Jayhawks Reload with Jersey PG
It didn’t take long for the Kansas Jayhawks, the national champion of their past season of NCAA basketball, to land another great player. The Jayhawks were going to be a little short on talent after some of their starting five players from last year’s title team decided to test the NBA Draft waters. However, they have landed one of the top prep point guards in the nation, one Tyshawn Taylor, who hails from Jersey City, New Jersey.
What does this mean of Kansas? Well, Bill Self might have known that Taylor was coming to play at Kansas, and that might have been one of the factors that kept him at the school, instead of taking an offer to coach at his alma mater, Oklahoma. Apparently Taylor picked Kansas over Georgia Tech.
But will this star player get Kansas back to the national title game, or even the NCAA Tournament? We’ll have to see who they put around him. Some Kansas players might return to the school when they realize that their draft position is too low. But with the new guys that Memphis picked up, we could be looking at a repeat national title game.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Tar Heels Play Obama; Plus, The Best Underclassmen in the Draft
The North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball team played Illinois Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama in a basketball game the other day. Obama is in North Carolina facing what might be an easier opponent, Hillary Clinton, in one of the few remaining primary elections. Obama often takes time out to play hoops with locals while on the campaign trail. According to the description of the game at CBSsports.com, Obama went scoreless even though the Heels, including their star player Tyler Hansbrough, went easy on him.
In other news, the most writingsest sports writer in the history of the internet, Gary Parrish of CBSsprts.com, has gone through the top 50 underclassmen who have declared for the NBA Draft. He gives a quick-hit sentence on each player. Go through it and see if any of your favorite college players are trying to go pro.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
The NBA Draft: Where will the Stars Fall?
The NFL Draft was this past weekend, so the entire sports world is focused on positioning, 40 times and draft grades. However, the basketball draft isn’t for a while now, so there is still plenty of time to obsess over where every single player will go. In the NBA, getting the right guy can be even more important than in the NFL, as there are only 5 guys who play at one time, making the individual efforts of each player that much more important, percentage-wise. Well, with the possible exception of the quarterback position.
The deadline to register for the draft is over (it was April 27th) so for now we can just speculate. The official NBA list will probably come in around Thursday. However, players can still drop out and head back to school, so long as they haven’t hired and agent.
So where will your favorite college basketball stars wind up when all is said and done on draft day? ESPN’s Chad Ford has an idea, and he breaks them all down alphabetical-like. Take a gander at where he thinks Ty Lawson, D.J. Augustin and Michael Beasley will go, but don’t take this blog as an endorsement. Draft day sometimes has some surprises.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Friday is Fun Day at the Final Four Blog
Hey Final Four Blog readers! It’s Friday, and that means that it’s Fun Day here, as the title has informed you, just a few short moments ago. So where are we going to get some fun in the college basketball world when there’s nothing really going on? Some players are still mulling going pro, and some are making the decision to stay in school, so this is a pretty slow part of the year. On to the fun.
Greg Oden, the top draft pick from last season and current NBA Center for the Portland Trail Blazers, went to Penn State to visit a friend, and now there are pictures floating around of him drinking box wine at a college party… with an “I am McLovin” shirt on. There are tons of other cool links to crazy college stuff around the country at SI On Campus, and most of it has to do with basketball in some way.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Augustin and Abrams Will Test NBA Draft Waters
D.J. Augustin and A.J. Abrams just decided that they will test the NBA Draft waters. They have not hired agents yet, so they still have the option to go back to school. Augustin would have a couple of years left. Abrams is a junior, so if he feels like he won’t go in the draft high enough, he’s going to pull out and finish up his senior year at Texas.
This news means a couple of things. Let’s go over them:
- The NBA Draft is quickly filling up with talented backcourt players.
- It might already be too full for these players to decide to go into the draft.
- The Texas Longhorns will have to have some really talented players coming into their program if they expect to be on top next season without A.J. and D.J.
- The percentage of initials in the college game is about to take a dramatic downturn.
So where do you think Augustin and Abrams will wind up. The Finals Four Blog tends to think that Augustin will probably go in the first round, but Abrams… we’re not sure. If you’re on the bubble, you might as well go back to school. What’s so bad about staying in college? You’ll be a higher pick when you graduate, and you’ll always have that degree to fall back on. Plus, from what we remember from college, it wasn’t so bad. Why would you ever want to leave?
To get Texas Longhorns basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Memphis Gets Top High School Prospect Tyreke Evans
The Memphis Tigers won more games than any other team in the country last year, they went all the way to the NCAA National Championship Game in the NCAA Tournament, and spent a lot of time on the top of the AP Top 25 Poll. However, they did all of their fantastic accomplishments while being led by Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, two of their best starters who will probably play for an NBA team next year. Losing a couple of blue chip players like that can really damper a team’s shot at getting back to the Tourney. Teams like Memphis, UCLA and Kansas will likely have to fill in three or more starting roster spots by next season, because of the mass exodus to the NBA.
However, the Memphis Tigers are going to get reloaded with another “one-and-done” young backcourt player who should get Memphis rolling once more. Tyreke Evans, who is listed as the nation’s top high school senior by several scouting sources, has decided to sign with Memphis. He’s certainly getting a lot of hype from the Memphis fan base already. ‘Reke will need to be good for the Tigers to get back to the Dance, though. With Rose gone, he has big shoes to fill.
To get Memphis Tigers basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
The List of NCAA Athletes Going Pro in Sports
Having trouble keeping track of all of the college basketball players who have declared their eligibility? Are you unsure if Stephen Curry has signed an agent? Do you thing Brandon Rush will stay in Kansas to win another championship with Mario Chambers and Bill Self? Do you expect that Tyler Hansbrough will head to the NBA this year, or do you think he’ll give Roy Williams and the Tar Heels one more year?
Well, you can get all of those questions answered by going to this page at CBSsports.com. There are other pages like it, but you probably are familiar with CBS if you follow college basketball (they have exclusive rights to all of the NCAA Tournament games, and we love going here for Final Four Blog article links, as you probably know). The good thing about this page is that they tell you if the player has signed with an agent. This is important, because once a player signs with an agent, his amateur career is over. No more college. If you don’t sign with an agent, you can always go back to school if you wind up breaking your ankle this summer.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
What to Remember from the College Basketball Season that Was
If you have an ESPN Insider account, you can look at this pretty interesting article by Jay Bilas, a leading NCAA hoops writer. Basically he goes over the best things about the past season, the highlights, the lowlights, and everything in between. What were the most memorable things from the past year to you? For many of us (those of us who cover the college basketball world on a daily basis, like Bilas and Yours Truly, your humble Final Four blogger) the best parts of a season are remembered with your particular team in mind. Because you are Kansas fan, you recall the best Kansas moments. If you were a Duke fan, you’d have a completely different list.
As much as I appreciate the effort of Bilas here, I have to say that many people will fail to get a vast majority of his references. If you skip Sports Center or PTI every now and again, you’re going to be better informed, but still clueless about a few. Did you know that Rick Pitino wore an all-white suit one game? Neither did we, until we read this article. Oh, well. You can’t blame Bilas for trying.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Ford Hired as Coach of Oklahoma St.
Oklahoma State has a good basketball program, although they haven’t been an elite team for some time. It’s a good gig for a coach trying to get into the big time, the Roy Williams/Coach K/Bobby Knight realm. If you succeed at Oklahoma State with the Cowboys, you could write yourself a ticket to any number of coaching jobs in the country. So why wouldn’t a guy like Travis Ford want to coach there? It’s a wonderful opportunity, and hey, the $1.3 million per year doesn’t hurt, either.
So why wouldn’t Bill Self want the job? Simple: Kansas could win another national championship next year or the year after that. Why would Billy Donovan turn down the big bucks to go pro? Because Florida is comfortable, and he knows he’s good at it. I think both Self and Ford made great decisions with where they wanted to coach. Because of their lackluster choices, there is little controversy this offseason with the coaching carousel. Well, we should knock on wood. There has not been much controversy… yet.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Basketball Prospectus knew it all along
Here at the Final Four Blog, Basketball-Prospectus.com is one of our top links in the favorites bar on our browser. They provide us with lots and lots of great material for blogs all throughout the entire season, all the way to the end of the tournament. Speaking of, that brings us to our point. The stats at Basketball-Prospectus knew all along that the Kansas Jayhawks would win the whole thing. If you check out their statistics main page, it has Kansas as the No. 1 team and Memphis as the No. 2. Of course, the main page of stats is ranked by the adjusted rank of their Pythagorean winning percentage. Kansas was the best in the country with .992. Memphis has .989.
Interestingly enough, Duke and Wisconsin, two teams which were eliminated much too early from the Tourney, were ranked as the No. 3 and No. 4 teams respectively. Davidson ranked 58th… so maybe they don’t get everything right.
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.