I guess it's clear they don't watch the games

When we first started talking about this blog, I felt strongly that it should not just be about Georgetown basketball, and I maintain that. That said, I couldn't let this one slide. And rather than take the homer "Go Hoyas" banner, I'm going the other way and trashing the national media for its bias in favor our storied program.

In short, I guess it's clear that the voters for neither the AP nor the coaches poll are watching the games. It's a joke that Georgetown actually moved up both rankings after the week that the Hoyas had, eeking out two wins against mediocre (at best) teams (including the questionable no-goaltending call to end the WVU game). If nothing else, you would have expected all the voters to have seen the Ewing highlight and realized how close we came to losing... again.

Georgetown seems to clearly be the best team in the Big East (one game lead on Notre Dame, who we destroyed in our only recent quality win), and maybe being the best team in the Big East means you automatically are one of the 6 or 7 best teams in the country, but as a fan of the Hoyas I'm starting to feel pretty nervous about AT Louisville and AT Syracuse in a one-week span (starting a week from Saturday -- both games on ESPN). I don't see anybody coming out of the Big East with fewer than 4 conference losses, so maybe it's better to dump those on the road than put up a bad show in the home finale against Louisville.

Front Line Collapse

With Ewing as a starter not really working, Georgetown now plays 3 guards, 1 swing man, and a center. Unlike last year, when they had one of the best front lines in all of college basketball (7-2, 6-9, 6-8), now they have a weak, undersized front court, especially by Big East standards. Summers now plays PF (6-8), Freeman plays SF, but is actually a guard and a soft non-rebounding 6-4. Georgetown essentially replaced Jeff Green with Austin Freeman, lost 5 inches, and now gets routinely decimated not only on the boards, which is atrocious, but also on some offensive possessions. Hibbert cannot dominate down low on his own, and one of the reasons defenses collapse on him so quickly is because there is not another player down there to take pressure. Georgetown is a soft, small, three point shooting team that goes on monster cold streaks. This is the type of team that just begs to lose in the round of the 32.

The answer, I think, is to start Hibbert, Macklin, Summer, Sapp and Wallace. 7-2, 7-0, 6-8. Get rebounds, let Hibbert get touches, and then bring Ewing, Freeman, Wright, and Rivers off the bench as necessary.

3-Pointers

Pretty good weekend in college and for the three-point shot.

The much-hyped PAC-10 match-up of #4 Washington State and #5 UCLA got some life at the end, when the Cougars made seven threes in the final 90 seconds to come up just short and lose 81-74. In a head-t0-head of potential PAC-10 POYs Kevin Love's win and 27-and-14 got the nod over Derrick Low's six threes and 24 points. But more than anything, Low and the Cougars came as close as anybody has come to Jason Williams' "Miracle Minute" at Maryland in '01.

In the Midwest, Bradley University broke a six-game losing streak on the shoulders of Jeremy Crouch, who scored 20 of Bradley's last 26 to inch by Northern Iowa. Crouch matched Low with six threes of his own en route to a season-high 28 and a nice W.

But nothing topped this line: "0:06, 72-69, Roy Hibbert made Three Point Jumper."

In a back-and-forth game against a very good UConn team, Big Roy sealed the deal with his second career three-pointer from the top of the key with time winding down. Coach John Thompson III said it was not a "fluke" and I bet the Sixers, Kings, Clippers, and Bucks hope he is right. Either way, this was a statement game for the iffy Hoyas because UConn is better than advertised and the Huskies played a superb game on the road.

After the Chargers' upset in Indy, I watched most of Indiana-Illinois on CBS. As an Illinois fan, this game was a big deal because the Illini stink and really needed a "turning point" game to salvage the season. If any game offered that opportunity, it was this: against Eric Gordon and the #10 Hoosiers.

Motivation for a W was huge given the Illini's struggles, Indiana's success, and Eric Gordon's much-documented recruiting flip-flop. Illinois jumped out tp a 13-4 lead after starting 6-for-6 from the field, and again led by as many as nine the second half, but still managed to lose by four.

If they can't win this one, they are in serious trouble. What's the motivation at Minnesota or Penn State in the dead of winter? 4-12 in the Big Ten?

I think both teams will come back to this game as a sign of their opposite trajectories: the Illini falling to 0-4 in the Conference and heading toward a post-season snub, and the Hoosiers seizing first place in the Big Ten and rolling towards a top-3 seed in the Tourney.

I actually think that Indiana makes the Final Four. They have a great core with DJ White, Gordon, Armon Basset, JaMarcus Ellis and Jordan Crawford. Kelvin Sampson is a good coach and puts them over the hump against similar teams.

Furthermore, this game served as a prime example of Illinois' slow plummet since 2005. Nobody wants to play for Bruce Webber--not Gordon and not even in-state talents like Jon Scheyer, Patrick Beverly, and Derrick Rose--and he has slowly grounded this once high-flying program that competed for titles in '01, '02, and '05.

Congratulations

Props to Dan Shanoff for getting his morning blog back into the mainstream with the Sporting News. He's awesome, and even though his sports analysis is usually too fast to be especially thoughtful, hes pretty even handed, smart, and really easy to read without getting mad. Also, he has probably the most interesting takes on sports media and blogging in general.

But ,even more importantly, its finally been put into words. http://www.sportspickle.com/features/volume7/2008-0109-duke.html

In Other News, Hillary Likes Chick Flicks...

So I realize that Barack Obama really does like to play basketball, but doesn't the hype surrounding him as "the sports fan's candidate" seem a little, well, racist?

Dan Shanoff, at the very top of my reading list each morning, wrote this on Friday after the Iowa win:

Longtime readers know that I am a politics junkie. It was awesome last night at the reading as lots of people there kept checking their Blackberries and cell phones to see results from Iowa, a murmur slicing through the crowd as the news came in. As far as the superficial sports connections go: Obama's win is a win for pick-up basketball fans. (Come on: Don't you really want to see a pick-up hoops court installed at the White House?)

Offensive? No. But the last sentence starts to feel a little suspect to me. We've had presidents in the past that were tremendous athletes (Gerald Ford was the MVP of back-to-back undefeated national titles at Michigan), and we've had candidates (like Bill Bradley) who were largely defined by their athletic prowess. Even this year, Bill Richardson famously clarified his long-standing claim that he had been drafted by the Kansas City A's in 1966. However, he did play in the Cape Cod summer league (one of the best amateur baseball leagues in the country) and clearly had the talent to play professionally. The current president is probably the "fittest" president that we've ever had (fittest on the treadmill, not exactly in the Oval Office) and entered politics after owning a baseball team. So sports and presidential politics is not new -- why then the interest in Obama's high school basketball career and love of pickup games?

Brett Edwards at Fanhouse has a video that at least somewhat explains the reason for the Obama comments, but it still has that tinge of being much more about Obama being black than about Obama liking basketball.

Obama will always be the basketball fan's candidate, and we'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that he's the only one running for President from either party who has the necessary skills to represent our country on the hardwood.

In a lengthy Times article from June 2007 about Obama's love for basketball, the article flat-out admits that it's a non-issue:

Basketball has little to do with Mr. Obama’s presidential bid — in fact, he has trouble finding time to shoot baskets anymore...

I'm not really an Obama fan, so maybe I'm just grasping at straws, but I feel like it would behoove Obama -- and all of us -- to move away from "the black candidate likes basektball" and towards a discussion about Obama's political capabilities.

Blazers

I've been meaning to watch the Blazers live for about a month, and I finally got the chance last night. They were playing on TNT against a gutsy Bulls team, who entered the game winner's of 3-of-4 since firing Scott Skiles.

In those four games, the Bulls beat similarly bad teams (Milwaukee, New York, and Charlotte) and lost to one good team (Orlando) in OT. The Bulls desperately needed a change and got something in the Skiles firing, and since then they've been playing committed basketball, so it made for a pretty good test for the Blazers.

I thought the Blazers would roll over...they won their 13 in a row and were now playing a back-to-back on the road against a rebounding Bulls team. But Luol Deng went down and the Blazers won 115-109 in OT. Sucks for the Bulls, but it again make the Blazers hard to figure out.

How is this team 20-13? They won 13 in a row over pretty good teams--including Utah twice, Denver twice, Toronto, New Orleans, and Golden State. Bill Simmons wrote a typically over-stated and generalized column explaining their success and related it to the Spurs pseudo-dynasty and the Celtics 27-3 sprint. He called it Chemacterillity and got some support from Jason Kapono, who is suddenly the authority on NBA team success?

Simmons groups the Spurs, Celtics and Blazers together in their Chemacterillity and explains that it's the "Moneyball" of the NBA. I personally think the Blazers are a good but not great team, and that while the Celtics and Spurs get along, you can account for their success because of two people: Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. The NBA has been and is a Player's League and I think the superstar accounts for a whole lot more than Kopono's camaraderie test. Getting along helps (Hello Pistons in 04), but every team has to have a Duncan/Garnett/Shaq/Jordan to get the job done. In Simmons' defense, at least the three organizations aren't overpaying for wannabe superstars right now.

Either way, besides the Randolph-Frye trade and buying-out-Francis, I still can't figure out why the Blazers are at least good and a whole lot better than they were in 06-07.

The only two observations I felt solid about were:

1) How successful their players were in college:

Aldridge, Texas, Elite Eight in 06
Steve Blake, Maryland, Final Four 01, Nat'l Champs 02
Channing Frye, Arizona, Elite Eight 03,05
Tuarean Green, Florida, Nat'l Champs 06, 07
Jarrett Jack, Ga. Tech, Runner-up 04
Greg Oden, Ohio St., Runner-up 07
Raef LaFrentz, won 123 games at Kansas with Paul Pierce

2) That they are coached by the great Nate McMillan, who somehow got the Super Sonics to win 52 games in 2005, take the Spurs to 6 games in the playoffs, and earn Jerome James $30million over 5 years with the Knicks.

College success does not mean much in the pros (how you doing Mateen Cleaves?), but it's a pretty safe indicator of success on big stages and while the NBA is a Player's League, the same coaches do end up winning (Jackson, Reilly, Brown, Popovich).

I think it's really fun the Blazers have been so good and I think McMillan is a top-5 coach in the League, but I don't know where they end up in the next 3-5 years. Are Roy, Aldridge, and Oden max-out players? Do they keep two and let one go? Does Outlaw fit into the long-term plan as mid-level, long-term contract?

As of right now, I think this team will crumble against the Spurs, Suns, Mavs, Pistons, and Celtics. They do not have a Superstar yet, so they can join the Raptors, Jazz, and Nuggets as Playoff fodder for the big dogs. They can beat the Bulls on any given night and lock up a 4-7 seed in the West, but if Roy-Aldridge-Oden emerge as Superstars, they could be in place to make some serious noise.

The start of a lot of Jeff Green love

From David Thorpe:

• The light shining on Kevin Durant casts a shadow on a few other rookies who in most seasons would be ROY candidates -- none moreso than his teammate, Jeff Green. The more I watch him, the more I think Green may be a top-tier player in this league. Scottie Pippen to Durant's Michael Jordan? Not quite. But his multiple offensive skills and basketball IQ, combined with Durant's scoring talent, means that in many big games in Seattle's future, defenses that aim to slow Durant are going to have fits defending Green. He'll be too good to have just anybody rotate onto him.

I'm already excited

The Origins of "Maiming by Mob"

Some quick background reading on the name:

• In his first mention in the New York Times, the maiming by mob incident is referenced in an article about Iverson committing to Georgetown. (NYTimes 6/3/94)
• During his sophomore season, Iverson (and resultingly Georgetown) was the feature of a lengthly article in the Times. It also portrays pure John Thompson.

These links will continue as I continue to read about it. Soon I'll actually dig into the Virginia articles.