Thanksgiving Hoop Recipe: Mixture of Appreciation and Desecration

A Thanksgiving holiday week absolutely should include the time-honored tradition of a smorgasbord mulling over a mixture of heartfelt Thank Yous while chewing on tasteless Turkeys. The list of candidates in college basketball is extensive stemming from issues and individuals your most grateful for and those of dubious distinction. Following is a healthy serving of food-for-thought Thanksgiving tributes and tongue-lashings for hoop observers to gobble up:

THANK YOUS

• Cheers to the striking number of mid-major players who have realistic shots at earning All-American acclaim this season.

• Cheers to Indiana's Cody Zeller, who could join his brother as the 10th set of All-American siblings.

• Cheers to Missouri's Flip Pressey, who could join his father as the ninth set of father-son All-Americans.

• Cheers to ex-college hoopsters Antonio Gates, Tony Gonzalez and Jimmy Graham, the G-Men who dominate as NFL tight ends.

• Cheers to the Pac-12 Conference, which appears to be undergoing a prompt renaissance after struggling just a year ago.

• Cheers to Colorado State's Larry Eustachy, who overcame personal problems and could become the first coach in history to win at least 24 games in a single season with five different DI schools.

• Cheers to standout seniors for not abandoning college hoops early and giving the sport at least some modicum of veteran leadership.

• Cheers to the Ivy League and Patriot League, which seem like the last bastions replete with textbook student-athletes. Five Ivy League institutions - Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard and Yale - can still hold their heads high despite each of them posting all-time losing records. The Ivy League deserves extra kudos for not conducting the money-grubbing gimmick otherwise known as a postseason conference tournament.

• Cheers to pristine playmakers who show again and again that "pass" is not a dirty four-letter word amid the obsession with individualistic one-on-one moves by self-absorbed one-and-done scholars.

• Cheers to model coaches who have their egos in check and carry their personal profiles in school media guides after, not before, the player bios.

• Cheers to upstanding schools having their academic priorities in order although it is getting increasingly difficult not to accept the stereotype that universities need to be one-dimensional sports factories to assemble successful NCAA Division I basketball programs.

• Cheers to Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who has assembled a "mid-major" powerhouse giving every indication it will eventually reach the Final Four.

• Cheers to entertaining little big men (players 5-10 or shorter) who inspire us with their self-confidence and mental toughness in the Land of the Giants.

• Cheers to women's hoops, which has improved immeasurably while the men's game has suffered somewhat from inattention to fundamentals such as competent free-throw shooting. The team-oriented women look for passing angles to teammates "flashing" into the lane while far too many one-dimensional men seek camera angles to trigger a "flashdance" routine. Some of the self-centered men haven't quite comprehended that it isn't platform diving or figure skating they're participating in and you don't secure extra points for degree of difficulty.

• Cheers to junior college players and foreigners who overcome perceptions in some misguided quarters that they are the rogues of recruiting.

• Cheers to Rashawn King, a freshman who overcame cancer to secure clearance to play for North Carolina Central.

• Cheers to the numerous promising first-year coaches assuming control of programs this season. They need to remember the fortitude exhibited by many of the biggest names in coaching who rebounded from embarrassing defeats in their first season as a head coach. An active luminary who lost multiple games to non-Division I colleges in his initial campaign before ascending to stardom as the all-time winningest coach is Duke's Mike Krzyzewski (lost to SUNY-Buffalo, Scranton and King's College in 1975-76 while coaching Army).

TURKEYS

• Jeers to Division I schools in a chaotic restructuring of conferences forsaking tradition although the quest for megaleagues could be delusional because they're vying for television revenue that might not exist as network sports divisions operate at ample deficits.

• Jeers to recruiting services incapable of discerning that Creighton's Doug McDermott should have been a Top 100 recruit coming out of high school in 2010. Ditto to announcers who infect the sport by spreading this virus without ever seeing any of the players enough to properly evaluate them.

• Jeers to marquee coaches who've served up assistants as sacrificial lambs when the heat of an investigation of their program intensifies.

• Jeers to anyone who incessantly castigates the majority of undergraduates declaring early for the NBA draft. Before accepting the party line that many of the players are making monumental mistakes by forgoing their remaining college eligibility, remember that more than half of the NBA's All-Pro selections in the last quarter century or so left college early or never attended a university.

• Jeers to any school for not promptly granting a recruit seeking to enroll elsewhere a release from its letter-of-intent when he wants to attend another institution for legitimate reasons.

• Jeers to "Me Generation" showmen who've failed to comprehend that their respective teams don't benefit on the court from a trash-talking Harlem Globetrotter routine.

• Jeers to self-absorbed players who spend more time getting tattoos and practicing macho dunks than team beneficial free throws. It all hinges on dedication. There is a reason they're supposed to be "free" throws instead of Shaq-like "foul" shots.

• Jeers to high-profile coaches who take off for greener pastures despite having multiple years remaining on their contract or don sweaters and workout gear with a logo of a sneaker manufacturer instead of their school during TV games and interviews. Where is their allegiance?

• Jeers to network analysts when they serve as apologists for the coaching community. When their familiar refrain echoes throughout hoopdom, they become nothing more than the big mouths that bore.

• Jeers to marquee schools forsaking entertaining non-conference games with natural rivals while scheduling a half-dozen or more meaningless "rout-a-matics" at home.

• Jeers to several colleges that hired tainted coaches, showing winning is still more important than dignity at some schools of lower learning. They know who they are!

• Jeers to defrauding coaches who manipulate junior colleges and high schools into giving phony grades. Ditto coaches who steer prize high school prospects to third parties toying with standardized test results.

• Jeers to "fatherly-advice" coaches who don't mandate that any player with pro potential take multiple financial literacy courses. Did they notice in recent years that products from Alabama, Georgia Tech, Georgetown, Kentucky and Syracuse filed for bankruptcy after combining for more than half a billion dollars in salaries over their NBA careers? What kind of classes are taken in college anyway if a staggering 60% of NBA players file for bankruptcy five years after retirement?

• Jeers to overzealous fans who seek to flog freshmen for not living up to their high school press clippings right away. The impatient onlookers need to get a grip on themselves.

• Jeers to the excessive number of small schools thinking they can compete at the Division I level. There are far too many examples of dreamy-eyed small schools that believe competing with the big boys will get them national recognition, make big bucks from the NCAA Tournament and put the institutions on the map. They don't know how unrealistic that goal is until most of the hyphenated and directional schools barnstorm the country during their non-conference schedules in college basketball versions of Bataan Death Marches.

• Jeers to ESPN for giving forums to individuals who either lie to NCAA investigators as a coach or practice reprehensible race-baiting with the intellectually-bankrupt "Uncle Tom" bomb.