2004-2005 College Basketball Preview

Maybe you haven't heard, but college basketball has been dead for years.
With underclassmen leaving school early to play in the NBA, high-schoolers never getting to college for the same reason and a corporate pall hanging over every big-time game, collegiate basketball has been ruined; at least, it has if you believe what major sports publications say.
Each year nostalgic sportswriters pen obituaries of the sport in which they lament the state of today’s game when compared with the one of yesteryear, where players stayed until they graduated and guys like Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, Pete Maravich, Ralph Sampson and Patrick Ewing were household names before they hit it big in the NBA.
While it’s true that the exodus of marquee players to the pros has hurt college basketball a bit, it has not, and will not, kill the sport. College basketball is bigger than a few players. Nobody misses LeBron James or Carmelo Anthony or Shaun Livingston once the ball is tipped in November.
The sport is cyclical, and whether stars stay one or four years doesn’t matter too much in the long run. What matters is the tradition, the fans and the passion.
Duke will always be Duke, no matter if Luol Deng stayed for his sophomore year or not. The fans at Kansas would have missed Wayne Simien had he gone pro, but it wouldn’t have affected their love of the Jayhawks. March Madness will be just as mad in 2006 if Chris Paul, Rashad McCants, Rudy Gay and Ike Diogu aren’t there.College basketball will never die.
Sure, expansion, realignment and player defections will hurt the game, but as long as there are players putting on jerseys and representing their universities with fans in the crowd to cheer them on, the college game will always survive.

Chris’s Sports Blog Preseason Top 25

#1 Wake Forest - Every scholarship player returns to a team that went 21-10 last season and was a few plays away from reaching the Elite Eight.
Watch out for the Deacs point guard, a little guy named Chris Paul, who I’m predicting will have a big season. He’s kind of flying under the radar now, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he might have an All-ACC season in him. Nobody else is predicting that, but that’s why you come to Chris’s Sports Blog: Analysis you won’t get anywhere else.
Besides Paul, who’s so good that he likely would have been a Top 3 pick in the NBA Draft after his freshman year (and been NBA ready, unlike another ACC freshman that went to the pros), Wake features a healthy Vytas Danelius (a preseason All-ACC pick last season who battled injuries all season), Jamaal Levy (a preseason CSB All-ACC selection), Eric Williams (who has so many Chinese character tattoo’s you could order take-out off of him) and Justin Gray.
Gray has kind of been forgotten about with all the hype surrounding Chris Paul, but the junior might be even more dangerous than his backcourt counterpart. Opposing teams will focus on Paul, especially in the fast break situations that the Deacs thrive on, leaving Gray with open jumpers he rarely misses. Don’t forget, it was Gray, not Paul, that was a first-team All-ACC selection last year. ACC teams won’t sleep on Gray – they’ve seen what he can do – but non-conference teams might, especially early in the season.
Wake’s Achilles heel is their defensive play. Last night’s game against George Washington didn’t suggest the Deacs have improved that much on the defensive side of the ball, but then again, it was just the first game. Jamaal Levy and Vytas Danelius should be rebounding machines, but they can’t stay inside and wait for the play to come to them. Both need to guard the perimeter better and become more aware of opposing offenses.
If they can improve just a little on defense and Eric Williams can stay out of foul trouble, the Deacs will be a Final Four team.
If they can’t, Wake Forest will be the biggest disappointment in college basketball.

#2 Kansas - High expectations are nothing new in Lawrence. Jacque Vaughn was supposed to lead the Jayhawks to their first national title since 1988, but fell short. Same with Raef Lafrentz and Paul Pierce in 1998 and Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison in 2002 and 2003. This year, it’s Wayne Simien, Keith Langford and Aaron Miles’ turn to bring a championship back to Allen Fieldhouse. The Jayhawks shouldn’t have any trouble in what looks to be a down year for the Big 12, emphasis on shouldn’t. This is a Kansas team that barely won games last year against such Midwest powerhouses as Kansas St. (73-67 at home), Texas A&M (71-65 on the road) and lost to Iowa State and by 19, yes 19, to Nebraska.

#3 Syracuse - As long as Gerry McNamara is in the game, Syracuse can never be out of it. With Billy Edelin back from a mysterious disappearance, the Orangemen – I refuse to call them the Orange since it’s not politically incorrect to give a masculine name to a men’s team. Wasn’t the Syracuse women’s basketball team called the Orangewomen. This is why I don’t like people. Let me start over. With Edelin back, the Orangemen look poised to return to the Final Four. And I haven’t even mentioned Hakim Warrick.

#4 Arizona - They’re only up this high because I refuse to rank ACC teams consecutively in the Top 5. Yes, I think North Carolina will be better than Arizona, but Arizona will roll through the Pac-10 while UNC will lose a few in the ACC.

#5 North Carolina - Rashad McCants infamously said that playing at North Carolina was like being in prison. With the way he acts off the court, I wouldn’t be surprised if he soon finds out how wrong he was.The honeymoon is over in Chapel Hill and if Roy Williams can’t get the Tar Heels back to the Final Four, the “can’t win the big one” characterization will grow to Mickelsonian heights.

#6 Michigan State - Might be a little high, but the Big 10 is terrible and somebody has to beat the Northwesterns and Ohio States of the world.

#7 Duke - For the first time since the Pete Gaudet era, Duke is not the team to beat in the ACC. You think Coach K won’t mention that a couple thousand times during practices?

#8 Texas - With Mack Brown coaching the football team and Rick Barnes leading the basketball team, UT sports fans might want to find a new hobby.

#9 Louisville - The Cardinals were ranked #2 in the AP Poll at one point last season, before falling out of the rankings all-together a few weeks later. The team’s fall came when Taquan Dean hurt his abdomen. He should be healthy this year, and if he is, he and Francisco Garcia can take Louisville back to their first Final Four since they won it all with Pervis Ellison in 1986.

#10 Illinois - Every year there is one team from the Big 10 that is vastly overrated in the preseason. Usually, this team has a heralded backcourt that is often called “the best in the nation”, but in reality wouldn’t even be the third best in the ACC. Quite often this team will have advanced to at least the Sweet 16 the previous season, eventually losing to a team that ended up going to the Final Four. Sometimes the overrated team will have a coach that has never won anything and has a middling record in the NCAA Tournament. In case you’re a little slow, Illinois is that team this year.

#11 Georgia Tech - Originally I had the Yellow Jackets at #16 in my preseason rankings, but I moved them up when I found out they were ranked below Providence. Last year, everything went right for Paul Hewitt and company.
This year, I don’t see that happening and I think the team will stay in the middle of the pack in the ACC, which is where they were last year.
Georgia Tech surprised everyone last year by bursting out of the gate and winning the preseason NIT, but they only won nine ACC games, two fewer than NC State. They peaked at the right time in the NCAA Tournament, but didn’t face a great team until the Final Four.
Alabama did the dirty work in the region by beating Kentucky, so all Tech had to do was top Nevada and Kansas. Their feat was still impressive, but the 2003 Yellow Jackets weren’t the world beaters that everyone is making them out to be.

#12 Maryland - The Terps were a bubble team last year until the week before the ACC Tournament. They quelled their at-large anxiety by winning the tournament, but that win doesn’t change the fact that Maryland’s frontcourt struggled all season and the team abysmal free throw shooting lost them important games.
Maryland returns four starters, including ACC Tournament MVP John Gilchrist who seemed to discover his game during the team’s run in Greensboro. The loss of Jamar Smith will help the team’s free throw shooting percentage, but the Terps rebounding will suffer unless Travis Garrison or Nik Caner-Medley steps up to fill Smith’s void.

#13 Wisconsin - Devin Harris is gone, but the Badgers easy non-conference schedule should be enough to give them a high seed in the Tournament.

#14 Providence - When Ryan Gomes decided to return to Providence for his senior season, the Friars season was saved.

#15 Oklahoma State - They probably don’t have another Final Four run in them, but Eddie Sutton’s Cowboys should still have a solid season with John Lucas III running the show.

#16 North Carolina State - Since Marcus Melvin has moved on to greener pastures (presumable to try out for a role in a live-action Spongebob Squarepants movie), the Wolfpack will need to fill his spot as a powerful frontcourt presence with long range capabilities.
Unknown in national circles, Ilian Evtimov will take over nicely and perhaps even be an improvement over Melvin. Evtimov was injured last season after a breakout freshman year in which he instantly became the heralded “Foreign guy every ACC fan hates”. Along with Engin Atsur, they will bring red staters and blue staters together with jingoistic pride.

#17 Kentucky - Because they always seem to hang around the Top 20.

#18 Florida - Because they can’t be as bad as last year… can they?

#19 Connecticut - The Huskies are ranked 8 in the AP Poll and 7 in the Coaches Poll. Now, preseason polls are meaningless, but #7 for a team that lost two players who went #2 and #3 in the NBA Draft? I don’t care that they won the National Championship last year. They had Okafor and Gordon then. This year the Huskies will be good, but will struggle early. Once Rudy Gay is ready to contribute, UConn will win some big games and make the tournament as a #5 or #6 seed. But without Okafor and Gordon, back-to-back is out of the question.

#20 George Washington - They have a guy named Pops Mensah-Bonsu. How can they not be good?

#21 Gonzaga - Gonzaga’s pitiful performances in the NCAA Tournament gives credibility to those that say the mid-major conferences shouldn’t get multiple teams into the field of 64. For the record, I’m on the side of the Southern Illinois’ and Butler’s of the world, but as long as the Zags keep choking in March, it’s tough to say that the #2 team in a mid-major conference deserves a spot over the 6th ACC team.

#22 Alabama - Once I saw that I only had 2 SEC teams ranked so far, I realized I needed to include another and there was no way I was putting Mississippi State on this list.

#23 Memphis - They have all the makings of a #7 seed that loses to a superior team with a #10 seed. Even though this will be obvious, Clark Kellogg will still insist it’s an upset.

#24 Southern Illinois - Like I said above, I’m all for mid-majors making the tournaments. It’s much more fun to watch Southern Illinois go for the upset than it is to see a limping Michigan team lose by 20 in the first round. That being said, if Southern Illinois was in the ACC this year, they would probably finish 9th.

#25 Arkansas - Stan Heath was in his first season as coach at Kent State when he took the Golden Flashes to within a few minutes of a Final Four berth. Arkansas hired him to replace Nolan Richardson soon after. But do you think that the Arkansas brass knew that Heath had only coached one year? Maybe this was a Wally Backman situation, except without the drunk driving and assault arrests. Don’t ask me why I have them ranked #25. I just have a feeling, but that could be the just-consumed Mexican Pizza talking.

Preseason All-Americans

I hate All-American teams that pick four guards and a forward. No team plays like that, so why would the All-American team? So I try to pick five players that an actual team would have on the floor at the same time. That might be three guards and two forwards, or vice-versa. It’s tough to pick the normal two guard, two forward, one center line-up because centers have gone the way of Dave Bliss’s coaching career. There are so few true centers out there that my team would be compromised by having to pick, say, Luke Schenscher just because he’s a center.

1st Team
G – Chris Paul, Wake Forest
G – Rashad McCants, North Carolina
F – Wayne Simien, Kansas
F – Hakim Warrick, Syracuse
F – Ryan Gomes, Providence

2nd Team
G – Julius Hodge, North Carolina State
G – Deron Williams, Illinois
G – Francisco Garcia, Louisville
F – Sean May, North Carolina
F – Lawrence Roberts, Mississippi State

3rd Team
G – Jarrett Jack, Georgia Tech
G – Gerry McNamara, Syracuse
F – Kennedy Winston, Alabama
F – Taylor Coppenrath, Vermont
F – Shelden Williams, Duke

ACC Predictions

I’m all cried out over the ACC realignment. To sell-out the soul of a conference built around basketball just to get a conference championship game for football is disgraceful. I hope every year the game is Georgia Tech vs. Maryland and the TV ratings rival that of anything on CNBC. John Swofford will always – well, now my blood pressure is rising. I can’t do this again. If you want to read my thoughts about the ACC expansion, click here.

1) North Carolina
2) Wake Forest
3) Maryland
4) Duke
5) Georgia Tech
6) North Carolina State
7) Virginia
8) Florida State
9) Clemson
10) Miami
11) Virginia Tech

UNC is ahead of Wake, even though I ranked Wake #1 in the rankings. I think the Deacs will slip in the ACC as Skip Prosser tries to work out the many kinks in his team's defense. Maryland is ranked third because they have the easiest ACC schedule of all the contenders, but I can't talk about that because it'll just make me mad that I'm discussing an ACC schedule that isn't a double round-robin. Where's my Valium?

Preseason All-ACC Team

This could just as easily be the All-American team:

G- Chris Paul, Wake Forest
G – Rashad McCants, North Carolina
G – Julius Hodge, North Carolina State
F – Sean May, North Carolina
F – Jamaal Levy, Wake Forest

I realize that I have Shelden Williams listed as a 3rd team All-American and not on the All-ACC team. This is for three reasons:
1) National sportswriters overvalue Duke players all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised to see J.J. (I can’t do anything but shoot, and I don’t even do that well anymore) Redick on the All-American team either.
2) Shelden Williams will eat up non-conference competition, but in the familiar ACC won’t be able to dominate as much.
3) Wake Forest will do better than Duke. Voters will want to reward the team’s success by loading the All-ACC teams with Demon Deacons. Levy, who could average 15 and 10, will likely be the beneficiary.

NCAA Basketball Thoughts

- I follow ACC basketball pretty closely. I grew up watching Maryland, except for those two years where you couldn’t watch Maryland, and attended Wake Forest. I watch every game those two teams play on television and many, many more not involving them. I would consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the players and teams of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
That’s why I was in such utter disbelief when I read that Julius Hodge was only a senior. Seriously, I couldn’t believe it. I had to look it up, and even then, I was still in disbelief.
How could I not know this? How was Hodge still in college? Wasn't he a freshman in 1996? I could have sworn he played under Les Robinson?
To make sure that I wasn't the only one who thought Hodge had graduated and been picked in the 2nd round of the NBA Draft (I even thought I knew who had drafted him: Milwaukee), I talked to two people who follow ACC basketball intently also. Neither of them could believe it either – one convinced me that I was getting bad information, and even though I had confirmed this crazy news, I still bought into what he was saying.
Starvin’ Marvin is still in college? Has he been taking lessons from Jason Kapono? How is this possible? Is Herb Sendek pulling a fast one on us? I’m still convinced this is some sort of mistake.

- ESPN has hired a bunch of new analysts for the upcoming season, one of whom is Jason “Jay” Williams. So, obviously, he’ll have Duke bias, which will fit him in nicely at a network that employs both Duke Vitale and Jay Bilas.
Mike Jarvis and Rick Majerus are two other newbies and the first time they were on TV under contract with ESPN they were slurping the Blue Devils so much (during a Wake-GW game, no less) that I thought I was watching a Coach K tribute show. I would be angry about this, but with all the Duke love up in Bristol, that’s, like, four or five blog entries that will write themselves.

- Speaking of Duke love: The aforementioned Jay Bilas put J.J. Redick on his preseason All-American team. That’s just ridiculous and I’ll leave it at that.
You would think Bilas would try to mask his Duke love by not picking overrated Duke players for his All-American teams. Apparently not.
By the way, I don’t mind that Bilas has Duke love. He played in Durham, so he should love Duke. Plus, he’s evil, which gives him more reason to love Duke. But Billy Packer went to Wake Forest and to hear him call a Wake game you’d think the Demon Deacon ran over his mother with an 18-wheeler.
OK, Bilas is a homer. Not too surprising. But The Sporting News is a national publication. They shouldn’t love Duke. So when I read in their college basketball previews that TSN named J.J. Redick “Best Shooter” in the country, I practically choked on the blue raspberry Jolly Rancher I was eating.
An aside: I don’t think anybody liked the lemon Jolly Ranchers, so I’m happy that they’re not included in with the regular Jolly Rancher flavors anymore. But blue raspberry is terrible. I mean, it’s Vanilla Coke bad. Where is the strawberry flavor hiding? I recall eating a fruit punch Jolly Rancher a few years ago that was fantastic. Would it kill them to develop a tangerine JR?
And what’s with blue raspberry flavored stuff anyway? Are there blue raspberries? Why wouldn’t it just be raspberry? Is there orange apple stuff? Or yellow grape? I don’t get this. But I digress.
Back to Redick being named the best shooter. Redick wasn’t even the best shooter in the ACC. Yes, his free throw percentage was the best, but he was 5th in three point percentage and had a lower field goal percentage than jump shooters like John Gilchrist, Tim Pickett and Justin Gray. Redick wasn’t even the best three point shooter on his own team! Daniel Ewing was.
The Sporting News said that nobody's shot instills fear in his opponents like Redick. That might have been true at the beginning of last year, but as the ACC season progressed it became clear that Redick was only effective when he was shooting from a set position. When he was coming off screens or darting back to the line his shots rarely went in. Teams figured this out and Redick couldn’t seem to make those big shots ACC fans had grown accustomed to.
Combined with the fact that Redick can’t dribble, doesn’t play defense and has backne, he is the most overrated player in the ACC and will suffer this season without Chris Duhon there to draw attention.

- If you love college basketball like I do, then you need to bookmark Yoni Cohen’s College Basketball Blog.

Final Four Picks

Wake Forest
Syracuse
Kansas
North Carolina State

NCAA Tournament Final: Kansas over North Carolina State