AROUND THE NATION
Nov. 14, 2009
The Monarchy
Don't look now, but all your old buddies from the
2008-09 season in the Colonial are back again.
Defending CollegeInsider.com Tournament champ Old
Dominion returns all five starters while James
Madison, Northeastern and VCU welcome back four
starters. In all, CAA teams return 70% of their
starters from a season ago.
While ODU and VCU come out of the gate as favorites,
keep an eye on George Mason. Jim Larranaga has 10
freshmen and sophomores, so expect the Patriots to
take their lumps during the month of December. But
this team should be a beast come February once the
youngsters grow up a little bit.
GMU was one of five CAA teams to clear the 20-win
barrier last season (ODU, VCU, JMU and Hofstra were
the others), and it's probable that the league can
turn the trick again. But all five of the
aforementioned teams also lost 10+ games a season
ago. In such a balanced league, it'll be tough for
one team to pull away from the pack and gain
attractive NCAA Tournament seeding.
Throwing it all Away
A few months ago, Royce White was an incoming
Minnesota freshman with all the potential in the
world. The state's Mr. Basketball was arguably the
biggest recruiting coup that Tubby Smith had scored
since arriving in Minneapolis.
But instead of readying himself for the rigors of
big time college basketball, White has instead taken
it upon himself to wage a one-man crime wave.
Following an October 13 arrest for shoplifting and
fifth-degree assault, he's now a suspect in an
on-campus burglary involving a laptop.
This is a kid who's no stranger to being in hot
water, but in the past, his indiscretions haven't
included brushes with the law. Instead, White was
dismissed from DeLaSalle High in Minneapolis for
academic misconduct. He finished his high school
career with a 4A state championship at Hopkins
before inking with Minnesota.
White is one of those rare talents who's beefy
enough to play the 4-spot, but also quick and savvy
enough to shift over and play the 3-spot. Multiple
publications dubbed him as the Big Ten newcomer who
would make the biggest impact.
At this point, he's really forcing Tubby's hand, and
it's tough to say what his long term future with the
Gophers will be. His arraignment for the October
charges is next week, while the laptop theft is
still being actively investigated by campus police.
From Feast to Famine
Florida is only a few years removed from
back-to-back national titles, but the program finds
itself in a state of flux as this season begins. The
culprit? Call it general roster upheaval.
Four players (Allen Chaney, Jai Lucas, Jonathan
Mitchell and Eloy Vargas) have transferred out over
the last two years. Billy Donovan also waved goodbye
to Nick Calathes and Marreese Speights over that
same time span, with both of them leaving early in
order to get paid to play.
To add to his woes, Donovan is suddenly coaching in
a division where the competition is much more
intense than in years past. SEC East rivals
Tennessee, South Carolina and Vanderbilt return a
combined 14 starters, while Kentucky welcomes John
Calipari and a recruiting class full of studs. Hey,
at least Georgia looks like a potential pushover in
the division.
Florida was extremely soft on the inside coming down
the stretch last season, so that's Donovan's biggest
area of concern. The answer looks like it's arrived
in the form of 6-10 Georgetown transfer Vernon
Macklin, but he'll have some rust to knock off now
that he's eligible. With Macklin in the middle, Alex
Tyus can now shift over to the 4-spot for Donovan.
Tyus had such a tough go of it last season that he
nearly transferred, but he decided to return and
give it another go. After being a good soldier and
manning the 5-spot last season, Tyus might blossom
into an All-SEC type performer this time around now
that he's at his natural position. A 17 ppg scoring
average wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility
coming off of his 12.5 ppg effort.
While Tyus is getting a spot on the floor he's more
comfortable with, the same might not come to pass
for heralded shooting guard recruit Kenny Boynton.
Boynton is virtually assured a starting role, but
that might include him having to play some point
guard because Donovan currently has no proven option
at the position. How that impacts Boynton's
strengths (knocking down 3-pointers and getting to
the rim) remains to be seen.
However, if Israeli product Nimrod Tishman is ready
for the rigors of SEC play, that might allow Boynton
to stay put at the 2-spot. Tishman's a fascinating
prospect who averaged nearly 19 ppg in the Under-18
European Championships over the summer. He only
recently got the green light to play from the
notoriously slow NCAA Clearinghouse. Just a few
minutes of solid ball handling a game from Tishman
would do this team a world of good.
In an SEC that will be vastly improved from a season
ago, Donovan has his work cut out for him. There's
quality talent on hand, but there are two many
variables at work to predict anything other than a
third straight NIT appearance for this team.
Sept. 20, 2009
The train wreck that is Binghamton basketball
I thought the Washington State football team had the
market cornered on athletes going wild. Their
well documented problems
the last three years have included no fewer than 25
Cougars being arrested, one of which involved a
frying pan assault. A FRYING PAN.
Then along comes head coach Kevin Broadus and the
Binghamton basketball team, an outfit that seemed
hell bent on outdoing Wazzu. There had been
grumblings around the program that maybe Broadus was
taking too many chances on players with questionable
character. Now it seems as if the worst fears of the
Binghamton fan base have been realized.
Tiki Mayben, a key contributor in Binghamton's first
ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament last season,
was arrested last week and charged with two counts
of selling cocaine. Mayben was recruited by Syracuse
out of high school but failed to qualify
academically. Subsequently, the point guard's path
to Binghamton included stops at UMass and Hudson
Valley Community College.
But
Mayben's attempt to moonlight as Marlo Stanfield
from "The Wire" hasn't been the lone recent
appearance by a Binghamton player on police
blotters. Guard Malik Allen was charged in November
with stealing condoms from a Wal-Mart...when he
could have gotten them free on campus. Hey, at least
the kid is conscientious enough to practice safe
sex.
Before that, forward Miladin Kovacevic knocked a
Binghamton classmate out cold during a bar fight.
He's since jumped bail and fled back to his native
Serbia, where he can beat up people in peace.
Should it be any surprise that this team wasn't full
of model students, either? An adjunct lecturer at
the school, Sally Dear, said that her experience
teaching three basketball players in her Human
Development 304 class last year wasn't exactly as
positive as Mr. Kotter's was teaching Epstein,
Horschack and the crew. Whenever the players did
decide to show up for class, Dear stated they pretty
much disrupted the proceedings.
To make
matters worse, Dear asserted that she was pressured
to give the players (whose names cannot be revealed
due to privacy rules) breaks that were not afforded
to other students. Is that the ghost of Jan Kemp I
hear?
Mayben's arrest was the straw that finally broke the
camel's back. In its aftermath, the university
decided to take the most drastic of steps by
dismissing five players from the team. In addition
to Allen, D.J. Rivera, Corey Chandler, David Fine
and Paul Crosby were given their walking papers.
Broadus has learned that it's a very fine line you
walk when you build a program with second chance
kids. Hey, everybody deserves a second chance, but
some college basketball players obviously deserve it
a lot less than others. In the end, the blame for
this mess can be laid squarely at his feet.
Where does the program go from here? There is no
point guard currently on scholarship, and only one
guard period on the current roster. If you're making
an early projection for the field of 64, I would
avoid pencilng in Binghamton if I were you.
Fisher gets locked down through 2012-13
Man, time really does fly. News of Steve Fisher
getting a two-year contract extension at San Diego
State through the 2012-13 season prompted me to
thumb through his career record. This is his 11th
season at SDSU...wow, has it been THAT long?
Fisher quietly coached the Aztecs to a school record
26 wins and an NIT Final Four bid last season. That
makes it four consecutive 20-win seasons for SDSU,
and that nice run has pushed Fisher to the verge of
being second on the school's career wins list.
Despite losing four senior starters, I think San
Diego State's going to be a big factor again in the
Mountain West. Former Pepperdine standouts Malcolm
Thomas and Tyrone Shelley are now eligible for the
Aztecs, as is center Brian Carlwell after a stint at
Illinois. They join junior forward Billy White, who
only averaged 8.8 ppg a contest a season ago but
shot a sick 66% from the field while doing so.
A fantastic recruiting class will serve to enhance
the team's depth. Out of that group, I'm very
interested to see what kind of impact that forward
Kawhi Leonard has this season. Despite being a tad
bit undersized, he was an absolute beast at
Riverside (CA) King High last season, just ask the
Wear twins (who are now toiling for Roy Williams at
UNC).
Talk about a big promotion
A promotion is always an impressive feat, even if
it's just going from being a fry cook to manning the
milk shake machine. But in the case of Utah Valley
State, the school has achieved one of the more
impressive promotions in the history of college
athletics.
Just seven years ago, UVU was a junior college
playing a full NJCAA schedule. This year, following
the NCAA's mandated provisional period, the school
is now cleared to play on the Division I level.
Dick Hunsaker's squad will be no pushover, though.
The Wolverines won 17 games last season and will
definitely be in the mix for the Great West title
right out of the gate. It also helps just a little
bit that the school will be hosting the Great West
tourney this season, with a berth in the
CollegeInsider.com postseason tourney being up for
grabs.
John Stansberry is in his thirteenth season as
a senior writer for collegeinsider.com.
EMAIL JOHN |