2020-21 College Basketball thread

Well, he had Jalen Jackson
Who he left on the bench during an NCAA Tournament game they lost
Jackson and Tillman are doing well in Memphis

 

He sat Jackson on the bench so one of his trademark 6-9 crew cut white gumps could play (he's got two on this year's team).
So Emoni Bates can probably look forward to
playing mop up minutes for Thomas Kithier.

 

Izzo made some big mistakes with that class
Way too early commits from Kithier and Foster Loyer
Took Gabe Brown over Brandon Johns and Marcus Bingham over Trevian Williams

 

Brown and Bingham look like semi-decent ok players. Loyer could be an instant-offense guy off the bench but he'll always be a huge liability on defense. He'd probably tear it up at Oakland U or U-D.
I think Johns would have been more effective under Beilein than Howard, who I think likes NBA body types more. But the main value of Johns to U-M was to grab a kid from East Lansing High School out of Izzo's pocket, raising questions for about the next 10 years, "what does he know that other people don't?"

For that matter, if I'm Emoni Bates looking to spend maybe one year in college before bolting to the NBA, I'd figure Juwan Howard would be a lot more likely to materially aid me in that pursuit.

 

Iona is going to the NCAA tournament. It figures any negatives from hiring a sleazeball cheater like Pitino are offset by winning games and going to the NCAAs. Given the cash grab NCAA sports are, and the lack of meaningful consequences for cheating, I can't blame them. Maybe I wish my school would have hired him instead of keeping the underachieving choirboy we have tolerated for the last decade.

 

Jeff MacGregor once asked why we play sports and Pitino leading Iona to the tourney -- in year one, mind you -- is exactly why.

One of the funniest funnies in funnyville.

 

Iona's been good. It's been to the NCAAs before plenty of times. It knows what it means to the school, and didn't bat an eyelash with false concern when it came time to pull the trigger and hire Pitino. It knew it was getting a sleazy guy who could win games, and hired him. Essentially, fuck the hand-wringers. We're playing to win.

 

Pitino, I am told, would "crawl" to BC if they were to offer. They won't.

 

Didn't know Draymond Green was a perimeter wonder.

 

How many times has a major conference had a team win their conference tournament to get to the NCAA that would not have been there but for winning conference tourney?

Georgetown is doing just that. Losing record prior to the conference tournament and the 8 seed. Wasn’t on any fence. Congrats to Pat Ewing. He can’t just roll the ball out and let the 5 star kids play.

 

Watching them house Creighton has been impressive. Patrick Ewing clearly found something this weekend.

Is Ewing trying to remind New York that the Garden is still his house?

 

The good fathers from the Society of Jesus will continue to wring their hands while worrying about their "image" - whatever the hell they think that is - and the basketball program will continue its irrelevant suckage.