A quick rundown of that which is mid-major and basketball in nature from the interwebs these last few days:
-- In his latest "Top 10 Thursday," Myron Medcalf listed the ten most indispensable players in all of college basketball, and only one mid-major player made the list, but he's listed as the most valuable to his team. You guessed it, folks - Creighton's Doug McDermott.
-- Long Beach State had the highest non-conference strength of schedule last season. They lost Casper Ware, Larry Anderson, and five other seniors, but have jumped right back in the fray. Their non-conference schedule this year will include road games at Arizona, UCLA, Syracuse and Ohio State, plus a home game against North Carolina. Dan Monson is nothing if not ballsy.
-- Texas Southern head coach Tony Harvey has suddenly resigned after turning around a squad that went 29-64 in the three years prior to his arrival and racking up a 57-49 record in the past three seasons. He also improved their APR score enough to avoid penalty in this upcoming season...but a difference of opinion appears to have caused bitterness. I'll keep an eye out for more on this.-- Last, we leave you with a whopper of a win for small schools everywhere. Zena Odosomwan is the son of a Nigerian immigrant, and ended this past season as Scouts.com's #72 high school recruit. He wanted to go to Harvard to play for Tommy Amaker, wasn't academically eligible, and had scholarship offers from thirty-nine other Division I programs. So what has he done? Chosen to skip college entirely to do a year at a prep school and get his eligibility. From his own mouth:
"Four years from now, when no one cares who Zena Edosomwan is, I know a lot of opportunities will be there for me to be successful on and off the court. And on top of that, why go for the average college experience when I could do something special that people remember me by? If I become successful, people will remember that I took that chance, that I had a higher purpose than basketball. Maybe I'll be a trendsetter."
Good on you, sir.