2K Sports Classic

Iowa lost to Texas and Syracuse, two teams ranked in the preseason Top 25. Losing those types of games doesn’t make Iowa a bad team. But based on the Hawkeyes frontcourt strength, I thought they would have a chance for at least one victory. Unfortunately for Iowa, their guards were ice cold in the two games in New York:

Player

FGM

FGA

Anthony Clemmons

2

11

Mike Gesell

3

15

Josh Oglesby

3

12

Peter Jok

1

4

Trey Dickerson

1

6

Mike Gesell is certainly one of the bigger culprits. As a former Top 100 recruit, a junior like Gesell is supposed to emerge as one of the team’s leaders. Instead his ORtg has plummeted from 106 to 82 in the early going. Oglesby is also ice-cold, as the 40% shooter last year hasn’t been hitting. But Oglesby has always been a bit of a streaky shooter.

The big surprise to me is that Anthony Clemmons is getting so much playing time. Based on his recruiting ranking out of high school, Clemmons has the least upside of Iowa’s guards. And I’m rather shocked that Jok and Dickerson aren’t getting more playing time.

Dickerson was one of the main reasons my model had Iowa so high in the preseason. JucoRecruiting.com had Dickerson in its JUCO Top 10, and I thought he might be an impact player for the Hawkeyes. So far that hasn’t happened. It’s way too early to draw any real conclusions, but so far most of Jucorecruiting.com’s top prospects have been a bit disappointing:

Leading that list is Arizona’s Kadeem Allen. Instead of becoming a major scorer, Allen is redshirting. Meanwhile Baylor’s Deng Deng, New Mexico’s Jordan Goodman, and Kansas St.’s Stephen Hurt have played relatively sparingly, particularly in their team’s biggest games.

LSU’s Josh Gray was supposed to be the super-scorer, but in his first big matchup against Old Dominion he was no match for ODU’s Trey Freeman. Sam Cassell Jr. seems to be UConn’s 4th guard, and after a 2 for 9, foul-filled performance in the Puerto Rico TipOff title game, he isn’t moving ahead in the rotation.

Oregon’s Dwayne Benjamin is shooting a pedestrian 6 of 18 on his 2’s so far, which isn’t good for a big man. But in fairness, Oregon needs his size more than anything, and Benjamin has avoided trouble while grabbing a fair share of rebounds. Memphis’ Trahson Burrell has only played one game, though he did look good. Oddly Memphis doesn’t play its second game until Monday.

The one elite JUCO player that has lived up to the hype is Auburn’s Cinmeon Bowers. Bowers is averaging 16 PPG and 14 RPG so far. That is a bit aided by Auburn’s tempo, but even the tempo free stats look solid. Bowers has an ORtg of 106 while using 29% of his team’s possessions, and an offensive and defensive rebounding rate of 18 and 35 respectively.

Coaches vs Cancer

Duke has participated in a holiday tournament for 10 straight years, won eight of those tournaments, and finished second twice. I could run the table again that shows how Mike Krzyzewski is the best coach in the world before January 1st, but you’ve seen it before. Right now, the Blue Devils have looked nearly invincible. Let’s see where they stand after the trip to Wisconsin in early December.

Hall of Fame Tipoff

Notre Dame vs Providence might have been my favorite game of the season so far. Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant and Providence’s LaDontae Henton aren’t on too many NBA watch lists. They were both three star prospects out of high school. But they’ve become college stars, and on Sunday both players played like they deserve a larger spotlight.

Grant showed an unbelievable ability to both drive to the basket and pull-up with a soft touch. And Grant’s step-back three pointer with the shot-clock winding down with 2 minutes left felt like a dagger. But Henton, on his way to a career high 38 points, would not be denied. Henton posted up, he hit floaters, he hit threes. And with time running down, Henton got to the line and sank the game-winning free throws.

Winning this tournament was huge for Providence. A year ago, the Friars had to win the Big East tournament to feel safely in the NCAA field. This year, with two early wins over likely bubble teams, they’ve already done a ton to build their resume.

The flip side of that is Florida St. which went 0-2 in this event. With Florida St. losing to both UMass and Providence, two teams projected on the bubble teams in the A10 and Big East, Florida St. can’t afford to simply finish 9-9 in the ACC. The good news is that the Seminoles will have a lot more chances against quality teams in ACC play. The better news is that freshman Xavier Rathan-Mayes had a breakout game on Sunday in his first start. But those losses to bubble teams are going to sting all year.

Puerto Rico Tipoff

Texas A&M has to be very frustrated that Danuel House wasn’t cleared sooner. The Houston transfer played for the first time on Sunday and dominated New Mexico. A&M lost by just two to Dayton on Thursday, and if House had been available, I wonder whether A&M would have won this whole event.

But A&M still has some chemistry issues to work through. I’m starting to wonder if House’s arrival might be the end for Davonte Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald who shot just 29% on his threes last season, is shooting 24% from the floor this season. But it isn’t the shooting percentage that bothers me, it is the shot-selection. Fitzgerald makes a basket and then thinks he can just jack up a random three on the next possession. Now that they have a number of talented scorers, head coach Billy Kennedy needs his players to work together to make sure the team doesn’t waste any more possessions. Last year Texas A&M had the 267th ranked offense in the nation. A&M had some talent limitations, but they shouldn’t have been that awful. Now that A&M has upgraded its overall talent level, Billy Kennedy’s job is to find the right rotation and make sure the right players are taking the majority of the team’s shots.

Meanwhile, UConn rolled out its four-guard lineup as expected in this event. By my unofficial math, Daniel Hamilton played 16 minutes at the 4-spot in the championship game. But his 8 turnovers (among the team’s 19) and the team’s inability to make threes doomed the Huskies. The purpose of the four guard attack should be to spread the floor and attack the basket, but we didn’t see enough of that for UConn to win.

And that was a very good sign for Bob Huggins and his West Virginia team. Huggins has traditionally been an elite defensive coach, but West Virginia couldn’t stop anyone last year. Shutting down the defending national champions shows his defense may be back.

Charleston Classic

We saw in this tournament exactly why Big Ten teams are going to hate their trips to Happy Valley this year. If the Nittany Lions are down eight with four minutes left, they actually like their chances of winning the game. Penn St. was in this situation a lot last year, and with a veteran squad they completely believe they can out-execute in the late-game situation. They nailed the comeback against Charlotte but lost in double OT. They nailed the comeback against Cornell and won. And they even survived against USC (though the comeback happened earlier in that game).

Penn St. probably isn’t very good. A good team would fend off Charlotte, Cornell, and USC a little earlier. But the Nittany Lions won’t be down 15 at home very often. And if the score is close, it doesn’t hurt to give DJ Newbill the ball and hope.

Miami FL rolled and won this tournament easily, crushing Drexel, Akron, and Charlotte.

Was this Really an Upset?

One of the problems with tracking college basketball closely is that lots of “surprising” outcomes no longer feel like major upsets. Case in point: Last Monday, Daniel Leroux and I recorded a podcast and I noted that without Alex Murphy (who will be eligible in December), Chris Walker (who was still suspended) and Dorian Finney-Smith (who was injured), Florida was going to struggle at home against a Miami FL. It might have been a Top 10 upset according to the ticker, but it really wasn’t that monumental when you looked at the rosters.

Had Florida lost at home to Louisiana Monroe, that would have been a lot more epic. But again, Florida was without three players. While Walker dressed, Eli Carter was out with injury. Florida just isn’t a Top 10 team right now. Perhaps when the roster is all together, they will live up to preseason expectations. But few teams could play without three key rotation players and still perform at the highest level.

The more disturbing trend for Florida might not be those game scores, it might be that Kasey Hill hasn’t taken a step forward since last season. Despite being the #11 recruit last season, Hill posted an ORtg of just 99 last season. That was largely driven by his poor eFG% of just 43%. But this year, he’s started off even slower. He’s just 3 of 24 on the season, without a made three.

Are These Upsets Truly Surprises?

Creighton, Indiana and Rhode Island may not be locks for the NCAA tournament, but I had them all in the Top 100 this spring. And it is always hard to win on the road against a Top 100 squad.  Oklahoma, SMU, and Nebraska may have lost on the road to these teams, but we shouldn’t blow these close games out of proportion. In January, these types of upsets, where upper-tier NIT teams upset ranked teams will happen every day.

In March we tend to focus on wins over Top 50 squads, but the committee puts a lot of stock on wins over teams ranked 51-100 too. Ken Pomeroy has argued that the emphasis should really be on road wins over these teams, and that’s probably fair. Indiana is going to be a completely different team at home and on the road. At home, you’ll see outcomes like the SMU game where the Hoosiers are knocking down threes at a high clip, and where the crowd feeds the team’s defensive intensity and causes a lot of turnovers. But Indiana won’t be the same team on the road, particularly if the threes aren’t falling. Road games against Top 100 teams are brutal.

Notes

-Even if those outcomes didn’t cause my jaw to drop, Marquette’s home loss to Omaha did. New head coach Steve Wojciechowski is learning that it is hard to teach a team to play fast and play quality defense at the same time. And certainly, Marquette lacks size in the paint. But the Golden Eagles can’t give up 1.28 points per possession at home to a low-level D1 team.

-Georgetown’s Joshua Smith had 12 and 11 rebounds in his last two games. It’s pretty sad when you feel the need to praise a player for his performance against Texas A&M CC and Robert Morris.  But after Smith’s defensive rebounding rate was a paltry 9% last year, even this effort is noteworthy.

-Maryland Terrapin Watch: We haven’t seen enough of Melo Trimble to know if he’ll star at PG this year, but it is worth noting that through 3 games, transfer Richaud Pack has a 21% assist rate. Pack wasn’t necessarily known as a passer prior to Maryland, so this development is worth watching.