Uconn loses to mediocre Tennessee team/NCAA/Boatright investigation turns Draconian

Yesterday's 60-57 loss to an 8-10 Tennessee five looked like a duplicate of Wednesday's 70-67 loss to Cincinatti. Once again, 65% of the points (Lamb 23, Napier 17) and shots came from Napier and Lamb, Lamb played 39 minutes, Napier, played 38 and Giffey 35, the game ended with Napier desperately firing up long three's, and there was very little contribution from the front court. The loss of Ryan Boatright, due the NCAA's now bizarre on-going investigation, is completely disrupting the Husky offense. Without a third guard, Lamb and Napier have played virtually whole games, reducing their effectiveness as they become exhausted in the second half. Boatright was not only was providing a much needed 10ppg., but he opened up the offense allowing for more passes inside and his penetrations with the ball more often than not resulted in dish offs to the bigmen for shots. In addition, Boatright is an excellent defender who forced turnovers in the back court- when he sits the Husky defense fueled runs disappear.

The front court continues to be desultory on offense. If it seemed like 14 pts from the back court on Wednesday was bad they outdid themwelves yesterday with a total of 8, points from their five forwards and Centers. Drummond had 6, Oriakhi 2, and Daniels, Olander and Smith were scoreless. Each game the Huskies seem to start by looking inside more but quickly give up; Napier who seemed to be providing Drummond with a couple of alley oops each game does not seem to looking inside at all in the last two contests and is taking far too many shots for a point guard. Daniels, who looked so promising early in the year seems to have lost his confidence and his getting the quick Calhoun hook every time he goes out on the floor and Olander, although coming of an injury seems to have stopped looking for shots. The front court is in absolute disarray.
Sidenotes Joe Nocera had a very good op ed piece in yesterday's NY Times about the NCAA's investigation of Ryan Boatright who has now sat for 9 games. Originally, the press believed that Boatright had accepted payment for a flight while playing for an A.A.U. team; note at that time he had no invovlement with the NCAA and did nothing remotely illegal. It now turns out that an old friend of boatright's Mother gave her the money to fly to one of Ryan's games that she otherwise could not afforded. The NCAA only found this out when her shady ex-boyfriend in an act of revenge reported it to the NCAA. How does the NCAA have authority over someone before they have any official status with them; as Nocera points out, he thought that in the US people were innocent until proven guilty- not, as in boatright's case, the other way around. Nocera will provide more information about the facts of the case in Tuesday's NYT times op ed section.

The CBS Broadcast team of (Jerry?) Randall and Greg Anthony are, to me typical of the inferior coverage provided by CBS and other major networks when compared to The Big East Channel and ESPN. They are both personable with silken voices but have not done their home work on the teams. For example, at one point when Napier took a poor shot off a fast break, Anthony said "I'm sure Coach Calhoun would have preferred that Napier stop and run UConn's motion offense." What motion offense? Even worse when Roscoe Smith entered the game Randall waxed that "Smith was sometimes too passive but at times was an explosive player on offense. " If I were going to feature Smith's "explosiveness" on July 4th the firewords would be pretty dull.
We can only hope that the NCAA shows some consideration of the fact that they are destroying the Freshman season of a 19 yr. old kid and conclude their investigation.

Does anybody but me suspect that Neils Giffey is actually an alias that Pete Doolittle has taken to attain 4 years of college eligibility. The German thing also is a clever part of the ruse.


"You Heard it Here First"
Steve Eliot