January Rewind

Conference USA wins the "common sense" award for reprimanding the zebras for giving Turnaround Tom a technical (!) for fainting. As if the zebras did not have a bad reputation to begin with. How insecure where they to think that someone would fake fainting to show them up! Lame! I hope C-USA kicks them out! I'm sure they can officiate the games of Dave Bliss's new team :P

As if Alabama didn't have enough guards to begin with, Justin Jonus decides to transfer on January 23 over lack of playing time. Curious decision, probably premeditated. With Chuck Davis down and out for the season, this is a disasterous season for Mark GottFRIED.

They didn't do their homework: Disappointing, disheartening, sad, disasterous: Chris McCray of Maryland and Marcus Landry of Wisconsin failed to maintain a 2.0 GPA in the previous semester and are now academically ineligible. This is really bad for McCray as this is his last year as a senior: He is DONE. Sad :-(

Duke does not consider Maryland their rival. Yet JJ Redick's only career dunk came against Maryland. "Not our rival?"

The last two Saturdays have been epic if not historic: The last three unbeatens go down last Saturday, while the previous Saturday the three Blue-bloods (North Carolina, Kansas and Kentucky) all lose on the same day. First time in history for that!

So many season-ending injuries... Nate Funk, Demario Eddins, Stan Gaines, Jawann McClelland, Chuck Davis, Armen Kirkland, ...

Bill Self is overrated. Period. Roy Williams won with Matt Doherty's players. Bruce Weber won with Bill Self's players. Both Roy and Weber have overachieved this season when they were universally expected to have mediocre seasons. Bill Self stumbled with Roy William's players and underachieved this year with a super-talented freshman class. Enough said!

The Silver Fox likes drama. With one hand he suspends Chris Rodgers indefinately (essentially ending the student-athlete's career), and with the other hand he lifts the redshirt from Houstonian power-wing Fendi Onobun. Onobun looked very promising in the minutes he played since the redshirt was lifted. And more drama, Jawann McClelland gets injured right after he became eligible again. The irony/drama of the Chris Rodgers situation: just 3 weeks ago Lute Olson was praising (!) Chris Rodgers on his "Lute On the Air" coach's show (can be seen nationally on CSTV) both academically and as his best ever on-the-ball defender (!!)

I can understand it when play-by-play guys utter BS. After all they cover multiple sports and events, so they are not really experts at anything. But the expert analysts (mostly former coaches and players) should know better than divide players in "stars" and "role players". This is far from the truth. This is more of a continuum, not a binary star system :)