A New Year edition of notes, numbers, thoughts and assorted gibberish from around college basketball, and maybe outside it, too. Our latest college hoops notebook, with thoughts on the three-pointer, USC, the Southern Conference, Western Michigan, bowl games and more:
- Good luck getting anyone to admit this, especially with many so bent on NBA-izing college basketball (and therefore believing anything that jacks up scoring is automatically good), but something is become quite apparent to us: the three-point shot has become way too easy. It seems literally every single day players or schools are breaking new records for threes made. Not only that, but the number of teams knocking down 60, even 70 percent of triples in a game while shooting so many of them (20 or more) is alarming. The three-pointer should be an option; it should not be barely harder than a contested layup under any circumstance. If teams can regularly knock down 40-50% of threes in a game, then it’s time the line should be moved back several feet. And we’re not talking about the NBA line-we’re thinking about 25 feet sounds appropriate right now. The three-pointer should be hard. It should not be prevalent for nearly half of a game’s scoring. If it is, then it’s too easy.
- Or, we could just go back to allowing hand-checking again. Of course, that would be the wrong move, because hand-checking was what got the sport in a condition where so many called it unwatchable (right or wrong). But the elimination of handsy defense on the perimeter is what is allowing the three-point explosion, and also demonstrates just how unnecessary reducing the shot clock was. The clock never should’ve been taken down to 30 seconds; scoring would’ve risen just fine without it with players having more freedom to shoot like they do now. Instead, we now have a more homogenized, dribble-dominated game where even more every single offense looks the same.
- The improvement Rick Barnes has made at Tennessee deserves every bit to be recognized. His Volunteers play their tails off defensively, force a bunch of turnovers, shoot well from three-point range, and Grant Williams is the type of undersized-but-athletic forward battling inside who is a blast to watch and that makes the sport fun. UT is doing it with a number of solid but relatively anonymous players behind Williams as well as a relative lack of size. That missed opportunity at Arkansas, though, could be a dagger later in the season…we’ll see.
- We mentioned in a recent Morning Dish that Paul Jorgensen at Butler is a player who has really stepped up his game this year. Count Jared Terrell at Rhode Island as another. With E.C. Matthews once again sidelined by injury early this season, the muscular Terrell has had his best year yet as a senior, emerging into a reliable scorer averaging over 17 points per game, leading the team in three-point shooting and even ranking second in assists. Not sure anyone would’ve seem this climb in him in the past, when Terrell was more of a complimentary scorer and not a great shooter, but his play helped URI weather a stretch without Matthews, who is now back and returning to form (62 points over his last three games).
- On a similar note, count us among those tickled watching what Lexus Williams has done at Boise State. The former Valparaiso point guard has notably hit some huge shots for the 13-2 Broncos and is averaging 7.1 ppg in 23.9 minutes, higher than his averages in both categories at Valpo. Before the season we would’ve said Williams would be a nice addition for depth; now he is delivering clutch blows for a team that also has more than most thought behind Chandler Hutchison, with four players scoring in double figures and no less than six legitimate three-point shooting threats on a team averaging 10.7 triples per game and shooting the long ball at a 40.3% rate.
- Cue those ‘Kansas’s Big 12 title streak is in jeopardy stories’ that seem to come every time the Jayhawks drop an early one in conference play. Sorry: KU is the favorite until it is definitively knocked off its throne. But that was an impressive win by Texas Tech, and don’t discount TCU winning at Baylor, either. The Horned Frogs are a legitimate top 25 team and more than just a product of another Jamie Dixon schedule…
- Remember when some thought Western Kentucky would fade into irrelevance when Mitchell Robinson decided not to play the Hilltoppers? WKU has done just fine without Robinson, sporting a 10-5 record that includes wins over Purdue and SMU (as well as being hosed out of at least overtime if not a win at Wisconsin) and five losses by a combined 22 points. Missing out on Robinson has certainly hurt Western’s depth-an incredible stat is that the Hilltoppers have had just eight players appear in a game all season. Five players are averaging in double figures, though, the team has quality in the backcourt (Virginia transfer Darius Thompson has been excellent, Taveion Hollingsworth is a talented freshman and Buffalo transfer Lamonte Bearden has also been solid) and frontcourt (the offense often runs through senior Justin Johnson, and Dwight Coleby plays his low-post role on offense and defense superbly), and there’s just enough scoring and versatility off the bench to compete. The Hilltoppers are one of the most efficient offensive teams in the country (49.4% from the field, including 39.2% in limited tries from three-point range), and for all the guff he takes, let’s give Rick Stansbury a little credit: it’s not easy to have a team so shorthanded playing so well on both ends. Western Kentucky can’t afford to have players in foul trouble, so it doesn’t foul much (14.8 fouls per game) and obviously can’t attack as much defensively as it might like.
- The Southern Conference had quite the week just before Christmas, led most notably by Wofford stunning defending national champion North Carolina, but also including UNC Greensboro winning at North Carolina State and Tennessee-Chattanooga (picked near the bottom of the conference) knocking off one of the top Ohio Valley teams in Jacksonville State, while near misses came with East Tennessee State nearly taking out Xavier on the road, Mercer falling by a point at Alabama and Furman hanging in at Tennessee to the very end. The SoCon is not an overnight success, though, and has been on the rise for the past several years…since Davidson left it for the Atlantic 10, actually. We’ve noted it multiple times before, but it can’t be said enough what a job the league has done since Davidson-easily its most notable program at the time-left for the A-10. East Tennessee State and Mercer (plus former longtime member VMI returning) were grand slam additions for the Southern; Chattanooga, Furman and UNCG have used smart coaching hires to rise, and Wofford is a very Davidson- or Belmont-like program that has shined out of the Wildcats’ shadow. Add in a wise conference tournament location (Asheville, N.C.) near a number of schools, and the league’s regular season and tournament title chases have become some of the best in the sport right now.
- Stony Brook’s win over Rutgers and Rider’s victory at Penn State, both just before Christmas, once again obliterated one of the sport’s more enduring falsehoods: that virtually every team outside the top 100 or so is the same, commonly implied by charges of a team ‘gaming the RPI.’ Rutgers and Penn State wouldn’t have gamed any rating by beating either team; they took a calculated risk against more dangerous opponents with a better reward than some others choose to. See: Wisconsin vs. Massachusetts-Lowell, Michigan vs. Alabama A&M & Jacksonville, etc. Playing Rider (ranked No. 108 in the RPI at this writing, though likely to fall some) or Stony Brook (No. 242, but probably will rise slightly in conference play) is a more dangerous game than playing The Citadel or Delaware State (two of a number of other Big Ten cupcakes of late mired well in the RPI 300s), and it should be awarded accordingly. (And if one is tuning this out for some reason because RPI statistics are noted, it should be mentioned that Rider is 142 and Stony Brook 208 in the Ken Pomeroy rankings, and Alabama A&M, Jacksonville, The Citadel and Delaware State are also solidly in the 300s there.) Ask Minnesota if there’s a difference between playing Drake (No. 145 in RPI, 164 in Ken Pomeroy and a team it scraped past by one point that now is 3-0 in the Missouri Valley) and Alabama A&M (which it demolished by 43 points).
(Plug: more of our thoughts on non-conference scheduling from last week) - Rewatched the DVR of the Middle Tennessee State/Miami third-place game from the Diamond Head Classic. Personally don’t usually get into commenting on officials near as much as used to (11 years working courtside at college sporting events and spending time with officials will do that), but has to be said: the first half of that game may have been the most egregious case of 8-on-5 we’ve seen in years. The Blue Raiders were flat-out ripped in this game, with a host of touch fouls and non-fouls helping wipe away an early 13-point lead and putting the team in foul trouble it never climbed out of. Of course MTSU could’ve helped itself in this game too (starting with not allowing Miami to shoot 60%), but the Blue Raiders spent a lot of time with players on the bench, or in the game in foul trouble, and there’s no question that affects a team. Unfortunate for what was otherwise an excellent matchup of very even teams.
- Watching New Mexico State play, the Wichita State influence on the Aggies is clear. New coach Chris Jans is a former Gregg Marshall assistant with the Shockers, and NMSU has some ‘Play Angry’ in it. Jemerrio Jones and Eli Chuha in particular are bundles of energy inside, and Jones is another player like Tennessee’s Grant Williams who plays much bigger than his size.
- USC won the Diamond Head Classic, but still not sold that all is right with the Trojans. Southern Cal easily could have lost that title game against New Mexico State, probably would have if not for Bennie Boatwright being downright on fire from three-point range or if Jones hadn’t left the game with cramps for a stretch late. Chimezie Metu and Jordan McLaughlin also were both stunningly ordinary in that game, passive and Metu badly outplayed by Jones. For as much length as the Trojans have, too, they’re not nearly as intimidating inside as one might expect. Either it’s a team that hasn’t meshed yet, or perhaps the talent level at USC just wasn’t quite as good as some thought before the season.
- Old Dominion can wear its baby blue, 1986-throwback uniforms every day of the week. And should.
- Watching Kentucky and Louisville play last week was like watching an AAU game. The game featured all kinds of high-level athleticism and players making athletic plays. It also had virtually no set offense to speak of, and the number of awful shots taken by both teams reflected it. In today’s NBA-ized college game, athletes win more than ever, so in many cases this won’t hurt teams like the Wildcats or Cardinals, but it does make them more prone to being taken down when the opposition-or maybe more appropriately, athletes-get better.
- With everyone in a rush to wear single digit numbers now, few players seem to wear jersey number 40 anymore. Zac Cuthbertson of Coastal Carolina does, and he’s a pretty good player, too, averaging 16.7 points and 6.9 rebounds per game to lead the Chanticleers in both categories as they’ve emerged as a dangerous if imperfect team in the Sun Belt. Cuthbertson is a lanky 6-foot-7, gets to the line a ton and does a bit of everything for CCU, which notably drilled Texas-Arlington by 25 points last week and also has a win over Iona, and its losses include by six to Wofford, two at South Carolina, four to Wake Forest and two to College of Charleston. The Chanticleers also followed up their rout of UTA, though, by losing at home to Texas State.
- By the way, Texas-Arlington has way too much talent to be falling at Coastal Carolina-or anywhere-by 25 points. It’s been tough to watch how the Mavericks have struggled after an early start that included an easy win at BYU and good showings in narrow road losses at Alabama and Northern Iowa.
- Speaking of UNI, it is right there with UTA for the title of most schizophrenic team out there. The Panthers had early wins against SMU, N.C. State, UNLV and UT Arlington, but since have slipped into another of their funks that have popped up periodically the last three years. With Northern Iowa, it’s pretty clear: when its seniors play well, so do the Panthers. Klint Carlson and Bennett Koch have been notably up and down throughout their careers, though, and when the two combine for five points and just three field goal attempts, total (as they did in a 72-53 loss at Bradley), UNI is going to have a hard time winning games. In fact, including point guard Juwan McCloud, three of the Panthers’ five starters combined for just five points in that loss to Bradley, an almost unfathomably low number from the team’s top three scorers over the course of the year.
- Non-college basketball note from holidays: personally love bowl games, even as college football in general has become increasingly hard to watch with the endless excess (chrome helmets, different helmets, different uniforms almost every single game) and lack of defense contributing to 4-hour games. Bowls are still fun, and one has to be soulless if they didn’t enjoy the scene when New Mexico State won the Arizona Bowl in the school’s first bowl game since 1960.
- All that said, yes, there are too many bowl games. Like, 20 too many. But every bit as much of a problem is bowl tie-ins. There’s no way leagues should be allowed to lock in six, seven, eight teams into games. Cap leagues at two or three tie-ins, make the rest a free-for-all, and you’ll get better competition for games and more interesting matchups in the minor bowls than many have right now.
- Also: sorry, this won’t play well with social media, but am not a fan of potential NFL draft prospects skipping bowls. Not because they shouldn’t think of their future or have the choice (they have every right to), but because it sends a terrible message to young people to teach them that their lives are somehow going to be less if, by small chance, they sustain a career-ending injury in a bowl and miss out on the windfall of being a first-round draft pick. For one thing, there are insurance policies available for athletes to purchase to protect against it. For another, there’s nothing saying a college athlete can’t be a major success outside of football, if their career happens to be cut short. Yes, there’s a lot of money at stake. But let’s also not pretend that highly driven major college athletes don’t have other avenues to make a more-than comfortable lifestyle, too. Playing one more game with teammates in a sport that demands so much sacrifice of self for team should trump concern over a slim chance of a career-ending injury. Maybe easier to say when we’re not the ones involved, but we’ll stick with it.
- It appears one of the new trends for baseline out-of-bounds plays is for inbounders to get the ball back quickly in the corner, as it often tends to surprise the player guarding the inbounder or who might be in a zone. As more and more teams over the years have all but given up on scoring on these plays and just throw it deep in the backcourt after a half-hearted play, we’ll take it.
- We got to see Western Michigan in person recently, and what struck us (other than that the Broncos do have the talent to make a run in the MAC) is just what an unselfish star Thomas Wilder is. Wilder is one of the hidden gems of this season, and part of the reason from our view is he refused to hunt his shot against Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The 6-foot-3 senior led WMU with 16 points in its 66-63 win over Milwaukee, but he only attempted seven shots, fifth-most on his team. Wilder did hit 6 of 7, including both of his three-point tries, but his performance was the product much more of restraint than lack of opportunities (as point guard he had the ball in his hands most of the time, and he also led the team with five assists while also adding six rebounds). It’s refreshing to see a guard who has the ball a lot and is obviously the team’s best scorer (Wilder averages 18.0 ppg, 4.4 apg and is a MAC Player of the Year candidate) but doesn’t feel compelled to force the issue.
