30-ish Hours of College Hoops, Part 1

Too much basketball for things like editing, paragraphs, complete sentences or even coherent thoughts. But as we get to know these teams and players who will inhabit our brains for the next several months, I've certainly got some thoughts on what's going down. So here are at least some of them, on a game-by-game basis.

Hampton @ Wake Forest
--The new ESPNU open for college basketball is horrible. Just some bad local public access looking stuff.
--There are some pieces here for the Deacs, but the lack of a PG will kill this team.
--Walker is a great shotblocker, but his offensive game lags far behind.
--I suppose Clark is the best option at point for Wake, but he isn’t meant to be there. Harris has got to be the go-to scorer for the Deacs, and I think he is better off the ball. He's probably better than Clark at the point (though neither is good), but he is needed more as a scorer than as a distributor.
--Neither team can make a FT to save their lives.
--Wake 63-56, survive a scare from Hampton.
--Pellum probably gunned the Pirates out of the game (6/22 FGA), but Funches was fun to watch.
--McKie is something else, 21pts, 8 rebs.
--No Deac w/ more than 2 assists, 3 w/ more than 2 TOs. 19 total TOs for Wake.

Siena @ Minnesota
--My goodness, what a start to this game, nobody missing. We’re on pace for like a 150-130 game after 4min. After 8min, Siena’s pace has slowed to just 125pts, shooting 77% from field.
--Jackson has 14 in the first 8 min, and the amazing thing is that a lot of those were on Nolen, a first-rate defensive guard.
--Jackson is spectacular.
--Minnesota big run to close the half, 17-7, get back within a point.
--I think this Minnesota could be a team that has many different leading scorers/go-to guys, depending on the night.
--Siena scores 25 in first 8 min, then 24 in the next 26.
--Minnesota is for real: excellent athleticism, excellent rebounders, balanced defense all around, shooters, ballhandlers, and all this w/o Joseph.
--Rossiter at least three travels on the night, Siena with a ton of turnovers.
--This maybe isn’t as talented a Siena team as we’ve seen the past 2-3 years, but there are some serious parts here (Jackson, Rossiter, Brookins, Anosike, Griffin, Wignot) and they should be near the top of the MAAC.
--Brookins comes out of nowhere down the stretch to catch fire, but too much of a drought in the middle of the game.
--Minnesota 76-69 final.
--Jackson 29, Brookins 12 for the Saints, but 24 TOs for the team.
--Minnesota balanced scoring: Hoffarber 16, Sampson 13, Hollins 12, Mbakwe 10 plus 11 rebounds.
--Minn 30 FTs, Siena 15.

Pepperdine @ UCLA
--In the first half I’m having flashback to last year’s CSUF/UCLA abortion. UCLA still struggling against the zone, the point guard situation still isn’t excellent, but they’re a more talented team this year.
--And Jerime Anderson still sucks.
--KeionBell is not meant to play point. He’s not good at it, and it limits his effectiveness in the offense and turns the team into little more than a series of 1-on-1 moves. --Nelson’s block at the start of the 2nd half is beautiful.
--Josh Smith is disturbingly earthbound.
--UCLA big run at end of first/start of second.
--Howland with his run-breaking timeouts back for another season.
--Final UCLA 79-69, score closer than the game, Bruins impressive in 2nd half.
--26-2 run for Bruins wrapped around halftime is the difference, but maybe the biggest story is the ankle injury to Lee early in the game that kept him out of the final 34 minutes and will keep him out of Tuesday’s NIT Quarterfinal matchup with Pacific.
--Bell 24 unimpressive points, just two assists.
--Nelson 20/11, Honeycutt 16, Smith/Jones 13.
--UCLA 21 assists, 13 TO. Pepp 18 TO, 10 assists.


Miami @ Memphis
--I know Kendrick is a very good player, but Pastner definitely had the luxury to let him leave. This team has plenty of talent at the guard spot.
--Unbelievably entertaining albeit sloppy back-and-forth first half.
--Aside from Johnson, Hurricanes don’t have much offensive punch in frontcourt. Kirk and his nice midrange jumper may earn a spot in the starting lineup.
--Dequan Jones has just never added anything beyond his athleticism. My notes on this kid from his freshman year are just filled with exclamation points. Now he just bores me.
--Miami is definitely at its best when it works inside out (or more to the point, just inside). Johnson is incredibly efficient, especially when fresh.
--Memphis is an immature team with some absolutely terrible body language at times: players sagging their shoulders, rolling their eyes, at both ref calls and poor plays by teammates. This does not immediately look like a team with great chemistry.
--Miami guards definitely settled down for a stretch, played under control and they got right back into it, and then in the last minute or two, both Grant and Scott have terribly out of control plays.
--After the first time seeing these incarnations of these teams play, I’m not sure how good either of these teams are. They’ll both get better, but they both certainly need to get better.
--Final score 72-68 Memphis.
--Jackson 17, Carmouche 13, Witherspoon 12, Antonio Barton 10.
--Scott 20, Grant 18, (a combined 10/27 and eight turnovers for those two), Johnson 12 points, 12 rebounds.
--5 assists for Miami on 20 field goals, Memphis 10 assists on 19 field goals.
--Teams a combined 7/41 from beyond the arc.
--Entertaining, but sloppy.

"The U"

I've been very much enjoying ESPN's "30 For 30" series so far, in which 30 different directors take a shot at documenting a major sports story over the 30 years of ESPN's existence. There was Kirk Fraser's take on the death of Len Bias, which transported me back to 11 years old and having one of my childhood heroes throw his life away. There was Mike Tollin's documentary on the life and death of the USFL, casting an evil eye on Donald Trump. Barry Levinson took a story that I knew quite a bit about and shed a new light on it as he chronicled the Baltimore Colt marching band and the departure of the Colts from Baltimore. Throw in shows on the Wayne Gretzky trade, the Ali/Holmes fight and the life and times of Jimmy the Greek and these are some compelling documentaries on sports.

Which brings me to the most recent film, "The U" by Billy Corben about the University of Miami's football program. Now, without a doubt, this is a great topic for this series: a team rising from irrelevance to become the best college football program in the nation during the 80s and beyond, but not without its share of controversy. Unfortunately, Corben's thesis for this film appeared to be something along the lines of "Miami was a very good football team, so that gives them a complete pass everywhere else." Part of the reason that "The U" was such a great topic for a documentary was the fact that there were two very distinct sides to this story: the amazing success the 'Canes had on the football field and the abysmal way in which they acted while gaining such success. But, while Corben certainly went so far as to admit that there was some controversy surrounding the 'Canes, he went out of his way to avoid voicing some of those concerns in a coherent way, instead focusing on the 'Canes players and coaches and apologists making excuses.

It wasn't the Miami players fault that there was a long litany of legal problems in the program, but it was certainly Sports Illustrated's fault for publishing a sidebar about it. Racists!

It wasn't Jimmy Johnson's fault that they ran up the score on overmatched opponents, it was the fault of the opposing team for failing to stop them. And 'Canes players dancing over fallen opponents? That's just kids having fun.

The Miami-cheap-shot-fueled onfield brawls? Certainly not the 'Canes fault. But the university president being concerned that this painted the university in a bad light? What a stooge that guy was. Didn't he know how much money the football team was generating? Money forgives all sins, right?

According to Steve Walsh, Miami dominated Penn State in every facet of the game in the '87 Fiesta Bowl. (Wait for it, wait for it.) Except for turnovers. Hey, I got one more for you Steve. Um, the score. (Somewhere around this point I briefly considered the idea that Corben was a genius in the field of satire, spending a couple hours making fun of Miami while pretending to fawn over them. I threw that idea away a couple seconds later.)

Who cares that Miami players were being paid in violation of NCAA regulations? Those rules were dumb anyway. Besides, Bennie Blades had a kid at the time! And if they hadn't been getting paid, they would have been forced to go out and steal car stereos and sell drugs in order to survive. Oh. Wait. They did that too.

And, as Randal Hill took pains to point out (albeit with tongue firmly in cheek), it wasn't his fault that he ran up the Cotton Bowl tunnel after scoring a TD and came back with imaginary guns ablazing. It was everybody else's fault but his. (Note that for some reason, the Miami AD called this something like the most egregious offense one of his players ever committed, a truly disgusting act. Maybe it's just me, but I saw like 15 things over the course of the two hours that were far, far worse than this.)

Don't get me wrong, if the entire documentary had been anti-Miami, focusing on all the controversy while just glossing over the successes, it would have been just as bad, but this film could have been so much more. Credit Corben for at least mentioning the dark side, but it would have nice to hear a perspective on the story from someone other than Miami players, coaches, writers and supporters.

One last complaint, perhaps minor compared to the above. At some point in the film, (and it might have been on a bumper coming back in from a commercial break) Corben says something like "Beano Cook once called Miami football the greatest dynasty since Julius Caesar." Which, if you know Beano is just a great line and admittedly overstatement. No problem with that. But then Corben follows it up by saying: "And he was right." Well, no. No, he wasn't right. Miami was the best college football team from the early 80s to the early 90s. In no way do their accomplishments compare with those of Caesar (which is such an obvious thing that I'm not even going to follow that comparison and bring in other world leaders into the conversation), let alone the Lakers or Celtics or Canadiens or Bruins or Yankees or... The Hurricanes were dominant, won four national championships in nine years and were clearly the most successful program in college football for a decade or so. Leave it at that. There is no need to take a great line like Beano's and take it seriously.

All in all, I still enjoyed the film and would still recommend it, but compared to earlier episodes in this series, this was clearly subpar.