If Thabeet goes, so might Cahoun

Ever since Donyell Marshall left Connecticut after his junior year and became the first Lottery Pick in school history, fans have watched so many great Husky greats follow suit, making the jump to the NBA a year, sometimes two, early. From Ray Allen to Rudy Gay and all the others stars that have made UConn the best college-to-NBA school in America, it has seemingly become a yearly ritual to pick apart said player’s games in hopes that he will realize how beneficial an extra season in Storrs would be.

Hasheem Thabeet is next in line. But if the big man enters the NBA Draft, I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t the only person the University says goodbye to this year. The other would be Jim Calhoun, the architect of one of the most successful college programs in the country over the last 20 years.

At times early this season, it sounded as though Calhoun might retire following the season. He was upset with the school for various reasons and his young Huskies weren’t responding to him the way teams in the past had. The 65 year old Hall of Famer looked angry and tired, which wasn’t all that out of character. But he also looked defeated.

And then everything clicked. The team ran off ten consecutive wins, including a season-changing road victory over Indiana. All of a sudden Thabeet was showing flashes of dominance offensively and A.J. Price had become exactly what Calhoun claimed he would be three years ago: one of the best point guards in college basketball. The Huskies were back in the national spotlight again.

But by getting eliminated from the Big East Tournament in the first round by West Virginia and then dropping their first round NCAA Tournament game to San Diego, the Huskies were exposed as a team with serious flaws defending the perimeter.

To lose Thabeet would mean that Huskies would head into 2009 in rebuilding mode as opposed to having their eyes on the Final Four. Is Calhoun prepared to spend another year or two (at least) constructing a contender?

He sounds optimistic about next year, but let’s wait and see if the big man returns.

Then we’ll know how Coach Calhoun truly feels.

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College Basketball is struggling in the Northeast

Nearly half of the 65 teams playing in the NCAA tournament this week have players from north Jersey or New York City on their roster, solidifying the argument that the best high school basketball is played in the northeast. And it’s not just the city kids that can play either. New England’s prestigious prep schools are home to just as many Division I recruits as they are to future senators these days.

Schoolboy basketball is thriving.

Yet somehow, college basketball in the region is dying.

Only Connecticut and Siena managed to qualify for the Big Dance this week, and only the Huskies have a reasonable chance to make it past the first weekend. It’s gotten so bad that even the Northeast Conference had to find a team from Maryland (Mount St. Mary’s) to represent the league in the tournament.

It wasn’t that long ago that St. John’s and Seton Hall were among the country’s elite teams and Providence was thriving. Even more recently, Boston College became a tournament lock every year, Massachusetts was in the Final Four and Rhode Island was able to recruit and land a future lottery pick named Lamar Odom. And of course there was UConn and Syracuse, who eventually went on to win three National Titles in six seasons.

But all of that seems forgotten now, especially since the Huskies are weaker than normal and the Orange have now missed the NCAA Tournament two years in a row.

The biggest problem, clearly, is that the schools have done a horrible job at keeping the region’s top players home. Next season, Connecticut will bring in New York’s top rated player, point guard Kemba Walker, but five of the next six prospects are all expected to leave the area. The same goes for Jersey, which is sending its best player to Louisville and three of its top five to Kansas to play for Bill Self. The top players in New England’s high schools are heading to Arizona, Ohio State and Louisville as well.

City kids are trading city life for cow tipping and pickup trucks.

And the future doesn’t look much brighter. Sure, Connecticut and Syracuse will always be fairly prominent, but the rest of the region (especially the New York Metro schools) seems hopeless. Until they figure it out, the kids will continue to thrive elsewhere.

And the schools will continue to fade.

*Correction* Cornell is the third team from the northeast in the tourney.

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Despite second title, Noah's stock dropped

Congratulations to the Joakim Noah and the Florida Gators. Not too many teams set the bar so high yet still live up to expectations.

Still, people need to slow down before praising Noah for staying in Gainesville an extra year.

Fact is he made a poor business decision.

Noah could have been the top pick in the 2006 NBA Draft following the Gators storybook national championship run. His flaws disappeared instantly. Nobody seemed to care that he couldn’t shoot the ball from outside of three feet and his intensity did a nice job masking his lack of strength.

But now, after the second title, Noah finds himself looking at two freshmen that almost everyone thinks could become all-time players. He has to face comparisons to Brendan Wright, whose ceiling is considerably higher than his. Then there’s the two studs at Georgetown that could pass him by come draft day.

Wait wait, there’s more.

It’s inevitable that some team will roll the dice on Yi Jianlian from China. The only question is will it be before or after Noah is selected? Most people agree that he’ll be the second Gator taken, following Al Horford. But it wouldn’t be a stretch for a team to take Corey Brewer before Noah either.

My point is that Noah’s stock has dropped significantly. Maybe he doesn’t need the money. But the boy has a huge ego and being the number one pick means a whole lot more than the cash.

It means hype.

It means being on the cover of all the magazines next fall.

It means shoe deals and instant creditability.

Noah took a pass on all of that to make history. Now he’ll wait and see how many NBA teams take a pass on him.

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'Melo gives 3 mil to school he barely knows

Carmelo Anthony’s latest contribution to Syracuse University was a lot more than he should be expected to give.

About $3 million more.

Anthony is donating that sum of money to the school he helped lead to the 2003 NCAA championship so it can build a new practice facility. The gym will be named after him in honor of his generous gift. Maybe they should throw him an honorary degree as well.

I guess its fitting that he’d give the money to the basketball program, but I wonder if he would have made the same contribution if it was an educational facility that was in need of money. The Carmelo Anthony School of Journalism does have a nice ring to it.

Anthony’s altruism aside, one has to wonder just how much in need of money the Cuse was to have Jim Boeheim’s wife go and beg a kid who spent all of six months there for that kind of cash.

“I thought that winning the championship was enough,” Anthony said, “but it wasn’t, so I had to give back to let them know that I didn’t forget about them.”

Sounds like he got guilt tripped to me.

If You're a Contractor in Syracuse, You're in Luck – Orange 44

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UConn's center is taller than yours

His reading ability may be in doubt, but Jim Calhoun says you can’t question the big man’s smile.

7’3 freshman center Hasheem Thabeet was declared eligible for the season Wednesday afternoon, after recent concern over his transcripts had many believing that he wouldn’t qualify academically.

Thabeet will almost definitely start on a team that Calhoun called “just as talented as last year” on media day. That seems right considering he’s going to be one of the tallest players in college basketball and UConn’s other potential center, Jeff Adrien, is about as tall as Khalid El-Amin was skinny.

The best thing about Thabeet is obviously that he’s from Tanzania. Which means it might eventually be okay to call him the Tanzanian Devil, unless some stupid welterweight boxer already has the name. While you can’t have unprotected sex in the country (9% of the country has HIV/AIDS) you can find Wildebeests there. Good stuff on the Tanzanian front.

The one negative here is that almost everyone seems to think Thabeet will be a top ten pick next year so the Huskies are getting a one year guy. I like to think that Calhoun has built a program by progressively developing future NBA players better than almost anyone in the business. I hate to see him go John Calipari on us with the one and done stuff. But I guess that's the game today.

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