Category: College Basketball (Page 27 of 153)

Kentucky 5 declare for NBA Draft

Five Kentucky Wildcats — John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Patrick Patterson, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton — declared for the NBA Draft on Wednesday.

I’ve referred to these freshmen as “John Calipari’s band of mercenary one-and-doners,” but it’s not their fault. They’re just doing what they can under the current (broken) rules that the NBA has in place. Patterson is the only player to spend more than a season at Kentucky — he’s a junior.

It’s this kind of exodus that makes a mockery of the college ranks. After failing to make the Final Four despite being a #1 seed entering the tournament, Calipari now has to try to reload as five guys that played nearly two-thirds of his minutes are headed to the NBA. I’m assuming these players attended class regularly and got good grades, otherwise the term student-athlete really wouldn’t fit, right?

NBADraft.net projects all five players to go in the first round, with John Wall being the best bet to be the top overall pick. DeMarcus Cousins is very talented but has character questions, while Patrick Patterson played his way into the lottery with a very nice season. I think he’s going to make some team in the #8-#12 range very happy.


Photo from fOTOGLIF

College basketball rules that (don’t) need to change

Sparty & Friends listed five rules in college basketball that need to change. I don’t have a problem with #2 (6-fouls to disqualification) or #3 (no passing the ball in the half court on out of bounds plays), so let’s focus on the other three:

1. Change to 48 minute games, divided up in quarters, with a 24 second shot clock – At first I wasn’t sure about this one, as most will usually complain that most sporting events are already too long in the first place. However, I reconsidered based on what my second rule change should be. An additional 8 minutes will not significantly impact the length of the game, especially if they were to eliminate stoppage timeouts every 4 minutes of playing time. They will have the two extra tv timeouts at the end of the quarters, which would help alleviate the advertising concern. A need for a 24 second clock would be needed to force teams to not milk the clock anymore than they already do. The cons of this would put teams with lack of depth, especially smaller schools in the tournament, at a disadvantage. To that I say tough noogies.

I object more to the 24-second shot clock than the four quarters idea, but I’d rather not see any of this happen. First, going to a 24-shot clock would only serve to make teams depend even more on the good ol’ on-ball screen that is already so prevalent in college hoops. In the NBA, the short shot clock leads to a lot of bad attempts — can you imagine what would happen in college with players that aren’t nearly as good? No, the 35-second shot clock is just fine. It allows offenses and plays to develop and generally results in good attempts. Plus, it rewards the best defenses that are able to defend for that duration.

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Sources: Evan Turner will go pro

Per ESPN…

Ohio State guard Evan Turner will pass up his senior season and enter the NBA draft, according to multiple media reports.

Turner was expected to announce his decision at a news conference at 4 p.m. ET Wednesday.

This isn’t a big surprise. It’s not often that a player that is projected to go #2 in the draft and decides to return to school. There is just too much money (~$20 million) at stake to take the risk of returning to school and potentially suffering a career-ending or career-altering injury.

Here is what DraftExpress said about Turner at the Junior National Team tryouts in 2009:

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Will Brad Stevens stay put?

ESPN rumors reports on the possibility of Brad Stevens taking a job elsewhere.

Given that the school can’t afford to pay Stevens a top salary, it probably can’t make his buyout price high enough to faze a BCS-level school either.

One thing that’s working in the school’s favor is time. The run to the championship game means many schools that had Stevens in mind have already filled their positions. With Oliver Purnell going to DePaul and BC looking ready to hire Cornell’s Steve Donahue, Oregon and now Clemson are the only schools that can offer a world-beating financial package.

The Register-Guard reports that Oregon AD Pat Kilkenny was in Indianapolis this weekend and reportedly has his eye on Stevens:

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