Rutgers

NYC Metro Ranking & Report: Season Preview

Raphielle Johnson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:33:14 -0500

Raphielle Johnson's Metro preview & weekly Metro rankings & updates are a staple of fans in NYC's tri-state region. To get things going, here is Raphielle's 23 team NYC Metro preseason ranking and all-Metro teams. Individual team previews will up shortly!

Preseason Metro Ranking

*CHN Top 144 previews by Joel Welser. All other Metro previews by Raphielle Johnson.

Preseason Metro Honors

It's time to project some honors in the metropolitan area, which will not be lacking on the perimeter this season. No matter where you turn there seems to be a quality perimeter player on the horizon with the ability to lead their team to a successful season. And given the overall lack of big men, that's a good thing. No players from teams in the poll were selected as their conference's preseason player of the year, but a few did receive preseason honors and could very well lift up that hardware come March. Here are the first-, second-, third- and all-rookie teams for the 2008-09 season.

First Team (Player of the Year in italics)

G Eugene Harvey (Seton Hall)

G Charles Jenkins (Hofstra)

F Anthony Mason Jr. (St. John's)

F Ryan Thompson (Rider)

C Hamady N'Diaye (Rutgers)

Second Team

G Antoine Pearson (Manhattan)

G Jeremy Hazell (Seton Hall)

G Jonathan Han (Fairfield)

F Justin Burrell (St. John's)

F Ross Morin (Yale)

Third Team

G Harris Mansell (Rider)

G Patrick Foley (Columbia)

G Jaytornah Wisseh (Long Island)

F Devon Austin (Manhattan)

F Gary Springer (Iona)

All-Rookie Team (Rookie of the Year in italics)

G Mike Rosario (Rutgers)

G Jordan Theodore (Seton Hall)

G Jiovanny Fontan (Fordham)

F Greg Echinique (Rutgers)

F Miklos Szabo (Hofstra)

Big East Coach Ranking: Sweet Sixteen

Dan Daitchman — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:17:50 -0500

The 2008-09 Big East season should bring as much excitement as any. Commonly regarded as the toughest conference in college basketball, it has the potential to put 9+ teams into the NCAA tournament come March.

At the backbone of a great team comes a great coach, and the Big East has plenty of great coaches. But which coaches are the best? Let's just say that a well-padded résumé is not enough to give a coach top honors in this conference.

1. John Thompson III (Georgetown) - Like father like son, JT III has brought Georgetown back to national attention. His teams display great hustle regardless of score, and perennially sport a top-5 defense. The other mark of a great coach? Winning close games. Last year, Georgetown won six Big East games by 3 points or less.

2. Jim Calhoun (UConn) - Truly one of the elite coaches in college basketball. He's got the hardware to support his hall-of-fame status, and puts impact players in the NBA (See the careers of Ray Allen, Ben Gordon, and Emeka Okafor for further details).

3. Jim Boeheim (Syracuse) - When your signature is a decal of the court you coach on, you know you've done well. Nobody runs a better 2-3 zone defense than Jim Boeheim. He recruits great talent and has never missed the NCAA tournament 3 years in a row.

4. Rick Pitino (Louisville) - Not enough can be said about the Godfather. He's the only coach to take 3 teams to the Final Four. His squad always plays well as a team, and nobody mixes zone and man-to-man defense better then the Cardinals.

5. Bob Huggins (West Virginia) - Regardless of his off-the-court antics, this guy can flat out coach. He brought the 21^st century version of phi slamma jamma to Cincinnati, a perennial top-15 team. He gave K-State a great run at the NCAA tourney in his short term there, and left a full cupboard of talent in Michael Beasley and Bill Walker. Huggins silenced a lot of critics last year when the 7^th-seed Mountaineers knocked off 2^nd-seed Duke to reach the Sweet 16.

6. Jamie Dixon (Pitt) - Pitt has become a familiar name in the NCAA tournament thanks to this guy. He's moved up a rung in the recruiting latter by getting big-time local talent in Dejuan Blair, who grew up a mile from the Petersen Events Center. Dixon is an Elite-8 away from becoming a premier coach in college basketball.

7. Jay Wright (Villanova) - He's the classiest coach in basketball. He's brought Villanova back to playing their best basketball since the '85 championship. Some of the best guards in the country have stopped through Philadelphia as of late. The future holds similar high hopes, as Villanova's 2009 class is ranked in the top 5 by Scouts Inc.

8. Mike Brey (Notre Dame) - As Dick Vitale once said, nobody fits a program better than Mike Brey at Notre Dame. He's created a very balanced attack that will continue to give a lot of teams fits this year.

9. Keno Davis (Providence) - Out with the old, in with the new. Davis led the Drake Bulldogs on a magical run to the NCAA tournament last year and was a buzzer-beater away from making the second round. Keno inherits a program full of disappointment from last year and hopes to turn things around.

10. Mick Cronin (Cincinnati) - Cincy hasn't been the same since Huggins left, but Cronin has been steadily building his alma mater into a contender once again.

11. Jerry Wainwright (DePaul) - One quality about all of Wainwright's teams: they play tough. The Blue Demons have knocked off a ranked team each year for the past three years.

12. Buzz Williams (Marquette) - Buzz hasn't had much time as head coach yet, and will try to remove the sour taste Tom Crean left in fans' mouths. One thing is true: he's a great recruiter. Three of his recruiting classes in the last 8 years have been in the top 50, all at mid-major or high-major schools. He helped Texas A&M in becoming a top-tier program, and his 2009 class for Marquette is ranked 5^th by Scouts Inc.

13. Stan Heath (South Florida) - Football gets more hype than basketball these days in Tampa, but Heath's Bulls have shown they're a sleeper team. Last year featured wins over Syracuse and Florida State, and a 1-point loss in overtime to 17^th-ranked UConn.

14. Fred Hill (Rutgers) - Hill has done nothing but lose games since he's shown up in New Brunswick, but he's brought in two top-tier recruits in Mike Rosario and Gregory Echenique, who he hopes will help the Scarlet Knights climb out of last place.

15. Norm Roberts (St. John's) - This is not Lou Carnesecca's Redmen of the 80s. Norm needs to quickly rebuild a team that's in danger of losing court time at Madison Square Garden.

16. Bobby Gonzalez (Seton Hall) - This is a team that's won 3 Big East road games in the last 2 seasons. That won't cut it anywhere, especially in the toughest conference in college basketball.

College Basketball: Coaches on the Hot Seat

Rob Carpentier — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:20:34 -0500

It’s that time of year again; that’s right everyone, its time to look at the coaches on the proverbial “hot seat” in major college basketball. This seems to be a bigger topic as each year rolls around and the build-up to this coming season is no different. There are several degrees of “hot” when discussing which coaches are actually in danger of losing their job. The reasons for being on the “hot seat” vary, from recruiting to alienating alumni to, of course, simply not winning enough. Even the question of winning “enough” has varying answers depending on the school that a particular coach is at.

Because this is a fluid concept, the “hot seat” will be broken down into three categories; hot, hotter and inferno. Coaches in one of the categories can easily move to another category or off this list altogether, depending on what transpires before New Year’s Day and the coming of conference games. Finally, this list is restricted to coaches from the traditional BCS conferences.

WARMING UP: Bobby Gonzalez (Seton Hall), Leonard Hamilton (FSU), Norm Roberts (St. John's), Jerry Wainwright (DePaul), Gary Williams (Maryland)

THE HOT LIST:

Johnnie Dawkins, Stanford: I know that Dawkins is in the first year of his contract, but the Cardinal are going to be one of the bottom feeders in the Pac-10 this season, and the Pac-10 will be down. Where Dawkins may run into early trouble is that it appears that it’s only going to get worse. Recruiting, considered a priority in the wake of losing the Lopez twins, has been abysmal. In fact the one solid recruit that Dawkins was supposed to count on, post Miles Plumlee, reneged on his commitment and is now headed to Dawkins’ old employer and school, Duke.

Bruce Weber, Illinois: Fans have come to expect big things for the Illini and, outside of the run to the NCAA title game (with Bill Self's players), Weber hasn’t delivered the kind of consistent excellence that many of the Illini fans crave. The past two seasons haven’t been great and this season should find the Illini in the middle of the Big 10 pack again. Weber needs to find a way to get sophomore Alex Legion to play to his potential. If that happens, Weber should be off this list. If not, he could find the flames getting much higher fairly quickly in spite of some big names headed to campus.. next year.

THE HOTTER LIST

Dennis Felton, Georgia: First off, Coach Felton runs his program the right way. There’s accountability and expectations and the kids are student-athletes. The trouble for Felton is that wins and losses are what count when it comes to keeping your job. In five years at Georgia, Felton has been to exactly 2 NIT’s, winning one game in the process, and, until last year’s improbable run through the SEC Tournament, he hadn’t been to the NCAA Tournament. That run saved Felton’s job, and if the Bulldogs play .500 or below ball again this season then Felton will be polishing his resume.

Fred Hill, Rutgers: Hill is a very good recruiter, but so far it hasn’t paid off as much as he’d like. The Scarlet Knights have been mired in the bottom of the Big East since Hill’s predecessor, Gary Waters, was the coach. Hill has gotten the team to look better on paper, but teams don’t fear the RAC like they used to. Hill is putting a lot of stock in two sophomore guards and a pair of big-name freshmen recruits, but he keeps missing out on the difference-making uber-recruit that could put Rutgers over the top. Hill and the Scarlet Knights have to show improvement because his situation hasn’t been made any easier by Jersey fans that are getting antsy because of the failures of the Rutgers football team this fall. In short, if Hill’s season is anything like last season, Rutgers will change coaches yet again.

Frank Martin, Kansas State: Martin put KSU back on the basketball map, and winning an NCAA Tourney game certainly helped, but now Martin doesn’t have Bill Walker or Michael Beasley around. The word on Martin is that he is a fantastic recruiter but a very mediocre X’s and O’s guy. This year he’ll need the latter to be much better. The tipping point is that Martin seemingly comes with a lot of baggage. As a result, Kansas State, which doesn’t have a squeaky clean reputation to begin with, may want to jettison the Martin experiment sooner rather than later as the Wildcats’ fortunes go south this winter.

THE INFERNO LIST

Sidney Lowe, North Carolina State: It doesn’t matter that Lowe is a legacy off of Jimmy V’s lone title team, he will be gone if this team doesn’t do well in the ACC and make the NCAA Tournament. After starting out creating some reasonable expectations after his first season, Lowe looked completely in over his head last season as the Wolfpack completely imploded both physically and emotionally on the court. NC State has some talent, but because of its Tobacco Road locale, Lowe doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt when his team appears to about to be overtaken by Wake Forest as the #3 team in North Carolina. State fans, alumni and administrators won’t stand for that.

Ernie Kent, Oregon: Kent has been on the proverbial Hot Seat for so long now that his "behind" is probably extra crispy. His perceived downfall at Oregon is because of a slew of questionable game decisions, the feeling that his teams never meet the expectations commiserate with the talent on hand and he is perceived as being poor with the press. There are also some personal issues puportedly hanging or were hanging over his head. Kent has been able to survive because of his ability, or his teams' ability to get to the Big Dance the past two years. However, there is a HUGE perception that both teams, even his Elite 8 team in 2007, underachieved. Those teams had players like Malik Hairston, Bryce Taylor and Maarty Leunen. Those three are now gone and there really isn't any comparable talent to take their places. In some circles there is the belief that the Oregon athletic administration is just waiting for a wins/losses reason to fire Kent. That very well may happen this year.