This Blog is about basketball predictions
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We're in a quiet time for college hoops. All of the big high school graduates have signed, all of the big transfers have happened, and college football, the NFL and Major League Baseball have stolen the spotlight. There isn't much in the way of news, which is why posting has been light.
But we're exactly six weeks away from Midnight Madness, and almost exactly two months away from the first regular season games. So we're getting close.
Posting here will continue to be light for the next few weeks, but it will pick up as we get close to Midnight Madness. I will post my next BP68 within a week of Midnight Madness. And soon after that I'll begin previewing the first games of the regular season, including all of the major early season tournaments. I'll also be previewing ESPN's wonderful 24 hours of hoops, which they're repeating after how successful it was last season (this year it will be held on November 16th - the full schedule is here).
So there's plenty ahead. And we're getting very close to the beginning of another college basketball season.
More conferences are shifting with Nevada and Fresno State saying that they will leave the WAC for the Mountain West. They are joining Boise State, the other WAC team to already defect to the Mountain West over the past few months. They will replace Utah and BYU, with Utah leaving for the Pac-10 and BYU most likely heading to a situation where they will be a football independent and will play their other sports in the WAC.
All of this movement from the WAC to the Mountain West has to be bringing vivid flashbacks for those that remember the history of those two conferences. The WAC formed in 1962 and rapidly grew to the point that by the mid-1990s it was a super-conference with 16 teams. It had teams that traversed the country, from Hawaii to TCU. But the happy times were short. While travel costs were a concern, the real issue that blew up the conference was quality control, with too many poor teams that were stuck at the basement each year and contributed nothing.
The turbulence led to eight schools defecting and forming the Mountain West Conference. TCU left for Conference USA, and a few years later joined up with the others in the Mountain West. Rice, SMU and TCU also left for Conference USA.
So with the Mountain West continuing to eat up WAC teams, is it risking a return of the old WAC? I don't think so. The conference will likely have ten teams, and there won't be any teams that really don't deserve to be there. Wyoming is probably the most questionable team right now, although I've written recently about a possible bright future for Wyoming basketball. And I would expect this to be very good news for a Nevada team that has been good in both basketball and football for some time now, and certainly has a very nice core of a basketball team that is ready to win this year and into the future. Fresno State has historically been decent but has fallen on hard times, and only time will tell if the move to the Mountain West will spur them to future success.
For the WAC this is devastating, as they've really lost the rest of their traditional sporting powers. Utah State is the closest to a traditional sports power left in the conference, and after that I suppose I'd take New Mexico State. The other teams: Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, Idaho and Hawaii. Yikes. They probably have to try to steal some Conference USA teams back just for survival. The remaining WAC teams will be desperate to try to keep the conference respectable, because none of them really have much of an alternative if the conference blows up. Utah State might be able to get themselves into the Mountain West, but the other teams would be staring at a conference like the Big West.
It's hard to keep track of all of these conference moves. I don't know why these conferences feel like more is better. Members of the WAC conference should know better than any that a bigger conference isn't always a better conference.
Miami got some good news today with Adrian Thomas receiving a sixth year of eligibility, after two seasons (2006-07 and 2007-08) were nearly entirely wiped out by injury. Thomas isn't well known outside of the ACC, and he only started four games last season, but he earned 22 minutes per game off the bench, collecting 7.3 points and 2.7 rebounds per game. At 6'7", 229 pounds he is part of a front line that is big and athletic but a bit raw, and so his experience means a lot. He'll also mean a lot for the entire team, since it was going to have zero seniors on it before Thomas was granted his extra season.
Miami is a team that is underestimated because they finished last in the ACC with a 4-12 record last season. But the ACC was much better than even most experts realized, and Miami was a young team that was pesky and just struggled to win close games. At the end of the season they were ranked the 50th best team in the nation by Sagarin, and 46th by Pomeroy. James Dews, Dwayne Collins and Cyrus McGowan were the graduations from the regular rotation, but it was an 11 man regular rotation that didn't have any clear stars, so those losses won't be too tough to replace.
Durand Scott scored 10.3 points per game as a freshman and should be the scoring focal point as a sophomore in 2010-11. He'll start in the backcourt with Malcolm Grant, who led the team in assists as a sophomore in 2009-10. Rion Brown, the most talented and most polished 2010 recruit for Miami, will provide depth in the backcourt, as will Trey McKinney-Jones, a transfer from UMKC. Garrius Adams can play shooting guard, although at 6'6" he can also play forward.
As I said, the frontcourt has a lot of athleticism and potential, but it's still young and raw: DeQuan Jones, Reggie Johnson and Julian Gamble all played in the regular rotation last season and will be back. Donovan Kirk, a 2009 recruit, didn't play much as a freshman but should play more as a sophomore. The 2010 recruiting class has two talented big men (Erik Swoope and Raphael Akpejiori), although both are raw and won't likely play much as freshmen.
In my original 2010-11 ACC preview I described Miami as a young and talented team that would be on the bubble in 2011, and that should be even better in 2012. My most recent BP68, done nearly two months ago, had Miami sneaking into the field as a 12 seed. One more year of Adrian Thomas will really help the development of that front line, and will help a team built for the future do more winning now. They learned in 2009-10 that raw teams tend to lose close games, and losing close games is a good way to knock yourself off the bubble. But the chances are much better now that Miami will win enough close games to get back to the Dance for the first time since 2008.
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