Mid-Major Madness: All Posts by Nicolas Lewis

Doug McDermott Returning to Creighton For Senior Year

2013-04-25T23:55:12Z

It was announced today that Doug McDermott, he of the annual Naismith award speculation, will be returning to the Creighton Bluejays and his father's tutelage for one more season of college basketball.

We had mentioned previously that such a move would only benefit both McDermott and the Jays. The team benefits because they could use their star player to buffer all the other challenges they will face in transitioning to a much more difficult Big East Conference. The player benefits because he could use the stiffer competition to (possibly) answer any questions that remain about his pro-readiness, at least in terms of the old "level of competition" argument.

It remains to be seen how this will turn out. Will it be a sweet swan song for Dougie, where he shows just how good he is, or will upping the competitive ante reveal his limitations and crush his draft stock? Will his continued presence truly be able to mitigate all of the hardships the team will face in their new conference, or will he be lucky to wind up a "Good Stats Bad Team" kind of guy in his last go around?

Either way, you won't read about it here. You're in the Big East now, but I had to write about you one last time. You're my boy, Dougie *throws up the deuces*.

Power of Prognosticaiton: How Did We Do? Missouri Valley Edition

2013-04-13T19:13:05Z

Back at the beginning of the season, I took a look at the potential top-10 players within the MVC. While the list caused a little beef (largely because I aimed to have the best player from each team, not purely the ten best conference players), the top spot belonging to Doug McDermott was not really debated.

While he did indeed turn out to be the most valuable player in the conference, the rest of the list is most certainly questionable now. Here is what we started with

1. Doug McDermott, Creighton

2. Colt Ryan, Evansville

(T)3. Jake Odum, Indiana State

(T)3. Jackie Carmichael, Illinois State

5. Carl Hall, Wichita State

6. Ben Simons, Drake

7. Anthony James, Northern Iowa

8. Anthony Downing, Missouri State

9. Walt Lemon Jr., Bradley

10. Dantiel Daniels, Southern Illinois

The criticisms with this list were Carl Hall being rated perhaps too high, Anthony James making the list over his teammates, Jake Koch and Seth Tuttle, and someone like Gregory Echenique missing the cut because I was aiming for the best from each team instead of the conference's best 10.

I think we can definitely say now that fifth on the list was not only not too high, but maybe a spot or two low for Hall, as he really came into his own this season and led his team very deep into March, dreadlocks or no. That was probably where I should have switched him with Jake Odum, who once again showed flashes but was inconsistent (much like his entire team) across the course of a full season.

Anthony James taught me a lesson this season - the difference between "leading scorer" and "most valuable." While James was the Panthers' leading scorer again this season, he was neither their most valuable player, nor even their most efficient offensive weapon, depending on which KenPom metric you would like to focus on. That would belong to either Seth Tuttle or the criminally underused Marc Sonnen.

I also couldn't have been more wrong about Dantiel Daniels, who just like James wasn't even the most (or second most) valuable player on his own team. While Daniels was indeed an offensive asset, both Desmar Jackson and Jeff Early were more valuable in the big picture to the Salukis (and it's too bad for coach Barry Hinson that they're all gone now after Daniels' transfer).

As for Echenique - he was indeed valuable, but in a very limited role (often limited due to his difficulties with foul trouble). The fact that he was outrebounded in any category by Doug McDermott is a shame given his incomparable size within the conference, so I will not be counting him in my "shoulda seen that coming" list.

The players that do belong on that list include Tyler Brown and Cleanthony Early. Brown was Robin to Jackie Carmichael's judo kicking Batman in Illinois State's success, while Early went back and forth between starting and sixth-manning out of his mind - perhaps one of those "Best Shape of His Life" situations.

For next season, the MVC is losing a lot of senior talent (most of the players I've mentioned so far). But the young players are coming on - Marcus Marshall at Missouri State, Anthony Beane, Jr. at Southern Illinois, Ron Baker and Fred Van Vleet at Wichita State among others. And let's not forget Tuttle or Early - boy, the MVC is going to be fun next season.

Portsmouth Day Two: More of the Same

2013-04-12T03:21:37Z

Here we are at day two, and Mike Duman Auto Sales took down Norfolk Sports Club 90-80, with many of the same faces posting similar results to what they showed yesterday.

For NSC, Vander Joaquim continued to be a non-factor, posting only 10 points and four rebounds in 26 minutes before fouling out. DJ Cooper initially looked like he had another respectable outing when you see his 10 points, 8 assists and 5 rebounds, but then you notice he also turned the ball over four times and missed most of his shots (most of them threes).

Our trusty scorer Lamont "MoMo" Jones raced his way to 19 points, and even tossed in 7 rebounds, three assists and two steals - but he also turned the ball over three times and shot only 39% from the floor, largely because he missed all six of his three-point attempts. Robert Covington, our lone representative on the winning squad, shot a tidy 54% to finish with 16 points and 19 rebounds, but he too was upside down on his assist to turnover ration (2:4) and nearly fouled out.

It's the debut of Roger Brown's Restaurant! What a squad, as they kicked the crap out of Portsmouth Sports Club to the tune of a 91-64 final. Ramon Galloway continued a busy offseason by filling the stat sheet - literally. He finished the night with 18 points, 8 rebounds, four assists, three steals, three blocks... and nine turnovers. Carl Hall made the most of his seven shots on the night, winding up with 10 points and 6 boards in his 26 minutes, though O.D. Anosike outdid him with 14 and 8 in the same playing time.

For PSC, Nick Minnerath led the losing effort with 16 points, while Kevin Foster hung out from long range and turned it into 13 points of his own. Jamal Olasewere and Colt Ryan seem to have only gotten mop-up duty, as they combined to go 3-for-9 from the field and had as many turnovers as rebounds (5).

In the night's final contest, Cherry Bekaert pulled out an 81-74 win over Sales Systems, LTD. The lone representative from the winning squad was Kyle Barone, the former Idaho Potato and WAC Player of the Year, though his eight points, 11 rebounds and six missed shots were not the cause for victory. On the losing side, three mids made an appearance: James Ennis, Rotnei Clarke, and Ed Daniel. Daniel posted the best night, with an efficient 17 opints and eight rebounds, though he also turned the ball over four times. Ennis and Clarke shot poorly (a combined 7-for-21 for 9 and 10 points, respectively), though Clarke did manage to chip in eight assists.

Sales Systems will play PSC tomorrow afternoon before the "semifinals" begin, so keep checking back here to see if Portsmouth's boys can recover can keep rolling and make their presence felt again.

Robert Morris AD Continues To Downplay Rice Allegations

2013-04-09T23:59:33Z

There appears to be some confusion in Western Pennsylvania.

After initially stating that there was no evidence of any misconduct on the part of former head coach Mike Rice, Robert Morris athletic director Craig Coleman conducted a further investigation of the matter and came to a final conclusion:

"I think it is unanimous that the Murdock allegations did not occur," Coleman said Tuesday.

One former player said Rice was inappropriate "once or twice," which is clearly not 'unanimous,' though there was supposedly nothing on the level of what occurred in the Rutgers program, and the allegations by Eric Murdock about behavior at Robert Morris somewhere between "nothing" and "Tim Pernetti getting fired" may just be smoke.

Fun fact here - Coleman pointed out, very calmly and matter-of-factly, that it was apparently usual that Rice taped and then tossed away the first few weeks of practice, and Coleman said Rice had been profane, but not excessively. Good to know that there is an acceptable level of profanity for college coaches. I wonder what it is?

I'm also not sure that a "lack of significant testimony against Rice" really serves as proof of anything - as they say, absence of proof is not proof of absence. That's would seem especially true when verbal testimony about a coach who did things on tape - tape that he conveniently threw away "out of habit" - is your only current information.

As to Coleman's opinion that he "didn't know what to make of"one player's opinion being so much more negative than everyone else's," I think the easy response is "you should probably dig deeper." I don't think this is the last we've heard of Mike Rice, and pretty much nothing would surprise me at this point.

Doctoring The Facts: Louisville's Kevin Ware

2013-04-03T05:28:23Z

WARNING: THE VIDEO IN THIS POST, USED TO SUPPLEMENT THE TEXT DESCRIPTION, SHOWS THE INJURY AND IS TO BE VIEWED WITH CAUTION.

An entire country of television viewers were subjected to a truly gruesome injury this past weekend during Louisville's win over Duke, when sophomore guard Kevin Ware simply tried to close out on a three-point shot and wound up breaking his leg so severely that it had to be covered up with a towel to prevent his teammates from vomiting any more than they already had.

What exactly happened? Ware came charging out to defend a three-point attempt by Duke's Tyler Thornton, a pretty common play in a basketball game, and since he was late closing out he used the "Superman Dive" technique to try to get there. This put his weight well forward of his legs, giving him little choice but to come down on his right leg, the only one he had time to get under him.

Unfortunately that leg just gave way, so severely that both his tibia and fibula fractured and the tibia became exposed to the open air in what is known as an open, or compound fracture. Two points I will make here: one, it is an amazing blessing that he got a clean break and that the bones (given the location of the break) missed any significant vascular structures so as to avoid him bleeding courtside. Also, that towel over his leg was to protect everyone's eyes, but also to protect the exposed skin and bone that, quite honestly, could have resulted in infection and amputation in short order.

You think to yourself "well, that's what he gets for flying out there so haphazardly that he lost body control and had to land awkwardly." To that, I would say that you are right, but only partly. As Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, put it:

"They're more commonly seen in car accidents where the shin smashes against the lower part of the dashboard or when someone jumps from a height like in parachuting,"

Indeed, in this case the amount of force imparted on Ware's leg was marginal compared to those two scenarios just described. While the way he closed out on the shooter is indeed a bad idea, it's more because that can cause a lot of unnecessary strain on the knee by sending multiple times your body weight down through one knee. The amount of force he experienced is more equivalent to jumping off a moving swing set than being in a car accident.

As that same article points out, the odds are decent that Ware had some history (either recent or not so recent) of stress fracture, and possibly even some dietary Vitamin D deficiency, that would predispose his bones to be weaker than average and thus more susceptible to such a traumatic injury, even from a relatively un-traumatic amount of force.

I don't know if it's quite as dramatic as some sort of systemic Vitamin D deficiency issue for African-American athletes, but it is still something worth paying attention to if Ware wants to fully recover and get back to playing basketball, which is very likely.

What does this mean for the game? It's hard to say. On the one hand, Ware's role had been gradually growing with the team, as evidenced by his play against Oregon. On the other hand, Louisville was able to put away Duke handily without him. On yet another hand, there's a chance that the emotion and adrenaline of the moment helped that Louisville surge and they'll not be quite as successful or cohesive now that they are down from that high.

2013 Postseason NIT: BYU Cougars VS Baylor Bears

2013-04-02T12:00:09Z

Way back on the Friday before Christmas, Brigham Young hit the road after a laugher against Eastern New Mexico to face the Baylor Bears, and they hit the ground running, to the tune of a 9-2 run. Unfortunately, they let the Bears go on a 15-2 run to close the first half, and then another 9-0 run in the second half, and before you knew it Baylor was up 20 and coasting to a win.

Brandon Davies finished with an impressive 26 points and 17 rebounds, in large part because of his 11 free throws, and Tyler Haws was the only other Cougar in double figures with 13 points - none of which came in the second half. The shots, what few good looks they got, were not falling, and they were never able to truly close the gap (especially since Davies scored almost all of their points in the last eight minutes.

The good news for the Cougars is that since then, especially in the postseason, their offense has come to life. Davies has remained his steady self, while Haws has upped his game to average 26 points a tilt in the post-season. Matt Carlino has come back to life and been a consistent all-around threat, averaging 16.5 points, 6 rebounds and 7 assists in that same span. Brock Zylstra had come to life with 37 points the last two games on the strength of 53% three-point shooting. The Cougar Offense Machine is back.

The bad news is, while the Cougars have indeed upped their offensive efficiency, they aren't necessarily playing better overall. They've been the beneficiary of teams that struggle to defend the long range shot, and who are not cohesively athletic enough to make comebacks once those threes start falling.

The worse news is that Baylor's offense has also become even more efficient since their 79-64 win over BYU, to the point that it resembles an absolute juggernaut. Consider the following:

~Brady Heslip, the Bears' resident sniper (literally - he has 20 two point shots in the last 23 games) went 4-for-24 in Baylor's last five games including the Big 12 tournament... and has shot 56% from long range during the NIT to get a quaint 16 points per game.

~Pierre Jackson, the senior point guard and leader of this offense, has gotten better at everything but shooting threes; look at the following uptick in his line:

Regular Season: 18.7 ppg, 6.5 apg, 42% FG, 77% FT
Post-season: 23.0 ppg, 9.6 apg, 49% FG, 87% FT

~Cory Jefferson, essentially the Bears' answer to Brandon Davies, has a similar trend in his numbers:

Regular Season: 11.7 ppg, 57% FG
Post-Season: 19.5 ppg, 73% FG.

And that doesn't even take into consideration the battle of the Austins, where 6'11" Nate (BYU) has to try and contend with 7'1" Isaiah (Baylor) down low, a big kid who is getting better by the game.

Whether it's Jackson and Carlino, Jefferson and Davies, Heslip and Zylstra, or even Austin and Austin, it appears that the Bears are a little bit more talented and a little bit more consistent than the Cougars at every position. I expect this meeting to go a lot like the first one, so we can wave goodbye to another West Coast Conference team tonight.

Former Big East To Become Western Athletic Conference

2013-04-01T06:13:19Z

Remember back when we jokingly made that graphic of the "few, very minor" changes the Western Athletic Conference had made in their illustrious history? It seemed pretty humorous at the time, what seemed like a history of shuffling the deck chairs and scrambling just to stay relevant.

Well, it seems now they've taken "grasping for relevance" to a whole new level, by simply giving away their identity. That's right, in what may or may not be a shrewd move, WAC commissioner Jeff Hurd has contacted new Big East commissioner Mike Aresco about the naming issue that the old Big East has to solve by May 2, and a deal was struck.

According to a source close to the discussions, over the next 10 years, the old Big East will give a total of $36 million dollars to the old WAC for the right to call themselves the WAC from here forward. A full announcement should be made later this week once paperwork is completed.

Confused? Yeah, me too. Follow along.

The Catholic 7 and their three new members (Xavier, Butler and Creighton) will retain the Big East name.
The old Big East members (Cincinnati, Louisville, Rutgers, South Florida and Connecticut) and their newly acquired acquisitions (Temple, Houston, Memphis, Tulane, East Carolina, and Southern Methodist and Central Florida) will form what will now become the Western Athletic Conference (the previous front-runner name was America 12).
The conference previously known as the Western Athletic Conference, now that a large chunk of their membership is coming from that location anyway, will become the Great West Conference.

According to Aresco, it was a reasonably easy solution that he and Hurd came to after a lengthy discussion.

"It made sense to both of us," said Aresco. "From our end, transitioning one name from another conference was easier than having to drag out a voting process that was guaranteed to not make everyone happy. Also, from a financial aspect, the price might seem a little steep to some, but with the new television deal we just put in place, we could easily afford something like this."

"Honestly, why not?" Hurd said. "Let's be honest, the WAC doesn't really exist anymore, not the way that anybody remembers it. We only have two teams that even remotely resemble "original" members (Idaho and New Mexico State). Since we are essentially hitting the reset button on our members, it only made sense to reset our name and identity, and reap the financial benefits of someone else wanting to capitalize on that change."

On the one hand, what a financial windfall for the old WAC now Great West - they get to re-brand themselves and start fresh. They also get to give roughly $250,000 per year for the next decade to their current members (a number that will certainly help a school like Seattle University, whose women's basketball team made the NIT this season), while the other half will stay with the conference offices as a sort of slush fund.

On the other hand, good grief. When I mentioned sarcastically the other day that these teams realigning should just take their conference names with them, I at least thought I was joking. Now I can only wish that I was.

Oh wait, I am joking, in case you didn't notice what day it was.

Conference Realignment: Sun Belt To Lose Western Kentucky

2013-03-31T17:22:15Z

It never ends, does it?

Lost in the tournament madness yesterday, Western Kentucky announced that they will be leaving the Sun Belt in order to begin their athletic pursuits in Conference USA starting with the 2014 season, a move made by C-USA to replace Tulsa, who appears destined to be leaving at the same time for The Artists Formerly Known As The Big East (TAFKATBE).

This, of course, comes only days after the Sun Belt announced that it would be adding four teams - Appalachian State and Georgia Southern for everything, Idaho and New Mexico State for football only - in order to compensate for North Texas, Middle Tennessee, and the Floridas (Atlantic and International) departing for C-USA as well.

According to some sources, this makes Liberty much less of a long shot than Parks originally suspected as the team the Sun Belt will need to get back to an even twelve members, and James Madison has been mentioned as well. Yes, I'm as perplexed by that one as you.

On the upside, this gives a home to the two remaining WAC cast-offs in football (though only one of them makes any geographic sense). On the downside, can anyone tell me the benefit of these lateral transitions? Think about it - a little more than a year from now, TAFKATBE will be 50% teams currently in Conference USA, and C-USA in turn will be nearly 50% teams currently in the Sun Belt. Why not just take the conference name with you?