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RETHINKING REBOUNDERS

Thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts..

- Most people find this hard to believe.. but I don't really read ESPN.com's basketball coverage (or any other site's for that matter). Honestly, I rarely pay attention to what goes on over there unless a reader or a message board poster highlights something. Apparently they set up a Mock Selection Committee, which I only heard about after reading an email from a reader by the name of Travis Klein. Looks like a cute endeavor on ESPN's part.. but what's really the point of this? To highlight what we already know about the process.. that's its completely subjective, arbitrary, and biased? If that's the point, then I guess they succeeded. What's really odd about the whole thing is how it took into account some ridiculous occurrences like Memphis losing the CUSA and Evansville winning the MVC? Did they just roll a dice or throw darts? And why did only Mid-Major powers lose in their mock up (Butler, Memphis, SIU/Creighton) all fell? Hell, lets make believe Rutgers wins the Big East tournament! I guess even this "shake-up" biased towards the power-conferences.. apparently only mediocre mid-majors win their conference tournaments.. but mediocre power conferences teams (ie, Syracuse last year..) never make such runs.

Air Force at SDSU, UNC at Duke, WKU at South Alabama, and Holy Cross at Bucknell.

Morris Almond (Rice ) 27.4 ppg

Jaycee Caroll (Utah State) 20.8

Kevin Durant (Texas) 24.4

Trey Johnson (Jackson St) 29.3

Chris Lofton (Tennessee) 21.5

Bo McCalebb (New Orleans) 26.1

Gary Neal (Towson) 25.9

Loren Stokes (Hofstra) 21.3

Rodney Stuckey (EWU) 24.0

Alando Tucker (Wisconsin) 19.2

Can someone make sense of Marquette for me? They beat Duke and got bumped to #9 in the AP Poll.. but they want down to the wire in games against Idaho State and Valparaiso.. not to mention struggling (down at the half) against DII Hillsdale. I know "a win is a win", but eventually these poor efforts will turn into losses.

John Thompson III gets more pub because he shares his name with daddy.. but his brother Ronny is also a head coach at Ball State. The two met yesterday in DC and no surprise the Hoyas rolled to a 69-54 victory.

It took two overtimes for a home Big East team to dispatch with Stetson yesterday. Granted, it was at South Florida.. but Big East teams shouldn't struggle against bottom tier Atlantic Sun teams that plays 9 freshmen & sophomores and just one upperclassman. The way things are going, USF and Rutgers might be battling hard for the Big East basement.