Most of our Big Ten blogging brethren are devoting all their attention to that sport with the oblong ball these days, but there have been a few interesting basketball-related posts:
Black Heart Gold Pants posted a nice rundown of Iowa’s basketball roster for next season. My take after reading the post: Iowa will have players who are (1) less experienced but (2) a better fit for Lickliter’s system.
The Chris West Basketball Journal has taken a look at what’s become of the 2003 McDonald’s All-Americans five years down the road. The exercise was conducted to see how Brian Butch has fared compared to his high school all-American colleagues (summary: worse than LeBron James, better than Ndudi Ebi). Two Spartan recruits are on the list: Shannon Brown (whom Mr. West ranks 13th most successful out of 24 players) and Brandon Cotton (who was only briefly a Spartan and is still holding out hopes of playing in the NBA). Interesting that a lot of guys in the bottom half of the list went pro early only to end up playing in Europe or the NBDL; would they have been better off if they didn’t enter college with the hype of being a McDonald’s All-American?
MGoBlog asks a question that we all want the answer to: “Why does Drew Sharp still have a job?“
One final pre-draft Drew Neitzel link: He worked out for the Trail Blazers on Tuesday. That’s at least five workouts for NBA teams, which seems like a decent number (I don’t normally follow this stuff very closely). But I’d still guess his odds of getting drafted tomorrow night are less than 50%.
