College Hoops Mailbag: Questions about the Sweet 16 and Coaching Changes

This is one of the weirdest weeks of the season for college basketball. You’re coming down from the high of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament as everyone writes about the same shit on Monday and Tuesday. Today is usually the slowest day of the year, unless some sort of breaking news happens and we haven’t really had that yet. The most surprising thing that’s been announced today is perhaps the decision by Eric Musselman to stay at Nevada and not take the Cal job.

So decided to take a couple questions regarding the Sweet 16, coaching hires and decisions to either stay in school another year or declare for the Draft. Personally, I try to avoid guessing as to why someone stays in school or goes, simply because I don’t care about someone else’s academic/professional decision. I think too many get caught up in judging a borderline talent for going instead of staying in college. Quite honestly, the development of the D-League has made it easier for those guys to go. You get paid to develop your game against better talent and within the system of the team that drafted you. Just look at Diamond Stone, he’s a perfect example of that.

There are a couple things of coming into play here. First, they are a west coast team. Most people just don’t stay up to watch a lot of west coast games as the typical start time is 10pm Eastern. After that, all you heard about Oregon (if you’re a casual fan) is they lost Chris Boucher to a torn ACL. Perhaps you saw them lose to Arizona in the Pac-12 title game and immediately canceled them out. Now, when looking at them after the URI game, you can see where a team can frustrate them. URI attacked the rim and challenged Oregon to defend them there. This is still an insanely good team and the second best team left in the Midwest region. Oregon does need more consistent play from Dylan Ennis. He’s seen plenty of big games and he’s the type of guy that can get hot enough to take some pressure off Tyler Dorsey and Dillon Brooks.

I absolutely love the move by UMass to go get Pat Kelsey. Honestly, I didn’t think they’d be able to get him as I thought he may get one of the better jobs. You have a guy who coached under Skip Prosser and Chris Mack and plays a style that fans and players want to see. In terms of recruiting though? He’s perfectly fine recruiting in the northeast. He’s recruited in the New England prep league before. On top of that he does have ties to Ohio still as we saw four players on the most recent Winthrop team from Ohio including star point guard Keon Johnson. Don’t worry about his recruiting. He can pitch to recruits that he helped develop Ish Smith, Jeff Teague and Al-Farouq Aminu. He also can just use his style of play, especially for guards. Winthrop played a very uptempo game and shot a lot of threes. That’s what guards want to do now. Again, I think this an unbelievable hire and UMass fans should be incredibly happy.

Jalen Brunson is an intriguing prospect. He’s a dynamite scorer and has been since his high school days. Once he gets going downhill he finishes at the rim and in the paint very well. He knows how to use his pivot foot to create space and while he can look dead in the water, ends up with a layup. I absolutely love his game. But, for an NBA standpoint. I don’t know if he’s quick enough to play there. He can struggle defending quicker guards. Also, you have to look at how deep the point guard depth is in this year’s draft. I mean he’s going to be behind the likes of Fultz, Smith, Ball, Fox, Evans, Ntilikina, Morris, Graham, among some others. So right off the bat, he’s at best a late second round pick, which even then could be a stretch. You’ll see him test the waters, not hire an agent and come back to school.

A couple questions here from Max. We’ll start with Gonzaga. Can they win it all? Absolutely. They are the second most complete team in the country. If Jonathan Williams is able to take advantage of a mismatch and not look like he did in the 1h against South Dakota State, they are incredibly tough to beat. Throw in the fact they have a top-10 point guard in Nigel Williams-Goss, a bunch of good shooters, NBA talent in Zach Collins and a really good post player in Karnowski. What’s not to love? They have the best defense in the country per KenPom and get to stay out West against West Virginia. Yes, people should not be doubting this team still.

Can Baylor make the Final Four? Again, yes. Remember this was a team that was a No. 1 seed for half the season. They’ve beaten a bunch of good teams and they have what’s now considered probably the weakest bracket when you look at who is left. Yes, South Carolina has one of the most impressive wins of this thing in how they beat Duke, but they also were 2-5 heading into the NCAA Tournament. Which team shows up? Back to Baylor though, they have a ton of size in Motley and Lual-Acuil, which they can just kill you on the boards and in that 1-1-3 zone they like to run. The guy to watch though for me is Manu Lecomte – the transfer guard from Miami. He provides some outside shooting and more importantly is healthy after missing some games towards the end of the season.

Finally, can Purdue beat Kansas? I’m going to go more in depth with this during the preview, but these are both bad matchups for each other. What kills Kansas is a post guy that can score. Purdue obviously has that in Caleb Swanigan. What Purdue doesn’t have though is the ability to guard the four-out lineup that Kansas can run, especially if Painter wants to run Haas and Swanigan. If Purdue goes with that big lineup, Swanigan has to guard either Svi or Jackson out on the wing, which is arguably his biggest weakness. But, if Purdue gets Landen Lucas in foul trouble, Kansas is immediately in huge trouble. They don’t have the bodies on the interior to match Purdue. The question is who picks up that cheap early foul first? Lucas or Swanigan? I think this will be a close game with Kansas ultimately winning, but it wouldn’t shock me if Purdue does pull off the upset just because of the mismatch inside.