Like I said, I'm taking my eldest daughter to the Colonial Athletic Association semifinals and finals, which hopefully will feature my post-high school educational receipt giver VCU shooting for a berth in the NCAA tourney. It's been a while since I've been to a tournament style event, and I'm glad I bought the tickets when I actually had some money this winter. But anyways, like I promised, using my patented internet nerd-mining systems, here are the 14 returning players in the CAA tournament who have scored the most points in the previous three conference tourneys...
#1: Eric Maynor (VCU guard, 90 previous points) - Maynor hit the shit that knocked Duke out in the first round of the NCAAs two years ago, and he has been suggested as a possible NBA caliber player, though that's hard to believe. I don't know if anyone from the CAA is even currently in the NBA. But Maynor is good - ACC good, but somehow he slipped through the cracks. And VCU coach Anthony Grant is on the hot track to a major conference gig, so VCU is that perfect storm of a better than mid-major player with a better than mid-major coach, that could cause some damage in the Big Dance. Except this is a down year in the CAA, and the league will probably only get their tournament winner into the NCAAs, making this weekend all the more important. Coach Grant got a boxing-style title belt made up for the VCU team, which they will carry with them onto the court during all games from here on out, with the thinking being it is their title belt to defend, and as long as they win, they keep it and get to keep playing. That shit is great. I am stoked. VCU is the #1 seed and plays the winner of Friday's Georgia State/Delaware game at noon on Saturday.
#2: Dre Smith (George Mason guard, 87 previous points) - #1 in your hearts, and your program. Leads the #2 seeded George Mason into the CAA tournament, where they hope to steal a spot in the NCAAs from VCU. Smith is Jim Larranaga's floor general, which is what I would say if this was cornball normal sports copy. Instead it's what I started to write after 7 Yuenglings, and then four words into the sentence was like, "What the fuck?" Dre Smith is a black kid being exploited by a suburban D.C. university to make money for the school. Their run a couple years back bankrolled everything from the athletic department to extra tri-colored pansies in front of the library. Get your's Dre Smith, because they got their's. George Mason plays their first game Saturday evening around 6 against the winner of the first round James Madison/William & Mary game.
#3: Leonard Mendez (Georgia State guard, 64 previous points) - Mendez must be pretty good, because Georgia State has never been that good to go deep into the CAA tourney, much less beyond that. They were most famous for being coached by Lefty Driesell when he was completely washed up. They are the #8 seed this year, playing Delaware at noon on Friday to earn a match-up against #1 VCU in an arena that's a fifteen minute walk from the VCU campus on Saturday. Mendez better sank some treys if they want to avoid weekend traffic heading south on I-95 back down to Georgia.
#4: Danny Sumner (William & Mary forward, 64 previous points) - William & Mary's only notable run in the CAA was last year in the tourney where they knocked off #1 seed VCU in the semifinals. William & Mary is coached by Tony Shaver, who used to coach white ass Division III Hampden-Sydney College near where I grew up. He got them to the D-III Final Four a couple times, and they lost a title game one year. William & Mary is a perfect fit for him because it's basically a basketball team made of a bunch of smart white guys. Danny Sumner plays the role of the token black guy who controls the team, because pretty much any white guy heavy into basketball wants to be down with the black guys anyways. William & Mary, though, is no better than the #10 seed in this melee, and will play James Madison at 6 pm on Friday with the right to play Old Dominion on the line.
#5: David Schneider (William & Mary guard, 50 previous points) - Schneider would be one of the many white guys on the W&M roster. They make Duke look like a Rucker Park team.
#6: Louis Birdsong (George Mason forward, 44 previous points) - Birdsong is the heat catalyst on the Mason team, the guy who is liable to bust out a thunderous dunk on a motherfucker and fire up the Patriots bench. That type of player in invaluable, especially in the CAA, where your standard starting line-up features three guards.
#7: Eugene Spates (Northeastern forward, 41 previous points) - Honestly, I know nothing about Northeastern, and I don't get paid to do this stupid shit at 1 in the morning. I don't even know where Northeastern University is, though it can't be too much further than southeastern Pennsylvania or south Jersey, because I can't see any of these schools really wanting to spend that much money in travel. I guess there's a team in Georgia, so maybe this is the far-flung team from the other direction. Seriously, in the time I thought about this, I could've done a google search and figured it out, but I refuse to do so. You are on the internet if you are reading this, and could do that yourself. You came here to wait for me to say something stupid, not be all factually correct. Northeastern is the #3 seed and will play the winner of the Drexel/Towson State game in the late game on Saturday night.
#8: Matt Janning (Northeastern guard/forward, 40 previous points) - Janning looks like that wigger Jason Williams kid from West Virginia that probably still plays in the NBA somewhere. Thus, I can't hate on Matt Jannings. Hopefully he does retarded no-look bounce passes too.
#9: Manny Adako (Northeastern forward, 37 previous points) - Goddamn, they are really trying to force me to google search some of this Northeastern nonsense, but still, I refuse. Fuck the north and fuck the east and double fuck a college all proud to be from there.
#10: Josh Thornton (Towson guard, 35 previous points) - A little peanut-headed looking dude who actually transferred away from Georgetown, which means he's got major conference game, trapped in a Towson uniform. Their chances to sneak through this battle royal probably rest heavily on the young Thornton's shoulders. Towson is the #11 seed (of 12 teams) and will play the Drexel Dragons in the late game on Friday night.
#11: Peter Stein (William & Mary forward, 34 previous points) - Man, these William & Mary kids had a lucky four-game run last year (although they lost the last of the four), and will be lucky to see Saturday morning in Richmond this year. Fuck them, although I feel bad because it must be hard to have cocksure attitude as a basketball player on a campus full of lesbian poetry majors.
#12: Gerald Lee (Old Dominion forward, 33 previous points) - A yellowbone looking dude who is actually half-Israeli and played there before coming to America to ball at Old Dominion University. ODU is the #3 seed and will play the winner of the Hofstra/UNC-Wilmington game on Saturday afternoon.
#13: Tony Durant (Towson forward, 32 previous points) - Not Kevin Durant, but Tony Durant, although the Towson Tigers sounds abouts as major league as the Oklahoma City Thunderballers or whatever the fuck it is. How did Oklahoma City get a major professional sports franchise anyways?
#14: Darryl Monroe (George Mason forward, 32 previous points) - The worrisome thing that sets George Mason apart from VCU or Old Dominion or Northeastern is the fact they have such an array of interchangeable guys who can score, and have swagger being they are from the mighty little George Mason University. This bothers me, because I don't want to drive to stank ass Richmond on a Monday night to see VCU fucking lose.
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