Sitting Courtside
Delay in the Ratings
I am eagerly anticipating the release of my college basketball ratings as much as the next guy. However, due to a quirk in college basketball scheduling this year, not every team had played a game against a Division 1 team by the end of the weekend. This situation should be settled on Wednesday of this week when the last team will play its first rated game. Look for the rankings to debut next week, along with a few more words.
Basketball as Life
Think for a moment about something that you excel at. Something that you might have spent the last 26 years of your life involved in. Think about that one thing defining so much who you are that without it, no one would know you. Now think about Steve Alford.
Alford turned 40 years old on Tuesday night, the night that his Iowa Hawkeyes were set to play Texas in the semi-finals of the Maui Invitational. For the past 26 years, and most likely longer, basketball has defined Steve Alford's life. As a high school student, he played on a team coached by his father Sam. He was named Mr. Basketball in the state of Indiana his senior season and recognized by two publications as the top prep player in America. At college at Indiana, Alford started for Bobby Knight all four years. He played on the 1984 Olympic team with Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, capturing the Gold Medal. In 1987, as captain of the Hoosiers, he led the team to a National Title. Alford was MVP of the team all four years and left as the all time leading scorer for Indiana.
After 4 years in the NBA, Alford went on to a coaching career, beginning in Division III and working that into a spot at Southwest Missouri State. Along with his father, who coached alongside him, Alford impressed at SMS and was given the job at Iowa. Entering his sixth season as coach, Alford has had basketball at the center of his life. This season, it may be in jeopardy of being taken away from him if his team doesn't produce something it has only done once under him. Iowa hasn't been to the NCAA tournament since an amazing run in the 2001 Big Ten tournament winning 4 games in 4 days gave Iowa the automatic bid. NIT appearances aren't enough to satisfy the Hawkeye fans who were promised big things when Alford took over as head coach. Suddenly, a team picked 5th or 6th in the Big Ten is being asked to produce miracles.
Hopefully for Alford, those miracles began to happen the last three days in Maui. Hawaii is a mystical place, home to islands shrouded in myth and mystery. It has also been home to some of the more miraculous basketball games in history. A #1 Virginia team led by Ralph Sampson walked into a tiny gym in 1982 and was beaten by host school Chaminade in what has been called the Greatest Upset in History. More recently, Ball State made an amazing run in 2001, beating #4 Kansas and #3 UCLA before losing to #1 Duke in the finals of the tournament. Ball State was able to translate that run into a 19-11 regular season and a place in the NIT. They managed to make it to the final 8 teams in that tournament, one win away from a trip to Madison Square Garden.
Iowa isn't Ball State. They play in the Big Ten and attract a talent level above anything that Ball State could hope. Yet, Iowa does have one thing in common with Ball State. They weren't expected to make a run to the finals of the Maui Invitational. Going into Wednesday night, they had done just that.
Iowa began their run with a back and forth game against Louisville. Louisville coach Rick Pitino had tried everything to give his team the edge. He flew out to the islands early and let his team warm up against BYU-Hawaii. He restricted taping of the game, one that his team ended up winning after a late scare, so that Iowa couldn't scout his team. It didn't make much difference. Before the game, Pitino commented that he felt that Iowa may be better than his team at this point in the season. This is Louisville, a team picked to finish in the top 4 by many publications and even to win it all in some. Yet, Monday night, Pitino was right and his Cardinals were taken down by the Hawkeyes.
The win placed Iowa into a game against Texas, another team ranked in the top 15. Texas defeated Chaminade in the opener, in a game where they easily cruised to victory. Their game against Iowa proved to be anything but easy. The game was close throughout. Up by nine midway through the second half, Texas just wasn't able to put it away. Iowa fought back from that deficit and then overcame a five point lead with only a minute left to play. When the buzzer sounded, Iowa had given their coach his 40th birthday present, a win.
Iowa won the Maui Invitational in 1987 and standing in their way of repeating that feat was North Carolina. Going into tonight's game, much had been made of UNC's season opening loss to Santa Clara. Whatever the Broncos did to North Carolina in that game, it inspired the Tar Heels to play like the Top 5 team they are predicted to be. Raymond Felton and Rashad McCants led their team in a game where the opponent looked more like Santa Clara than Iowa. Iowa never led and after being behind by 1 four minutes into the game, they were systematically put away by the strength of North Carolina. Pierre Pierce, who had carried his team to victories in the first two games, was again impressive but played the entire night in the shadow of what Felton was able to do. Playing with a sore wrist, Felton scored 13 points almost effortlessly. He added 9 assists and his tiring defense generated 4 steals. He cut through Iowa's defense again and again, in leading his team to the 14 point victory and a tournament MVP title for his shelf. The result left Iowa looking much like Ball State did at the conclusion of the tournament in 2001, on the short end of a win by a much better opponent.
However, for Iowa, an NIT appearance like Ball State's is not going to be enough. The play of his team in the three games of the tournament should give Steve Alford some hope though for the rest of his season. Despite the loss on Wednesday, his team still scored 92 points and shot over 52% from the field. They will have to improve on their defense, especially when they get to the hard nosed Big Ten season, but all signs point toward an improvement over last year's 16-13 record.
If Alford hopes to keep basketball at the center of his life, those signs had best be correct.
More on Longwood
Ken Pomeroy is a man with a few more contacts than me. He adds to the discussion of the four new Division 1 teams by interviewing the coach from Longwood. You can check out his interview
here.
Communism is Upsetting
I found
this article while surfing through
Yoni Cohen's College Basketball blog. I chose to link to it not for the reason he did, the banning of the Rock n Roll Part 2 Cheer at Maryland, but because of the last paragraph.
Meanwhile, the 4,000-seat student section that rings the Comcast Center court will be known as "Garyland." Last year's designation — the Red Army — was withdrawn after alumni objected it referred to the Soviet Union.
Yes, and nothing else in college basketball has ever been offensive before. Now, someone is upset about the Soviet Union? And to add to the thought, you are telling me that with all the students who go to that school, they couldn't come up with a better name for the section than "Garyland"? Personally, if I was an opponent, I would feel a little more intimidated by "The Red Army" than something that sounds like a theme park in some guy's backyard dedicated to himself.
Sorry, Maryland, you got this choice very wrong.
Mississippi State Survives
He came back, but he hasn't played yet. Mississippi State All-Everything forward Lawrence Roberts came back to school this year to play out his Senior season. If the first two games without Roberts are any indication, the team is going to be very glad that he did.
Roberts sat out the
team opener against Fairfield, serving a one-game suspension by the NCAA for an issue with a paid try-out when he was considering making the jump to the NBA. The team struggled to beat the Stags by 4. Fairfield is picked to be near the top of the MAAC, but this should be a team that Mississippi State should handle even without Roberts.
Flash forward to
game number two against Birmingham Southern, a team that two years ago was an Independent. Ignore the fact that they are picked by almost everyone to win the Big South this year. Roberts again sat out this game, nursing a broken nose. Again his team struggled without him, barely winning again, this time by 7. Birmingham Southern even led at one point during the second half in this game.
Roberts will return against Syracuse when the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament moves to Madison Square Garden. Let's hope he returns with the form that earned him SEC Player of the Year honors last season. If not, his team will definitely be overmatched against any decent opponent. Without him in the line-up, there will be no hope for the Bulldogs to repeat as SEC champs.
Breathe Deep, It Begins
Can you smell that? I do. It is the smell of a new leather ball being rolled out onto the court. The smell of new sneakers (Thank goodness they haven't been worn yet). The smell of a college field house. The smell of popcorn and hotdogs and stale pizza being reheated.
It is college basketball season, and it has begun again. The MRI will be tracking all the Division 1 teams again this year, for the fifth time. And just to make things more difficult for me, the league added 4 new teams this year bringing the total to 330. When I started five years ago, there were 317. Where do these teams come from?
This year's answer to that question may be the strangest yet. This year, the four new teams the MRI will be tracking are Northern Colorado, UC Davis, Longwood, and Utah Valley State.
Northern Colorado is not a new opponent for many Division 1 teams. They have been playing teams for a couple of years, but this is the first year that they play a full slate of Division 1 games. So far, with two games under their belt this year, they have shown that they have a long way to go in the league. Their opening game of the season saw them lose by 50 to Syracuse. They followed that up by losing by 13 to Bucknell. That second game might have been closer had Northern Colorado scored more than 9 points in the first half.
UC Davis will be playing in the Big West starting in 2007. That means 3 seasons as an Independent unless something changes early as has happened many times, most recently with
Georgia State moving up their schedule. UC Davis was previously a big name in Division II. UC Davis has a non-D1 game against UC-Santa Cruz before opening their Division 1 season against Utah State on November 27th (barely making it before the opening MRI stats are to be released).
Longwood, located in Virginia, doesn't have a destination picked out in Division 1 yet, and they have a lot to prove before anyone will pick them up. Undersized and without much experience at the D-1 level, Longwood will be struggling to win many games this season, their first out of Division II. They will tip off their season on November 19th against Columbia.
And here is the one that will leave you scratching your head. Welcome Utah Valley State to Division 1. Where are they from? Utah Valley State was a Junior College last year. Yes, last year, they battled other 2-year colleges for supremacy and this year will be facing teams such as Nebraska, Weber State, and Oral Roberts. At least they have senior guard Ronnie Price to lead the team. Price was picked by Street and Smith as the top player in among the eight Independent teams. It may not be much, but when you consider where the team is coming from, it is saying something. Good luck to Utah Valley State. They will be hard pressed to win anything against a Division 1 school this year, but lucky for them, a big group of their games are against the other Independent teams. They begin their inaugural season on November 19th against Weber State.
The tracking has begun, the numbers are calculating. Close to 4500 games left to go before the champion is crowned. It will be another fun ride. I'll be watching.
