Hello, friends and everyone just realizing they should send out the holiday cards, and welcome to another merry Shot Takers mailbag.
We’re on the cusp of college basketball truly heating up, and Dana O’Neil and I are here again to field your questions and offer somewhat intelligible answers.
In fact, this is merely Part 1 of a two-mailbag saga. It’s our gift to you.
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When is Kenny Payne getting fired at Louisville? – Becky M.
Who are your favorites to take over the Louisville job when Kenny Payne is fired? – James S.
Brian: Eventually. Or inevitably. Take your pick of time-related adverbs, though the expiration date is a day or two after Louisville exits the ACC tournament at latest. The product is bad enough — a loss at even more miserable DePaul last Saturday eradicated the last atoms of optimism, I’d think, and that was before Wednesday night’s 12-point home loss to Arkansas State — but the apathy is untenable. Louisville fans care intensely about basketball. But count up the empty arena seats, and it’s clear that Louisville fans don’t care about this basketball. The school simply can’t let that continue past this season, for its own sake and for the sake of local business in the city. It’s honestly a bigger problem than just wins and losses.
Midseason coaching changes are trickier than you’d think, though. Any administration that even pays lip service to student-athlete welfare has to ask itself: What’s best for these players? Is the culture so dismally toxic that you have to save them from the status quo? Or is that part of it in decent shape, and this group is just bad at basketball and the coaches are collectively bad at their job? And do you have anyone capable of stepping in as an interim coach, and will that person make any difference in any way?
And does making a change sooner than later give the school an actual, measurable head start on vetting replacements, or not really?
A lot more layers to it than just a knee-jerk reaction based on, say, Kentucky rolling into town and winning by 50. If I’m athletic director Josh Heird, I probably let Payne coach out the season as long as the locker room isn’t going to devolve into the equivalent of a WarGames match. And I’m doing my homework behind the scenes already.
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I know you’re not going to stump for Payne to keep his job, Dana, so assemble your hiring committee and fill the gig for 2024-25 and beyond.
Dana: When not if is certainly where we are, and to Brian’s point, not as easy as it seems from the outside. Along with all of the reasons offered, who exactly is replacing Payne? Does Danny Manning make things better? Does Nolan Smith? And you are not hiring a replacement tomorrow, unless you’re going for the retired sector. Pretty sure Mike Krzyzewski isn’t walking through the Yum! Center door.
Who is? Louisville is a good job. Dedicated fan base. Tradition. Great arena. Basketball commitment, but with the bonus of football funding. Not to mention a position among the elite, no matter what the NCAA does with football subdivisions. So the Cardinals would be wise to aim high. Dusty May will sit at the top of everyone’s wish list. For Louisville’s purposes, he grew up next door in Indiana. Maybe that makes the job more attractive than the other offers that come his way. Regardless, you have to ask.
I’d make Mick Cronin say no. He spent two years on staff under Rick Pitino, and as a native of Cincinnati is more than familiar with all things U of L. Why would he leave Los Angeles for Louisville? He might not. He loves it out there, but he’s also less than thrilled with UCLA’s move to the Big Ten. His buyout is big, but there’s money to be found among desperate Louisville alums and boosters.
Pat Kelsey is going to be a popular name — probably right after May among the move-up candidates. He signed an extension with Charleston after his 31-4 season, but extensions are meant to be broken.
Scott Davenport would — and could — walk from Bellarmine, though that may not be a splashy enough name to appease the masses.
And I hear the guy at St. John’s knows what he’s doing. I’m kidding. I think.
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Is the B1G any good? How many teams will get tournament bids and will ANY get to the second week? – Brandon M.
Dana: I tried to look at numbers to offer proof of what my eyeballs tell me — that, no the Big Ten does not look very good this year. The numbers are messy. KenPom ranks the Big Ten as the third-best conference, behind the Big 12 and the SEC. Warren Nolan says the league has the second-best NET ranking, behind only the Big 12.
I beg to differ. Aside from Purdue, Illinois has a good win against Florida Atlantic, Wisconsin thumped Marquette, Northwestern beat Purdue (transitive theory hard at work here) and Northwestern lost to Chicago State on Wednesday (testing the limits of the transitive theory). As in, No. 335 at KenPom Chicago State. The league started this season faced with plenty of skepticism, and that was before Michigan State nosedived from No. 4 in the preseason to 0-2 in the conference with not a single nonconference quality win (unless you count Butler, and I do not). The Spartans were supposed to be the 1A to the Boilermakers and instead will need to find some Tom Izzo magic to keep the coach’s NCAA Tournament streak alive.
Maryland, Indiana and Iowa, three teams you can typically rely on for March consideration, appear to be unmitigated disasters right now. Ohio State just blew a 17-point lead to lose at Penn State, and Michigan looked at the Jim Harbaugh football season upheaval and said, hold my beer.
It will be really interesting to see how this all shakes out come March and, more, how the league is judged. Theoretically the committee is only meant to consider the season’s body of work, but if you don’t think reputation matters, you’re just silly. Way too early to count bids or predict tourney runs, but there’s not a lot here to inspire confidence, let’s put it that way.
Brian, the proud Northwestern alum, may argue … or perhaps not.
Brian: So this league is going to be pretty hard to watch this winter, right? I see a lot of solid offensive efficiency numbers that I fully expect to be dragged into the morass by the combination of similarly solid defenses, general familiarity and no one in the conference pushing tempo with any top-shelf effectiveness other than Iowa. I hope I’m wrong, because by virtue of geography a lot of Big Ten basketball crosses my screens. But I’m preparing to be grossed out more often than not.
My hottest of hot takes is that the Big Ten has us exactly where it wants us. Set aside Purdue — and only tentatively, given the way the Northwestern loss played out — and no one would bet on any of these teams ending the league’s two-decade-plus national title drought. Which is exactly what the league has been waiting for. The perfect time to strike. And, bam, there are four or five Big Ten teams in the Sweet 16 and Wisconsin and Michigan State wind up playing another national semifinal in the 40s. Or Northwestern gets ranked and immediately loses to Chicago State and there is no hope at all.
What team has the highest ceiling in the country and why is that team UConn? – Zach V.
Brian: Zach, we do appreciate you trying to do our jobs for us in this busiest of seasons. So many errands. So many parties to attend. So many imperial stouts to choose from. And, also, some work. It’s a lot.
Still, we must earn our keep. And I’m not sure UConn qualifies here. Watching the Huskies gives me a very “Yep, Brendan Quinn is going to write another amazing national championship story about the Hurleys for The Athletic” vibe. Kind of hard to play along with the concept and wonder how good the Huskies can be if I won’t be surprised to see them in Glendale.
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So broadening it out a bit … maybe Tennessee? Which is weird to say about a top-10 team. But the Volunteers have played the 10th-toughest schedule in the country as of Wednesday morning, according to KenPom, and all three of their losses are to top-20 teams, and all of them were single-digit margins. Meanwhile, Santiago Vescovi looks like he’s still trying to figure out how to play with Dalton Knecht and maximize his output, and Zakai Zeigler presumably is still rounding into form after the ACL tear. So the Volunteers are already good, and already tested, but also not at full throttle especially on the offensive end. That seems like a dangerous combination, in a good way, in Knoxville.
Dana: I already used the word “terrifying” to describe UConn this year, because the Huskies, though incredibly different from last season’s team, could be just as good. Donovan Clingan and Stephon Castle aren’t entirely healthy, Alex Karaban played with his fingers buddy taped, and Cam Spencer played with messed up toes. And the Huskies are 9-1, despite a stupidly hard schedule.
GO DEEPER
The reigning champs are still bringing the thunder
I agree that Tennessee has a big upside, especially with Knecht in the lineup. The Vols needed more scoring, and he provides that. I’ll toss out two more for you.
For starters, Kentucky. I know the Wildcats are 14th in the country, but do remember how poorly March has treated John Calipari recently. This is where I’m looking for the upside. Like, this team could make a run. There is silly talent like always — DJ Wagner, Aaron Bradshaw, Rob Dillingham — but there’s also the very grounding presence of Reed Sheppard. If Calipari can put his faith in Sheppard (and he should), he could help Kentucky overcome a lot of what has ailed the Cats previously. He does not make mistakes, and when things get squirrelly, is exactly the sort of player you want on the floor.
The catch: Cal has to figure out how to get Sheppard his minutes and still keep Wagner happy. Balancing personalities and egos used to be Cal’s strong point. If he can make it work, this will be interesting.
The other — and feel free to call homer on this one, since full disclosure my son is a manager (I no longer cover the team so no conflict of interest usually) — is Michigan State. Because there is no earthly reason the Spartans should be this bad. They lost Joey Hauser from last year’s Sweet 16 team. Nothing against Hauser, but he is not Magic.
Jaxon Kohler as program savior is not a sentence I thought I’d consider at any point in my career, but when Kohler returns from his stress fracture, he at least gives the Spartans some offensive threat in the post. They currently have none, which is a problem. It is not the only one. Malik Hall, AJ Hoggard and Tyson Walker can’t seem to all play well at the same time, and watching from afar, it feels like that loss to James Madison gave Michigan State a serious case of the yips. Whenever games get close, the Spartans get tight. Someone has to solve that.
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No doubt this is a big riddle to solve, but if I had to pick a coach to solve it, I’d choose the man who earned the phrase “December, January, February, Izzo.”
Why are the pros apparently undervaluing Zack Edey? I know bigs are out of fashion but he’s unstoppable. – Ron A.
Dana: You sort of answered your own question. Bigs — or at least traditional ones — are out of fashion in the NBA. Hence Edey is back. Why Hunter Dickinson is still here. Why Oscar Tshiebwe and Drew Timme stuck around. And so forth.
I spoke to Edey about it all this summer. At the time, he was anxious to play with the Canadian National Team in the FIBA World Cup, largely to challenge himself against that competition and see where he stacked up. He did well, when he got a chance to get in — 19 points in 21 minutes of play. But he’s not going to wake up tomorrow and become Victor Wembanyama. Or Chet Holmgren for that matter.
GO DEEPER
College basketball’s most dominant force can’t change who he is. Can he change perceptions?
He’s dropped some weight to increase his mobility (and for what it’s worth, his footwork is really good, especially for a man his size).
But this is who Edey is. Someone will find a spot for him — because he remains 7-4 and 7-4 people usually find a spot on a basketball court. He’s just a victim of the times, if you ask me.
Brian: I wish the situation was different, because until further notice the Big Maple is one of the more enjoyable characters to pass through college basketball recently, but Edey is guilty of not being an ideal modern NBA big until he can prove himself innocent in a training camp and beyond. How he defends elite pro guards and wings in screen-and-roll situations is the determinative factor as to whether he belongs or not.
I think he’s more athletic and skilled than he gets credit for. I kind of wish Matt Painter would let Edey hoist a 3 at some point this season, because I’ve seen the big man make them in practice. But at least according to Synergy Sports, Edey has guarded a pick-and-roll 16 times in the Boilermakers’ first 10 games. It’s not a large sample size, and the opponents involved in those scenarios mostly aren’t good enough to provide a definitive answer about Edey’s competency for pro front offices, anyway. The bad news is, for all his production, he’s going to have to prove himself all over again next summer. The good news? He’ll get every chance to do so.
(Top photo of Zach Edey being defended by Northwestern’s Brooks Barnhizer and Matthew Nicholson: Michael Reaves/ Getty Images)