It seems like people really think Hofstra is going to finish eighth in the Colonial Athletic Association. Almost every preview magazine has the Pride there after losing Charles Jenkins and the coaches reiterated it today in their preseason poll.
Category: Colonial Athletic Association
Dribble Handoffs – End of September Edition
Dribble Handoffs is going to be another weekly feature on the site this season. Get ready for the weekend with a bunch of interesting links. There are lots of really smart people writing about college basketball and each week I’ll try and highlight some to read. It’s like Follow Friday for cool college basketball writers.
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Over/Under for Hofstra and CAA Hoops
CAA Hoops has a fun look at the over/unders for the conference’s teams on their site today. As the author of the post points out, there’s a real small difference from the #5 team (James Madison) to the #9 team (Hofstra). Should make the middle of the conference an absolute slugfest. It just so happens that JMU and the Pride are some the toughest teams to predict as well. The analysis seems to reveal four tiers of teams with the third one containing as many as six teams, if you include #10 UNC-Wilmington, so get ready for a wild season.
New York is under-recruited
Or at least that’s one of the big takeaways from this study about geography and recruiting from Basketball Prospectus and Drew Cannon. It’s an amazing tome of information and I highly recommend you check out the Appendices as well because there’s a lot of great information there in the raw numbers.
Progress on player similarity scores
A few weeks ago when I talked with Beyond the Arc’s Mike Miller I told him about the player similarity project that I was going to be undertaking. Initially I said I’d start with five conferences, but I’ve expanded it to six. (Adding the Atlantic 10.)
What would an A10-CAA Challenge look like?
It’s time to start talking about 2011-12 schedules and everyone likes a good challenge, like one between two conferences. The Big Ten and ACC have made their challenge the premiere event, but couldn’t smaller conferences stage their own? The Missouri Valley and Mountain West Conference are trying, but a more interesting one is proposed by Mike Miller. What if the CAA and Atlantic 10 took the time to schedule a 12-game event?
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Welcome Paul Hewitt to the CAA
It’s not often you get fired and actually end up coaching a better team, but that’s exactly what happened to Paul Hewitt. After finishing 13-18 (5-11 in the ACC) Hewitt was relieved of his duties at Georgia Tech. Still, he managed to land on his feet with a sweet gig at George Mason after Jim Larranaga left for Miami.
Hewitt was known at Tech for underachieving teams. It might seem odd then that he was chosen to lead a Patriots team that is expected to be in the Top 25 in the nation next season.
Attendance figures released
The NCAA wants everyone to know that 32.6 million people watched college basketball games live last season. Most of those numbers come from schools like Kentucky and Syracuse, but they did release team-by-team numbers as well. Here’s a look at each school’s total.
Best players coming to a gym near you
Recruiting is picking up steam at the moment and Justin D. Young over at the National Hoops Report recently posted a list of the top incoming players for each conference.
It’s an entertaining undertaking that probably took quite a bit of research for a few conferences where you won’t find McDonald’s All-Americans or even Top 100 recruits via any service. None of the NYC schools were represented, but here are some talented freshman that will be playing for the visiting teams next season.
Iona robbed in final Mid-Major Top 25 and the sad state of Fordham basketball
The final Mid-Major Top 25 poll from CollegeInsider.com is out and there appears to be one team missing. Despite reaching the finals of the CIT, Iona isn’t in the Top 25. (They’re actually 26th, four points behind Wofford.)
Santa Clara, the team that won the CIT on the Gaels’ home court, is ranked 22nd. Butler was an obvious choice for the #1 spot in the poll and VCU, after the Rams’ Final Four run, deserved to be #2, but beyond that it probably was pretty difficult for the selectors to rank the teams. Wichita State, which won the NIT, got boosted all the way up to #5, but St. Mary’s, which lost in the first round of the NIT to Kent State, only fell to #11.
This seems to be a case of poll momentum keeping teams from cracking the list. Congratulations to Long Island. The Blackbirds finished 17th in the poll. Also, Hofstra was in the others receiving votes category, but the CAA showed it’s strength with three teams in the Top 5. The three CAA teams in the poll also tied the West Coast Conference (which along with Santa Clara and St. Mary’s had #7 Gonzaga) for the most teams in the poll.
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NYC Buckets Archive 