A place for college basketball fans to be reminded that their opinions matter, and shouldn't be completely ignored by loud, obnoxious football-driven anarchy.
In an era where the Big 12 has 10 teams and the Big Ten has 12 (soon to be 14), we're used to conference names being a bit nonsensical. If you're looking for false advertising in your league handles, though, the Western Athletic Conference nearly had the market cornered this offseason.
The WAC is no longer exclusively western, unless you consider Chicago and Kansas City far west outposts. If you do, kindly ask Doc Brown to drag you back to 1845.
The snarky college football jock-sniffer would claim that the "Athletic" part went away when the WAC stopped sponsoring football.
Finally, had it not broken down and invited Chicago State, UMKC and a host of other misfit toys, the conference would have no longer been a conference.
So, credit to the league for doing what it had to do to survive, but this is not the WAC that once gave us stars like Danny Ainge, Tim Hardaway, Keith Van Horn or the immortal Fennis Dembo.
WAC basketball will look extremely different this season (and there's still a domino left to fall when Idaho heads for the Big Sky in 2014), but it could surprise us all. There will be no return to 1998's four-bid status, though. Ever.
More on who should get this year's bid after the jump.
(All statistics and rankings via StatSheet.com unless otherwise noted.)
For an indication of how shaky the Big South was last season, consider this: The league's championship tournament was won by a team that didn't beat a Division I opponent until New Year's Eve.
Liberty getting the automatic bid lessened any chance of the league springing an upset, which may have been possible if it had been Charleston Southern or High Point in the dance. The Flames became only the second team in NCAA tournament history with 20 losses, joining Coppin State's 2008 squad.
As long as everyone stays healthy (and TBI is saying a prayer for High Point stud John Brown; more on him in a bit), the BSC should have a team qualified to pull a No. 15 seed. As Florida Gulf Coast proved, the 15 need not be a death sentence.
This season, the Big South has one team with a tremendous pair of forwards that need guards to step up and help. Several teams have strong backcourts, including one that's probably the best duo you've never heard of.
Let's look at this season's Big South and decipher who's got the best chance to dance...after the jump.
(All statistics and rankings per StatSheet.com unless otherwise noted.)
White ribbon=Best Licker, for dog with cleanest junk.
The Big Sky is closer than most college hoop conferences to getting its season right.
Even though there are 11 teams in the league, the BSC still orders everyone to work with a 20-game double round-robin, eliminating the issue of any team getting an advantage from the day the schedule comes out. It'll be screwed up next year when Idaho returns, but for now, it's a nice change of pace.
When the postseason hits, instead of the league tournament being a participation ribbon and juice box for every kid, even the asthmatic ones, only the top seven make it with the regular-season champion getting a first-round bye.
I'd advocate a system that leaves the regular-season champion out totally, pitting that team against the tournament champ in a winner-takes-all single game, but again, the Big Sky has it more correct than most.
As far as who'll be dueling for that bye, the usual suspects will be near the top, but a couple of experienced squads should mount a major challenge. Read on after the jump for more.
(All statistics and rankings per StatSheet.com unless otherwise noted.)
The Southland Conference was actually one of the more surprising minor conferences in 2012-13. The Back Iron Index was kind to three SLC squads: Stephen F. Austin, which ranked highly enough to score a play-in spot in TBI's fantasy bracket of the nation's REAL top 68 teams; Northwestern State, whose Index ranking was actually four spots higher than Dunk City's; and league newcomer Oral Roberts, which entered the year as a favorite to win the conference outright.
Fast forward to the new season, and college basketball's inevitable change appears to have been unkind to the Southland's elite. SFA lost three All-SLC players as well as its head coach. ORU likewise lost two, plus another who could have made the leap this year. Northwestern State may be in the best shape after losing an all-conference performer of its own, but it still returns two more.
What really damages the league's stock this season is not so much the top of the food chain, but the bottom. The Southland went all Statue of Happiness on us this summer, asking for college basketball's tired, its poor and its Division II.
New Orleans spent a large part of a decade as an independent as its school and program tried to recuperate from Hurricane Katrina. Houston Baptist fled from a much smaller-scale disaster, one which most of us knew as the late, unlamented Great West Conference. Finally, two Division II schools, Abilene Christian and Incarnate Word, are beginning their transition to D-I. It will be 2017 before the two are eligible for any postseason play.
All four will need a couple of seasons before the benefit of affiliation with a real live conference shows up in recruiting.
When the season shakes out, there may be a surprise waiting for us. Of course, it wouldn't be a surprise if we saw it coming, and right now, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot coming out of the Southland. Just what we can expect will be spelled out after the jump.
(All statistics and rankings per StatSheet.com unless otherwise noted.)
Dickens would have loved the Southwestern Athletic Conference's 2012-13 season. Best of times, worst of times and all that.
Two of the SWAC's top three finishers (Texas Southern and Arkansas-Pine Bluff) were ineligible for the postseason tournament, leaving Southern to waltz its way to the Big Dance. Once there, the Jaguars nearly pulled the upset of upsets, taking top-seeded Gonzaga to the final minute before succumbing.
The latest APR results came out in June, and the SWAC once again took it raw. Four programs were banned, including repeats for Pine Bluff and Mississippi Valley State. Grambling hopped on the short bus, although the Tigers need to be more focused on winning A game more than any postseason reservations.
Alabama State got its postseason APR ban overturned, which is about the extent of the good news the Hornets received this offseason.
TSU lost the league Player of the Year (guard Omar Strong) and Defensive POY (forward Fred Sturdivant) to graduation and MVSU watched league scoring champ Davon Usher bolt for Delaware after the APR ban came down. On the arrivals board, Jackson State activates a pair of notable transfers in Julysses Nobles (ex-Arkansas) and 6'11" B.J. West (New Mexico State). Plus, Texas Southern becomes the final stop on La SalleWest Virginia journeyman Aaric Murray's magical college basketball mystery tour.
Finally, in the most EPIC news of all, the SWAC miraculously rises out of the cellar in TBI's conference rankings! The league office will erupt in mad champagne-spraying celebration...right...about...now.
Best. Intern. Crop. Ever.
So now that we know the SWAC's out of the cellar, let's look at why. Who wins and gets to pass around those chicks right there before going to the tournament and getting blitzed by some one-seed that didn't play in the West Coast Conference?
Answers after the jump.
(All statistics and rankings per StatSheet.com unless otherwise noted.)
The MEAC was a big sack of hot mess when last season was totaled up. If not for North Carolina Central losing a road squeaker to Savannah State, the league would have had regular-season co-champions with matching 16-0 records. Meaning Norfolk State and NC Central never played each other.
At all.
Not once.
Who in the blue flames of hell does this? Unbalanced schedules are one thing, but at least make everybody play everybody once.
Meanwhile, North Carolina A&T went into the conference tournament with a losing record and came out with a bid to the Big Dance, thanks to a totally goofed-up championship event in which none of the top four seeds reached the semifinals. The good news was that all the conference tourney carnage put three MEAC teams into postseason tournaments for the first time ever, as Norfolk State went to the NIT and Savannah State played in the CIT.
In a league like this, there's a real chance that preseason predictions will be shot to hell by one team making a four-day charge like A&T did. There's not much reason to expect that anyone projects as an all-conquering Harvard-esque juggernaut this season, so the MEAC falls in dead last among TBI's conference rankings.
For standings and awards, read past the jump.
(All statistics and rankings per StatSheet.com unless otherwise noted.)
We tried this last season and didn't quite make it all the way through all 31 conferences.
This year, there are 32, so the task is even heavier. However, this time, The Back Iron will succeed in previewing all of the college basketball conferences in all their geographically schizophrenic (Chicago State in the WAC? For reals, player?), realignment-ravaged glory.
One will be presented each day leading up to the season's opening tip-off on November 8. Our worst conference in the nation will lead off the procession, with a brief moment to pour some out for the poor lonely SOBs at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (aka The Nation's Only Independent, aka The Fat Dude With Pimples, Braces and a Harelip Who Got Shot Down by Every Chick He Asked to Prom).
The best conference in America (SPOILER ALERT: It's exactly who you think it is, and it's even more dangerous next year) will be unveiled on November 7, with a full NCAA mock bracket to follow on opening day.
You can bookmark this post for the up-to-date rankings and links to each conference as its preview gets posted.
Read on past the jump for explanations of what each preview will feature, as well as the aforementioned rankings and links.
The college hoop coaching carousel never seems to stop. One school just made a move last week after its coach bolted for the NBA.
College football and basketball coach are both jobs whose security levels rank somewhere between "Osama's security chief" and "Spinal Tap drummer." For every firing and resignation, however, the bell of opportunity rings for someone else.
In all, 48 someone elses have gotten new jobs this summer, and after the jump, we'll get into every...single...one. Which ones are best and worst? Read on.
Because college football owns the soul of American sports, Johnny Manziel has been all over the media spectrum over the past eight-to-10 months. The Texas A&M quarterback's historic feat of becoming the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy has placed him in a fishbowl, and the 24/7 news cycle has sired no shortage of onlookers peering through the glass.
New Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens has a six-year contract in hand as he walks away from a Butler program that he nearly helped steer to a Hoosiers finish in the 2010 NCAA championship game.
That same Butler program is now lacking the steward that made it attractive to the refurbished Big East Conference, a league dying to remind everyone that it will still be relevant without Syracuse, Louisville, UConn and all those other barbarians who follow football money around like a dog with a chain through its nose.
Do we know how much Stevens is getting paid in Boston? No, but it's a pretty safe bet that it's at least triple (quadruple? QUINTUPLE?) the $1.2M that Butler was paying him on his contract extension that ran through 2022. As a young man with a young family who worked some menial office jobs before he became a well-paid head coach, none of us (especially me, with a young family and part-time gigs of my own) should begrudge him a payday.
Those of us who enjoy and cover college basketball, however, can bemoan it all day long. In a game that is increasingly being defaced by realignment and package-deal recruiting tactics, the list of truly likable, charismatic and talented coaches who succeed well enough to stick around and improve a program's standing in the game is short enough already.
The NBA poaching one to a gig where he's going to be done in by egotistical players and a general manager whose judgment is frequently questionable (how'd those Sebastian Telfair and Gerald Green acquisitions work out, Celtic fans?) is just downright sad.
Stevens occasionally seems like a robot on the sideline, cool and stoic win or lose. When the Bulldogs pulled out a last-second win over Gonzaga in a nationally televised battle at Hinkle, Stevens evinced little excitement. When asked why, this was the response:
"What goes through my mind is, the hay is in the barn," Stevens said.
"If a guy makes a shot like that or doesn't, it doesn't define who we
are. It doesn't affect how I evaluate our team. It doesn't break our
season. I'm a huge person on growth over prize."
Growth over prize is all well and good at a college program, especially one up from Butler's humble roots, where the coach is the only one getting paid (allegedly). Try to sell that to NBA players, a group of people among whom even the most relentlessly average make more coin than all but the elite coaches, and they'll roll eyes.
The owner paying those relentlessly average players is doing it for the prize of a full arena, and the fans will only cooperate when wins are vastly more frequent than the losses. A club praying for ping-pong balls to fall in exactly the right combination doesn't tend to engender a ton of optimism.
As for Butler, it will scramble to find someone who can keep elevating the program's profile to the point where signees like in-state four-star sniper Kellen Dunham are the norm rather than the exception. Stevens' ability to evaluate and develop talent, the very qualities that make him attractive to a team stripping down to land Andrew Wiggins (give it up, Danny), will be extremely difficult for any other late-stage candidate to replace.
As of this writing, ESPN lists five of its top 100 prospects in the class of 2014 as considering Butler. Were they swayed by the quaint charms of Hinkle Fieldhouse? Do they think the new mascot, Butler Blue III (aka Trip) is cute? (He is, as can be seen in the video here, but still.)
Or were they thinking about playing for Brad Stevens, who somehow assembled a Horizon League team tough enough to survive five NCAA tournament games and come within an inch of winning the sixth over always-indomitable Duke?
Brad Stevens wins in this deal, because he's getting the kind of paid in full Eric B. and Rakim could only dream about. A savvy investment guy will have Stevens set for life when he's let go after four years once Boston fails to win the lottery, Ainge makes a string of bad draft picks and the team can't climb above a six-seed even in the crumbling Eastern Conference. To boot, he'll have any college job he wants lined up at his door.
Danny Ainge wins in this deal, because he's landed a compelling big-name coach who can serve as the pretty shade of lipstick on the pig of a roster that will suit up in Celtic green as soon as Rajon Rondo tantrums his way out of town.
Celtic fans win, because they have a reason to have faith. If Stevens could put tiny Butler in the national title game -- TWICE! -- surely he can hang another banner once the ping-pong balls align to deliver the Canadian messiah.
Butler loses. HARD. Prospective candidates like current Bulldog assistant Brandon Martin and Michigan assistant LaVall Jordan were a good backcourt on the Hinkle hardwood in 2001, when the school was still part of the Midwestern Collegiate Conference.
Unfortunately, the 2014 recruits were still in preschool when those guys played. The kids won't care. Stevens is gone, so watch Butler get crossed off list after list just when it has to contend with schools like Marquette and Georgetown.
(One caveat: Indianapolis Park Tudor swingman Trevon Bluiett is considering Michigan and Butler. LaVall Jordan is the primary recruiter trying to woo him to Ann Arbor. This package deal would set the Bulldogs up well.)
The Celtics have been down this road before, when they snagged Rick Pitino from a superb run at Kentucky. Even with a roster packed with his former stars (Antoine Walker, Ron Mercer and Walter McCarty in particular) and a great draft pick named Paul Pierce, Pitino lasted essentially three full seasons and never saw a playoff game from the sideline.
Is Stevens a better coach than Pitino? How you answer that question will determine how much faith you have in the Celtics.
Me? I'll be first in line to welcome Brad Stevens back to college in May of 2017. And he'll be rich enough to hand twenties to all of us.
After all, Celtic green and currency green are just about the same color.
