The Players And Coaches Who'll Make This Season Amazing
The Players And Coaches Who’ll Make This Season Amazing
The monolithic entity we call ‘Sports’ has had a rotten run of late. First, there was a month of non-stop coverage of what is consistently the most depressing and least enjoyable aspect of sports — owner-athlete financial bickering — when the NFL locked out. Then we had weeks of breaking coverage of the huge money grab and rivalry-busting of the major college football powerhouses and conferences. Then the NBA managed its own lockout (with attendant financial bickering). Then Tony La Russa and the Cardinals won the World Series, subjecting the rest of us to an entire post-and off-season of the oft-repeated fallacy that St. Louis is somehow a better America. And then we got to the mother of all stomach-churning awfulness, this still-unraveling Penn State sexual-abuse scandal. I guess if you were an MLS fan — those apparently do still exist — maybe the LA Galaxy’s pursuit of a title is compelling. I’m not sure.
But for college basketball fans, things are about to change at least. A new season is here, and it promises to be a doozy. Thanks to the then-impending NBA lockout, a bevy of the NCAA’s best players did something they almost never do and decided to return to school for another season. This means that for the first time in recent memory, several of the big names in college hoops, basketball bluebloods like North Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio State, will have not only talent at their disposal, something they almost always have, but experienced talent.
Additionally, thanks to some excellent pre-conference and made-for-TV scheduling, fans will get to see many of these top-tier teams face one another before winter hits. North Carolina travels to Kentucky the first weekend of December for what’s the best on-paper matchup of the regular season. Duke takes on Michigan State and Kentucky meets Kansas in New York City this week. Ohio State and Florida renew their annual out-of-conference tilt on Tuesday, too. There are a slew of other good head-to-heads as well.
By all accounts, this college basketball season looks to be a very good one, perhaps even the best in a while. While Cinderella stories make for good copy and unpredictable tournaments, generally the best overall seasons are marked by the traditional powers being at their best. It’s an odd facet of a sport that makes so much hay about upsets, but in an era of mid majors crashing the party, power conference bullies beating up on one another is really where the meat is. Sorry, Butler fans, but it’s true.
In the NBA, it may all be about the players. But in college basketball, while players certainly matter, the coaches have a much larger imprint on the game. With that in mind, for our first column of the season, let’s take a look at a few of the big storylines for both players and coaches heading into this new season.
THE PLAYERS
Jordan 2.0: Harrison Barnes has a name meant for stardom. It may be a fluke — after all, who can predict what kid will end up being an All-American at birth — but, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld you don’t give someone a handle like Harrison Barnes to become a shoe salesman. Too much was expected of the young Mr. Barnes in his debut season at North Carolina. He was a preseason first-team All-American pick; and whether because of pressure or just the learning curve, Barnes underachieved until around February. But in the last two months of the season, things began to click in a big way.
Now Barnes is back, part of the aforementioned boon of collegiate returnees, and he appears primed to reach the heights first predicted of him. Silky smooth and ideally built for the game, it’s Barnes’ moxie in baby blue that reminds one of Mike, even if their playing styles are different. Whether he can accomplish some of the big things Jordan did — a national title, player of the year awards, etc. — remains to be seen. If he does, expect some NBA teams to have a tough choice come next summer: draft for style or draft for size. Just like Jordan, way back when.
The Biggest Buckeye: While Barnes’ return was somewhat unexpected, the announcement by Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger, immediately after his team’s loss to Kentucky in the Sweet 16, that he would definitely return for a sophomore season was met with outright shock. Sullinger, most people’s Player of the Year, had accomplished enough that even the least jaded observers figured he was NBA bound.
But Sullinger has other ideas, namely to reach the Final Four and win a championship. Now a few pounds slimmer and a year more polished, Ohio State’s pivot man is primed to erase last season’s disappointing final memory. At issue, though, is that the veteran-laden team that surrounded his outstanding freshman campaign is mostly gone, replaced by similarly talented but green underclassmen.
That may or may not matter. Sullinger is a load in the paint. But it gets a lot easier to post up when you have deadly shooters floating around the perimeter. Last season, any team that sent extra defenders at Sullinger usually paid a hefty price from those free shooters. This year, things may not be so easy. That said, Sullinger is a beast whose game doesn’t have many flaws. He does the things he does well and doesn’t try to do things he can’t do.
‘Dore real?: It’s not very often that college hoops watchers are high on Vanderbilt. Actually, it almost never happens. But thanks to the return of the Commodores’ nucleus, preseason prognosticators are bullish on Vandy. That Vanderbilt plays in one of the nation’s toughest conferences certainly will play a factor. Kentucky, Florida and Alabama are all highly regarded, and no road conference game will be a gimme. But this Vanderbilt team is chock full of upperclassmen who’ve been through the conference season a few times now, so they shouldn’t be cowed.
With one of the nation’s top shooters in John Jenkins, a future pro swingman in Jeffery Taylor, a legit big man in Festus Ezeli and a glue guy guard in Brad Tinsley, Vanderbilt has most of what you need to win a lot of games. Coach Kevin Stallings is a competent guy with a lot of experience. But the program has been on the cusp before and struggled to take that next step. Plus, whether the Commodores progress in the tough SEC this season is only part of the intrigue. They’ve done that before, too. What they haven’t done is win NCAA tournament games, and that is why they all returned for another season. The loss of Ezeli for the start of the season to injury doesn’t help — witness Sunday’s loss at home to Cleveland State — but occasionally forcing other players to step up in a starter’s absence can create a depth that otherwise might not exist.
Top Dog a Cat?: There’s no other college player quite like Kentucky freshman Anthony Davis this season. There are guys who are taller, stronger, faster, shoot better, pass better, block more shots or any number of other things. But none of them combine so many of those talents and in such a long frame. Davis, a Chicago native, was a 6’3” guard through his sophomore season in high school. Then he started growing and didn’t stop until he was 6’9” with a 7’4” wingspan. But instead of being awkward in his new body, Davis has flourished, showcasing his length and all-around skills in an NBA frame that have scouts drooling. Lots have him pegged a potential overall No. 1 pick in next season’s draft.
On the court, Davis appears almost cartoonish at times. Sporting an impossible-to-ignore pair of prominent eyebrows, he nabs inbounds passes at his feet and shoots (and makes) three-pointers, rebounds well above the rim and blocks shots at a prodigious rate. He is very thin, and that will certainly affect him when matched up against bigger bodies. But NBA teams covet players with exceptional, even freakish, body types — your Kevin Durants, Dwight Howards and Kevin Garnetts. Davis is most often compared with another former John Calipari-coached big man, Marcus Camby, though Davis is further along offensively at the same stage. Camby was the best player in college basketball in 1996, a year some consider among the best of the 1990s in terms of talent level and depth, and a year this season may mirror in certain ways. Whether Davis reaches those same levels will be fun to watch. There’s definitely no one quite like him out there, down to that bushy unibrow.
THE COACHES
Climbing K2: With those two wins over the weekend, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has matched, at 902 wins, his former coach and coaching mentor Bob Knight as the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history. It’s a pretty safe bet he’ll get at least one more. When Coach K gets that win, which could come as early as Tuesday, in a tilt against Michigan State in New York City, a wave of hagiographic articles, television spots and pundit love will wash over him. And that’s fine. Really. Because K’s feat has been monumental.
It’s certainly easy to be a K loather. We are many and varied, and Duke doesn’t care that we exist. Unlike Knight, the principal reason everyone hates on Krzyzewski isn’t his personality or his obnoxious behavior. It’s his stupid amount of winning. For all the over-reach of his principal champions, Krzyzewski’s coaching resume is indeed remarkable. He took over a down Duke program, struggling as he implemented his style and system and built through recruiting. He had two losing seasons in his first three, but the school stuck with him and now they have hung four NCAA banners during his tenure with the potential for more.
Most notably, Coach K built the Duke brand into one of the strongest and most recognizable in sports, and he did it almost entirely on the court. He will break Knight’s mark and keep going until he’s hit 1,000 and probably more. His team this year is (again) very good and recruits continue to sign on. It may bug a lot of us to have to begrudge Krzyzewski the extra attention sure to come his way this season — after all, he already gets plenty — but just accept that it’s deserved. Besides, anyone is better than Bob Knight. Even his protégé and favorite son.
UCONN’d: The only guy who may rival John Calipari as “The Coach college fans least want to see hoist an NCAA championship trophy” is Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun. Once revered as the guy who built a title-winner from scratch, in recent years recruiting scandals and an imperious, dickish attitude have made the Hall of Fame coach into one of the least likeable guys in the game. It was painful to watch him gleefully hoisting the hardware last April just over a month after the NCAA handed down punishment for his program’s improper recruitment of former player Nate Miles.
Calhoun always appears of two parts: the winner and the creep. Which one you see may depend on the hour, but they’re both integral to his successes and his failures. Notoriously salty and screamy to his kids and assistants, Calhoun is as old school as you get. But that style continues to work.
Once thought to be ready to retire, Calhoun now looks rejuvenated, as if his anger at the NCAA, the “media” and the world were an invigorating force. He convinced one of the nation’s top recruits, Andre Drummond, to re-classify down a year and come to UCONN, so now he again has one of the nation’s best squads. You get the impression he wants to just stick it to everyone one more time. Another title would be his fourth, putting him in the rare company of just three other men: John Wooden, Adolph Rupp and Krzyzewski.
But thanks to his creep side, Calhoun gets to spend the first three games of the Big East season suspended from coaching. Then again, thanks to his winner side, he very well may hang that fourth banner before he retires.
Getting His Clock Crean-ed: Pull up a chair, kids, and I’ll tell you a tale about a great powerhouse known as Indiana University basketball. You probably don’t know this story, as it took place long before you were a twinkle in your parents’ eyes. But people once feared the Crimson and Cream, despite their preposterous candy-striped warm-up pants. Once, long ago, recruits wanted to play there and rivals didn’t shake their heads in pity after stomping them repeatedly. A young coach in over his head named Mike Davis was the first to put his own crappy stamp on the once-mighty program. Then, a man named Kelvin Sampson showed up and finished the job with aplomb. It’s a cautionary tale, kiddos.
Tom Crean, the guy who took over as head coach at Indiana, has taken on the task of rebuilding the program. Somehow he’s managed to get four years of patience out of IU fans to “do it the right way.” But apparently the right way involves cleaning up the bottom of the Big Ten cellar.
Look, basketball isn’t football. One or two recruits can change things dramatically, especially in an age of parity. Crean was never really an ace recruiter. Now, though, Crean’s biggest recruit is a big, homegrown kid who has the entire program on his back. Cody Zeller is now the savior of both Indiana basketball and Crean’s own coaching life. That seems a lot to load onto a freshman. We’ll see.
Expect Crean to be on a very short leash. Coaches like him because coaches stick up for coaches, and writers think he’s a swell guy, so you’ll hear a lot about how much he deserves time. Thing is, he’s had time. He just doesn’t win that much. You should be able to do it the right way and win. Crean has this season to prove he can do both, because he sure hasn’t shown it yet.
Originally from Kentucky, Joshua Lars Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on things can be found at Agonica and on Twitter.
Photo from Friday’s Michigan State-University of North Carolina matchup courtesy of Official US Navy Imagery.