleaming crown jewel of A-14 architecture, the Cintas Center. (They don't have passes, but look for the invisible people in Groucho glasses.) Dayton's had more historical success in the cross-state series (80-64), and Dayton was Xavier's first-ever basketball opponent. And Dayton has not won in the Cintas Center, ever, and hasn't beat the X in the city of Cincinnati since Jan. 10, 1981, in the building now known as the U.S. Bank Arena. Tonight won't be any easier, as the Musketeers boast an 11-1 record at home, and have averaged a whoppin' 84 points there, their highest average since 1997-98. As is tradition for UD-XU postseason games, the Blackburn-McCafferty trophy will be on the line (even though both schools have their own), and the game is so big that there's an MVP. Who will it be tonight? One of Xavier's six double-figure scorers? Or will UD's Brian Roberts play out of his mind and lead the Flyers to victory? PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I never meant this to be Philosophy Week, and I apologize for all the thoughtful treatises on insignificance I've spilled recently. I'm going to blame it on jet lag, and leave it at that. I've made a key decision, and I post it here for you now primarily to point to it later once certain people ask, "why come?" Until further and distant notice, I will not be accepting any interviews, "spots" or "bits" on the radio, whether it be "The Kahuna in the Morning Show," "Power 1750," "The SportsMonster," or any of that. (If it's ESPN Radio, well... my hands are sorta tied there.) Halftime chats at games, student-run podcasts, all of that's fine, I don't have any problems with those. But from now on, I am boycotting your sports talk radio show. I've covered the topic of sports talk radio here before, how it plays to every single sports-culture community sensibility that our website has tried to fight against for years now. And now that "blogs" have stolen radio's immediacy and thunder, talk has felt the general need to become more sensationalistic, ridiculous and over-the-top in order to compete for attention. Radio will lose, because you can't say "fuck" without getting fined thousands of dollars. You can do that on a blog, no big. Being part of a part of the problem has been (for the most part) an exercise in depression, being asked to fill a few minutes between commercials. The questions are always the same exact questions: Is there parity in college basketball? Who do you think will make the Final Four? What's a mid-major? Is [local team] a mid-major? Waiiit a second, I think we're big time, and here's why! Blah, blah, blah.
Akron at Kent State (Mid-American) Kent State has the strongest MAC legacy in the past decade by far -- the Flashes are working on a 10th straight 20-win season, and their four NCAA appearances have yielded four wins. Three of those, of course, came during the stirring march to the Elite 8 in 2002, the first such run for a team at this level since the Seventies. After decades as a Division II power and cradle of coaches (Bob Huggins!), Akron's only made the Big Dance once, when Huggins led the 1985-86 team to within six points of a first-round 15-over-2 upset of Michigan. Sure, there's a legacy gap, but that matters little on a night like tonight. Kent and Akron are virtually even in their 122-game series (KSU leads 62-60) and are bitter, angry crosstown rivals. Plus, the fact they wear the same colors just makes it all that much more confusing. Akron's also had the better of recent meetings -- in a pitched battle on the last day of the 2006-07 regular season, Akron edged Kent 66-64 in overtime to claim the East division title. The Zips followed that up by eliminating the Flashes five days later in the MAC semifinals -- and as a courtside spectator at that game, I will tell you that the lingering oneupsmanship from the previous contest was very much in the air that night. Akron knew going in that it had Kent's number, and the Flashes knew it too. But now it's 2007-08, and once again, the two teams find themselves battling for MAC East supremacy. Akron (14-3, 4-0) is in first place, with Kent (14-4, 3-1) a step behind after losing to Ohio on Saturday. But it's almost freakish how evenly matched these two squads are -- both have strong guards that force a lot of turnovers and productive scoring from the inside -- the battle of senior bigs between Kent State's Q (10.7 ppg, 7.7 rpg) and Akron's Jeremiah Wood (14.5 ppg, 8.3 rpg) should be a dooz. Both teams play at a relatively slow pace, so we're in for a methodical display of excellent basketball tonight. PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I wasn't going to mention anything about this here, I was going to launch in today with a knock-knock joke about UMBC. But before my flight home yesterday, I picked up God Save The Fan by Will Leitch at a Barnes and Noble on the way to the airport. If you have a two-timeone flight segment coming up, it will last you from takeoff to around when you're supposed to stow your portable electronic items. This book does not have an on-off switch, so you'll be alright. Leitch and I have a few things in common. We're both awkward, weedy guys who don't do TV all that particularly well. We both share the odd distinction of being anonymous schlubs one day and semi-revolutionary figures a few days later. We both couch our pompous statements in the kind of aw-shucks self-effacement that the format requires (largely as a defense against both ridicule and the next generation of ). I like Bally, so does he. He was blackballed by ESPN, I was... well, whiteballed, I guess. Mr. Leitch, and I use that in the same way The New York Times would, has developed a very defined and detailed manifesto over the past couple of years, and now it's a book. He thinks that sports don't matter really, that they're as escape for us and our buddies to hang out and watch, and that the purity and sanctity of The Games Themselves are outdated notions. But I disagree: there is poetry and beauty in sport. There is joy to be had in watching athletes, alone or in groups, playing their games well... once upon a time, that was why we bought tickets. The problems started when somebody got the bright idea of taking that poetry and beauty, wrapping it up in a package, and selling it like a product -- if I'm not mistaken, that man was Roone Arledge and the products were Wide World of Sports and the postmodern Olympics. The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final Four in a simulation of last season. For our purposes here, it gives the world's only hype-free, non-voting, computer poll of teams in the lower 22 conferences. This is the full 246-team chart (updated hourly), and this is a recording. As of 1/22/2008, 1 p.m. ET The Knapp Center hasn't really been a house of horrors for opponents in recent years -- Drake's had three losing season records in home games over the past decade. But they're a perfect 10-0 there, prompting opponents to ask, "is this hell?" Nope, Iowa. Drake takes to the road before a nice two-game Valley homestand. Should the Bulldogs' 15-game win streak (third longest in the nation) survive tonight against No. 5 Creighton, they will have matched their victory total from last year, and it's not even February yet.
Drake at Creighton (Missouri Valley) You've beaten your fellow league-undefeateds and now sit alone at the top of Hoops Nation's toughest and deepest conference. You've won 15 games in a row, are on all sorts of national watch-lists, and are No. 14 in the RPI (not to mention No. 1 in our State Of The Other 22 rankings). Congratulations! Your prize is a trip to Omaha, where you'll get yelled at by over 15,000 hostile fans. Tonight Drake (16-1, 7-0) faces perhaps its tightest gauntlet yet, a roadie at Creighton. Drake's only won there twice in the past 15 years, most recently a 75-73 escape in February of 2002. The Bluejays have only lost once at home this year (against Illinois State, the fans are still a bit sore), and have only lost 15 games there this century... against 115 wins. But this is a bit of a different Drake team than in recent years, one that believes that anything is possible, that no mountain is too high. No Valley offense clicks as well, with a solid 1.09 points per possession (that's 28th best in the country), and the defense is pretty good too -- .87 points allowed per opponent possession, and a stifling 26 percent of those end in turnovers, which is third-best in all the land. If there's a hole in the armor, the undersized Bulldogs do allow a few short-range shots. 45.7 percent, in fact. And that's where Creighton comes in. You've probably heard of fleet, mouthguard-flashing P'Allen Stinnett by now, but the hidden strength of this team is its rotation of developing big men (a Dana Altman staple), anchored by veteran force Dane Watts, a 6-8 senior who's had plenty of championship experience. But here comes Chad Millard, Kenny Lawson and Kenton Walker, raw beef that has already made big impacts in Creighton's recent five-game win streak. And since Altman likes to show his entire contents of his bench early this year, Drake will likely get a faceful of each one. It'll be a severe test of the Bulldogs' own depth. SAN JOSE -- We were too busy putting the weekend's results into a semi-digestible package, as is Monday tradition, so we're hopelessly late on the latest big coaching news from the WCC. If you haven't heard already, Vance Walberg "resigned" suddenly on Jan. 18. Since then, more of the story's come out. Insiders with licorice-flavored blogs like basketball buddy Jeff Goodman reported that maybe it wasn't really a resignation. Not surprising in the least, but athletic directors should realize by now that they look like idiots when the initial story is revealed as a total fabrication. We caught up with Pepperdine a few weeks ago at Manhattan, an 80-79 loss for the Waves. Close and exciting game, sure, but there were a lot of things about Pepperdine's body language and general demeanor that was all sorts of wrong. At the time, I just chalked that up to 10 straight games away from home and the fact that they had a thumpin' at Memphis next on the slate. After the game, I was asked if I wanted to talk to Walberg. Sure, I said, I wanted to ask him about all the talented freshmen he had. Just then, the only other journalist at the game, a female writer from a local paper, piped up. She needed to go talked to him too, saying that it was a "competitive issue." As I was there representing ESPN.com, I crossed my brow and asked her what she meant. "Well," she said, fumbling for a response. "You never know, he might quit or something." It was a strange response, but once we talked to Walberg outside the visitors' locker room, he looked like a guy who was looking for a vacation. His voice hoarse, his eyes swollen and drooped from sleep deprivation, he talked about the worst year in his life, of deaths in the family, and the long road the team's been on. He perked up when he started to talk about his talented freshmen, players like Tyrone Shelley and Malcolm Thomas. Along with the 5-9 record at the time, pretty normal for a young team that had been out on the road all month, I wasn't ready to put him on career-suicide watch. It's never going to end. We might try to fight it, we may try to ignore it, but every year it's going to come back. I'm talking, of course, about the endless debate of what a "mid-major" is and what one isn't. Within the past few weeks, we've had weigh-ins here, here, here and on countless blogs. What all of these explanations lack -- and this is important -- is that they're all painfully complicated and long-winded, and each has some sort of complicated Rube Goldberg scale of three and sometimes four (!) levels and designations. This may be college, and everyone's all smart and stuff, but it's still basketball -- all of these redrawn maps fail the important 35-second clock test. (Honnnnk!) They also use vague, author-defined conceptions of "expectations," "performance" or "prestige." Give me a break.
Smith's performance lit up the possession-based, geek-stat board like no other night has this season. In effective field goal percentage (with weights threes as a regular shot plus a half), his 10 long-distance makes helped him notch a 133.3% mark -- easily the best performance in eFG% for the year, blowing out the 123.1 that former MMBOW Samuel Haanpaa turned in on Dec. 15. Using the NBA Efficiency Model, which rewards "good" stats (points, rebounds, etc.) and punishes "bad" ones (turnovers and missed shots), Smith scored a 40. Others have had higher numbers, but when you "tempo-free" it by applying the new (new!) Basketball State statistic of "efficiency per possession", Smith's .890 was this season's highest one-game number of any player who spent 20 or more minutes on the court. All of this is a long-winded way of saying, dude played a solid game. Mr. Smith went to Fairfax two summers ago, a key juco recruit that was drawn to George Mason because of the Final Four run. At Cochise Community College (Ariz.), he scored 23.1 ppg and was named a first-team juco All-American. He was previously chased by Creighton and Mississippi State, but he ended up as a Patriot. It took him a little time to adjust to Division I life, averaging 8.0 ppg in half-games in 2006-07, but he heated up big-time in the CAA tourney, averaging 17.3 ppg in the four-day run to the championship game. He was named to the all-tourney first team, and there's no question the Patriots wouldn't have made it to that final step if not for him. And after hitting a December rut here in 2007-08, George Mason is back to fulfilling the promise of its solid and stacked roster, winning four of its last five games to climb to 5-2 and a tie for second in the CAA race. A lot of that wouldn't have happened if not for the Patriots' 11.1 ppg man, who also happens to be our 11th MMBOW.
North Carolina A&T at Delaware State (MEAC) The news channels say that this is a day for "remembering" and "celebrating" the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. which has always struck me as a superficial invitation that may or may not include party hats and/or streamers. Every year, this day is a reminder that there are countless so-called leaders who used killing and violence to get their points across, and most of them lie dead, unremembered. And that tomorrow, once the media's free of its annual one-day obligation, bleeding will lead again. So it goes. On a somewhat lighter note, did you know that Dr. King was awarded honorary degrees from Hofstra (CAA), Saint Peter's (MAAC), Yale (Ivy), Boston University (America East), in addition to two MEAC schools, Howard and Morgan State? It's true! Plus, King Day and basketball have been well-intertwined in years past, including MAAC doubleheaders and, more recently, the all-day HBCU marathons on ESPNU. Those are defunct traditions, sadly, and this game didn't fit in the regularly-scheduled doubleheader. Delaware State (6-9, 4-0) won its first league game at Memorial Hall on Saturday, knocking Norfolk State from the ranks of the MEAC-undefeated by 15 points. Somewhat surprisingly, the defending champion yet young Hornets are unbeaten in conference play, and are doing what they used to do with 11 underclassmen. Once again, Del-State is among the national leaders in slowness (58.4 possessions per game) and turnovers. They also foul only 14.6 times per ballgame, meaning their opponents are rarely in the bonus. Non-violence, indeed. Few teams in Hoops Nation are as frustrating as A&T, which showed its potential early with a 96-93 upset of DePaul. The Aggies are as experienced as a team can be (seven seniors), but the chemistry just isn't clicking like it should. Steven Rush, a 5-11 senior who leads the team with 15.3 ppg, but his shooting percentage has dipped seven points year-over-year to 36 percent, and it always seems like he's shooting his way out of a slump. NCATSU has also slowed its pace a bit, but is still being bedeviled with turnovers -- only 10 teams in America average more per game than the Aggies' 18.9. It's still relatively early, though, just as it is for the career of 6-9 freshman Thomas Coleman, whose combination of skill and promise make him a player to watch in coming years. MORAGA, Ca. -- One of the most-asked question types I get is in regards to these datelines. Where am I? Where have I been? How many games am I up to? I know it's all pleasant small-talk, and folks are just trying to make conversation, but I've been meaning to put together a one-webpage answer to answer all or most of these questions. Besides, I lose track sometimes myself. So with a little free time this weekend, I hacked together this handy map. As games complete, they'll be added to the map along with links to the boxscores, provided as always by our alter-ego friends over at Basketball State. Follow along with me as I travel the highways and byways of Hoops Nation. Or don't, your choice. And with that, you know how we do it here on Mondays. Get your eyes exercised, because we have a lot of ground to cover.
Houseguest or menace? Kyle and Bally try to figure out what to do about Footbally's sudden arrival at Mid-Majority HQ.
Versus Local On the road, general well-being is a complicated mesh of karmic gears, all of which must be humming and whirring smoothly to ensure smooth runnings. For example, there's cop karma, rental car karma, WiFi karma, digestive karma and gas prices karma. Those are only a few. For two weeks, I was having a hell of a time with my Waffle House karma. It seemed like every time I stepped into the World's Leading Server, that yellow hut with the globe lighting, I was suddenly an undesirable unserviceable, despite the "house rules" that said they didn't discriminate against creed, color or tip size. It was almost as if they'd circulated my picture with the caption, "treat this guy like crap." For instance, there was the location near Kansas City where I stopped for breakfast on January 2nd. I was the only customer there, and I took my regular seat at the counter. One employee organized silverware in the rack right in front of me, never stopping to acknowledge my presence. The line cook cleaned off the batter drippings from the station of four waffle irons, and the waitress in the corner took a cell-phone call. Several minutes passed, and I couldn't stay polite anymore. "Am I going to get service here?"
Fool People always seem so disappointed when the story isn't as simple as they apparently thought it was. In the eyes of some folks, I don't stand up to certain ideas of pure and perfect vagrancy. "You never stay in hotels? You just sleep in the car?" Actually, I stay in hotels on days off between games. There usually isn't anything going on hoops-wise on Fridays, unless I'm somewhere in the northeast. That's when I catch up on phone interviews, site programming, and answering e-mails. Those are all things that are easier to accomplish with a heavy door between oneself and the public, instead of at a Flying J where truck drivers are always coming up and asking how that Apple laptop is "working out." "You're the guy who drives all over the country to games, like a college basketball rip-off of John Madden? Are you afraid of flying too?"
It's been over two months since that landmark upset, and Gardner-Webb is once again just another mid-major program that's struggling hard to move above .500. Last Friday, we caught up with the Bulldogs, then 7-9 overall and 1-1 in the Atlantic Sun, at the home of new A-Sun member (and recent Division I newcomer) South Carolina-Upstate. On the strength of an overwhelming second half run, the Spartans came away with their first ever D-I conference win at the expense of the infamous Kentucky-beaters. Afterwards, Coach Scruggs was kind enough to share his thoughts about the unbearable lightness of unexpected SEC upsets, Australian recruiting, the right way to move up to D-I, and the lasting legacy of what happened at Rupp that magical November night.
Boise State at Nevada (Western Athletic) In keeping with our West Coast Bias theme, we're going to forget about all those big games going on back East. (Like, say, Chatty at Davidson, Valpo-Cleveland State, and... oh yeah, that battle of Valley undefeateds.) No, we're going to concentrate on an attractive showdown between WAC contenders. "But wait a second," you say. "It's only because you're going to be there." Yeah, buddy, humor us for a second. Just a couple of weeks ago, Boise State (12-5, 3-2) was the hottest team in the WAC, having won eight of nine coming into league play. The Broncos' overwhelming 2007 success hasn't exactly translated into the '08 conference slate, and while they've won three against the second division (Idaho, San Jose State and La-Tech), their two shots against the real contenders have come up empty. BSU dropped decisions to New Mexico State and Utah State, both within the last week. But don't sleep on this team just yet -- the losses were by a combined seven points, the frontcourty Broncos haven't been outrebounded since Christmas, and this is still the best two-point shooting team in the country (58.5 percent). Greg Graham's squad leads the WAC in every shooting-related category, except free throws. They're not so good at those (66.7 percent), and are one of the very few teams in recent memory to have an eight-point spread between FT's and FG's. Nevada (10-6, 2-1) had road problems to start the season, Then the team was shocked at San Jose to open WAC play, but that seems to have jolted them into focus. The Wolf Pack's already got the Hawaii trip under their belts (a handy 77-59 win), and warmed up for this one by dumping Idaho Thursday night by eight. You likely know about star big-guard Marcellus Kemp from NCAA teams past, but here comes the next generation of hungry wolves. Freshman Armon Johnson is coming into his own, notching his second collegiate 23-point game against Idaho, and you're going to be hearing the name JaVale McGee in his space for the next several years. He's the 6-11 sophomore who's second to Kemp in scoring at 12.9 ppg, and who's collected four double-doubles and 11 50 percent-or-better shooting performances this season.
Folks sometimes ask me why I use the word "we" so much on the site. It's not anything "royal," not at all. Wherever I go on the hoops highway, I've got a little buddy who comes with me everywhere. He's orange, and his name is Bally. RENO, Nev. -- I'm sorry, what was that? This post is late somehow, not nearly early enough, making me tardy, irresponsible, untrustworthy? Well, from where I'm sitting, it's still morning, all bright and bushy-tailed like a Tahoe snow-bunny. TMM Mobile HQ is on Pacific time, b#%*&s! Sure, interesting mid-major things are happening back on those other coasts and in the middle there, so let's give it all a cursory mention. Cleveland State beat Butler, and the 6-0 Vikings are quickly becoming into the Wright State of the 2007-08 Horizon season. App-State made all its free throws and gave Chattanooga its first SoCon loss. ORU nipped IUPUI in the G!O!T!N!. Blah, blah, blah. Now let's get to the important stuff. Like Jim Morrison said once, "the west is the best." I think he was ad-libbing, and he may have been on something. Here comes the blue bus...
IUPUI at Oral Roberts (Summit League) Call it the Mid-Continent, the Summit League, late for dinner or the Badlands Conference (like we do), this randy group of Central Standard Time-based basketball warriors (and Southern Utah) hasn't seen a regular-season clash like this in some time. There's a throwdown-showdown-hoedown in Oklahoma, and our invisible G!O!T!N! camera crew will be there to capture all the hot action. In one corner, pure God (a founder with a direct line) and in the other, pure convenience (the ability to choose between two degrees). You can't spell "it's on" without "Indiana-Purdue-Indianapolis" and "Oral Roberts." ORU and IUPUI enter this matchup of league-undefeateds with identical 5-0 records, and there's no question that these are the two best teams in the conference. The Jaguars and Golden Eagles have been simply overwhelming to their BC opponents -- in their five victories, IUPUI have won by an average margin of 16.2, and Oral Roberts has dumped its competition by an average of 13.6 points. Ooe-Pooey (13-3, 5-0), in particular, has been lethal on offense, leading the conference in nearly every meaningful category having to do with shooting, starting with field goal percentage (49.2 percent, 15th best nationally). A lot of that has to do with four double-figure scorers, led by 6-2 redshirt junior guard George Hill, who's connecting on a full 57 percent of his shots. Oral Roberts (10-5, 5-0) has had a stranglehold on this series in years past -- despite a fairly even 11-10 split since the two schools started playing regularly a decade ago, the G'Eagles have won seven of the last eight and have eliminated IUPUI from the league tourney twice during that stretch (2005 and 2007). No more Ken Tutt or Caleb Green, the oft-mentioned wonder twin powers that led the team to two straight NCAA appearances... but no matter, since the next generation is now fully entrenched. ORU has four double-figure scorers too, and keep an eye on 6-8 junior transfer Marcus Lewis (10.7 ppg, 4.7 rpg), who's startign to show he can put up Green-like numbers of his own. DAVIS, Ca. -- We have a system here, we do a California trip every season and alternate between Southern (odd-numbered years) and Northern (even). We're going to go recover from the jet lag before charging into our annual West Coast Bias weekend, but we have some Easty bits to clean up.
The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final Four in a simulation of last season. For our purposes here, it gives the world's only hype-free, non-voting, computer poll of teams in the lower 22 conferences. This is the full 246-team chart (updated hourly), and this is a recording. As of 1/16/2008, 11 a.m. ET If it sounds like a duck and runs like a dog, it must be Drake! The Bulldogs assume the top spot in our index this week, and they showed their depth and poise by beating Missouri State without leading scorer Josh Young, who's out with an ankle injury. Though the team's won 13 straight games, the road to the school's first Valley title since 1971 doesn't get any easier: tough game at Bradley tonight, followed by a Saturday date at home versus...
Delaware at Virginia Commonwealth (Colonial) A lot of stuff's changed since last time these two teams met, back on Dec. 20, 2006 when the Rams mopped the floor with Delaware 79-60. Like, for instance, the inherent basketball power that the Blue Hens contain, as they were suiting up eight players at the time and still searching for their first win of the 2006-07 season. This year's Delaware squad, on the other hand, is collecting league wins like they were game tickets in an elaborate fast-food promotion. It's the only perfect 5-0 team in the CAA (8-7 overall), so how are they doing it? Perimeter defense! Rebounding! The first is less shocking, since that's a point of emphasis anyway with this team, and the Hens have been allowing around 27.5 percent from 3 all season. The rebounding bit, though, that's a surprise. Overall, this is the worst rebounding team in the league with 28.1 rpg, but in the five league wins, Delaware's been averaging a CAA-best 34. A lot of that's thanks to the team's pair of 6-6 glass-crashers, junior Marc Egerson and senior Herb Courtney. Together, they make a beautiful 12.9 rpg monster, like in the shoe ads. But nobody in the country defends the 3 as well as VCU (11-4, 4-1 CAA) does -- only 26.4 percent of opponents' bombs find the mark. That won't matter tonight, because that's not Delaware's thing, but the Eric Maynor- led Rams will offer the toughest general defensive challenge the Hens have faced since league play began. This game will likely come down to skilled size, and VCU may have the edge there with players like 6-7 seniors Michael Anderson and Wil Fameni. But on the whole, this looks like a fairly evenly pitched defensive battle, one that might just give Delaware its third consecutive win over the traditional Virginia-based power center of the league, and snap a losing streak to VCU that stretches back eight games to 2003.
I seriously couldn't sleep last night. Part of that was because of the bright lights at this here truck stop, and the PA system was playing the Sirius "classic rock" station really loud ("Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo" haunts my waking dreams), but that was just part of it. I was trying to think of questions to ask Mr. George after the game tonight, and I couldn't come up with much of anything. Seriously, what do you ask a 7-foot-7, 360-lb. guy? So I'm putting this one to you, faithful reader-viewers. Let me stand in your place tonight, the conduit between you and a 7-foot-7 guy. What would you ask a 7-foot-7 guy? Would you have a brain cramp, a neck cramp, or just ask weakly, "uhhh, how's the weather up there?" Submit your best, most well-thought-out questions via the feedback form, and I'll collect them before the game. If we get some good Q & A going, I'll post it all here tomorrow.
The 6-5 senior forward's week began with a non-D1 tuneup for the Big South season, in which he helped the Panthers destroy hapless Florida Christian 124-43 by scoring 29 points and grabbing 12 rebounds. But the real reason for his selection this week is his 19-point, 14-rebound performance on Saturday in a remarkable 62-61 victory over Winthrop.. He hit two 3-pointers midway through the second half to help stave off an Eagles rally, and, as mentioned in yesterday's Boubacar, ripped his jersey off while the crowd stormed the floor. After he put his clothes back on, the ever-humble Reid said, "I didn't play well, but I played hard." Reid's huge year so far is no surprise -- he was selected Big South Preseason Player of the Year after completing a junior season in which he was the postseason selection for Big South Player Of The Year. He's the sixth-leading scorer in the nation at 23.9 ppg, has not dipped into single digits all year, and leads his conference in rebounds at 10.8 per game. No surprise, then, that he has 10 double-doubles so far, and has narrowly missed that mark twice more with nine-rebound performances. He didn't miss this particular double-digit distinction, though -- congratulations to "AZ" for being our tenth weekly honoree here at The Mid-Majority.
La Salle (Atlantic 10) at Pennsylvania (Ivy) When there's no games featuring conference frontrunners or prospective NCAA teams that are facing soul-baring tests, we here at G!O!T!N! studios usually revert to the game we'll be attending. Since we're hoarding all our Winthrop material for the paid gig, we go to our third option, which is anything Big 5-related. So the virtual satellite trucks will be rolling up to the Palestra, the great cathedral of college basketball, for a matchup in the greatest invisible league in college hoops. And here we have the two schools with the very least amount of Big 5 success, the Explorers and Quakers. In the 51 years that the round-robin's been held, La Salle came into the year 76-116 and Penn 75-117 while the other three schools (Saint Joseph's, Villanova and Temple) all own winning records. But Penn has the distinction to be the first to sweep in consecutive years twice, under Dick Harter in 1969-70 and 1970-71, and Chuck Daly repeated the feat in 1972-73 and 1973-74. No sweep this year with Glen Miller, as the Quakers' 5-9 record includes a loss to Villanova. And while we originally liked the Quakers to win their league on raw talent alone, the six-freshman roster hasn't shown much to be excited about -- although they play much faster and freer than usual, they're among the nation's leading producer of embarrassing turnovers. It'll be interesting, though, to see how SWAC style translates to the Ancient Eight. La Salle has been swept out 0-4 in the city series six times in its history, and you have to go back to the mid-Seventies days of Charlie Wise to find some positive blue-and-gold Big 5 vibes. This is a young team,with just three functional upperclassmen, but one of those is mainstay senior guard Darnell Harris, who's stepped up to contribute 16.7 ppg this year. Coming up behind is sophomore guard Rodney Green, a 6-5 combo who's developing as an all-around threat (13.6 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 2.2 apg) that could lead the 'Splorers for years to come. Can he turn in a Wise-like performance tonight in this matchup of underperforming 6-9 Philly squads? ROCK HILL, S.C. -- Tuesdays are generally going to be a bit slow around here during conference season. For all its presupposed "Big"-ness, Mondays are nearly as slight as Fridays schedule-wise, with only the MEAC, SWAC and a few WCC and SoCon games reporting. So that gives us here at The Mid-Majority a little time for housekeeping. And housekeeping-related rants. For over three years now, the name of this site has been "The Mid-Majority." And we love it when other sites link to us, because it lets more people read about mid-majors, makes us seem more popular than we are, and even gives us a few more stray pennies in Google Ad revenues. But an alarmingly high number of site operators don't get the name right. Aa lot of the links to this site say "Mid-Majority Report," or "Mid-Major Report," or somesuch. There's no "Report" anywhere on this page, and there haven't been for years, except for the two mentions I just typed up. I don't get it. I don't know if this site reminds people of The Majority Report... do I look like Jeanene Garofalo? That's the show on liberal radio outlet Air America which complained about our short-lived "Mid-Majority Report" podcast two years ago, and had it blacklisted from iTunes, effectively killing it. There's no more podcast, there's no Jeanene, and precious little liberal politics. And this isn't some ironic joke, like the Colbert Report, which, okay-fine, was funny for a month or two. This may seem like small stuff to you, but what if I got your name wrong? What if you were me, and I called you "Carl?" It's annoying. Plus, nobody calls the Worldwide Leader "ESPM," or CBS' site "Sportsline." Names are important, and so it is with the name of this site. The Mid-Majority. We're going to start getting actively aggressive about this. If you have our name wrong, we're going to purposely misspell your site's name in our link back to you. We're going to replace "Hoop" with "Poop," real damaging and mean stuff like that. See how you like having your Google PageRank screwed up.
Morgan State at Norfolk State Just another MEAC Monday. There are four remaining 2-0 teams in the conference, and two of them will be on display for your enjoyment if you're a member of the tight-knit family of ESPNU subscribers. It's part of the network's wonderful series of HBCU doubleheaders (disappointing prohibitive SWAC favorite Mississippi Valley State travels to Alabama State in the first game), the quality and production standards of which have improved immensely over two-plus years. It's good to see these conferences get a showcase, and more importantly some respect. Respect is something that Norfolk State (5-8, 2-0) got very little of in the preseason -- little was expected from a young team with very few seniors, a squad with an interim coach since Dwight Freeman was "reassigned" to the front office after going 63-75 in five seasons. Anthony Evans, a four-year assistant there, was I-tagged to lead the Spartans this season, and he's done a good enough job. NSU has a three-game win streak heading into this TV game, having beaten the OVC's Jacksonville State and indie N.C. Central to close the preseason, then taking out Coppin State on Saturday. Junior Corey Lyons is the player to watch, he's averaging 14.8 ppg and has been the Spartans' most dangerous player. But let's be honest here, this game is really a spotlight for Morgan State (7-7, 2-0). With preseason favorite North Carolina A&T struggling with chemistry problems and nonconference standout Hampton battling injuries, the Bears have emerged as the conference's to-beat team. We were witness to their basketballing power on Saturday, when they destroyed A&T on the road, 87-66. Morgan boasts three legitimate scoring threats across the size spectrum -- there's explosive 6-5 junior Marquise Kately (13.1 ppg) and senior leading-scoring guard Jamar Smith (19.1 ppg). Oh yeah, and their most efficient scorer and rebounder, 6-9 junior and daily segment namesake "The" Boubacar Coly, who's averaging 9.4 ppg and 9.9 rpg. Here's a picture from the game the other day, featuring No. 4 doing what one of the things he does... boxing out to grab a missed shot.
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- It's Monday, which means no cutesy-cutesy, no how-do-ya-do, no warm-up act jokes. Nearly every one of the 245 teams in Hoops Nation played over the weekend, and we're totally committed to mention at least two percent of those. It's all basketball today.
Drake may end up losing a game or two without Young (two out of their next three are tough roadies at Bradley and Creighton), but this isn't a team that's going to go in the tank when its head is temporarily lopped off. This is a team-team, one which builds victories with lots of good individual performances, not a squad with a leading scorer that the rest of the team just stands around and watches. Wait 'til you see them. You'll be impressed too.
This One's For The Valley This one's for the Valley, the Missouri Valley. This is a tribute to that switch of strong and landlocked America that only sees the sun an hour after the right coast does, whether Indiana saves daylight or not. Let the light shine from Lincoln's boyhood home to his license-plate Land, across Iowa and the region's namesake Show-Me state, into the brilliant corners of Nebraska and Kansas. This one's for the very center of the Central time zone. This one's for Republican voters, for corn-miles, for playing in Peoria. This is also for the Kum & Go, a chain of gas stations so blissfully unaware of itself. It's a special shout-out to the "Burgers & Cream" in Carbondale, Illinois, and to the 50-year-old old-time Steak & Shake in Springfield, Missouri, the one with the sign on the side that says, "We Protect Your Health." To the Buffalo Wild Wings locations from end to end, and to "Ski," the lemony-orangey hometown beverage of Evansville, Indiana. This is for the diners, for the buffets, for size 42 pants. This is for skinny white kids in black t-shirts in the parking lot of the Jo-Ann Fabrics store at 10 p.m., clouds of cigarette smoke hanging overhead like bored ghosts, all gathered around a pair of beaten and bruised Japanese automobiles from the early Nineties. There's an Evanescence CD playing loudly over a severely taxed and tinny-sounding speaker system. It's the major-label debut, the one with all the hits on it. This is for the slow turn of the key, for the sputtering rev of the engine, for the eternal marriage of machinery and freedom. This is for backseat sex, for endless squirming and stray elbows and not quite getting the angle right, for dejection and disappointment. This is for swearing that one day... One day we're going to get out of here, Maureen, and we're never going to look back. This is for never leaving. Ever.
Kyle and Bally finally lose college football for another year, but they gain... a mortal enemy?
Siena at Niagara (Metro Atlantic) Playing most of its weekend games on Fridays instead of Saturdays has been a shrewd move for the MAAC -- there are more TV windows (ESPNUUUuuuuu!), and they get the good Big East refs who want to make a few extra bucks. And since there aren't any real blockbuster mid-matchups tomorrow anyway, this game is a sure bet for our weekend-edition G!O!T!N!. You might remember these two from their thrill-a-minute conference championship game just 10 months ago. The coaches say it, the objective observers say it, and The State Of The Other 22 index says it -- here we have the best two teams in the conference, the Saints (8-6, 3-1 MAAC, SoMM No. 11) and the homestanding Purple Eagles (10-3, 4-0, SoMM No. 2). Siena is in a bit of a downswing though -- after impressing early with the best blend of athleticism and smarts we've seen at this level so far this season, the injury bug hit. Or bit, or however you want to use that ridiculous phrase. Alex Franklin, a 6-5 sophomore who leads the team in rebounding (7.7 rpg) and is second in scoring at 15.4 ppg, hasn't played since a Dec. 22 win over Holy Cross (also a G!O!T!N!) because of a bulging disc in his back. He nearly singlehandedly lifted the Saints to the Dance last March (27 pts, 11 reb in that aforementioned title game), and as the owner of a full one-quarter of the team's boards this year, they need him badly. The team is 2-3 without him, although he should be back in the lineup tonight. But this is a nice opportunity for Niagara to make another big statement on who the best team in the conference is, and on semi-national television, no less (ESPNUUUuuuuu!). And although we don't like talking polls, we find it cute that the Purps had as many votes as both 2007 national finalists Florida and Ohio State this week (one). Though Joe Mihalich only uses eight guys, everybody knows exactly what they have to do to keep winning. The job of Charron Fisher, for example, is to score a poop-load of points. He's the leading scorer in all the land (27.4 ppg), and he hasn't dipped below 22. On the whole, this is the fastest and best-rebounding (37 rpg) team in the MAAC... if Franklin isn't 100 percent tonight, Niagara might outglass Siena by at least 15. GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Super-size fast-food. Big Dog t-shirts. Enzyte. This is America, and everything is big. Real big. We all want to be big-time, and some of us do it by leading pieces with the kind of stuttering, oddly conversational, and totally incomplete sentences that have vaulted hack sportswriters to multi-million dollar careers. Others of us do it by convincing themselves that their smaller university is a major program. I read lots of reader e-mails and chat questions about how big-time their school is, too big-time for my niche coverage, and I laugh. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Not because I recognize that they're trying to put me out of a job by taking away my source material, I always enjoy the twisted logic that goes behind these arguments. Never get the same argument twice. Truth is that power-conference schools would be known from coast to coast even if they didn't play sports at all. But as it is, they churn out tens of thousands of rich graduates, some of which help kick back money to help its athletic departments go out and clean clocks at a high level. With the exception of the Ivy League and a few others, if a school oft-mentioned in this space didn't have a basketball team, it wouldn't have any sort of name recognition a day's drive from campus, in any direction. Not that that's a bad thing. The America that's concerned with power and ginormousness and domination is a country that lost its way a long time ago. At the beginning, over 200 years in the past, we were a rag-tag bunch in shabby clothes with limited resources. We used ingenuity and systems, the long-distance cannon, as well as the occasional backdoor cut to overthrow our well-funded oppressors in their clean red uniforms. (Paul Revere was the first advance scout, you know) In the 1770's, our fledgling government couldn't be described as anything more kind than mid-major. Even though two centuries of manifest destiny and poorly-planned conquest has made our nation too big for its original britches, there's still a little tri-cornered hat on each of our souls. When a No. 14 seed beats a No. 3 in March, the underdog's struggle evokes the efforts of revolutionaries that built this great country, and while people may not know why they cheer, it's because they're cheering for the real American spirit, not the one that replaced it. For a second, a brief second, we're all reminded of who we really are under the layers of history. And whether you're in denial about it or not, you're with us. No matter what you say, you don't want to be on their side. You're an underdog, and you're a patriot.
New Mexico State at Boise State (Western Athletic) OK, so what about the WAC?, you ask. It's a conference that started out very slow due to ill-timed up-scheduling (like you can schedule your scheduling around unscheduled crises anyway), sitting in the low-20's of the conference RPI for most of the first two months. Now the league is up to No. 19, and look! A matchup of the WAC's only 2-0 teams so far tonight, available for a fee at ESPN Full Court, as all NMSU games are. Somebody get Aggievision a budget! Boise State (11-3, 2-0) came into 2007-08 looking like a frontcourt-heavy team that would have a difficult time getting the kind of guard play one needs to win a conference. And yes, the front line has performed as expected... led by 6-6 junior Reggie Larry (19.1 ppg, 8.6 rpg), the three upperclassman forwards combine for 46.5 points and 19.7 rebounds per contest. Which is a lot. But the real hero of the Broncos is emergent sophomore point guard Anthony Thomas, who dishes four dimes a game, leads the conference in steals (2 per), and scores 8.7 ppg on his own. He helps Boise State find the shots that make it the No. 1 shooting team in all of Division I, a squad that nails a very impressive 52.6 percent of its attempts. Then there's defending champions New Mexico State (8-9, 2-0), who lost their coach to the NBA and all their good mojo to who-knows-where. New bench boss Marvin Menzies has had to deal with multiple suspensions, expulsions and dismissals (some of which were his own team-rules violations), most notably the loss of self-destructive prospect Herb Pope. The Aggies who are left have slogged along, opening with a 6-9 nonconference record and two wins over Idaho and Fresno State which proved little other than that they are nowhere near the worst team in this league. Especially not with a guy like Justin Hawkins, who averages 19.0 ppg and has posted four dub-dubs this season. Solid enough defense, shooting and rebounding in general, but hoo boy do they turn the ball over a lot (17.9 times a game). Will Thomas and the Broncos guards take advantage? SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- I was going to start out today with a hilarious joke about squirrels and their nuts, but this came across the wires this morning. The Cincinnati Enquirer, a fine newspaper, ran this today: Xavier shuns mid-major award. Here's a taste for those who don't like clicking things: Rivals.com called Xavier to tell the athletic department that the Web site had chosen senior point guard Drew Lavender for its "Mid-Major Player of the Week Award." There's been a lot of consternation in the Atlantic 14 this year because people like Rivals.Com, and ESPN.com -- and yes, me -- are covering the league like it's something other than a power conference. Most outlets are basing the lowered status on the lowered number of premier wins, NCAA bids and postseason success in recent years... and no doubt about it, the A-14 has not been getting the same types of results it was getting back in the mid-Nineties when it was the A-10. But, for those just joining us, wins and losses are not our yardsticks here. As I've said many times before, mid-majorness is not about on-court performance. It's about resources. With all respect to Bobinski, I'll tell you what the whole story is. Xavier is a school that spends just $11 million on athletics (according to the 2006-07 Office of Postsecondary Education figures), which would put them right there with any of the Missouri Valley, CAA or WAC programs. No fewer than 183 schools spent more. The school pulled a profit of $7 million on its operation last year, and that's good for them... this is a business. I'm really sorry that we don't have a better label for conferences that don't have the finances of the Big Six and the two money leagues (Conference USA and Mountain West, which have average athletic budgets in the mid-$20M range). This imperfect hyphenate is the label we inherited. And I don't care if Xavier doesn't want me to, I'm going to continue to talk about Xavier for years to come, whether the school is beating power-conference teams or having the kind of 10-20 down year that every program suffers eventually. If their own AD can't bring himself to celebrate the fact that his school is doing a hell of a lot with very little, too bad. It's a great story. But I can't help wondering: why did Rivals.Com feel the need to call them up? Did they have to obtain a mailing address to send the trophy?
Rhode Island at Dayton (Atlantic 10) If we've learned anything from college basketball, it's that November and December results can be intoxicating, bewildering, and occasionally ultimately maddening. There's no rollercoaster that quite matches the high of a hot start with double-digit wins, made all the higher with a little bit of unexpected coaches' poll love, and the crash of a broken conference season and Selection Sunday heartbreak. Every season, we seem to have one or six of those stories. This is why I've been purposely cool on Dayton (12-1) and Rhode Island (14-1) coming into the beginning of Atlantic 14 play, and why I think both squads have a lot to prove as the rough grind of league season begins. The signature, high-profile, Weekly Watch-worthy wins over traditional powers have been great (UD over Pitt and Louisville; URI over Providence and Syracuse), and nobody can say "but they haven't played anybody," but these are not laurels to rest on for either team. Even with those two wins, UD's nonconf strength of schedule is hardly NCAA-worthy (78th, according to Pom), and it took everything they had not to lose at home against Akron last week. URI's is even worse: 132, and they do give up the points (70 PA). We've said this before in the ESPN chats (by the way, there's one today at 4PM ET!), but we would be as happy as anybody if Will Daniels earns the league's player of the year award. He's been the most consistent big man in the league over his three-plus years in URI light blue, and has amassed an impressive 18.3 ppg and 7.3 rpg so far. Dayton is paced by senior guard Brian Roberts, whose 19.1 ppg is fourth among league players. How to win this one, and make an early A-14 statement? Dictate tempo, first and foremost... Dayton likes it slow n' nasty, and the Rams like to run. And Hoops Gods help us all if this comes down to free throws: UD hits just 65 percent, but URI is indeed steadily moving up the charts at 68.9 after a horrible start. See? Drills do work! ELON, N.C. -- Late start today due to delayed air travel. A whole bunch of people in suits wielding Blackberries and Blackjacks, talking about internal voter metrics or somesuch, seem to suddenly be travelling from New England to the mid-South today, all at once. Couldn't figure out why. Let's go!
Aside from two home losses against ranked teams that few teams would have an easy time winning (Indiana convincingly, and Butler by an A.J. Graves buzzer-beater), the Salukis are as frighteningly dominant at home as they've ever been. Not naming any team names, but I've seen fear in opposing players' eyes as they come out of the tunnel to meet that loud, crazy, maroon blob-monster of a crowd. But on the road, it's a completely different story. The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final Four in a simulation of last season. For our purposes here, it gives the world's only hype-free, non-voting, computer poll of teams in the lower 22 conferences. This is a recording. As of 1/8/2008, 1 p.m. ET Legend: Rank. Team Rating (Conference), Rating, Record (Conf. Record) [Last week] I have not actually seen this team with my own eyes (something we'll fix on Jan. 24), but we're starting to get reports from people who have. Two coaches who have played the Bearkats tell me that it was the toughest game of the year, and the team's only loss remains that one-point OT drop to San Diego State. Last week, they beat former mid-major and current money-conference participant UCF at home in OT. Now the Southland season begins (Wednesday against Southeastern Louisiana), and we'll see what happens. Either way, probably a drop in this index, since SHSU won't play another team in the State's overall top 100 until that JAn. 24 game with Stephen F. Austin.
Northern Iowa at Illinois State (Missouri Valley) Tuesday night is the night that we usually go to your mother’s place, and it's also Valley night. In a topsy-turvy MVC where everything formerly down (Illinois State, Indiana State and Drake) is up (all 3-0), Northern Iowa is currently the only one of the old guard that's over .500, having beaten Bradley and Evansville to start the season before being Treed at Terre Haute on Saturday 74-56. It's just about the quietest 10 overall wins we can think of here at TMM Mobile HQ, but that's because they've done it with nationally ranked ball control (11.7 TOPG) and defense (37.3 FGA%). If you're outside the region, Eric Coleman is likely the name you remember from the not too far-off NCAA days. The 6-6 undersized center is a senior now, and he's the team's heartbeat with his team-leading 12.4 ppg and 8.7 rpg. The Panthers defend the 3 well (30.7 percent), and they're going to need every ounce of that effort tonight. The Redbirds shoot nine percentage points better than that, and have a 6-11 freak named Levi Dyer who steps out often to make an even 50 percent (39-of-78) of his longies. And, of course, there's plenty of O to go around -- O being Osiris Eldridge (15.3 ppg), the sophomore that will likely be at or near the top of the MVC POY voting at least three times for the rest of his career. Despite being 6-3, he loves to be around the basket as much as possible, grabbing 5.7 rebounds per game. He's also hitting 46 percent of his shots from the floor. And even though it's a Tuesday, conditions are perfect for making baskets. It's business time. PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I want to share with you an idea I had this morning. I'll do anything necessary to make this possible, but I think that next November somebody should hold a Multi-Team Event just for relentlessly uptempo teams. The naming rights are open for purchase by any beverage manufacturer, but for now we'll call it the Caffeine Classic. So here's the idea. Eight teams in a building, maybe the Pepsi Arena in Denver. The only barrier to entry is that you have to play really fast, at least 75 possessions per ballgame. We'll have VMI from the Big South, Duquesne representing the Atlantic 14, Texas State from the Southland, the CAA's James Madison, Navy from the Patriot League, SEMO from the OVC, Troy from the Sun Belt, and Pepperdine from the WCC. For one long weekend (three days, four games each), they'll run up and down the court, putting up triple-digit scores on each other. Fans get to listen to Pantera records over the P.A. system during media timeouts, and can drink all the free coffee they want. Don't think this will draw? Too gimmicky for you? Admit it, you'd go see this.
After Albany was thrashed by Virginia in a 2007 NCAA Tournament first-round game that was a viable athletic contest for about 20 seconds, those of us in attendance on the "little guy" side did a lot of wondering aloud about the future of the Great Danes afterwards. This was a school that quickly ascended from 6-22 independent to two-time America East champions in half a decade... but with two high-scoring seniors (Jason Siggers and A-East POY Jamar Wilson) gone to graduation, it looked like the program was about to drop off the map again. If our spotlight player has anything to say about it, that's not going to happen. Senior swingman Brian Lillis is our ninth Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
What's remarkable about this is how far off the radar Lillis was last March. He was essentially the fourth option on a three-option team last season, averaging seven points per ballgame with well-timed shots that allowed him to shoot 52 percent on the year. But he was a complete non-factor in that Virginia loss, wandering around the floor for 25 minutes and scoring no points. This season, however, Lillis really come into his own, more than doubling his scoring average (14.5 ppg) and maintaining a high shooting average while leading the team in scoring. We really thought it would be Brent Wilson's team this year, what with his outside shot-making ability... he did chip in a double-double on Saturday, but maybe there's leftover trauma from Blakely's crotch coming at his face at 55 mph. Who knows. Congratulations, Brian, you were a slam dunk for our Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
Manhattan at Marist (Metro Atlantic) It could be argued that these schools are the two from the MAAC that have received the most national attention in recent years -- Manhattan for its NCAA first-round victory over Florida in 2004 (which remains the conference's only non-play-in win this century). The Red Foxes haven't found their way to the NCAA Tournament since 1987, the year many current Marist students were born, but that's okay. Led by New York non-sticker Jared Jordan and current Lithuanian league pro (like the Knicks couldn't use him), they carried the conference banner into the NIT as regular season champions in 2007 and won by three at Oklahoma State. Truth is, we're making that argument so we can aim the G!O!T!N! virtual cameras at these two teams and chat them up, and because Ronnie Weintraub is right, there's always a big story at Manhattan College. Things are very different in both competing schools, especially in Jasperland (7-6, 1-2) -- second-year coach Barry Rohrssen has nary a senior on his roster right now, and only two juniors. We'll leave the "green" pun to the beat writers, but there are some nice players who could have impacts on the league race in future years. We especially liked 6-4 freshman Rashad Green on our recent visit there -- still a little raw, but he has a nice soft finish to his plays. But the star of the future is most likely fellow frosh Chris Smith, a 6-3 Seton Hall transfer who's just now getting in the flow of the Jaspers offense after three eligible games. In a 10-point loss to Niagara on Saturday, Green went 9-for-15 from the floor and scored 21. Marist (8-6, 2-0) still has some holdovers from the MAAC champs, and are led by 6-5 senior guard Louie McCroskey, who's leading the team with 13.5 ppg and 6.5 rpg. But coming up for the Foxes is a hott frosh too. Jay Gavin, a 6-3 Maryland native, has scored in double figures eight times in his first 14 games. He's coming off a career-high 21-point performance of his own, a Friday night special against Rider in which Marist prevailed over the "Thompson Twins," 81-80. So tonight, it's a freshman fiiiiiite! In the MAAAAAC! INDIANAPOLIS -- Making the transition from nonconference to conference season is always a little rough. Not that we're getting dragged into something we don't want to be dragged into -- they just require such different mindsets. For two months, it's all rah-rah beat the power conferences, and then it's back to focusing on one-seeds and four-seeds. It takes a few weeks to get used to the shock. But with only four teams left with no league games played (WCC, Patriot, Big South and Atlantic 10... stragglers), we're getting back in the flow. And so are you. So let's go...
Give a live-action cartoon basketball an all-access pass to Hoops Nation's toughest conference, an unlimited expense account and all the press room pizza he can eat... what kind of trouble will he get himself into?
Valparaiso at Butler (Horizon League) January means snow, overwhelming holiday-related credit card bills, the active avoidance of NFL scores and conference basketball. And we have a real March-quality matchup already on the 5th of the month, between two teams that should be jostling for the Horizon League one-seed all winter long. You know all about Butler (12-1, 1-1), how they're nationally ranked and real good and all that. The personnel might have slightly changed since the Sweet 16 run, but the Butler brand has stayed steadfast: make up rebounding deficiencies with extremely fastidious ball control (10.7 turnovers per game, No. 3 nationally) and extraordinarily good 3-point shooting and 3-point defense. We're running out of players to say nice things about, so, ummm... how about the year Drew Streicher is having? He's on the floor pretty much the whole time, with virtually no stats (5.5 rpg and 2.2 rpg). Then in the press conference the opposing coach talks about what a great game Streicher had. Defense and proper positioning... it's the Butler way, baby. Valpo (11-3, 2-0) is the "new kid in town," just like that old Eagles song they're always playing in truck stops. This is their first year in the Horizon League, and they already swept their first conference road weekend at Detroit and Wright State. They can shoot the 3 a little too, with senior guard Jarryd Loyd making over 51 percent of his attempts. He hit five in the Crusaders' 90-58 loss at North Carolina, which in general showed the kind of heart this team has. Down 19-4 early, Valpo fought back to pull it close by halftime, but that's when the Heels' counteradjustments kicked in. Few teams at this level are good enough to even make the initial adjustments, which makes Valpo a serious threat to Butler's regular-season crown. As A.J. Graves might say, "I don't want to hear it."
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- I attended my first-ever Summit League game last night. Oh sure, I've been to plenty of Mid-Continent Conference games before, but things are different now. They've got a new name, new colors, and a new clip-art logo. Are their feelings of inadequacy solved? Hope so! Folks from the conference have said the name change had a lot do do with getting those three letters out of the title: M, I and D. We here at this website, naturally, were mortified and offended that anybody -- much less a league that is referred to by minds more closed as a low-major league -- would ever think of dropping the most wonderful prefix in college sports. One might think a conference full of teams that have never won a non-play-in NCAA game would aspire to the title of "Mid." When we got over the hurt, we wept. Then, in November, we gave the league our own name. If you've been on the train this far, you probably know that we refer to the conference as the "Badlands Conference" whenever we can get away with it (much like we do with the A-14). Because that's where most of these teams are from, and it sounds cooler. Now all we need is to foist a better logo on these people. With several thousand of you folks out there in the audience, we have to have at least two or three with bootlegs copies of Photoshop. If you can create a Badlands Conference logo that's at least 10 times better than what the league's hired designers came up with, and send it into bally [at] midmajority.com, you could win this Bally (or, at least, an identical one). You have a week, then we'll put it to a vote.
Long Beach State at California-Santa Barbara (Big West) More conference action tonight, and not a moment too soon. We'll be closely tracking Georgia Southern at Davidson from our perch at UMKC tonight, since GS (and Chattanooga) look like the only serious contenders to the Wildcats' SoCon throne. But we're going to use this opportunity to spread some California love, mid-major style. Big West season is underway, a league we've been paying entirely too little attention to. Over at Basketball State, we keep a conference scoreboard, which are basically averages of all team ratings. The BWC is 11th (RPI: 17)... the league doesn't have a win over the Big Six, but it's performed extremely well against similar conferences. In amongst a 47-51 nonconference report card, there's an 8-4 mark against the Big Sky and a 12-6 overall record versus the WCC. There are a lot of .500 teams in there, which means that the race for seeds will be lots of fun. Unlike in recent years, there are only two truly bad teams. One of those is the defending conference champions, Long Beach State (3-8, State: 226). Last year's 24-8 record in Larry Reynolds' final season was tarnished somewhat with possible transfer-tampering and eligibility gray areas, and the school decided to cut bait after LBSU was loudly eliminated in the NCAA Tournament's first round. Former Minnesota bench boss Don Monson has had to start from virtual scratch. Neither of the two main scoring threats, Fresno State transfer Donovan Morris and ex-juco newcomer Brian Freeman, were on the squad last season. UCSB, on the other hand, looks like the clear class of the league with its 11-2 record. The Gauchos have had trouble following up on its traditionally solid defense in recent years, but this season they're the No. 5 3-point shooting team in the entire country (42.7 percent), getting a lot of points at the line as well (76.9 percent FT, seventh best in Division I). Super-shooting senior Alex Harris (22.4), who will definitely be getting looks in the NBA Summer League, is no one-man show at the Thunderdome... 6-8 junior Chris Devine is following up a strong 2006-07 with 12.8 ppg on 50 percent shooting, and sophomore James Powell has stepped up to become a reliable third option. It's a power trio that has "Big West champions" written all over it. DES MOINES -- We usually leave the politics to bloggers who enjoy disseminating red-or-blue opinions and sorting through 300 comments' worth of fallout (You're in league with al-Qaeda! No, you are!), but it's been fascinating to see the caucus process in action up close. People around here take this very, very seriously, and some folks have been sharpening their powers of persuasion on the visiting basketball journalist, preparing for the local meetings. One guy actually was able to convince me that Rudy Guiliani was a normal human being. Just for a second, though. Mid-major basketball is a lot like the 2008 presidential election in extreme miniature. We're at just about the same point in the campaign, too. We've spent the last few months weeding through pretenders, and we're finally at the point when things count -- conference time. We'll nominate our candidates the first week of March at regional conference conventions, then we'll see who emerges as the winner on the final ballot. And as usual, it'll be the wrong guy. The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final Four in a simulation of last season. For our purposes here, it gives the world's only hype-free, non-voting, computer poll of teams in the lower 22 conferences. This is a recording. As of 1/2/2008, 1 p.m. ET Instead of defending our methodology and pointing out 1-1 California road trips that contain an overtime loss to a Mountain West team, instead of pointing out that you're looking at a list of well-rounded teams that are potential NCAA first-round victory candidates, instead of pointing out that teams not on this list generally have a fatal flaw (or two), we're going to go down the list this week and put the spotlight on each Top 10 team's star player. A big reason for the Bearkats' emergence as a national mid-major threat is the breakout season by a 6-1 senior named Shamir McDaniel. The San Antonio native was an unlikely candidate for breakout anything with deep role-player status for his entire career, but he's more than doubled his output with 13.7 ppg, and is shooting 15 percentage points better than last year (47.6 percent). Nine double-figure scoring games so far this season for a guy who only had 10 in his first three years combined. Not bad.
Akron (Mid-American) at Dayton (Atlantic 10) OK, remind me how to do this thing again. There's a premier spotlight game between mid-major schools, lots of exclamation points, and at least two exploratory paragraphs about key storylines and players. Right? It's been so long since we've had a rounded-out slate of weekday games (okay, so it was last Friday), you have to forgive us if we've forgotten how to do this. Today marks the beginning of 2008 in earnest here in Hoops Nation, with conference play busting out in the Valley, Big West, WAC and CAA. But we're keeping our eye on the UD Arena here at the G!O!T!N! studios, as the splashiest team in the A-14 takes on a squad from the MAC that still doesn't quite know its capabilities. Dayton (11-1) has had high-profile wins over the Big East's Louisville and Pittsburgh, but they've also enjoyed a couple of solid victories against good teams from this level -- Miami (Oh.) and Holy Cross, for instance. Even the SportsCenter set knows who 6-2 senior guard Brian Roberts is now, with his 19.3 ppg, 50 percent floor shooting and gigantic 31-point, Pitt-sinking, nationally-televised performance last Saturday. Then there are the Zips (10-2), one of the rare mid-major teams that can buy three early-season victories (N.C. A&T, N.C. Central and Wyoming). They're riding a five-game win streak and have a plus-15 scoring margin in their first dozen games, but a relatively gentle schedule has kept them from making an impact on the RPI (127) and State (247) charts. There are some key holdovers from last year's 26-7 postseason snubees, like tough senior guard Nick Dials (12.9 ppg), as well as rebounding machine Jeremiah Wood (team-leading 14.1 ppg and 9.3 rpg), whose body and concentration are much improved from last year. So how good are they, really? Are they ready for the MAC grind? We just may find out tonight. We're not worried about Dayton's Brian Roberts getting recognition anymore, so we're going to go deeper than his dominant 31-point performance in an upset win over Pitt. Much deeper. Peyton Stovall, star guard for the Ball State Cardinals, is our eighth Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
Stovall's career at Ball State has been eventful, to say the least. He's on his third head coach, and sustained two season-ending injuries and surgeries, and personal and team adversity has always kept his production far below his potential. He was Ball State's third option last year, scoring 8.8 ppg as the primary point guard. But he's made the most of his senior campaign, becoming one of the real hidden stars of the MAC. He opened the season with a surprising 13-and-12 double-double against Butler, and dropped 22 against Evansville in a one-point loss. Despite the tough start, Stovall has averaged 14.3 ppg and has shot a sterling 46.5 percent from 3. We were witnesses to the performance in Muncie on Monday, which clinched the Cardinals' first win in the Billy Taylor era after 11 straight losses and a turbulent summer. We can attest to the fact that Stovall personally held off the visiting Mastodons himself, driving for layups and hitting deep 3's as IPFW made its furious late charge from a 15-point halftime deficit. Stovall is a real all-around threat -- he loves to drive and draw contact, he's an excellent passer in traffic, and can seemingly run from end to end in an eye-blink. It's a shame he's not on a better team, but he's our Mid-Majority Baller of the Week anyway. |
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63
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109 |  |
26,514 |  |
season over |  |
119/887 (13.4%) |
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The grand old Mid-American Conference has been tragically misunderstood this decade. A league that's produced some of the most competitive, exciting and thrilling hoops at the mid-major level has had a lot of trouble with respect on the national scene, not having received a second bid to the NCAA Tournament since 1999 or a first-round win since 2003. All this despite producing an Elite Eight team (Kent State 2002) and several productive pros. 
We've chosen the entry of Mr. Nate B. from Iowa, and in TMM contest tradition we're obscuring his last name so he won't be denied a job in the future because of past shameful mid-major dealings. For Nate's effort, he will receive one (1) fuzzy, adorable, orange Bally Basketball, virtually identical to 
We're in Texas, so it's only fair that we shine the spotlight on some Lone Star hoops. Because of Texas-Pan American's longstanding independent status and virtual unlikelihood of making the NCAA Tournament, you don't hear much about them in the mainstream press... and with the 
There are two kinds of people who go to more games than I do: stats crews, and... refs. Like Steve Welmer, who has the knack of showing up just about anywhere. While I've been resting up, he's been making hay. Thanks to Basketball State, we know Welmer is up to 
A 6-0, 185-lb. junior point guard from Houston, Texas had the shooting night of his life -- or most people's lives -- on Saturday. In a 
Drake. All hail the undisputed kings of the Valley! The Bulldogs haven't lost a game since early November, and their 15th in a row was the mammoth showdown-throwdown-hoedown between them and fellow MVC undefeateds Illinois State on Saturday night. Behind at the half, Drake pulled back even, and won 
Until the night of Nov. 7, 2007, most college basketball fans didn't know Gardner-Webb from a weed whacker. But with a 
ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- I'm really all atwitter today. I've been to 52 games so far this year, but none has been as eagerly anticipated as tonight's. For the finale of my weeklong tour of the Carolinas, I'm going to see 
Our most recent MMBOW has the distinction of being the only Division I player named after a state of the union -- the 11 Washingtons don't count -- and one of a very select few players in history with a nickname derived from a U.S. Postal Service abbreviation. Arizona "AZ" Reid is our tenth Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
After a week-long break (nobody wants to talk during the holidays), TMMI is back. And to kick off the new year, we have one of the most powerful men in all of Hoops Nation, Missouri Valley Conference commissioner Doug Elgin. He's led the toughest mid-major conference in the land since 1988, spent four years on the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee, and some even believe he 
Southern Illinois. Positives cancel out negatives in the grand scales and wheels of the Boubacar, and the end result is the non-committal yellow arrow. But there's no team that will make its fans as screaming-yellow-zonkers agitated than SIU. 
In a rematch of last year's conference championship on Saturday, the 6-5 Iowan hit a career high with 29 points, scoring 19 of those in the second half in a thrilling 
On New Year's Eve against IPFW, the 6-1 senior exploded for a career-high 37 points and nine rebounds in a 
