Tyler Hansbrough vs. Luke Harangody

Tyler Hansbrough and Luke Harangody got some comparisons made between one another last season, so while there’s still not a lot of action this offseason, Gary Parrish of CBS Sports has a nice little article about the two big men to get you pumped for a possible Naismith Players of the Year Award competition.

The names are similar, the numbers are similar, but by far the thing that gets these two players compared to one another the most is their looks. They’re both wide bodies bruisers, white with short hair, who play around the basket. A while ago we had a blog here about true player comparisons, how guys like Adam Morrison (former Gonzaga forward) and Larry Bird get compared simply because they look alike. But I digress. Here are some of the similar things that we sound between these two players.

  • Letters: L, U, E, H, A, R, N, G, O, Y
  • Height: Tyler: 6-9, Luke: 6-8
  • Weight: Tyler: 250, Luke: 251
  • Points/Game: Tyler: 22.6, Luke: 20.4
  • Rebounds/Game: Tyler: 10.2, Luke: 10.6
  • Blocks/Game: Tyler: 0.34, Luke: 0.88
  • Nickname: Tyler: Psycho-T, Luke: Big Luke
  • School Mascot Adjective: Tyler: Tar, Luke: Fighting

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 16, 2008 - Post a comment

Dick Vitale Names His Top 40

When Dickie V comes out with a list of his preseason top 40 basketball teams, you can’t help but take notice. Mr. Enthusiasm has a list made up for you to see at ESPN, and even though there are not a lot of surprises on the list, it’s still interesting to see what the man thinks about college basketball. Not surprisingly Dick Vitale chooses on emotion, and you can catch a glimpse of the players and things he’s excited about for each team, because he makes sure to write a sentence or two for each pick. That’s one of the best things about Dickie V’s list, is that he backs it up with a talking point about each team.

As for Vitale’s actual picks, there’s not that much that would surprise you. His affinity for Duke is clear to most, and he ranked them in the top ten. His No. 1 pick was a pretty clear one: North Carolina. No surprise there. However, his No. 2 and No. 3 teams might raise a few eyebrows, if only because UCLA is not one of them. Take a look at the list and start getting pumped about the next season of college basketball.

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 15, 2008 - Post a comment

The Luckiest BCS, High-Major Hoops Teams

As we do a lot here at BasketballProspectus.com, we’re going right to the stats to give you another blog. It’s Friday, so we’ll try to be as brief about the explanation as possible. BP.com has a whole bunch of great stats, and one of them is the luck factor. You can read all about it at the website, but basically it tallies the number of games a team won versus the number of games a team should have lost based on Pythagorean winning percentage and a whole bunch of other stuff. Discounting mid-majors, who are often more lucky than larger, BCS school, which ones are the most lucky. Here are the schools that we’ve come up with, based on the BP.com stats, plus our own secret recipe.

THE TOP TEN LUCKIEST BCS HOOPS TEAMS

1. Tennessee
2. Vanderbilt
3. Boise State
4. UNLV
5. Oklahoma
6. North Carolina
7. UCLA
8. Wisconsin
9. Texas
10. Notre Dame

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 12, 2008 - Post a comment

Indiana Lands Another Top Recruit

The University of Indiana might be on their way to some very sweet redemption. Following the hiring of Tom Crean in the wake of that miserable debacle known as Kelvin Sampson, the Hoosiers have gone to work, landing several of the nation’s top recruiting prospects. Indiana has several verbal commitments, including, according to Scout.com, at least five incoming freshmen players who are ranked in the top 100 overall in the nation. The latest, just added the other day, is Christian Watford, a 6-7 small forward from Alabama.

If you are interested, the website Scout.com does have some very intriguing information that has to do with major college recruiting. College basketball fans who would like to get in on the scoop about what their favorite programs (or least favorite) have been up to over the summer would be wise to head on over to Scout.com. Hopefully we can get you all some more blog posts from this great site in the near future.

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 11, 2008 - Post a comment

Oregon State: More Attention with New Recruit

Oregon State has been the subject of several blog posts this college basketball offseason. Why is that, you ask? Well, even though the program in Corvallis, Oregon has been, well, less than stellar the past few years, the Oregon State Beavers have done a great job of promoting themselves. They have a new coach, exciting new players, and, hey- everybody loves a comeback. Why wouldn’t you like to root for the Oregon State Beavers this season. Check this out: They landed one of the top guard recruits in the nation.

Apparently this Roberto Nelson kid is really good. Not the next Derrick Rose good, but he’s up there, and has a shot at becoming an NBA player one day. Thanks to the recruiting of first-year coach Craig Robinson (who did a lot with a little at Brown before he left, and is also, rather famously, the brother of Michelle Obama, Barrack’s wife), the Oregon State Beavers have a leader on the court who should be in town for more than just one season. The Final Four Blog would love to see Nelson and Robinson turn the program around at Oregon State. In two years, if the Beavers get into your NCAA Tourney Bracket, two of the main reasons will be Robinson and Nelson.

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 10, 2008 - Post a comment

“Glory Road” Coach Don Haskins Dies at 78

Don Haskins coached Texas Western (which later was renamed to UTEP, University of Texas El Paso) for nearly four decades between 1961 and 1999. He was the coach for the 1966 Texas Western team about which the Disney film Glory Road was made. As you might know, if you watched the movie or know your sports-meets-cultural significance trivia, the 1966 Texas Western team won the college basketball national championship versus the favored, Adolph Rupp-coached, winningest hoops program ever Kentucky Wildcats. What was significant about the win, despite the fact that a small school did it against a large one, was that it was the first time an all-black starting team won the national title. The fact that the Wildcats were all white made the contrast even more apparent. If you don’t have Glory road on your Netflix, you’d better sign up to get it soon, because there are a lot of people putting it on their queue today. Said famous coach Eddie Sutton of Haskins’ move to play an all African American starting five in the title game:

“When they won the national championship against the University of Kentucky, that changed college basketball. At that time, there weren’t many teams in the South or Southwest that had African-Americans playing. There was a change in the recruiting of the black athlete. It really changed after that. They’ve had a great impact on the game.”

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 9, 2008 - Post a comment

ESPN Gets WACy Through 2017

ESPN and the Western Athletic Conference have announced a television coverage deal that will last until the 2016-2017 season. According to the article about the deal at ESPN, the ports media superpower’s senior vice president, Burke Magnus, had this to say about the WAC:

“You cannot talk championship level teams without including WAC members in that conversation. With this agreement, college sports fans will continue to see — in a bigger and better way — the quality and depth of the conference as well as the passion and enthusiasm of their supporters.”

All in all this should be a great thing for sports fans in the Western United States. With some of the best teams in football and basketball in the nation in recent years, the WAC has been making big strides in the effort to play with the big boys- the SEC, the Pac-10, Big Ten and others. Hawaii went undefeated in the regular season lat year, Boise State was a national title contender not too long ago. BYU is up there in the college football rankings, and Nevada has put together some great college basketball teams over the past few years.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on September 8, 2008 - Post a comment

Taking a Look at Colorado

The Colorado Buffaloes haven’t been in the national spotlight for college basketball in a long time. In fact, they have been floundering at the bottom of the Big 12 for the better part of this decade. But hope is on the way. With a new coach who managed to get the team improving by the second half of last season, the Buffaloes could be a surprise team in 2008-09.

In fact, coach Jeff Bzdelik was considered for the Chicago Bulls head coaching position this summer before the Bulls eventually went with Vinny Del Negro. It was an honor to simply be looked over for the position, though, and it speaks to the efforts that Jeff Bzdelik has made in Boulder. You can check out a quick run down of the other happenings for Colorado when you go to the CBSSports.com page here. Apparently there are some good recruits headed to Colorado, so fans should be clamoring to get tickets to all the home games.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on September 5, 2008 - Post a comment

Blurring the Lines on Package Deals

Check out this Seth Davis article at SportsIllustrated.com. Many casual college basketball fans might not be aware of the subtle power plays that go on behind the scenes of college hoops, where competition for the best players coming out of high school is as fierce a business as any in sports. Coaches are constantly getting in trouble for crossing the boundary of legality when it comes to aggressive recruiting (see Kelvin Sampson), but one way in which coaches and schools are landing top flight talent seems to be slipping under the radar. Apparently, many schools will hire influential summer league basketball coaches onto the payroll of the school in order to sway influence in the decision making of a prep athlete.

Here’s how it would work: Jimmy Chitwood is a high school basketball phenom who plays for his high school team, the Hickory Hoosiers. But during the summer, he trains and hones his skills while playing for a basketball development league team, the Koogerz. The coach of the Koogerz promises Powerhouse University of Everytown that he can get Jimmy Chitwood to sign with PU if, in exchange, he gets a job with the team, let’s say Player Development Assistant, a job which pays a good deal for basically doing nothing other than getting Chitwood to sign at PU. Does it happen a lot? Apparently it does, though because it’s so prevalent, nobody raises a stink about it.

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 4, 2008 - Post a comment

Defending The Three: Is It Important In College Hoops?

The three point shot can make or break games, but can it make or break entire seasons? NCAA Tournament seed numbers? Final Four appearances? This is the question we seek to answer today. A couple of days ago we hypothesized that teams with better two point field goal percentages– that is, the teams that score a better percentage of their points from two point field goals– seemed to have better success overall.

But as for a defensive strategy, is it important to guard the perimeter and keep your opponent from scoring off three point baskets? Check out the Ken Pomeroy stats at BasketballProspectus.com to see a breakdown of every college team and how well they guard against the three. Can you detect any patterns? We couldn’t. In fact, it seems just as likely that a good team will defend the three well as a bad team. Take the Big East, where teams like De Paul and Connecticut allowed a lot of threes, and Marquette and St. John’s didn’t allow many at all. Marquette and UConn were great all throughout the regular season, while DePaul and St. John’s struggled.

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Permalink - Posted in General on September 3, 2008 - Post a comment


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