College Basketball Boxer Report 11/24

This is the PREMIERE EDITION of the College Basketball Boxer Report! Why is it called that, you ask? Because it's being written as I sit here in my boxers having just watched the Terps beat Delaware State. Pants are far too formal for this blog post!

Anyway, the Terps are 4-2, having lost the games you'd expect them to lose while winning the others (though not without some hariy moments against the College of Charleston). Now that we're about 1/5 of the way through the season, let's look at the players - who is playing well and who is pissing me off enough to want to launch my cell phone through the TV.

So far Cliff Tucker has been excellent. He's winning acclaim for his defense and has scored in double figures every game. His outside shooting looks solid and his midrange game looks Dixonian when the Flex offense gets going. It's still too early to say he's headed for an All-ACC season (he doghoused himself late against Illinois), but he has been as good as could be hoped for. Jordan has also been spectacular, but that goes without saying. Even though he started slow in the Coaches vs Cancer games in MSG, he still managed a double double on both nights due to his second half performances.

The other starters have been up and down. Bonecrusher has outright sucked for most of the season aside from the Seattle game. He looks slow and lethargic which is the most disappointing part. Bowie has been more Adrian than Anthony this season, scoring in double figures just once while carrying an unacceptable A/TO ratio. Dino Gregory started off slow but has put together back to back outstanding games (10/10 against Illinois and 14/8 against Delaware State) while averaging 2 blocks a game.

The freshman have, of course, been up and down. Stoglin looks like a gunner - but mostly in a good way. I'm sold on him as a future big time scorer because with some guys you can just see they have the skill and the lack of conscience needed to put points on the board. Pe'shon Howard had that game winner in his second game, and while he hasn't exactly followed it up, he's been fine for a guy six games into his career. Hawk Palsson has no position but looks like he has a high basketball IQ. Berend Weijs has played pretty well for a stick figure and might be taking some of Padgett's minutes if the Inspector doesn't turn it on. It's not that Padge has been bad, it's just...he hasn't been particularly good either. I'm perfectly indifferent to all aspects of his performance aside from his odd gait which makes him look about 90 years old. That I do hate.

So all that being said, it's easy to be optimistic. That's because the ACC absolutely sucks. It's putrid. It might be the worst thing ever, and even then it may not even qualify as a thing. Is AIDS a thing? I don't know.

Duke is going to be awesome and give Dickie V many, many orgasms this season, but after that, it's questionable at best. UNC, for all their undue preseason hype, lost two games in Puerto Rico to Vandy and Minnesota. Both are solid teams, but if North Carolina wants to live up to the ranking and the name on the jersey, they absolutely have to win one of those. Virginia Tech, another presumed top three team, got handled pretty well by Kansas State. NC State's freshmen look good, but they also lost by a fairly comfortable margin to Georgetown in their tournament this weekend. Virginia lost by over 40 to Washington in Maui last night. Wake Forest has already lost to Stetson, VCU, and Winthrop. Boston College lost to Yale. Georgia Tech got handled by double digits at Kennesaw State. Rutgers crushed Miami. Like I said, it's ugly, and even with two losses in NYC, the Terps have passed the Look Test better than most of the teams besides Duke and perhaps FSU, which hasn't been tested yet against weak competition.

Something I realized last night is that I love John Cal. Sports is theater, and it's fun to have a bad guy to root against. As far as villains go, John Cal is somewhere between The Joker and Hans Gruber. It's one thing that he's a cheating scumbag. There are plenty of those, from Jim Calhoun to Bruce Pearl, and I hate them. On the other hand, John Calipari is so blatant and over the top with it that you can't help but respect it. The NCAA pretty clearly won't do anything but "strip" him of his Final Fours and wins, so why not just do whatever you have to do to win? I bring this all up because Kentucky just beat Washington behind 16/17 from freshman Terrance Jones, a guy that Cal pretty much stole right out from under Washington after Jones had committed there. Gotta love it.

Kemba Walker is much the best player I've seen so far this season. Granted that he's only been in four games so far, but he's averaging over 30 a night for UConn. That will come down, but it's pretty crazy. He scored over 40 once already and had an insane game yesterday where he almost singlehandedly led UConn over Wichita State.

There were only 64 undefeated teams coming into tonight according to kenpom. God I love kenpom. And speaking of kenpom. his rankings (which also factor in a preseason forecast) have the Terps at 31st in the nation. Not too shabby. He's also giving Duke a 1-in-20 shot at going undefeated through the end of the regular season.

How is Kansas State a top 5 team? They just got beaten easily by Duke and struggled with Presbyterian - the mighty BLUE HOSE. Frank Martin pretty much strikes me as a guy whose greatest talent in life is getting perilously close to an anuerysm and/or killing a player over every minor infraction, plus losing Denis Clemente has to hurt them. Sure, they beat VT, and sure, the top tier is wide open behind Duke especially with Robbie Hummell's knee being died again, but it doesn't seem like they're going to repeat last year's success. At least I hope not with three of their key players coming from DC (what up Dalonte Hill?!)

And that's that.