Bruce Pearl of Tennessee
would corral the majority of votes in any coach of the year balloting that was
conducted this week.
The Volunteers’ 19-4 record, which
includes nationally televised victories over Texas, Florida and Kentucky, during
his first season in Knoxville, has made him the front-runner for those honors
for the past month or so.
But Bill Self is gaining on
Pearl – and rapidly.
And if ballots were to be collected
and tabulated next week, he might have surpassed Pearl.
Self’s Kansas Jayhawks took 19-6
(overall) and 10-2 (Big 12 Conference) records, and a nine-game winning streak,
into their game in Lawrence with Baylor Tuesday night.
And the past five of those defeats
have come by a collective margin of 13 points.
To think there were some in
Lawrence snapping fingernails while clamping down on panic buttons after
back-to-back Big 12 losses to Kansas State (in Allen Fieldhouse) and Missouri
last month.
In mid-November, when the Jayhawks
dropped games to Arizona and Arkansas during the EA Sports/Maui Invitational,
and even as recently as the losses to KSU and the Tigers, it appeared as if
Self’s crew was a year away from being able to challenge for a conference
championship.
But, with a starting lineup made up
of three freshmen and two sophomores, the Jayhawks could slip out of Austin,
Texas, Saturday night with sole possession of first place. And that’s during a
season in which the question, for the most part, hasn’t been about Texas winning
a conference title but how the Longhorns might snag a No. 1 NCAA Tournament
seed.
Regardless of what his team does
Saturday night, Self belongs securely on the short list of Coach of the Year
candidates.
BOUNCING AROUND THE
COUNTRY
*Duke hasn’t been looking
strictly like the J.J.-Shelden Show lately.
Sure, J.J. Redick continues
to be 1-2 (or 2-1) with Adam Morrison of Gonzaga in the race for the
national Player of the Year awards, while Shelden Williams continues to
be one of the three “locks” for first-team All-America honors.
But freshman Josh McRoberts
and sophomore DeMarcus Nelson are evolving into near-double figure
scoring threats of late for Coach Mike Krzyzewski.
The 6-foot-10 McRoberts is
beginning to demonstrate on a consistent basis why he was the most highly touted
2005 prep who didn’t enter the NBA Draft last spring.
During the eight-game winning
streak that the Blue Devils will take into their Wednesday night Atlantic Coast
Conference game at Georgia Tech, McRoberts averaged 10.8 points, 5.5 rebounds
and 2.3 assists per game, while shooting 61 percent from the floor.
Nelson, in that same stretch (the
beginning of which marked his return to active duty from injury), averaged 7.1
points, 3.3 rebounds and 1.3 assists, while shooting 50 percent from the
field.
*This whole “Hey, kids, let’s rush
the floor when our team wins!” thing is getting a bit out of hand, don’t you
think?
For one thing, it’s potentially
dangerous as heck. Someone is going to get severely injured in one of these bad
dashes for the floor and a whole bunch of attorneys are going to be busy on both
sides of the litigation table.
It’s all too much a cliché these
days.
It’s even reached the point in
which students spilled onto the floor Monday night in the Carrier Dome after
Syracuse edged West Virginia, 60-58.
Granted, it was a critical win for
the Orange’s NCAA Tournament’s at-large bid resume. But it’s not like Jim
Boeheim’s team had knocked off the top-ranked team in the country. The
Mountaineers took an 18-7 record into the game and had lost three of their
previous four games.
This is one of the top 10 programs
in the country, one that won a national title three years ago.
A new rule for Rushing the Floor:
Unless the win comes against a top-ranked team or as the result of a frantic
comeback and/or last-second shot, the students at a school that has won a
national title within the past decade aren’t eligible to race onto the floor
after a game.
*I was on hand for the Gonzaga at
Loyola Marymount game in Los Angeles on Saturday when Adam Morrison went
for 37 of his career-high 44 points after intermission.
And I’ve come to this conclusion:
The former college and NBA standout that Morrison most reminds me of is
Reggie Miller.
It’s all in Morrison’s ability to
work himself free from a defender (or defenders) with constant movement and a
near-flawless knack for reading and setting up screens.
And it’s also in Morrison’s ability
to get off his jump shoot, with accuracy, regardless of how much cushion he has
from a defender.
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