Bob Huggins Stepped In It
One of the greats of the game made the ultimate faux pas.
Tipoff
If you put a microphone in front of someone for long enough, they are bound to say something daft. Even the savviest of posters will eventually fire off a terrible comment on the message boards that serve as the modern-day sports bars (Be honest with yourself, you know you’ve done it, too!). The annual parade of conference media days preceding the upcoming college basketball season produced quite the splat when none other than Bob Huggins, he of 900 career coaching wins, suggested the power conference teams ought to think about following in the footsteps of the football powers by forming their own basketball tournament. After all, according to the logic of Huggins, those other teams can only put a few hundred fans into the stands each night. Yikes, Bob.
We have defended the sanctity of the NCAA basketball tournaments in this newsletter before. Naturally, many writers have done the same in direct response to the comments from Coach Huggins. One of the best responses came from Michael DeCourcy of The Sporting News. As DeCourcy astutely notes, the NCAA tournament concept is a winning formula.
Fans tune in specifically to see the small teams. No, most fans were not aware that Max Abmas of Oral Roberts was “That Dude” before he and his teammates knocked off Ohio State and Florida. On the other hand, as soon as it was clear that Ohio State was in trouble, you can take it to the bank that fans started tuning in en masse. Few things beat the magic of the Cinderella story in March. It’s a shame that the mic was hot when Coach Huggins suggested otherwise.
The Mixtape
The Field of 68 team puts out lots of great content each week. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.
BREAKING NEWS! The Field of 68 is excited to announce a whole new slate of podcasts this season, including a brand new one focused on the UConn Huskies, Top Dogs hosted by none other than Rob Dauster. We’ve also got BEST BETS! featuring the crew from Three Man Weave; Ball is Wife featuring Andrea Hurley and Nicole Kellogg; Bear Down Ballers, an Arizona podcast with A.J. Bramlett; Seat 14 with Tod Lanter, focused on Kentucky; Drive the Lane on Ohio State with Joey Lane and Andrew Zoldan; and Unscripted with Sleepers Media’s Carter Elliott and Greg Waddell discussing all things Michigan State. To see Rob’s interview with UConn head coach Dan Hurley, check out the first episode of Top Dogs.
The Field of 68 continues its rundown of the preseason top 50 team. Each preview includes an interview with the head coach and insiders that follow the team. The countdown continued with #32 Xavier, #31 Belmont, #30 West Virginia, #29 Virginia Tech, #28 Oklahoma State, #27 Virginia, #26 Indiana, #25 UConn, #24 Auburn, #23 Maryland, #22 Florida State, #21 Ohio State, #20 Michigan State, #19 St. Bonaventure, #18 Houston, and #17 Tennessee. You know that Rob Dauster had to sneak UConn into the top 25, right? He started a UConn podcast this year, too! The man is pumped to root for a relevant Huskies squad again (well, at least on the men’s side; the women’s team is more than relevant yet again this year). You can see him go into a full lather on the Big East preview with John Fanta and FS1’s Nick Bahe.
It’s a basketball draft! The first NBA mock drafts have been posted before the season and so Jeff Goodman and Robbie Hummel sit down to draft the best college basketball players. Hummel stymied Goodman by drafting Duke’s Paolo Banchero 1st overall, leaving Goodman with the National Preseason Player of the Year, Drew Timme. Talk about taking the scraps. The winner gets to send his draft insights to Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics front office. See who won the draft:
The Field of 12
The college football season is in high gear and the Field of 12 is on the scene. Here is a brief sample of the new network from the makers of Field of 68.
Four Point Play
Each newsletter throughout the summer, we’ll check in with one of our podcast hosts and see what they’re up to besides producing compelling content for us at The Field of 68.
This week, we checked in with Jahenns Manigat, host of the Welcome to the Jay podcast (Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you access podcasts).
I want to start off by asking about your former team and focus of your podcast, the Creighton Blue Jays. What is Creighton in the world of college basketball? You were a senior when the university moved to the Big East. They are coming off their first Sweet 16 appearance since 1974. Creighton followed that up with putting together a top 10 recruiting class this past offseason. Is Creighton now a basketball power? If so, when did that happen?
It is a basketball powerhouse. Coach (Dana) Altman gets a lot of credit for putting the program on the map. Coach (Greg) McDermott has done a lot to put the program where it is right now. The top 10 recruiting class has the whole town (of Omaha) buzzing. We are more respected nationally than before, but there is a difference between that and being a team that others fear. There is more to do to get there. They lost the top 6 players from last year but brought in a lot of players to fill in that gap.
We have to talk about Coach Greg McDermott for a minute. He caused a significant amount of controversy last season due to comments made to his players that were insensitive at best and hurtful at worst. He was suspended by the university for making the comment following a loss to Xavier about ‘staying on the plantation,’ a phrase that you and many others described as hurtful. You addressed those statements in March, as a former player, mentor, and friend of Coach McDermott. Looking at the new season, do you see that Coach McDermott has done enough to earn the trust of his team entering the season?
It’s a tough question to answer. All of that happened and then Coach McDermott had a lot of conversations since then. Not a lot of people know this, but Doug McDermott and I were roommates for 4 years while we were at Creighton. I was very close with Coach “Mac”. It’s a hard thing to answer. In knowing him for more than a decade, that was the first time I have ever heard something like that coming out of his mouth. If you are speaking in public enough, at some point you are going to stick your foot in the mouth. I’ve been in those locker rooms before. When I read that statement, I knew what the message was but certainly didn’t agree with it. What he said was what he said. He doesn’t have to prove to me that he has done enough. He has to prove it to the people in his locker room. I believe he has done the work because he told me he was going to do his best to mend fences and right what was wrong. The proof is in the pudding for Coach Mac. If he says he is going to do something, he will follow through on it.
Let’s talk about the current team. There are a ton of new faces this year. According to Bart Torvik’s amazing website, Creighton has the 5th fewest returning minutes played by the projected roster in the entire country. How do you see the coaching staff navigating all those new faces and how do you see the Blue Jays performing this year with a young but talented roster?
That is a little of a loaded question. Not only are there new players, but the coaching staff is new as well. It will be a little bit of a work in progress for the coaching staff as well. Offensively, they will certainly be fine. Coach McDermott is sort of an offensive genius. I am super-biased, of course, having played for him. I am in awe of how he puts guys in the right position to succeed. Defensively, all those new faces are going to struggle at first. This is going to be a very young team. Only 4 guys played any minutes last year. This team will take their lumps, especially early in the season. They are ranked 8th in the Big East preseason poll. You can bet Coach McDermott is going to use that as bulletin board material. The team is going to get better and better over the season and definitely finish higher than 8th in the conference. It will be fun to grow with this team, watching them and talking about them on the podcast after every game.
And one!
You are Canadian, right? It must be exciting to see another Canadian point guard, Ryan Nembhard, join the fraternity of Canadian Blue Jays. Winter is approaching and you are currently playing professional basketball in Poland, another cold-weather nation. What is your advice for dealing with long, dark, cold nights to ensure you are able to get hot when you step into the gym?
I don’t know if there is any advice. Get in there early and get yourself warmed up before everyone else. Growing up in Canada, it’s very different up there. You have to get in there early, do the dynamic warm-ups, get your mind right. Actually, I was the first Canadian to play at Creighton and now Ryan Nembhard is the second. We all saw what Ryan’s older brother, Andrew, did at Gonzaga in the NCAA tournament next season. I’m going to be rooting harder for Ryan just because he comes from where I come from.
Stay tuned for upcoming episodes of the Welcome to the Jay podcast with Jahenns Manigat. Upcoming guests include former Blue Jay Maurice Watson, Jr., a current teammate of Manigat’s in Poland. Coach Greg McDermott will also join the podcast to discuss how he became the head coach, favorite moments during his tenure, and what he expects for the upcoming season.
Around the Rim
This section highlights some of the best writing on college basketball to hit the web. Consider these your extra credit assignments for fall semester.
It happens every year. Last year, no one saw Virginia Tech emerging as a legit contender in the ACC. A couple of years ago, Obi Toppin and the Dayton Flyers burst onto the scene. There are teams that everyone ignores heading into the college basketball season. Brian Rauf is wide awake. If you want to sound smart to your friends, read up on why these 5 teams are being overlooked and which players are going to impress this year. Let’s just say that David Roddy of Colorado State deserves all the attention that a 6’5” power forward that could earn All-American status deserves.
This offseason has been particularly active in the transfer portal. Between the extra year of eligibility, the one-time transfer waiver, and just the general terribleness of playing a season during a pandemic, more than one third of D-I players entered the transfer portal. If you start tuning in when the games begin in November, you’ll do a double take, wondering why your favorite player is suddenly wearing a new jersey color. Tristan Freeman has a rundown of the top 50 transfers that will impact the upcoming college basketball season, from former McDonald’s All-Americans looking to start somewhere new to former veterans that were multi-year starters on their old teams.
Eamonn Brennen provided his third installment of the best players preview series, which included guards on Monday, wings on Tuesday, and now bigs on Wednesday. The latest in the series, frankly, had way too many players to whittle down to just 20. This season of college basketball is going to feature tons of good big men. We know Drew Timme is at the top of the list. See which large human beings appear alongside the Preseason Player of the Year.