Get Excited

With a month to go before tipoff, the hype for the upcoming season reaches a fever pitch.

October 06, 2021

Tipoff

A couple of weeks ago, a set of 4 tickets behind the home team bench at Cameron Indoor Stadium sold for a cool million dollars. Don’t worry, the seats were sold at auction for charity. The sales price points to the hype surrounding the season. The fans want to be there for Coach K’s last game at home against North Carolina. Let’s hope they have a better experience than Barack Obama did when he watched Zion Williamson’s shoe explode less than a minute into the action in 2019. Fortunately for politicians and celebrities, there will be many hot tickets this upcoming season.

What kind of experience do you want to have this year? If you are into rooting for familiar faces, there are plenty, including former All-Americans Kofi Cockburn of Illinois, Hunter Dickinson of Michigan, and Drew Timme of Gonzaga. If you get excited about the top NBA Draft prospects, there’s Duke’s Paolo Banchero, Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren, and a pair of Memphis Tigers in Emoni Bates (not eligible until 2023 due to his date of birth) and Jalen Duren.

Maybe you like blue bloods. UCLA returns most of its roster from last year’s Final Four run while Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State, and North Carolina all look to rebound after relatively poor performances in the past couple of seasons. Kansas also looks like a consensus top 10 team while “new blood” Villanova is right there in the preseason polls. Or maybe you like those new blood programs. The ultimate mid-major Gonzaga, which came one game short of perfection last season, will be back atop the polls yet again. For every kind of fan, this is going to be a big season. No wonder those seats behind Coach K had no trouble selling to the highest bidder.

The Mixtape 

The Field of 68 team puts out lots of great content each week. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

  • BREAKING NEWS!! The Field of 68 is launching a brand new livestream show during the college basketball season, The Field of 68 After Dark. There was a big announcement and everything last week. Check your inbox. Anyway, Rob Dauster, Jeff Goodman, Robbie Hummel, and Terrance Oglesby kicked off the inaugural episode last week by unveiling the Preseason All-American teams. The show included interviews with members of the 1st Team, including James Akinjo of Baylor, Paolo Banchero of Duke,  Andre Curbelo of Illinois, Hunter Dickinson of Michigan, and Drew Timme of Gonzaga.

  •  To get into high gear for the season, the Field of 68 is also conducting a rundown of its preseason top 50. Each preview includes an interview with the head coach and insiders that follow the team. You’re not going to get this kind of insight by reading a one-page list. To get the party started, Rob Dauster interviewed Steve Alford, head coach of our #50 team, the Nevada Wolf Pack. Check out the previews for #49 Rutgers, #48 Oklahoma, #47 Richmond, #46 USC, and #45 Syracuse with head coach Jim Boeheim.    

  •  Who is the best coach in the country? Read Around the Rim below for a definitive ranking of all 358 head coaches in D-I. Or you can watch Rob Dauster, Terrence Oglesby, and John Fanta hash it out. T.O. says that Eric Musselman of Arkansas is the choice for building a program over the next five years. Fanta goes with the king of the Big East (surprise, surprise from Mr. Big East), Jay Wright of Villanova. Dauster makes a bold claim that, after two years, he’s seen enough of Michigan’s Juwan Howard to declare that he’s the top man in the sport. It helps when you have a steady pipeline of 5-star sons coming through the program. If not, Scott Drew is a pretty good choice.

The Field of 12

The first weekend of college football is in the books and the Field of 12 is on the scene. Here is a brief sample of the new network from the makers of Field of 68.

Four Point Play 

Each newsletter throughout the summer, we’ll check in with one of our podcast hosts and see what they’re up to besides producing compelling content for us at The Field of 68.

This week, we checked in with Greg Waddell, co-host of the brand new Unscripted podcast focused on Michigan State basketball (Available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you access podcasts).

  1. Most of the hosts on the Field of 68 are former players that rarely need an introduction to the fanbase. You are in a bit of a different situation. Tell us a little about yourself, your connection to Michigan State, and how you got into podcasting.

  • Carter and I were incredibly honored to be part of a network that has so many former players. I’m a Michigan State grad (2015), and alumni. I played intramural sports and was in the stands in the Izzone. I’ve been working on college basketball content ever since moving into the corporate world. Carter Elliott and myself have been podcasting since 2016 covering Michigan, Michigan State, and the Big Ten. While I didn’t play, my buddy Carter played Division III in Michigan. Getting into a space where so many are former players is a great honor.

  1. Let’s focus on the basketball team. MSU has been known as a program that builds and develops players, like Cassius Winston, Denzel Valentine, and Draymond Green. On the other hand, head coach Tom Izzo will have to rely on new faces this upcoming season, including Northeastern transfer point guard Tyson Walker, freshman forward Max Christie, and freshman guard Jaden Akins. Which of the new faces is the most important to the success this season and why? 

  • There are two answers that any MSU fan will come back to. My answer is Max Christie. If you look at this roster from top to bottom, point guard play is the #1 concern, but there is an abundance of options there with AJ Hoggard. You know what the floor is at least with Hoggard. There’s Tyson Walker and Jaden Akins, too, so between those three, you’ve got 40 minutes of point guard play. The rest of the roster does not include a go-to scorer. Max Christie is that guy. Whether he is ready or not - and I think he is more than ready - he is going to be in that role. Max Christie and Gabe Brown will be forced to play more than 30 minutes at the 2 and the 3. Christie is going to be a shot creator, a facilitator, and a playmaker with the ball in his hands. Spartan fans should be excited about the opportunity in front of him and the skillset being the perfect match for that opportunity.

  1. Let’s just be upfront about things. Professional sports has given Michiganders a summer of heartache for far too long. GIve the fine people of the Mitten State some hope moving into the college sports season. What’s exciting about the upcoming Spartans basketball season to you?

  • Whether you are a Wolverine or a Spartan, you have been through a lot in the last decade. There is a sense of turning the page. Professional teams in Detroit have focused on getting young players that give fans hope. That is the case in East Lansing. Last year was a bit of a bridge year. It was a bit of a weird roster with players everyone expected to leave the roster that did so. Now you have a number of newcomers with some excitement behind them, one of the most impressive groups we have seen in a few years. This team is going to be a foundation team for next year when Max Christie returns and Jaden Akins blossoms into his role where they will be bona fide stars in the Big Ten.

And one!

  1. You are a native of Lansing, Michigan and co-host of the Sleepers Media podcast with your friend, Carter Elliott. One of your series for Sleepers is Drunk Scouts. Everyone that is anyone that knows Michigan beers knows that Bell’s Oberon is the Michigan beer of the summer. What I want to know is what’s the Michigan beer of the winter?

  • I have the answer! I have an insider perspective because my wife works at Bell’s Brewery. I’ve been spoiled and had too much. Oberon is 100% the beer of the summer. Two Hearted, an IPA, is the beer of the winter. In fact, it is the #1 seller for them. It’s a totally different taste. It’s a little like getting punched in the face, to be honest. That will get the job done all winter long.

Stay tuned for upcoming episodes of the Unscripted podcast with Greg Waddell and Carter Elliott. Coming up, Carter and Greg will interview more current and former players, recruits, and coaches on the show.

Around the Rim

This section highlights some of the best writing on college basketball to hit the web. Consider these your extra credit assignments for fall semester.

If ranking every college basketball team for a season is no cakewalk, how hard must it be to rank every head coach? Joey Loose takes on the monumental task of doing just that, putting in order every head coach, from Chicago State’s Gerald Gillion - whose only head coaching experience to date was at the high school level more than a decade ago - to the man with the most wins in the history of the sport, Chicago native Mike Krzyzewski. This is a great place to learn about some of the new and unfamiliar faces on the sidelines. If Chicago State is lucky, Gillion will follow the same path as Bob McKillop, another former high school coach that has to date amassed more than 600 career victories.

If you are a first-time reader of this newsletter, welcome! So glad you made it here. We’ve talked a lot about new professional options over the summer, as have college coaches. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander reached out to more than 100 coaches over the summer to get their thoughts on the hot topics facing college hoops. The series covers a number of issues, such as expectations for players this upcoming season, whether Duke or UNC will fare better under a new head coach, and the impact of name, image, and likeness policies allowing players to earn revenue outside of their scholarship. As for the question of players bypassing college, the response from coaches is kind of a big “meh”. About three quarters of the coaches were either not concerned or were moderately so. Some expressed concern over the future for the kids if the NBA dream doesn’t pan out. What else is new?

Have you ever wanted to go really deep into one team? Sure, the quick snapshots from a preseason Top 25 gives you a surface-level overview of a team. Maybe it even lists the projected roster. But what does that really tell you? Riley Davis feels the same way. He is writing a deeeeeeeeeep dive into the top teams this October and begins by looking at a team on the cusp, Washington State. The Cougars have not been a frequent guest of top 25 lists, but head coach Kyle Smith has a new contender for relevant programs located in eastern Washington. It’s not just an experienced roster. Smith has an interesting mix of players, including breakout candidate sophomore forward Efe Abogidi and freshman forward Mouhamed Gueye. Complete with gifs and video clips, this is the most in-depth preview you’ll see before the season kicks off in just over a month.