She’s a Beauty

Sorry folks. Life is life, and it rolls along. Embrace that fact and we’ll all get along much better. I’ll get some additional updates going this weekend, when I have some time. Golf season has ended with another bagel in my personal “Holes in One, Career” stat line. But I press on…

I’m going to pop by a VCU scrimmage this weekend to see how the Actually Running Rams look in their new system. I’m seeing what I can do to get to Charlotte for Hofstra’s opener against Ex-Moss’s.

I tell you, I’m going to have to rethink this hatred of all things recruiting position of mine. It puts me at a huge disadvantage with this blog.

***

Once again, I have been pummeled for an intelligent position that Homers can’t see through. So I’ll say it plainly: Arnaud Dahi is not the player he was last February. I don’t care if he looked good in five minutes of a scrimmage. And I don’t care if your brother’s friend’s aunt’s cousin knows the sister of John Morris’ mother-in-law and she said Dahi is 100 percent.

He’s not.

There’s “good pain,” which Dahi has experienced as part of the natural healing process. And sure, Dahi may have logged five good minutes and made two good moves. How do you think he felt that night?

Five minutes against his own teammates that know he’s slowed is not 27 minutes against UNCW. I’m not saying he won’t be his old self come February, but I’m warning you: don’t put expectations on the kid that are unrealistic. It’s unfair and you will be disappointed.

Look, it’s Friday, 53 degrees, and raining. Deal with it.

***

I think we’re all rooting for George Mason into January, right? Nobody really wants that team or especially this conference to become The Tubes. The Patriots just can’t go into Cameron with a “2″ in the loss column. Or, let me put it this way, so I can inject a bit of sunshine into this thing…they can’t leave Cameron with a “3″ in the loss column.

We all need it, for legitimacy sake. The reason it is doubly important is that this league won’t be any different than last year. Teams are gonig to beat up on each other without mercy. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say this year will be worse: Towson is better, Georgia State is better, and JMU isn’t as bad. I think you’re going to see some 2-7 team beat a 7-2 team.

So if we’re all beating up on each other, there needs to be a Lech Walesa working throughout the nonconference season.

***

I’m still loving Media Day. Part of the reason is the complete and total wonder in which everyone–fans, coaches, local media, administrators, conference pooh-bahs–are approaching the year. How are we going to be received and treated? The national media is there now, but for how long? For how much? At what point do the wins and losses start impacting newspaper coverage and ESPN highlights?

These are the things I like to watch play out.

***

Side note: it should not be lost that with all the grief Tom Yeager has received over the years, both he and Ron Bertovich deserve a slap on the back. They turned last season into more than 75 teevee games while at the same time refusing to rest on the laurels of last year. They know.

***

Speaking of Wild Cards:

1. ODU
2. VCU
3. UNCW
4. Towson

Just think about the impact these teams can have on the standings. Now think about how much you really don’t know.

***

The early start to the season is killing the coaches; to a man. We’re about two weeks from the official stat of the season and one week from intrasquad scrims.

Coaches hate; we love it.

Time to roll.

Buzz, Buzz, Buzz

CAA Media Day, and a completely different feel from last year. There are too many other outlets that can give you the coaches quotes. I think we all know how those go at these kinds of events. Think Nuke Laloosh on the hardwood.

Let’s talk about the event and the high points. Oh, and I’ll get you more later. I just got back and have a pile to do.

I summed it up to Blaine Taylor, when I finally got a chance to sit down with him, that last year I was able to talk to whomever I wanted to. This year, I talked to whomever I could.

And there were a lot of people. I’d say five times the number of folks were on hand, including a couple of USA Today reporters and John Feinstein. The buzz in the room was exponentially greater.

As you might imagine, Jim Larranaga held court. Mason PR foof Richard Coco had to give up on the one-on-one interviews and gave in to a group session.

Tom Pecora mentioned Andy Katz is going to spend some time with the team and hang out at practice this evening.

I finally met Washington Post scribe and new bogger Dan Steinberg. You Mason guys cut him some slack. Good guy and he gets it. Helluva good haircut, too.

I was told Gary Neal scored 45 points in a scrimmage. Hoo-boy, he is going to be fun.

For once, the media did a good job picking preseason All CAA teams. Loren Stokes is preseason POY. The only glaring omission in my mind is Drew Williamson. He won’t get the big pub, ever, but he is one of the top five guys I take if I’m drafting a team of CAA players. Anyway, my thought is that he should replace his teammate Arnaud Dahi on the second team. I just can’t see voting a guy to the all conference team who just had ACL surgery. And I don’t care what people say, Dahi has a ways to go.

Crazy

I really think this is a bad idea, but I must. Customer service and all.

I’ll have access to all the coaches and CAA pooh-bahs next week at CAA Media Day.

What do you want to know?

You know my email.

And don’t be an idiot. Everybody likes to be funny. But you need to be smart enough to understand what I am asking you. If not, you don’t need to be reading this blog.

Start Me Up

Today has become more symbolic than anything else. What was once a classic Lefty Driessel move (”I can start practice on October 15, so we’ll be on the court at 12:01am…”) morphed into a concept called Midnight Madness as other schools jumped on the bandwagon and turned it into an event.

Then Dick Vitale drilled a half court shot to win a kid at Cincinnati tuition.

Eventually the NCAA became involved, which is precisely when a fun event jumped the shark. At some point the pecksniffs that run that organization decided that with all the corruption in college sports, it was essentail to mandate that practice could begin on the Friday evening at 7:00 before October 15.

Suddenly, October 15 was merely a symbol, no more important than the Friday after Thanksgiving being the start of Christmas shopping season.

But hey, don’t let my pessimism stop you. Mason is on teevee, and undoubtedly Your Team is holding some type of event.

So go, have fun.

As for me, I’ll crack open some Stella, prepare for the Bon Air Elementary Village Fair, peruse the music lineup for the Folk Festival, and wait until November 15. I leave for St. Thomas that day.

Enjoy!

So Close, Yet So Far Away

It’s been slow, I know. Recruiting has been a hot topic, but that’s not my bag of tricks. I’ve also been less involved in CAA basketball for a very good reason.

Now, I’m not much of a teevee guy. I have my staples—the local news, an occasional Law & Order repeat, and My Name is Earl. Otherwise, I stay close to Barnes & Noble and John Coltrane. But I was given a gift a few weeks ago, and I want to share it with you. A friend dropped off a DVD of the show Arrested Development. In a word, this show is brilliant.

So while you may have been fretting over the number of stars your recruit received from whatever scouting service, I have become engrossed with the Bluth family. Fear not, my friends—it appears no teevee execs are going to pick the show up for this season. It is on life support and that is a shame. They’d rather try the 43rd version of reality teevee—I Look Ridiculous.

And that is why I don’t watch too much teevee, and I will have plenty of time for CAA hoops come November.

***

So here we are, one week from the official start of practice, and I’m in a very funky place.

I’m excited about the start of the season, yet nothing is really starting. It’s a microcosm of the entire Midnight Madness concept. You get all riled up…get to see a scrimmage or dunk contest. Get a free t-shirt even.

But in the end you get to wait another month before anything truly matters.

***

Because I’m also all about having a good time while you are educated–figuring maybe you’ll learn something without realizing you’ve learned something–I indeed held a blind draw for the conference standings. Moreover, I wanted to be fair. Instead of challenging myself to the top seven spots only, I drew a line and held two “drafts.”

Each team name in the top seven was written on a sticky note, folded exactly in half, and shuffled. All seven were put in a desk drawer. I pulled, at random, your top seven:

Hofstra
UNCW
ODU
Mason
Drexel
Towson
VCU

I wasn’t as fair with the botttom five. I really believe Georgia State is a bit better than everyone else in this group, so I gave them two entries. In the Six for the Final Five draw:

JMU
Georgia State
Northeastern
William & Mary
Delaware