Research shows freshmen rule and point guards rock
I recently spent a decent number of hours filing columns for the CBSSports.com preseason college basketball magazine, scheduled to hit newsstands some time soon. It was exhausting, in a sit-in-a-chair-and-stare-at-a-computer-screen kind of way. But the assignments were also beneficial in that they forced me to examine the landscape, and the whole exercise served as a refresher course during which some interesting tidbits made themselves evident.
I'm here today to share three of them.
And to remind you that Midnight Madness is less than six weeks away.
1. The freshmen will be great again: When the Greg Oden/Kevin Durant phenomenon took over college basketball last season it was collectively viewed as a once-in-a-generation situation, just one of those years when the two best players in the country happened to be freshmen. The consensus was that it was the exception more than the rule, that what we were experiencing was more circumstance than anything else.
But that wasn't true.
While I doubt any freshman this season will score like Durant or swat like Oden, it's likely the impact as a group will be similarly huge. Two favorites to win the national title (Memphis and UCLA) could both be led by freshmen (Derrick Rose and Kevin Love). It's possible that by March most observers will believe the nation's best point guard (Rose), shooting guard (Indiana's Eric Gordon) and power forward (Kansas State's Michael Beasley) are all first-year players, just like last year when the nation's best point guard (Ohio State's Mike Conley Jr.), small forward (Texas' Durant) and center (Ohio State's Oden) were each in their first (and final) years of college.
Bottom line, as long as the NBA forces high school kids to college, the best players in college will consistently be freshmen, meaning last season wasn't magical as much as it was a sign of what will happen every year until somebody sues the NBA for the right to earn a living out of high school. When that happens, normalcy will return. But until then it's probably wise to focus on the young guys.
2. The point guard spot will be scary good: Acie Law was the 11th pick in June's NBA Draft, not because he was that talented but rather because the Atlanta Hawks needed to take a point guard with that pick. Law was simply the best on the board. Nothing more. And that's how down the point guard class was last season, which is strange because it's primed to be the top position in college basketball this season.
Seriously, can any other position even compare?
The position is so strong it's impossible to find a way for Tywon Lawson (North Carolina), Darren Collison (UCLA), D.J. Augustin (Texas), Drew Neitzel (Michigan State), Jamont Gordon (Mississippi State), Sean Singletary (Virginia), Ronald Steele (Alabama), Dominic James (Marquette), Derrick Low (Washington State) and Eric Maynor (Virginia Commonwealth) to each make an All-America team despite each being worthy of such accolades.
And then there are the freshmen, guys like Rose and O.J. Mayo (Southern California) who will each be immediate stars. Or Nick Calathes (Florida), Jonny Flynn (Syracuse) and Corey Fisher (Villanova), who will each likely find themselves running three of the better programs in the country.
3. The non-BCS leagues will be down a bit: I enjoy watching non-BCS leagues thrive, if only because the deck is mostly stacked against them. Inferior TV contracts that lead to subpar budgets make it difficult for the not-so-big-boys to consistently compete with the so-called-big-boys, which is why it's splendid when the Missouri Valley Conference sends four teams to the NCAA Tournament or the Colonial Athletic Association provides a Final Four surprise.
Both those things happened two years ago.
Alas, I'm not optimistic we'll see such again this season.
A scan of the rosters seems to indicate this could be a season of regression for some of the more relevant non-BCS leagues, evidence being how I only have one MVC school (Southern Illinois), one Colonial school (Virginia Commonwealth) and eight other non-BCS schools (Memphis, Gonzaga, Butler, Xavier, New Mexico State, Davidson, UAB and Western Kentucky) in our magazine's preseason Top 50.
The Mountain West placed three teams in the NCAA Tournament last March, but this season I have it projected as a one-bid league primarily because UNLV, BYU and Air Force combined to lose 16 of their top 20 scorers ... plus a coach. There's no way to find the good in that.
And while I'm certain a Missouri Valley team will emerge as a surprise and join Southern Illinois in the NCAA Tournament, it's difficult, at this point, to project which school will take one of the 34 at-large bids.
That's why I have but one multi-bid non-BCS league in my preseason bracket.
It's Conference USA.
But I feel less confident about that prediction today than I did a week ago given how five UAB Blazers were arrested early Friday after an incident inside something called Club Red and two Memphis players were arrested early Sunday after an incident outside something called the Plush Club.
The only good news is that the Memphis players seem to have been on the same side of the scuffle, which is more than UAB has going for it considering its players were reportedly shoving each other.
So though team chemistry is probably still OK for John Calipari's Tigers, Mike Davis clearly has some issues to settle because there's no way the Blazers can hold off Southern Miss and Houston for rights to second place in C-USA if they're less focused on beating opponents than they are on beating each other.
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