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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Supporting the blog/review
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Mid-week recap (today's theme: jaded)

Gary Parrish chimes in on the Mike Montgomery firing. My two cents: I wonder if any college will now fire its current coach so they can get Mike Montgomery. Of course this type of behavior would cause uproar at the college level since it is more about education (at least in theory), while the NBA is all business and all about winning rings.

The 144 previews continue at CHN with Rice, Miami-Ohio, and Fresneck State

Vance Wahlberg and the Pepperdine Waves continue to generate buzz with their style of play. No doubt the Mike D'Antoni offense and George Karl's decision to switch to a similar offense will help generate even more buzz for Pepperdine. It looks like Gonzaga may have found a nemesis at the PR-level :-)

DeCourcy dishes on text messaging My two cents: The NCAA, comprised of people who are probably afraid to touch modern electronics, has been painfully slow in dealing with the text messaging bombardment of recruits. But when the NCAA gets its paws on text messaging, they are surely going to come up with convoluted, possibly impractical, legislation. Unless of course the neo-NCAA attitude of Myles Brand rubs off some common sense on the frozen-in-evolution committee members who historically come up with all the Orwellian "crapola" rules.

Tyrone Nelson gets reinstated to New Mexico State. If you can score and rebound, you get reinstated. If you can't, then you transfer to a Division 2 school the next day and a week later they use your scholarship to sign a JuCo or a 20 year old prep-school freshman. (jaded is today's theme)

Day 7 of Pitino practice-blogging. On top of that, there's more coverage at the Cardinals CSTV-branded web-page with audio clips (Real Audio player format) from Pitino, Palacios and T-Will (Terrence Williams). But back to the blog: In today's episode Rick Bloggino talks about his offense, the freshmen's defense (or lack thereof), Brad Gianiny's turnovers, recruiting goals (2-3 players, starting Sept 9), and a whole lot more.

Speaking of the media, USC's Tim Floyd was featured in a recent episode of Comcast Sports Net (CSN)'s Out of Bounds. He had a whole segment to himself (7 minutes) where he talked about NCAA tourney expansion. He also said that he will kick NBA first rounders out of college and into the NBA Draft if they are guaranteed first rounders because of the financial security of such a move. Is he talking to OJ Mayo and Billy Walker via the media? :-)

Speaking of whom, OJ Mayo returns to his native Huntington West Virginia for the 2006-2007 high school basketball season. I'll take a wild guess here and predict that Billy Walker will follow. I wouldn't be surprised if some of their HS or AAU teammates follow along :-) And assuming this goes through, will this put the Mountaineers back in the hunt (no pun intended) for Mayo and Walker?

Looking for a new coach? Mike Montgomery is now available!

As speculated, the Monty and Warriors marriage was not to last. Now Mike Montgomery is available, although he may not want to get back into coaching right away, since he is presumably financially secure.

And the Warriors do a flashback, back comes Nellie! Oh Nellie! Here comes Nellie! After all, the chaotic run and gun offense is back in fashion. So this may have been a case of hiring Nellie because he was available and willing, and not because they had enough of Monty just yet.

Yahoo Sports story

Mike DeCourcy analyzes the situation, in his basketball blog

Daily News - Tuesday

The Blue Ribbon Basketball Yearbook is accepting pre-orders for the 2006 edition of the book expected to ship in October. Yes basketball fans, the new season is just around the corner! You can also order previous editions at half price.

The good people at Blue Ribbon have just started a new basketball blog as well with an update on the status of the upcoming 26th edition of the Yearbook.

Day 6 of practice at the Rick Pitino blog. Pitino is looking at a big starting lineup for the Canadian trip with McGee, T-Will, Palacios, Huffman and Farley (Jenkins and Padgett are injured and won't play). Pitino is also touching up on the once-controversial issue (in Louisville at least) of T. Farley which Pitino was accused of pushing out. Pitino says "many of my former assistant coaches... wanted to write off T. Farley ... let them transfer out for their benefit ...". Hmmm, wasn't Pitino who kicked Farley off the team for a minor violation last year? :-) In retrospect he thinks he should have redshirted Farley and Huffman last year. Pitino continues to be bullish on this season, partly because of the additional benefit of this pre-season labor day trip to Canadia. Many potential recruits are watching these practice sessions as Pitino is looking for a couple more players for the 2007 class.

Another OJ Mayo story, not on this college commitment, but on his high school commitment for 2006-07. This time it may be Huntington, West Virginia (the state, not the team). Billy Walker, also a Huntington native, is likely to follow him there if eligible there.

The Big (Y)east sprawls all over ESPN. ESPN will produce almost all Big East basketball games, 139 of 144, with the remaining five going to CBS. 60+ of them will be on ESPN/ESPN2, with the rest on the other ESPN properties (ABC, ESPNU, Classic, ESPN Plus/Regional, Full Court). The deal has been extended to 2013 so if any one TV network had Big East hopes, well forget about it!

Great news for UAB, reports CBS Sportsline. Jeremy Mayfiled is eligible to play!

Seth Davis revisits Hoop Dreams

Gary Parrish thinks: practice starts October 13, Derrick Rose narrows his list (allegedly to DePaul, UCLA, Kansas, Indiana and Memphis) - as if Bill Self needs another point guard! (Where is Illinois in the list?). Wisconsin returns from Italy, Reggie Theus deals with the Ty Nelson situation, the new half-a-billion arena at Louisville, the reasons behind Donovan's decision not to take the $300,000 contract extension now, and the recruiting of Anthony Randolph. Gary also digs into his mailbag and finds emails talking about diploma mills, racism, gluttony, religion, negative recruiting, and a lot more.

Monday Night Hoops

Technically it is Tuesday, but who cares :-)

144 previews at CHN continue with Fresno State and Western Kentucky

Day 5 at the Pitino blog, and the PHD attitude is back, Pitino is gushing about the effort level and the improvement of individual players. Pitino also mini-interviews David Padgett and Brandon Jenkins (!) and both talk in detail about their injuries. Pitino is now looking at a possible big line-up, with Palacios at the 3 and T-Will at the 2. The point guard position looks like a battle between McGee and Edgar Sosa. Derrick Caracter's weight today: 296. For details on each of the above topics and a whole lot more visit the Pitino blog!

Hoopville talks a new $2.5 million practice facility for the Tennessee basketball teams.

Andy Katz will be back on Friday Sept 1st with his semi-free blog.

CSTV Daily News has a handful of new news: Lamar Robertson is transfering from Houston to UNLV, often-injured A. Thierro of Memphis takes advantage of the new "graduate free agent" rule and will play this new season (06-07) for the new hyper-active coach at Dusquene. This opens up one scholarship for Calipari for this season (Jeremy Hunt?) Northwestern got some good news as Ivan Tolic has recovered and will play this new season.

This edition of DeCourcy's Inside Dish talks about Greg Oden's injury (a popular topic it will become in the upcoming weeks), Padgett's injury (this one seems to be more in check), and musings about TeamCanada and lame-duck-status of Ricardo Patton at Colorada.

Rick Pitino coaching in an ancient arena? Not for long. Louisville will move into a new 22,000 modern arena by 2010-11. Goodbye historic Freedom Hall!

The NCAA Field may have not grown to 128 this year, but the Bracket Buster Field will grow to 102 in 2007. The matchups will be announced January 29 in case you want to mark you calendars :)

The mailbag is a popular online feature and Andrew Skwara of Rivals opens his and finds it full of Big East questions.

One more transfers out of SMU leaving headcase coach with seven available scholarships.

Tarkanian's UNLV team In Focus on FSN

FSN's In Focus will feature the Running Rebels team of the 90-91 season. The show repeats multiple times, so check local listings for airtimes.

Weekend rewind

Past and present college basketball players are competing in the World Basketball championship. Among the current players, E. Ibekwe of Maryland (Senegal), Engin Atsur of NC State (Turkey), and Aaron Bruce of Baylor (Australia)

Fran Fraschilla, while being the color analyst of TeamUSA games jokingly took a shot at Boeheim's contributions to TeamUSA, commenting on the fact that TeamUSA rarely plays zone defense. He appeared to be joking but who knows if he has some history with Boeheim (Fraschilla was a coach at Manhattan and StJohns once upon a time)

If you needed any additional evidence of Matt Doherty's attitude problems, just read his blog. Among other brilliant things he said, "SMU is like Duke". Argggg!!! Memo to SMU: Fire him now before sends your program into Division 3!

Clearly in a more professional manner, Rick Pitino's blog has accumulated four days of practice updates, including the Andre McGhee brief visit to the hospital. This is quite an interesting read actually, with more on Derrick Caracter, a diet of bluerries and brussel sprouts (!), high praise for his four-man recruiting class and walk-on shooter Stuart Miller, thinking of emulating the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats style of play, an experimental big-man line-up with Caracter at the 4 and Juan Diego Palacios at the 3 and T-Will at the 2!, bring back the PHD, an hourglass prop, his debut at the Michael Jordan fantasy camp, double practice sessions without AC, going inside out for now, and some turnover psychotherapy!

CHN's 144 previews continue with a mid-major extravaganza of Northern Iowa, Winthrop, St Mary's, Cal and George MASON. George, MASON! George, MASON!

CSTV's daily news are jam-packed with news all over the country, including former Gopher Lawson finding a spot on the coaching staff, Bill Self's walk-on tryouts, a 290-pounder at McNeese State, Arizona's Jawann McClellan's redshirt situation for last year's injuries...

YocoHoops reports of a story on the situation at New Mexico State with Nelson and the implications on Reggie Theus.

Thanks to sfbabasketball for the link!

Thanks to sfbabasketball.blogspot.com for linking to this blog!

Sports Magazines!

A great way to catch-up with sports while away from the TV and the Internet, while at the same time supporting this blog:

Sports Magazines

Hoops Magazines

Catching up with the latest news

Rick Pitino goes blogging. No, not a myspace website with dozens of multimedia files flashing in a chaotically crowded webpage. Rick Pitino will be blogging daily for the 10 days of practice his team is allowed before their foreign trip to Canada on September 1st. Day 1 has been posted already with some incidents: Andre McGhee to the hospital...

YocoHoops.com is back!. Things to read about: The ACC schedule, including a George Mason visit, a turnover by Andy Katz, and a surprise at Memphis: Jeremy Hunt is back!

Andrew Skwara of Rivals.com is quickly becoming a household name among college hoops fans. His latest long post, which is referenced by YocoHoops above as well, covers a lot of things. The main story is Herb Sendek's move out west. Other stories: ACC scheduling, Derrick Caracter weight watch (it's gonna be a popular topic during the season), former Georgia players on the move, Y. Idrissi is tranferring either to Iona (or is it Baylor?); and Kendrick Johnson to a JC.

CHN's 144 previews continue with St Marys, California without Powe(r), George MASON, Marist and Penn.

InsideHoops is a good place to find links to newspaper stories from all over the country

This week's semi-free Andy Katz blog talks about Randolph Morris at KY, Dickerson happy at Tulane (although Gary Williams could use his help right about now), and Tony Barbee goes crazy flying all over the country trying to hold on to UTEP recruits.

As always CSTV's daily news is packed with new news such as basketball schedules announced left and right, new unis at VaTech (Seth Greenberg is always up to something), Chaminade news, former players becomming assistant coaches, foreign tour results for UMass and others, and Billy Donovan delays signing a contract extension.

Hoopville.net reports of ESPN's selection of the 2006-2007 bracketbuster teams. The actual matchups won't be selected until early 2007. A whooping 51 games will be played with 13 of them on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU/etc. Jumping on the hot midmajor bandwagon all MVC and CAA teams will participate. (Don't want to miss the next George Mason or Bradley or Wichita State!)

Stare like a zombie, into the TV

FIBA World Championship Basketball on:
* ESPN2/2HD: Live Team USA games mostly
* NBATV: Tape-delayed games (2 additional per day) + reruns of Team USA and earlier games
* FSN and Fox College Sports: rebroadcasts of some of the NBATV broadcasts.

90-minute highlight show of the 2006 Reebok Big Time AAU tourney on CSTV (multiple repeats)

90-minute highlight show of the 2006 Reebok ABCD Camp tourney on CSTV (multiple repeats)

30-minute summer edition of Seth Davis Generation Next at the ABCD Camp on CSTV (multiple repeats)

Also Fox College Sports is showing reruns of the various state championship games. Check local listings.

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