Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Spinner's alley at the ACC/Big Ten Challenge
In keeping with his adopted narrative shtick for the week--the ACC/Big Ten Challenge is the Iowa Caucuses of hoops--Wonk herewith coughs up some wry yet empty calories of the coverage-of-the-coverage variety....
Best prediction. The winner, in a walk, is Rob Daniels of the Greensboro (NC) News-Record, for this gem:
"Ohio State at Clemson, Wednesday, 7:30 pm (ESPN2): Just when the Tigers are about to win, somebody comes off the Ohio State bench and punches a Clemson player. (Sorry. Couldn't pass up the Woody Hayes reference.)"
BONUS obsequious pander to rabid anti-ACC conspiracy theorists! Loyal and alert readers of this blog know Wonk customarily has little time for that type of rabid anti-ACC conspiracy theorist who rails against “Dookie V” (Lute Olson was actually the first person Wonk heard say that), the Duke lineage of Jay Bilas, or the Wake Forest upbringing of Billy Packer. In short: Deng and Livingston are pros, Duke is down, and Vitale is onto different flavors of the month (OK, largely ACC flavors); Bilas does his homework (unlike Wonk he actually seems to know--and care--who comes off the bench for, say, Wyoming); and Packer would be a querulous old get-your-frisbee-off-my-yard! buzzkill no matter where he played 40 years ago.
That being said, even Wonk raised an eyebrow when he read this tidy compilation of the most incendiary quotes from both sides of this particular gulf. Did Jay Bilas really say Deron Williams of Illinois would only be the 10th-best player in the ACC?
SPECIAL Bruce Weber exemption: Yes, yes, Wonk knows Illinois coach Bruce Weber himself said, "Dick Vitale can take his Dookies and shove it." (Hey, it was a pep rally.) But, far from finding this rabid, Wonk (like Sports Illustrated, who specifically cited this quote among its reasons for placing Illinois in its ten "easiest teams to root for") finds it welcome and indeed refreshing. If coaches talked less like members of the same country club and more like Don King, we'd have a more enjoyable spectacle. Um, which is the nominal purpose of sports.
Toward that end, Wonk pledges to do his part: for the next 72 hours, Wake Forest at Illinois will herewith be known as the....
Brawl in the Hall: day-before hype
Wonk reported yesterday that Illinois planned to wear "throwback" jerseys in honor of the 1989 Final Four team Wednesday night. Those plans have been scrapped because the uniforms arrived and the shorts are...too big? Is that possible?...Indefatigable Illini beat writer Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times reminds readers of the last time Illinois played a consensus number 1 in Assembly Hall: January 11, 1979, when Illinois defeated Magic Johnson and Michigan State on a last-second baseline jumper from Eddie Johnson. (Bad invocation: after winning that game, the 15-0 Illini went 4-11 the rest of the year.)...Gould's colleague at the Sun-Times, columnist Carol Slezak, says the game is Bruce Weber's opportunity to achieve Self-like visibility with the nation's recruits....Marlen Garcia of the Chicago Tribune eerily puts both story threads in a blender and pours it out here. More day-before game previews here, here, here, and here.
Shooting bricks in the sticks
The ACC leads this Challenge 1-0 after North Carolina State's 60-53 victory over Purdue last night in Raleigh. (Links here, here, here, and here.) The Boilermakers' David Teague, in his second game back after suffering a broken hand, continued his "I Shouldn't Be Back Yet!" tour, going 2-of-11 from the field. (The miss that Teague jacked up from behind the arc with eight minutes left in the game was so far off that for a split second Wonk genuinely feared it would go behind the backboard on the fly. It's a teachable comment on Purdue's current personnel that everyone keeps looking to the injured Teague as though he were the second coming of Glenn Robinson--and he averaged all of 11.5 points per game last year.) Maybe it's unfair to single out Teague for cold shooting, though, in a game that totaled an astounding 85 rebounds: in a nice piece of what was no doubt pre-arranged symmetry in honor of Gene Keady, both teams shot .333 from the field.
BONUS garden-variety worst-call-ever gripe. With four minutes left in the game NC State's Julius Hodge fouled Purdue's Matt Kiefer on a breakaway and was called for an intentional foul. Wonk has watched with increasing alarm as the intentional foul has morphed in the space of just a few seasons from something called only in the case of the most egregious and physically harmful fouls to something that is expected as a veritable birth right on any foul on a breakaway. (Keady immediately screamed for an intentional foul, as though anticipating contact that did not in fact occur.) Hodge made a smart and appropriate play on the ball and swiped it out of Kiefer's hands, with no harm done to the lumbering Boilermaker. If he can't make that play in that situation, all breakaways should simply be conceded.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk software note. Wonk's crack staff of software development engineers have perfected a Big-Ten-hoops-savvy syntax checker called HoopCheck. As I typed the above paragraph it continually put a squiggly green line under the words "Matt Kiefer on a breakaway." When I right-click I get, "Suggested changes: 'Matt Kiefer dribbles the ball off his foot and falls over'; 'Matt Kiefer gets called for double-dribble and falls over'; 'Matt Kiefer misses a free throw and falls over.'"
EXCLUSIVE Wonk investigative report: Shame of a Nation, Day 348
The diligent professionals at the Big Ten press offices continue to maintain a link on the conference's main men's basketball page to this story: "Q&A with Kris Humphries." This was originally posted, mind you, on December 16, 2003.
Meticulous can't-be-rushed antiquarians of the Big Ten's web content group, Wonk salutes you! In fact, Wonk thinks you've got a pretty sweet gig if your boss looks to you for new content only every year or so. Watch for still more fast-breaking stories coming soon from the tireless scriveners at Big Ten HQ:
"Eddie Johnson and Illinois Beat Ervin 'Magic' Johnson and Michigan State"
"Big Ten Considers New Wrinkle, So-Called 'Three-Point Line'"
"Area Toddler, Lil' Matt Kiefer, Takes First Steps, Falls Over"
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Detroit Free Press columnist Drew Sharp repeats the most tired meme of all, that Mike Krzyzewski "saved" college basketball by not going to the Lakers. (I've seen this year's Lakers and let us be clear: Mike Krzyzewski saved first and foremost his sanity and his still-dark hair by staying in Durham.) Sharp even gets Tom Izzo to say that if college hoops had lost Coach K, the game "would have lost its soul." Coach Izzo, Wonk is a big fan of yours. Let's keep it that way. Please don't say anything even remotely so fatuous again. In other news...oh, right, Michigan State plays at Duke tonight in a game Wonk cannot wait to see. Game previews here, here, here, here, here, and here. (Kudos to alert reader Dave N. for this last link.)
Wisconsin hosts Maryland tonight in Madison. The psychic bruising suffered by the Badgers in their loss at Pepperdine Saturday night can be gauged by the prevalence of "Maryland is a lot like Pepperdine" quotes (another word sequence HoopCheck doesn't like) to be found in game previews here and here. View from the Terps' turf here.
Michigan plays at Georgia Tech tonight. Jim Spadafore of the Detroit News, apparently an alert reader of this blog, notes that the Wolverines just aren't the same without Preseason All-Wonk selection Lester Abram. Glad to have you aboard, Jim! More here.
Minnesota hosts Florida State tonight in Minneapolis. Game previews here and here.
Iowa, keenly conscious of being left out of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, went out and scheduled a high-profile cash-generating game at...Drake. The Bulldogs are coached by former Iowa coach Tom Davis. Predominantly Davis-led game previews here, here, and here.
Confronted with an ESPN-sponsored event, competing content providers such as cnnsi.com and the Sporting News are for the most part taking a "What ACC/Big Ten Challenge?" approach. Notable exception: Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline posts his preview of the Challenge here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:31 AM
In keeping with his adopted narrative shtick for the week--the ACC/Big Ten Challenge is the Iowa Caucuses of hoops--Wonk herewith coughs up some wry yet empty calories of the coverage-of-the-coverage variety....
Best prediction. The winner, in a walk, is Rob Daniels of the Greensboro (NC) News-Record, for this gem:
"Ohio State at Clemson, Wednesday, 7:30 pm (ESPN2): Just when the Tigers are about to win, somebody comes off the Ohio State bench and punches a Clemson player. (Sorry. Couldn't pass up the Woody Hayes reference.)"
BONUS obsequious pander to rabid anti-ACC conspiracy theorists! Loyal and alert readers of this blog know Wonk customarily has little time for that type of rabid anti-ACC conspiracy theorist who rails against “Dookie V” (Lute Olson was actually the first person Wonk heard say that), the Duke lineage of Jay Bilas, or the Wake Forest upbringing of Billy Packer. In short: Deng and Livingston are pros, Duke is down, and Vitale is onto different flavors of the month (OK, largely ACC flavors); Bilas does his homework (unlike Wonk he actually seems to know--and care--who comes off the bench for, say, Wyoming); and Packer would be a querulous old get-your-frisbee-off-my-yard! buzzkill no matter where he played 40 years ago.
That being said, even Wonk raised an eyebrow when he read this tidy compilation of the most incendiary quotes from both sides of this particular gulf. Did Jay Bilas really say Deron Williams of Illinois would only be the 10th-best player in the ACC?
SPECIAL Bruce Weber exemption: Yes, yes, Wonk knows Illinois coach Bruce Weber himself said, "Dick Vitale can take his Dookies and shove it." (Hey, it was a pep rally.) But, far from finding this rabid, Wonk (like Sports Illustrated, who specifically cited this quote among its reasons for placing Illinois in its ten "easiest teams to root for") finds it welcome and indeed refreshing. If coaches talked less like members of the same country club and more like Don King, we'd have a more enjoyable spectacle. Um, which is the nominal purpose of sports.
Toward that end, Wonk pledges to do his part: for the next 72 hours, Wake Forest at Illinois will herewith be known as the....
Brawl in the Hall: day-before hype
Wonk reported yesterday that Illinois planned to wear "throwback" jerseys in honor of the 1989 Final Four team Wednesday night. Those plans have been scrapped because the uniforms arrived and the shorts are...too big? Is that possible?...Indefatigable Illini beat writer Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times reminds readers of the last time Illinois played a consensus number 1 in Assembly Hall: January 11, 1979, when Illinois defeated Magic Johnson and Michigan State on a last-second baseline jumper from Eddie Johnson. (Bad invocation: after winning that game, the 15-0 Illini went 4-11 the rest of the year.)...Gould's colleague at the Sun-Times, columnist Carol Slezak, says the game is Bruce Weber's opportunity to achieve Self-like visibility with the nation's recruits....Marlen Garcia of the Chicago Tribune eerily puts both story threads in a blender and pours it out here. More day-before game previews here, here, here, and here.
Shooting bricks in the sticks
The ACC leads this Challenge 1-0 after North Carolina State's 60-53 victory over Purdue last night in Raleigh. (Links here, here, here, and here.) The Boilermakers' David Teague, in his second game back after suffering a broken hand, continued his "I Shouldn't Be Back Yet!" tour, going 2-of-11 from the field. (The miss that Teague jacked up from behind the arc with eight minutes left in the game was so far off that for a split second Wonk genuinely feared it would go behind the backboard on the fly. It's a teachable comment on Purdue's current personnel that everyone keeps looking to the injured Teague as though he were the second coming of Glenn Robinson--and he averaged all of 11.5 points per game last year.) Maybe it's unfair to single out Teague for cold shooting, though, in a game that totaled an astounding 85 rebounds: in a nice piece of what was no doubt pre-arranged symmetry in honor of Gene Keady, both teams shot .333 from the field.
BONUS garden-variety worst-call-ever gripe. With four minutes left in the game NC State's Julius Hodge fouled Purdue's Matt Kiefer on a breakaway and was called for an intentional foul. Wonk has watched with increasing alarm as the intentional foul has morphed in the space of just a few seasons from something called only in the case of the most egregious and physically harmful fouls to something that is expected as a veritable birth right on any foul on a breakaway. (Keady immediately screamed for an intentional foul, as though anticipating contact that did not in fact occur.) Hodge made a smart and appropriate play on the ball and swiped it out of Kiefer's hands, with no harm done to the lumbering Boilermaker. If he can't make that play in that situation, all breakaways should simply be conceded.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk software note. Wonk's crack staff of software development engineers have perfected a Big-Ten-hoops-savvy syntax checker called HoopCheck. As I typed the above paragraph it continually put a squiggly green line under the words "Matt Kiefer on a breakaway." When I right-click I get, "Suggested changes: 'Matt Kiefer dribbles the ball off his foot and falls over'; 'Matt Kiefer gets called for double-dribble and falls over'; 'Matt Kiefer misses a free throw and falls over.'"
EXCLUSIVE Wonk investigative report: Shame of a Nation, Day 348
The diligent professionals at the Big Ten press offices continue to maintain a link on the conference's main men's basketball page to this story: "Q&A with Kris Humphries." This was originally posted, mind you, on December 16, 2003.
Meticulous can't-be-rushed antiquarians of the Big Ten's web content group, Wonk salutes you! In fact, Wonk thinks you've got a pretty sweet gig if your boss looks to you for new content only every year or so. Watch for still more fast-breaking stories coming soon from the tireless scriveners at Big Ten HQ:
"Eddie Johnson and Illinois Beat Ervin 'Magic' Johnson and Michigan State"
"Big Ten Considers New Wrinkle, So-Called 'Three-Point Line'"
"Area Toddler, Lil' Matt Kiefer, Takes First Steps, Falls Over"
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Detroit Free Press columnist Drew Sharp repeats the most tired meme of all, that Mike Krzyzewski "saved" college basketball by not going to the Lakers. (I've seen this year's Lakers and let us be clear: Mike Krzyzewski saved first and foremost his sanity and his still-dark hair by staying in Durham.) Sharp even gets Tom Izzo to say that if college hoops had lost Coach K, the game "would have lost its soul." Coach Izzo, Wonk is a big fan of yours. Let's keep it that way. Please don't say anything even remotely so fatuous again. In other news...oh, right, Michigan State plays at Duke tonight in a game Wonk cannot wait to see. Game previews here, here, here, here, here, and here. (Kudos to alert reader Dave N. for this last link.)
Wisconsin hosts Maryland tonight in Madison. The psychic bruising suffered by the Badgers in their loss at Pepperdine Saturday night can be gauged by the prevalence of "Maryland is a lot like Pepperdine" quotes (another word sequence HoopCheck doesn't like) to be found in game previews here and here. View from the Terps' turf here.
Michigan plays at Georgia Tech tonight. Jim Spadafore of the Detroit News, apparently an alert reader of this blog, notes that the Wolverines just aren't the same without Preseason All-Wonk selection Lester Abram. Glad to have you aboard, Jim! More here.
Minnesota hosts Florida State tonight in Minneapolis. Game previews here and here.
Iowa, keenly conscious of being left out of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, went out and scheduled a high-profile cash-generating game at...Drake. The Bulldogs are coached by former Iowa coach Tom Davis. Predominantly Davis-led game previews here, here, and here.
Confronted with an ESPN-sponsored event, competing content providers such as cnnsi.com and the Sporting News are for the most part taking a "What ACC/Big Ten Challenge?" approach. Notable exception: Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline posts his preview of the Challenge here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:31 AM
Monday, November 29, 2004
The Iowa Caucuses of hoops!
The sixth edition of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge kicks off tonight and Wonk says: enjoy the spectacle! (Previews here, here, and here.) Sure, it's an artificial early-season contrivance that moves pundits to lay out arbitrary and mutually contradicting measuring sticks. (How many wins does the Big Ten need to achieve respectability? Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News holds the envelope to his forehead and solemnly says: four!) What of it? Anything that can give us Wake Forest against Illinois and Duke against Michigan State is a worthy cause in Wonk's book.
Stats you will hear quite often this week: The ACC has won the Challenge all five years (by a 5-4 count three of those years) and is 27-17 overall. Duke and Wake Forest are both undefeated. Illinois and Wisconsin, by notable contrast, are both 1-4.
Illinois resorts to voodoo: When NFL teams wear throwback jerseys on Thanksgiving, they're harkening back 60 or 70 years. When college basketball teams do it, appropriately enough, they are going back just 15 years, which to a college player is the functional equivalent of 60 or 70 years. For Wednesday's home game against Wake Forest, Illinois will wear "throwback" jerseys in honor of the 1989 Final Four "Flyin' Illini."
Does a 15-year-old jersey really qualify as a "throwback"? Isn't it more of a "tossback"?
How good is Illinois?
No one knows. Yet. One thing we do know is that Gonzaga had no business being in the top 25. ("If Gonzaga is a top 25 team," says Copley News Service columnist Mike Nadel, "I'm the next President of United States." Other links here, here, here, and here.) The Zags are young, with four new starters playing alongside proven star Ronny Turiaf. (Kind of like Illinois two years ago with newbies Dee Brown, Deron Williams, Roger Powell, and James Augustine alongside Brian Cook.) Adam Morrison showed he's got both game and heart, though, and the Bulldogs will improve markedly as the season progresses.
As for the Illini, if they turn out to be as good as they looked Saturday it will be in large part because of their unselfish blink-and-you'll-miss-it ball movement. The Illini's three guards are averaging nearly 19 assists a game. Luther Head (7.5 assists per game), Deron Williams (6.5) and Dee Brown (4.8) are pleasing the purists with that kind of passing. "I thought that was one of the finest performances I've seen in a while, especially in the first half," said the tournament's namesake, John Wooden. ("It's like God talking," the SportsCenter guys said when they played that clip.)
How good is Michigan State?
No one knows. Yet. One thing we do know is Tom Izzo will never again schedule Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse, UCLA, and Oklahoma, as he did last year.
The Spartans' latest triple-digit self-esteem booster came Saturday at the expense of Nicholls State, 102-52. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Wonk knows it's only November, but: the Spartans are leading the nation in scoring offense, averaging 103.3 points a game.
How bad is Purdue?
Bad (headline on Sunday's autopsy by Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz: "Painter might inherit large-scale project at Purdue"), but....
Wonk was impressed with Carl Landry despite Landry's best efforts to the contrary--he had a terrible day in the loss against Cincinnati. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Wonk knew, of course, of Landry's beastly 25-point 16-board effort in a losing cause against Miami of Ohio but did not know that the big guy can dish the rock. He's no Vlade Divac, mind you, but if David Teague can get healthy these two can put up some assists and points.
Speaking of Teague, the junior guard, apparently aiming for an inspiring Willis Reed kind of thing, came back earlier than expected after suffering a broken hand and played in Saturday's game--and shot very much like someone who'd come back earlier than expected after suffering a broken hand.
How bad is Indiana?
Bad, surely, and the Hoosiers are about to post numerous L's (North Carolina, Connecticut, Notre Dame, Kentucky), but....
Wonk was heartened by one aspect of what was the otherwise disheartening spectacle of a 64-60 struggle at home over Western Illinois Saturday night. (Links here and here.) What was encouraging was the complete and utter invisibility of Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Bracey Wright. Wonk feels strongly that Indiana's improvement lies squarely in the direction of diversifying its offense beyond watching Wright miss shots (see 2003-04). Saturday night, for all its ugliness, that is pretty much what happened. Wright was ineffective on the offensive end (1-of-7 shooting) but Indiana did not force the ball to him anyway like they did so many times last year. This represents improvement Wonk thought may not occur until the post-Wright era.
Additional encouraging note: Wonk was impressed by Patrick Ewing, Jr. So much so that Wonk herewith introduces the Ewing Paradox: if this guy were with a better team, he'd be starting. Ewing has no post moves, no driving ability, and no shooting touch so, on an offensively-challenged team, coach Mike Davis can't afford to start him. (Actually Ewing did start Saturday night but only because Sean Kline was in Davis's doghouse for some reason.) But Ewing's defense and tenacious rebounding would be highly valued on any team with plenty of scoring but little inside presence (say, Illinois or Michigan State). If the Hoosiers get some scoring from some non-Wright types, watch for a sudden and deserved upswing in the ink and pixels devoted to Ewing.
Wonk reprints old posts only when he's right
Wisconsin lost at Pepperdine late Saturday night, 75-61. (Links here and here.) How did the Badgers come to post their first L? Here's what Wonk said last Monday, referring to Wisconsin's easy win at home over Penn:
What will be interesting to watch this year is whether or not Bo Ryan is able to continue his winning formula or will have to find a new one. Ryan's teams have relied on rock-steady guard play, specifically the ability to not turn the ball over....And so Wonk notes with interest that even against the hopelessly overmatched Quakers, the Badgers turned the ball over a fairly un-Ryan-like 16 times....
Two seasons ago Wonk started a running tally of conference games in which Wisconsin was outrebounded and outshot and still won handily. They did it by not turning the ball over and by shooting many more free-throw attempts than their opponent. Keep an eye on this.
Now note the box score from the Pepperdine game here: 22 turnovers. Vintage Bo Ryan teams go about three games before turning the ball over that many times.
Two concerns for Ryan's team moving forward this year: valuing the ball and outside shooting. On Saturday night they still outrebounded the Waves and attempted nine more free throws. But while shooting basically the same number of three's (Wisconsin shot 17, Pepperdine shot 18), the Badgers yielded 15 fewer points from the effort, going just 3-of-17 while the Waves drained 8-of-18.
Note to members of the Orange Crush, Izzone, Grateful Red, Gene Pool, and the 117 socially-challenged undergrads who attend Penn State home games. The Pepperdine home crowd, all 3,024 of them, chanted "Chris Rock" every time Kammron Taylor touched the ball, referencing an alleged resemblance between the Badgers' sophomore guard and the once-funny SNL performer who (Wonk knows this will come as a surprise) has gone on to do a string of undistinguished movies. Wisconsin lost. Can't argue with results.
In yesterday's less Wonk-ish venues....
Ohio State cruised against Tennessee-Chattanooga Saturday night, 84-67. Link here. St. John's Arena is a wonderful old venue (and the Buckeyes' current home, Value City Arena, is fully blessed by every fault its very name foreshadows) but when one's old home floor has since been lined and painted for volleyball it's just too visually disconcerting to come home again. Verily, Wonk sayeth to the Buckeyes: stay in your cold and sterile new home.
Penn State defeated Sacred Heart Saturday, 69-61. Link here. Wonk knows it's only November, but: Penn State's Aaron Johnson is third in the nation in rebounds, averaging 14.8 a game.
Minnesota lost to Oklahoma, 67-54, in the third-place game of the Great Alaska Shootout Saturday night. Links here and here.
Michigan's Daniel Horton was the subject of a Sunday feature-length/multiple-header think-piece in the Ann Arbor News, the kind of ponderous spelunking-in-print usually reserved for the Mideast peace process or Cher. Verily, Wonk says: when you're so inscrutable you attract headlines like "The Education of Daniel Horton," you deserve your spot on Wonk's All-Head-Case team.
Announcing the "Leopold von Ranke Rolls in His Grave Tonight" Award
Presented in honor of notably dubious statements about past events.
The winner is: Brandon McKnight, Purdue's senior guard. Asked about his team's challenging schedule (one that includes upcoming games against North Carolina State, Memphis, and Oklahoma), McKnight offered the following: "Michigan State had this type of schedule last year and they went pretty far in the NCAA tournament."
Define "far." Wonk and McKnight have different notions about this vexing term, apparently, for the Spartans lost in the first round last year to a scrappy Nevada squad, 72-66.
Brandon, Wonk salutes your knack for defining success down! You'll go far!
Runner-up: Jeff Washburn of the Lafayette Journal and Courier, who printed McKnight's adventurous historiography without comment.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Colorado defeated Northwestern in Boulder yesterday, 66-57. Links here and here.
Purdue kicks off the ACC/Big Ten Challenge tonight in Raleigh, NC, against North Carolina State. Game previews here, here, and here.
He's-a-work-in-progress piece on Michigan's sophomore guard Dion Harris here.
(EXCLUSIVE Wonk warning to journalism students: you major in journalism, you graduate, you get a job with the Detroit Free Press, and your assignments editor tells you to write a he's-a-work-in-progress piece on Dion Harris. Wonk thinks the above sentence should be printed in the college catalogue, next to Journ. 101.)
What the heck happened to Wisconsin? Get your day-after head-scratching here.
Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline says Illinois has the best guards in the country (but that still won't be enough some nights) here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:25 AM
The sixth edition of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge kicks off tonight and Wonk says: enjoy the spectacle! (Previews here, here, and here.) Sure, it's an artificial early-season contrivance that moves pundits to lay out arbitrary and mutually contradicting measuring sticks. (How many wins does the Big Ten need to achieve respectability? Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News holds the envelope to his forehead and solemnly says: four!) What of it? Anything that can give us Wake Forest against Illinois and Duke against Michigan State is a worthy cause in Wonk's book.
Stats you will hear quite often this week: The ACC has won the Challenge all five years (by a 5-4 count three of those years) and is 27-17 overall. Duke and Wake Forest are both undefeated. Illinois and Wisconsin, by notable contrast, are both 1-4.
Illinois resorts to voodoo: When NFL teams wear throwback jerseys on Thanksgiving, they're harkening back 60 or 70 years. When college basketball teams do it, appropriately enough, they are going back just 15 years, which to a college player is the functional equivalent of 60 or 70 years. For Wednesday's home game against Wake Forest, Illinois will wear "throwback" jerseys in honor of the 1989 Final Four "Flyin' Illini."
Does a 15-year-old jersey really qualify as a "throwback"? Isn't it more of a "tossback"?
How good is Illinois?
No one knows. Yet. One thing we do know is that Gonzaga had no business being in the top 25. ("If Gonzaga is a top 25 team," says Copley News Service columnist Mike Nadel, "I'm the next President of United States." Other links here, here, here, and here.) The Zags are young, with four new starters playing alongside proven star Ronny Turiaf. (Kind of like Illinois two years ago with newbies Dee Brown, Deron Williams, Roger Powell, and James Augustine alongside Brian Cook.) Adam Morrison showed he's got both game and heart, though, and the Bulldogs will improve markedly as the season progresses.
As for the Illini, if they turn out to be as good as they looked Saturday it will be in large part because of their unselfish blink-and-you'll-miss-it ball movement. The Illini's three guards are averaging nearly 19 assists a game. Luther Head (7.5 assists per game), Deron Williams (6.5) and Dee Brown (4.8) are pleasing the purists with that kind of passing. "I thought that was one of the finest performances I've seen in a while, especially in the first half," said the tournament's namesake, John Wooden. ("It's like God talking," the SportsCenter guys said when they played that clip.)
How good is Michigan State?
No one knows. Yet. One thing we do know is Tom Izzo will never again schedule Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse, UCLA, and Oklahoma, as he did last year.
The Spartans' latest triple-digit self-esteem booster came Saturday at the expense of Nicholls State, 102-52. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Wonk knows it's only November, but: the Spartans are leading the nation in scoring offense, averaging 103.3 points a game.
How bad is Purdue?
Bad (headline on Sunday's autopsy by Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz: "Painter might inherit large-scale project at Purdue"), but....
Wonk was impressed with Carl Landry despite Landry's best efforts to the contrary--he had a terrible day in the loss against Cincinnati. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Wonk knew, of course, of Landry's beastly 25-point 16-board effort in a losing cause against Miami of Ohio but did not know that the big guy can dish the rock. He's no Vlade Divac, mind you, but if David Teague can get healthy these two can put up some assists and points.
Speaking of Teague, the junior guard, apparently aiming for an inspiring Willis Reed kind of thing, came back earlier than expected after suffering a broken hand and played in Saturday's game--and shot very much like someone who'd come back earlier than expected after suffering a broken hand.
How bad is Indiana?
Bad, surely, and the Hoosiers are about to post numerous L's (North Carolina, Connecticut, Notre Dame, Kentucky), but....
Wonk was heartened by one aspect of what was the otherwise disheartening spectacle of a 64-60 struggle at home over Western Illinois Saturday night. (Links here and here.) What was encouraging was the complete and utter invisibility of Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Bracey Wright. Wonk feels strongly that Indiana's improvement lies squarely in the direction of diversifying its offense beyond watching Wright miss shots (see 2003-04). Saturday night, for all its ugliness, that is pretty much what happened. Wright was ineffective on the offensive end (1-of-7 shooting) but Indiana did not force the ball to him anyway like they did so many times last year. This represents improvement Wonk thought may not occur until the post-Wright era.
Additional encouraging note: Wonk was impressed by Patrick Ewing, Jr. So much so that Wonk herewith introduces the Ewing Paradox: if this guy were with a better team, he'd be starting. Ewing has no post moves, no driving ability, and no shooting touch so, on an offensively-challenged team, coach Mike Davis can't afford to start him. (Actually Ewing did start Saturday night but only because Sean Kline was in Davis's doghouse for some reason.) But Ewing's defense and tenacious rebounding would be highly valued on any team with plenty of scoring but little inside presence (say, Illinois or Michigan State). If the Hoosiers get some scoring from some non-Wright types, watch for a sudden and deserved upswing in the ink and pixels devoted to Ewing.
Wonk reprints old posts only when he's right
Wisconsin lost at Pepperdine late Saturday night, 75-61. (Links here and here.) How did the Badgers come to post their first L? Here's what Wonk said last Monday, referring to Wisconsin's easy win at home over Penn:
What will be interesting to watch this year is whether or not Bo Ryan is able to continue his winning formula or will have to find a new one. Ryan's teams have relied on rock-steady guard play, specifically the ability to not turn the ball over....And so Wonk notes with interest that even against the hopelessly overmatched Quakers, the Badgers turned the ball over a fairly un-Ryan-like 16 times....
Two seasons ago Wonk started a running tally of conference games in which Wisconsin was outrebounded and outshot and still won handily. They did it by not turning the ball over and by shooting many more free-throw attempts than their opponent. Keep an eye on this.
Now note the box score from the Pepperdine game here: 22 turnovers. Vintage Bo Ryan teams go about three games before turning the ball over that many times.
Two concerns for Ryan's team moving forward this year: valuing the ball and outside shooting. On Saturday night they still outrebounded the Waves and attempted nine more free throws. But while shooting basically the same number of three's (Wisconsin shot 17, Pepperdine shot 18), the Badgers yielded 15 fewer points from the effort, going just 3-of-17 while the Waves drained 8-of-18.
Note to members of the Orange Crush, Izzone, Grateful Red, Gene Pool, and the 117 socially-challenged undergrads who attend Penn State home games. The Pepperdine home crowd, all 3,024 of them, chanted "Chris Rock" every time Kammron Taylor touched the ball, referencing an alleged resemblance between the Badgers' sophomore guard and the once-funny SNL performer who (Wonk knows this will come as a surprise) has gone on to do a string of undistinguished movies. Wisconsin lost. Can't argue with results.
In yesterday's less Wonk-ish venues....
Ohio State cruised against Tennessee-Chattanooga Saturday night, 84-67. Link here. St. John's Arena is a wonderful old venue (and the Buckeyes' current home, Value City Arena, is fully blessed by every fault its very name foreshadows) but when one's old home floor has since been lined and painted for volleyball it's just too visually disconcerting to come home again. Verily, Wonk sayeth to the Buckeyes: stay in your cold and sterile new home.
Penn State defeated Sacred Heart Saturday, 69-61. Link here. Wonk knows it's only November, but: Penn State's Aaron Johnson is third in the nation in rebounds, averaging 14.8 a game.
Minnesota lost to Oklahoma, 67-54, in the third-place game of the Great Alaska Shootout Saturday night. Links here and here.
Michigan's Daniel Horton was the subject of a Sunday feature-length/multiple-header think-piece in the Ann Arbor News, the kind of ponderous spelunking-in-print usually reserved for the Mideast peace process or Cher. Verily, Wonk says: when you're so inscrutable you attract headlines like "The Education of Daniel Horton," you deserve your spot on Wonk's All-Head-Case team.
Announcing the "Leopold von Ranke Rolls in His Grave Tonight" Award
Presented in honor of notably dubious statements about past events.
The winner is: Brandon McKnight, Purdue's senior guard. Asked about his team's challenging schedule (one that includes upcoming games against North Carolina State, Memphis, and Oklahoma), McKnight offered the following: "Michigan State had this type of schedule last year and they went pretty far in the NCAA tournament."
Define "far." Wonk and McKnight have different notions about this vexing term, apparently, for the Spartans lost in the first round last year to a scrappy Nevada squad, 72-66.
Brandon, Wonk salutes your knack for defining success down! You'll go far!
Runner-up: Jeff Washburn of the Lafayette Journal and Courier, who printed McKnight's adventurous historiography without comment.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Colorado defeated Northwestern in Boulder yesterday, 66-57. Links here and here.
Purdue kicks off the ACC/Big Ten Challenge tonight in Raleigh, NC, against North Carolina State. Game previews here, here, and here.
He's-a-work-in-progress piece on Michigan's sophomore guard Dion Harris here.
(EXCLUSIVE Wonk warning to journalism students: you major in journalism, you graduate, you get a job with the Detroit Free Press, and your assignments editor tells you to write a he's-a-work-in-progress piece on Dion Harris. Wonk thinks the above sentence should be printed in the college catalogue, next to Journ. 101.)
What the heck happened to Wisconsin? Get your day-after head-scratching here.
Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline says Illinois has the best guards in the country (but that still won't be enough some nights) here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:25 AM
Saturday, November 27, 2004
BONUS Wonk weekend edition!
In other words, don't get used to this.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
In Wednesday's edition of this blog's recurring "pastry shelf" feature, Wonk profiled Michigan State's next opponent, the Colonels of Nicholls State University. Thinking he had diligently researched this institution of higher education located in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Wonk, it turns out, had barely scratched the surface....
Wonk,
Having lived in New Orleans for a while I must say that Thibodaux is a nice little town. In fact one of my best friends is a Nicholls graduate and is an adjunct teaching there at present. That being said basketball is not on the top of anyone's list of priorities since one has to pass too many drive-in daquiri stands to get to the court.
--Dave N.
Wonk's readers are so well-informed they know of the location and prevalence of drive-in daquiri stands in Thibodaux, Louisiana! Thanks, Dave!
Speaking of Nicholls State....
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
At noon eastern the Colonels of Nicholls State will offer themselves as a five-fold human sacrifice on the court of the Breslin Center at Michigan State. Slaughter preview here.
Alabama defeated Minnesota 78-72 last night in the semifinals of the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage, Alaska. (Link here.) What is up with this, Wonk readers ask? The consensus 10th-best team in the Big Ten hanging with the top-25 Crimson Tide? Further elucidation coming tonight, perhaps, when the Gophers take on Oklahoma in the third-place game.
Providence beat Michigan 72-63 in the third-place game of the Preseason NIT last night. Links here and here.
Illinois faces Gonzaga today in the opening game of the fifth annual John Wooden Tradition in Indianapolis. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Want a link to the Zags' hometown (Spokane) paper? Too bad! It's a paid site! Wonk warning: Wonk's ire at such oddities is building into a big post for a slow day.
Purdue plays Cincinnati in today's second game at the John Wooden Tradition in Indianapolis. Links here, here, and here.
Penn State hosts Sacred Heart today. Link here.
Indiana hosts Western Illinois tonight. Link here.
Ohio State hosts Tennessee-Chattanooga tonight in the first game played by the Buckeyes in their former home, St. John's Arena, since 1998. Link here.
Wisconsin wins Wonk's first-ever You Are Highly Intelligent! Award, traveling to Malibu for a game against Pepperdine. (Links here, here, and here.) Wonk has seen his share of college campuses but believes Pepperdine's is the single most beautiful one he has yet encountered. ¶ 9:36 AM
In other words, don't get used to this.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
In Wednesday's edition of this blog's recurring "pastry shelf" feature, Wonk profiled Michigan State's next opponent, the Colonels of Nicholls State University. Thinking he had diligently researched this institution of higher education located in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Wonk, it turns out, had barely scratched the surface....
Wonk,
Having lived in New Orleans for a while I must say that Thibodaux is a nice little town. In fact one of my best friends is a Nicholls graduate and is an adjunct teaching there at present. That being said basketball is not on the top of anyone's list of priorities since one has to pass too many drive-in daquiri stands to get to the court.
--Dave N.
Wonk's readers are so well-informed they know of the location and prevalence of drive-in daquiri stands in Thibodaux, Louisiana! Thanks, Dave!
Speaking of Nicholls State....
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
At noon eastern the Colonels of Nicholls State will offer themselves as a five-fold human sacrifice on the court of the Breslin Center at Michigan State. Slaughter preview here.
Alabama defeated Minnesota 78-72 last night in the semifinals of the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage, Alaska. (Link here.) What is up with this, Wonk readers ask? The consensus 10th-best team in the Big Ten hanging with the top-25 Crimson Tide? Further elucidation coming tonight, perhaps, when the Gophers take on Oklahoma in the third-place game.
Providence beat Michigan 72-63 in the third-place game of the Preseason NIT last night. Links here and here.
Illinois faces Gonzaga today in the opening game of the fifth annual John Wooden Tradition in Indianapolis. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Want a link to the Zags' hometown (Spokane) paper? Too bad! It's a paid site! Wonk warning: Wonk's ire at such oddities is building into a big post for a slow day.
Purdue plays Cincinnati in today's second game at the John Wooden Tradition in Indianapolis. Links here, here, and here.
Penn State hosts Sacred Heart today. Link here.
Indiana hosts Western Illinois tonight. Link here.
Ohio State hosts Tennessee-Chattanooga tonight in the first game played by the Buckeyes in their former home, St. John's Arena, since 1998. Link here.
Wisconsin wins Wonk's first-ever You Are Highly Intelligent! Award, traveling to Malibu for a game against Pepperdine. (Links here, here, and here.) Wonk has seen his share of college campuses but believes Pepperdine's is the single most beautiful one he has yet encountered. ¶ 9:36 AM
Friday, November 26, 2004
A venerable Thanksgiving tradition: Wonk's day-old recap in 300 words or less ....
Wednesday night....
North Carolina overwhelms overmatched Iowa, 106-92, in the championship game of the Maui Invitational. (Links here, here, and here. ESPN's Jay Bilas raves about the Hawkeyes here.) Jeff Horner puts up another sweet line (granted, one skewed by garbage-time second-half looks): 18 points on 6-of-8 shooting (6-of-7 on his three's) and nine boards. If Horner continues anything remotely approximating his play in Maui, watch out....
With All-Wonk selection Lester Abram nursing a sore shoulder and watching from the bench, Michigan loses in overtime to Arizona, 61-60, in the semifinals of the Preseason NIT in New York. (Links here, here, and here.) The Wolverines play a surprising amount of zone in the first half--and give up 15 offensive boards to the Wildcats. Michigan big man Courtney Sims has potential but right now his footwork--on both ends of the floor--is nonexistent. (Mobile bigs like Paul Davis and James Augustine should fare well against Sims.)...
Creighton defeats Ohio State in overtime, 65-63, in the finals of the Guardians Classic in Kansas City. (Links here and here.) The Buckeyes attempt only seven free throws all night--and make only two.
Illinois dispatches Oakland, 85-54. (Links here, here, and here.) Wonk thought the Grizzlies might at least hang in there for a half. Wonk thought wrong. Looking like the 2002 Sacramento Kings, Wonk's beloved Illini put on a ball-movement clinic: 31 field goals on 26 assists. Yikes....
Minnesota beats Furman, 84-69, in a quarterfinal game at the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage, Alaska. (Link here.) The Gophers never trail and shoot .566 from the field and .583 (7-of-12) on their three's against the apparently jet-lagged Paladins. Minnesota faces Alabama in a semifinal Friday night. Game preview here. ¶ 3:42 PM
Wednesday night....
North Carolina overwhelms overmatched Iowa, 106-92, in the championship game of the Maui Invitational. (Links here, here, and here. ESPN's Jay Bilas raves about the Hawkeyes here.) Jeff Horner puts up another sweet line (granted, one skewed by garbage-time second-half looks): 18 points on 6-of-8 shooting (6-of-7 on his three's) and nine boards. If Horner continues anything remotely approximating his play in Maui, watch out....
With All-Wonk selection Lester Abram nursing a sore shoulder and watching from the bench, Michigan loses in overtime to Arizona, 61-60, in the semifinals of the Preseason NIT in New York. (Links here, here, and here.) The Wolverines play a surprising amount of zone in the first half--and give up 15 offensive boards to the Wildcats. Michigan big man Courtney Sims has potential but right now his footwork--on both ends of the floor--is nonexistent. (Mobile bigs like Paul Davis and James Augustine should fare well against Sims.)...
Creighton defeats Ohio State in overtime, 65-63, in the finals of the Guardians Classic in Kansas City. (Links here and here.) The Buckeyes attempt only seven free throws all night--and make only two.
Illinois dispatches Oakland, 85-54. (Links here, here, and here.) Wonk thought the Grizzlies might at least hang in there for a half. Wonk thought wrong. Looking like the 2002 Sacramento Kings, Wonk's beloved Illini put on a ball-movement clinic: 31 field goals on 26 assists. Yikes....
Minnesota beats Furman, 84-69, in a quarterfinal game at the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage, Alaska. (Link here.) The Gophers never trail and shoot .566 from the field and .583 (7-of-12) on their three's against the apparently jet-lagged Paladins. Minnesota faces Alabama in a semifinal Friday night. Game preview here. ¶ 3:42 PM
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
"Holiday blogging": contradiction in terms?
Wonk answers in the strong affirmative. He will therefore spend his Thanksgiving holiday with his family and away from the keyboard. See you soon. ¶ 1:00 PM
Wonk answers in the strong affirmative. He will therefore spend his Thanksgiving holiday with his family and away from the keyboard. See you soon. ¶ 1:00 PM
Wonk's streak of consecutive posts without a pun on Paige Laurie's name continues!
Yesterday the University of Missouri announced that the Laurie family has relinquished the naming rights to the $75 million Paige Sports Arena, which was named after their 22-year-old daughter and Wal-Mart heiress, Paige Laurie. The decision comes less than a week after the ABC News program "20/20" broadcast a story alleging that Paige Laurie paid a roommate in excess of $20,000 over a period of three years to write term papers for her at the University of Southern California.
The university's board of curators will now meet to decide on a new name for the arena. In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Big Ten Wonk, Tom Atkins, president-elect of the board of curators, outlined the criteria the board will employ in making their selection.
"Well, obviously we're looking for someone who is at once shallow, callow, and utterly unaccomplished, yet with a maddening presumption of privilege," Atkins said.
"But I think the most important single factor, and I emphasized this to the board, is that the person we select should, like Paige Laurie, have no connection whatsoever to the University of Missouri."
Atkins dismissed as "premature" widespread speculation that the facility will now be named the "Paris Hilton Sports Arena."
"Actually, we were thinking about calling it the 'Brad Pitt Sports Arena' but then someone did some checking and found that he actually attended the University of Missouri."
Other possible candidates were similarly ruled out by Atkins, including the "Ashlee Simpson Sports Arena" ("She just has too much gravitas"), the "George W. Bush circa 1972 Sports Arena" ("Hey, the guy went on to have a life--with Paige at least we knew she wasn't going to be president"), and the "Quin Snyder Sports Arena" ("Malfeasance assumes a kind of forethought for which our kind of candidate is simply not equipped").
Brushing aside suggestions from extraneous parties such as University of Missouri alumni and students, Atkins instead left the decision to the readers of a blog about basketball in a different conference. Send in those suggestions today!
Bad decision, good result--how Hegelian!
In non-Paige-Laurie news, the Iowa Hawkeyes, continuing their dogged one-team project to reverse the damage already done to the conference's RPI by Penn State, defeated Texas last night 82-80 in the semifinals of the Maui Invitational. The Hawkeyes will face North Carolina tonight in the tournament's championship game. (Outstanding post on the game over at the Hawkeye Hoops blog. Other links here and here.)
With 44 seconds left in the game and Iowa trailing 78-76, Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Pierre Pierce found himself with the ball some 25 feet from the rim, so far from the tin he was practically in Steve Alford's lap.
You could see it. You could feel it. He wanted to shoot it soooooo bad. But Pierce hesitated. Wonk thought to himself, "Man, last year he would have shot that. Maybe he is maturing."
Pierce was understanding, it seemed, that any other option was a better choice. After all, teammate Jeff Horner was having an absolutely unconscious 6-of-10-on-his-three's kind of night on his way to 27 points. And Pierce himself has made something of a specialty out of driving to the rim. True, he often turns the ball over on such drives but here was a situation that plainly called for taking the ball to the tin. Yes, Wonk thought, Pierce has finally become a true leader, one who....
Oops. Never mind. He shot it. If the Longhorns rebound the miss, the free-throw contest begins now and the Hawkeyes have been clanging their FT's all night. Terrible decision.
Except it went in. Pierce is the hero, rightly so. Such is the genius of happenstance. Yet, verily, your intrepid blogger waggles a finger and intones this Wonk warning: the iron law of statistics decrees that this decision will harm you about three times for every one time it helps you.
(In non-finger-waggling news, Pierce twisted his ankle on the game's final play and his status for tonight is in doubt.)
A correction and a reiteration
Yesterday Wonk posted an item on Indiana's brutal schedule and neglected to note that the Hoosiers will play Western Illinois this Saturday. Wonk regrets any inconvenience this omission has caused and assures his readers that the hard-working staff on Wonk's Schedule Desk (Jayson Blair, Mary Mapes, Dan Rather, et. al.) have been severely reprimanded and sent home without their usual Thanksgiving "For Those about to Wonk" oven mitts.
Properly pentitent, Wonk now wishes to gloat and direct attention to a still earlier item suggesting that it may be a long year for the Hoosiers. Nothing Wonk saw last night in the last ten minutes of Indiana's 56-52 victory at home against Indiana State swayed my opinion. (Links here and here.)
This was an ugly game. Both teams put up air balls in the final four minutes. Even on a good shooting night (8-for-13), Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Bracey Wright jacked up some notably ill-conceived shots. The rest of the team looks young and scared spitless because they are. And the Hoosier defense was vaporous, 52 points for the opposing team notwithstanding. No wonder coach Mike Davis has done his best to define success down for this year's team, saying, "We might be one of the elite programs in the state."
Pastry shelf
Michigan State will host Nicholls State this Saturday in the Spartans' latest attempt to get as far away as possible from last season's masochistic approach to scheduling. Located in Thibodaux, Louisiana, NSU "serves a diverse base of traditional and non-traditional students, as well as professional, social and cultural populations."
No doubt NSU's diverse base of traditional and non-traditional students (as well as professional, social and cultural populations) were all wondering what the Thibodaux was going on when their basketball coach pulled a Ricky Williams and resigned suddenly last month, coming off a 6-21 season.
On the plus side, Nicholls State claims one of the coolest names Wonk has ever seen bestowed upon a student services entity: "La Maison du Bayou." Unimaginative and coldly bureaucratic northerners like Wonk, by notable contrast, tend to call this function something strikingly more dweeby like, say, "Student Housing." Lyrical and Faulknerian romantics of NSU Student Services, Wonk salutes you!
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Ohio State defeated Houston 78-61 last night in Kansas City in the semifinals of the Guardians Classic. Links here and here. The Buckeyes face Creighton tonight in the finals.
Purdue defeated Detroit Mercy 66-56 in West Lafayette last night. Links here, here, and here.
Wisconsin defeated UC-Santa Barbara by the notably nonlopsided score of 72-61 in Madison last night. Links here, here, and here.
Michigan State defeated Wisconsin-Green Bay by the notably lopsided score of 104-46 in East Lansing last night. Links here, here, and here. More from what is rapidly becoming the most intensively reported beat in the Big Ten, the Neitzel beat, here.
Michigan plays Arizona tonight in New York in the semifinals of the Preseason NIT. All-Wonk Team selection Lester Abram is suffering from a sore shoulder and his status is questionable. Game previews here, here, and here.
Illinois hosts Oakland University tonight, a game Wonk believes could be more interesting than the garden-variety November rout. Game previews here, here, and here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
Yesterday Wonk posted this link to an article in the Bloomington (IL) Pantagraph on the father of new Ohio State coach Thad Matta. Since noting last week that Matta is a native of Hoopeston, IL (where the sports teams are indelibly known as the Cornjerkers), Wonk has watched with paternal and no doubt wholly misplaced pride as this bit of trivia has subsequently appeared in other blogs and in even in the MSM (Mainstream Media). Still, even Wonk must draw the line on new Matta information somewhere.
WARNING: Shocking confession ahead. Which is to say Wonk may not have read all the way to the bottom of an article he's linked to on Thad Matta's father (apologies to the Dad of Thad). But Wonk's readers do! In detailing the Thad mania and alleging the sudden prevalence of Cornjerker paraphernalia in Ohio, the article's author, it seems, may have embellished the truth. At least according to this email from Ohio....
Quickly becoming a daily read. Really, you're good at this and I enjoy the read.
But Big Ten Wonk Fan (BTWF) is confused. See, we read the Pantagraph report on Matta's dad and we're stunned to learn that not only is there a market for Jerker apparel, but such fine quality clothing items exist outside of the greater Hoopeston-East Lynn metropolitan area. Don't get me wrong, I trust the Graph (fine paper, the sports desk once wooed BTWF's father to no avail), but this knowledge begs for cosmic realignment.
--Jason H.
Wonk's readers are so well-informed they number among themselves enough Illinois natives now living in Ohio to catch the MSM in their nefarious deceptions! Thanks, Jason!
MSM, you are on notice! Wonk's readers form a veritable army of fact-checkers! Monitors of truth! Tribunes of accuracy! Over-users of exclamation points! ¶ 7:32 AM
Yesterday the University of Missouri announced that the Laurie family has relinquished the naming rights to the $75 million Paige Sports Arena, which was named after their 22-year-old daughter and Wal-Mart heiress, Paige Laurie. The decision comes less than a week after the ABC News program "20/20" broadcast a story alleging that Paige Laurie paid a roommate in excess of $20,000 over a period of three years to write term papers for her at the University of Southern California.
The university's board of curators will now meet to decide on a new name for the arena. In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Big Ten Wonk, Tom Atkins, president-elect of the board of curators, outlined the criteria the board will employ in making their selection.
"Well, obviously we're looking for someone who is at once shallow, callow, and utterly unaccomplished, yet with a maddening presumption of privilege," Atkins said.
"But I think the most important single factor, and I emphasized this to the board, is that the person we select should, like Paige Laurie, have no connection whatsoever to the University of Missouri."
Atkins dismissed as "premature" widespread speculation that the facility will now be named the "Paris Hilton Sports Arena."
"Actually, we were thinking about calling it the 'Brad Pitt Sports Arena' but then someone did some checking and found that he actually attended the University of Missouri."
Other possible candidates were similarly ruled out by Atkins, including the "Ashlee Simpson Sports Arena" ("She just has too much gravitas"), the "George W. Bush circa 1972 Sports Arena" ("Hey, the guy went on to have a life--with Paige at least we knew she wasn't going to be president"), and the "Quin Snyder Sports Arena" ("Malfeasance assumes a kind of forethought for which our kind of candidate is simply not equipped").
Brushing aside suggestions from extraneous parties such as University of Missouri alumni and students, Atkins instead left the decision to the readers of a blog about basketball in a different conference. Send in those suggestions today!
Bad decision, good result--how Hegelian!
In non-Paige-Laurie news, the Iowa Hawkeyes, continuing their dogged one-team project to reverse the damage already done to the conference's RPI by Penn State, defeated Texas last night 82-80 in the semifinals of the Maui Invitational. The Hawkeyes will face North Carolina tonight in the tournament's championship game. (Outstanding post on the game over at the Hawkeye Hoops blog. Other links here and here.)
With 44 seconds left in the game and Iowa trailing 78-76, Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Pierre Pierce found himself with the ball some 25 feet from the rim, so far from the tin he was practically in Steve Alford's lap.
You could see it. You could feel it. He wanted to shoot it soooooo bad. But Pierce hesitated. Wonk thought to himself, "Man, last year he would have shot that. Maybe he is maturing."
Pierce was understanding, it seemed, that any other option was a better choice. After all, teammate Jeff Horner was having an absolutely unconscious 6-of-10-on-his-three's kind of night on his way to 27 points. And Pierce himself has made something of a specialty out of driving to the rim. True, he often turns the ball over on such drives but here was a situation that plainly called for taking the ball to the tin. Yes, Wonk thought, Pierce has finally become a true leader, one who....
Oops. Never mind. He shot it. If the Longhorns rebound the miss, the free-throw contest begins now and the Hawkeyes have been clanging their FT's all night. Terrible decision.
Except it went in. Pierce is the hero, rightly so. Such is the genius of happenstance. Yet, verily, your intrepid blogger waggles a finger and intones this Wonk warning: the iron law of statistics decrees that this decision will harm you about three times for every one time it helps you.
(In non-finger-waggling news, Pierce twisted his ankle on the game's final play and his status for tonight is in doubt.)
A correction and a reiteration
Yesterday Wonk posted an item on Indiana's brutal schedule and neglected to note that the Hoosiers will play Western Illinois this Saturday. Wonk regrets any inconvenience this omission has caused and assures his readers that the hard-working staff on Wonk's Schedule Desk (Jayson Blair, Mary Mapes, Dan Rather, et. al.) have been severely reprimanded and sent home without their usual Thanksgiving "For Those about to Wonk" oven mitts.
Properly pentitent, Wonk now wishes to gloat and direct attention to a still earlier item suggesting that it may be a long year for the Hoosiers. Nothing Wonk saw last night in the last ten minutes of Indiana's 56-52 victory at home against Indiana State swayed my opinion. (Links here and here.)
This was an ugly game. Both teams put up air balls in the final four minutes. Even on a good shooting night (8-for-13), Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Bracey Wright jacked up some notably ill-conceived shots. The rest of the team looks young and scared spitless because they are. And the Hoosier defense was vaporous, 52 points for the opposing team notwithstanding. No wonder coach Mike Davis has done his best to define success down for this year's team, saying, "We might be one of the elite programs in the state."
Pastry shelf
Michigan State will host Nicholls State this Saturday in the Spartans' latest attempt to get as far away as possible from last season's masochistic approach to scheduling. Located in Thibodaux, Louisiana, NSU "serves a diverse base of traditional and non-traditional students, as well as professional, social and cultural populations."
No doubt NSU's diverse base of traditional and non-traditional students (as well as professional, social and cultural populations) were all wondering what the Thibodaux was going on when their basketball coach pulled a Ricky Williams and resigned suddenly last month, coming off a 6-21 season.
On the plus side, Nicholls State claims one of the coolest names Wonk has ever seen bestowed upon a student services entity: "La Maison du Bayou." Unimaginative and coldly bureaucratic northerners like Wonk, by notable contrast, tend to call this function something strikingly more dweeby like, say, "Student Housing." Lyrical and Faulknerian romantics of NSU Student Services, Wonk salutes you!
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Ohio State defeated Houston 78-61 last night in Kansas City in the semifinals of the Guardians Classic. Links here and here. The Buckeyes face Creighton tonight in the finals.
Purdue defeated Detroit Mercy 66-56 in West Lafayette last night. Links here, here, and here.
Wisconsin defeated UC-Santa Barbara by the notably nonlopsided score of 72-61 in Madison last night. Links here, here, and here.
Michigan State defeated Wisconsin-Green Bay by the notably lopsided score of 104-46 in East Lansing last night. Links here, here, and here. More from what is rapidly becoming the most intensively reported beat in the Big Ten, the Neitzel beat, here.
Michigan plays Arizona tonight in New York in the semifinals of the Preseason NIT. All-Wonk Team selection Lester Abram is suffering from a sore shoulder and his status is questionable. Game previews here, here, and here.
Illinois hosts Oakland University tonight, a game Wonk believes could be more interesting than the garden-variety November rout. Game previews here, here, and here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
Yesterday Wonk posted this link to an article in the Bloomington (IL) Pantagraph on the father of new Ohio State coach Thad Matta. Since noting last week that Matta is a native of Hoopeston, IL (where the sports teams are indelibly known as the Cornjerkers), Wonk has watched with paternal and no doubt wholly misplaced pride as this bit of trivia has subsequently appeared in other blogs and in even in the MSM (Mainstream Media). Still, even Wonk must draw the line on new Matta information somewhere.
WARNING: Shocking confession ahead. Which is to say Wonk may not have read all the way to the bottom of an article he's linked to on Thad Matta's father (apologies to the Dad of Thad). But Wonk's readers do! In detailing the Thad mania and alleging the sudden prevalence of Cornjerker paraphernalia in Ohio, the article's author, it seems, may have embellished the truth. At least according to this email from Ohio....
Quickly becoming a daily read. Really, you're good at this and I enjoy the read.
But Big Ten Wonk Fan (BTWF) is confused. See, we read the Pantagraph report on Matta's dad and we're stunned to learn that not only is there a market for Jerker apparel, but such fine quality clothing items exist outside of the greater Hoopeston-East Lynn metropolitan area. Don't get me wrong, I trust the Graph (fine paper, the sports desk once wooed BTWF's father to no avail), but this knowledge begs for cosmic realignment.
--Jason H.
Wonk's readers are so well-informed they number among themselves enough Illinois natives now living in Ohio to catch the MSM in their nefarious deceptions! Thanks, Jason!
MSM, you are on notice! Wonk's readers form a veritable army of fact-checkers! Monitors of truth! Tribunes of accuracy! Over-users of exclamation points! ¶ 7:32 AM
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Thank you, Hawkeyes, but....
A couple weeks ago a certain college basketball writer whom Wonk respects came out with his season preview and pointedly ranked the Big Ten as inferior to Conference USA. So Wonk confesses to feeling a certain satisfaction at seeing Iowa, the consensus fifth-best team in the Big Ten, hand a 76-71 defeat to Louisville, the consensus best team in the C-USA, last night in the Maui Invitational on ESPN. (Links here, here, here, here, and here.)
That being said--and as strange as the following will sound when speaking of a Rick Pitino-coached top-15-ranked team--Louisville looked absolutely atrocious last night, at least in the part of the game that Wonk saw. I joined the action with about 18 minutes left in the second half and the Cardinals up by four. From that point on Pitino's team exhibited no ability whatsoever to read and react to what the Hawkeyes were doing. There was zero movement without the ball. Iowa's Erek Hansen was a shot-blocking beast, yes, but his task was made immeasurably simpler by Cardinals dribbling toward him on 30-foot straight-line drives. If there had been cutters moving without the ball Hansen's zealous pursuit of the block could have been used against the Hawkeyes.
Other random Wonk impressions: Jeff Horner was unconscious....Greg Brunner and Brian Cardinal share a barber....Not a good first impression of Adam Haluska: lost his man on D and allowed a three, then fired up a miss from 24 feet after one pass, then committed a charging foul.... Iowa will face Texas in a semifinal game tonight.
(BONUS Maui note: Man, did Carolina look beastly or what? Pity BYU.)
Polls in November are inherently futile. So here's one....
In the AP poll released yesterday, Wake Forest replaces Kansas as #1, Illinois moves up a notch to 5, and Michigan State edges into the top ten:
1. Wake Forest
2. Kansas
3. Georgia Tech
4. Syracuse
5. Illinois
6. Oklahoma State
7. Connecticut
8. Kentucky
9. Duke
10. Michigan State
Wisconsin moved from 21 to 20. Michigan is still lurking two or three spots outside the top 25.
Pastry shelf
Purdue hosts Detroit Mercy tonight, mindful, no doubt, that UDM claims the #25-ranked dental hygiene program in the nation.... WARNING: over-used cliche du jour ahead. Or could this be a trap game for the Boilermakers? UDM does have a home win over Southwest Missouri State to its credit already this season. And, Carl Landry aside, Purdue showed few signs of being able to play effectively in David Teague's absence while losing at Miami of Ohio Friday night.
Two reasons why Illinois should take its next game seriously
The Illini host Oakland University and the Grizzlies are not your standard November pastry: 1) Oakland's 6'7" tweener, Rawle Marshall, may play in the NBA someday soon; and 2) the Grizzlies only lost by 11 at Xavier Friday night.
True, Miami of Ohio also went to Xavier last night and they won by 12. Safe to say Xavier's not what they were last year. Still, Wonk's point is that Oakland is no Florida A&M.
(BONUS Miami of Ohio note: thus far this season the RedHawks are shooting .667 on their three's.)
(BONUS BONUS Miami of Ohio note: "RedHawks" is not a typo but it should be. Wonk has learned from sources close to the situation that University officials plan to donate the proceeds from this year's capital campaign toward endowing a space.)
Mike Davis: pastry-free
The reason Wonk’s crack staff of analysts on the “pastry shelf” desk have not yet trained their beacon on some lightweight on the Indiana schedule is quite simple: there are no lightweights on the Indiana schedule. Leading up to the Big Ten opener on January 5, the Hoosiers will play: Indiana State, North Carolina, Connecticut, Notre Dame, Kentucky, Missouri, Charlotte, Ball State, Oral Roberts and Furman.
It's true that Indiana State and Ball State are coming off down years (9-19 and 14-15, respectively). But Wonk has heard of them, they are in real conferences (Missouri Valley and the MAC, respectively), and they are and have for some time been Division I. And every other team on that schedule won at least 17 games last year. You are nothing if not brave, Coach Davis. Here’s hoping your RPI makes up for the L's.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk investigative report: Shame of a Nation, Day 341
The diligent professionals at the Big Ten press offices continue to maintain a link on the conference's main men's basketball page to this story: "Q&A with Kris Humphries." This was originally posted, mind you, on December 16, 2003.
Meticulous can't-be-rushed antiquarians of the Big Ten's web content group, Wonk salutes you! In fact, Wonk thinks you've got a pretty sweet gig if your boss looks to you for new content only every year or so. Watch for still more fast-breaking stories coming soon from the tireless scriveners at Big Ten HQ:
"Young, Thin and Mellow: Gene Keady Hired as New Purdue Coach"
"Buckeyes Win it All: Credit Given to Calm and Quiet Role Player, Bobby Knight"
"Traditionalists Cry Foul: Should Nets Replace Peach Baskets?"
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Ohio State will play Houston tonight in Kansas City in the semifinals of the Guardians Classic. Game preview at-a-glance here. (Link here for a briskly efficient column on the Tom Penders-coached Cougars.) Meanwhile, Buckeye coach Thad Matta's father (known to friends as Dad of Thad) proves profile-worthy in his own right here.
As noted above, Indiana will play Indiana State tonight in Bloomington. Game preview here.
As noted above, Purdue hosts Detroit Mercy tonight. Game previews here and here.
Michigan State hosts Wisconsin-Green Bay tonight. Game previews here and here. Tom Izzo says he's been having some heart-to-heart's with freshman Drew Neitzel. He should. Neitzel's line in the Florida A&M romp: 15 minutes, no points, four assists, six turnovers, fouled out.
Wisconsin hosts UC-Santa Barbara tonight. Game previews here and here. Profile of Brian Butch here. DeAaron Williams, a freshman from Peoria, IL, has decided to redshirt this season.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:12 AM
A couple weeks ago a certain college basketball writer whom Wonk respects came out with his season preview and pointedly ranked the Big Ten as inferior to Conference USA. So Wonk confesses to feeling a certain satisfaction at seeing Iowa, the consensus fifth-best team in the Big Ten, hand a 76-71 defeat to Louisville, the consensus best team in the C-USA, last night in the Maui Invitational on ESPN. (Links here, here, here, here, and here.)
That being said--and as strange as the following will sound when speaking of a Rick Pitino-coached top-15-ranked team--Louisville looked absolutely atrocious last night, at least in the part of the game that Wonk saw. I joined the action with about 18 minutes left in the second half and the Cardinals up by four. From that point on Pitino's team exhibited no ability whatsoever to read and react to what the Hawkeyes were doing. There was zero movement without the ball. Iowa's Erek Hansen was a shot-blocking beast, yes, but his task was made immeasurably simpler by Cardinals dribbling toward him on 30-foot straight-line drives. If there had been cutters moving without the ball Hansen's zealous pursuit of the block could have been used against the Hawkeyes.
Other random Wonk impressions: Jeff Horner was unconscious....Greg Brunner and Brian Cardinal share a barber....Not a good first impression of Adam Haluska: lost his man on D and allowed a three, then fired up a miss from 24 feet after one pass, then committed a charging foul.... Iowa will face Texas in a semifinal game tonight.
(BONUS Maui note: Man, did Carolina look beastly or what? Pity BYU.)
Polls in November are inherently futile. So here's one....
In the AP poll released yesterday, Wake Forest replaces Kansas as #1, Illinois moves up a notch to 5, and Michigan State edges into the top ten:
1. Wake Forest
2. Kansas
3. Georgia Tech
4. Syracuse
5. Illinois
6. Oklahoma State
7. Connecticut
8. Kentucky
9. Duke
10. Michigan State
Wisconsin moved from 21 to 20. Michigan is still lurking two or three spots outside the top 25.
Pastry shelf
Purdue hosts Detroit Mercy tonight, mindful, no doubt, that UDM claims the #25-ranked dental hygiene program in the nation.... WARNING: over-used cliche du jour ahead. Or could this be a trap game for the Boilermakers? UDM does have a home win over Southwest Missouri State to its credit already this season. And, Carl Landry aside, Purdue showed few signs of being able to play effectively in David Teague's absence while losing at Miami of Ohio Friday night.
Two reasons why Illinois should take its next game seriously
The Illini host Oakland University and the Grizzlies are not your standard November pastry: 1) Oakland's 6'7" tweener, Rawle Marshall, may play in the NBA someday soon; and 2) the Grizzlies only lost by 11 at Xavier Friday night.
True, Miami of Ohio also went to Xavier last night and they won by 12. Safe to say Xavier's not what they were last year. Still, Wonk's point is that Oakland is no Florida A&M.
(BONUS Miami of Ohio note: thus far this season the RedHawks are shooting .667 on their three's.)
(BONUS BONUS Miami of Ohio note: "RedHawks" is not a typo but it should be. Wonk has learned from sources close to the situation that University officials plan to donate the proceeds from this year's capital campaign toward endowing a space.)
Mike Davis: pastry-free
The reason Wonk’s crack staff of analysts on the “pastry shelf” desk have not yet trained their beacon on some lightweight on the Indiana schedule is quite simple: there are no lightweights on the Indiana schedule. Leading up to the Big Ten opener on January 5, the Hoosiers will play: Indiana State, North Carolina, Connecticut, Notre Dame, Kentucky, Missouri, Charlotte, Ball State, Oral Roberts and Furman.
It's true that Indiana State and Ball State are coming off down years (9-19 and 14-15, respectively). But Wonk has heard of them, they are in real conferences (Missouri Valley and the MAC, respectively), and they are and have for some time been Division I. And every other team on that schedule won at least 17 games last year. You are nothing if not brave, Coach Davis. Here’s hoping your RPI makes up for the L's.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk investigative report: Shame of a Nation, Day 341
The diligent professionals at the Big Ten press offices continue to maintain a link on the conference's main men's basketball page to this story: "Q&A with Kris Humphries." This was originally posted, mind you, on December 16, 2003.
Meticulous can't-be-rushed antiquarians of the Big Ten's web content group, Wonk salutes you! In fact, Wonk thinks you've got a pretty sweet gig if your boss looks to you for new content only every year or so. Watch for still more fast-breaking stories coming soon from the tireless scriveners at Big Ten HQ:
"Young, Thin and Mellow: Gene Keady Hired as New Purdue Coach"
"Buckeyes Win it All: Credit Given to Calm and Quiet Role Player, Bobby Knight"
"Traditionalists Cry Foul: Should Nets Replace Peach Baskets?"
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Ohio State will play Houston tonight in Kansas City in the semifinals of the Guardians Classic. Game preview at-a-glance here. (Link here for a briskly efficient column on the Tom Penders-coached Cougars.) Meanwhile, Buckeye coach Thad Matta's father (known to friends as Dad of Thad) proves profile-worthy in his own right here.
As noted above, Indiana will play Indiana State tonight in Bloomington. Game preview here.
As noted above, Purdue hosts Detroit Mercy tonight. Game previews here and here.
Michigan State hosts Wisconsin-Green Bay tonight. Game previews here and here. Tom Izzo says he's been having some heart-to-heart's with freshman Drew Neitzel. He should. Neitzel's line in the Florida A&M romp: 15 minutes, no points, four assists, six turnovers, fouled out.
Wisconsin hosts UC-Santa Barbara tonight. Game previews here and here. Profile of Brian Butch here. DeAaron Williams, a freshman from Peoria, IL, has decided to redshirt this season.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:12 AM
Monday, November 22, 2004
Maybe Wonk was right after all
On Saturday Wonk interrupted a blog-free weekend to point out that All-Wonk selection T.J. Parker of Northwestern had a nice game in the Wildcats' season opener Friday night, scoring 18 points and draining 3-of-6 three's. Maybe, Wonk opined on Saturday, Parker can shoot the rock after all.
Or maybe not. Saturday night Northwestern fell to New Mexico State, 64-61, in day 2 of play at the Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, Alaska. Parker put up a 4-for-12, including 0-for-4 on his three's. It's all right here in this box score, which, believe Wonk, was not easy to track down.
One of the oddest sights in college hoops is the team that keeps shooting nothing but three's--even when they're not hitting them. Take for instance Northwestern Saturday night: 31 attempts from outside the arc (no, that's not a typo) and only eight makes.
Update: Northwestern lost to Utah State in last night's game, 64-57. Parker's line: 16 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including 2-of-4 on his three's.
Winning ugly, part 1
Wisconsin defeated Penn in the Badgers' regular-season opener Saturday night, 77-44 (links here and here). The Quakers shot just .319 from the field.
What will be interesting to watch this year is whether or not Bo Ryan is able to continue his winning formula or will have to find a new one. Ryan's teams have relied on rock-steady guard play, specifically the ability to not turn the ball over. But this year's guards are all either on leave of absence (Boo Wade), new to the program (Penn State transfer Sharif Chambliss), new to playing time (Kammron Taylor), or new to college ball (Michael Flowers). And so Wonk notes with interest that even against the hopelessly overmatched Quakers, the Badgers turned the ball over a fairly un-Ryan-like 16 times. They also allowed an un-Ryan-like 17 free-throw attempts to their opponent.
Granted, it didn't matter one whit because Wisconsin beat Penn unconscious on the boards, 40-22. But it's interesting, nonetheless. Two seasons ago Wonk started a running tally of conference games in which Wisconsin was outrebounded and outshot and still won handily. They did it by not turning the ball over and by shooting many more free-throw attempts than their opponent. Keep an eye on this.
Winning ugly, part 2
Continuing their Giving Big Ten Teams Self-Esteem Tour, Florida A&M lost to Illinois yesterday, 91-60, after having been similarly pounded at Michigan State Friday night, 104-72. Dee Brown put up a sweet line: 8-for-8 from the field, 4-of-4 on three's, 20 points. (Links here, here, here, and here.) And yet Brown also coughed up a Pierre Pierce-esque six turnovers to the scrappy Rattlers, leading, if that's the correct term, an Illinois team that totaled 21 turnovers. Wonk hopes (trusts) this is just early season sloppiness. (With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot: "The ball it is said/Never goes where it's sent/When the skies of November turn gloomy.")
Gopher fans, look fast: Minnesota is undefeated
Minnesota held off a feisty Lipscomb squad yesterday, 83-66, in the regular season opener for the Gophers (links here and here). Meanwhile, Tom Powers, columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, beat Wonk to the punch yesterday and said what I was going to say here one of these posts: it's absurd to call this a make-or-break year for Minnesota coach Dan Monson. Everyone knows the Gophers will struggle this year. There's no talent in the program right now. The knock on Monson, conversely, has been that he can't win even when he does have talent. To judge Monson by the results he shows this year is as good as saying he's a lame duck.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Iowa will play Louisville today in the opening round of the Maui Invitational. Game previews here, here, and here. Cardinals coach Rick Pitino likes to deploy a five-man "red team" that comes off the bench as a unit and runs an attacking pressing style. Pitino has been known to call this group the "Kamikaze Kids" but tactfully refrained from doing so at the press conference in Hawaii yesterday.
Dick Vitale lauds Purdue coach Gene Keady here.
Wisconsin's Brian Butch and Michigan's Dion Harris merit mention as two of ten sophomores to watch nationwide in Seth Davis's latest post at si.com here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
¶ 7:26 AM
On Saturday Wonk interrupted a blog-free weekend to point out that All-Wonk selection T.J. Parker of Northwestern had a nice game in the Wildcats' season opener Friday night, scoring 18 points and draining 3-of-6 three's. Maybe, Wonk opined on Saturday, Parker can shoot the rock after all.
Or maybe not. Saturday night Northwestern fell to New Mexico State, 64-61, in day 2 of play at the Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, Alaska. Parker put up a 4-for-12, including 0-for-4 on his three's. It's all right here in this box score, which, believe Wonk, was not easy to track down.
One of the oddest sights in college hoops is the team that keeps shooting nothing but three's--even when they're not hitting them. Take for instance Northwestern Saturday night: 31 attempts from outside the arc (no, that's not a typo) and only eight makes.
Update: Northwestern lost to Utah State in last night's game, 64-57. Parker's line: 16 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including 2-of-4 on his three's.
Winning ugly, part 1
Wisconsin defeated Penn in the Badgers' regular-season opener Saturday night, 77-44 (links here and here). The Quakers shot just .319 from the field.
What will be interesting to watch this year is whether or not Bo Ryan is able to continue his winning formula or will have to find a new one. Ryan's teams have relied on rock-steady guard play, specifically the ability to not turn the ball over. But this year's guards are all either on leave of absence (Boo Wade), new to the program (Penn State transfer Sharif Chambliss), new to playing time (Kammron Taylor), or new to college ball (Michael Flowers). And so Wonk notes with interest that even against the hopelessly overmatched Quakers, the Badgers turned the ball over a fairly un-Ryan-like 16 times. They also allowed an un-Ryan-like 17 free-throw attempts to their opponent.
Granted, it didn't matter one whit because Wisconsin beat Penn unconscious on the boards, 40-22. But it's interesting, nonetheless. Two seasons ago Wonk started a running tally of conference games in which Wisconsin was outrebounded and outshot and still won handily. They did it by not turning the ball over and by shooting many more free-throw attempts than their opponent. Keep an eye on this.
Winning ugly, part 2
Continuing their Giving Big Ten Teams Self-Esteem Tour, Florida A&M lost to Illinois yesterday, 91-60, after having been similarly pounded at Michigan State Friday night, 104-72. Dee Brown put up a sweet line: 8-for-8 from the field, 4-of-4 on three's, 20 points. (Links here, here, here, and here.) And yet Brown also coughed up a Pierre Pierce-esque six turnovers to the scrappy Rattlers, leading, if that's the correct term, an Illinois team that totaled 21 turnovers. Wonk hopes (trusts) this is just early season sloppiness. (With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot: "The ball it is said/Never goes where it's sent/When the skies of November turn gloomy.")
Gopher fans, look fast: Minnesota is undefeated
Minnesota held off a feisty Lipscomb squad yesterday, 83-66, in the regular season opener for the Gophers (links here and here). Meanwhile, Tom Powers, columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, beat Wonk to the punch yesterday and said what I was going to say here one of these posts: it's absurd to call this a make-or-break year for Minnesota coach Dan Monson. Everyone knows the Gophers will struggle this year. There's no talent in the program right now. The knock on Monson, conversely, has been that he can't win even when he does have talent. To judge Monson by the results he shows this year is as good as saying he's a lame duck.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Iowa will play Louisville today in the opening round of the Maui Invitational. Game previews here, here, and here. Cardinals coach Rick Pitino likes to deploy a five-man "red team" that comes off the bench as a unit and runs an attacking pressing style. Pitino has been known to call this group the "Kamikaze Kids" but tactfully refrained from doing so at the press conference in Hawaii yesterday.
Dick Vitale lauds Purdue coach Gene Keady here.
Wisconsin's Brian Butch and Michigan's Dion Harris merit mention as two of ten sophomores to watch nationwide in Seth Davis's latest post at si.com here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
¶ 7:26 AM
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Friday night sights
Wonk interrupts his blog-free weekend to do some micro-posting and call your attention to some numbers....
Purdue's juco transfer Carl Landry had a monster line last night, putting up 25 points and 16 boards. Didn't matter. Host Miami of Ohio shot .700 on their three's (not a typo) en route to an 81-71 win. Links here and here.
Wonk was right! There was a game scheduled last night between Michigan and Sacramento State, even if little advance notice was given in the understandably Michigan-Ohio-State-football-focused Wolverine press. Michigan held Sac State to just 49 points for the game and 18 points in the second half. Final score: 70-49. Links here and here.
Iowa sank 20 of 20 free throws in their win over Western Illinois. Links here and here. Additionally and as always, excellent blogger's-eye-view to be found over at Hawkeye Hoops.
Displaying a slackness on defense that will need to change quickly, Illinois allowed the scrappy Delaware State Hornets to shoot .571 from the field. Fortunately, the Illini shot .625 and won 87-67. Links here, here and here.
Being the first annual Pick on an Innocuous State Day in the Big Ten, Ohio State decided to match the Illini's fearless scheduling and defeated Delaware last night, 74-49. Buckeye guard Tony Stockman went a notable 10-of-13 from the field, including 6-of-9 on his three's, in notching 26 points. Link here.
Wonk selected Northwestern's T.J. Parker for his All-Wonk Team even though, Wonk said then, Parker has no outside shot. Wonk may have to change his tune but not his selection. Parker went 3-of-6 on his three's last night, including the game-winner, in scoring 18 points to lead the Wildcats over Portland 56-53 in the first round of the Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, Alaska. Links here and here.
Kelvin Torbert picked up where he left off last year (little noticed hot-shooter), hitting at an .800 clip from the field and .750 on his three's. Michigan State won 104-72 over Florida A&M. Links here and here.
It's only November but Penn State's already been a one-team wrecking crew when it comes to the conference's RPI, posting losses to Illinois State and South Carolina State. The Nittany Lions at least avoided further damage last night, defeating in-state rival Lehigh, 73-64. Link here. ¶ 5:57 PM
Wonk interrupts his blog-free weekend to do some micro-posting and call your attention to some numbers....
Purdue's juco transfer Carl Landry had a monster line last night, putting up 25 points and 16 boards. Didn't matter. Host Miami of Ohio shot .700 on their three's (not a typo) en route to an 81-71 win. Links here and here.
Wonk was right! There was a game scheduled last night between Michigan and Sacramento State, even if little advance notice was given in the understandably Michigan-Ohio-State-football-focused Wolverine press. Michigan held Sac State to just 49 points for the game and 18 points in the second half. Final score: 70-49. Links here and here.
Iowa sank 20 of 20 free throws in their win over Western Illinois. Links here and here. Additionally and as always, excellent blogger's-eye-view to be found over at Hawkeye Hoops.
Displaying a slackness on defense that will need to change quickly, Illinois allowed the scrappy Delaware State Hornets to shoot .571 from the field. Fortunately, the Illini shot .625 and won 87-67. Links here, here and here.
Being the first annual Pick on an Innocuous State Day in the Big Ten, Ohio State decided to match the Illini's fearless scheduling and defeated Delaware last night, 74-49. Buckeye guard Tony Stockman went a notable 10-of-13 from the field, including 6-of-9 on his three's, in notching 26 points. Link here.
Wonk selected Northwestern's T.J. Parker for his All-Wonk Team even though, Wonk said then, Parker has no outside shot. Wonk may have to change his tune but not his selection. Parker went 3-of-6 on his three's last night, including the game-winner, in scoring 18 points to lead the Wildcats over Portland 56-53 in the first round of the Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, Alaska. Links here and here.
Kelvin Torbert picked up where he left off last year (little noticed hot-shooter), hitting at an .800 clip from the field and .750 on his three's. Michigan State won 104-72 over Florida A&M. Links here and here.
It's only November but Penn State's already been a one-team wrecking crew when it comes to the conference's RPI, posting losses to Illinois State and South Carolina State. The Nittany Lions at least avoided further damage last night, defeating in-state rival Lehigh, 73-64. Link here. ¶ 5:57 PM
Friday, November 19, 2004
A pox on you, schedule makers!
Two gripes about the conference schedule: whom and when.
Whom. Wonk’s beloved Illinois does not get a game against Michigan State in Champaign this year. For Spartan fans this is divine retribution for 2001, when an absurdly talented Michigan State team featuring Jason Richardson and Zach Randolph did not get a game against Illinois in East Lansing and thus had to split the Big Ten title with the Illini.
Fair enough. What comes around goes around. But Wonk would like to offer a memo to the schedule makers for next season and all subsequent seasons: Let us assume that the preseason favorites any given year are Teams A, B and C. Can’t we at least see to it that those three play each other home-and-home? Can nothing be done about this?
Nor does Michigan come to Champaign, a fact that may or may not have a bearing on the Big Ten title, depending on whether or not the Wolverines arrive this season as a force with which one must reckon.
When. Illinois and Wisconsin will be done with their home-and-home February 12. The final week of the season, conversely, Wisconsin hosts likely middle-feeders Purdue and Indiana while Illinois hosts Purdue and visits Ohio State. Wouldn't it be more interesting to have Wisconsin and Illinois play the final week? (As indeed they did in 2003, resulting in a classic down-to-the-wire game in Madison that was, in effect, the conference championship game.) Can nothing be done about this?
Big Ten to coaches: you win
In one stretch two years ago, Michigan State played three in a row and six out of nine on the road, much to the vocal displeasure of Tom Izzo. In one stretch last year, Iowa played three in a row and six out of eight on the road, much to the vocal displeasure of Steve Alford.
Their complaints were heard. This year no team plays more than two games in a row on the road.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Michigan State opens its regular season at home tonight against Florida A&M. Game previews here and here. Detroit Free Press columnist Michael Rosenberg pens an appreciation of coach Tom Izzo here.
Illinois opens its regular season at home tonight against Delaware State. Bruce Weber-led game previews here and here. Luther Head-led game preview here. Deron Williams-led game preview here. (Williams has matured tremendously, says this link, since a talk with coach Bruce Weber in the spring. Wow, just a couple hundred days ago! What if we all continuously matured tremendously at this rate? Not just when being interviewed by overburdened Big Ten beat writers looking for a writes-itself lead but always? Wonk would be the maturity equivalent of the oldest living Confederate widow by now.) Meanwhile, discussions continue, as they have for some time, as to the feasibility of replacing the Illini's home arena, Assembly Hall (link).
Purdue opens its regular season on the road tonight against Miami of Ohio. Game previews here, here, and here. Injured Boilermaker guard David Teague is aiming to return to action by mid-December (link).
Iowa opens its regular season at home tonight against Western Illinois. Game preview here. After the game the Hawkeyes will jet off to Hawaii, where they will open play in the Maui Invitational against Louisville on Monday.
Wisconsin's freshman center Greg Stiemsma is expected to miss six to eight weeks due to a foot injury suffered last week (link). Meantime, Boo Wade, who took a leave of absence from the Badgers for unspecified personal reasons in October, hopes to return to action by mid-December. This according to his father (link).
Wonk's handy schedule swears that Michigan is going to play a game at home tonight against Sacramento State. But this particular tilt isn't exactly attracting a lot of ink in Wolverine land. Seems there's a football game tomorrow between Michigan and somebody or other....
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
You have earned a bookmark on my Thunderbird browser. Keep up the good work.
And keep up the Steve Alford digs, too. Alford may be the only person on earth to have all of the negative traits of Bobby Knight without having any of the positive ones--like the ability to get players to play effective half-court basketball.
Which brings me to my next point--is Big Ten basketball, where most coaches produce teams that play a grinding half-court oriented, every possession counts type of ball, in danger of getting to be too boring to watch, even for basketball wonks?
--Mark M.
Mark, Wonk will take your paragraphs one at a time....
1) How perceptive you are!
2) Wonk doesn't know that he's been digging at Alford, necessarily. I'm just genuinely puzzled--on and off the court. On the court, I am puzzled at how a coach who was brought to Iowa City on the strength of an incredible defensive performance by his 1999 Sweet 16 Southwest Missouri State team could have put such nondescript teams on the floor in his first five seasons with the Hawkeyes. Off the court, I am puzzled by the creepy interview Alford had last month with an Iowa beat writer. More troubling than any quote from the interview itself (though there were plenty of odd ones) was the manifest "Look at me! I'm just plain folk!" agenda behind the sit-down. Remember Wonk's First Law of Media Relations: When someone so plainly seeks out and so eagerly sits down for an "I'm just plain folk" interview, they are not just plain folk.
3) Speaking only for Wonk, styles of play, within reason, are less important than results. Michigan State and Wisconsin both played grinding half-court oriented ball in 2000 and it resulted in such an ugly national semifinal game that the NCAA made hand-checking a point of emphasis going into the following season. But for Wonk, watching that year's Spartans was a pleasure. Watching that year's Badgers was an ordeal. Michigan State was brimming with talented players that Tom Izzo had somehow taught to play defense. Wonk likes that. Wisconsin was limited by their lack of talent and played a similar style because it was the only conceivable way they could compete. Wonk understands that but finds it less engrossing. ¶ 4:09 AM
Two gripes about the conference schedule: whom and when.
Whom. Wonk’s beloved Illinois does not get a game against Michigan State in Champaign this year. For Spartan fans this is divine retribution for 2001, when an absurdly talented Michigan State team featuring Jason Richardson and Zach Randolph did not get a game against Illinois in East Lansing and thus had to split the Big Ten title with the Illini.
Fair enough. What comes around goes around. But Wonk would like to offer a memo to the schedule makers for next season and all subsequent seasons: Let us assume that the preseason favorites any given year are Teams A, B and C. Can’t we at least see to it that those three play each other home-and-home? Can nothing be done about this?
Nor does Michigan come to Champaign, a fact that may or may not have a bearing on the Big Ten title, depending on whether or not the Wolverines arrive this season as a force with which one must reckon.
When. Illinois and Wisconsin will be done with their home-and-home February 12. The final week of the season, conversely, Wisconsin hosts likely middle-feeders Purdue and Indiana while Illinois hosts Purdue and visits Ohio State. Wouldn't it be more interesting to have Wisconsin and Illinois play the final week? (As indeed they did in 2003, resulting in a classic down-to-the-wire game in Madison that was, in effect, the conference championship game.) Can nothing be done about this?
Big Ten to coaches: you win
In one stretch two years ago, Michigan State played three in a row and six out of nine on the road, much to the vocal displeasure of Tom Izzo. In one stretch last year, Iowa played three in a row and six out of eight on the road, much to the vocal displeasure of Steve Alford.
Their complaints were heard. This year no team plays more than two games in a row on the road.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Michigan State opens its regular season at home tonight against Florida A&M. Game previews here and here. Detroit Free Press columnist Michael Rosenberg pens an appreciation of coach Tom Izzo here.
Illinois opens its regular season at home tonight against Delaware State. Bruce Weber-led game previews here and here. Luther Head-led game preview here. Deron Williams-led game preview here. (Williams has matured tremendously, says this link, since a talk with coach Bruce Weber in the spring. Wow, just a couple hundred days ago! What if we all continuously matured tremendously at this rate? Not just when being interviewed by overburdened Big Ten beat writers looking for a writes-itself lead but always? Wonk would be the maturity equivalent of the oldest living Confederate widow by now.) Meanwhile, discussions continue, as they have for some time, as to the feasibility of replacing the Illini's home arena, Assembly Hall (link).
Purdue opens its regular season on the road tonight against Miami of Ohio. Game previews here, here, and here. Injured Boilermaker guard David Teague is aiming to return to action by mid-December (link).
Iowa opens its regular season at home tonight against Western Illinois. Game preview here. After the game the Hawkeyes will jet off to Hawaii, where they will open play in the Maui Invitational against Louisville on Monday.
Wisconsin's freshman center Greg Stiemsma is expected to miss six to eight weeks due to a foot injury suffered last week (link). Meantime, Boo Wade, who took a leave of absence from the Badgers for unspecified personal reasons in October, hopes to return to action by mid-December. This according to his father (link).
Wonk's handy schedule swears that Michigan is going to play a game at home tonight against Sacramento State. But this particular tilt isn't exactly attracting a lot of ink in Wolverine land. Seems there's a football game tomorrow between Michigan and somebody or other....
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
You have earned a bookmark on my Thunderbird browser. Keep up the good work.
And keep up the Steve Alford digs, too. Alford may be the only person on earth to have all of the negative traits of Bobby Knight without having any of the positive ones--like the ability to get players to play effective half-court basketball.
Which brings me to my next point--is Big Ten basketball, where most coaches produce teams that play a grinding half-court oriented, every possession counts type of ball, in danger of getting to be too boring to watch, even for basketball wonks?
--Mark M.
Mark, Wonk will take your paragraphs one at a time....
1) How perceptive you are!
2) Wonk doesn't know that he's been digging at Alford, necessarily. I'm just genuinely puzzled--on and off the court. On the court, I am puzzled at how a coach who was brought to Iowa City on the strength of an incredible defensive performance by his 1999 Sweet 16 Southwest Missouri State team could have put such nondescript teams on the floor in his first five seasons with the Hawkeyes. Off the court, I am puzzled by the creepy interview Alford had last month with an Iowa beat writer. More troubling than any quote from the interview itself (though there were plenty of odd ones) was the manifest "Look at me! I'm just plain folk!" agenda behind the sit-down. Remember Wonk's First Law of Media Relations: When someone so plainly seeks out and so eagerly sits down for an "I'm just plain folk" interview, they are not just plain folk.
3) Speaking only for Wonk, styles of play, within reason, are less important than results. Michigan State and Wisconsin both played grinding half-court oriented ball in 2000 and it resulted in such an ugly national semifinal game that the NCAA made hand-checking a point of emphasis going into the following season. But for Wonk, watching that year's Spartans was a pleasure. Watching that year's Badgers was an ordeal. Michigan State was brimming with talented players that Tom Izzo had somehow taught to play defense. Wonk likes that. Wisconsin was limited by their lack of talent and played a similar style because it was the only conceivable way they could compete. Wonk understands that but finds it less engrossing. ¶ 4:09 AM
Thursday, November 18, 2004
EXCLUSIVE Wonk bold prediction: Iowa will either be good or bad
Wonk has posted on this once before but it simply cannot be emphasized enough: the Hawkeyes have a sweet schedule this year. Steve Alford’s team faces only two nothing’s-certain-but-this-is-close losses: at Illinois and at Wisconsin (between them the Illini and the Badgers have lost a total of two home games the past two seasons). That leaves six other road games in conference. Half of those are against bottom-feeders Ohio State, Minnesota and Penn State. And Iowa could go 1-2 if not better at Northwestern, Purdue, and Michigan. So even if they drop one at home, the Hawkeyes are looking at 11-5 or 10-6, more than enough for a ticket to the big dance.
But with Alford's teams there is always, it seems, the possibility of the wheels coming off completely, as they did in 2001-02, when a team led by Luke Recker and Reggie Evans and picked by many to win the Big Ten instead imploded and finished 5-11 in the conference. In the Alford era, transfers out of Iowa City have been many and fans in seats in Carver-Hawkeye Arena have been few. (Wonk loved this classic piece of damning-with-faint-praise from espn.com’s Andy Katz a couple years ago: “[Marcellus Sommerville is] the seventh player to leave Alford's program since he took over in March of 1999. His departure leaves Iowa with 10 scholarship players, including three freshmen. The Hawkeyes haven't lost a star player yet, and until they do under Alford, it's premature to raise the red flag on these defections.”) Even talking amongst themselves in their own chat rooms, Hawkeye fans can’t convince themselves that getting to the tournament’s a sure thing.
And if they're not convinced why should Wonk be?
The NIT win streak continues
Michigan defeated Colorado in Ann Arbor last night 69-60 in second-round Preseason NIT action. The Wolverines will travel to New York for a Wendesday night game against the winner of tonight's Arizona-Wright State matchup. Links here, here, and here.
Pastry shelf
Illinois opens its season tomorrow night against Delaware State. Located in Dover, Delaware State is so much more than just the most disturbing life-sized Hornet mascot you've ever seen. DSU also supports a lively "on-line" "chat" community! Link here to go to "The Buzz," DSU's main page for chat forums and perhaps the most inappropriately named site Wonk has ever seen. The kindly and paternal staff at DSU have set up no fewer than 13 different chat rooms--that so far have attracted a grand total of 20 posts. Wonk can't imagine why. The topics chosen by site administrators just beg for posting: "Freshman want to know" (sic, I think, unless they're doing a reggae thing), "Sophomores takin' it slow," "Juniors goin' with the flow," "Seniors ready to go," and "Alumni bringin' in the dough." Wonk is feelin' kinda low!
Proof we are all quite old
The lead headline on the main page at si.com today makes a nice and appropriate Lemonheads reference. When I was a kid, part of the attraction of Sports Illustrated, conversely, was that its writers (gruff scary types like Frank DeFord) clearly had no idea about and no interest in such frivolous things as music.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Jeff Shelman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune weighs in with over 2,000 words on why it's make-or-break time for Minnesota coach Dan Monson here. Shelman's conference preview/picks here. Gopher previews here and here.
The apparently indefatigable Shelman also moonlights for espn.com and profiles Ohio State coach Thad Matta here.
Referring to Michigan State's incoming freshman point guard, the Detroit Free Press asks: "Is Neitzel a Spartans savior?" (The Lansing State Journal certainly thinks so. Wonk, on the other hand doubts it.) Also today: Free Press conference preview here. (Surprise pick: Northwestern at fourth.)
Very good Q&A with Spartans coach Tom Izzo here, on the occasion of his tenth season. Said it before and will say it again: Wonk likes Izzo.
The Indianapolis Star is out with its college basketball preview today. Included: a tribute to outgoing Purdue coach Gene Keady (including, as far as Wonk knows, an unprecedented offer to install "Keady's Swan Song" wallpaper on your computer); a polite but unmistakably don't-hold-you-breath preview of Purdue; a cautiously optimistic preview of Indiana; a polite but unmistakably arm's-length profile of Wonk All-Head-Case selection Bracey Wright; and "power rankings" for conference teams (Illinois, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Michigan are 1-4).
Profile of Iowa's Adam Haluska here. Combo profile of and injury update on Haluska here.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber continues to recuperate nicely from Monday's appendectomy. Links here, here, and here.
Latest example of Wonk's new favorite visual cliche--a picture of Penn State playing in front of empty seats--here.
Link here for excerpts from the print edition's college basketball preview at si.com.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:30 AM
Wonk has posted on this once before but it simply cannot be emphasized enough: the Hawkeyes have a sweet schedule this year. Steve Alford’s team faces only two nothing’s-certain-but-this-is-close losses: at Illinois and at Wisconsin (between them the Illini and the Badgers have lost a total of two home games the past two seasons). That leaves six other road games in conference. Half of those are against bottom-feeders Ohio State, Minnesota and Penn State. And Iowa could go 1-2 if not better at Northwestern, Purdue, and Michigan. So even if they drop one at home, the Hawkeyes are looking at 11-5 or 10-6, more than enough for a ticket to the big dance.
But with Alford's teams there is always, it seems, the possibility of the wheels coming off completely, as they did in 2001-02, when a team led by Luke Recker and Reggie Evans and picked by many to win the Big Ten instead imploded and finished 5-11 in the conference. In the Alford era, transfers out of Iowa City have been many and fans in seats in Carver-Hawkeye Arena have been few. (Wonk loved this classic piece of damning-with-faint-praise from espn.com’s Andy Katz a couple years ago: “[Marcellus Sommerville is] the seventh player to leave Alford's program since he took over in March of 1999. His departure leaves Iowa with 10 scholarship players, including three freshmen. The Hawkeyes haven't lost a star player yet, and until they do under Alford, it's premature to raise the red flag on these defections.”) Even talking amongst themselves in their own chat rooms, Hawkeye fans can’t convince themselves that getting to the tournament’s a sure thing.
And if they're not convinced why should Wonk be?
The NIT win streak continues
Michigan defeated Colorado in Ann Arbor last night 69-60 in second-round Preseason NIT action. The Wolverines will travel to New York for a Wendesday night game against the winner of tonight's Arizona-Wright State matchup. Links here, here, and here.
Pastry shelf
Illinois opens its season tomorrow night against Delaware State. Located in Dover, Delaware State is so much more than just the most disturbing life-sized Hornet mascot you've ever seen. DSU also supports a lively "on-line" "chat" community! Link here to go to "The Buzz," DSU's main page for chat forums and perhaps the most inappropriately named site Wonk has ever seen. The kindly and paternal staff at DSU have set up no fewer than 13 different chat rooms--that so far have attracted a grand total of 20 posts. Wonk can't imagine why. The topics chosen by site administrators just beg for posting: "Freshman want to know" (sic, I think, unless they're doing a reggae thing), "Sophomores takin' it slow," "Juniors goin' with the flow," "Seniors ready to go," and "Alumni bringin' in the dough." Wonk is feelin' kinda low!
Proof we are all quite old
The lead headline on the main page at si.com today makes a nice and appropriate Lemonheads reference. When I was a kid, part of the attraction of Sports Illustrated, conversely, was that its writers (gruff scary types like Frank DeFord) clearly had no idea about and no interest in such frivolous things as music.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Jeff Shelman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune weighs in with over 2,000 words on why it's make-or-break time for Minnesota coach Dan Monson here. Shelman's conference preview/picks here. Gopher previews here and here.
The apparently indefatigable Shelman also moonlights for espn.com and profiles Ohio State coach Thad Matta here.
Referring to Michigan State's incoming freshman point guard, the Detroit Free Press asks: "Is Neitzel a Spartans savior?" (The Lansing State Journal certainly thinks so. Wonk, on the other hand doubts it.) Also today: Free Press conference preview here. (Surprise pick: Northwestern at fourth.)
Very good Q&A with Spartans coach Tom Izzo here, on the occasion of his tenth season. Said it before and will say it again: Wonk likes Izzo.
The Indianapolis Star is out with its college basketball preview today. Included: a tribute to outgoing Purdue coach Gene Keady (including, as far as Wonk knows, an unprecedented offer to install "Keady's Swan Song" wallpaper on your computer); a polite but unmistakably don't-hold-you-breath preview of Purdue; a cautiously optimistic preview of Indiana; a polite but unmistakably arm's-length profile of Wonk All-Head-Case selection Bracey Wright; and "power rankings" for conference teams (Illinois, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Michigan are 1-4).
Profile of Iowa's Adam Haluska here. Combo profile of and injury update on Haluska here.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber continues to recuperate nicely from Monday's appendectomy. Links here, here, and here.
Latest example of Wonk's new favorite visual cliche--a picture of Penn State playing in front of empty seats--here.
Link here for excerpts from the print edition's college basketball preview at si.com.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:30 AM
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Jeez, lighten up, Flanders
Published last month but worth circling back for: during a Q&A between the Des Moines Register and Steve Alford, the Iowa coach was asked about lessons learned from his father, a longtime high school coach:
Q: Did you and your father share pregame superstitions?
A: We’re a family of faith, not superstitions.
Can someone please clue Wonk in?
Same interview:
Q: Will you comment on rumors about a rift in your marriage that have been rampant on the Internet for the past four months?
A: Questioning what we do X and O, questioning why we get this recruit versus passing on that recruit - that's open game; that's part of being a fan. Just flat-out spreading lies about a family is another thing.
[snip]
Q: How did the rumors begin?
A: I’ve heard hot tub rumors, and doggone it, I wish Tanya and I would get in the hot tub more. I haven't done a very good job this summer of keeping the hot tub running. It's crazy, the rumors. I feel more for Tanya because she's such an incredible coach's wife. We're a big family of faith. It's biblically sound that when you get closer to your destiny, and you get closer to really fulfilling what your purpose in life is all about, that's when the enemy is at its strongest. That's what we're going through. If we weren't close to fulfilling our purpose of why we're in the coaching profession, then the enemy wouldn't be so close.
The rumors were started by people with bad marriages, (who) are unhappy with their jobs - all the things that are not spiritually based, all the things Tanya and I have. We're spiritually based, we're happy with our job, we're happy with our family. When you're not - you try to tear other people down. We know we're getting close to our purpose and our destiny because the enemy's at full force, and that's what's exciting.
What in the Tom Davis is he talking about? Hot tub rumors? And “the enemy’s at full force”? What’re you, David Koresh?
Undefeated in the Matta era
Ohio State held Robert Morris to .322 shooting from the field, including 3-of-17 on their three's, en route to an 82-50 victory last night in the second round of the Guardians Classic. The 2-0 Buckeyes will play in the Classic's semifinals in Kansas City on Tuesday night against...um, I don't know who they'll be playing, actually. If you can tell from this bracket please let me know.
Which begs the question: just how bad is Western Carolina?
Coming off a 78-63 victory over Western Carolina the previous evening, Penn State lost to South Carolina State last night, 63-43, in the fifth-place game (you read that correctly--there was a fifth-place game) of the Black Coaches Association Classic in Milwaukee. Link here.
Dan Rather Award for late arrival at a story
Awarded in the event of blinding-flashes-of-the-obvious ("Gee, maybe these aren't authentic documents!") being phrased as precious nuggets of hard-earned sagacity.
Today's winner is Seth Davis of si.com, who offers up the following: "I realize Dee Brown is a fabulous player who gets most of the hype for Illinois, but Deron Williams is the guy who makes that team go." Wonk salutes Seth's dogged efforts to bring too-long-delayed attention and acclaim to a player who was selected by both the media and the conference coaches as the Big Ten's Preseason Player of the Year.
BONUS non-hoops note
Even coming off Saturday's devastating loss to Michigan State, Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez continues to eerily resemble Clemenza from "The Godfather," a resemblance Wonk has noted before. Wonk warning: Don't take a ride to get mattresses with Alvarez.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dale Hoffman surveys this year's Wisconsin roster and concludes the "words that best describe this team are 'numerous' and 'large.'" (Wonk thinks Hoffman means "deep," unless Bo Ryan has resorted to dressing 32 players.) The Badgers defeated Division III Wisconsin-Platteville 78-44 in an exhibition last night; links here, here, and here.
Lansing State Journal columnist Todd Schulz says "the pieces are in place for a return to power" for Michigan State. "Problem is," Schulz continues, "we thought the same thing about virtually the same cast at this time a year ago."
Illinois coach Bruce Weber is recuperating nicely from an appendectomy performed on Monday; update here. Luther-Head-led Illinois season at-a-glance preview from the Chicago Sun-Times here.
Purdue season preview here.
Miscellaneous Michigan notes here.
Indiana fans get a new round of answers to their questions in Terry Hutchens' excellent Q&A forum in the Indianapolis Star here.
Latest example of what is quickly becoming a visual cliche: a picture of a Penn State basketball game occurring in front of many empty seats.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:23 AM
Published last month but worth circling back for: during a Q&A between the Des Moines Register and Steve Alford, the Iowa coach was asked about lessons learned from his father, a longtime high school coach:
Q: Did you and your father share pregame superstitions?
A: We’re a family of faith, not superstitions.
Can someone please clue Wonk in?
Same interview:
Q: Will you comment on rumors about a rift in your marriage that have been rampant on the Internet for the past four months?
A: Questioning what we do X and O, questioning why we get this recruit versus passing on that recruit - that's open game; that's part of being a fan. Just flat-out spreading lies about a family is another thing.
[snip]
Q: How did the rumors begin?
A: I’ve heard hot tub rumors, and doggone it, I wish Tanya and I would get in the hot tub more. I haven't done a very good job this summer of keeping the hot tub running. It's crazy, the rumors. I feel more for Tanya because she's such an incredible coach's wife. We're a big family of faith. It's biblically sound that when you get closer to your destiny, and you get closer to really fulfilling what your purpose in life is all about, that's when the enemy is at its strongest. That's what we're going through. If we weren't close to fulfilling our purpose of why we're in the coaching profession, then the enemy wouldn't be so close.
The rumors were started by people with bad marriages, (who) are unhappy with their jobs - all the things that are not spiritually based, all the things Tanya and I have. We're spiritually based, we're happy with our job, we're happy with our family. When you're not - you try to tear other people down. We know we're getting close to our purpose and our destiny because the enemy's at full force, and that's what's exciting.
What in the Tom Davis is he talking about? Hot tub rumors? And “the enemy’s at full force”? What’re you, David Koresh?
Undefeated in the Matta era
Ohio State held Robert Morris to .322 shooting from the field, including 3-of-17 on their three's, en route to an 82-50 victory last night in the second round of the Guardians Classic. The 2-0 Buckeyes will play in the Classic's semifinals in Kansas City on Tuesday night against...um, I don't know who they'll be playing, actually. If you can tell from this bracket please let me know.
Which begs the question: just how bad is Western Carolina?
Coming off a 78-63 victory over Western Carolina the previous evening, Penn State lost to South Carolina State last night, 63-43, in the fifth-place game (you read that correctly--there was a fifth-place game) of the Black Coaches Association Classic in Milwaukee. Link here.
Dan Rather Award for late arrival at a story
Awarded in the event of blinding-flashes-of-the-obvious ("Gee, maybe these aren't authentic documents!") being phrased as precious nuggets of hard-earned sagacity.
Today's winner is Seth Davis of si.com, who offers up the following: "I realize Dee Brown is a fabulous player who gets most of the hype for Illinois, but Deron Williams is the guy who makes that team go." Wonk salutes Seth's dogged efforts to bring too-long-delayed attention and acclaim to a player who was selected by both the media and the conference coaches as the Big Ten's Preseason Player of the Year.
BONUS non-hoops note
Even coming off Saturday's devastating loss to Michigan State, Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez continues to eerily resemble Clemenza from "The Godfather," a resemblance Wonk has noted before. Wonk warning: Don't take a ride to get mattresses with Alvarez.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dale Hoffman surveys this year's Wisconsin roster and concludes the "words that best describe this team are 'numerous' and 'large.'" (Wonk thinks Hoffman means "deep," unless Bo Ryan has resorted to dressing 32 players.) The Badgers defeated Division III Wisconsin-Platteville 78-44 in an exhibition last night; links here, here, and here.
Lansing State Journal columnist Todd Schulz says "the pieces are in place for a return to power" for Michigan State. "Problem is," Schulz continues, "we thought the same thing about virtually the same cast at this time a year ago."
Illinois coach Bruce Weber is recuperating nicely from an appendectomy performed on Monday; update here. Luther-Head-led Illinois season at-a-glance preview from the Chicago Sun-Times here.
Purdue season preview here.
Miscellaneous Michigan notes here.
Indiana fans get a new round of answers to their questions in Terry Hutchens' excellent Q&A forum in the Indianapolis Star here.
Latest example of what is quickly becoming a visual cliche: a picture of a Penn State basketball game occurring in front of many empty seats.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:23 AM
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Wonk directs your attention to a rare instance where he was right
Ohio State opened its regular season last night with a 74-53 victory over Towson, making coach Thad Matta 1-0 for his career with the Buckeyes. Preseason All-Wonk Team selection Terence Dials scored 23 points on 8-of-11 shooting and pulled down six boards.
FLASH: Events prove Wonk wrong. Wonk wife "not at all surprised."
Meanwhile, Preseason All-Wonk Team selection Lester Abram went 2-of-12 from the field in Michigan's 59-46 win over Binghamton in the Preseason NIT. (Links here and here.) And did not Daniel Horton, a Wonk Preseason All-Head-Case selection, also make your intrepid blogger look foolish in the opposite direction with his 17 points, including 4-of-7 on his three's? Kinda, but Horton also coughed up a Pierre Pierce-esque seven turnovers against the pesky Bearcats. "I look past those turnovers because of how hard he was competing," said coach Tommy Amaker after the game. Verily, Wonk says: watch the Horton.
While draining a notable 21-of-23 free throws, Michigan held Binghamton to .273 shooting from the field and just 14 second-half points. Over at College Basketball Blog, Yoni knows a good deal more about Binghamton than does Wonk and tut-tuts the Wolverines for trailing 27-12 in this one early.
Glass-is-half-full headline-writers of the Detroit News, Wonk salutes you!
Horton was yanked by Amaker when he picked up his fourth foul with ten minutes to go in the game. Unburdened by the junior guard's turnovers and fouls, Michigan promptly pushed a five-point lead into double-digits and cruised to victory. We learn all this from a News "Notebook" entry headlined: "Horton's faith in team rewarded."
Iconoclastic photo editors of the Detroit News, Wonk salutes you!
The Detroit News is out with its Big Ten preview today, guaranteed to be the only conference preview you see that opens with a feature-subject-sized photo of...Minnesota's Jeff Hagen. Gamely resisting the Hagen-mania so rampant at the News, Jim Spadafore picks Illinois, Michigan State and Wisconsin to go 1-2-3. His predicted 14-2 conference record for the Illini, however, feels a little inflated to Wonk.
Penn State fan (note: singular) seen chanting: "We want South Carolina State!"
Coming off a loss the previous evening to Illinois State, the Nittany Lions defeated Western Carolina, 78-63, in the second evening of play in the Black Coaches Association Classic in Milwaukee. Penn State will face South Carolina State in tonight's fifth-place game. (You read that correctly: there is a fifth-place game.)
Link here for a glimpse of what is fast becoming a veritable visual cliche: the Nittany Lions in their road blues disappearing amidst a sea of empty blue seats in the background, not unlike the character in "Arrested Development" who's simultaneously auditioning for the Blue Man Group and utilizing naturally occurring urban camouflage to track his errant spouse's movements.
NCAA Tournament bracket projections in November are futile. So here's one....
Joe Lunardi is out with his first installment of Bracketology on espn.com. His 1-seeds: North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, and Kansas. Lunardi projects four bids for the Big Ten: the Illini, Michigan State (3-seed), Wisconsin (5), and Michigan (8).
Wonk gives Lunardi points for courage: one might just as well attempt to divine what derivative straight-to-video release Ben Stiller will inflict upon us next March as try to slot all 65 teams in each region correctly four months out.
BONUS Thad Matta note
Readers of this space know of Wonk’s sterling reputation for journalistic integrity and even-handed fairness. But what fun is that? So here’s the deal. First-year Ohio State coach Thad Matta is beloved of Wonk because he is a fellow native of central Illinois. Matta hails from Hoopeston, whose sports teams are indelibly known as the Cornjerkers. Watch for notably homer kid-gloves treatment of Matta by the sometimes acerbic Wonk. (Draft headline: "Wonk, Matta seen as charismatic and magnetic by many; Dynamic 'central Illinois effect' cited.")
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
All-Wonk Team selection T.J. Parker of Northwestern has been hanging with big brother Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs and working on his shot, says Brian Hanley of the Chicago Sun-Times in this Wildcat season preview.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber underwent an appendectomy yesterday. He's OK and is expected to be back on the sidelines for the Illini's regular season opener against Delaware State Friday. (Links here, here, here, and here for Wonk's more clinically-inclined readers.) The medical news spooked the AP's pollsters, apparently, for Wonk can think of no other reason why the Illini would go from #5 last week to #6 in this week's poll without having played a game. Now if Weber is caught on tape tumbling down some steps in a Castro-esque display of enfeebled senescence, watch for Illinois to drop out of the top 25 entirely.
The Detroit News previews Michigan State's season here.
Wisconsin plays its final exhibition tonight against Division III Wisconsin-Platteville. Game previews here and here.
Minnesota senior guard Adam Boone has filed an appeal with the NCAA for an additional year of eligibility. Boone is recovering from surgery to repair a torn bicep tendon.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
Yesterday, in the latest in a series of attempts at humor that seem downright Shavian at 5:38am with no one else around, Wonk wondered aloud whether Laval University of Quebec was a "Division Deux" school. Leave it to Wonk's perceptive and knowledgeable readers to supply the answer:
As you can see, Laval is listed as #913 here. Their division designation is CIS which stands for Canadian Interuniversity Sport.
Thanks for all your work, keep it up.
--Kevin R.
Mon dieu! Wonk's readers are so well informed they know the most arcane intricacies of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport! And at last Wonk knows the origin of the hitherto inscrutable chant so often heard at Laval home games: "Nous sommes nombre neuf-treize! Nous sommes nombre neuf-treize!" Merci, Kevin! ¶ 7:05 AM
Ohio State opened its regular season last night with a 74-53 victory over Towson, making coach Thad Matta 1-0 for his career with the Buckeyes. Preseason All-Wonk Team selection Terence Dials scored 23 points on 8-of-11 shooting and pulled down six boards.
FLASH: Events prove Wonk wrong. Wonk wife "not at all surprised."
Meanwhile, Preseason All-Wonk Team selection Lester Abram went 2-of-12 from the field in Michigan's 59-46 win over Binghamton in the Preseason NIT. (Links here and here.) And did not Daniel Horton, a Wonk Preseason All-Head-Case selection, also make your intrepid blogger look foolish in the opposite direction with his 17 points, including 4-of-7 on his three's? Kinda, but Horton also coughed up a Pierre Pierce-esque seven turnovers against the pesky Bearcats. "I look past those turnovers because of how hard he was competing," said coach Tommy Amaker after the game. Verily, Wonk says: watch the Horton.
While draining a notable 21-of-23 free throws, Michigan held Binghamton to .273 shooting from the field and just 14 second-half points. Over at College Basketball Blog, Yoni knows a good deal more about Binghamton than does Wonk and tut-tuts the Wolverines for trailing 27-12 in this one early.
Glass-is-half-full headline-writers of the Detroit News, Wonk salutes you!
Horton was yanked by Amaker when he picked up his fourth foul with ten minutes to go in the game. Unburdened by the junior guard's turnovers and fouls, Michigan promptly pushed a five-point lead into double-digits and cruised to victory. We learn all this from a News "Notebook" entry headlined: "Horton's faith in team rewarded."
Iconoclastic photo editors of the Detroit News, Wonk salutes you!
The Detroit News is out with its Big Ten preview today, guaranteed to be the only conference preview you see that opens with a feature-subject-sized photo of...Minnesota's Jeff Hagen. Gamely resisting the Hagen-mania so rampant at the News, Jim Spadafore picks Illinois, Michigan State and Wisconsin to go 1-2-3. His predicted 14-2 conference record for the Illini, however, feels a little inflated to Wonk.
Penn State fan (note: singular) seen chanting: "We want South Carolina State!"
Coming off a loss the previous evening to Illinois State, the Nittany Lions defeated Western Carolina, 78-63, in the second evening of play in the Black Coaches Association Classic in Milwaukee. Penn State will face South Carolina State in tonight's fifth-place game. (You read that correctly: there is a fifth-place game.)
Link here for a glimpse of what is fast becoming a veritable visual cliche: the Nittany Lions in their road blues disappearing amidst a sea of empty blue seats in the background, not unlike the character in "Arrested Development" who's simultaneously auditioning for the Blue Man Group and utilizing naturally occurring urban camouflage to track his errant spouse's movements.
NCAA Tournament bracket projections in November are futile. So here's one....
Joe Lunardi is out with his first installment of Bracketology on espn.com. His 1-seeds: North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, and Kansas. Lunardi projects four bids for the Big Ten: the Illini, Michigan State (3-seed), Wisconsin (5), and Michigan (8).
Wonk gives Lunardi points for courage: one might just as well attempt to divine what derivative straight-to-video release Ben Stiller will inflict upon us next March as try to slot all 65 teams in each region correctly four months out.
BONUS Thad Matta note
Readers of this space know of Wonk’s sterling reputation for journalistic integrity and even-handed fairness. But what fun is that? So here’s the deal. First-year Ohio State coach Thad Matta is beloved of Wonk because he is a fellow native of central Illinois. Matta hails from Hoopeston, whose sports teams are indelibly known as the Cornjerkers. Watch for notably homer kid-gloves treatment of Matta by the sometimes acerbic Wonk. (Draft headline: "Wonk, Matta seen as charismatic and magnetic by many; Dynamic 'central Illinois effect' cited.")
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
All-Wonk Team selection T.J. Parker of Northwestern has been hanging with big brother Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs and working on his shot, says Brian Hanley of the Chicago Sun-Times in this Wildcat season preview.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber underwent an appendectomy yesterday. He's OK and is expected to be back on the sidelines for the Illini's regular season opener against Delaware State Friday. (Links here, here, here, and here for Wonk's more clinically-inclined readers.) The medical news spooked the AP's pollsters, apparently, for Wonk can think of no other reason why the Illini would go from #5 last week to #6 in this week's poll without having played a game. Now if Weber is caught on tape tumbling down some steps in a Castro-esque display of enfeebled senescence, watch for Illinois to drop out of the top 25 entirely.
The Detroit News previews Michigan State's season here.
Wisconsin plays its final exhibition tonight against Division III Wisconsin-Platteville. Game previews here and here.
Minnesota senior guard Adam Boone has filed an appeal with the NCAA for an additional year of eligibility. Boone is recovering from surgery to repair a torn bicep tendon.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
Yesterday, in the latest in a series of attempts at humor that seem downright Shavian at 5:38am with no one else around, Wonk wondered aloud whether Laval University of Quebec was a "Division Deux" school. Leave it to Wonk's perceptive and knowledgeable readers to supply the answer:
As you can see, Laval is listed as #913 here. Their division designation is CIS which stands for Canadian Interuniversity Sport.
Thanks for all your work, keep it up.
--Kevin R.
Mon dieu! Wonk's readers are so well informed they know the most arcane intricacies of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport! And at last Wonk knows the origin of the hitherto inscrutable chant so often heard at Laval home games: "Nous sommes nombre neuf-treize! Nous sommes nombre neuf-treize!" Merci, Kevin! ¶ 7:05 AM
Monday, November 15, 2004
Horton hears a when
Wonk has said it before and will say it again: I love Tommy Amaker to pieces but ever since the Eddie Griffin days at Seton Hall his teams have often played as though afflicted with an inexplicable listlessness, one that seems to strike with particular force in the biggest games. When he coached the Hall I chalked it up to Griffin being a 19-year-old head case. When Amaker arrived in Ann Arbor I chalked it up to the disastrous aftermath of the Brian Ellerbee era and the funereal atmosphere in Crisler Arena, the worst basketball venue in the Big Ten (and that’s saying something).
But now I’m beginning to wonder. Last year’s team got less advance notice than it should have—and then got the lack of notice it deserved. For a team with Bernard Robinson, Jr., Daniel Horton, and a nice complement of young legs, the Wolverines seriously underperformed. True, they won the NIT. So did St. John's in 2003 and that didn't exactly herald a bright new dawn. (And so, one might add, did Michigan in 1997 and Minnesota in 1998--teams about to implode in particularly messy ways, it appears, first win the NIT.)
Now we are told, again, that this is the year. We are told Daniel Horton has matured. But Wonk will believe Michigan has truly arrived when it starts winning on the road, something it has not done—with the huge exception of the Purdue game in 2003—since the now happily discredited Fab 5 days.
BONUS non-Big-Ten note
Wonk is a fan and graduate (three times over) of Illinois who's followed Big Ten hoops from addresses in California, Atlanta, Kansas City, California (again), and, now, Minneapolis. Yesterday in the fabled skyways of downtown Minneapolis your intrepid Wonk had a chance encounter with the above mentioned Eddie Griffin, who is five games into a promising comeback with the Timberwolves after being waived by the Rockets last year and missing the entire 03-04 season.
WARNING: blinding-flash-of-the-obvious ahead. Wonk is 6'6" and is the tallest person in view, say, 90 percent of the time. Griffin, who blends in vertically without distinction in the NBA and shows no prominence in that category whatsover during the games on my TV screen, TOWERS over Wonk. Well he should, you say. After all, he's listed at 6'10". Yes, yes, Wonk knows. But sometimes I think we forget: these guys are just from another galaxy. To paraphrase a Twin Cities native: the very tall are different from you and me.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Penn State played the first regular season game of any Big Ten team yesterday and lost to Illinois State, 82-73, in the Black Coaches Association Classic in Milwaukee. Defense, as it has been so often for the Nittany Lions, was a problem: the Redbirds scored 50 points on 62 percent shooting in the second half. Links here, here, and here.
Michigan opens regular season play tonight in the Preseason NIT with a game at home against Binghamton. Game preview here. Wolverine season preview at-a-glance here.
Illinois defeated Division II Lewis in an exhibition yesterday, 92-61. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Oddly, the Illini chose this occasion to raise last season's Big Ten championship banner to the rafters in a pregame ceremony. Who needs motivational gimmicks when Lewis is the opponent? There's no love lost between these two teams. When Illinois and Lewis play you can throw the records out the window. Send Wonk more suggested cliches, please.
Illinois is ranked #9 on si.com's list of the "10 easiest teams to root for" here. Best choice, however, is surely the #10 team on si.com's list of "10 to reject": "Jim Harrick's next school."
Michigan State defeated Northern Michigan 98-56 in an exhibition yesterday. Links here and here.
Iowa defeated Laval University in an exhibition yesterday by the notably non-lopsided score of 85-77. Links from the usual suspects here and here, but Wonk additionally recommends the informative blogger's-eye-view to be found over at Hawkeye Hoops.
BONUS Laval note: Laval is located in Quebec and Wonk can't find any information on whether or not they are Division Deux. In an EXCLUSIVE postgame teleconference with Big Ten Wonk, Hawkeye coach Steve Alford said he was very pleased with how his team defended the trois, adding, "You can't really stop Jean-Phillippe Morin, you can only contain him." Meanwhile, rumors abounded in Carver-Hawkeye Arena that Laval's coach had launched into an obscenity-laced tirade in the locker room after the game ("Vous jouez like merde!") that will no doubt soon be circulating on the Internet.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
¶ 6:17 AM
Wonk has said it before and will say it again: I love Tommy Amaker to pieces but ever since the Eddie Griffin days at Seton Hall his teams have often played as though afflicted with an inexplicable listlessness, one that seems to strike with particular force in the biggest games. When he coached the Hall I chalked it up to Griffin being a 19-year-old head case. When Amaker arrived in Ann Arbor I chalked it up to the disastrous aftermath of the Brian Ellerbee era and the funereal atmosphere in Crisler Arena, the worst basketball venue in the Big Ten (and that’s saying something).
But now I’m beginning to wonder. Last year’s team got less advance notice than it should have—and then got the lack of notice it deserved. For a team with Bernard Robinson, Jr., Daniel Horton, and a nice complement of young legs, the Wolverines seriously underperformed. True, they won the NIT. So did St. John's in 2003 and that didn't exactly herald a bright new dawn. (And so, one might add, did Michigan in 1997 and Minnesota in 1998--teams about to implode in particularly messy ways, it appears, first win the NIT.)
Now we are told, again, that this is the year. We are told Daniel Horton has matured. But Wonk will believe Michigan has truly arrived when it starts winning on the road, something it has not done—with the huge exception of the Purdue game in 2003—since the now happily discredited Fab 5 days.
BONUS non-Big-Ten note
Wonk is a fan and graduate (three times over) of Illinois who's followed Big Ten hoops from addresses in California, Atlanta, Kansas City, California (again), and, now, Minneapolis. Yesterday in the fabled skyways of downtown Minneapolis your intrepid Wonk had a chance encounter with the above mentioned Eddie Griffin, who is five games into a promising comeback with the Timberwolves after being waived by the Rockets last year and missing the entire 03-04 season.
WARNING: blinding-flash-of-the-obvious ahead. Wonk is 6'6" and is the tallest person in view, say, 90 percent of the time. Griffin, who blends in vertically without distinction in the NBA and shows no prominence in that category whatsover during the games on my TV screen, TOWERS over Wonk. Well he should, you say. After all, he's listed at 6'10". Yes, yes, Wonk knows. But sometimes I think we forget: these guys are just from another galaxy. To paraphrase a Twin Cities native: the very tall are different from you and me.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Penn State played the first regular season game of any Big Ten team yesterday and lost to Illinois State, 82-73, in the Black Coaches Association Classic in Milwaukee. Defense, as it has been so often for the Nittany Lions, was a problem: the Redbirds scored 50 points on 62 percent shooting in the second half. Links here, here, and here.
Michigan opens regular season play tonight in the Preseason NIT with a game at home against Binghamton. Game preview here. Wolverine season preview at-a-glance here.
Illinois defeated Division II Lewis in an exhibition yesterday, 92-61. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Oddly, the Illini chose this occasion to raise last season's Big Ten championship banner to the rafters in a pregame ceremony. Who needs motivational gimmicks when Lewis is the opponent? There's no love lost between these two teams. When Illinois and Lewis play you can throw the records out the window. Send Wonk more suggested cliches, please.
Illinois is ranked #9 on si.com's list of the "10 easiest teams to root for" here. Best choice, however, is surely the #10 team on si.com's list of "10 to reject": "Jim Harrick's next school."
Michigan State defeated Northern Michigan 98-56 in an exhibition yesterday. Links here and here.
Iowa defeated Laval University in an exhibition yesterday by the notably non-lopsided score of 85-77. Links from the usual suspects here and here, but Wonk additionally recommends the informative blogger's-eye-view to be found over at Hawkeye Hoops.
BONUS Laval note: Laval is located in Quebec and Wonk can't find any information on whether or not they are Division Deux. In an EXCLUSIVE postgame teleconference with Big Ten Wonk, Hawkeye coach Steve Alford said he was very pleased with how his team defended the trois, adding, "You can't really stop Jean-Phillippe Morin, you can only contain him." Meanwhile, rumors abounded in Carver-Hawkeye Arena that Laval's coach had launched into an obscenity-laced tirade in the locker room after the game ("Vous jouez like merde!") that will no doubt soon be circulating on the Internet.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
¶ 6:17 AM
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Wonk is a fan
Wonk interrupts his blog-free weekend with a request: If you haven't already, use the link Wonk handily provides on this page to Mid-Majority. And if you're just getting around to this request on Monday, don't miss Mid-Majority's post from Saturday entitled "The Beautiful Season." Wish I'd written it. Also wish I were about to attend 100 college games this season. The dude has his priorities correct. ¶ 7:18 PM
Wonk interrupts his blog-free weekend with a request: If you haven't already, use the link Wonk handily provides on this page to Mid-Majority. And if you're just getting around to this request on Monday, don't miss Mid-Majority's post from Saturday entitled "The Beautiful Season." Wish I'd written it. Also wish I were about to attend 100 college games this season. The dude has his priorities correct. ¶ 7:18 PM
Friday, November 12, 2004
But I've talked enough about myself. What do YOU think of me?
Even when he’s ostensibly tossing a bouquet to a fellow coach, Bo Ryan just can’t help engaging in yet more effusive self-regard. Here he is welcoming new Ohio State coach Thad Matta to the Big Ten: “He’s probably asked me more questions about the swing offense in the last five years than anybody.”
EXCLUSIVE: Wonk's 2005 Preseason All-Head-Case Team
WARNING: Numbers are no defense against a guilty verdict on the charge of being a head case. (Just throw a dart at any of the past five or so University of Minnesota Men’s Basketball media guides: Joel Przybilla, Rick Rickert, Kris Humphries, etc., etc.) And so we find the Big Ten’s top three returning scorers leading up Wonk’s All-Head-Case team….
Bracey Wright, Indiana. In April 2002, a gritty overachieving Indiana team made it all the way to the national championship game before falling to Maryland. Going into the following year big things were expected of the Hoosiers and their highly touted incoming freshman, Bracey Wright. The expectations soared even higher when Indiana won the Maui Invitational that November. The Hoosiers stood 8-0 and ranked sixth in the nation.
But since the moment in Wright’s ninth game on December 21, 2002, when coach Mike Davis lost his mind in public in the loss against Kentucky, Indiana has gone 27-28. They have played in a grand total of two NCAA tournament games and have won one. The 2002-03 team was devoured by intrasquad acrimony the likes of which Wonk has never seen on any team without Rashad McCants. The 2003-04 team was young and lean, yes, but certainly no more so than Northwestern, whom the Hoosiers ended the year looking up at in the standings.
Can all of this be laid at Wright’s feet? Sheeyeah! He’s The Man. It’s His Team. And what’s the quality of his leadership? Questionable shot selection side-by-oblivious-side with a messianic (note first two letters) quest for the NBA have enabled Wright to achieve a rare trifecta, proving in one swoop he is: a) delusional; b) selfish; and c) not locker room poison, exactly—call him locker room Nyquil: one dose of him and teammates wince, get a bad taste in their mouths, and are left listless and whiny.
And please don’t tell Wonk Wright’s shot selection is the way it is because there are no other scoring options on the roster. There were plenty of other options in 2002-03: Wright still hogged like he was Kobe and the rest of the starters muttered angrily and tuned him out like they were Shaq.
All of the above leads Wonk, who never makes a prediction, to make a prediction:
Echoing, if perhaps not equaling, their trip to the Final Four the year after the NBA-focused Kirk Haston left, Indiana will improve markedly the first year that the NBA-focused Wright is gone, whenever that may be, as the chemistry improves and the offense branches out from its single-dimension feed-Wright focus.
Pierre Pierce, Iowa. The Human Turnover, to the tune of four per game last year.
Just how off-the-charts bad is that? Consider: in 2004 first-year Penn State coach Ed DeChellis was forced to throw two freshman guards into his starting lineup, close his eyes, and hope for the best—and even the lightly-recruited and hopelessly overmatched freshman guards on a last-place team didn’t turn the ball over as much as Pierce. Good grief, the entire Wisconsin team averaged just 10 turnovers a game last year. But a veteran on a competitive (fourth-place) team averaging four turnovers a game for an entire year? Incredible.
Wonk is on the record as advocating a mature tolerance of a reasonable number of turnovers as a cost of doing business. And Wonk has also inveighed eloquently, brilliantly, and modestly against an over-emphasis on the assist-turnover ratio, a number that once in a great while can indeed tell us important things about the great ones (cf. Oscar Robertson) but that much more often is an Ichiro-esque vanity stat that has little to do with W’s. (Basically, if you are no threat whatsoever to score, like Purdue’s Austin Parkinson last year, you stand an excellent chance of putting up a gaudy assist-turnover ratio, like Purdue’s Austin Parkinson last year. It means simply no one is guarding you. They don’t need to.)
But Pierce is the exception that proves Wonk’s rule. Turnovers as a function of aggressive play is one thing but you can’t just give your opponent the ball.
Paul Davis, Michigan State. March 2, 2004: At 12-3 in conference, the Spartans are playing their final game of the regular season at home against Wisconsin. A win guarantees them at least a share of the Big Ten title. A banner is in the rafters, ready to be unfurled.
With 2:24 left in regulation, Paul Davis, already with 25 points and 10 rebounds in the game, goes to the bench with leg cramps. He doesn’t return and the Spartans lose in overtime.
Now, if you’ve got leg cramps, you’ve got leg cramps—Wonk does not begrudge you that.
But Davis didn’t just have leg cramps. For the better part of a half-hour the young man grimaced, writhed and flopped around on the sideline like a deranged street person who’d been impaled with a tire iron, a display ESPN lovingly returned to again and again with every single stoppage of play. People have donated kidneys with less chewing of scenery.
Leg cramps hurt, yes, but they’re hardly on a par with third-degree burns or having a limb amputated without anesthetic. You wouldn’t know it to have watched Davis that day. Willis Reed, he ain’t. Paired with two years of unjustifiably tame performance from a player who has the talent to dominate the conference, this episode earns Davis recognition as All-Head-Case.
Nick Smith, Illinois. Beat reporters covering Wonk's beloved Illini relate that senior big man Nick Smith has added “about 20 pounds” since last season, which means he now dresses at, what, 7-2, 170? Smith, like sixth-year Illinois quarterback Jon Beutjer, has seemingly been in Champaign since the Reagan administration. At long last getting a little PT under Bruce Weber, he was largely ignored by Bill Self (rightly, given the frontcourt depth of those teams) and actually recruited and signed by Lon Krueger.
Smith, whose role model is apparently Jan Brady, is given to petulant hissy fits: his technical foul and subsequent pouting at Wisconsin last season helped turn a tight four-point game into a 20-point blowout in the last ten minutes.
Token Wonk moment of magnanimity when it comes to Smith: On the other hand, his two three’s and two clutch free throws in OT at Purdue last year almost single-handedly set the stage for Luther Head’s game-winning last-second shot.
(BONUS (i.e., wholly unrelated) Wonk note on depth of Illinois frontcourt under Bill Self: when Illinois lost to Arizona in the regional finals of the 2001 NCAA tournament, six Illini players fouled out, setting an all-time tournament record. So many players fouled out, in fact, that Smith was actually on the court at the end of the game, throwing terror into the hearts of Richard Jefferson, Gilbert Arenas, Loren Woods, et. al.)
Daniel Horton, Michigan. When Daniel Horton went to Purdue and dropped 31 points on the stunned Boilermakers in a key late-season victory in 2003, the freshman was being talked up for Player of the Year. Rightfully so. He was a go-to prolific scoring freshman who created opportunities for teammates and dished assists.
But Horton quickly quieted such talk with a 1-for-11 outing at Wisconsin and since that golden moment in West Lafayette his play has been notably less stellar. Last year his numbers were actually down slightly from his freshman year: in points, assists, FG percentage, and 3-pt FG percentage—a striking regression.
Tommy Amaker is on the record as saying the expectations placed on Horton last year were unrealistic and that in fact during the year he improved as a defender and QB. We’ll see.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Indiana faces Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in an exhibition tonight. Combo game preview and Sean Kline profile here.
Minnesota faces Division II St. Cloud State in an exhibition tonight. Combo game preview and Kerry Wooldridge profile here.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk warning to journalism majors reading this now: You graduate, you're hired by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and your assignments editor sends you to do a profile on Kerry Wooldridge. Wonk believes this paragraph should be in the college catalogue, next to Journ 101.
Andy Katz and Dick Vitale of espn.com get the retirement-party toasts rolling for Purdue coach Gene Keady here.
Illini beat writer Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times picks Michigan State to win the conference and Ohio State to surprise at fifth. Link here.
The indefatigable Gould also chips in with some Illini recruiting news here. Need an update on Illini forward Brian Randle, the winner of Wonk's first annual Kevin Brown Award for Notably Injurious Stupidity? Links here, here, and here. Want both the recruiting and the Randle stories in one covenient article? Wonk's got you covered here.
Michigan sophomore Courtney Sims, past winner of Wonk's Mike Davis Nostradamus Award, is profiled here.
Lansing State Journal columnist Todd Schulz says Michigan State's chances this season hinge less on freshman point guard Drew Neitzel and more on finding some toughness in the paint. (Link here.) Hmmm. Where has Wonk heard that before?
Wisconsin's signees include Marcus Landry, younger brother of Purdue juco transfer Carl Landry. Link here. Combined Badger recruiting update and recap of Wednesday's exhibition win over Wisconsin-Parkside here.
Say you don't buy into Wonk's bullish favorable-schedule-driven NCAA-berth-a-maybe forecast for the Iowa Hawkeyes? Neither do their fans, appararently. Season ticket sales are down. Link here not only for the info but also for the largest--virtually teen-magazine-esque--picture you will ever see of Iowa Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby. Sorry, girls, dreamboat Bob is spoken for.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:02 AM
Even when he’s ostensibly tossing a bouquet to a fellow coach, Bo Ryan just can’t help engaging in yet more effusive self-regard. Here he is welcoming new Ohio State coach Thad Matta to the Big Ten: “He’s probably asked me more questions about the swing offense in the last five years than anybody.”
EXCLUSIVE: Wonk's 2005 Preseason All-Head-Case Team
WARNING: Numbers are no defense against a guilty verdict on the charge of being a head case. (Just throw a dart at any of the past five or so University of Minnesota Men’s Basketball media guides: Joel Przybilla, Rick Rickert, Kris Humphries, etc., etc.) And so we find the Big Ten’s top three returning scorers leading up Wonk’s All-Head-Case team….
Bracey Wright, Indiana. In April 2002, a gritty overachieving Indiana team made it all the way to the national championship game before falling to Maryland. Going into the following year big things were expected of the Hoosiers and their highly touted incoming freshman, Bracey Wright. The expectations soared even higher when Indiana won the Maui Invitational that November. The Hoosiers stood 8-0 and ranked sixth in the nation.
But since the moment in Wright’s ninth game on December 21, 2002, when coach Mike Davis lost his mind in public in the loss against Kentucky, Indiana has gone 27-28. They have played in a grand total of two NCAA tournament games and have won one. The 2002-03 team was devoured by intrasquad acrimony the likes of which Wonk has never seen on any team without Rashad McCants. The 2003-04 team was young and lean, yes, but certainly no more so than Northwestern, whom the Hoosiers ended the year looking up at in the standings.
Can all of this be laid at Wright’s feet? Sheeyeah! He’s The Man. It’s His Team. And what’s the quality of his leadership? Questionable shot selection side-by-oblivious-side with a messianic (note first two letters) quest for the NBA have enabled Wright to achieve a rare trifecta, proving in one swoop he is: a) delusional; b) selfish; and c) not locker room poison, exactly—call him locker room Nyquil: one dose of him and teammates wince, get a bad taste in their mouths, and are left listless and whiny.
And please don’t tell Wonk Wright’s shot selection is the way it is because there are no other scoring options on the roster. There were plenty of other options in 2002-03: Wright still hogged like he was Kobe and the rest of the starters muttered angrily and tuned him out like they were Shaq.
All of the above leads Wonk, who never makes a prediction, to make a prediction:
Echoing, if perhaps not equaling, their trip to the Final Four the year after the NBA-focused Kirk Haston left, Indiana will improve markedly the first year that the NBA-focused Wright is gone, whenever that may be, as the chemistry improves and the offense branches out from its single-dimension feed-Wright focus.
Pierre Pierce, Iowa. The Human Turnover, to the tune of four per game last year.
Just how off-the-charts bad is that? Consider: in 2004 first-year Penn State coach Ed DeChellis was forced to throw two freshman guards into his starting lineup, close his eyes, and hope for the best—and even the lightly-recruited and hopelessly overmatched freshman guards on a last-place team didn’t turn the ball over as much as Pierce. Good grief, the entire Wisconsin team averaged just 10 turnovers a game last year. But a veteran on a competitive (fourth-place) team averaging four turnovers a game for an entire year? Incredible.
Wonk is on the record as advocating a mature tolerance of a reasonable number of turnovers as a cost of doing business. And Wonk has also inveighed eloquently, brilliantly, and modestly against an over-emphasis on the assist-turnover ratio, a number that once in a great while can indeed tell us important things about the great ones (cf. Oscar Robertson) but that much more often is an Ichiro-esque vanity stat that has little to do with W’s. (Basically, if you are no threat whatsoever to score, like Purdue’s Austin Parkinson last year, you stand an excellent chance of putting up a gaudy assist-turnover ratio, like Purdue’s Austin Parkinson last year. It means simply no one is guarding you. They don’t need to.)
But Pierce is the exception that proves Wonk’s rule. Turnovers as a function of aggressive play is one thing but you can’t just give your opponent the ball.
Paul Davis, Michigan State. March 2, 2004: At 12-3 in conference, the Spartans are playing their final game of the regular season at home against Wisconsin. A win guarantees them at least a share of the Big Ten title. A banner is in the rafters, ready to be unfurled.
With 2:24 left in regulation, Paul Davis, already with 25 points and 10 rebounds in the game, goes to the bench with leg cramps. He doesn’t return and the Spartans lose in overtime.
Now, if you’ve got leg cramps, you’ve got leg cramps—Wonk does not begrudge you that.
But Davis didn’t just have leg cramps. For the better part of a half-hour the young man grimaced, writhed and flopped around on the sideline like a deranged street person who’d been impaled with a tire iron, a display ESPN lovingly returned to again and again with every single stoppage of play. People have donated kidneys with less chewing of scenery.
Leg cramps hurt, yes, but they’re hardly on a par with third-degree burns or having a limb amputated without anesthetic. You wouldn’t know it to have watched Davis that day. Willis Reed, he ain’t. Paired with two years of unjustifiably tame performance from a player who has the talent to dominate the conference, this episode earns Davis recognition as All-Head-Case.
Nick Smith, Illinois. Beat reporters covering Wonk's beloved Illini relate that senior big man Nick Smith has added “about 20 pounds” since last season, which means he now dresses at, what, 7-2, 170? Smith, like sixth-year Illinois quarterback Jon Beutjer, has seemingly been in Champaign since the Reagan administration. At long last getting a little PT under Bruce Weber, he was largely ignored by Bill Self (rightly, given the frontcourt depth of those teams) and actually recruited and signed by Lon Krueger.
Smith, whose role model is apparently Jan Brady, is given to petulant hissy fits: his technical foul and subsequent pouting at Wisconsin last season helped turn a tight four-point game into a 20-point blowout in the last ten minutes.
Token Wonk moment of magnanimity when it comes to Smith: On the other hand, his two three’s and two clutch free throws in OT at Purdue last year almost single-handedly set the stage for Luther Head’s game-winning last-second shot.
(BONUS (i.e., wholly unrelated) Wonk note on depth of Illinois frontcourt under Bill Self: when Illinois lost to Arizona in the regional finals of the 2001 NCAA tournament, six Illini players fouled out, setting an all-time tournament record. So many players fouled out, in fact, that Smith was actually on the court at the end of the game, throwing terror into the hearts of Richard Jefferson, Gilbert Arenas, Loren Woods, et. al.)
Daniel Horton, Michigan. When Daniel Horton went to Purdue and dropped 31 points on the stunned Boilermakers in a key late-season victory in 2003, the freshman was being talked up for Player of the Year. Rightfully so. He was a go-to prolific scoring freshman who created opportunities for teammates and dished assists.
But Horton quickly quieted such talk with a 1-for-11 outing at Wisconsin and since that golden moment in West Lafayette his play has been notably less stellar. Last year his numbers were actually down slightly from his freshman year: in points, assists, FG percentage, and 3-pt FG percentage—a striking regression.
Tommy Amaker is on the record as saying the expectations placed on Horton last year were unrealistic and that in fact during the year he improved as a defender and QB. We’ll see.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Indiana faces Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in an exhibition tonight. Combo game preview and Sean Kline profile here.
Minnesota faces Division II St. Cloud State in an exhibition tonight. Combo game preview and Kerry Wooldridge profile here.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk warning to journalism majors reading this now: You graduate, you're hired by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and your assignments editor sends you to do a profile on Kerry Wooldridge. Wonk believes this paragraph should be in the college catalogue, next to Journ 101.
Andy Katz and Dick Vitale of espn.com get the retirement-party toasts rolling for Purdue coach Gene Keady here.
Illini beat writer Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times picks Michigan State to win the conference and Ohio State to surprise at fifth. Link here.
The indefatigable Gould also chips in with some Illini recruiting news here. Need an update on Illini forward Brian Randle, the winner of Wonk's first annual Kevin Brown Award for Notably Injurious Stupidity? Links here, here, and here. Want both the recruiting and the Randle stories in one covenient article? Wonk's got you covered here.
Michigan sophomore Courtney Sims, past winner of Wonk's Mike Davis Nostradamus Award, is profiled here.
Lansing State Journal columnist Todd Schulz says Michigan State's chances this season hinge less on freshman point guard Drew Neitzel and more on finding some toughness in the paint. (Link here.) Hmmm. Where has Wonk heard that before?
Wisconsin's signees include Marcus Landry, younger brother of Purdue juco transfer Carl Landry. Link here. Combined Badger recruiting update and recap of Wednesday's exhibition win over Wisconsin-Parkside here.
Say you don't buy into Wonk's bullish favorable-schedule-driven NCAA-berth-a-maybe forecast for the Iowa Hawkeyes? Neither do their fans, appararently. Season ticket sales are down. Link here not only for the info but also for the largest--virtually teen-magazine-esque--picture you will ever see of Iowa Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby. Sorry, girls, dreamboat Bob is spoken for.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 7:02 AM
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Day 1 of 144
The college basketball season will start a little after 5:30pm ET tonight in the Kenneth G. Langone Athletics and Recreation Center in Lewisburg, PA, when host Bucknell takes on Princeton.
It will end 814 miles and 144 days away, sometime around 11:30pm ET on Monday, April 4, 2005, in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, with the final horn in the national championship game.
EXCLUSIVE: 2005 Preseason All-Wonk Team
Not necessarily the gaudiest stats or biggest talents, mind you. Just guys Wonk would want in his foxhole.
Mike Wilkinson, Wisconsin. Wilkinson has spent his career defending bigs longer and heavier than he is and he’s still been a rock for Bo Ryan. In fact, Wonk is expecting better things of Wisconsin this season than most of the chatterers, even with the departure of Devin Harris (who, by the way, agrees with me), for two reasons: 1) they’ve owned Michigan State in the Ryan era to the extent that now they’re in the Spartans’ heads; 2) if newcomers Brian Butch and Greg Stiemsma can take some of the load off Wilkinson, he is poised to flower.
T.J. Parker, Northwestern. Let this be the one squib on Parker that does NOT mention that he’s the younger brother of Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs…DOH! Anyway, little bro is the capable QB on a Northwestern team that has featured more intricate plays than a garden-variety NFL playbook. So what if he has no outside shot? He’s jet-quick, plays D, has started every game but one in his career, and is a coach on the floor. Wonk will take one of those any day.
Terence Dials, Ohio State. Dials is a beast who has always given Wonk’s beloved Illinois fits, much more so than Michigan State’s much more highly touted Paul Davis, for example. How this blue-collar stud could only have averaged 10 points a game last year is beyond me because the last time Wonk saw Dials he was putting up consecutive 22-point games to close out the year. Note to the Ohio State backcourt: feed your beast.
Lester Abram, Michigan. Abram mirrors his coach: solid, methodical, capable. He fills in where he’s needed and gets the job done. A tweener at 6’6”, Abram is the Wolverines’ top returning scorer and shot .412 on his three’s last year. That is one handy dude to have around.
Greg Brunner, Iowa. Big Ten’s top returning rebounder. Nuff said.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
SportsLine.com is out with its Big Ten preview. Points for not just repeating everyone else's predictions: Michigan is picked to finish second to Illinois, ahead of Michigan State and Wisconsin. Link here.
(SportsLine also picks Iowa's Adam Haluska as their newcomer of the year. Sounds like they need to read Wonk on this particular subject.)
Wisconsin defeated Division II Wisconsin-Parkside in an exhibition last night, 81-42. Links here and here.
Michigan State defeated Division II Grand Valley State in an exhibition last night, 77-62. The level of expectations being placed on Spartan freshman point guard Drew Neitzel can be guessed from the headline on the Detroit Free Press's write up on the game: "MSU's Neitzel didn't star in his debut, but he wasn't asked to, either." More here.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk Neitzel note. Wonk says to the Spartans faithful: Verily, remember Wonk's Neitzel or No Neitzel Hypothesis, which holds, basically, that Michigan State had such an incredible (if little noticed) year in offensive efficiency last year that they will be hard pressed to match those stats this year, Neitzel or no Neitzel.
Michigan defeated Division II Wayne State in an exhibition last night, 67-54. Links here and here.
Iowa defeated Division II Upper Iowa in an exhibition last night, 84-43. Links here and here.
Illinois reserve forward Brian Randle wins this week's Kevin Brown Award for Notably Injurious Stupidity: he broke his left hand in practice yesterday, punching a padded wall in frustration after a missed shot. The sophomore from Peoria will likely miss six to ten weeks and thus will look at a possible redshirt this year. Link here.
Deron Williams of Illinois is no doubt giddy with excitement this morning, knowing he's been named to the second team of si.com's All-Junior Team. Want to read more about the All-Junior Team? In God's name, why? Link here if you really feel you must.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
RE: Erek Hansen article
"Here's what kills me about the woman who did the profile on Hansen - she has a J.D. and was a lawyer for 11 years! I guess making money isn't for everybody."
--Ryan K.
Wonk's readers are so well informed they know the previous careers of the Big Ten beat writers! Thanks, Ryan.
Note to Wonk readers: Ryan has a very fine blog of his own on Iowa hoops that Wonk heartily recommends. ¶ 7:17 AM
The college basketball season will start a little after 5:30pm ET tonight in the Kenneth G. Langone Athletics and Recreation Center in Lewisburg, PA, when host Bucknell takes on Princeton.
It will end 814 miles and 144 days away, sometime around 11:30pm ET on Monday, April 4, 2005, in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, with the final horn in the national championship game.
EXCLUSIVE: 2005 Preseason All-Wonk Team
Not necessarily the gaudiest stats or biggest talents, mind you. Just guys Wonk would want in his foxhole.
Mike Wilkinson, Wisconsin. Wilkinson has spent his career defending bigs longer and heavier than he is and he’s still been a rock for Bo Ryan. In fact, Wonk is expecting better things of Wisconsin this season than most of the chatterers, even with the departure of Devin Harris (who, by the way, agrees with me), for two reasons: 1) they’ve owned Michigan State in the Ryan era to the extent that now they’re in the Spartans’ heads; 2) if newcomers Brian Butch and Greg Stiemsma can take some of the load off Wilkinson, he is poised to flower.
T.J. Parker, Northwestern. Let this be the one squib on Parker that does NOT mention that he’s the younger brother of Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs…DOH! Anyway, little bro is the capable QB on a Northwestern team that has featured more intricate plays than a garden-variety NFL playbook. So what if he has no outside shot? He’s jet-quick, plays D, has started every game but one in his career, and is a coach on the floor. Wonk will take one of those any day.
Terence Dials, Ohio State. Dials is a beast who has always given Wonk’s beloved Illinois fits, much more so than Michigan State’s much more highly touted Paul Davis, for example. How this blue-collar stud could only have averaged 10 points a game last year is beyond me because the last time Wonk saw Dials he was putting up consecutive 22-point games to close out the year. Note to the Ohio State backcourt: feed your beast.
Lester Abram, Michigan. Abram mirrors his coach: solid, methodical, capable. He fills in where he’s needed and gets the job done. A tweener at 6’6”, Abram is the Wolverines’ top returning scorer and shot .412 on his three’s last year. That is one handy dude to have around.
Greg Brunner, Iowa. Big Ten’s top returning rebounder. Nuff said.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
SportsLine.com is out with its Big Ten preview. Points for not just repeating everyone else's predictions: Michigan is picked to finish second to Illinois, ahead of Michigan State and Wisconsin. Link here.
(SportsLine also picks Iowa's Adam Haluska as their newcomer of the year. Sounds like they need to read Wonk on this particular subject.)
Wisconsin defeated Division II Wisconsin-Parkside in an exhibition last night, 81-42. Links here and here.
Michigan State defeated Division II Grand Valley State in an exhibition last night, 77-62. The level of expectations being placed on Spartan freshman point guard Drew Neitzel can be guessed from the headline on the Detroit Free Press's write up on the game: "MSU's Neitzel didn't star in his debut, but he wasn't asked to, either." More here.
EXCLUSIVE Wonk Neitzel note. Wonk says to the Spartans faithful: Verily, remember Wonk's Neitzel or No Neitzel Hypothesis, which holds, basically, that Michigan State had such an incredible (if little noticed) year in offensive efficiency last year that they will be hard pressed to match those stats this year, Neitzel or no Neitzel.
Michigan defeated Division II Wayne State in an exhibition last night, 67-54. Links here and here.
Iowa defeated Division II Upper Iowa in an exhibition last night, 84-43. Links here and here.
Illinois reserve forward Brian Randle wins this week's Kevin Brown Award for Notably Injurious Stupidity: he broke his left hand in practice yesterday, punching a padded wall in frustration after a missed shot. The sophomore from Peoria will likely miss six to ten weeks and thus will look at a possible redshirt this year. Link here.
Deron Williams of Illinois is no doubt giddy with excitement this morning, knowing he's been named to the second team of si.com's All-Junior Team. Want to read more about the All-Junior Team? In God's name, why? Link here if you really feel you must.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
RE: Erek Hansen article
"Here's what kills me about the woman who did the profile on Hansen - she has a J.D. and was a lawyer for 11 years! I guess making money isn't for everybody."
--Ryan K.
Wonk's readers are so well informed they know the previous careers of the Big Ten beat writers! Thanks, Ryan.
Note to Wonk readers: Ryan has a very fine blog of his own on Iowa hoops that Wonk heartily recommends. ¶ 7:17 AM
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
BONUS Sharif Chambliss note
A native of Racine, Wisconsin, Chambliss played three seasons at Penn State (he was a freshman on the Joe-Crispin-led 2001 team that went to the Sweet 16) and led the Big Ten in made three's in 2003. His late-game heroics were largely responsible for the dramatic upset win the Nittany Lions posted over the Badgers in State College that season. Penn State entered that game 5-16 overall and 0-10 in the conference. That kind of record tends to have an effect on attendance and thus the game was played in front of, shall we say, a notably select group of Penn State supporters. Few in number, the home fans nevertheless stormed the court when the final horn sounded. To this day it is the only instance in Wonk's experience where the jubilant fans swarming onto the court were actually outnumbered by the players, coaches and referees already on the floor.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
The Chicago Tribune is out with its college basketball preview: writes-itself article on Illinois, Deron Williams, Dee Brown, and living up to the hype here. Northwestern guard T.J. Parker and his mates ask "Why not Northwestern?" here. Under the headline "5 best Big Ten games this season," the apparently mathematically challenged Tribsters pick six: Michigan State at Wisconsin, Illinois at Wisconsin, Michigan at Michigan State, Illinois at Michigan State, Michigan State at Michigan, and Wisconsin at Illinois.
(BONUS non-Big-Ten note: Also in the Trib's preview, Skip Myslenski offers this quip from the Texas Tech coach, some fellow named Bobby Knight: "I talked to a kid this spring who has yet to be a full-time player on his high school team and was going to be a senior, is a senior currently, and he asked me how I'd feel if he went to the NBA early. I said, 'I'd be damned surprised. That's how I'd feel.'")
Michigan State opens with an exhibition tonight against Grand Valley State. Previews here and here.
Wisconsin opens with an exhibition tonight against Wisconsin-Parkside. Preview here. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Big Ten preview at-a-glance here. Profile of Wisconsin's Alando Tucker here. Rob Schultz of the Madison Capital Times profiles Badger freshmen Michael Flowers and Greg Steimsma here. The apparently indefatigable Schultz also looks at next year's crop of Badger recruits here.
Lead paragraph from the Des Moines Register's preview of tonight's exhibition between Iowa and Upper Iowa: "Steve Alford checked the history section of the Iowa men's basketball media guide recently. He turned to the pages that documented past games, particularly the four the Hawkeyes played against Upper Iowa between 1901 and 1922." Want to read more? In God's name, why? Link here if you feel you must. More here.
(BONUS Upper Iowa note: Located in Fayette, Iowa, Upper Iowa University has apparently snuck its alumni center into the family room of some poor unsuspecting Fayette resident, judging by this photo.)
Say you need more information on Iowa's Erek Hansen? Of course not! But here's the link anyway.
(EXCLUSIVE Wonk warning to journalism majors reading this now: You graduate, you're hired by the Iowa City Press-Citizen, and your assignments editor sends you to do a profile on Erek Hansen. Wonk believes this paragraph should be in the college catalogue, next to Journ 101.)
Indefatigable Illini beat writer Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times takes in all of college hoops and offers ten points to ponder here.
Jeff Shelman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune looks at next year's crop of Minnesota recruits here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
"You are dead on right about MSU. What they really lack is the beef combined with the attitude. I have been pounding the table that the biggest loss for MSU was when Lorbek left early to go sit the bench in Europe. During the last part of his first and only season at MSU, when he was on the floor with Davis, everything opened up. Unfortunately for the Spartans, I am not sure they have enough beef yet on the baseline to take some pressure of Davis. Anderson just does not get after it like Mo Pete did. By the way most Spartan fans do not share my views."
--Mark M.
Most Spartan fans may not share your views, Mark, but Wonk does! Losing Erazem Lorbek to professional basketball in Europe was huge. I still remember the game Lorbek played at Wisconsin in 2003. After a scoreless first half, Lorbek was apparently hypnotized in the locker room at halftime by Tom Izzo. All Wonk knows is that the hitherto diffident Slovenian teenager came out in the second half convinced, somehow, that he was in reality Tim Duncan. Lorbek, albeit in a losing cause, lit up the Badgers for 19 points in 20 minutes. Wonk has never seen a Bo Ryan-coached defense look so porous.
¶ 6:39 AM
A native of Racine, Wisconsin, Chambliss played three seasons at Penn State (he was a freshman on the Joe-Crispin-led 2001 team that went to the Sweet 16) and led the Big Ten in made three's in 2003. His late-game heroics were largely responsible for the dramatic upset win the Nittany Lions posted over the Badgers in State College that season. Penn State entered that game 5-16 overall and 0-10 in the conference. That kind of record tends to have an effect on attendance and thus the game was played in front of, shall we say, a notably select group of Penn State supporters. Few in number, the home fans nevertheless stormed the court when the final horn sounded. To this day it is the only instance in Wonk's experience where the jubilant fans swarming onto the court were actually outnumbered by the players, coaches and referees already on the floor.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
The Chicago Tribune is out with its college basketball preview: writes-itself article on Illinois, Deron Williams, Dee Brown, and living up to the hype here. Northwestern guard T.J. Parker and his mates ask "Why not Northwestern?" here. Under the headline "5 best Big Ten games this season," the apparently mathematically challenged Tribsters pick six: Michigan State at Wisconsin, Illinois at Wisconsin, Michigan at Michigan State, Illinois at Michigan State, Michigan State at Michigan, and Wisconsin at Illinois.
(BONUS non-Big-Ten note: Also in the Trib's preview, Skip Myslenski offers this quip from the Texas Tech coach, some fellow named Bobby Knight: "I talked to a kid this spring who has yet to be a full-time player on his high school team and was going to be a senior, is a senior currently, and he asked me how I'd feel if he went to the NBA early. I said, 'I'd be damned surprised. That's how I'd feel.'")
Michigan State opens with an exhibition tonight against Grand Valley State. Previews here and here.
Wisconsin opens with an exhibition tonight against Wisconsin-Parkside. Preview here. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Big Ten preview at-a-glance here. Profile of Wisconsin's Alando Tucker here. Rob Schultz of the Madison Capital Times profiles Badger freshmen Michael Flowers and Greg Steimsma here. The apparently indefatigable Schultz also looks at next year's crop of Badger recruits here.
Lead paragraph from the Des Moines Register's preview of tonight's exhibition between Iowa and Upper Iowa: "Steve Alford checked the history section of the Iowa men's basketball media guide recently. He turned to the pages that documented past games, particularly the four the Hawkeyes played against Upper Iowa between 1901 and 1922." Want to read more? In God's name, why? Link here if you feel you must. More here.
(BONUS Upper Iowa note: Located in Fayette, Iowa, Upper Iowa University has apparently snuck its alumni center into the family room of some poor unsuspecting Fayette resident, judging by this photo.)
Say you need more information on Iowa's Erek Hansen? Of course not! But here's the link anyway.
(EXCLUSIVE Wonk warning to journalism majors reading this now: You graduate, you're hired by the Iowa City Press-Citizen, and your assignments editor sends you to do a profile on Erek Hansen. Wonk believes this paragraph should be in the college catalogue, next to Journ 101.)
Indefatigable Illini beat writer Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times takes in all of college hoops and offers ten points to ponder here.
Jeff Shelman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune looks at next year's crop of Minnesota recruits here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
"You are dead on right about MSU. What they really lack is the beef combined with the attitude. I have been pounding the table that the biggest loss for MSU was when Lorbek left early to go sit the bench in Europe. During the last part of his first and only season at MSU, when he was on the floor with Davis, everything opened up. Unfortunately for the Spartans, I am not sure they have enough beef yet on the baseline to take some pressure of Davis. Anderson just does not get after it like Mo Pete did. By the way most Spartan fans do not share my views."
--Mark M.
Most Spartan fans may not share your views, Mark, but Wonk does! Losing Erazem Lorbek to professional basketball in Europe was huge. I still remember the game Lorbek played at Wisconsin in 2003. After a scoreless first half, Lorbek was apparently hypnotized in the locker room at halftime by Tom Izzo. All Wonk knows is that the hitherto diffident Slovenian teenager came out in the second half convinced, somehow, that he was in reality Tim Duncan. Lorbek, albeit in a losing cause, lit up the Badgers for 19 points in 20 minutes. Wonk has never seen a Bo Ryan-coached defense look so porous.
¶ 6:39 AM
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Preseason polls are inherently futile. So here's one....
The preseason AP poll was announced yesterday. Top 10:
1. Kansas
2. Wake Forest
3. Georgia Tech
4. North Carolina
5. Illinois
6. Syracuse
7. Oklahoma State
8. Connecticut
9. Kentucky
10. Arizona
Michigan State is 13th and Wisconsin is 21st. Michigan polled just outside the top 25 (at 27th).
Just how futile is a preseason poll? Here are the top 10 from last season's preseason AP poll:
1. Connecticut
2. Duke
3. Michigan State
4. Arizona
5. Missouri
6. Kansas
7. Syracuse
8. Florida
9. North Carolina
10. Gonzaga
Connecticut and Duke did, of course, meet in the Final Four (in a national semifinal game) and the Huskies did indeed win the national championship. Sixth-ranked Kansas was another good call, making it all the way to OT in the Elite Eight before falling. Kudos to the AP's national media panel, then, for correctly forecasting the national champion, half the Final Four, and three-eighths of the Elite Eight.
As for the rest of last year's preseason top 10, however, it gets pretty ugly pretty fast....
Preseason #3 Michigan State dropped out of the top 25 entirely by Christmas and did not reappear. The Spartans lost in the first round of the tournament to Nevada.
Preseason #4 Arizona rose to an absurdly overrated #3 by January 6 before entering the tournament in March at #22 (which was still too high--they were 20-9), where they lost in the first round to Seton Hall.
Preseason #5 Missouri rose to an absurdly overrated #3 by December 8 before dropping out of the top 25 entirely and for good by January 6. The Tigers lost in the first round of the NIT to eventual champion Michigan.
And as for the rest of last year's preseason top 10, only Syracuse made it as far as the Sweet 16 (where the Orangemen lost to Alabama).
It all adds up to a Wonk warning to teams feeling good about their lofty preseason rankings: Six of the teams in last year's preseason AP top 10 didn't even make the Sweet 16.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Purdue defeated Division II Washburn by the notably non-lopsided score of 81-72 in an exhibition last night. The pesky Ichabods pressured the Boilermakers into no less than 20 turnovers. Beat writers make Purdue's juco transfer Carl Landry the lead in links here and here.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber responded to his team being ranked 5th in the AP's preseason poll by screaming in fury at shocked Illini beat writers: "Fifth? Hell, we should be number 1! Who votes in this thing, anyway? Blind morons? John Zogby?" No, seriously, Weber reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here, here, and here.
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo responded to his team being ranked 13th in the AP's preseason poll by throwing himself to the ground in a violent frenzy in front of dumbfounded Spartan beat writers and sputtering: "Thirteenth? Like I'm supposed to be happy with that? What do I look like, the Washburn frickin' Ichabods?" No, seriously, Izzo reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here.
Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan responded to his team being ranked 21st in the AP's preseason poll by shouting in a rage at stunned Badger beat writers: "Twenty-first? What the hell is that? In my instructional video, Bo Ryan Presents: Ranking Teams in the Preseason the Bo Ryan Way, Featuring Bo Ryan, I clearly explain that what I call 'The Bo Ryan Factor' means we should be first!" No, seriously, Ryan reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here.
Iowa coach Steve Alford will sit newcomers Adam Haluska and Seth Gorney in the Hawkeyes' exhibition against Upper Iowa tomorrow night. Link here.
Wisconsin's guards are young but feisty, says Rob Schultz of the Madison Capital Times. The apparently indefatigable Schultz also chips in a write up on Sunday's Badger intrasquad scrimmage here.
Fran Fraschilla of espn.com rates Deron Williams of Illinois as second only to Chris Paul here.
Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News rates Deron Williams as tenth only to Chris Paul, Lawrence Roberts, Francisco Garcia, Wayne Simien, Julius Hodge, Hakim Warrick, Ryan Gomes, Hassan Adams, and Joey Graham here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:54 AM
The preseason AP poll was announced yesterday. Top 10:
1. Kansas
2. Wake Forest
3. Georgia Tech
4. North Carolina
5. Illinois
6. Syracuse
7. Oklahoma State
8. Connecticut
9. Kentucky
10. Arizona
Michigan State is 13th and Wisconsin is 21st. Michigan polled just outside the top 25 (at 27th).
Just how futile is a preseason poll? Here are the top 10 from last season's preseason AP poll:
1. Connecticut
2. Duke
3. Michigan State
4. Arizona
5. Missouri
6. Kansas
7. Syracuse
8. Florida
9. North Carolina
10. Gonzaga
Connecticut and Duke did, of course, meet in the Final Four (in a national semifinal game) and the Huskies did indeed win the national championship. Sixth-ranked Kansas was another good call, making it all the way to OT in the Elite Eight before falling. Kudos to the AP's national media panel, then, for correctly forecasting the national champion, half the Final Four, and three-eighths of the Elite Eight.
As for the rest of last year's preseason top 10, however, it gets pretty ugly pretty fast....
Preseason #3 Michigan State dropped out of the top 25 entirely by Christmas and did not reappear. The Spartans lost in the first round of the tournament to Nevada.
Preseason #4 Arizona rose to an absurdly overrated #3 by January 6 before entering the tournament in March at #22 (which was still too high--they were 20-9), where they lost in the first round to Seton Hall.
Preseason #5 Missouri rose to an absurdly overrated #3 by December 8 before dropping out of the top 25 entirely and for good by January 6. The Tigers lost in the first round of the NIT to eventual champion Michigan.
And as for the rest of last year's preseason top 10, only Syracuse made it as far as the Sweet 16 (where the Orangemen lost to Alabama).
It all adds up to a Wonk warning to teams feeling good about their lofty preseason rankings: Six of the teams in last year's preseason AP top 10 didn't even make the Sweet 16.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Purdue defeated Division II Washburn by the notably non-lopsided score of 81-72 in an exhibition last night. The pesky Ichabods pressured the Boilermakers into no less than 20 turnovers. Beat writers make Purdue's juco transfer Carl Landry the lead in links here and here.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber responded to his team being ranked 5th in the AP's preseason poll by screaming in fury at shocked Illini beat writers: "Fifth? Hell, we should be number 1! Who votes in this thing, anyway? Blind morons? John Zogby?" No, seriously, Weber reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here, here, and here.
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo responded to his team being ranked 13th in the AP's preseason poll by throwing himself to the ground in a violent frenzy in front of dumbfounded Spartan beat writers and sputtering: "Thirteenth? Like I'm supposed to be happy with that? What do I look like, the Washburn frickin' Ichabods?" No, seriously, Izzo reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here.
Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan responded to his team being ranked 21st in the AP's preseason poll by shouting in a rage at stunned Badger beat writers: "Twenty-first? What the hell is that? In my instructional video, Bo Ryan Presents: Ranking Teams in the Preseason the Bo Ryan Way, Featuring Bo Ryan, I clearly explain that what I call 'The Bo Ryan Factor' means we should be first!" No, seriously, Ryan reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here.
Iowa coach Steve Alford will sit newcomers Adam Haluska and Seth Gorney in the Hawkeyes' exhibition against Upper Iowa tomorrow night. Link here.
Wisconsin's guards are young but feisty, says Rob Schultz of the Madison Capital Times. The apparently indefatigable Schultz also chips in a write up on Sunday's Badger intrasquad scrimmage here.
Fran Fraschilla of espn.com rates Deron Williams of Illinois as second only to Chris Paul here.
Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News rates Deron Williams as tenth only to Chris Paul, Lawrence Roberts, Francisco Garcia, Wayne Simien, Julius Hodge, Hakim Warrick, Ryan Gomes, Hassan Adams, and Joey Graham here.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:54 AM
Monday, November 08, 2004
Um, usually the statistic you use to lead the article isn’t this lame
The Des Moines Register opened its start-of-practice profile of the 2004-05 Iowa Hawkeyes in the following rather breathless fashion:
Adam Haluska grabbed a basketball. He walked with it to near the three-point line.
Net.
That, in a swish, is what the transfer from Iowa State hopes to bring to the Iowa basketball team this season.
"It'll be nice to be able to get out there and shoot again," Haluska said during the Hawkeyes' media day at Carver-Hawkeye Arena Wednesday.
Nice for Haluska and nice for a team that coach Steve Alford wants "to fly the floor" for fast-break layups and three-point baskets in quick transition.
As a true freshman at Iowa State in the 2003 season, Haluska made 40 of his 119 three-point attempts. Now, he is expected to be one of the primary long-range shooting threats for a team that has adopted "The Year of the Fastball" moniker.
So as a freshman, Adam Haluska went .336 on his three’s. Let’s see, how can Wonk broach this graciously….
That’s not very good. Last year Northwestern’s Evan Seacat was 15th in the Big Ten (as low as they go in listing the “leaders”) in three-point FG percentage. He shot .347. Or, to quote Wonk’s favorite single stat from last season yet again: Michigan State as a team shot .434 on its three’s in conference play (.401 for the year). In fact, five entire teams (Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio State, and Wisconsin) shot a higher percentage from behind the arc last year than Haluska did at Iowa State.
Wonk therefore offers a handy rewrite at no charge to the earnest yet statistically-challenged scriveners in Des Moines:
Adam Haluska grabbed a basketball. He walked with it to near the three-point line.
Clang.
That, in a ricochet, is what the transfer from Iowa State is likely to bring the Iowa basketball team this season.
“It’ll be nice to be able to get out there and miss 79 of 119 three’s again,” Haluska shouted over his shoulder while chasing his miss behind the bleachers.
That being said, Wonk will not be at all surprised if carryover (Iowa is returning Pierre Pierce, Jeff Horner, and Greg Brunner) and the Big Ten’s single most favorable schedule (they don’t go to Michigan State and Wisconsin doesn’t come to Iowa City) suffice to push the Hawkeyes from last year’s 9-7 to a 10-6 in conference this year, good enough for the big dance.
And, lest Wonk be misunderstood, who knows: Haluska may have a big year shooting the three. Deron Williams of Wonk's beloved Illinois made huge strides in this category between his freshman and sophomore years, going from .354 to .394 while more than doubling his number of attempts. (Wonk still remembers the look of shock on then-Western Kentucky coach Dennis Felton’s face when the then-freshman Williams sank three big three’s in the Illini’s first-round NCAA tournament game against the Hilltoppers.) Yes, Haluska may turn out to be a valuable addition. But we don’t know, yet.
Until we do, let’s dial down on the one-word-paragraph hype pieces.
Please.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Michigan defeated Division II Michigan Tech in the Wolverines' exhibition opener yesterday. Links here, here, here, and here.
Penn State beat Division II East Stroudsburg in the exhibition opener and finale for the Nittany Lions yesterday. (Excitement is running high in Happy Valley if the crowd cheering on Aaron Johnson in this accompanying photo is any indication.) This was the only exhibition game Penn State will play. They open against Illinois State this Sunday.
Purdue opens exhibition play tonight against Division II Washburn. Links here and here.
(BONUS Washburn note: located in Topeka, Kansas, Washburn's men's teams are nicknamed the Ichabods, while the women's teams are known as the Lady Blues, thus avoiding the oxymoronic but nevertheless cool-sounding moniker, "Lady Ichabods.")
Wisconsin held an intrasquad scrimmage yesterday and Penn State transfer and Racine native Sharif Chambliss showed signs of continued progress as he comes back from surgery in April for a torn ACL.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber likes what he saw from the Illini in Friday night's victory over Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the team's exhibition opener.
Illinois is overrated, Wisconsin is underrated, and both Mike Davis and Dan Monson could be looking at involuntary job searches in the near future. All this according to the Sporting News' admirably verb-less college basketball preview for readers with ADD.
BONUS non-hoops note
Going by the photo on the sports page of today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez eerily resembles Clemenza from "The Godfather."
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 5:19 AM
The Des Moines Register opened its start-of-practice profile of the 2004-05 Iowa Hawkeyes in the following rather breathless fashion:
Adam Haluska grabbed a basketball. He walked with it to near the three-point line.
Net.
That, in a swish, is what the transfer from Iowa State hopes to bring to the Iowa basketball team this season.
"It'll be nice to be able to get out there and shoot again," Haluska said during the Hawkeyes' media day at Carver-Hawkeye Arena Wednesday.
Nice for Haluska and nice for a team that coach Steve Alford wants "to fly the floor" for fast-break layups and three-point baskets in quick transition.
As a true freshman at Iowa State in the 2003 season, Haluska made 40 of his 119 three-point attempts. Now, he is expected to be one of the primary long-range shooting threats for a team that has adopted "The Year of the Fastball" moniker.
So as a freshman, Adam Haluska went .336 on his three’s. Let’s see, how can Wonk broach this graciously….
That’s not very good. Last year Northwestern’s Evan Seacat was 15th in the Big Ten (as low as they go in listing the “leaders”) in three-point FG percentage. He shot .347. Or, to quote Wonk’s favorite single stat from last season yet again: Michigan State as a team shot .434 on its three’s in conference play (.401 for the year). In fact, five entire teams (Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio State, and Wisconsin) shot a higher percentage from behind the arc last year than Haluska did at Iowa State.
Wonk therefore offers a handy rewrite at no charge to the earnest yet statistically-challenged scriveners in Des Moines:
Adam Haluska grabbed a basketball. He walked with it to near the three-point line.
Clang.
That, in a ricochet, is what the transfer from Iowa State is likely to bring the Iowa basketball team this season.
“It’ll be nice to be able to get out there and miss 79 of 119 three’s again,” Haluska shouted over his shoulder while chasing his miss behind the bleachers.
That being said, Wonk will not be at all surprised if carryover (Iowa is returning Pierre Pierce, Jeff Horner, and Greg Brunner) and the Big Ten’s single most favorable schedule (they don’t go to Michigan State and Wisconsin doesn’t come to Iowa City) suffice to push the Hawkeyes from last year’s 9-7 to a 10-6 in conference this year, good enough for the big dance.
And, lest Wonk be misunderstood, who knows: Haluska may have a big year shooting the three. Deron Williams of Wonk's beloved Illinois made huge strides in this category between his freshman and sophomore years, going from .354 to .394 while more than doubling his number of attempts. (Wonk still remembers the look of shock on then-Western Kentucky coach Dennis Felton’s face when the then-freshman Williams sank three big three’s in the Illini’s first-round NCAA tournament game against the Hilltoppers.) Yes, Haluska may turn out to be a valuable addition. But we don’t know, yet.
Until we do, let’s dial down on the one-word-paragraph hype pieces.
Please.
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Michigan defeated Division II Michigan Tech in the Wolverines' exhibition opener yesterday. Links here, here, here, and here.
Penn State beat Division II East Stroudsburg in the exhibition opener and finale for the Nittany Lions yesterday. (Excitement is running high in Happy Valley if the crowd cheering on Aaron Johnson in this accompanying photo is any indication.) This was the only exhibition game Penn State will play. They open against Illinois State this Sunday.
Purdue opens exhibition play tonight against Division II Washburn. Links here and here.
(BONUS Washburn note: located in Topeka, Kansas, Washburn's men's teams are nicknamed the Ichabods, while the women's teams are known as the Lady Blues, thus avoiding the oxymoronic but nevertheless cool-sounding moniker, "Lady Ichabods.")
Wisconsin held an intrasquad scrimmage yesterday and Penn State transfer and Racine native Sharif Chambliss showed signs of continued progress as he comes back from surgery in April for a torn ACL.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber likes what he saw from the Illini in Friday night's victory over Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the team's exhibition opener.
Illinois is overrated, Wisconsin is underrated, and both Mike Davis and Dan Monson could be looking at involuntary job searches in the near future. All this according to the Sporting News' admirably verb-less college basketball preview for readers with ADD.
BONUS non-hoops note
Going by the photo on the sports page of today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez eerily resembles Clemenza from "The Godfather."
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 5:19 AM
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Wasn't this mentioned in the Book of Revelations as a sign of the apocalypse?
Illinois won a conference football game today, defeating Indiana 26-22. ¶ 5:43 PM
Illinois won a conference football game today, defeating Indiana 26-22. ¶ 5:43 PM
Scary thing is: Wonk believes him
Minnesota coach Dan Monson on this season's goals: "The other day someone asked if I was worried about the daunting task of playing Michigan State and Wisconsin and some of the other veteran teams in our league....Honestly, that hasn't even crossed my mind. I'm worried about St. Thomas and Lipscomb and those teams right now."
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Illinois defeated Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, 78-58, in an exhibition last night. Calvin Brock decided--on the bench during the game, apparently--to redshirt, a wise decision for a freshman guard on this team. Shaun Pruitt, on the other hand, played last night and thus the redshirt option is gone (unless due to injury). The 6-8 freshman forward "has played well enough to possibly be in the mix," according to Bruce Weber. (More here.)
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 8:36 AM
Minnesota coach Dan Monson on this season's goals: "The other day someone asked if I was worried about the daunting task of playing Michigan State and Wisconsin and some of the other veteran teams in our league....Honestly, that hasn't even crossed my mind. I'm worried about St. Thomas and Lipscomb and those teams right now."
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Illinois defeated Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, 78-58, in an exhibition last night. Calvin Brock decided--on the bench during the game, apparently--to redshirt, a wise decision for a freshman guard on this team. Shaun Pruitt, on the other hand, played last night and thus the redshirt option is gone (unless due to injury). The 6-8 freshman forward "has played well enough to possibly be in the mix," according to Bruce Weber. (More here.)
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 8:36 AM
Friday, November 05, 2004
Wonk didn’t really need another reason but this sure helps
Yesterday Wonk waved around some free-lance editorializing by indefatigable Indiana beat writer Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star to support my low expectations for the Hoosiers this year.
More of the same, only this time it’s spade-work done by Mr. Hutchens: coach Mike Davis is reportedly high on a sharp-shooting 5’8” walk-on.
And that's just not where you want your program to be.
Missing the point
This time a year ago Michigan State was ranked #3 in the nation in both the AP and ESPN/USA Today preseason polls. Only Jason Andreas (2.8 ppg) and Rashi Johnson (0.8) are gone from last year’s roster. And with the addition of freshman point guard Drew Neitzel, one could make a case that this edition of the Spartans has better talent than last year’s team—provided Neitzel plays to the level of his advance advertising. So why in the world are the Spartans getting no preseason respect?
It’s not, contrary to popular belief, for lack of an experienced point guard. The beloved national championship 2000 Spartans led by point guard and fabled floor general Mateen Cleaves had a 1.06 assist/turnover ratio. The maligned 2004 Spartans with point-guard-by-committee had a 1.00 a/t ratio.
As if anticipating Wonk’s devastating statistical analysis, Minneapolis Star-Tribune scribe Jeff Shelman, in a handy here’s-Neitzel piece for espn.com, makes a fairly persuasive argument that the Spartans have suffered not so much from poor play at the point as from the lost production they would have otherwise had from Chris Hill and Alan Anderson. Still, Wonk begs to differ. Shelman assumes that what ails the Spartans is production on offense.
But Tom Izzo’s teams have never been especially productive on offense—with the glaring and teachable exception of last year, when they were first in the Big Ten in scoring, field goal percentage, and three-point field goal percentage, and second in the conference in assists (see below for a statistical appreciation of an underappreciated year on offense). And as for lost opportunities with players forced to play point, Hill, granted, has had some great games at 2-guard (the 34-point explosion in a losing effort against Carmelo Anthony and Syracuse in 2003 comes to mind) but let us speak plainly here….
The show-me attitude being taken toward Michigan State this preseason can be traced to the fact that after last season their two best players, Hill and Paul Davis, are widely believed to be soft. And I mean Lute Olson soft. Here is the statistic that Izzo has probably printed in block letters over the players’ entrance to the court at the Breslin Center:
Last season Michigan State tied for third in the Big Ten in rebounding margin.
Wonk rubs his eyes in disbelief at that sentence. But Wonk wrote it so it must be so.
Ask Pedro Martinez and he’ll tell you to just call Wisconsin the Spartans’ Daddy: no active Michigan State player has ever won against the Badgers. (The last victory came in 2001, with Tim Bograkos watching from the bench in street clothes as a redshirt freshman.) Last year Wisconsin beat Michigan State no fewer than three times: home-and-home and in the Big Ten tournament semis. Yes, two of those losses were by a total of six points—they’re still L’s.
The Spartans have also been outscored 145-91 in their last two games at Illinois (reason enough to thank their lucky stars they don’t have to go to Champaign this season). They’ve dropped two games at home each of the last three seasons. And when last we saw the Spartans they were being run out of the gym by a Nevada team that, true, went to the Sweet 16 but that also lost during the year to the likes of Boise State and Rice.
Bottom line: Neitzel’s most important contribution can be as a leader. Even with their shortcomings on the boards and in their hearts, Michigan State was one Hill free throw away (or, if you like, one no-call in the Illinois-Ohio State game away) from a piece of the Big Ten title. Who knows? Maybe all this loaded team needs is just one Kirk Hinrich-type to return to the good life: conference title, a 1-seed, and playing beyond the first weekend.
Or maybe they’ll just miss like last year. Wonk does not yet know. Neither does Tom Izzo.
BONUS statistical note on the 2004 Spartans
Michigan State as a team shot .434 from three-point range in conference play. (Second place in the category, by instructive contrast, went to Iowa, which shot “only” .395.) An individual who did that would have been the sixth-best three-point shooter in the conference last year. This level of shooting, extended over the entire year, would have been unequalled nationally; Birmingham Southern led the nation at .430.
Michigan State as a team shot .522 from the floor in conference play. (Second place in the category, by instructive contrast, went to Illinois, which shot “only” .471.) An individual who did that would have been the tenth-best shooter in the conference last year. This level of shooting, extended over the entire year, would have been unequalled nationally; Oklahoma State led the nation at .513.
And here is Wonk’s favorite: Michigan State came within just five field goals of making more shots than any other team while attempting fewer shots than any other team. One would be hard pressed to define efficiency on offense more precisely than that. The Spartans needed only 778 attempts to convert 406 field goals in conference play last season. Illinois, by contrast, put up 873 shots to record 411 makes. In other words, the Illini, no slouches in efficiency on offense last year, had to jack up 12 percent more shots just to record an additional 1 percent in makes.
All of the above leads Wonk, who never makes a prediction, to make a prediction:
Michigan State’s numbers on offense—definitely in efficiency terms and likely in absolute terms—will be down this year from last year, Neitzel or no Neitzel.
Last season’s torrid shooting covered a multitude of sins. The point is not that the Spartans will have fewer wins but that they will need to come up with a different formula to stay in the first division of the Big Ten. One piece of the formula is already in place: a favorable schedule, one that does not include a game at Illinois. This gives the Spartans a slight but real advantage over the Illini before the first game is played.
But what about the turnovers?
OK, Michigan State suffered a fair number of turnovers last year. Only Penn State, Ohio State and Iowa had more in conference play. Surely a steady hand at the point will help here, right?
Maybe. The relationship’s not as straightforward as we think. Last year Iowa, led by savvy responsible floor general Jeff Horner, led the league in turnovers. Nor, of course, can all of Michigan State’s turnovers be attributed to poor backcourt play. The Chris Hill-Alan Anderson composite point guard averaged 2.2 turnovers per game in conference play last year. But then big man Paul Davis averaged 2.5 and no one’s scanning the horizon for a savior to replace him. Hill and Anderson may even turn the ball over more often this year in the act of trying to be scoring 2-guards or wings than they did in the act of trying to run the offense. Scorers turn the ball over more often than role players.
But the main point is simply this: improving your turnover stats is not necessarily going to translate into more wins. Last year the Spartans actually turned the ball over more in their conference wins (average 13.7 per game) than in their conference losses (13.2).
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Indiana defeated Division II Bellarmine 101-64 in an exhibition last night in Bloomington. New regulations from the NCAA forbid traditional non-NCAA exhibition opponents from past Novemebers, such as “Athletes in Action.” (What, Wonk always wondered, did Athletes in Action do the other 50 weeks of the year?)
Located in Louisville, Kentucky, Bellarmine apparently inculcates a mom-like stone-cold zeal for safety in its students, judging by the picture of the stern co-ed with safety goggles on their home page. (Keep refreshing ‘til it comes through. It’s worth it: she’s warily eyeing a spiral notebook that could leap up and poke her eye out.)
Tim Bograkos is scrappy as all get-out, injured freshman Goran Suton is weight-conscious, and Tom Izzo is pondering his redshirt options, according to today’s miscellany in the Lansing State Journal.
Wisconsin “has become a basketball school in a basketball state,” sayeth Dale Hoffman’s column in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Nobody’s won more Big Ten games over the last three years than the Badgers,” observes Hoffman. True enough. Equally true: “Nobody’s won more Big Ten games over the last three years than Illinois.” Both teams have won 35 Big Ten games over the last three years. Mr. Hoffman has a future as a presidential press aide.
(Wisconsin’s not a true basketball school. Their football team’s too good. Illinois, on the other hand….)
Illinois plays an exhibition tonight against Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville (links here and here). Coach Bruce Weber is reportedly pleading with freshmen Shaun Pruitt and Calvin Brock to redshirt. If they play, even in an exhibition, the redshirt’s gone, unless a medical necessity arises.
Minnesota coach Dan Monson, conversely, has decided this season he will go redshirtless, if that’s a word.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
¶ 6:21 AM
Yesterday Wonk waved around some free-lance editorializing by indefatigable Indiana beat writer Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star to support my low expectations for the Hoosiers this year.
More of the same, only this time it’s spade-work done by Mr. Hutchens: coach Mike Davis is reportedly high on a sharp-shooting 5’8” walk-on.
And that's just not where you want your program to be.
Missing the point
This time a year ago Michigan State was ranked #3 in the nation in both the AP and ESPN/USA Today preseason polls. Only Jason Andreas (2.8 ppg) and Rashi Johnson (0.8) are gone from last year’s roster. And with the addition of freshman point guard Drew Neitzel, one could make a case that this edition of the Spartans has better talent than last year’s team—provided Neitzel plays to the level of his advance advertising. So why in the world are the Spartans getting no preseason respect?
It’s not, contrary to popular belief, for lack of an experienced point guard. The beloved national championship 2000 Spartans led by point guard and fabled floor general Mateen Cleaves had a 1.06 assist/turnover ratio. The maligned 2004 Spartans with point-guard-by-committee had a 1.00 a/t ratio.
As if anticipating Wonk’s devastating statistical analysis, Minneapolis Star-Tribune scribe Jeff Shelman, in a handy here’s-Neitzel piece for espn.com, makes a fairly persuasive argument that the Spartans have suffered not so much from poor play at the point as from the lost production they would have otherwise had from Chris Hill and Alan Anderson. Still, Wonk begs to differ. Shelman assumes that what ails the Spartans is production on offense.
But Tom Izzo’s teams have never been especially productive on offense—with the glaring and teachable exception of last year, when they were first in the Big Ten in scoring, field goal percentage, and three-point field goal percentage, and second in the conference in assists (see below for a statistical appreciation of an underappreciated year on offense). And as for lost opportunities with players forced to play point, Hill, granted, has had some great games at 2-guard (the 34-point explosion in a losing effort against Carmelo Anthony and Syracuse in 2003 comes to mind) but let us speak plainly here….
The show-me attitude being taken toward Michigan State this preseason can be traced to the fact that after last season their two best players, Hill and Paul Davis, are widely believed to be soft. And I mean Lute Olson soft. Here is the statistic that Izzo has probably printed in block letters over the players’ entrance to the court at the Breslin Center:
Last season Michigan State tied for third in the Big Ten in rebounding margin.
Wonk rubs his eyes in disbelief at that sentence. But Wonk wrote it so it must be so.
Ask Pedro Martinez and he’ll tell you to just call Wisconsin the Spartans’ Daddy: no active Michigan State player has ever won against the Badgers. (The last victory came in 2001, with Tim Bograkos watching from the bench in street clothes as a redshirt freshman.) Last year Wisconsin beat Michigan State no fewer than three times: home-and-home and in the Big Ten tournament semis. Yes, two of those losses were by a total of six points—they’re still L’s.
The Spartans have also been outscored 145-91 in their last two games at Illinois (reason enough to thank their lucky stars they don’t have to go to Champaign this season). They’ve dropped two games at home each of the last three seasons. And when last we saw the Spartans they were being run out of the gym by a Nevada team that, true, went to the Sweet 16 but that also lost during the year to the likes of Boise State and Rice.
Bottom line: Neitzel’s most important contribution can be as a leader. Even with their shortcomings on the boards and in their hearts, Michigan State was one Hill free throw away (or, if you like, one no-call in the Illinois-Ohio State game away) from a piece of the Big Ten title. Who knows? Maybe all this loaded team needs is just one Kirk Hinrich-type to return to the good life: conference title, a 1-seed, and playing beyond the first weekend.
Or maybe they’ll just miss like last year. Wonk does not yet know. Neither does Tom Izzo.
BONUS statistical note on the 2004 Spartans
Michigan State as a team shot .434 from three-point range in conference play. (Second place in the category, by instructive contrast, went to Iowa, which shot “only” .395.) An individual who did that would have been the sixth-best three-point shooter in the conference last year. This level of shooting, extended over the entire year, would have been unequalled nationally; Birmingham Southern led the nation at .430.
Michigan State as a team shot .522 from the floor in conference play. (Second place in the category, by instructive contrast, went to Illinois, which shot “only” .471.) An individual who did that would have been the tenth-best shooter in the conference last year. This level of shooting, extended over the entire year, would have been unequalled nationally; Oklahoma State led the nation at .513.
And here is Wonk’s favorite: Michigan State came within just five field goals of making more shots than any other team while attempting fewer shots than any other team. One would be hard pressed to define efficiency on offense more precisely than that. The Spartans needed only 778 attempts to convert 406 field goals in conference play last season. Illinois, by contrast, put up 873 shots to record 411 makes. In other words, the Illini, no slouches in efficiency on offense last year, had to jack up 12 percent more shots just to record an additional 1 percent in makes.
All of the above leads Wonk, who never makes a prediction, to make a prediction:
Michigan State’s numbers on offense—definitely in efficiency terms and likely in absolute terms—will be down this year from last year, Neitzel or no Neitzel.
Last season’s torrid shooting covered a multitude of sins. The point is not that the Spartans will have fewer wins but that they will need to come up with a different formula to stay in the first division of the Big Ten. One piece of the formula is already in place: a favorable schedule, one that does not include a game at Illinois. This gives the Spartans a slight but real advantage over the Illini before the first game is played.
But what about the turnovers?
OK, Michigan State suffered a fair number of turnovers last year. Only Penn State, Ohio State and Iowa had more in conference play. Surely a steady hand at the point will help here, right?
Maybe. The relationship’s not as straightforward as we think. Last year Iowa, led by savvy responsible floor general Jeff Horner, led the league in turnovers. Nor, of course, can all of Michigan State’s turnovers be attributed to poor backcourt play. The Chris Hill-Alan Anderson composite point guard averaged 2.2 turnovers per game in conference play last year. But then big man Paul Davis averaged 2.5 and no one’s scanning the horizon for a savior to replace him. Hill and Anderson may even turn the ball over more often this year in the act of trying to be scoring 2-guards or wings than they did in the act of trying to run the offense. Scorers turn the ball over more often than role players.
But the main point is simply this: improving your turnover stats is not necessarily going to translate into more wins. Last year the Spartans actually turned the ball over more in their conference wins (average 13.7 per game) than in their conference losses (13.2).
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wonk reads 'em so you don't have to!
Indiana defeated Division II Bellarmine 101-64 in an exhibition last night in Bloomington. New regulations from the NCAA forbid traditional non-NCAA exhibition opponents from past Novemebers, such as “Athletes in Action.” (What, Wonk always wondered, did Athletes in Action do the other 50 weeks of the year?)
Located in Louisville, Kentucky, Bellarmine apparently inculcates a mom-like stone-cold zeal for safety in its students, judging by the picture of the stern co-ed with safety goggles on their home page. (Keep refreshing ‘til it comes through. It’s worth it: she’s warily eyeing a spiral notebook that could leap up and poke her eye out.)
Tim Bograkos is scrappy as all get-out, injured freshman Goran Suton is weight-conscious, and Tom Izzo is pondering his redshirt options, according to today’s miscellany in the Lansing State Journal.
Wisconsin “has become a basketball school in a basketball state,” sayeth Dale Hoffman’s column in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Nobody’s won more Big Ten games over the last three years than the Badgers,” observes Hoffman. True enough. Equally true: “Nobody’s won more Big Ten games over the last three years than Illinois.” Both teams have won 35 Big Ten games over the last three years. Mr. Hoffman has a future as a presidential press aide.
(Wisconsin’s not a true basketball school. Their football team’s too good. Illinois, on the other hand….)
Illinois plays an exhibition tonight against Division II Southern Illinois-Edwardsville (links here and here). Coach Bruce Weber is reportedly pleading with freshmen Shaun Pruitt and Calvin Brock to redshirt. If they play, even in an exhibition, the redshirt’s gone, unless a medical necessity arises.
Minnesota coach Dan Monson, conversely, has decided this season he will go redshirtless, if that’s a word.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
¶ 6:21 AM
Thursday, November 04, 2004
BONUS non-Big-Ten note: NCAA finds Quin Snyder guilty of lax ethics in recruiting. Other “findings”: sun is hot, French are pretentious, Jim Carrey’s not funny.
Yesterday the NCAA announced it is placing a one-year ban on off-campus recruiting by the University of Missouri men’s basketball coaching staff. The NCAA also took three scholarships away from the program over the next two years.
Mizzou fans are naturally breathing a sigh of relief that the NCAA did not impose a postseason ban, however, the prohibition on off-campus recruiting is huge, a fact that some observers appreciate but most do not.
Simply put, Quin Snyder is trending dangerously close to Brian Ellerbee territory, a realm where recruits stay away not so much because of anything the NCAA has done but rather in fear of what the authorities may yet do to a program that has become synonymous with rule-skirting and sleaze.
One of the observers who doesn’t get it is Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In the course of saying, incredibly, “I still believe in Snyder,” Miklasz asserts his belief that Snyder “can turn himself, and Missouri basketball, around.”
Snyder is entering his sixth season as Missouri coach.
Nevertheless, Miklasz also offers the best summary of Snyder’s career Wonk has yet seen:
As a coach he has delivered some outstanding moments, including five victories in the NCAA Tournament. But overall, his pattern of finishing fifth or sixth in the Big 12 and getting hammered by Kansas and Illinois is nothing special.
Predictions are inherently futile—so here’s one….
Here’s Jeff Washburn of the Lafayette Journal and Courier on why the injury to Purdue shooting guard David Teague means the Boilermakers will likely spend their December just trying to climb back up to .500.
Other possible opponents include Roger B. Taney High and George Fitzhugh Academy
BONUS non-anything note: In his customary desultory trolling for Big Ten news, Wonk stumbled across a write up on high school volleyball in Pennsylvania and thus learned to his shock and horror there is in 2004 a high school in Mercersburg, PA, still named in honor of the 15th president, James Buchanan.
Wonk devotes a lot of free time (i.e., time when he should be working) to pondering questions like this and has come to the considered conclusion that Buchanan is the single worst president in our history.
A Pennsylvania Democrat who served from 1857 to 1861, Buchanan knew of no step he would not take in order to appease the slaveholders who made his national career possible. He thought the Dred Scott decision a very good thing (and likely knew of it in advance), sought to run Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas (no anti-slavery zealot he) out of the party for insufficient fealty to the pro-slavery cause, and famously declared a convulsing and bloody Kansas to be “as much a slave state as South Carolina.”
The Democratic party in the quarter-century before the Civil War forms the sternest and most troublesome challenge to be found in our country’s history to the premise that democracy inherently nourishes and preserves basic human values and rights. As a matter of party doctrine (adherence to which was ruthlessly enforced) humans were classified as property, enslaved and sold. Laws were enacted abridging free citizens’ rights to object to this enslavement. Buchanan was the apotheosis of the antebellum northern Democrat, a genus that presents a particularly repugnant spectacle across the decades: placing career advancement above the lives of millions.
For Pennsylvanians in the early 1900s (I trust) to have named a high school after their eminent favorite son is an understandable manifestation of local pride. To carry that name forward into the 21st century is obscene.
Mike Davis Nostradamus Award
Named in honor of the Indiana coach’s outrageously immodest and catastrophically incorrect prediction that his 2002-03 Hoosiers could go undefeated—they went 21-13.
The winner is: Courtney Sims, Michigan sophomore big man and fabulist, for his bold—nay, Namathesque—talk on media day: “I think we’re capable of [winning the national championship]. I think we have the talent. If we just come together and play as a team, I don't think anybody can really stop us.”
Mr. Sims, Wonk salutes your Ralph Nader-esque confidence! Surely teams everywhere are quaking in their overpriced sneaks, trying to figure out how to “stop” a team that hasn’t been to an NCAA tournament since 1998. Congratulations, Courtney! A “For Those About to Wonk” oven mitt and laminated post-game-interview-ready “NO COMMENT” flash card are in the mail. To borrow a line from “The Simpsons,” you, sir, are truly a credit to dementia.
Wright off
Indiana beat writer Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star does a great job covering the Hoosiers but Wonk’s favorite stuff comes from the answers Hutchens posts to a readers’ forum.
Here, in a succinct bite-size package, is why Wonk is skeptical of Indiana’s chances for improvement, even with its influx of recruits:
Question: Is there any reason to believe Bracey Wright will finally become the player people thought he was coming out of high school? My uneducated perception (after watching 40 years of IU ball) is that he is a selfish player.
It's hard to imagine an NBA team wanting a guy who scores a lot but takes a million shots to get his 18 points per game. He has given no evidence of being a team player or leader and is a poor defender. What is it that makes people think he's so special? (Ken from Charlotte, N.C.)
Answer: I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a big season for Bracey Wright in terms of his basketball future. He has a lot to prove. And he has a lot to prove within a team concept.
He needs to prove he can co-exist with guys such as Robert Vaden and D.J. White and get them involved in the offense. And he has to prove he can work within the offense instead of settling for the three steps-beyond-the-NBA-3-pointer that he was tossing up from all over the gym a year ago.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:49 AM
Yesterday the NCAA announced it is placing a one-year ban on off-campus recruiting by the University of Missouri men’s basketball coaching staff. The NCAA also took three scholarships away from the program over the next two years.
Mizzou fans are naturally breathing a sigh of relief that the NCAA did not impose a postseason ban, however, the prohibition on off-campus recruiting is huge, a fact that some observers appreciate but most do not.
Simply put, Quin Snyder is trending dangerously close to Brian Ellerbee territory, a realm where recruits stay away not so much because of anything the NCAA has done but rather in fear of what the authorities may yet do to a program that has become synonymous with rule-skirting and sleaze.
One of the observers who doesn’t get it is Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In the course of saying, incredibly, “I still believe in Snyder,” Miklasz asserts his belief that Snyder “can turn himself, and Missouri basketball, around.”
Snyder is entering his sixth season as Missouri coach.
Nevertheless, Miklasz also offers the best summary of Snyder’s career Wonk has yet seen:
As a coach he has delivered some outstanding moments, including five victories in the NCAA Tournament. But overall, his pattern of finishing fifth or sixth in the Big 12 and getting hammered by Kansas and Illinois is nothing special.
Predictions are inherently futile—so here’s one….
Here’s Jeff Washburn of the Lafayette Journal and Courier on why the injury to Purdue shooting guard David Teague means the Boilermakers will likely spend their December just trying to climb back up to .500.
Other possible opponents include Roger B. Taney High and George Fitzhugh Academy
BONUS non-anything note: In his customary desultory trolling for Big Ten news, Wonk stumbled across a write up on high school volleyball in Pennsylvania and thus learned to his shock and horror there is in 2004 a high school in Mercersburg, PA, still named in honor of the 15th president, James Buchanan.
Wonk devotes a lot of free time (i.e., time when he should be working) to pondering questions like this and has come to the considered conclusion that Buchanan is the single worst president in our history.
A Pennsylvania Democrat who served from 1857 to 1861, Buchanan knew of no step he would not take in order to appease the slaveholders who made his national career possible. He thought the Dred Scott decision a very good thing (and likely knew of it in advance), sought to run Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas (no anti-slavery zealot he) out of the party for insufficient fealty to the pro-slavery cause, and famously declared a convulsing and bloody Kansas to be “as much a slave state as South Carolina.”
The Democratic party in the quarter-century before the Civil War forms the sternest and most troublesome challenge to be found in our country’s history to the premise that democracy inherently nourishes and preserves basic human values and rights. As a matter of party doctrine (adherence to which was ruthlessly enforced) humans were classified as property, enslaved and sold. Laws were enacted abridging free citizens’ rights to object to this enslavement. Buchanan was the apotheosis of the antebellum northern Democrat, a genus that presents a particularly repugnant spectacle across the decades: placing career advancement above the lives of millions.
For Pennsylvanians in the early 1900s (I trust) to have named a high school after their eminent favorite son is an understandable manifestation of local pride. To carry that name forward into the 21st century is obscene.
Mike Davis Nostradamus Award
Named in honor of the Indiana coach’s outrageously immodest and catastrophically incorrect prediction that his 2002-03 Hoosiers could go undefeated—they went 21-13.
The winner is: Courtney Sims, Michigan sophomore big man and fabulist, for his bold—nay, Namathesque—talk on media day: “I think we’re capable of [winning the national championship]. I think we have the talent. If we just come together and play as a team, I don't think anybody can really stop us.”
Mr. Sims, Wonk salutes your Ralph Nader-esque confidence! Surely teams everywhere are quaking in their overpriced sneaks, trying to figure out how to “stop” a team that hasn’t been to an NCAA tournament since 1998. Congratulations, Courtney! A “For Those About to Wonk” oven mitt and laminated post-game-interview-ready “NO COMMENT” flash card are in the mail. To borrow a line from “The Simpsons,” you, sir, are truly a credit to dementia.
Wright off
Indiana beat writer Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star does a great job covering the Hoosiers but Wonk’s favorite stuff comes from the answers Hutchens posts to a readers’ forum.
Here, in a succinct bite-size package, is why Wonk is skeptical of Indiana’s chances for improvement, even with its influx of recruits:
Question: Is there any reason to believe Bracey Wright will finally become the player people thought he was coming out of high school? My uneducated perception (after watching 40 years of IU ball) is that he is a selfish player.
It's hard to imagine an NBA team wanting a guy who scores a lot but takes a million shots to get his 18 points per game. He has given no evidence of being a team player or leader and is a poor defender. What is it that makes people think he's so special? (Ken from Charlotte, N.C.)
Answer: I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a big season for Bracey Wright in terms of his basketball future. He has a lot to prove. And he has a lot to prove within a team concept.
He needs to prove he can co-exist with guys such as Robert Vaden and D.J. White and get them involved in the offense. And he has to prove he can work within the offense instead of settling for the three steps-beyond-the-NBA-3-pointer that he was tossing up from all over the gym a year ago.
Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me! ¶ 6:49 AM
