Basketball from a fans perspective
Bits n Pieces
Did you witness Auburn’s student body storm the court when the Tigers beat Kentucky recently? Earlier in the week the same scenario occurred as West Virginia upset then number one Kansas. As much as I believe there is an opportunity for a serious injury to occur court storming continues. I’m unsure if it will occur again at Auburn they were fined $100,000. More interesting I believe the Big 12 (WV and Kansas) has a rule prohibiting court storming. Yet as I was finishing this it happened once again, Oklahoma State upset Kansas in Stillwater (OK).
UCLA and its basketball fans should be excited about the arrival of Lonzo Ball in the Fall Quarter 2016. The 6-6 point guard led his undefeated Chino Hills (CA) Huskies to a 100-75 victory over High Point (NC) a short time ago. Mr. Ball had 15 points 10 rebounds and 18 assists in the win, did I mention Lonzo has two young siblings on the team. LiAngelo is a junior while LeMelo is freshman and the brothers combined for 65 of the 100 points.
Clash of the Titans was so nice it was necessary to do it twice. Well that might be an exaggeration on my part however there were two movies about this tale of Greek mythology. The first movie was released in 1981 and a re-make was done in 2010. Their might be a number of players with Greek heritage on the Spurs and Warriors but this Clash of the Titans is not mythology this is the real deal. The two NBA teams with the best record in the league face off against one another tonight. The Spurs enter the game 38-6 and a 13 game win streak, 10-0 in the last 10 games. As for the Warriors they stand 40-4 with a modest four game winning streak, 8-2 in their last 10. The Spurs announced Tim Duncan would not play due to a sore knee as this was being completed.
Maybe I spoke too soon
I must admit I had no idea what part of the nation Williams College was located. I had to research and discover it’s located in Williamston (MA) about three hours from Boston or New York City. Williams plays a Division III schedule and that’s the significance of the story. Remember me once stating basketball talent seemed to all be located in Division I schools---well I was wrong. We could cite Duncan Robinson as our case in point, at the time Robinson graduated high school nobody wanted him. Not literally but there were no Division I scholarship offers despite an outstanding high school career.
This 6-7 forward found himself at Williams where he averaged 17.1 ppg during his freshman year. It’s quite possible he would have remained at Williams if not for his coach. The Williams coach decided to seek employment at another school which caused Robinson to search for another school. Fast forward to the present, Robinson is enrolled at Michigan and is the second leading scorer on the roster. The season is early and we have no idea if he maintains his present pace. This we do know he can play whether it’s Division III or Division I basketball, perhaps the talent gap is not as great as we might be led to believe.
No argument from me
A SI.com story rated the Top 100 college basketball players this season. Rather than walk you through the list I’ll concentrate on the top three. At three they listed LSU’s Ben Simmons; two was Kris Dunn of Providence. At one they chose shooting guard Buddy Hield of Oklahoma. No argument from me, I haven’t witnessed a great deal of play for Dunn but trust he can play at a high level. As for Hield I’ve had several opportunities to see him play including his
46-point explosion against Kansas.
On June 23rd Commissioner Silver will step to the podium to announce the first pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. I believe we all will be surprised, no shocked if we hear a name other than Ben Simmons. I know you and I continue to hear the same stories; “He’s got no outside shot” or “He’s too passive at times.” I don't like to focus on numbers alone however freshman Simmons are outstanding 19.6 points & 12.6 rebounds a game. Even more interesting his assists exceed those several pure point guards (5.1) noteworthy for a 6-10 forward. It's highly unusual for a forward to hand out assists at this level.
