BOUNCING AROUND THE
COUNTRY:
It’s good to be the king – or,
falling short of that, it’s good to be Mike Krzyzewski.
He’s already in the Hall of Fame,
his teams have won three national titles, his current squad is clearly the best
in the country right now and he’s been anointed with the task of helping bring
2008 Olympic gold back to the country where the sport was invented.
And high school players continued
to jump at the opportunity to play for him at Duke.
He and his staff signed three
potential 2006 McDonald’s All-Americas in November (center Brian Zoubek, Gerald Henderson and Jon Scheyer).
And then two of the best juniors in
the country, guard Nolan Smith
(Mouth of Wilson, Va., Oak Hill Academy) and forward Taylor King (Santa Ana, Ca., Mater
Dei), made it public Thursday that they plan to sign letters of intent with the
Blue Devils in November.
The lure of playing for Krzyzewski
and Duke was such that Smith turned down Louisville, the alma mater of his
late father, Derek Smith.
And King, who “committed” to UCLA
months before attending his first class as a freshman at Mater Dei, had offers
from USC (Tim Floyd was at Mater
Dei’s game with rival Santa Margarita the night before King’s announcement),
Gonzaga and Villanova that he turned down.
Another probable 2006 McDonald’s
All-America, forward Lance Thomas
(Newark,
N.J., St. Benedict Prep), is expected to sign
with Duke or Rutgers in the spring.
Suffice to say, even after J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams shake hands with David Stern on NBA Draft night in June,
don’t look for the talent pool in
Durham to level off any time
soon.
*When
Marquette visits
West Virginia, Saturday for a Big
East Conference game, it will provide the best matchup of long-range shooting
big men of the season --- that is, unless, the teams meet again in the Big East
or NCAA tournaments.
The Golden Eagles’ 6-10 Steve Novak, who dropped 41 points on
Connecticut a couple of weeks ago, has connected on 16 of 30 3-point attempts
over his team’s past three games. He’s hitting .455 from behind the arc this
season and has never hit below .430 for his career. Novak has averaged 27.7
points and 11.7 rebounds per game in that stretch.
The Mountaineers’ 6-11 Kevin Pittsnogle, who seemingly has a
tattoo for every jumper he’s hit, is at .481 on 3’s this season and has canned
17 of 30 attempts over the past five games.
*That was a huge Missouri Valley
Conference victory for Creighton Wednesday when the Bluejays won, 55-52, at
Northern Iowa without Nathan Funk (sidelined for the season
with a left shoulder injury).
But have you been paying attention
to how well Southern Illinois has played of
late?
The Salukis lost three starters
(including two-time MVC Player of the Year Darren Brooks) from a team that was
27-8 in Chris Lowery’s first season
as the program’s head coach.
They lost three of their first five
games of the season, including defeats inflicted on them by Monmouth and
Alaska-Anchorage during the Great Alaska Shootout.
But they will take a 10-game
winning streak, five of those in MVC contests, into Des
Moines when they take on Drake Saturday night.
And four of the wins have come on
opponents’ courts – the truest measure of how well a college basketball team is
playing.
The last two Southern
Illinois coaches, Bruce
Weber (Illinois) and Matt Painter (Purdue), have moved onto
more high-profile gigs. Can Lowery be far behind?
In fact, the MVC is rampant with
guys whose names are probably high up on the shopping lists of a lot of athletic
directors who will be looking for new coaches in a few
months.
*Injuries seem to have impacted an
extraordinary number of high profile programs this season.
But there isn’t a team that has
been more adversely affected by a high number of injuries than has
UCLA.
With the news Friday morning that
sophomore center Lorenzo Mata had
suffered a fractured tibia (and is projected to be sidelined for six to eight
weeks) as a result of the late-game collision with teammate Jordan Farmar in the Pacific 10
Conference game with Washington State Thursday night, the Bruins could have
seven scholarship players available for their Saturday afternoon game with the
University of Washington Huskies.
Five of those are freshmen and the
other two are sophomore guards Farmar and Arron Afflalo.
Mata’s injury (and prognosis) means
that he is one of three players, along with senior Cedric Bozeman (shoulder) and sophomore
Josh Shipp (hip), that were
projected to be either starters or key reserves that could be sidelined for the
remainder of the season. Shipp has already been ruled out for the rest of the
season.
Senior centers Michael Fey and Ryan Hollins have also missed the bulk
of the season with injuries and Farmar
has missed two games with an ankle injury that still limits his
effectiveness.
All things considered, it’s
remarkable that the Bruins will take 14-2 (overall) and 4-1 (Pac 10) records
into the game with the Huskies.
Inducted into the USBWA Hall of
Fame last April, Frank Burlison is Scout.com’s national basketball expert and is
also a columnist for the Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram. He can be reached at
frank.burlison@presstelegram.com. Read more of Burlison’s pieces at
www.FrankHoops.com