It Is Time to Speak Up

When the sport is going through yet another crisis, someone has to have a voice.

December 29, 2021

Tipoff

As the surge of cancellations and fears over going through another COVID-altered season raged during the Christmas season, the sound from Indiana has been one of silence. At Taylor University, that meant the annual “Silent Night” game (see Box Score, below). From the headquarters of the NCAA in Indianapolis, it was a deafening silence. NCAA President Mark Emmert gave no public statements. There was no discussion of revisiting testing protocols or altering cancellation policies. The most recent thing Mark Emmert said was in early December, lamenting the burden of being a university president.

Jim Phillips took initiative. Within moments after the Center for Disease Control announced on Monday evening new protocols for isolation following a positive COVID test result, the new Atlantic Coast Commissioner announced a revised policy for athletes, including those in men’s and women’s basketball. Other conferences will surely follow suit over the coming days. Unfortunately, that fails to address the underlying issues, the void in leadership at the top and consistent policies across conferences.

The NCAA is scheduled to vote on a new constitutional framework in January, pushing leadership of the different sports (sans football) to the divisions. This framework is more of an organizing principle, one that has many details to iron out. When it comes to individual sports, each division can chart its own path. If the pandemic era has taught us anything, it is the need for voices like Jim Phillips to act quickly for the benefit of the entire sport. The fact is, the committee structure that bureaucratically and deliberately moves ideas up the chain has proven ineffective at a host of issues, from doling out punishments for violating rules to adjusting to health and safety concerns on the fly. Whatever the next iteration of the NCAA looks like, it would benefit from identifying an authoritative voice to address concerns that have the potential to derail college sports, including basketball.

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.

  • It’s the DTF (Dauster, T.O., & Fanta) podcast, featuring Rob Dauster, Terrence Oglesby, and John Fanta. While 2021 was, let’s be honest, a terrible year, it did offer some great moments in college basketball. The DTF crew recap the year behind, including Jalen Suggs’s iconic bank shot from the Final Four, Baylor’s National Title, and the wildest coaching carousel in memory. Here is to a better 2022 with more iconic moments in college hoops!

  • Her number hangs in the rafters of Cameron Indoor Stadium. She is a WNBA star that helped her team change the outcome of the 2020 Senate elections in Georgia. Her “little” brother now starts for the men’s basketball team at Duke. It is none other than Elizabeth Williams on the latest Dawkins on Duke podcast with Andre Dawkins. The two Dukies talk about the “welcome to Duke” moment, playing professionally in the WNBA and overseas, and the all-time starting 5 for the women’s side.

  • “R-E-L-A-X.” That is the message from Dan Dickau on the latest Bulldog Broadcast podcast. After early season struggles, the Gonzaga Bulldogs are still National Title contenders. To break it down, Dan talks with his radio co-host, Greg Heister of KHQ. That, Mark Few being named to the USA Basketball coaching staff, and Christmas gifts for the team.

Wednesday Superlatives

Each week, we will shine a light on a team and an individual player that has captured the hearts of the world of college basketball.

  • Team of the Week: Tennessee

    • Let me just get this out of the way: there were controversial calls in the Arizona-Tennessee game, and those calls appeared to favor the Volunteers on their home court. That being said, we all got to witness an extremely entertaining game between the Wildcats and the Vols last week. The 6th-year senior center John Fulkerson provided many of the fireworks late in the game to seal the victory for the Vols to hold off Arizona sophomore Bennedict Mathurin and the visitors from Tucson.

  • Player of the Week: Kellan Grady

    • When head coach John Calipari convinced Kellan Grady to use his extra year of eligibility at Kentucky, he was hoping for nights like Wednesday night, December 22nd. Grady scored more than 2,000 points in his career at Davidson by making shots all over the court. He has been much more of a 3-point specialist in Lexington. The super senior poured in a team-leading 23 points on 6-9 shooting from 3 against Western Kentucky. The attention that evening went to fellow teammate Oscar Tshiebwe, who grabbed a Rupp Arena-record 28 rebounds. But it was the shooting of Grady that head coach Calipari felt he needed to add this offseason. Grady is making a career-best 47.5% of his attempts from beyond the arc and helping Kentucky prepare for what should be a grueling SEC schedule.

Box Score

Basketball can be told through the numbers. We take a look at some of the numbers from the last week of college hoops.

  • 28. Kentucky forward Oscar Tshiebwe collected a Rupp Arena-record 28 rebounds against Western Kentucky on December 22nd. The rebounding performance comes as no surprise. The big man leads the nation in both offensive and defensive rebounding percentage. The previous record-holder for rebounds at Rupp was a player named Shaquille O’Neal of LSU. Not bad company, if you ask me. (DraftExpressContent)

  • 16. Of the 29 games featuring Division I men’s basketball teams on Tuesday, December 28th, 16 were cancelled or postponed due to one or both teams being shut down due to COVID-19. While some may think those covering the sport enjoy reporting on this development, it is literally the number one story right now. We would much rather be discussing the games being played than those being cancelled. (ESPN)

  • 10. Taylor University of Indiana, which competes in the NAIA, celebrates Christmas the only way a university in the Hoosier State knows how: with basketball. Since 1997, the “Silent Night” game is a way for fans to celebrate the season by remaining silent until the 10th point of the game is scored. At that point, all pandemonium breaks loose. This year, the Taylor Trojans fans added a court storming to the celebration. (Taylor University Athletics)

  • 4. The total number of games featuring Division I men’s basketball teams played between Friday, December 24th and Monday, December 27th was just 4 due to limited scheduling around Christmas and cancellations. I don’t write this to suggest that we should schedule more games around the holiday. I am just pointing out that there wasn’t a lot going on over the weekend, you know? Hopefully, you had a safe and healthy holiday weekend, too. (ESPN).

  • 2. Following a change in guidance from the Center for Disease Control, the Atlantic Coast Conference quickly announced new guidelines on Monday, December 27th for scholarship athletes in men’s and women’s basketball to enter out of isolation following a positive COVID test. The new rule allows two different paths, one of which allows asymptomatic players to pass 2 negative tests at least 24 hours apart if the player is vaccinated. (The ACC)

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.

New Year’s Day is this weekend, so now seems like a good time to take a look at Bracketology. That begs the question, though, which bracketologist should I trust? Why not trust the wisdom of crowds? That is the simple implication behind Bracket Matrix, which aggregates more than 30 projected brackets and puts them into one place. You’ve got the famous ones, including Joe “OG Bracketologist” Lunardi of ESPN and Andy Katz of NCAA.com. Then there are the more obscure ones, like jMor Bracketology, a classical musician with a college hoops obsession. Bookmark the Bracket Matrix, because it only gets more important from here.

Do you ever see those dubious statistical categories presented during basketball games? These are things like ‘Player X is the first player since 1997 to average 15 points, 7 rebounds, 2 steals, 75% free throw shooting, and less than 2 turnovers a game’. Who was keeping track of that collection of stats? Well, this list is like that if you actually cared about the categories. The team at Heat Check developed a set of arbitrary thresholds (hence, “arthur”) to create award categories for roles, like “the floor general” (plays a lot of minutes, high assist rate, and low turnover rate). This is a fun way to highlight players that are playing their role to perfection, using less than dubious stats.

My point of view is that you shouldn’t think about which teams are Final Four contenders until Selection Sunday. If you select 4 teams on January 1st that you think are bound for New Orleans, what happens if 2 or 3 of those teams end up in the same bracket? That being said, Jim Root provides interesting insight, with the help of KenPom data, to identify a group of dark horse candidates that look like Final Four contenders right now or could be contenders by March. With conference play ahead, these contenders could stay in the ring or look more like pretenders as the season progresses.