The Halfcourt Trap: Opening Tips Edition

Practice has begun and media days are taking place throughout the land. College basketball is back. With exhibition tilts to begin soon, here’s the first Trap of the ‘09-’10 season. Enjoy.

1. Slick Richard. When details of Rick Pitino’s decision to go one on one with an insane woman on a restaurant table first surfaced, many surmised that the Louisville coach would suffer on the recruiting trail for his moral misstep. It appears that won’t be the case. 2010 commitment Josh Langford remains solidly in the Cardinal fold, Pitino is in in the race for a number of other elite players in this class, notably Tobias Harris and J.J. Moore, and has a trio of 2011 horses already lined up. It just goes to prove that parents, guardians, and advisors are far more concerned with how you develop players than how you spend your free time. In my opinion, that’s as it should be. They’re basketball coaches, not members of the clergy.

2. Amateur Hour. Now, I turn to one of my favorite topics, the utter stupidity of the NCAA. As is becoming an annual right of fall, the ‘AA is still “investigating” the amateur status of a number of players, most notably Renardo Sidney, Lance Stephenson, and John Wall. The fact these three cases are essentially treated the same shows how out of touch with reality the Keystone Cops in Indy are these days. They are acting as if a family living in a house many L.A. doctors couldn’t afford to pay rent on is the equivalent of a kid traveling on a team coached by a guy who was trying to break into the agent business. Really? It is the concentration on minutia, such as the issues in the Stephenson and Wall cases, that prevents the governing body of major college athletics from attacking real issues like academic fraud and the unseemly mess the summer scene has become. What does it matter if Clifton was an agent when he took Wall on unofficial visits or if Stephenson’s family made a couple of bucks off their dopey internet documentary. No school gets an advantage from either of those occurences. The ‘AA should wisen up and bring their amateurism rules into the 21st century. The IOC, arguably the most corrupt and clueless governing body on the planet, have already done so. Maybe then the Indianapolis Imbeciles could get down to the business of trying to stamp out actual cheating.

3. Patience Is A Virtue? At the end of the ‘06-’07 season, there may not have been a hotter coaching prospect than Chris Lowery. The Southern Illinois head man had the Salukis making the NCAA Tournament on an annual basis and was mentioned for every major job that came open in the midwest. He chose to stay in Carbondale and attempt to build something akin to what Dana Altman has wrought at Creighton. Now, after a couple of Danceless seasons and a rash of transfers and off floor problems, Lowery is beginning to feel the heat. Can he turn it around? Sure, Kevin Dillard is the kind of player you can build a Valley champion around. However, it’s just as likely that Lowery becomes another in the long line of coaches whose careers become cautionary tales because they didn’t strike while the iron was hot.

4. If It Weren’t For Bad Luck… For the first time in Norm Roberts’s tenure, there was palpable excitement around the St. John’s program. A number of upperclassmen who performed well in the absence of injured team leader Anthony Mason, Jr. were being joined by a stellar recruiting class. Also, Mason was returning, having been granted a medical redshirt. The future was brighter than at any time since Roberts arrived in Queens. Now, Mason has injured his hamstring and will be out for a considerable amount of time. Without that versatile forward’s offense and experience, there’s no way St. John’s reaches its goal of making the NCAA Tournament. Some programs are simply snakebitten.

5. Macon The Best Of A Bad Situation. Binghamton, one of the more intriguing stories of the ‘08-’09 season, is burning to the ground. Player arrests, dismissals, and recruiting violations have led the school to put coach Kevn Broadus on a leave most sane people assume will be made permanent. Since Nancy Zimpher, The Hillary Clinton Of College Adminstrators, is running the SUNY system, most people would assume I hope Binghamton continues to embarrass itself. While anything that make Numbskull Nancy’s life miserable brings a smile to my face, I hope the program rises from the ashes and competes well in the America East this season. Why? Former Temple star and all time Trap favorite Mark Macon has been made the interim coach. Macon is a solid coach and a fantastic role model for his players. He’s the kind of man the college game needs more of sitting in the head coach’s office around the nation.

6. And So It Begins… In shocking news, John Calipari and Bruce Pearl are already lobbing verbal grenades at each other. I know, I know it’s troubling. The next thing you know, there will be friction between Egypt and Isreal and President Obama and Fox News. If Cal and America’s Favorite Bodypainting Coach can’t play nice, is there any hope for peace in our time? In all seriousness, this is great for the SEC. For years, the Big East, Big Ten, and the ACC have pretty much monopolized the kind of white hot hatred between coaches that drives rivalries and intices people to tune in on television. That has changed just in time for the new ESPN package to capitalize on the animus. It will not be dull.

Until next week, stay classy, Volnation.