The Town Crier

[PointGuard]

NCAA Punishment:

LSU has been found to have offered bribes to 7 players and has been placed on probation. They will not be able to offer scholarships for 2 years and will be banned from post-season play for a year.

In other news:

The American Basketball Conference announced they are opening an investigation into the recruiting activities of the Notre Dame mens' basketball program. Allegations of illegal recruitment have surfaced in recent weeks although both the school's administration and coaching staff deny the claims and say they are baseless.

[PointGuard]

Norton Award Nominees:

We received the great news that three of our players have been nominated for consideration for the Norton Award. They are: SF Rick Coffey, C/PF Ike Minahan, and SF Kenton Dunn.

Pac-12 nominees also included 3 players from Arizona, 2 from UCLA, and 1 each from Stanford and Washington.

Both Temple and Notre Dame had 4 nominees, the highest number of nominees from any Division I program.

[PointGuard]

Fall Recruiting News:

We struck gold quickly when 2 very talented recruits accepted our scholarship offers in early September:

PG Daniel Meads, 6-0 Sr, Bellevue, WA who as a junior last season averaged 18.5 ppg, 11.7 apg, 6.0 rpg. 3.4 spg, and 0.5 bpg. He’s an excellent scorer with a great outside shot and has outstanding passing and ball handling skills. He’s also a very strong rebounder. He was rated in the top 5 at the Indy Elite Camp. He’s ranked as the 12th best recruit in the nation.

PF Angelo Anderer, 6-7 Sr, Postville, IA who as a junior last season averaged 23.9 ppg, 1.7 apg, 13.8 rpg, 2.6 spg, and 4.9 bpg. He scores extremely well inside and is an outstanding rebounder. He has strong passing skills. He’s a top-flight shot blocker. He’s ranked as the 15th best recruit nationally.

Then two weeks later we landed our 3rd and last recruit:

SF Kurtis Payne, 6-7 Sr, Cambridge, WI who as a junior last season averaged 21.0 ppg, 2.1 apg, 4.1 rpg, 3.5 spg, and 0.8 bpg. He shoots extremely well from both inside and outside and is a great scorer. He has very strong rebounding and defensive skills and has quick hands that get more than his share of steals. He has a tremendous work ethic. He was rated in the top 10 at the Indy Elite Camp and is ranked as the 32nd best recruit in the country.

We still have to wait until all score satisfactorily on their SAT’s, so we will continue to build interest in recruits that have not accepted scholarships elsewhere so we have some backups in the event someone doesn’t meet our SAT minimum.

Roby Jordan did a great job handling recruiting this year. His excellent work with recruits and their families made it possible for my home visits to be extremely productive and effective.

Roby said to me, “Not only did we get some great recruits this fall, but I kept your record intact.” When I asked him what he meant by that, he replied, “As with every other season’s recruiting here, we continued your having never recruited a true Center.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, we may live in mile high country, but we sure don’t ever get mile high players. 6’8” seems to be the height limit for Colorado. It would be nice to get a 7 footer (or even a 6’11” guy) some time who can match up against some of the tall timber we have to play against.”

[PointGuard]

Pre-Conference Schedule Set:

We’ve scheduled some strong opponents during our pre-conference play this season:

PURDUE
MISSOURI
VILLANOVA
Iowa State (1st game of Palmetto Shootout)
FRESNO STATE
MINNESOTA
@ #15 Maryland
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
ST. JOHNS

[PointGuard]

Who’s starting?

Practice this fall went well. We’re ready to start the season, but have some work to do since we have a lot of young players this season.

Starters:

PG—Justin Wilson, 6-5 Jr: Started 24 of 31 games last season averaging 6.3 ppg and 3.1 apg, a good all-around player. A good defender with quick hands who gets a lot of steals.
SG—Rick Coffey, 6-7 Sr: Played SF his previous 3 years here, but his sharp shooting last season has led me to give him a try at SG. He averaged 9.4 ppg and 4.6 rpg last season. Solid defender. Will play SF as well as SG this year.
SF—Kenton Dunn, 6-6 Sr: Has been a starter at SG, SF, and PF the past 3 seasons. A solid scorer who last season averaged 11.9 ppg and 5.1 rpg. Top-notch defender. Will play SG also this year.
PF—Ike Minahan, 6-8 So: Last season started at C. Was our leading scorer and rebounder last season as a freshman, averaging 12.3 ppg and 6.9 rpg. Strong defensively. Will also play C some this year. Fully recovered from the broken elbow that sidelined him late last season.
C—Lamar Kapono, 6-8 Fr: Destined to be a star. Extremely strong rebounder and good scorer with very good passing skills. Strong defensively, particularly as a shot blocker and stealing the ball. Will also play PF this season.

Substitutes:

PG—John Phelan, 6-3 So: As a freshman played well in a limited role averaging 2.8 ppg. Shot well inside the arc. Likely will fill in at SG as well as PG this season.
PG—Bret Cross, 6-1 Jr: Played JC ball the past 2 years. Good overall skills. Good mid-range scorer.
SG—Malik Howard, 6-4 Fr: Great potential but needs experience and maturing. Looks like he may be a good outside shooter.
SG—Tony Stewart, 6-2 Fr walk-on: Although not likely to play much he has ability to drive and post up.
SF—Jason Archie, 6-5 Fr: Needs to develop further but will be a good solid player for us in the future.
PF—Marcus Paulding, 6-8 Fr: Able to work the entire court so will be filling in at SF as well as PF this season. Should get a lot of playing time and will develop into a solid starter for us in the future.
PF—Mel Dye, 6-7 Fr (R): Red-shirted last season and still developing his skills but will become a solid performer for us in the future.
C—Derricus Ivener, 6-8 So: Filled in last season at both C and PF. A strong rebounder and can score well inside. Last season he averaged 3.3 ppg and 2.3 rpg, but will get a lot more playing time this year.
C—Billy Horton, 6-10 Jr walk-on: Not likely to get much playing time.
C—Brian Walker, 6-10 So walk-on: Pretty good shooter but not likely to play much.

[frankinho]

Awesome news on the recruiting front! PF Angelo Anderer, 6-7 Sr seems a bit undersized for PF, do you plan on using it at PF or SF? BTW Does size have a big impact i.e do undersized players in your experience do well or does it have a negative impact?

[PointGuard]

Awesome news on the recruiting front! PF Angelo Anderer, 6-7 Sr seems a bit undersized for PF, do you plan on using it at PF or SF? BTW Does size have a big impact i.e do undersized players in your experience do well or does it have a negative impact?

Not so much impact as in the pro game. There are a lot of 6-7 or 6-8 PF's in DDSCB (and in real life college ball).

As to where Anderer will ultimately play, just depends on the level of his skills once he gets to us. If he is a strong rebounder and his inside shooting is fairly good, then he should do OK as a PF for us. If his outside shooting is much better than his inside shooting, then very well could shift him to SF.

[PointGuard]

Re-checked Anderer's recruit notes:

His interior shooting is very strong (and his outside shooting is just average) and he likes to post up. He's also a great rebounder and shot blocker. He also doesn't seem to be much of a jump shooter. Of course that all relates to playing high school ball so we'll see how it translates in Division i play. But at this point it seems as though he'll be best at PF.

[PointGuard]

Pac-12 Media Picks:

Each newspaper, TV, and radio reporter along with each major online blogger who who reports on their favorite team or overall Pac-12 ball has ranked the teams. Their predictions on how the conference will shake out this season have been consolidated into the overall prediction that follows:

1-UCLA
2-Arizona
3-Washington
4-Utah
5-Colorado
6-Oregon
7-Stanford
8-USC
9-Arizona State
10-California
11-Oregon State
12-Washington State

I can’t really find fault with their prediction but hope we will finish higher than 5th. While I feel UCLA is definitely the favorite this year, I think any of the top 9 teams have a chance to do well this season. And the bottom 3 teams are all likely to be spoilers. If we want to come out near the top of the standings we’re going to have to play sound defense and do well on the road.

Our players were upset about not being ranked higher, but maybe that will serve to light a fire within them. Our team has set as their goal to make some noise in and play deep into the NCAA Tournament at the end of the season.

[PointGuard]

Game #1: Purdue Boilermakers (0-0) at Colorado Buffaloes (0-0)

3 minutes into the game, we trailed 12-0 and SF Kenton Dunn was on the bench with 2 fouls. Not a good start to our season. But we slowly clawed our way back into the game and finally gained a 25-25 tie with 7:10 remaining in the half when Ike Minahan drove down the lane and scored on a fingertip roll-in. Marcus Paulding drained a 3 to give us our first lead at 28-25 with 5:36 left. We went on to hold a 40-36 halftime advantage with SG Rick Coffey scoring 12 points.

Our defense tightened in the 2nd half and with 12:27 remaining in the game, Ike Minahan put up a highly contested 14 foot jumper than settled through the hoop to give us a 50-40 lead. We expanded our lead to 18 before settling for a 77-64 victory. We won this game with defense (Purdue hit just 35% of their shots including only 27% of their 3P attempts) and rebounding (we held a 45-29 rebounding advantage).

Leading our scoring was SG Rick Coffey with 21 points (he also had 7 rebounds) and PF Ike Minahan’s 17 points. SF Marcus Paulding scored 11 in 14 minutes of play. PG Justin Wilson had 9 assists and C LaMar Kapono grabbed 12 rebounds.

Pac-12 Highlights:

UCLA (preseason #1 ranked) ripped Tennessee 83-53 with PG Darelle Dawson scoring 18 and pulling down 8 boards and then Mississippi 66-42 with SG Kyle Taylor scoring 22 plus getting 5 assists, 7 rebounds, 3 steals and a block.
Oregon (preseason ranked #21) was upset at home by lowly Georgia State 66-55 as the Ducks hit just 30% of their FG attempts.
Arizona (preseason ranked #3) stomped UTEP 75-46 in the opening game of the Preseason NIT Tourney.
Utah held Georgetown’s shooting to just 26% enroute to a 66-46 blowout win over the Hoyas.