Basketball

Hoop Thoughts: Kobe’s impact on the college game, a bizarre departure at Kentucky, Memphis plummets, my top 25 and more


A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Eugene, Ore., to visit with Ducks senior guard Sabrina Ionescu, the reigning national player of the year in women’s college basketball. I asked about her friendship with Kobe Bryant. Like a lot of young players, Ionescu sees Bryant as a role model for how she wants to play, but Bryant also saw Ionescu as an example for how he wanted his own daughters to play. He attended a couple of Oregon’s games in southern California, spent some time around the team and even broke down video of Ionescu’s pick-and-roll action for ESPN+ right before she led her team to the Final Four last year. The two got to be close, so much so that Ionescu worked out with Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and her team over the summer. Sabrina and Kobe talked and texted frequently. It was a deep, genuine friendship, borne of a common love for basketball.

I asked Ionescu to tell me about a piece of advice that Bryant had given her recently. “He said something about a movie,” she replied. Ionescu pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through the thread. “Here. ‘Real sharpness comes without effort.’ It’s from a movie (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). He was basically saying, ‘You master your craft to the point where it should look effortless.’ I was like, yeah, that’s good.”

I thought of that exchange when I heard the tragic news on Sunday that Kobe and Gianna had died in a helicopter crash, along with seven others.

The impact was felt in every corner of college basketball, including the best player in the women’s game, because of who Kobe was, what he did and how he played. Every player’s dream is to make the NBA, and Bryant was not just one of the greatest the league has ever seen, he also carried an air of regal intrigue. He was physically gifted, yes, but what separated him was his lethal mind. He worked longer and competed harder than anyone else, yet somehow he made it all seem so effortless.

You could see that impact in the way the tributes rolled in. Michigan State Tom Izzo expressed surprise at how emotional his players got when they heard the news right after their win at Minnesota. “It’s interesting,” Izzo said. “None of the players (knew him) and yet the idolization, the respect – it was like, oh, my God. That win meant nothing three minutes after it. I was just amazed watching players that I didn’t think would really look at things that way.”

After Maryland won at Indiana, Terrapins sophomore guard Aaron Wiggins told reporters, “Every guy in that locker room would tell you they looked up to Kobe. Somebody like him, he seems untouchable. … I’ve always tried to copy his game. It hurts.” Similar sentiments flowed on social media, like this Instagram post from Baylor junior guard MaCio Teague: “You the reason I didn’t put down the basketball when I was at prep and didn’t have an offer. You the reason I still hoop bro. You are superhero to me. Love you like you my own dad. Rest in Paradise.”

Teague didn’t know Kobe personally, and neither did most of us. We just felt like we did.

That’s because we watched him grow up. Bryant’s decision to bypass college and go straight to the NBA in 1996 opened the floodgates that had been cracked by Kevin Garnett in 1995. I watched Bryant compete at the Adidas ABCD Camp in New Jersey the summer before his senior year at Lower Merion (Pa.) High School. He had a big reputation so I knew to look out for him, but I didn’t see anything that would make me think I was watching the birth of a legend. Neither did a lot of others, apparently, because Bryant was selected 13th overall by the Hornets and then traded to the Lakers. Still, while Garnett was a 6-11 freak, Bryant, a slender 6-6, seemed a little more attainable. No one knew quite yet what he had inside.

In the years that followed, many of the top high school players tried to be like Kobe and go straight to the NBA. When it became apparent just how good he was, every NBA team went hunting for the next one. His decision to bypass Nike and sign a huge contract with Adidas ignited a sneaker war in grassroots basketball that still simmers to this day. For the players who weren’t quite good enough to go straight to the league out of high school, the next best thing was to leave college after a year or two. The surge of defections was so intense that in 2006 the NBA mandated an age minimum of 19 years, the so-called “one-and-done” rule. The purpose of the new rule wasn’t to keep future Kobe Bryants from entering the league, but rather to discourage the players who wanted to be like Kobe but weren’t nearly good enough.

As the reactions to Bryant’s death indicate, his influence on the game at all levels runs deep. You see countless examples of college players dressing like him, trying moves like his, insisting that they too possess the “Mamba mentality” that will propel them to greatness. They are sure that if they work as long and compete as hard as Kobe, one day they will play in the league just like he did.

Because Bryant did not play in college, I did not have a lot of contact with him over the years, but I did have a few telling interactions. The first came during that summer I saw him at the ABCD Camp. Garnett’s leap to the NBA was being interpreted by many as a once-in-a-generation event, but I sensed it might create a new way of thinking. I called two dozen of the top high school players in the country and asked them if they wanted to follow Garnett’s path to the league. Many of them hemmed and hawed and hinted, but Kobe came right out and said he wanted to try. When I asked him why, he replied, “I want to get to the NBA before Michael Jordan gets too old.”

I recounted that conversation to Bryant 17 years later in Las Vegas. He was training for USA Basketball and was making an appearance as a guest on Mike Krzyzewski’s SiriusXM radio show. The regular host was unavailable to work that day, so I was called in as a last-minute replacement. My job was to be a traffic cop and move us in and out of commercials while Krzyzewski conducted the interview. The three of us sat around a table in a conference room and talked for close to an hour. It was one of those how-the-hell-did-I-get-here-and-what-the-hell-is-happening experiences that come along once in a while.

I distinctly recall that at one point during the conversation, Bryant explained how he had recently been to Europe to have surgery on his knee. He was spending his off-season rehabbing and reshaping his body. He was getting older and had to lose a few pounds, but not so many that he wouldn’t be strong enough to compete. A big grin came across his face as he talked about how energized – that’s the word he used, “energized” — he felt by the process. I remember thinking, that’s the definition of greatness, when you’re so committed to the hard, unglamorous, tedious parts of your craft that it energizes you. That’s the Mamba mentality.

Sabrina Ionescu and her Oregon teammates learned of Bryant’s death shortly before their big game at Oregon State on Sunday night. She was so emotional that she couldn’t come out for warmups, which is unheard of for her. Still, when game time came around Ionescu performed with her usual excellence, finishing with 19 points, eight rebounds and three assists in a 66-57 win. When Ducks coach Kelly Graves was asked if he thought Ionescu would not play, he smiled and said, “You don’t know Sabrina.” He added that even if that thought momentarily entered her head, she was always going to play for the simple reason that it’s what Kobe would have done.

Ionescu was asked about her friend on the court right after the final buzzer. She held back tears and said, “This season’s for him.” With those four words, Ionescu said what all college basketball players are thinking today. It didn’t matter that Kobe Bryant never played in college. They play for him. The Mamba is gone and the games will go on, but basketball will never be the same.

Other Hoop Thoughts

• I try be careful when criticizing college students, especially if it’s on a personal level. I do not know Kahlil Whitney and can’t tell you all of the innermost secrets of the Kentucky locker room. But I have to say, Whitney’s decision to leave the program last week is truly mystifying, and frankly, it does not bode well for the young man’s future if he wants to be a professional athlete.

Start with the timing. Because Whitney, a 6-6 freshman, is leaving after the start of the second semester, that means if he wants to transfer to another Division I school he won’t be eligible to hit the court until the 2021-22 season unless he gets a transfer waiver. If Whitney had left in mid-December as Quade Green did last year, he would have been eligible second semester next season.

Whitney did not say he was definitely going to transfer to another school in the announcement he posted on Twitter, only that he was going to “continue to develop and work towards my ultimate goal.” That goal, presumably, is making the NBA. But what options does Whitney have to get there outside of college right now? Does he really believe he has a chance to play professionally in the G League or overseas when he couldn’t even crack the starting lineup at Kentucky?

According to our own Kyle Tucker, Whitney could have played more than the 12.9 minutes he was averaging for the Wildcats if he was willing to dedicate himself to being a tenacious rebounder and defender. Apparently that wasn’t good enough for Whitney or his father, Kelly, who played for Seton Hall from 2002-06. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to ride the pine, but this is what you sign up for when you come to Kentucky. Talent is high, minutes are hard to come by, nothing is given and everything is earned. Whitney was apparently under the impression that, not only was he due minutes he had not earned, but he also should have been given a role he wasn’t qualified to play.

Whitney also wrote in his statement that “my time at Kentucky has not gone as I had hoped.” This is astonishing considering he was less than three months into his freshman season. I empathize with Whitney because he is a product of a poisonous way of thinking, which says if a player isn’t a first-round pick after his freshman season then he is an abject failure. If Whitney really, truly wants to be a professional, he should have stayed at Kentucky for as long as it took, practicing every day against future lottery picks under the eye of a Hall of Fame coach, and competing in big-time games on national television while earning his degree. Instead, he is now a young man with plenty of potential but who has no place to develop it, and there’s no reason to believe he has the makeup — or is getting the proper advice — that will prepare him for the long haul. I wish him the best, but this decision was the worst.


Richards has flourished during his junior season at Kentucky. (Michael C. Johnson/USA Today Sports)

• On the flip side, consider this statement from Kentucky junior forward Nick Richards, who averaged 4.5 points and 3.9 rebounds in 13.4 minutes during his first two seasons in Lexington and is now putting up 14.3 points and 8.1 rebounds in 29.5 minutes. After Richards tied his career-high with 25 points to go along with 14 rebounds in the Wildcats’ overtime win at Texas Tech on Saturday, he was asked about his “slow” development at Kentucky. Here’s what he had to say:

“Everybody has their own story. Just because I go to a school that is known for one-and-done doesn’t mean I have to be one-and-done. It took me time to develop. Over the past three years, I’ve had the best time of my life, meeting incredible people, having the best coaching staff in the world, training to be the player I am right now and to be the better player I can become.”

Now there’s a young man who gets it.

• One final question on a similar topic: How does James Wiseman feel as he watches Memphis play its way out of the NCAA Tournament? The Tigers had a disastrous week, getting humiliated by 40 points at Tulsa and then coughing up a 12-point lead in the final seven minutes on Saturday to lose at home to SMU, 74-70. Wiseman’s decision to bail on his team in December was just as surprising as Whitney’s because he was halfway through serving his 12-game suspension and would have been the go-to guy when he came back. Of course, I recognize this is a business and Wiseman has every right to do what is best for his playing career … but still, I wonder how he feels watching the program fall apart without him.

Let’s recall that Wiseman grew up in Nashville and played his junior season of high school in Memphis for Penny Hardaway. (He stayed at Memphis East for his senior season, but Hardaway was already with the Tigers.) His decision to commit to Memphis produced a surge of excitement for the program, the city and for college basketball. It prompted several other top recruits to sign with Memphis because they wanted to play with him and thought they could do big things together. Thousands of Tigers basketball fans – one of the best fan bases in all of sports – bought season tickets hoping to watch him play and cheer on a winning team after so many down years.

Yet because Wiseman decided not to follow through on his commitment to Memphis – which again, is his right – the team has now dropped four of its last six games, fallen out of the national rankings and sits in sixth place in the American Athletic Conference. It is No. 52 in the NET and dropping fast. Its two Quad 1 wins, over N.C. State and Tennessee, might not even be Quad 1 wins by the time the tournament rolls around. The Tigers could make things interesting by running the table, and of course they could earn the league’s automatic bid by winning the AAC tournament. But there is scant evidence to believe they are capable of doing that. It’s hard not to imagine how much different things would be if Wiseman were on the team for the home stretch. I feel badly for that school, those players, their coaches, and the fans. Does he?

• A big reason why I rated Seton Hall a Buy-Plus in my Stock Report is that the Pirates, who at the time were unranked, were playing without 6-10 junior forward Sandro Mamukelashvili, who fractured his right (non-shooting) wrist early in a loss at Iowa State on Dec. 8. Mamukelashvili’s contributions go beyond his 10.9 points and 4.7 rebounds per game. He is a strong, physical upperclassman who started all 34 games as a sophomore. He is also the team’s best 3-point shooter at 43.5 percent, and his presence as a Euro-style stretch-4 makes it easier for everyone else to get open looks.

This is a big week for Seton Hall as Mamukelashvili prepares to rejoin the team. He practiced for the first time on Friday, but Pirates coach Kevin Willard told me he doesn’t want to play Mamukelashvili in games until he is ready for the physical rigors of Big East basketball. Seton Hall did not play over the weekend, so its next game is Wednesday at home against DePaul. Mamukelashvili probably will not play in the game, and instead make his return on Saturday against Xavier. Even then, Willard plans to work him back in a few minutes at a time.

“I don’t want to throw him into the physicality of the Big East and risk him losing confidence,” Willard said. “I’ll give him a couple of minutes here and there to get his feet wet and find his rhythm. I have a long game plan. I want him to be playing well toward the end of February.”

The other reason Willard will integrate Mamukelashvili slowly into the rotation is that his team is playing so well. There’s always a risk a returning player could disrupt things. In the long run, however, Mamukelashvili is a unique talent who has the ability to raise this team’s ceiling even higher. If he can stay healthy, get back into shape and rediscover his long-range touch, by the end of February this team could be almost impossible to beat.

• Texas lost twice last week in two very different ways, and it’s hard to tell which was more painful. Was it the 97-59 pasting the Longhorns suffered at West Virginia on Monday night? Or the two-point squeaker at home to LSU on Saturday?

Either way, Texas, which started the season by winning nine of its first 10 games, has now lost three in a row and five of its last seven. The Longhorns have some quality guards, but their lack of physicality inside is costing them. They are last in the Big 12 in rebound margin (minus-3.3) and were outrebounded by 41 in the two losses last week. Texas has fallen into a tie for seventh place in the Big 12 with a 2-4 record (7-11 overall) and is No. 71 in the latest NET rankings.

If this continues, the Longhorns will miss out on the NCAA Tournament for the third time in the last four seasons. That’s a lot of pressure on these players, especially as they face the building narrative that if Texas does not make the tournament, then coach Shaka Smart’s five-year tenure could come to an end. Shake succeeded Rick Barnes, who was fired even though he had 16 NCAA Tournament appearances in 17 seasons and had just taken his team to the second round. Texas may be thought of as a football school, but expectations are plenty high on the hoops side as well. And right now, the program is not meeting them.

I spoke with Smart by telephone on Friday night to get a sense of how he is addressing this with his players. He is not unaware of all the chatter, and he knows they are too. So he is trying to strike the balance between not ignoring the situation but not getting bogged down by it. “We’ve addressed it with our guys from the standpoint of, we want the main focus to be on each other,” Smart said. “It’s not the easiest thing to deal with, but you have to be a big boy and control what you can. It’s our job as coaches to help our guys get better every day. That’s where we want the focus to be inside the program.”

As I mentioned in my recent look-ahead to the coaching carousel, if Smart’s tenure at Texas is going to end, I believe he will be a sought-after prospect if he wants another job. Barnes, after all, immediately landed at Tennessee, where he is now one of the top five highest-paid coaches in the country. It has never been clear to me why Smart abandoned his fullcourt havoc style that propelled him to such success (including a spot in the 2011 Final Four) at VCU for a more traditional approach at Texas. Regardless, for the next five weeks, the players at Texas are fighting for a lot more than just the chance to play important games in March. It remains to be seen whether their coach’s tenuous status serves as motivation to climb higher or proves too heavy a burden to bear.

Five games I’m psyched to see this week

San Diego State at New Mexico, 9 p.m. ET Wednesday (CBS Sports Network): Everybody keeps waiting for the Aztecs to lose, but here we are in the last week of January and their record is still spotless. After taking care of business at UNLV on Sunday, SDSU has four road games remaining. The Lobos have yet to lose in The Pit this season, but that aside, there’s not a whole lot of reason to believe they are capable of knocking the Aztecs off their stride. New Mexico has lost three of its last four games, including Saturday’s 96-74 drubbing at Nevada.

Texas Tech at Kansas, 4 p.m. Saturday (ESPN): The Red Raiders have a tough week ahead with a home game against West Virginia on Wednesday and this trip to Allen Fieldhouse. They play tough and scrappy, but they haven’t had a quality win since the upset over then-No. 1 Louisville in Madison Square Garden on Dec. 10. Texas Tech fell in overtime at home to Kentucky on Saturday because it didn’t have enough size inside to handle Nick Richards. That doesn’t bode well against Kansas’ twin towers of 7-foot senior center Udoka Azubuike and 6-10 sophomore forward David McCormack, who will be back from his two-game suspension for his role in last week’s court melee.

Kentucky at Auburn, 6 p.m. Saturday (ESPN): I took quite a bit of grief for ranking the Wildcats No. 6 last week, but they justified my high opinion with their two wins. Auburn, on the other hand, had to fight to beat a mediocre Iowa State team by four points at home on Saturday. Still, the Tigers have legit defenders up front in 6-11 senior Austin Wiley, 6-7 senior Danjel Purifoy and 6-7 senior Anfernee McLemore. Also, this will be the teams’ first meeting since their thrilling game in the Elite Eight last year, which the Tigers won in overtime. Auburn Arena is gonna be in a frenzy for this one.

Duke at Syracuse, 8 p.m. Saturday (ESPN): Something memorable happens almost every time these two teams play. The Orange have been playing increasingly better the last few weeks, and they will have a packed Carrier Dome behind them in hopes of pulling off the upset. Duke, which did not play over the weekend following its 30-point win over Miami on Tuesday, needs to get 6-7 sophomore Joey Baker back on track. Baker did not play in Duke’s loss at Clemson on Jan. 14 because of a sprained ankle, and he shot 1-of-7 in the Blue Devils’ loss at home to Louisville four days later.

Illinois at Iowa, 1 p.m. Sunday (FS1): During a season in which it is very difficult to win on the road, especially in the Big Ten, the Illini have won their last three conference road games over Wisconsin, Purdue and Michigan. It’s going to be a lot of fun watching Iowa junior forward Luka Garza, who leads the Big Ten in scoring (23.2) and is second in rebounding (10.3), go up against Illinois’ 7-foot freshman center Kofi Cockburn.


Maryland is back in the top 25 after a road win against Indiana. (Brian Spurlock/USA Today Sports)

This week’s AP ballot

(Last week’s rank on my ballot in parentheses)

  1. Baylor (1)
  2. Gonzaga (2)
  3. Kansas (3)
  4. San Diego State (4)
  5. Seton Hall (5)
  6. Kentucky (6)
  7. Florida State (7)
  8. Dayton (8)
  9. Louisville (9)
  10. Villanova (10)
  11. West Virginia (12)
  12. Butler (11)
  13. Duke (15)
  14. Illinois (19)
  15. Michigan State (16)
  16. Penn State (21)
  17. Iowa (22)
  18. Texas Tech (13)
  19. Oregon (14)
  20. Rutgers (23)
  21. Maryland (NR)
  22. Arizona (17)
  23. Colorado (18)
  24. Houston (24)
  25. Wisconsin (20)

Dropped out: Liberty (25)

What happened to all that chaotic fun? For the first time all season, my top 10 went unchanged. No team in my top 25 rose or fell more than five places, and only one dropped out. Is this a one-week aberration? Or the new normal?

I suppose it’s a mixture of both. We’re at the point in the season where teams have played so many games, it’s hard for one or two results to create a major shift. We also have two teams in the top five, Gonzaga and San Diego State, who are rolling through mid-major conferences and are thus unlikely to get tripped up. Ditto for Dayton, which is far and away the class of the Atlantic 10.

Who would have guessed that on the last weekend of January, Illinois would be my highest-ranked Big Ten team? Not I. As mentioned above, the Illini are really distinguishing themselves on the road these days. That included a 17-point win at Purdue last Tuesday. Three of Illinois’ next four games are at home, including a date with Michigan State on Feb. 11., so don’t be surprised if the Illini, who are tied with the Spartans for first place in the Big Ten, are alone atop the league standings pretty soon.

Speaking of the Big Ten, I’m sure Maryland fans are rejoicing that I finally deigned to rank the Terps again. I dropped Maryland after it lost at Seton Hall when the Pirates did not have Myles Powell. I was waiting until the Terps got a quality road win before I ranked them again, and they finally got one in the closest possible fashion on Sunday, edging Indiana, 77-76. Maryland’s outside shooting is still suspect and I do think it’s a tad overrated, but we are almost into February and this team still has not had a bad loss. There’s a lot to be said for that.

I gave strong consideration to dropping Arizona from my ballot after it blew a 22-point lead at Arizona State on Saturday night. The Wildcats, however, beat Colorado by 21 points on Jan. 18, and even though that game was in Tucson, the lopsided margin dictated that I should at least keep Arizona ahead of the Buffaloes — and I didn’t have a reason to drop the Buffaloes. So the Wildcats survive, for now.

Liberty had a short stay on my ballot. The Flames started off 19-1 but lost two road games last week in the Atlantic Sun, including to Stetson, which is ranked No. 303 on KenPom. I like to find low-profile mid-majors to shoehorn into my ballot, and I almost did it this week with East Tennessee State, which is 18-3 (7-1 SoCon) with an 11-point win at LSU. The Bucs are No. 57 on KenPom and No. 43 in the NET. If they keep winning, they’re going to have a number next to their name real soon.

(Top photo of Kobe and Gianna Bryant: David Butler II/USA Today Sports)





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