Friar Basketball

Here and There in Friartown

kris_dunn2

Opinions on Friar basketball (and college basketball in general) while waiting for Big Sean and Jalen Rose to take over Friartown at Midnight Madness in a few weeks. 

  • The University of South Carolina recently announced that they are going to be offering four year scholarships in their major sports, instead of the typical “one year at a time” scholarships most schools currently offer. They have joined a few other “Power Five” football schools in offering the four year scholarship. The Big East Conference has stated that it will do whatever it takes to keep up with the Power Five conferences when these conferences start adding more perks for their players (see: yearly stipends, insurance policies etc.). I think this would be a great place to start and would love to see a couple of Big East schools take the lead by offering four year scholarships while it is still optional and not a mandatory rule in the big football power conferences. It would be a great way to show potential recruits that the Big East is indeed serious about maintaining a level playing field with the Big Five Football conferences.
  • Friar fans have been talking about how this may be the tallest PC team they can remember, and that they will have more length than any team on their schedule except for Kentucky. Not so fast. Florida State may be the tallest team in the country. 7’3 Boris Bojanovsky and 7’1 Michael Ojo split the minutes at center last season for the Seminoles. They will be joined this year by 7’0 Kiel Turpin who missed all of last season with an injury. Yikes! Most programs wish they could get one “aircraft carrier” type of player. Florida State has a whole carrier task force.
  • PC is still waiting for freshman forward Ben Bentil to be cleared through the NCAA Clearinghouse. Even though Bentil is a very good student and graduated from a school with an elite academic program (St. Andrew’s of Delaware) the Clearinghouse supposedly still has an issue because Bentil went to a school for a few months in Ghana before he came to the United States. Call me naive, but what difference does it make how long it takes a student complete the work as long as he does indeed complete the work and has the grades? There are just way too many rules and regulations under the present system. That being said, I fully expect Bentil to be fully cleared in the next few weeks.
  • It is the end of September and most of the national publications and sites have come out with their college basketball season previews. Just about every summary on the Friars mentions Kris Dunn returning from injury… then they proceed to ignore him when they rate the Friars in the upcoming season. If he stays healthy, Dunn is going to be one of the top two or three point guards in the Big East and one of the best in the country. I can see Kris easily making 2nd Team All Big East at the end of the season — and being just as important to the Friars success as LaDontae Henton. Dunn is going to sneak up on a lot of people this year.
  • It is ironic that one of the few advantages that PC has had on he recruiting trail over the past several years has now almost become a liability. In prior years a big selling point for a potential recruits was significant immediate playing time. With all of the quality recruits in the program for the 2014 and 2015 classes I can imagine opposing coaches are telling recruits not to go to PC because you won’t play right away. A nice problem to have even if it does make recruiting more difficult.

email Craig at Craig.Leighton@friarbasketball.com

follow Craig on twitter: @CraigL78

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