Busting Brackets CBB Town Square meeting while sitting at a Roundtable
By Joe Nardone
Program on the fall?
Jan 14, 2014; Omaha, NE, USA; Creighton Bluejays forward Doug McDermott (3) talks to his teammates guard Devin Brooks (5), and guard Austin Chatman (1) during their NCAA basketball game against the Butler Bulldogs at the CenturyLink Center. Mandatory Credit: Dave Weaver-USA TODAY Sports
JN: Butler? I only put a question mark there because I don’t want to be too hard on a first year coach. He is replacing Brad Stevens after all, which is no easy task. However, Stevens was also replacing a succesful coach when he took over and he did just fine. Regardless, I don’t like this question.
BLW: I think UConn is headed in the wrong direction. It was always a miracle that Jim Calhoun was able to recruit talent to a place like Storrs. That task will be much harder for Kevin Ollie since the Huskies are no longer in a prestige conference. UConn is the primary casualty of the great sea-change created by Syracuse and Pitt’s defection to the ACC. UConn did not get to tag along. UConn did not get to stay with their historic rivals in the new Big East. And unlike lowly Rutgers, UConn didn’t even get to move to the B1G. The AAC is playing solid basketball right now, but once Louisville leaves for the ACC next season, the AAC is going to drop into late-1990’s Conference USA type status. If I was a UConn fan, that would concern me.
JM: I don’t want to pick on Butler, so I’ll go after Butler 2.0 and say that once the golden child is gone, Creighton will be amongst the more irrelevant teams in a power conference. It’s easy to ride Doug McDermott and 17th year senior Grant Gibbs (but really, he’s older than James Harden who’s been in the NBA for five seasons now after playing two years of college ball) to a ranking, but this program will be completely depleted without the coaches son.