Harvard Hoops

Harvard Coach Tommy Ammaker learned from the best...

The Clarion Content was on this story many moons ago. Duke alum, Tommy Ammaker, and his Harvard Crimson, have a shot at the school's first Ivy League Men's Basketball title in 100 years of competition. They are the only one of Harvard thirty-four varsity sports not to have won a single league title. They are the antithesis of Jack Nicklaus, having finished second only twice in school history. Once was under Coach Ammaker, with a star, who has since matriculated to the NBA, Jeremy Lin.

This year Coach Ammaker's squad is the youngest in the Ivy League. With wins in their remaining games against league pillars Penn and Princeton, this team can do something never accomplished in the history of Harvard basketball. The New York Times quotes the coach, "I’m not sure you can walk anywhere on this campus and find something that hasn’t been done before," Amaker told the Times this week. "But we are on the verge of doing it."

Read the whole story here.

Look out

The Duke Blue Devils backed into the #1 ranking in the land this weekend when the four teams ahead of them lost. However, last night Duke took a much more definite step forward when the Most Outstanding Player at last year's Final Four finally exploded. Much like the beginning of last season, Duke's Kyle Singler has battled to find his place in the offense. Singler has rotated over the course of his career between center, power forward and wing player, depending on the needs of the team.

This year, like last year, as the team has grown around him, Singler has been willing to sublimate his own game to let others develop theirs. About this time last year Brian Zubek's emergence as a defensive and rebounding presence helped clearly define Singler's role and led to Duke's run.

Last night, against a banged up Temple squad, Singler exploded for twenty-eight points without the benefit of a single three-point shot. Temple Coach Fran Dunphy said, "He was just not to be denied."

Singler humbly noted, "The bigs were actually passing the ball to me, so I got good post entries and ... just kept getting the ball and putting it back up."

Has the Duke offense turned a corner?

ACC expansion, fantastic?

The Clarion Content has long been a vocal opponent of ACC expansion. We do not believe in diluting one's core brand, in this case outstanding basketball, for the vain hope of improvement in something that has never been a core competency, football. The ACC has been a classic case for our point of view. The new schools (Va Tech excepted) have not made the ACC any better at football. In fact, the ACC has dragged Florida State and Miami, once perennial college football powers, down to its level of mediocrity.

Now the second stage is kicking in, loss of focus has gradually damaged ACC basketball. The last two years of ACC basketball, save at the very top of the conference, have been some of the weakest ACC basketball in its history. More than once, a .500 record in league play has not been good enough to qualify an ACC team for the Big Dance. In the league's heyday, as the nation's premier basketball conference, that never would have happened. This year, the ACC is even worse.

For the first time since the poll's inception, the ESPN/USA Today Coaches' Poll this week has not only just one ranked ACC team, #1 Duke, but beyond that, not a single other ACC team so much as received votes. None. That had never happened before; Duke stands alone. How the mighty have fallen!

Duke worries

The redoubtable Jon Scheyer

The Clarion Content is an unabashed supporter of Duke basketball and Coach Mike Krzyzewski. We root for Duke. At the beginning of the season the Clarion Content thought, like many other Duke supporters and members of the sports media, that Duke was a good team, but by no means one of the very best Duke teams in Coach K's illustrious history.

The Blue Devils proceeded to have a remarkable season, going 28-5 and sharing the ACC regular season title. The Blue Devils look like a lock for at least a #2 seed in the NCAA tournament, and possibly even a #1 if they can win the ACC tournament final today. Does this mean that they are better than we and the so-called experts thought at the beginning of the season?

For the Clarion Content, the answer is no. This has been one of Coach K's very best coaching jobs. He has gotten the maximum out of this squad. Nolan Smith has developed wonderfully. Kyle Singler has adjusted to his new role. Brian Zoubek has grown by leaps and bounds. But in our view, the heart and soul of the team has been guard Jon Scheyer. Scheyer has been a stalwart all season, he carried the team through the early stretches of the schedule while Singler was adapting to his new position. Scheyer leads the Duke team in both minutes and scoring.

We wonder, however, as the NCAA tournament is about to begin, is Jon Scheyer wearing down? Our answer is an unqualified yes, and that response is at the core of our thinking that says this team is what we thought it was. We would be very surprised to see Duke get past the Elite 8. We would not be shocked by a loss in the Sweet Sixteen.

Scheyer, who has been playing 36 minutes plus per game since the beginning of the season, has continued to get those minutes and more over the final ten games of the year. Unfortunately, his scoring has dropped a bit, and worse his shooting percentage has fallen dramatically. This is frequently a sign of fatigue, wear and tear, tired legs, especially in a terrific, high percentage shooter like Scheyer.

Going into today's ACC final against Georgia Tech, Scheyer had averaged about a point per game below his season average over the last ten. But that was misleadingly augmented by an outstanding performance in the first UNC game. Scheyer has actually failed to reach his season average of points per game in five out of the last eight contests. Worse, only twice in the last ten games has Scheyer matched his season long average for field goal percentage. Scheyer's field goal percentage over the last ten games is a troubling 34.6%. In four of his last eight games, Scheyer hasn't hit even 30% of his field goals.

It is an ominous sign for Duke that their best player, their glue guy, is worn out. It is one of the main reasons why the Clarion Content thinks Duke will be long by the time they are playing the Final Four.

Changed the equation

For the last month the Clarion Content's sports editor had been telling Duke fans in Durham, NC that Gerald Henderson the younger was going pro at the end of this season. The draft experts had all been listing him as a top ten prospect. Duke fans had been insisting that it was different for him, despite how well he was playing he wasn't leaving. His dad was a pro baller, he wasn't broke, he was staying. The Clarion Content was insistent, he was too good, he was going.

The equation changed tonight in the Sweet Sixteen. The Clarion Content thought Gerald Henderson would showcase as a NBA draft lottery prospect in the NCAA tournament. 33% from the field against Binghamton, 33% from the field against Texas, then on national television this evening, he had an awful, ugly outing, 1 for 14 from the field against Villanova. Is Gerald Henderson going pro this year, the Clarion Content is no longer so sure.

If he comes back to Duke, he is going to hugely motivated, that could help his game and his draft status.

Don't let the door hit you in the butt

The guy who should
have gotten the job,
Gus Johnson


Or good riddance, goodbye!

Suffice it to say the Clarion isn't sorry to hear that caustic jerk and lead CBS NCAA basketball announcer Billy Packer is retiring. Packer denies being pushed out the door but The Sporting News Reports, Packer resigned with "six or seven more years" remaining on his contract.

Packer has broadcast the last 34 Final Fours. He will be replaced by the wooden and cautious Clark Kellogg. Clearly, in picking Kellogg CBS is trying to go for the anti-Packer. Kellogg, whose best feature, his good looks, won't be visible during play-by-play, rarely says anything with the slightest bit of controversy. He loves to parrot the NCAA line.

The Clarion had disliked Packer's bombastic know-it-all style for ages, but the incident that sent us over the top occurred several years at Duke when Packer accosted two female undergraduates, who not recognizing him were slow to allow him admission to Cameron Arena. Hey, big time, these are kids! Why don't you take it easy! What are you DMX?

Packer's comments at the time (allegedly) "Since when do we let women control who gets into a men's basketball game? Why don't you go find a women's game to let people into?"