Howdy, everyone. It’s the mailbag!
In journalism, this is called the lede. It’s your first few sentences, your opening gambit, what you use to hook your readers in. Not my strongest work, this one. I’ll admit it. Then again, the mailbag speaks for itself, right? You guys send a bunch of excellent questions; I do my best to answer them. Let’s not get too fancy about it. Plus, college basketball had something of a week — or, really, the ACC coaches had a week, and we spent about 24 hours responding to their crazy idea before the whole thing blew over — so it behooves us to jump straight in, to get down to the pressing matters at hand, to tackle the tough issues. Things like:
Hypothetical exercise! A full CBB season takes place with each D1 school allowed to build a roster from both current and former players, as they are today in 2020 (as in, they are their current age). Players are eligible to suit up for whichever D1 school they last played for. NBA players, retired guys, G Leaguers, dudes playing overseas — it’s all fair game. Teams are coached by their current staffs. Give me your Final Four and your champ. (Obviously, Duke and Kentucky would be huge favorites, but I wouldn’t sleep on teams like Indiana, UCLA or even Wake with John Collins/CP3. And Texas has like 10 NBA centers!), and the mid-major you think would make the biggest run (Weber State with Dame Lillard! Lehigh with CJ McCollum! BYU with Jimmer!). It’ll never happen, but it’s fun to dream. — Al K.
This is just, wow. A beautiful question. I was going to lead with the all-in tournament stuff but … nah. This is it, Al. This is the one.
Advertisement
There are tons of possibilities out there. Imagine the deep tournament run Arizona State could make with James Harden, Lu Dort and three standstill shooters. Imagine, yeah, Damian Lillard carrying Lance Allred, Joel Bolomboy and two intramural standouts to the Sweet 16. Imagine Steph Curry reprising his Davidson role. Imagine Kevin Durant back in a Texas shirt (with LaMarcus Aldridge, P.J. Tucker, D.J. Augustin and Mo Bamba — a lineup that kind of works). Imagine the number of lawyers LeBron James would hire to find him a loophole that would allow him to enter this tournament.
You have to start and end this discussion with Kentucky. JJust look at this. It’s insane. Kentucky could put together two or three teams and be competitive with the vast majority of NBA alma maters (and, yes, I’m focusing on the NBA, because that’s where the elite rosters will be coming from, primarily). Kentucky’s starting five would, be, what? Anthony Davis, Jamal Murray, John Wall, Karl-Anthony Towns and Bam Adebayo? Or De’Aaron Fox? It’s crazy.
Duke is obviously pretty good too, especially if Zion ends up being Zion and so many of the past two or three years (your Wendell Carters, your Marvin Bagleys) come good. Putting Kyrie Irving on the same floor as Jayson Tatum, Brandon Ingram, Zion and a fifth of your choice sounds enjoyable. Compare this to, say, North Carolina. The current elite talent isn’t quite there. But if you want to bring in former players, maybe the greatest player of all time helps close the gap. (He’s probably too old, but still. He has an open invitation.)
Indiana (led by Victor Oladipo, the emerging OG Anunonby, Eric Gordon, etc.) would be sneaky good. My favorite might be Connecticut. The Huskies have five current NBA players, and they just so happen to make near-perfect sense as a five-man lineup: Kemba Walker, Shabazz Napier, Jeremy Lamb, Rudy Gay, Andre Drummond. Is that anywhere near as good as Kentucky? Of course not. But it’s so neat and tidy, and led by Kemba, I think a Final Four trip is perfectly reasonable.
Advertisement
I could probably do this all day. I almost certainly missed a few. Shout them out in the comments, please.
Yo, E! Keep up the great work. — Carl A.
See now these are the kinds of mailbag questions I’m here for. Granted, this is not technically a question. That’s true. On the other hand, who doesn’t like a little casual encouragement? This almost never happens on the Internet. It made me feel pretty good. I’m going to start telling people to keep up the good work more often. Thanks, Carl.
How will you pivot your “Bubble Watch” segment if every team makes the tournament? — Casey O.
Here’s an idea The Athletic college basketball executive editor Hugh Kellenberger came up with: In our first edition, I write out a list of 346 teams, categorize them all under “locks,” and then go open a beer.
It’s still as good as any I’ve come up with. How does one watch a bubble that does not exist? If there is a bubble in a sealed box, but the box is closed and not under observation, does the bubble both exist and not exist simultaneously? The philosophical quandaries have shaken me to my core. (When the possibility was first broached, I think my face looked like this.)
Really, we’d figure something fun out. We’d turn it into a column about the top 68 teams in the country each week, and cover the sport comprehensively the way we already endeavor to, and toss in even more mirth along the way. Fortunately, given NCAA VP Dan Gavitt’s statement this week — when he said, and I’m paraphrasing, that the NCAA is cool with everyone’s crazy ideas and all but the tournament isn’t going to get bigger — this doesn’t look like a problem we’re going to have to solve. Phew.
So in the O’Neil vs. Davis heavyweight battle over everyone in tourney, whom do you vote for? — Paul C.
Ah, yes. O’Neil v. Davis. Dana v. Seth. The Tournament-Size Torrent! The Smackdown on Slack! A heavyweight slugfest for the ages.
Advertisement
For what it’s worth, I’ve worked on the same staff with Dana for almost as long as I’ve been writing about college basketball. No one is a bigger fan of her work, or her; she has long been a mentor and a friend. She was at my wedding. Dana is the best. All of which I say to forcefully bring across how deeply held this view of mine is: You don’t get far in life disagreeing with Dana about anything. If she says something, it’s usually true.
Having said all of that, I agree with Seth.
I just don’t think the all-in tournament is a very good idea. As I talked about with Brian Bennett earlier this week, I’m still scarred by the 96-team tournament idea that got floated back in the early 2010s; it was a very scary, very emotional time. (Remember when Tom Crean screamed at Michigan assistant Jeff Meyer in a handshake line? “You know what you did! You wrecked our program!” That’s how I feel about anyone who even considered a 96-team field. I’m not rational about it.) Having lived through those wars, I don’t trust any attempt, especially by coaches, to expand the field, and I don’t trust them to keep it a one-year one-off once the genie is out of the bottle.
But even if we grant that it would be a one-year deal, it feels both logistically far-flung (especially in a pandemic) and sort of redundant: If college basketball can do anything this year, it can do conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament (all of which can bubbled, or mini-bubbled), and that’s basically an all-in NCAA Tournament anyway. Why abandon the regular season — which will exist, and will be fun, even if it won’t be the most competitive equitable season ever, like there is such a thing anyway — for such a minor conceptual tradeoff?
Again, the good news is the NCAA doesn’t seem remotely interested. The 2020-21 season will be different, for sure. But it doesn’t need to be that different.
Why is Chicago State D1, yet Northwest Missouri State (dominating D2 basketball and football) is still in D2? Northwest Missouri State can clearly compete in D1 as they almost knocked off Duke in an exhibition last year. — Max G.
First things first: Did you guys know that in February 2019, the Massey Rankings (a system not unlike Sagarin, et al.) had Northwest Missouri State ranked 48th in the country? Like, of every college basketball team? The Bearcats were one spot behind Clemson and a few spots behind Indiana. That’s a remarkable achievement.
So, yeah, clearly the program can compete. Thing is, it’s pretty brutal to transition from Division II to Division I. It’s not enough to have one or two good programs (though having good programs in basketball and football certainly helps), because the entire athletics department has to transition to Division I. Meanwhile, DI has different requirements about how many varsity sports you have to offer, which requires more money than many DII schools are able to come up with. Oh, and the entire process is a limbo that lasts years, and is quite complicated and painful along the way.
Do you think Seton Hall can remain in the top three in the Big East this year? — David O.
I do. That’s where I put Seton Hall all the way back in early May, and not much has changed since. Yes, there are huge departures in South Orange; Myles Powells don’t walk through that door all that often, and Quincy McKnight and Romaro Gill will be really missed too. But Bryce Aiken was a huge get from the transfer portal, and Sandro Mamukelashvili could be in for a breakout senior season. I’m pretty high on him.
Advertisement
Really, this has as much to do with Seton Hall as the rest of the Big East. Outside of Villanova, which might be the best team in the country, the league looks entirely wide open. There isn’t a huge gap between third and, what, seventh? Eighth? So everything is on the table.
How do you rank the recruiting job that Rick Barnes and his staff are doing at Tennessee in terms of SEC and national competitiveness? — James H.
How could you not rate it highly? Just look at the class Tennessee is bringing in this year: three top-75 guys, two in the top 20? That’s added to a quality group that Barnes started to integrate last season when the Vols still finished 17-14 and weren’t that far off the occasional NCAA Tournament bubble look. Come this season, it looks like the staff has reloaded a program that looked like it would take at least a few more years to get there after a veteran-defined 31-6 season in 2018-19.
Considering Tennessee men’s hoops’ traditional level — even if you throw in the Bruce Pearl years, which were an outlier in their own right — Barnes is doing a remarkable job.
Tennessee at Wisconsin is one of the top early games on the NCAA schedule for next season, assuming nonconference games get played. Is this a wise decision by the UT coaching staff in scheduling a top-10 team in their opener? The young players on the team will have to be ready to play right off the bat. — Richard C.
Assuming that game is played (which is a pretty big assumption), it’ll be tough, sure. Especially against Wisconsin, which will return one of the oldest and most experienced teams in the country. But as important as nonconference games are — and we’re always eager to stress their importance — it’s also just one game. Everyone expects the Badgers to be good. Worst-case scenario, you drop a game that doesn’t hurt your metrics or your reputation all that much, and you get your kids some valuable experience of what old-man college basketball is like. Best case, you get a massive win. I don’t see the downside.
Who do you see being at the top of the Big Ten this season? Iowa and Wisconsin are clearly the favorites, but Michigan State seems to always be in the picture. — Nick B.
Michigan State always is in the picture. It’s Michigan State. But Iowa has to be the favorite. Not to pile on the pressure, but the Hawkeyes have the best player in the country — who was arguably already the best player last season too, but let’s not relitigate that debate — coming back. The offense was already good with C.J. Fredrick stepping in for the injured Jordan Bohannon last season; now Bohannon is back too. Joe Weiskamp is a top Big Ten wing. Iowa, already a top-five efficient offense, needs to merely get marginally better on defense to be one of the best teams in the country. It’s not a huge ask. That’s the best roster in the Big Ten.
What are your thoughts on Alabama this year? Nate Oats in his second year, got the recruits he wants. Curious to hear what you say. — Ryan S.
I loved Alabama last year. The Tide wasn’t a great team, so to speak, though Kira Lewis was a high-quality guard and they had their moments, like the blowout win over Auburn. More than anything, I love Nate Oats’ system, because Oats took one look at the sort of incremental change most college programs adopt when it comes to stylistic adaptation, pace and space, etc., and decided that was boring enough to make his eyes bleed. So it was that Alabama, after a few nondescript, unremarkable seasons under Avery Johnson, was almost immediately transformed into one of the fastest, most offensively efficient, most forward-thinking college hoops teams in the country.
My lovely colleague Kyle Tucker had much more on the Tide on Friday, in Alabama’s State of the Hoops Program piece, and a couple of Oats quotes are telling on ‘Bama prospectus front. Especially this one:
“I could sit here and downplay expectations because that’s what coaches try to do. We’d be lucky to get 20 wins and all that coach-speak garbage. I’m not going to do that,” Oats said. “That’s a coach trying to protect himself. No, we’re going to be good. Anything less than a high seed in the NCAA Tournament, we’re going to be disappointed. I don’t see any need in trying to downplay it: We should be competing for an SEC championship and making a run in the NCAA Tournament.”
Advertisement
So, yeah. I think Oats likes his squad.
Oh, and one more thing: If “Oats Quotes” isn’t the name of the Alabama basketball coach’s show by the end of the day, someone in Tuscaloosa isn’t doing their job.
I’ve been curious about this for awhile now. A bit back, various Athletic basketball writers — yourself included — suggested a pod system for college basketball. It was an interesting article. One of the pods was in Richmond. Did you insist on Richmond’s inclusion so you could enjoy the city’s many excellent breweries? — Kirk O.
Let’s just say it didn’t hurt. (True story: I have family in Richmond, and my very-soon-to-be-brother-in-law — early congratulations to Jake and Meredith! — frequently carts fresh shipments of Richmond flavors up my way. He’s a good lad.)
Who wins the AAC this year? — Tony E.
UConn. Just kidding. Conference realignment jokes. Wacky stuff.
Houston is the safe bet, and the one I’m going to take. It was impossible to read C.J. Moore’s SotHP check-in on Kelvin Sampson’s team this week and not think the Cougars are going to be every bit as good as they have been for most of the past three seasons, with slightly more aesthetic appeal dolloped on for good measure. Memphis, Cincinnati and Wichita State follow from there, not necessarily in that order.
ECU has an absolute stud in Jayden Gardner and some promising young players in Tristen Newton, Noah Farrakhan and Charles Coleman. As Joe Dooley continues to build a culture and program, what’s a realistic expectation for ECU in the next 2-3 years? Is asking for an NIT berth in that time too much? Given they play in a high major league, how talent-rich the state of North Carolina is and how close ECU is to the Tidewater area of Virginia, and what seems to be a firm commitment to hoops from the athletic administration, how high can Dooley raise the “floor” of the ECU basketball program? — Drew V.
This would certainly help shake things up in the American, wouldn’t it? Count me in. I admit, despite becoming much more familiar with the Tidewater and Down East North Carolina in the last five years, it hadn’t occurred to me that ECU might be a sleeper in waiting. You’re not wrong, though. It’s a big school. There’s a Division I football team. There’s a geographic talent base. The basketball program probably shouldn’t be as bad as it traditionally is.
Of course, every time I talk about a program this way, folks (sometimes even the coaches and administrators of the program itself) helpfully explain why things are the way they are; usually, there’s some slightly hidden challenge you wouldn’t think of right away. That may be the case here. But yeah:, there’s no reason ECU couldn’t get into at least NIT territory every once in a while. That seems totally fair.
Advertisement
Sam Hauser’s addition is actually being slightly underestimated by most, Kihei Clark is the PG you’d most want to have running your team in the ACC, Virginia is 104-24 in the conference since 2013, and Tony Bennett is the best coach in America. Where am I wrong? Yes I’m a massive homer, but can you explain to me why this team isn’t the hands-down favorite to win the ACC right now, and a consensus top-five team? Yes, the offense was bad last year … and they were still 23-7, rolling, and looking pretty 3-seedish when COVID hit. I don’t get it. — John T.
A couple of things here:
1. Virginia was not looking like a No. 3 seed when the season ended last year. The Cavaliers were more like a No. 7 seed, and even that represented a recent surge in seed expectation. “Rolling” is also a bit of a stretch. More “like scratching and clawing and maximizing every last drop of ability.” It was a struggle, and the coaches and players are the first to admit it. That they got where they were at all was accomplishment enough; we don’t need to gloss up that 23-7 record in retrospect.
2. I probably would have Virginia in the top five to start the season. If everything goes well, I think it’s absolutely a title contender. But a lot of things need to go well. Hauser will help with a lot of them, but Virginia had a long, long way to go offensively; a lot of players will need to improve; and Diakite and Key were massively important defenders and rebounders the likes of which UVa won’t have this season. The Cavaliers will score more, but there’s a lot more to Bennett’s game than that.
Anyway, here’s 5,200 more words on Virginia. I think the Hoos will be pretty good! That should tide you over.
What’s your gut feelings on what awaits LSU at the conclusion of the investigation into Will Wade and his program? — Philip B.
Nothing good, Philip. Nothing good.
Geaux Tigers, but I’m really sick of all the Will Wade stuff. If my team cheated, then I just want everything ripped and some closure on it all. Strip the SEC crown, whatever — if we didn’t earn it then we didn’t earn it. Where do we stand in the process? Is there any chance he stays? — Kevin Q.
I really admire this outlook, Kevin. It’s crazy how often fan bases go all the way down the rabbit hole on defending their coaches from even the most obvious or minor of sanctions-related accusations. It gets really silly sometimes.
I’m hardly the world’s biggest stickler for the NCAA rules. I don’t have a huge moral problem with a talented young kid and his family getting a few stacks of some rich guy’s money. The world has bigger problems. But everyone in college athletics agrees to the rules when they sign up, and when they cheat those rules, they have to suffer the consequences. It’s pretty simple. Far too often, people get tribal and flock to their coach’s defense, and the whole thing becomes an ugly, refracted morsel of American political dysfunction. It bums me out.
Advertisement
Here, instead, is an LSU fan that is happy to take the rap and send Wade on his way, if in fact Wade did what he is alleged to have done, which he was caught on tape saying, he and the program are probably in big (NCAA) trouble. Pretty legit, Kevin.
As for a timeline, I can’t really help you. Much of the NCAA’s LSU-related enforcement process is still pretty new, and it’s never moved quickly in the first place. In a normal situation, LSU would be in the self-flagellation portion of the proceedings, where the school fires its coach and voluntarily sits out of a tournament or two and loses all of its players and stinks for a few years to prove how seriously it takes the whole not-cheating thing. LSU has sidestepped that stage. It remains a miracle that Wade is still in his job. It’s one of the most remarkable ongoing circumstances in modern college hoops history. Christian Dawkins told HBO Sports Wade “was definitely a gangster” for remaining employed despite it all. He’s not wrong.
Which is more interesting to you? Every team makes it into the NCAA Tournament OR only 32 conference tournament champions make it into the NCAA Tournament? — Tom D.
I guess, if you’re asking me to choose the better of two bad ideas, the former. I suppose I’d rather have an unnecessarily unwieldy 346-team hoopfest than a 32-team tournament that left out all manner of potential national champions and Final Four teams from multi-bid leagues. That said, if we were doing the latter in addition to the usual season and tournament — again, like a kind of supplementary college hoops FA Cup, all during the middle of the year, or between Christmas and Jan. 1, or whatever — well, then you have my attention.
What’s your basketball game like? Are you a shooter, defensive specialist … who’s your comp if you’re in a pickup basketball game if we get to play pickup ever again? Mine’s probably Landry Shamet, not the best guy out there ever but can hit some shots and don’t make a fool of myself lol. — Andrei L.
My game is … pretty good? It’s been a while since I played, which is the classic thing every awful pickup random says before they get on the court, I realize, but it’s true. When I was playing avidly (all through my 20s), I was always comfortably at home in a game where the level was roughly high school varsity-ish. I’m good in that range. I can play a little bit. When the college and fringe overseas guys showed up to the East Bank Club, that’s when it was time to find my role as a glue guy and just enjoy the workout.
My favorite thing to do on a basketball court is pass. I love finding tight angles and passing the ball well, and playing with other people who do too. I play on the wing, I can shoot it a bit, I can post up smaller guys (I’m 6-foot-2), my ballhandling is passable but not amazing. I once spent at least 20 minutes a day working on Dirk-fade footwork at the elbow. I like games when the ball moves and people move. This can be harder to find than it should be.
I don’t know who this comps to, frankly. But I’m eager to hear the comment section’s suggestions. Meanwhile, I just realized how much I miss playing basketball. Damn.
Eamonn, do you think Rider can nab a top-128 seed in the everyone-gets-in 2021 tournament free-for-all? — Bryan Y.
And, as always, we close with a question about Rider. Thank you for maintaining decorum, Bryan.
Of course, the answer is yes.
(Thanks, everyone!)
(Top photo of Jamal Murray, left, and Anthony Davis: Matthew Stockman / Getty)