College Hoops Blog

11/6/07
I thought I'd start a thread to post thoughts (not picks) on college hoops.

How did I ever go all these years without Direct TV and the 40 some sports channels? Now that I have it, I got to see a Derrick Rose tonight on ESPNU. His athleticism exceeds his court sense and defensive fundamentals right now, but those things will come. He had a video highlight on defense blocking a shot after being beaten by a step and a half on a drive, and a highlight slam dunk. The kid is for real...

ALso watched the Illini tonight in their exhibition. They are going to need big years from Pruitt and Frazier. Their defense looked good against Kentucky Wesleyan. Illinois can guard people and force TOs. But it looks a lot like last year that they are going to struggle to score at times. Might be a good under team again, particularly early in the season if the numbers are right.

Coast2Coast wrote:

11/6/07
I thought I'd start a thread to post thoughts (not picks) on college hoops.

How did I ever go all these years without Direct TV and the 40 some sports channels?
.

I remember back in my pre ESPN (my parents did not believe in cable) grade/high school days of watching any big ten game I could find on week nights. I used to love the Iowa Hawkeyes back in those days for some reason.

When I went to college in d.c. I was in heaven. Local stations broadcast Big East and ACC basketball on an almost nightly basis.

While that was not a long time ago, it was before sports bars came into being and before cable stations were available in dorms. You took what they gave you and were appreciative of it.

I look at it now and homesickness should be a thing of the past. You can communicate with friends every day, you can listen or watch almost any local programming over the internet. You can make anywhere in the world feel like home.

I'm a big fan of both Lute Olson and Kevin O'Neill. So I was a big fan when Lute hired KO to be his top assistant. And now with Lute taking an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons, and KO in charge, expect a very different looking Arizona team this year. I know O'Neill is not loved by fans of the schools he has coached...Marquette, Tennessee and Northwestern. At each of those schools, O'Neill ran into issues he tired of dealing with, namely academic requirements that kept him from getting the kids he wanted. He wanted kids who could not be enrolled at each of those schools....even though at Tennessee, football players were getting admitted with worse academics than the kids he wanted. He knew that going in at Northwestern academics were first, but you have to understand that he should not have been at NU in the first place. He just ended up there as a bailout because it was a job that happened to be available when he bailed from Tennessee and his lying sack of crap boss, former Vols AD Doug Dickey. He also was going through a divorce at the time and needed to get out of Knoxville and away from his about to be ex who was making things very loud for him in Knoxville. So NU was his landing spot from a bad situation. After a few years, he realized he couldn't win in Evanston and bailed. I don't begrudge him for that. Few coaches who want to win are cut out for that job. O'Neill wants to win. Guys who want to win first and foremost are not cut out to coach at upper tier academic schools like NU, Duke, stanford, Vandy, etc. Bill Carmody is exactly the kind of under-achieving mediocre coach who can tolerate mediocre facilities and a disinterested fan base and be tolerated for his mediocrity by his bosses. It takes a special kind of coach to win there.....so special in fact, that Northwestern hasn't had a single coach in its history take them to the NCAA tourney.

But his spotty resume aside, I'm a fan of O'Neill because he is one of the few coaches in this era of run and gun undisciplined street ball that emphasizes defense. The problem with O'Neill is that he is a very poor offensive coach. If Arizona can take Lute's offensive wisdom and combine it with O'Neill's defensive coaching acumen, the Cats will be a top ten team this year.

Trivia Question: O'Neill began his coaching career at a community college in New York. Then he became the head coach at a 4-year college and took that team to the national tournament. What school was it? Ryan should know this without looking it up. If he doesn't.....hmmmm... Ok, if you don't know, look it up on Wikipedia...

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/pac10/2007-11-05-Arizona_N.htm

Tonight's basketball card features the Oklahoma Sooners and their player Longar Longar. Now there's a guy who doesn't have a problem with the last name first/first name last thing when he's filling out forms....