Barstool College Hoops Notebook: Purdue as Team USA, Tragedy at Ball State, Oklahoma Forward Suspended

Basketball is starting to become a year round thing at all levels. We are seeing late recruits, transfers and changes to the game during the summer leading into preseason. My goal is to keep everyone updated with what’s going on across the landscape of college hoops. Consider this a cheat sheet, because God knows we all used one at some point in college. If there’s something specific you want to see or change in these notebooks, let me know on Twitter @barstoolreags. 

Purdue wins Pool C at World University Games

Every two years the World University Games is played and for the last few years Team USA has taken an individual team as a representative. Last time it was Kansas (along with SMU’s Nic Moore) who brought home the gold for the USA. This year Purdue is representing Team USA in Taipei and they are off to a 4-0 start after beating Romania 116-62 this morning. They’ve used a predominately one big lineup with Isaac Haas and surrounding him with some combo of Carsen Edwards, Vince Edwards, Dakota Mathias, PJ Thompson and Ryan Cline. It will be a different look for Purdue this year as they should go with just one big, opposite of what they’ve done the last two years when they had Haas, Swanigan and AJ Hammons, although we saw Painter finally start to sit Haas more last year and let Swanigan operate as the lone big. The positive so far is Purdue is still shooting the ball extremely well from the 3-point line as they’ve made roughly 50% of their shots from behind the arc. That will be one of the main keys as they head into the season as a fringe top-25 team and a team trying to compete for the second spot in the Big 10. Haas needs to stay out of foul trouble so he can draw attention in the paint offensively and be able to kick out to one of the shooters. Following a game against Estonia tomorrow, Purdue will play in the quarterfinals of the UWG on Sunday.

SMU hires father of 5-star: 

People will make a big deal of this but in no way is this the first or last time we’ll see something along these lines happen. It’s a way to secure the commitment. We saw Ben Simmons going to LSU because of a similar reason. Michael Porter and Jontay Porter go to Missouri for this. This time it’s SMU who hired Tyrone Maxey, the father of Tyrese Maxey a top-25 player in the class of 2015. Now, it’s not like Tyrone doesn’t have a background in coaching or anything like that, his resume makes this a reasonable hire. Tyrone has been a high school coach for over 20 years and played at Washington State. The NCAA has tried to put an end to this by putting a two-year moratorium on the related recruit. With Tyrese being in the class of 2019 it meets that requirement.

Ball State forward Zach Hollywood was found dead in an apartment: 

Absolute tragedy for Ball State as Zach Hollywood, a redshirt freshman, was found dead in his campus apartment earlier this week. It was ruled a suicide and comes just about a year after his mother passed away. His last tweet is pretty haunting to read looking back at it now:

Nothing but thoughts and prayers for his family and Ball State.

Oklahoma suspends Kristian Doolittle for first semester: 

Oklahoma is expected to make a jump back to relevance this season after struggling last year. Part of that is due to bringing in a guy like Trae Young, but also because of the group they return being a year older. One of those guys who was expected to play a role in this was Kristian Doolittle, a sophomore forward. He’s going to miss the first semester due to academic reasons and not meeting academic standards. Doolittle started 25 games as a freshman, averaging over 9 points a game for the Sooners. It will be interesting to see how the Sooners handle this with a nonconference schedule that includes the PK 80 Classic, USC, Wichita State and Northwestern.

Mitchell Robinson expected to skip playing in college: 

This is absolutely no surprise and the right play after Mitchell Robinson left Western Kentucky. The report is he’ll sit out this year, work out and plan on entering the 2018 NBA Draft, where he could be a lottery pick. With him likely not getting a waiver from the NCAA because he took a couple summer classes to be eligible to play this year his options were limited. It was either go play overseas (although he wouldn’t contribute a ton, but a team would love his buyout for the NBA), go to the G-League (what I think he should do) or just practice with a team like Kansas as a redshirt. If he doesn’t want to leave America, going to the G-League would be beneficial. Yes, he wouldn’t make a ton of money, but he’d get to work out with fringe NBA players, get to know a system and could start working on being a professional. The risk is obviously he gets destroyed in the G-League and falls in the Draft, but there’s a risk here with whatever decision he makes. Either way, I stand by my thought process that these big time recruits shouldn’t be going to smaller schools like Western Kentucky. Stick to the 10-15 blue bloods where you can really help yourself be a professional, which is the goal of these guys. I don’t want to hear about parity or anything like that. If you have the chance to go to the best option to reach your goal, you do that.

More info about the 3v3 for 100k at the Final Four: 

I sat down with Drew Russell, who is one of the two guys who helped create this 3v3 at the Final Four for NCAA seniors exhausting their eligibility to find out more details about the event. This has been in the works for over a year and the plan is to have all 32 conferences represented in this event with a team of 4 players made up by a selection committee of sorts. From there it will be pool play and then a single-elimination tournament to decide the winner. As for the 100k purse, it hasn’t been decided yet if they’ll do a winner-take-all, ration it out based on wins or what. You can listen to me talk with him about the event here (starting at the 56 minute mark, following an interview with KenPom):