http://www.cracked.com/sports/superbowl/

1/31/2006 10:49:12 PM

http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/insider/columns/story?columnist=bilas_jay&id=2317557

2/3/2006 10:05:54 PM

• There has been a lot of talk about the issue of NCAA violations regarding the number of phone calls coaches make to recruits. Listen, rules are rules, and rules are important, but the restriction of college coaches to one phone call per week to a recruit is counterproductive.

If a coach calls a recruit's home and the kid is not there, that counts as the one call for the week. To limit not just a coach but an entire program to such marginal contact with a recruit restricts the ability of coaches to get to know a kid before committing to him, and limits the kid's ability to get to know the coach and program.

Recruiting has accelerated to where juniors are committing to schools and coaches before the rules allow the coaches to fully get to know and evaluate them. More contact with recruits is not an unfair advantage, and it is not a burden to recruits. College coaches are a good influence on kids, not a negative one. The real problem is that young players are fair game for summer coaches, street agents, runners and others that are out for profit off of the kid with no regulation, and college coaches are essentially prohibited from providing an acceptable outlet and guidance to a young prospect. Why?

A kid is more than capable of screening calls if he does not want to talk, and most kids are incredibly technology-savvy today. They have their Blackberrys, Sidekicks and cell phones working constantly anyway. Plus, the one call a week rule does not level the playing field -- it allows the big shots like North Carolina, Duke, Kentucky and others to maintain their inherent advantage because the rule does not allow smaller schools and lesser-known coaches to outwork their competition.

The NCAA needs to stop overregulating coaches and allow them to be what they are -- good influences on kids and good for the game.

• While we are on the phone call issue, if you believe that too many phone calls is such a sinister offense, think about this: To flag the offending coaches, the NCAA had only to look at the school's phone records and count calls. The relatively few coaches that really intend to skirt the rule use private cell phones or phone cards that cannot be traced.

One program flagged for too many calls responded by stating that it would put in stringent control procedures for phone calls to recruits. To me, the terms "control procedures" sounds like a lot of needless expense and busywork for an unattainable end -- to level a playing field that needs not be leveled, and never can be anyway.

• I have never seen Arizona's Lute Olson look as exasperated as he has this season. Olson is a master at bringing teams along and making them understand how to play the right way; this year's Wildcats team has talent, but does not seem to be a very good listening team.

I cannot help but believe, based upon what I have witnessed and heard, that the influence of the NBA draft has had an effect on Arizona and its players' on-court decisions.

Hassan Adams is an outstanding college player and a good pro prospect, but he still seems intent on proving that he can be a perimeter shooter (which I pointed out in Maui in November) instead of embracing who he is -- a great athlete who can impact the game in transition, on the glass and on the defensive end. Adams can make an open shot, but he is not a shooter, and the NBA is not interested in him as such. The NBA wants his energy, athleticism and production to help a team win, not to show he can shoot jump shots.

• Coaches today are spending more time than ever on late-game situations. It is imperative that a coach prepare his team as best he can to navigate end-of-game scenarios, including whether or not to foul and how to foul in a short-clock situation.

All of this sounds easy in theory, but it is really difficult in practice. Coaches have limited time each week to work with their teams, and there are hundreds of scenarios to deal with. The best way to go about it, in my judgment, is to play out game situations at key times throughout practice. A coach can put a certain time and score on the scoreboard, give each team the foul and timeout situation, and play it out.

After it is over, the coach can then evaluate the situation, and provide the team feedback on what should have been done. That way, the players feel like they have been there before when a similar situation arises in a game. Another great way to educate your team is to go over key late-game situations on tape from other teams' games. That way, the players learn from the mistakes of others without feeling like they are being called out. Late-game situations in basketball may be the most complicated coaching in sports -- much more so than football or baseball, which is often more by the book.

Jay Wright
Chris Livingston/Icon SMI
The four-guard lineup has worked wonders for Jay Wright and Villanova.

• Villanova's Jay Wright is a really fine basketball coach who has done a masterful job with his team this year. It was not Wright's intention to go with a four-guard lineup, but necessity was the mother of this invention. With an apparent season-ending injury to Curtis Sumpter, Wright decided to go small, starting Randy Foye, Allan Ray, Mike Nardi and Kyle Lowry to go along with big man Will Sheridan.

Sumpter still is harboring thoughts about coming back this year, which I think is a mistake. He wants to be a part of this truly special class and team, but rushing back could hurt him and the Wildcats. Sumpter was slated to see noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews, but did not because Andrews recently suffered a heart attack, and there is no timetable for any return.

Wright's four-guard look really only plays together for about 20 minutes per game, but it is a disruptive and difficult lineup to deal with. Lowry may be the most underrated and underappreciated great player in the country. Let me say that again: Lowry is a great player. He changes the game with his athletic slashing ability, and his open-court game. To beat Villanova, you had better have a defender to match his toughness and energy. Lowry may wind up being the best pro of the bunch before he's through.

2/3/2006 10:39:30 PM

• There continues to be too much trash talking going on in the college game, and it needs to stop. If you want to talk, join the debate team. If you want to play ball, shut your yap and play.

Conference offices and officials need to come down on inappropriate player interaction -- hard. There is a difference between real and spontaneous emotion and showboating. We shouldn't have to have a fight in order to address this, but that may be what it will take.

In addition, coaches need to be reined in a bit on the sidelines as well. Everyone tells you that "working officials" is a myth and is overhyped. If that is so, why don't the coaches sit down and coach their teams? If the NCAA really wants to level the playing field, let's have a little more decorum on the bench when interacting with officials. It is sad to say that NBA coaches moan at their officials far less than college coaches yell and scream at theirs.

Lastly, let the officials do their jobs, and use their judgment. The old concept of "advantage/disadvantage" seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird. Officials are the most overcoached performers on the floor. Let them make the right calls and manage the game.

As long as we are speaking about officials, I want to revisit a concept I raised a few years ago, and I am not the first to discuss this. I think that conferences should strongly consider making an official available to the media to answer questions after games. We criticize coaches and players and question every move they make, yet we in the media never -- and I mean never -- question the judgments of officials.

As long as the discussion is reasonable, why can we not discuss the officiating of a game? We all might learn something in the process, and it might take some of the mystery out of officiating. It just might work, and the accountability would make everyone in the process feel better about things. I think that officials would be even more respected as a result of such a policy.

Joe Scott
Sean Meyers/Icon SMI
Scott's struggled so far at Princeton, but expect things to turn around.

• I have received a lot of questions over the past few months regarding the Princeton offense -- what is its background, what are its principles, how is it taught, etc. Instead of boring you to death with some mini-clinic regarding something really complicated, the best layman's explanation I have read on the Princeton offense was by Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl a couple of years ago. It has to be somewhere out there still in cyberspace. Go read it.

I ran into the Princeton team in an airport last week, and the Tigers may be down, but they are not out. Joe Scott is a really good coach and he will bring the Tigers back -- soon. One thing I learned about Princeton last week: its students get to go home for the holidays and they take their final exams when they return from break. Cool idea, but I would have been in a cold sweat all through the holidays if I had to do that.

• I love all of the talk about the NCAA Tournament and who will get in and who will get left out. It can be fun, and all of those number crunchers who put together mock brackets do a great job.

But let's get straight on something: When all of the NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday gurus brag about predicting 64 of the 65 teams that are in the field, what do they really have to brag about? They don't "predict" it until just a few hours before the actual bracket is released, which is like predicting Seattle and Pittsburgh going to the Super Bowl in the fourth quarter of the conference championship games, and they give themselves a pretty healthy pat on the back for doing some very simple math.

First, they get 31 correct out of the gate with the automatic qualifiers. That is like getting 400 points on the SAT for simply signing your name, so those guys really get 33 out of 34 at best. Factor in that at least 28 of those 34 at-large spaces (and that may be a bit conservative) are dead-solid locks that no reasonable person could deny, and you are left with getting five out of six correct, at the most.

It hardly takes Nostradamus to figure out the NCAA Tournament field on Selection Sunday. To really impress, they should all put together a mock bracket three weeks before Selection Sunday and see how they do. Now that would be interesting.

• UConn is, in my judgment, the best team this year, but the Huskies are beatable, just like everyone else. The type of team that can beat UConn is a team that can spread the bigger Huskies out and take them off the bounce. That has been a key in beating Duke over the years, and it is a key in beating UConn this season.

• Ask yourself this question: Do you believe that Northern Iowa, Creighton, Southern Illinois, Wichita State and Wisconsin-Milwaukee are truly among the top 30 teams in the country? It certainly is arguable. Clearly, those teams can beat many of the other teams ranked in the top 30 on a given night. All of those teams are ranked in the top 30 of the NCAA's recently released version of the RPI.

Now, do you think that any of the above teams would be NCAA Tournament teams (as they are now) if they played in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten or SEC? I would say probably not. All of those teams have guards, but very few big guys, and that would take a real toll.

But that is not the reason I ask those questions. I do it to point out that I think the RPI is a flawed and overanalyzed tool. With all of the smart people out there, there has to be a way to value games at the time they are played, without the value of a win or a loss fluctuating throughout the season.

Hey, look at the RPI and consider it, but don't get too wrapped up in it. It is close to meaningless, and is best used as an organizational tool rather than a predictor of how good a team really is. All of the above teams are very good, but you don't need RPI numbers to figure it out. You just have to watch them play.

• Why do people have to denigrate Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in order to praise Kobe Bryant's 81-point game? In order to discuss how great Coach K's run at Duke has been, do we have to say that it is comparable to or better than John Wooden's 10 national championships at UCLA? Do we have to choose between J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison, not just for player of the year, but period?

Why can't we just enjoy the accomplishments and take them for what they are, instead of playing the "glorify or vilify" game? I heard Bob Costas say last year that the media business has no room for nuance because we are too busy either glorifying someone or vilifying someone. I think he is right. I know we live in a "Take Your Pick" and "Fact or Fiction" world, but that doesn't make it right.

Jay Bilas, a college basketball analyst for ESPN, is a regular contributor to Insider.

2/3/2006 10:40:11 PM

i fully support this thread

i post insider stuff when I'm the first to see the request

so why do people lock threads about downloading ROMs and shit in tech talk?

afterall, this is stealing too

2/4/2006 1:45:38 AM

sshh

2/4/2006 3:29:06 AM

how about this article, its about the acc meeting with the officials of the duke-bc game

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=katz_andy#20060125

2/5/2006 1:44:40 AM

i dont' know why i can access this article (i don't have insiders), but, as requested:

Quote :

"ACC meets with BC-Duke refs posted: Friday, February 3, 2006 | Feedback The ACC reviewed a number of calls from the Duke-Boston College game Wednesday night, including the final drive by the Eagles' Tyrese Rice in Duke's 83-81 victory at Conte Forum. ACC coordinator of officials John Clougherty said he spoke with Boston College coach Al Skinner, but he wouldn't say what he said to Skinner regarding whether the correct call was made on Rice's drive with nine seconds remaining. Clougherty declined to comment on whether he also spoke with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. With the Eagles down by three, Rice drove on Duke's Shelden Williams. Contact occurred but no call was made. Skinner thought a foul should have been called. So did Rice. "We looked at that play, replayed it, replayed it," Clougherty said. And? He wouldn't say. "I visited at length with the officials after the game," Clougherty said. And?????? "I tell all of our referees whether we make [the call] or don't make [it], we have to be as accurate as we can be [on those last plays]," Clougherty said. "We don't get another chance after the last play. BC doesn't get another chance after that last play. Whether we blow the whistle or not on that last play, we have to be accurate. Whether it's that game or the Georgia Tech-Virginia Tech game the day before [which was decided on an over-the-back call on the Yellow Jackets, negating a basket], we have to be accurate. That was a game-ending call." Virginia Tech won the game at the other end on Deron Washington's free throw with five-tenths of a second left. "I'm not saying either call was right or wrong, but we have to be right on those calls," Clougherty said. "We don't have time to recover. BC would have gone to the line with a chance to go down by one." Clougherty said he understands why BC was upset over the free-throw situation because of the discrepancy (37 attempts to 13), but he said that reaction is natural when you look at the stat sheet."

2/5/2006 2:18:38 AM