- Welcome to Lopez Land. (You may know it as New York) – There’s Pac-12 splattered throughout this nice profile of the Lopez twins. But my favorite call out is the NYT quoting of friend of the program and over all good dude, Kevin Danna. In related news, the NBA tips on Tuesday night and I’m pretty fired up for that. Think about the NBA right now. It’s as exciting and broadly talented as I can remember. The league’s best player isn’t on a talent contending team – but he might be? I won’t derail this brief into a note the Pellies but Tuesday night is exciting.
- Injury bug hits Wildcats again, this time in basketball – I was going to make Ray Smith the “Stat you must know” for my Arizona preview. He’s a dynamic “modern” basketball player with shooting range, length, and a bunch of other scoutitudes (that’s scout + platitude combined). You haven’t heard a lot about him because the summer before his senior year of high school he tore his ACL. Shortly thereafter he committed to play for Sean Miller and the rest of the 2015 class took to the summer circuits. Smith remained a highly rated recruit but the publicity didn’t swirl. And that was fine. Smith worked hard to rehabilitate and join a his new teammates in Tucson. And then, on Thursday night, he tore his other ACL. And that sucks.
- Sports Illustrated Pac-12 basketball preview – I’m a fan of the numbers. I like when we use past performance to predict future performance. The last few seasons, SI has done a great job leveraging the smarts of Dan Hanner and Luke Winn, to discuss preseason hoops. This year is no different. This preview shares some fantastic insights into the forthcoming season.
