Basketball from a fans perspective
No conspiracy here
These guys have got to be paid, the media on all the networks. They must provide us their view which team was placed in the wrong region for the NCAA Tournament. Which team was omitted that should have been selected. Which teams could potentially provide an upset? The most interesting is the conspiracy theorists, they have all kinds of explanations with teams placed in certain regionals. As an example team A is placed in the same regional they could wind up playing team D a rival. I haven’t looked at the brackets but an example might have this matchup Wichita State-Kansas or Kentucky-Florida, how about Duke-North Carolina?
The plan!
Is Lavar Ball just plain crazy or crazy like a fox? The question is posed because he’s made almost as many headlines as My Three Sons. Not the ‘60’s television series the basketball playing Ball brothers. Lonzo is headed to the NBA as soon as UCLA season concludes whether in the first round or the national championship. Brothers LiAngelo and LeMelo are also ‘one n done’ although both the younger brothers remain students at Chino Hills High School (CA). Middle brother LiAngelo is a senior and the youngest LiAngelo is a sophomore.
As for dad Lavar he began training his sons as toddlers to play basketball. Probably the most incendiary headlines the dad said; ‘The Lakers must draft Lonzo’. He backtracked a bit with this; indicating the preference for the Lakers is two-fold; ‘His son would be playing at home and Magic Johnson. Magic would be able to school his son how to play point guard in the NBA.’ The other pronouncement his eldest son Lonzo ‘will be better than Steph Curry.’ The June draft awaits and next fall LiAngelo will replace his brother as a UCLA freshman, ’little’ brother Melo will be a junior at Chino Hills.
The 'other' Tournament
It’s largely over shadowed by the larger glitzier NCAA Tournament. It‘s players no longer dot NBA rosters as they once did. No longer are there players the talent level of Willis Reed or Scottie Pippen. It’s the NAIA Tournament which kicks off on Wednesday in Kansas City for the 80th year. In 1937 Central Missouri State (University of Central Missouri) beat Morningside College 35-24. The tournament has been played every year in Kansas City with the exception of an 8 year period when it was held in Tulsa.
As the basketball ‘explosion’ occurred over the years more and more schools left their NAIA affiliation and move up to the NCAA Division I and II level. Louisville, Indiana State, Southern Illinois and San Diego State are just a few of the Division I schools that once played in this tournament. That very first champion team University of Central Missouri has been a Division II program for quite a number of years. The NAIA champion will be crowned next Tuesday and I will provide the results. It‘s likely you won’t see the results on SportsCenter.
Junior college
Junior college players at D-I schools have become “rare as hen’s teeth.” Hens don’t have teeth it was used to point out a rare and unusual occurrence. At one time D-I coaches would scout junior colleges in almost the same manner they did high school prospects. That seems to have changed over the course of time with fewer and fewer junior college players making an impact at the D-I level. The following is a list of former NBA players who first toiled at junior colleges.
Spencer Haywood, Bob McAdoo, Nate Archibald and John Starks. Current NBA players Jimmy Butler, Jae Crowder and Tony Allen all toiled in junior college before heading off to a D-I school. The top junior college in the nation as this is written is South Plains (25-0) in Levelland Texas; Levelland is about 30 miles west of Lubbock. Right behind them is Hutchinson Community College 26-1. Hutchinson Kansas is about 220 miles west of Kansas City Kansas.
