Funniest Tweet Ever, plus some other Valley news

Ha, ha...here's the single funniest line I have seen on any head coach's twitter.....
It is a comment today from Indiana's Tom Crean...
he is asking, begging, even pleading for a recruit to come to Indiana who is a good player or someone who can score!
Maybe this tweet borders on illegal recruiting.....??

Anyway.......you can almost hear Crean's whiney voice and see his mussed up hair as the cries...
"I sit and watch tape and other teams play and all I really know is that we have got to get a impact player that can score,rebound and th ...
Toughness and willing to battle right away. We dont need another learner. We need a doer"
http://twitter.com/TomCrean/status/7423844921
http://twitter.com/TomCrean/status/7423896934


Does anyone recall that Wichita State's Toury Murry's name came up over and over in the preseason as the Shockers' best returning player and getting preseason all-conference mention...
Well, Toure is doing well, but not great and has struggled at times...
He averages 12.9 ppg overall (11th in MVC), but only shooting a bit over 33% from 3-pt., and only 9.7 ppg (not in top-20) and 27% from 3-pt in Valley play.
The rest of the Shockers have stepped up.


Jake Kelly was another player who everyone said would dominate the Valley and tear up the league...and was some people's choice for preseason POY in the MVC!
Kelly is injured, and out for the season but wasn't even hitting over 30% of his 3's and clearly wasn't even one of the best two players the Sycamores have.
So how could a player who got POY consideration in the Big Ten be virtually nothing more than a bit above average in the Valley?
Could the Valley actually be a tougher and better league than many give credit for??
I sure think that's the case!

Jake will return next year as a senior...but oddly, the fans and even the press for Indiana State think he still has a chance to ask for and get a medical redshirt this year.
I guess you can ask for anything, but he's certainly played TOO MANY games to qualify for a medical waiver.
Kelly already got a rare and scarcely precedented break from NCAA by being cleared to play this year after transferring and not having to wait out a season. Could the NCAA really give the kid yet another unprecedented break??


ISU's 3 seniors are carrying the team, Eldridge, Dinma, and Phillips.
Next year when those three are gone, ISU will return nobody presently averaging more than 7.8 ppg, and the current combined 3-pt shooting pct of the players who return is just 27%
So, who's gonna be their scorers??


A big man that both ISU and SIU fans were buzzing about on their boards, and one long thread on the Saluki board really wanted this guy....Paris Carter, a juco big man from Lake Land in Matoon, has verballed to UIC.
http://jucojunction.rivals.com/barrier_noentry.asp?ReturnTo=&sid=&script=content.asp&cid=1035708&fid=&tid=&mid=&rid=


An interesting thread at Creighton..
"We Suck" ...a thread in which people simply rip into the team and the coach...
They ought to be thankful they don't have the kind of "loyal" followers BU has...
Bradley "pseudo-fans" even rip on BU when we win!!
http://creighton.rivals.com/showmsg.asp?fid=2688&tid=129888608&mid=129888608&sid=1209&style=2


Here's an article about Missouri State...
are they "for real"??
Hmm....I'd say so...
http://www.omaha.com/article/20100105/SPORTS/701059832


Ex-Illinois Wolves teammate of Sam Maniscalco and Ohio State superstar Evan Turner is rumored to be cleared to return tonight in the Buckeyes' game against Indiana.
http://blogs.indystar.com/hoosiersinsider/archives/2010/01/will_the_hoosie.html
http://www.cleveland.com/ohio-sports-blog/index.ssf/2010/01/ohio_states_evan_turner_may_re.html


This will be the FIRST actual ROAD game for Indiana -- and we're all the way more than two months into the season!!
...they have played exclusively home games and neutral site tourney games.
Indiana is 7-6 overall, 6-3 at home against a woeful list of weak opponents, and they are just 1-3 away from home - so watch for them to really go in the tank when they actually have to play someone tough on the road!

....but here's some good news for them....
it is rumored that Matt Roth is doing very well, healing ahead of schedule, and may be back soon.....
Good luck to Matt.

In more Big Ten news.....Purdue is not only the best team in the Big Ten right now, they are also ranked #4 and undefeated...
They have an arena that seats well over 14,000 and can even pack in close to 14,500 with SRO.....
But they have had some serious trouble filling the place.
Last night in their first CONFERENCE home game, they only drew 11,000 for Minnesota!
They are averaging only about 13,000, well under capacity!!


Bruce Pearl and Tennessee are in the news again after four of their players were nabbed on drug, alciohol, and illegal gun laws...
First - several local billboards are being stripped down as they highlight the image and talents of Tyler Smith, one of the players now disgraced and possibly gone...although Bruce will do everything he can to try to hold on to his scorers....or he may not win an SEC game!!!
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=11773359

And then, in a moment of stupidity, Bruce Pearl is giving an interview, and comments on who he has left to score with all the players suspended...
and get this....he actually says...
"we still have weapons on this team"....
Ha, ha.....does he realize that having weapons is what got the team in this horrible mess???

Anyway....this morning brings more rumors that both of the illegal guns in the car were the property of Tyler Smith, but nobody's owning up to it...
and I find it odd that since they were driving around in a rental car that was "given to them" to drive by someone else....isn't it strange that nobody's yet come up with a clear explanation of whose car is it and why do the players get to use someone else's car for free??
Schools like BU get major violations laid on them for this stuff alone!!


Pearl's "weapons" comment may have been an intentional or unintentional pun.....either way - it's a really stupid thing to say or joke about...
remember....just a few weeks back Pearl made a reference to the hometown in Tennessee of one of his players and remarked that the people there wear hoods (a suggestion they are KKK and bigots).
http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=169&f=2616&t=5407041
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/editor/2009/09/did_news_sentinel_underplay_br.shtml

People like Jimmy the Greek and Don Imus and others have lost their jobs over this kind of remark, but somehow the press seems to lick up to Pearl and cut him some slack.
I think we need to reopen this thread!!!
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=8371


A very highly touted big man, Jin Soo Choi has left Maryland....this is a bit of mud in the face of Maryland's Gary Williams..
Choi is the best Korean player ever - a poor-man's Yao Ming, and Williams gained a little cred by landing the kid in the midst of a very tough recruiting battle.
Anyway, the kid barely ever played...only 4 min per game despite having the talent....
and he struggled with understanding English...
Too bad - had this kid gone to a midmajor, he'd have been a Jack Sikma - a dominating player who could have had a great professional opportunity.
Instead he went to a power conference and didn't have the chance to play and develop, and Williams ends up with a scholarship wasted for 3 years on the kid.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/05/AR2010010503483.html


Speaking of kids who aimed too high.....the PJ Star had a story about Devan Bawinkel. Bawinkel first went to West Virginia, then to juco then to Iowa. Everywhere he's been, he's been good but not dominating nor a game breaker.
The kid keeps aiming too high...
again, he'd have been a Kyle Korver had he gone to a midmajor - but going to Iowa, he sounds like he's afraid to get banged or hurt and all he wants to do is stay 30 feet from the basket and pump up 3-pointers....a trade at which he's merely average and not spectacular.
His senior year is half over, and he never starts and is nothing more than a spot sub....
He aimed too high....twice!!!
http://www.pjstar.com/sports/x1689190950/Iowa-senior-relishes-his-role-as-team-s-designated-shooter


One more tidbit...about New Mexico where Steve Alford (ex-MVC coach and ex-Big Ten coach), busted out to an 11-0 record and then 14-1...
they played their first conference game last night and lost --- assuming the early basement spot in the Mountain West.
Are they overrated?? Their conference season will tell, but their schedule to this point has been a bit soft...
They also have been doing very poorly with attendance....
at their home arena, named "The Pit", where they used to routinely fill the place with 17,000, they are drawing more in the range of 10,000-12,000 and are averaging aunder 13,000.

Albuquerque used to have two major daily newspapers.... but given the environment for papers, the readership dwindled to the point where one was bound to fail...and finally it was the Albuquerque Journal that went belly up in February of 2008.

But their main beat writer for the Lobos, a guy named Richard Stevens, who was widely reviled as being way too anti- and ripped into the home team way too often......has now been hired to do the writing on the official New Mexico Lobos web site for game reports and news releases...
of course he now knows where his paycheck comes from and he toes the line...
but unlike the releases everywhere else...that come without a "by line", all of Stevens' writings on the Lobo web site have his name prominently cited as the writer for the pieces!!
(must be something he insisted on)
"By Richard Stevens -- Senior Writer / GoLobo.com"
http://www.golobos.com/sports/m-baskbl/recaps/010610aaa.html

One other head coach I kinda love to rib a little bit since he loved to take swipes at BU and the Valley when our guys got the NCAA bid in 2006, Houston's Tom Penders...
Penders' Houston Cougars started off pretty good against the really weak part of their schedule.
But now they hit the skids, have lost 3 in a row, and are heading into their conference portion of the schedule.
Houston's 7-6 and RPI 175...and CUSA is ranked 14th in RPI among conferences...
Only two CUSA teams have SOS under 100...and only four are under 159!

BU's SOS at 43 is by far the best in the MVC!