Thank Yous and Turkeys: Feasting on Best and Worst of College Basketball

November 27th, 2014 - 12:07

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-gobble up:

THANK YOUS

  • Cheers to Grant clan headed by former Oklahoma All-American Harvey Grant. He and his sons could bypass the Barrys and Waltons as First Family of Hoops.

  • Cheers to vanishing breed Caucasian mid-major players (guards from BYU, Gonzaga and Wichita State) who have realistic shots at earning All-American acclaim this season if A-A voters are paying attention.

  • Cheers to Denzel Valentine (Michigan State) and Tyler Haws (Brigham Young) as they carry the torch for their respective fathers at the same school dear old dad attended.

  • Cheers to this season's crop of entertaining freshmen although they pale in comparison to the depth exhibited by gifted group in 1979-80.

  • Cheers to ex-college hoopsters Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham, who dominate as NFL tight ends even after fellow G-Man Tony Gonzalez retired, and set the stage at that rugged position for fellow ex-hoopsters Jordan Cameron and Julius Thomas.

  • Cheers to Canada, which should provide a north-of-the-border All-American for the fourth consecutive campaign.

  • Cheers to the Big East Conference, which appears to be undergoing a prompt renaissance after losing prominent members to supposedly superior leagues.

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

  • Cheers to "old-school" 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 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 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 mega-leagues could be delusional because they're vying for television revenue that might not exist as network sports divisions operate at ample deficits.

  • Jeers to the striking number of power conference members who've provided a long list of players on their rosters participating in an authentic "War on Women."

  • Jeers to recruiting services incapable of discerning that Creighton's Doug McDermott, last year's unanimous national player of the year, 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 several decades 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 to regal recruits even before encouraging them to take lame courses in college to keep the team GPA out of danger zone. 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 contrived classes such as Afro Studies at North Carolina 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 rejecting a charity hospital ad promoting Jesus while giving forums to individuals who either lie to NCAA investigators as a head coach, lose new coaching job due to drunkenness, become a recruiting guru for the network after shady dealings at the highest level, practice reprehensible race-baiting with the intellectually-bankrupt "Uncle Tom" bomb (Jalen Rose) or spew spin like lunatic liberal propagandist LZ Granderson.