Observations from Opening Week

To celebrate the return of college basketball, we bring some observations from the many games we already scouted this past week, as well as some methodology regarding how to digest what we’re currently seeing.

November Scouting…

November is definitely an awkward time to begin scouting and re-scouting the landscape of college basketball. On one hand, it’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of NCAA hoops returning after a 6 month hiatus, but on the other, we do need to remind ourselves constantly that ‘it’s only November’ and that really this period doesn’t end up being more than just a blip on the radar screen when it comes to the total evaluation that NBA teams do.

The sheer amount of televised games every single night—often a dozen or more thanks to channels like ESPN Full Court, the various Fox channels (Atlantic, Pacific, etc), and others—gives us a chance to watch everyone these days, especially players we are less familiar with like, like the incoming freshman class and the more under the radar non-BCS conference prospects.

How worked up should you get about this player or another tearing apart a random Big Sky team to the tune of 30 points? Not very if history is any indication, unless that player is doing it consistently in an efficient manner against stronger opponents as well. The real value of this period is to check certain aspects of a player’s game that we had question marks about previously, to look for improvement, or see how a prospect is adapting to a new position or situation that helps shed new light on their strengths and weaknesses. There’s an awful lot of “box-score scouting” going on these days in the national media. We try to stay away from that, unless we saw the game ourselves.

Things are going to get very interesting once the big non-conference tournaments start pitting the heavyweights against each other, but as our good friend David Thorpe likes to remind us "no one gets drafted based off how they play in November."

Fabulous Freshman

We’ll be back next week with a special all-freshman edition of our top weekly performers series, which will go into great depth regarding some of the potential one and done prospects, but it’s hard not to come away incredibly impressed by the way this freshman class has sunk it’s teeth into the NCAA so far.

Last year’s freshman class was by all accounts one of the deepest and most talented ever from top to bottom, but even they took some time to hit their stride and really dominate the college ranks. Greg Oden was injured for the first few months, Kevin Durant was excellent but really didn’t start putting up superstar type numbers consistently until the Big 12 slate, Mike Conley Jr. was effective in a quiet kind of way until his buddy Oden returned, Thaddeus Young took time to adjust, as did teammate Javaris Crittenton, Spencer Hawes was good but not great in early going, etc, etc. Brandan Wright was really the only freshman besides possibly Durant to catch the national spotlight in the first few weeks of the season, which should puts things in perspective regarding how impressive this year’s freshman class has been early on. Let’s see now if they can keep it up…

Random Observations from Week One

-Bill Walker is back…or is he?



-Josh Heytvelt’s stress fracture hurts…literally

We have to be honest…after reevaluating Josh Heytvelt’s game tape from last season, Gonzaga’s entire non-conference slate essentially, it really wasn’t going to take much to convince us that he has a serious chance of landing in the first round of this year’s draft. Let’s remember that he had a 27 point, 22 rebound game against Pepperdine just one week before he was arrested. All he needed to do really keep his nose clean for the entire year and show the type of natural progression you expect from players going from their sophomore to junior years.

Alas, things got a little more complicated now, as Heytvelt was diagnosed with a stress fracture, meaning he’ll miss 4-6 weeks after having surgery this past week. That means he’ll miss almost all of Gonzaga’s big out of conference games before they enter the much softer portion of their schedule in the WAC. Those include games against Courtney Lee’s Western Kentucky, St. Joe’s, Connecticut and Washington State. He could still play in their very game against Tennessee on December 29th, but it’s not exactly clear what kind of shape he’ll be in at that point.

That puts a lot of pressure on Heytvelt to have a big game against Memphis at the end of January, as well as put up a strong NCAA tournament performance, should the Zags get there as expected. NBA Teams will scout him playing in the WAC, but considering the lack of legit big men competition he’ll be facing, it won’t be an ideal setting to evaluate him. Thankfully for Gonzaga, freshman Austin Daye has been stepping up wonderfully in his absence so far.

Another unfortunately setback early on occurred when Kansas’ Sherron Collins went down with a stress fracture himself. He’ll also be out around 6 weeks, meaning he’ll miss KU’s games against Arizona and Southern Cal. The Jayhawks will be looking to Rodrick Stewart primarily to step up in his absence, although freshman Tyrel Reed could see minutes as well.

-Alex Harris Missed a Chance?