City of Basketball Love

Matt Trabold (@TrabsMatt)
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This season’s men’s college basketball action will grace the eyes of fans starting tomorrow afternoon. Whether it be from the exploits of returning players, junior college transfers, Division I switches, guys coming off a redshirt year and/or true freshmen, this campaign will certainly again be full of exciting moments.

Here are three questions I have heading into the season:

1.) Will this season’s Atlantic Coast Conference break the record for most teams from a single conference named to an NCAA Tournament field?

The 2011 NCAA Tournament saw a record 11 teams from the pre-conference realignment Big East Conference dance. Four of those programs in Louisville, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame are now in the Atlantic Coast Conference. If you look at the talent that the rosters of this conference returned, had transfer in and added via recruiting class, twelve or more squads from it could easily be in the 2017 NCAA Tournament field.

Not only did Duke receive all but six of a possible 91 first-place votes in the conference’s preseason poll, but many also believe this season’s national title is firmly the Blue Devils’ to lose. Even programs as consistently colossal as Duke are not usually met with a combination of the club’s best player from the campaign prior returning, like with the front-runner for all of the player of the year awards this time around in Grayson Allen, and the country’s top-ranked recruiting class.

There is currently no timetable for when Harry Giles and the composite top Class of 2016 center recruit in Marques Bolden will make their men’s college basketball regular season debuts due to injury, but another consensus top-eight Class of 2016 recruit in Jayson Tatum is expected to be on the court for the Blue Devils in the season opener against Marist after an injury scare of his own. With Giles and Bolden sidelined at the moment, the fact that wiry rebounding machine Amile Jefferson is healthy presently for his senior year after missing the final 27 games of last season with a right foot fracture is vital. The stretch of nine contests Jefferson was able to compete in last year included a double-double of sixteen points on 7-of-8 shooting from the field and fifteen rebounds against the second-ranked team in the nation at the time in Kentucky.

North Carolina is dealing with a monumental injury of its own with charismatic junior wing Theo Pinson sidelined for up to the next twelve weeks because of a stress fracture. On top of that, fans of the Tar Heels are waiting to see how Joel Berry II responds to the graduation of the other member of the team’s daunting two-headed point guard monster last season in Marcus Paige.

Virginia’s heralded Memphis State transfer Austin Nichols being suspended for the season opener versus North Carolina at Greensboro should be quickly forgotten. Virginia Tech may not be as impressive on paper as many of the other Atlantic Coast Conference sides most expect to make the 2017 NCAA Tournament, but the Hokies have come a very long way from falling to Appalachian State and Radford in their maiden campaign with Buzz Williams at the helm.

Former Arkansas commitment Ted Kapita is still waiting to see if he will be eligible to play for North Carolina State this season, but the clout of the rest of the Wolfpack’s newcomers will ensure Mark Gottfried’s battalion is mighty. A program with as much recent off the court turmoil as Louisville craves a veteran presence like Penn graduate transfer guard Tony Hicks, especially now that former graduate transfers at the Cardinals’ disposal in Damion Lee and Trey Lewis are gone. It would not be much of a surprise at all for Clemson’s Jaron Blossomgame to reach All-American status as a senior. With Zach Auguste no longer around, let’s see if Bonzie Colson and V.J. Beachem can continue playing taller than they stand. While top-fifteen junior college transfer Crisshawn Clark unfortunately found out earlier in the week he required season-ending surgery, keep an eye out for the new role of Jamel Artis at Pittsburgh as a point forward.

2.) In terms of the quantity of the quality, is this the best national freshman class of international talent right from overseas men’s college basketball has ever seen?

This past June’s NBA Draft included a record 26 international players getting selected. Among that number, in addition to being in the top-eleven draft picks overall, were two recent men’s college basketball sophomores that entered that level of amateur American hardwood right from overseas: Gonzaga’s Domantas Sabonis and Utah’s Jakob Pöltl. The sport appears to draw in more and more of these impressive competitors from abroad – that used to more frequently go the route of sticking it out another year or two with their European clubs before entering their name into the NBA Draft – every season these days.

While the Utes brought in 6-11 Czech forward Jakub Jokl this season, Gonzaga went above and beyond with how it reloaded with international talent after the loss of its respective 2016 NBA Draft lottery pick. 6-11 Danish center Jacob Larsen unfortunately went down with a season-ending knee injury in practice in early October, but the Bulldogs still wield a pair of jaw-dropping foreign weapons right from overseas in their freshman class. French Killian Tillie, whose older brother Kim was a frontcourt starter for Utah not long ago, was named the most valuable player at the 2013 FIBA U16 European Championships. Japanese Rui Hachimura led the 2014 FIBA U17 World Championships in scoring with 22.1 points an outing.

Enes Kanter is putting up all sorts of points for the Oklahoma City Thunder these days, but you may remember that his pre-men’s college basketball team in Turkey’s Fenerbahçe was not the most helpful in working with the NCAA to get him eligibility at Kentucky. He ended up being ineligible for the entirety of his only season with the Wildcats. Another prized Turkish export coming over from Fenerbahçe in seven-footer Ömer Yurtseven has been much more fortunate in that realm. At the end of last month, it was announced that Yurtseven would only be ineligible for the first nine North Carolina State games this campaign.

Like Yurtseven, Finnish seven-foot Arizona freshman Lauri Markkanen is projected by many as a top-twenty pick in one of the next two NBA Drafts. After Ray Smith suffered his second straight season-ending knee injury before a regular season even began a week ago, Chance Comanche was suspended indefinitely due to academics and with Allonzo Trier also sidelined at the moment with an undisclosed off the court issue, Markkanen may just have to be the leader of the Wildcats this year.

Dan Majerle and his staff at Grand Canyon have quickly made a name for themselves in the Division I ranks predominantly through the notable transfers like Grandy Glaze and Jeremy Adams they have brought in on top of, to a lesser degree, roster additions from American high schools like Oscar Frayer. This season, one way the Antelopes are turning heads is having at their disposal one of Markkanen’s former Helsinki Basketball Academy teammates in Fiifi Aidoo.

The two best international pieces that did not play American high school basketball for St. John’s over the last few seasons have been Italians Federico Mussini and Amar Alibegovic, but it’s a German player in Richard Freudenberg that arguably has the most eyes on him of the three going into this Red Storm campaign. Christian Sengfelder burst onto the scene as a German freshman for Fordham two years ago. Now, the Rams boast a pair of Turkish first-year players in Sinan Sağlam and Cavit Havsa. Belgian guard Manu Lecomte may be a Baylor Bear now, but Miami (FL)’s backcourt will still have foreign flair behind Australian Dejan Vasiljevic. Yet another former Helsinki Basketball Academy teammate of Markkanen in 6-7 Samuli Nieminen could play a sizable role in the start of the Kyle Keller era at Stephen F. Austin.

3.) Will recent mid-major recruiting wizards get their respective teams to the NCAA Tournament this season?

Schools the size of Western Kentucky don’t usually get commitments from top-ten men’s college basketball recruits. That’s just what former Mississippi State and current Hilltoppers head coach Rick Stansbury and his staff got over the summer in seven-foot Class of 2017 recruit Mitchell Robinson.

Western Kentucky was not even doing that back when current New York Knick Courtney Lee and recent Utah Jazz sultan of spring Jeremy Evans were leading the Hilltoppers to the Sweet Sixteen of the 2008 NCAA Tournament. A few short months after Robinson’s commitment, Stansbury and company received a pledge from another top-fifty Class of 2017 recruit in Josh Anderson. This most recent summer also included the best player from Buffalo’s 2016 NCAA Tournament squad in Lamonte Bearden transferring over to be a part of this movement in Bowling Green.

While having Robinson, Bearden and Anderson in red and white down the road might wildly mean a spot in the preseason national poll for the Hilltoppers going into next season, you cannot overlook the talent Western Kentucky has this season. A trio of immediately eligible transfers in Pancake Thomas (Hartford), Junior Lomomba (Cleveland State, Providence) and Que Johnson (Washington State) is just what this roster needed in an incredibly strong Conference USA this year. The current recruiting class boasts 6-5 Papua New Guinean backcourt weapon Matineng-iakah Leahy.

Former Golden State Warriors and current Nevada head coach Eric Musselman may not have a commitment from a top-ten recruit from the high school ranks under his belt just yet, but he has made a larger number of significant roster additions in the short time since he got his new gig if you are going to compare the two recruiting wizards in that manner. Musselman’s first order of business when he got to Reno was bringing in a threesome of big-name now eligible transfers in Leland King II (Brown), Marcus Marshall (Missouri State) and Jordan Caroline (Southern Illinois) – the first two being the leading scorer at their prior men’s college basketball stop before departing.

Musselman's second act in the sport’s “transfer market” as head coach consisted of the acquisitions this summer of a 2014 Big Ten All-Freshman Team member at Purdue in Kendall Stephens and the 6-7 Martin twins from North Carolina State. Both Cody and Caleb were top-hundred recruits a couple years ago and had starting experience with the Wolfpack. As far as the current recruiting class goes, Musselman and his staff were able to get prominent three-star recruits Devearl Ramsey and Josh Hall. Ramsey won gold medals as part of the American side in the 2014 FIBA U17 World Championships and the 2013 FIBA Americas U16 Championships.

Another program that should receive a mammoth boost next season due to Division I transfers and top-flight recruits from the high school ranks that a program of its size does not usually corral is Saint Louis behind former Oklahoma State head coach Travis Ford. Since being hired to lead the Billikens on March 30, 2016, Ford and his staff have added the trio of transfers that will be eligible to play for their new men’s college basketball home starting next campaign of Javon Bess (Michigan State), Adonys Henriquez (Central Florida) and D.J. Foreman (Rutgers) on top of top-fifty Class of 2017 recruit Jordan Goodwin. Joining Goodwin in that future freshman class for Saint Louis is Rivals150 frontcourt player Hasahn French.