2006-2007 Athlon College Basketball Season Preview Review

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

Looking for the 2007-2008 Athlon Sports preview magazine review? I just finished the review! Check it out!!!


The original 2006-2007 review
The Athlon Sports 2006-2007 NCAA basketball college preview is now out! I picked it up at Borders Bookstores for the list price of $5.99 (display until Dec-15-2006). This is a west coast edition with Stanford's Mitch Johnson and California's Ubaka sharing the front cover.

And now I am putting my Magazine Reviewer hat on.

Comprehensive Review
* The review is divided in two parts
* The first part covers all the special features, stories, recruiting and player rankings.
* The second part covers the meat of the magazine, the team-by-team within conference-by-conference analysis.


Part One: Grade A-

Lots of advertising in this magazine, including ESPN Full Court, Samsung 40" LCD HDTVs (nice way to start the season, but who's gonna pay for it?), Sirius, and sadly a few gambling sites. Ironically in one of them (page 101) there is a picture of a random dude partially covering his face, but he looks a bit like the Coach K! That made me laugh for a few minutes :-)

Magazine content starts with an editorial from Michael Light

Five pages called "Hoops Madness" that cover a variety of topics, including some top XX lists, including coaches on the hot seat, and "put up or shut up" for touted but not-delivering players (they usually play on teams who underachieved or did not make the NCAA) (DUH!)

A three-page story on the new "One & Done" phenomenon because of the new NBA Draft rules. Featured is a full page picture of Greg Oden. Interesting "Oden" is an anagram of "Done". One & Done for Oden?

Next there is a "Ten things to watch in 2006" list. This covers players, teams and coaches.

A very nice touch follows, the preseason Bob Cousy Award candidates, about 40 of them including two from Division 2 and one from Division 3. Some of them are combo guards, but I digress. Included in the list are some of the highly touted freshmen. The 2006 class is definately going to sizzle this year! New Feature!

Three one-page interviews follow with Joakim Noah, Arizona's M-Will (Marcus Williams) and Kansas's Juliana Wright.

New Feature!: Their post-season predictions come with a nice overlay of the colleges on a two-page USA map. Very clever idea! Quite surpringly Oden State is not predicted to make the Elite 8! And their pre-season #1 maybe a surprise, but it is really the common-sense choice. Here is a hint: Ole Roy ain't that good? Two mid-majors are predicted to make the Sweet 16 and neither one is Gone-Zaga.

Then they present their three All-American teams, along with 30 honorable mentions. (Top 45 in all)

Recruiting
* Top 100 of the 2006 class, sorted by position.
* Top 25 recruiting classes of 2006
* Next 200 (101-300) of the 2006 class sorted alphabetically
* Top 100 of the 2007 class sorted alphabetically
* Top 25 of the 2008 class
* Top 10 of the 2009 class
(Editiorial humor: What's missing is the Top 5 of the Embryo class)

Two pages of Women Hoops coverage

Scheduling: The back of the magazine has an incomplete schedule of all teams, sorted alphabetically. Because the magazine is published relatively early, and some of the schedules have not been announced/finalized, some teams has complete schedules, some teams have partial schedules, some have none. They do however have a listing of all the holiday tournaments, but the font is very tiny. Pull out your magnifying glasses! The first game listed is the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic on November 7 and 8 at College Park, Maryland. If you want to see Gary Williams sweat early in the season, bang your monkey and demand ESPN-U! (Jim Rome radio listeners should be familiar with that phrase)

The Back Page: They take a critical look at the Athlon Top 20 Recruits of 2002. Some very familiar names there such as Melo, McCants, Dee Brown, Bosh, Felton, and Hot Sauce. There's also some disappointments: Evan Burns (who?), Christian Drejer, Anthony Roberson (the Me-First class at Florida pre-championship), Elijah Ingram and Soft Davis (of Izzo). But I disgress.




Part Two: Overall Grade A-

In a nice new twist, all conferences are listed alphabetically. In the past the smaller conferences were sent to the back. Not any more. All conferences alphabetically. Good!

Conference Pages. Grade B-
* The BCS conferences get one full page each for a conference preview, which includes the predicted order of finish (POF), a one-line recruiting round-up analysis, first, 2nd and 3rd all-conference teams (top 15 players), and the superlative awards (player of the year, defensive player, underrated, newcomer).
* The non-BCS conferences get the POF and the all-conference first team only, but they don't get a page for the conference preview.

Team Pages. Grade A-
* Team by team coverage for BCS teams: Each BCS conference team gets its own FULL PAGE, with Intro, Frontcourt, Backcourt and Analysis. Thankfully this magazine (unlike Lindy's) has complete rosters with jersey numbers for the returning players and most of the freshmen/newcomers. The redshirts and transfers are clearly indicated. For returning players comprehensive stats are listed (Games Played, MPG, PPG, RPG, APG, FG%, FT%) and their hometowns. For newcomers/freshmen it lists their hometowns and a short paragraph of recruiting analysis which is a nice touch. Each team also gets a corner picture of one of their players captioned with a sometimes related statistical factoid. Also nice! Sadly coaching records and tenure are not included.
*Team by team coverage for non-BCS conferences: The designer teams (Memphis, and Gonzaga) get a full page, similar to the BCS teams above. Semi-designer teams expected to make it to the post-season (NCAA or NIT) get half a page (eg Nevada, George Mason, New Mexico State, Charlotte, Xavier, Akron, four MVC teams, GW, and a few more), which includes full rosters, jersey numbers and but no recruiting analysis. The remaining teams who are not expected to make to the NCAA or NIT get only a 15-line writeup that is 1/3rd of a page wide, no rosters, but the top players are mentioned in the 15-line writeup. Ouch for those teams in terms of coverage.


Shortcomings

Schedules are incomplete

Tenure and coaching records along with assistant names are not included


Compared to Lindy's magazine
+ Athlon: Complete rosters and almost all jersey numbers
+ Athlon: More recruiting coverage in the back of the magazine
+ Athlon: partial schedules (vs none for Lindy's)
+ Lindy's: More coverage for teams not expected to make the NCAA/NIT
+ Lindy's: Coaching records (but no assistants) included


Recommendation
* I recommend this if you are a college basketball fan.
* If you are buying it mainly for your conference or team, the BCS teams get a nice full page of coverage each. If your team projected to make the NCAA/NIT you also get a nice half-page to full-page coverage. For teams projected not to make the post-season the coverage is very little.
* Which one to get? Compare the +/- of each, and browse through them at your local bookstore/newstand.


Upcoming Preview Magazines
* Sporting News, CBS Sportsline, Blue Ribbon Yearbook, ESPN, and SI

Supporting the blog/reviews
If you found the review useful you can support this blog by making your Amazon purchases using this affiliate link. This will encourage me to review every single 2006-2007 college basketball season preview magazine :-)

Jam-packed Weekend update

CHN's 144 previews continue with Kansas State (Bob Huggins is here!), the tough Bucknell team, Virginia Tech, the Fighting Bobby Lutzes (Charlotte), South Carolina and Akron.

Recruiting updates: An updated on highly touted Oregonian Kyle Singler (please don't go to Duke!!!), Rob Thomas and St Johns, new news from Dave Telep, Wisconsin gets a Top 100 player, Reggie Theus gets a trio, and a handful of other schools get 2007 verbals. Details at http://recruitingwars.blogspot.com/.

Possible BIG NEWS at Kansas State. Billy Walker, the highly touted 2007 prospect, and team-mate of MJ-TNG (Michael Jordan, The Next Generation, aka OJ Mayo), is trying to complete his coursework and become eligible for the 2006-2007 season. This is partially because he has exhausted his high-school eligibility. Links to the story at InsideHoops.com below:

FoxSports has updated conference reports on the Pac10 and Big12

Frank Burlison looks at the 2006-2007 Super Sophs. To refresh your memory this includes Tyler Hansbrough, Damion James, Josh McDukie, and qutie a few more, some of whom you may have not heard of before because they didn't play in a high profile league.

InsideHoops has local newspaper reports including troubles with Flowers at Oklahoma State, a look ahead into the first week of the Thad Five's games at the Ohio BCA classic bracket (with or without Greg Oden?), a rematch of LSU vs Texas on December 10, Kentucky planning for Midnight Madness, Billy Donovan enjoying rock-star status in-state,

Gary Parrish blogs some more: Top 26 coaches who could jump from a non-BCS school to a BCS-school. #1 is ... *drumroll* Mark Turgeon of Wichita State, followed by the usual names of Mark Fox, Altaman, Jim Les, Pecora, Greggg Marshall, etc, etc. He also applauds Philly for continuing the Big Five tradition. I applaud them too!

Andy Katz (see link on the left column) quasi-freely reports on UConn's young huskies. Calhoun thinks that they all have a chance to play, with Adrien, Price and Marcus Johnson leading the way. Katz also tries to dispell the Billy Walker rumors, but unfortunately the meat of the post is for subscriber's only (Booooo! at ESPN). Other topics: McRoberts's's return from injury and scheduling extravagazna.

Gary Parrish and CBS SportsLine cover the story of Myles Brand -vs- the Diploma Mills. Related story on JuCos gaining over Prep schools. And some comic relief (or at least an attempt) by look into his mailbag

Mike DeCourcy dishes on: Mike Montgomerry's free agency and Temple's SOS (or lack thereof in the post-Chaney era)

Skwara of Rivals.com opens his mailbag once and twice: Young Jayhawks, Super TarHeels starting five, McRoberts, Seton Hall, Stan Health, and Gerald Henderson.

CSTV Daily News is as always jam-packed with news on Arizona, Georgetown, Bucknell, St Joe's, GW, Ohio State, Duke, USF, Illinois, Bowling Green, Georgia Tech, New Mexico, Nova, Clemson, UMass, and a different face-off between Tyler Hansbrough and Josh McDukie (ooops McRoberts). Schedules announced for UW-Milwaukee, Providence, UNLV, Utah, New Mexico, Air Force, and the rest of the MWC. Read all about it by visiting their website and then following the links to each individual team's webpage.

A story on the Kentucky schedule including national TV games

Coach K reflects on his failure to win a GOLD medal. The difference between NCAA/ref-favoritism and the randomness of FIBA officiating? :-)




Reading Materials

The Five Year Graduate Free Agents Transfers List

This list will attempt to track the effects of the new NCAA legislation that allows a student-athlete to transfer (without sitting out) to a graduate degree program of another school after completing his undergraduate degree providing he has eligibility left.

The Five Year Graduate Free Agents Transfers List
1. Kevin Kruger from Arizona State to Daddy State (oops! UNLV)
2. A. Thierro from Memphis to somewhere else
3. Jermaine Maybank from StJohns to Huggins State (oops! Kansas State)
4. Jason Walberg from St Mary's to Daddy State (Pepperdine)
5. Tim Tillman from Drexel to New Orleans
6. ?????

If you know of any more, please leave a comment or send me an email!


A list of most transfers for 2006-2007 and beyond is maintained at FoxSports by Jeff Goldman

Big Break College Basketball Coaches Challenge

The Gold Channel aired this week the Big Break Challenge featuring four prominent NCAA college basketball coaches:

Jim Calhoun of UConn

Jim Boeheim of Syracuse

Gary Williams of Maryland

Turnaround Tom (Penders) of Houston (ex of GW and Texas)

The show will repeat a few times, so you can still catch the reruns on the Gold Channel. Check local listings. It is one hour long.

The coaches were competing in various golf challenges and joking/bantering with each other. Gary Williams took the challenge more seriously than the rest. Proceeds from this event benefited bone marrow related charities.

The challenge took a dramatic turn when Gary Williams accidentally bounced a ball and hit Calhoun on the leg. This was purely an accident. Or was it payback for stealing Rudy Gay? :-) Gary Williams and Jim Calhoun did not seem to have any issues though between them though, so they must have put that behind them. Except the subconcious mind of Gary Williams managed a payback trick-shot? :-)

Super Tuesday

CSTV Daily News is jam-packed with news: The Big 5 (Philly) gets extended through the 2009-2010 season, Redick gets sentence to (just) community service, Coach K preaches to the Puke lacrosse "team", Matt Drama holds open tryouts at SMU, Dwight Boetner leaves Colorado, while Rice, Colorado State, Mizzou, and UIC announce their 2006-2007 season schedules.

Big Deli, 300+lb former UMass center was dismissed from Sacred Heart. Actual name: Jeff Salvoski

Andy Katz reports in his semi-free blog (link on the left column) that the highly-anticipated Dec 21 Duke - Gonzaga game gets a new appetizer game (Seton Hall - Virginia Tech), after the Pitt - South Carolina game fell apart. He also talks about MAC's (MAC, the conference) quest for a 2nd NCAA bid.

CHN 144 previews continue with two tough teams: South Carolina and Akron. Currently at #61 which indicates that we are about two months away from the start of the new season. WOW!

Seth Davis has a breakfast of Champions (Read this to find out what car a certain legendary coach drives).

Yocohoops gets a new computer

InsideHoops will be back tomorrow

CSTV and Bill Hodges report updates on mid-majors, including a couple of transfer-outs from trendy mid-majors. Meanwhile tough Bucknell gets another verbal, BYU loses one and it looks like Daniel Hackett is good to go for 2006-07 for USC (graduated high-school in three years by taking extra classes)

Coming Soon: Report on the College Basketball Coaches Golf challenge broadcast on the Golf Channel today.

Weekend rewind

Mini-Editorial
College basketball announcers and analysts have to stop calling players "property of" when referring to players whose NBA rights are held by a team. This is a rather demeaning term. A player is not a property of a team, his basketball rights are! I am surprised activist groups and the players union have not objected to this loudly. Come on!


NewS

Is Fran Frachilla trying to get a job as an assistant coach with Team USA? During his stint as TV analyst of TeamUSA games he kept mentioning his extensive international basketball experience (over and over) and pointing out problems with the team and how they should have been handled.

Gary Parrish blogs about another Huggins Thuggins incident at Kansas State but with Woolridge's players, Florida players getting their rings (Thanks Frodo) while trying to lure 2007 recruit Patrick Patterson (insert LOTR moment here), journeyman prepster Roburt Sallie trying to become eligible (now at Nebraska)

The 144 CHN previews march on with some fun teams: Vandy, West Virginia, Stanford (Lopez twins!), and St Louis.

CSTV Daily news features even more schedule updates such as UCI (Irvine), American, Baylor, Georgetown, BC (Boston Collage), UTPA, Bowling Green, So. Miss, Pitt, Colorada, and a whole lot more.

Andy Katz blogs about the "underreported stories" of the summer in his quasi-free blog (link in the left column of this blog)

CSTV Recruiting reports that Bob Knight beat out Huggie-Bear and Matt Drama of SMU for the services of a touted 2007 Texan. Others getting new verbals: Charlotte, New Mexico State, Temple and new coach Fran D, Tulane, UCLA (2008 recruit) and UNLV. Meanwhile Oregon State is trying to become Serbia-West with two more Serbian recruits :-) For all the details visit the Bill Hodges daily report at CSTV

Shoe Wars: An interesting story posted at TheSportsBizBlog here at blogspot about the $15 (yes fifteen dollar) shoe marketed by Starbury. Included is a link to a story and roundtable discussion at NPR.

Enjoy our review of the Lindy's 2006-2007 college basketball preview magazine


TV segment

TV update: A College Basketball Coaches Golf Tourney will be covered on the Gold Channel (usually on expanded cable, check local listings). Coverage begins Tuesday September 12. The official name of the event is "Big Break All-Star Challenge". Details at The Gold Channel page. It looks like it will repeat a few times if you miss the first airing. Included are Jim Calhoun of UConn, Jim Boeheim of Syracuse and Gary Williams of Maryland. I have not found any additional details.

The Marquette BasketBall here at blogspot talks about what went on behind the scenes as the Big East was pondering whether to go for a conference-branded TV channel like the Big 10 (eleven teams) or expand their ESPN deals. The SEC and Big 12 are allegedly pondering on this. As you may recall CSTV started this trend last year with C-USA and MWC local/regional branding. The blog also digs into Marquette's 2006-2007 schedule.

Daily Grind

More schedules are announced at CSTV Daily News, including the 2006-07 schedules (including TV appearances) for Louisville, Marquette, Cincy, Villanova, Houston, Umass, Marsha, East Carolina, FAU, Tulsa, UCF and SMU. Meanwhile former Virgina great Ralph Sampsons pleands guilty (mail fraud).

InsideHoops has a couple of updates on Kyle Singler, expected to visit Kansas, Duke and Arizona in the next few days. I have this bad feeling Duke is going to grab this player, despite them having signed Taylor Queen. More stories linked there: Jeremy Hunt happy in Memphis, Daniel Dillon preview, Oregon State's comings and goings, Paul Hewitt's pipeline from Memphis (the city).

CHNs 144 previews" continue with the tough ODU Monarchs, Purdue (just lost Nate Minnoy), St Johns, Maryland, UNLV...

CSTV Recruiting reports a series of transfers/dismissals, some may be surprising such as Nate Minnoy. Others affected by such moves: Iowa State, Tennessee, and USC.

I am now going into Dennis Miller mode (trying to blend history/mythology/etc with today's sports): Syrcause fans insisted G-Mac played like a Greek God during the Big East tourney. It looks like they were right! ;-)

Big story at CBS Sports! Gary Parrish delves into the glamorous world of sneaker camps. The Godfather hates the Pumps. As Reebok and Adidas merged, they will eventually merge their grassroots branches, and that can be trouble as the Godfather and the Pumps have to co-exist under the same umbrella.

Wondering what your team has been up to? Team by team updates at Sportsline

Andy Katz blogs about Notre Dame recruiting, fallout from the World basketball championship and Florida's international trip.

Speaking of the world championship, the most overrated coach of this century has returned to Duke

The Pete Newell camp still strong!

Ninety-one (91) years young and still going is legendary coach Pete Newell, just four years younger than his friend John Wooden. Frank Burlison of Scout.com has a nice story on Pete Newell and his big men camp.

Mid-week recap

RSS feed for this blog: http://ncaahoopstoday.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Gary Parrish thinks about football.

Latest CHN previews: St Johns, Maryland, UNLV and Rice

CBS Sports has a story on this season's top transfers. Sleeper of those ten: Justin Cerasoli at Ole Miss

Want to watch the 2006-2007 Ohio State team play? You have to wait for the full team, but if you want to watch the freshman play together, then watch the 2006 Roundball classic: The four starters of one team are Oden, Conley, Cook and Lighty!

Rick Bloggino updates his blog with post-game comments on his team's Canadian tour

Andy Katz has a semi-free story on Florida's international trip and dazzles us with his math skills on Florida's scholarships ;-)

InsideHoops covers a variety of stories from local newspapers, including Florida's, Arizona's and Louisville's intl trips, the latest recruiting news, the Gordon/Rose visit to IU, basketball hall of fame (David Gavitt) and much more

Good news for USC, both Daniel Hackett (a 2007 signee who graduated earlier) and big man Taj Gibson were deemed eligible by Big Brother

Last but not least, CSTV Daily News covers a number of teams, including a lot of mid-majors which usually don't get as much attention in the other "national media" outlets. And a look at Herb Sendek by the numbers.

Calipari replaces one of his vacancies with a St Johns assistant. Everybody wants to recruit NY/NJ players after all!

Jeff Goodman makes a case for Kevin Durant as freshman of the year. What about Greg Oden? You have to read the story :-)

What if Rick Pitino stayed at Kentucky?

What if? A slogan for the SciFi channel among other things, the "What If" segment takes a look at what could/would have been had Rick Pitino stayed at Kentucky.

The last three years of the Rick Pitino era (the 3rd one being the first year under Tubby Smith), the Kentucky program won two national championships and had consecutive three Final Four appearances. Rick Pitino was able to recruit like crazy at that point. Was that the peak or would he be able to sustain the program at such a high level? The trend of players jumping to the NBA draft would have affected his rosters, but given that he had a loaded bench, would that be significant? Would Rick Pitino be considered the poster child of college basketball coaches instead of Coach K? How many more national championships would he have gotten? Enough to be considered the closest thing to a modern-era John Wooden? Or was the three year segment a peak, an abberation and the Wildcats would have landed back down on earth in years after?

Back to reality now: It has certainly taken Pitino a while to rebuild the Louisville program. But if you compare his progress in his early years at Kentucky with that of Louisville, they are almost running in parallel. So that means in the next couple of years we should be seeing a consistently dominant Louisville team? Perhaps. Perhaps not? After all, the basketball landscape has changed twelve years later. This year's team may be an indicator. Louisville has the talent, the depth and the potential. But can the players stay healthy, and can the freshman deliver on both ends of the floor? If yes, this year's team could make the Final Four and perhaps more.

Weekend Update

Lindy's Sports Top 40 is published in their magazine, which I have reviewed right here. The top four is the expected four, with Florida as #1, NC at #2, Kansas at #3 and Ohio State at #4. Wondering who else made the top 40? You have to check it out yourselves :-) Details on Lindy's sports magazines can be found at LindysSports.com

The mystery continues: We will not find out the details that led to Knight's firing

Rivals Andrew Skwara updates his notebook with a story on UCLA's offense. As expected really, following the horrible style of play which cost UCLA a number of high profile recruits (with the exception of Kevin Love) Ben Howland realized that he has to play faster. So Howland claims they will, but you know how coaches are... Skwara has updates on Josh Shipp and Afflalo's injuries, Sidney Lowe tries to re-recruit Brackman, and a clarification on Kendrick Johnson's transfer. Skwara has a trivia question, which you have to visit his story to find the answer to (Who won the ncaa championship as both players and coaches?)

CHN's 144 previews continue with Maryland, UNLV, Rice, Miami-OH

Rick Bloggino updates his training camp blog with day 8 with a candid but positive evaluation of his current roster. Meanwhile Derrick Caracter did not travel with the team to Canada because of a certain issue that came up and as a precaution he was left behind until the matter is sorted out. More details as they emerge.

Gary Parrish's latest update deals with the Kelvin Sampson fallout as Indiana continue to lose in-state recruits, the last one being Jeff Teague to Wake Forest.

Yocohoops.com talks about Mike Montgomery, the ex-NBA coach

Gary Parrish opens his mailbag. New content as of August 31!

Gary Parrish of CBS Sports talks about whether the current process of Verbal Commitments should be changed

Gary Parrish of CBS Sports is a very busy writer! His latest story is on Recruiting at a BCS school.

Thanks to Coach Tuk's blog for the link!


Good News, Bad News segment

Bad news for Rick Stansbury et al: D. Slater of Mississipppiii State gets suspended for half the 2006-07 season. Not the first sememster, but really half the season as in 50% of the games scheduled. He will be eligible to play Jan 13. Not sure what his violation was, but it must have been something non-trivial for an upperclassman to be punished like that (one would think)

Bad news for Temple and coach Not Chaney: Mark Tyndale and Wayne Marshall AI for Fall. AI = Academically Ineligible. Ouch! This practically ruins their first season without Coach Chaney. Right about now Fran D is thinking "Oooooooooh I should have stayed at Penn" ???

Bad news for Siena: Guard Kojo Mensah is transfering to Dusquene. A popular trend these days as Ron Everhart continues to stockpile transfers there most notably shot-blocking Shawn James of Northeastern.

Good news for Tenneessseeee: Ramar Smith has been cleared by Big Brother to play for the 2006-07 season. The issue was SAT related.

Good news for New Mexico State Tyrone Nelson is re-instated

Start the season early: Listen to Louisville basketball LIVE this weekend!

Games played on Saturday, Sunday and Monday (Labor Day) and you can listen to them live on their radio station webpages.

Make sure you do the math to figure out the correct time zone

Louisville exhibition schedule

U of L's Canadian Exhibition Schedule
Sept. 2 Carleton University 8 p.m. ET WHAS 840 AM
Sept. 3 University of Ottawa 1 p.m. ET WHAS 840 AM
Sept. 4 Laurentian University 11 a.m. ET WKRD 790 AM

The pre-game show starts 90 minutes before tip-off on the radio stations above.

First two games on WHAS radio in Louisville
3rd game at WKRD

Here we go folks, you can listen to your first 2006-2007 basketball game (exhibition game that is).

***** UPDATE *******
Unfortunately the game is only broadcast over the airwaves. The internet version of the radio stations are broadcasting talk shows and music instead of the games :-(

There is a frequently updated thread in the Louisville forums however: Scout.com Louisville forum

At some point the radio station switched to the game, and they are now broadcasting the post game show!.

***** UPDATE *******