A Few Updates

I just wanted to update some of the bigger college basketball stories of the past week. I know it's been a long time since my last post, but I really needed a bit of time to decompress after writing all of those previews in such a short time. If you're a college basketball fan, you probably know most or all of the stories I'm going to discuss. But I'll try to give you a bit of my own spin:


NBA Draft surprises: A few of the NBA defections were no-brainers. Kevin Love, Derrick Rose, Michael Beasley, et cetera. I was surprised by Luc Mbah a Moute declaring, but my guess is that he'll still come back to college next year. He'll go to the draft camps and hopefully find out how low he'll go in the draft (if he'd get drafted at all). One definite surprise on the other side of the coin is Earl Clark, who has declared his intent to return for another season. Most draft analysts considered him a lock for the draft. I guess he feels that another season of improvement could push him into the top ten or fifteen of the draft, something that definitely isn't out of the question. His return will be a big boost for a Louisville team that was in danger of falling all the way back to the bubble in 2009.

Travis Ford to Oklahoma State: A great signing for Oklahoma State. Ford is an outstanding coach, and the Cowboys really needed one. Ford has been a good recruiter, although I'm not sure that's entirely a proven skill yet. Ford is a big name with big connections, and guys like him can be successful at smaller schools just by getting the scraps that his friends at better schools couldn't use. At Oklahoma State he's going to be on his own. Expect him to be active in the Juco market, a place where he got much of his UMass talent from. Even without any big new signings, Oklahoma State is a team with the talent to make a Tournament run. Expect to see them on the bubble next season.

Providence gambles on Keno Davis: Probably the highest profile coach signing of the season. It is probably a very good signing, but I don't see it as a sure thing. Keno Davis has had just one year as a head coach. It was a great season, but it's impossible for anybody but a true Drake insider to know just how much was Davis and just how much was his great set of seniors. Even if you accept him as a good in-game coach (Davis is especially good at called plays out of timeouts), I don't see where he's obviously a great recruiter. He certainly hasn't blown the Valley away with his recruiting abilities, and Providence is a school where recruiting will be incredibly important. The Friars are in a kind of recruiting purgatory. They haven't been able to steer the big time blue chips away from Boston College, UConn and other more successful programs. But at the same time, they lose out to a lot of the second tier recruits that would rather have a chance to star on a winning team in a mid-major than come off the bench for a losing team in the Big East. They are squeezed from both sides, and have a really hard time bringing in elite players. Only time will tell if Keno Davis can recruit to the level necessary to compete with the Rick Pitinos and Jay Wrights of the world.