Jeff Benton
Tuesday's College Hoops winners ... 10 DIME: KANSAS (minus the points vs. Memphis)
5 DIME: OKLAHOMA (minus the points vs. UL-Monroe)
Kansas
It’s extremely rare for a college basketball team to go wire-to-wire as the No. 1 ranked team in the country, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Kansas pulls off that feat this year, because the Jayhawks are loaded. Not only do they return their top NINE scorers from a season ago, including preseason All-Americans Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich, but they also have arguably the most talented freshman class in the country. The best of the young crop is Xavier Henry, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard who – ironically – originally committed to Memphis but reneged and signed with Kansas after former Tigers coach John Calipari bolted for Kentucky.
In his first game in a Jayhawks uniform on Friday, all Henry did was pour in a game-high 27 points in 24 minutes, helping Kansas to a 101-65 rout of Hofstra as 27½-point favorite. I know it was just Hofstra and you don’t want to get too caught up in one game against an overmatched opponent, but the Jayhawks definitely exhibited their impressive depth in that opener. While Henry and Collins (23 points) did the bulk of the work, eight other Jayhawks got in the scoring column, with five tallying eight or more. Kansas also had a 48-32 rebounding edge and a 50.8 percent-36.6 percent field-goal edge.
As for Memphis, can you say “rebuilding mode”? Once Calipari departed, not only did the Tigers lose a slew of blue-chip recruits, but their best player from last year (point guard Tyreke Evans) bolted for the NBA. The fact that Memphis’ top two players are transfers (one a castoff from Duke; the other from the junior-college ranks) should tell you how long of a year it’s going to be for a program that won 138 of its last 152 games under Calipari since the start of the 2005 season.
Heck as it is, of the last 14 losses Calipari suffered at Memphis, 13 were against high-quality competition, including Duke, Texas, UCLA, Arizona, Ohio State, Georgetown, Syracuse, Missouri, Tennessee (twice) and – of course – Kansas in the 2008 national title game. In fact, since a 70-67 loss to Duke as a five-point underdog in 2005, the Tigers have failed to cover the spread in any of their last 13 defeats.
Bottom line: Kansas – which enters this game on a 27-9-1 ATS roll, including 7-1 ATS in its last eight against teams from Conference USA – is miles ahead of Memphis right now. Put it this way: The Jayhawks are laying double digits tonight on a neutral floor against an opponent that is 138-14 SU over the past four seasons and hasn’t been a double-digit underdog since Feb. 9, 2005. If that doesn’t explain the gulf that exists between these programs, nothing will. Throw in the fact that Kansas coach says he wants to start “defining roles” and get “a little more organized” with this game tells me he’s going to leave his big guns in for extended minutes tonight, and if that happens, the Jayhawks will roll by at least 25 points.
Oklahoma
Yes, Blake Griffin is gone. But he hardly left an empty cupboard behind him at Oklahoma. Like Kansas, the Sooners are blessed with a gifted roster of young talent that includes three McDonald’s All-Americans – a first for the school. Those three are sophomore Willie Warren and freshmen Keith “Tiny” Gallon and Tommy Mason-Griffin. Warren averaged 14.6 points for last year’s Oklahoma squad that reached the Elite Eight (where it bowed out to eventual national champion North Carolina), and he started this season with a 15-opint, 11-assist performance in Saturday’s season-opening 95-71 rout of Mount Saint Mary’s and scored 21 points.
Gallon, who replaces Blake Griffin down low, also had a nice collegiate debut Saturday, with 18 points and 15 rebounds … in just 22 minutes! And then there’s another freshman, Steven Pledger, who came off the bench and scored 21 in the win over Mount St. Mary’s.
Granted, Mount St. Mary’s isn’t exactly Texas or Kansas. But neither is tonight’s opponent. Louisiana-Monroe has won exactly 10 games each of the last two seasons. The Warhawks are 1-1 already this season, but the one victory came against Alcorn State (82-66) while the one loss came at LSU (82-62). All you need to know about LSU with respect to Oklahoma is this: The Sooners are the 17th ranked team in the country and received 490 votes this week; LSU not only is unranked, but of the 28 teams outside the Top 25 that received votes in this week’s poll, not one was named LSU! Point being: If LSU, which isn’t even among the nation’s top 50 teams, can beat UL-Monroe by 20 points, don’t you think Oklahoma – which is going for the school’s 1,500th win tonight, can top that?
Seven of Oklahoma’s last eight victories going to last season were double-digit routs, and the Sooners traditionally trounce these low-level programs. That includes blowout wins last year over American (83-54), Mississippi Valley State (94-53), Tulsa (69-44), Maine (78-52), VCU (81-70), Rice (70-58), Coppin State (93-62) and Morgan State (82-54). Lay the points, as UL-Monroe is just no match for what the young, quick Sooners are bringing to the court in this one.
BOUGHT,PAID AND CONFIRMED-------GL GUYS
