The off-season hit and I’ve fallen in to a bit of hibernation. Frankly, there’s a lot of fun to be had in the hoops off-season seeing as how it’s summer and all that so I’ve taken full advantage. There’s also the fact that there’s effectively three things to discuss when no one is playing college basketball:
- Recruiting – The future of the program is running up and down rinkadink gyms (or NBA player camps) and men who make millions of dollars a year will sit in said gyms and try to make teenagers wanted. We, on the other hand, scour for every bit of news on where these pimple faced athletes will someday take their talents and we’re left having to explain that our bad mood is because a 2015 kid from the other side of the country listed our school sixth and not first or second when he cut his list to twelve. Normal.
- Current Roster – This makes a little more sense in the realm of relevant discussion topics. You’ve at least seen this group play and have a semblance of their strengths and weaknesses so there’s something tangible to discuss and you don’t have to talk kids in distant gyms. Of course as you delve into this subject, you expose yourself to discussion topic three…
- Reminisce – Be it the failed jumper at the horn or conference championship that didn’t turn in to a tournament appearance or a late season run or a recently departed senior’s career there’s a lot left to think about when the arena goes dark. There always seems to be that moment in a season you can’t shake from your psyche, for better or worse.
Whichever of these conversations you prefer, we’re completely needing out because there really is nothing tangible going on (aside from a few verbal commitments). That’s alright. I’m a college hoops nerd and I’ll admit that.
And I’ve chose to assuage my hoops withdrawal via option three (although I incessantly refresh recruiting sites and scour for news on current rosters; say, does anyone know if Josh Smith hit the gym?).
I joined a Fantasy Draft run by the great minds at Rush the Court’s Pac-12 Microsite, Andrew Murawa and Connor Pelton. These fellas organized eight writers into the Pac-12 Fantasy Draft. The rules were simple: any player on any Pac-12 roster from any year was eligible to be drafted; each team had to have four guards, four forwards, two centers, and a coach. There were no trades and a lot of banter. Here’s what they had to say after Round One and here’s the rest of the draft.
Soon, Team PacHoops will make their debut on the microsite and I’ll be asking for your votes for the greatest Pac-12 Fantasy team ever compiled. I’ll walk you through my roster in the coming days but know that it’s great.
In the mean time, here are a few other things I’ve been up to:
- The RTC guys had some questions about the state of Arizona hoops during their Arizona week. I answered them
- Jim Basnight has a weekly radio show called “Talkin’ Hoops” that he graciously invited me on to, well, Talk Hoops
- RTC had one more burning question about Mark Lyons’ forthcoming year at Arizona that I answered
- Been trying some new moves, too