Lindy's 2006-2007 College Basketball Preview Magazine is out!

Update September 2007

The 2006-2007 season is long gone, but the 2007 NCAA College Basketball Tournament games are available on DVD!.

And you can get started on the 2007-2008 season by checking our Gigantic 2007-2008 preview of links.

Catch up the latest recruiting rankings

If you are looking this year's edition, the 2007-2008 Lindy's Magazine preview review is ready!.


The original 2006-2007 review
The Lindy's Sports 2006-2007 College Basketball preview magazine is out! I spotted it at Borders Bookstores today, with a list price of $6.99 + tax, on August 31, 2006! Yet another sign the new season is just around the corner!

And now I will put on my Magazine Reviewer hat, and as a self-appointed authority on the topic, I am writing a review blog-style:

Comprehensive Review
* The review will be divided in two parts.
* The first part covers the first half of the magazine: the special features, player rankings, etc, along with the recruiting pages in the back
* The second part covers the meat of the magazine: conference-by-conference and team-by-team analysis.


Part One: Grade: A+
A great selection of features by Lindy's Sports! Starts on page 8:

Top 40 teams, with the Top 25 teams getting a three-paragraph overview. Nice! Mid-majors in full force!

A look at the Vegas sneaker camp situation. Good choice of a topic!

Short stories on Maggie Dixon and Mike Sutton

Many Top 10s: JuCos of 2006, Freshman of 2006, Class of 2007, Under-appreciated college players, Shooters, Tranfers

All Coaching changes listed

Ranking of the 31 conferences

Six dates to remember (tourneys and single-games to mark in your calendar!)

Field of 65 projections

Five great defenders

A long story on the state of the Big 12 (half the teams have new coaches), including a full page on Bob Huggins (nicely done by the way!), and a story on Bob Knight

Feature story on Florida as the national champions

Frank Burlison takes a look at the touted freshmen of the 2006 class

Story on UCLA and Ben Howland

Top 25 players per position (five pages total!) Nice!

Top backcourts and top frontcourts (four pages total) Nice!

Four pages on Women's Hoops

Recruiting wise: Top 25 classes of 2006, Top 50 incoming freshmen in 2006, Top 100 prospects of 2007, and half a page overview of the summer camps


Part Two Overall Grade: B-

Conference pages: Grade: B+ The conferences are in two groups: major and non-majors. Conferences are listed alphabetically in each of the two groups. The major conferences (11 total) get two pages of coverage each, followed by individual team pages. Those two pages include a general preview, a big table with three columns offering Lindy's quick hitters on each team, an analysis of recruits/newcomers per team, top returning player statistics (scorers, rebounders, etc), Lindy's all-conference teams (total of 15 players), and Lindy's top players in various categories. The smaller conferences get a third of a page (one column out of three) with obviously a lot less content, followed by individual team pages with obviously less information (except for the Top 40 teams).

Team pages: Grade: C+ The Top 40 teams get a full page to themselves and they are listed in ranking order. The unranked teams are listed alphabetically. Teams outside the Top 40 from the top eleven conferences get half a page. Teams from low/mid-major conferences are six per page (three columns of two each). But kudos to Lindy's for printing returning starters, key reserves and newcomers for each mid-major team! They managed to squeeze all that while having six teams per page. Nice touch! (Note: The low grade is because of the first two shortcomings below).


Shortcomings

Rosters of teams are not complete. They do not even claim they are rosters. They call them "Key Players". Some players are mentioned in the text preview, but they are not listed in the roster (errr Key Players list). Bad! Bad! Bad!

Players numbers (jersey numbers) are not printed. Bad! Bad! Bad!

Because the magazine is published so early it is not possible to print the schedules. Lindy's will make them available online and you can be request a printed copy after Oct 15.


Recommendation

I recommend this magazine unless you must have complete rosters or rosters with the jersey numbers printed: this magazine does not have them. But they do have a nice selection of features, and those alone make it worth the price. The magazine should also receive credit for giving the mid-majors some more respect!


Comments or Corrections?
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