Around the Rim — 8/19/08

Man, I enjoy and wish it were summer all year round, but things are slow around here and I am already ready for some college basketball. (Though football is great too.) Just a few things going around

• As many of you may know by now, Justin Carter’s summer league team lost in the semi-finals of the Say No Classic summer league tournament with a close three point loss in overtime. However, Justin led the way again with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists.
• Coach Altman was playing some golf again this week in a celebrity golf tournament to help raise money for the College Basketball Experience. located at the Sprint Center in Kansas City. It is a college basketball museum, but more of an interactive look at the history of basketball.
• You can tell that basketball is getting a little bit closer as some sites start to put up some previews. ESPN did their Shootaround series on the Valley last week where they look at Creighton to be tougher than last year since they return 72% of the scoring and 66% of the rebounding. Some props to P’Allen, Booker and Cavel. ESPN questions replacing Dane Watt’s rebounding, but with improvements in Kenny Lawson’s and Kenton Walker’s (getting an overseas experience with Dane Watts earlier this summer) games and the addition of Justin Carter I think that can be replaced.
• Along the same lines, CollegeHoopsNet has their Rise and Fall series where they evaluate the different conferences progression and regression. They gave the Valley a “Status Quo” ranking between this past season and the season before because of the only NCAA bid going to Drake. I suppose that is fair especially since the rest of the Valley teams didn’t perform when they needed to against the “BCS” competition last year compared to the year before.
• Then there is a little more feel for the season upcoming as some of the Valley schools have officially released their non-conference schedules. Missouri State (@Auburn, Arkansas), Evansville (@Butler, @North Carolina) and Bradley (Florida or Syracuse at CBE Classic, @Michigan St., Butler) have released their schedules. The rest of the Valley schools might be waiting for the conference schedule to be finalized so they can release the full schedule at once. It sounds like a few Valley schools have to wait for their home venues where facilities are shared to finish scheduling to see what is open for playing games, so that is what is taking the conference so long to get the schedule finalized. It has been mentioned on here before a sampling of what the other Valley teams have on their non-conference schedule. I have tried to keep a tally of the Jays schedule so far, and with several teams releasing their schedules lately, I would have hoped to see one that had the Jays on the schedule that we didn’t know about, but no such luck so far. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Justin Carter Update — Part 2

On Sunday, Justin Carter led his No Way Classic summer league team to the semifinals that will be played on Friday night.  In a 79-76 victory, Justin had 25 pts on 8/21 shooting, 12 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 steals in 28 minutes.

Today I received an e-mail from his Summer League coach Jeff Logan.  Here were his comments on Justin:

I am the coach of Entertainment Tonite, Justin plays on the team and has had an exceptional summer. We started the playoffs this past weekend. Saturday he posted 20 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assist and 3 steals…Sunday he had 25 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assist and 4 steals. I have talked with a couple of NBA scouts that were at the two games and they were very impressed with him and gave compliments to his overall game.

Justin is able to play the 1-2-3 positions and actually is my best defensive player and post player. In the game Sunday, we played against Demar Derozan, who is headed to USC and ranked on NBADraft.net as the possible #3 pick in next year’s draft. Demar had 40 points, but down the stretch Justin frustrated him and forced him into some bad shots.

Justin is a hard worker and a good guy to be around. Very mild mannered and easy going, but between the line is a very fierce competitor.

Some very nice words and exciting to hear.  This Jays team is shaping up on paper to look  pretty exciting.

Justin Carter update

This past week, Paul Suellentrop, who posts for the blog Pass the Rock linked to this blog on the Josh Dotzler speculation and my take on the ESPN Prestige rankings. But Paul goes on to say he wonders if Justin Carter is with the Jays or not. For Paul’s and other’s information, here is what Justin has been doing this summer.

Justin has been playing for the Say No Classic summer league basketball out in Los Angeles. The Say No Classic is billed as America’s premier summer league along with Ricos Get Better League. He has played for the team Entertainment Tonite being one of the team leaders in points and rebounds. The Rivals site Californiapreps has been covering the two leagues all summer with reports. The playoffs for the league started yesterday with Entertainment Tonite advancing. Justin led the team with 20 pts, 9 rebounds and 4 assists. Their next round game is Monday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. (5:30 CST). The playoffs are scheduled to run through August 16th.

It looks like he is getting some great experience. I’m excited to see him play for the Jays once he gets on campus. As of right now, he is still a Creighton commit and intends on being here, so I don’t know what Paul is so worried about. I’ll try to post updates on the tournament progress. I requested some information from the contact of the Say No league and hope to have more to post on Justin’s summer as well.

Last Summer League Games and Other News

Just a few tidbits of things in the lulls of the off-season until the schedule comes out.

• The Metro Summer Basketball League is coming to a close this Thursday.   The way it shakes out is that UNO will play UNK at 5:30 while the UNO Grads will take on PCS Phosphate featuring P’Allen Stinnett from the Jays at 6:30 and the winners will play each other for the championship at 7:45.   P’Allen really stepped it up last week to help his team pull out a  win.  It is just fun to seem him and the other Jays play ball so if you need some entertainment, the matchups should be pretty good.
• One Jay we haven’t seen on the court this summer is Josh Dotzler.  I talked to a friend of mine who is close to the family and the way it sounded was that he was taking the summer off to try and completely heal up after the knee surgery almost 2 years ago and all of the other “odd” injuries that have plagued him since getting injured against Southern Illinois his freshman year.     But I sometimes don’t know how much “friend” information is reliable, but if anyone else has any info, I would be game to hear it.  I suppose there is something to be said about taking a little time away from basketball to re-focus.
• Some of you may have seen the ESPN Prestige Rankings that they put out a week or so ago on the most “Prestigious” teams since 1985.  The highest Valley team is Southern Illinois at 53rd.  The Jays come in at 59th, with Missouri State in the middle.  I can’t really say I agree with that.  The Jays somehow not getting in front of the Cubs is sort of surprising.    Rush the Court has a good breakdown of the numbers involved in coming up with these rankings and their own opinions.  I sort of go with their thoughts on this whole thing.  I mean come on, Murray State at #30?   No wonder Issac Miles went there.  All that Prestige RTC didn’t think Xavier deserved 8th, but really I don’t think they get enough respect sometimes and are a quality program that always seem to be in the mix.  Another interesting note was that Drake accumulated -45 points in this ranking system showing what a unique season they had last season.  But I guess it is “unbiased” just like everything else from the spin doctors at ESPN.
• And finally on a lighter note, Jay opponent St. Joseph’s mascot the “Hawk” is nominated for the Mascot Hall of Fame.  You can check out more information on this “prestigious” institution at the Mascot Hall of Fame website.  Now I am inspired to play the Mascot game on NCAA Football 2009  Ha ha!!

Summer League Quarterfinals and Other News

Tonight is the quarterfinal round of the Metro Summer Basketball League at Omaha Central. There are 3 teams left with Jays that are playing.

• 6:30–State Farm (Kaleb Korver, Antoine Young, Casey Harriman) vs. UNK--This should be a good game as UNK has a great player in Drake Beranek and Antoine Young has been fun to watch this summer. Hard to know if any of the other Jays will be there at this game as Casey hasn’t been playing since week 1 and Kaleb Korver has been off and on. Who knows, maybe Kyle Korver will be around since he will be in town on Saturday.
• 8:30–PCS Phosphate (P’Allen Stinnett, Kenton Walker) vs. Narmi Group (Josh Dotzler, Justin Carter, Chad Millard)–I’m only expecting P’Allen to play tonight because Kenton has been injured all summer, Josh hasn’t played, Justin hasn’t been in Omaha yet and I’m not even sure if Chad has played this summer in the league. Who knows maybe another surprise tonight.

In other news from a Kevin Sarver update:

• Kyle Korver will be at Scheels this Saturday, August 2nd, from 10-noon to sign autographs. It is a free event and open to the public.
• Speaking of Kyle-The Kyle Korver Foundation has scheduled a charity golf event at Shadow Ridge Golf Club on Friday, September 12. Any Creighton fan interested in learning more about the event should contact Mark Burgers (605-690-6152,mark.burgers@sdstate.edu) or Mike Potthoff (402-981-3310, mpotthoff@dmsi.com).
• Those that are headed to Vegas for the Las Vegas Classic that the Jays are taking part in on December 22nd and 23rd can get a limited number of all-session tickets from the CU Athletic office for $123. Call the Jays ticket office at 402-280-JAYS or e-mail cuticketoffice@creighton.edu for more info.

Word is that the schedule is supposed to be released around Labor Day so we only have about a month more to speculate who the last teams are on the schedule. Probably not that exciting, but will wait and see.

A Good Night of Basketball

I saw some of the games from last nights first round of the Metro Summer League Basketball Tournament. You could tell that the players were playing more for keeps since there appeared to be a little more defense and not as much flash. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get there until after 8, so I missed the early games. Then some guy started reminiscing about the past before I could get into the gym, so I missed the rest of the 7:30 games, but somebody tell me if I am wrong, but I think the team that had Cavel Witter lost their game last night and so that team is out. During the 8:30 game one of the players from the 7:30 game was in the stands saying that they had an upset, so I assumed that was Cavel’s team. Also Cavel wasn’t there last night.

Anyway, the 8:30 game was to feature several Creighton Jays. Former Jay Rodney Buford and current jays Booker Woodfox, Kenny Lawson, P’Allen Stinnett, Josh Jones and Kenton Walker. Well Booker and Kenny were no-show’s and Kenton still has a small cast on his hand. However, I think it is great that even though Kenton injured his hand in week 1 that he has still been there to support his teammates and definitely happy to be there even though he couldn’t play.

The game was not quite as fast paced as the matchup in week 2. P’Allen’s team was down in the first half for most of it (around 10-15 points) and then turned it on towards the end of the half and into the second half to pull away to win by almost 20 points. P’Allen had his dunks as usual, but his team as a whole really play well together and are really unselfish. P is really relaxed out there, but his leadership really shows. Josh Jones hit some big shots early and was a scoring machine, but then kind of disappeared by the second half. However, the fun part was that P’Allen and Josh basically went 1-on-1 with each other the last 2-3 minutes of the game which was fun to watch. They started talking fun smack with each other right before tipoff so you knew at some point they would matchup. The athletic ability of these 2 guys is impressive and they both got the best of each other a couple of times, but still can tell they have this great rapport that will be great asset come regular season time.

Next week the games are at Omaha Central.

Summer League Preview–Playoffs Week 1

Hey it is Playoff time! Okay well it is only summer league playoffs, but hey still exciting. A couple more chances to see the Jays in action this summer before fall conditioning and first practice in October. Here are the matchups this week:

6:30–#4 State Farm (Kaleb Korver, Antoine Young, Casey Harriman, Dane Watts) vs. #13 Dana–The #4 seeded State Farm takes on Dana in the first matchup of the evening with Creighton players. Kaleb has looked pretty good in the couple of games he has played this summer and Antoine Young has been fun to watch. Casey has been MIA since week one, so hopefully his knee hasn’t continued to bother him. Dane Watts will be playing tonight as a nice surprise. I think I read something somewhere in the past few days that Dane signed with a German team (You’ll want to use Google Translator for this link)–the same German team with former Nebraska player Jason Dourisseau.  Should be a good matchup to start the Jays evening.

7:30–#2 EQ School of Hair (Cavel Witter) vs. #15 Hastings–Cavel has had a great summer having nights of scoring and dishing the ball honing in his skills. Tom Whitehead was on the team most of the summer, but for obvious reasons he is no longer on the team.

7:30–#10 Porter, Tauke and Ebke (Sitzmann) vs. #7 UNO Grads–A rematch from a deadlock close game two weeks ago, the Walk-on All-Stars take on the UNO Grads. Watch your favorite Jay walk-on Dustin Sitzmann in this matchup that could go either way.

8:30–#3 Narmi Group (Justin Carter, Chad Millard, Josh Dotzler) vs. #14 Morningside–It sounds like Justin is playing in a summer league this summer out of state, so he hasn’t had a chance to play on this team yet. I haven’t seen Josh Dotzler play yet this summer so I don’t know if he has been to any of the games and Chad Millard has been working the College World Series and going on vacation, so it will be interesting to see if any of the Creighton guys can make it to this game.

8:30–#6 PCS Phosphate(P’Allen Stinnett, Kenton Walker) vs. #11 Shanks Law (Rodney Buford, Kenny Lawson, Booker Woodfox, Josh Jones)–Game of the night right here. The rematch from week 2 where it was the Booker and P’Allen show along with huge games from Josh Jones and Kenny Lawson. This again should be a great game to watch. I doubt Walker will be playing still due to the hand injury in week1.

Hope people can make it out to the games. If anything, put the kids to bed and head out for the 8:30 matchup. It should be worth it.

For more info on the Metro Summer League Basketball go to http://metrobball.com

Wichita State Finally Joins the 21st Century

Well, maybe they aren’t that far off, but an article in the Wichita Eagle talks about how Koch Arena is finally adding courtside seats for Shocker fans to purchase for a whopping $4260 per seat. The cost for one seat is a $4,000 donation to WSU’s athletic scholarship fund, plus $260 for the price of a season ticket. The seats will be at six of the 10 tables along the court with the middle four tables still reserved for media. There will be 24 courtside seats total.

To compare to the Jays, Creighton has 136 courtside seats, but each one is $1,250 — $600 donation, $650 for a season ticket. Of course, I’m sure that the $600 donation is the low end and that there are higher donations with the Jaybackers.

The rest of the Valley breaks down like this:

Missouri State-With their new arena being built, 48 courtside seats for $5,000 a piece.

Drake-12 seats at $1,000 apiece, the person must make a donation of at least $5,000 per year for five straight years to their Champions Club.  I’m sure that will go up after their one-year wonder.

Southern Illinois-48 seats at $2,500 each.  I wouldn’t pay that kind of money in that building.

Northern Iowa-44 seats on the floor at the going season-ticket rate of $290 each. However, those were assigned based on the level of giving by the season-ticket holder. If that level of giving drops, the fan is in danger of losing his seat. Very similar to Creighton season-ticket holders and any of the Jaybacker donations for any of the seats.

Illinois St.–Have seats that come right up to the court, but they are not sold at a special price

Valley schools not mentioned in the article and courtside seats:

Bradley–They have seats that come up to the court, but not different from other areas of the arena and of course have their own donation requirements called “Ticket Maintenance”

Indiana St–$285 per Season Ticket, $400 Varsity Club Donation per seat. They started their courtside seats last year, but according to their ticket information they also use some courtside seating for Corporate events. 2 courtside seats with complimentary game programs for VIP’s 98 non-priority lower level tickets (100 total tickets) Varsity Club Room access–$750 per game

Evansville–Does not have courtside seating according to their ticket information.

Tolliver signs with the Spurs

The San Antonio Spurs announced today that they have signed former Bluejay Anthony Tolliver.  After playing with the Nets Summer League team a few weeks ago, this past week he has played for the San Antonio Spurs Summer League team and played impressively with them.

Anthony was on with Matt and Trav today on Big Sports 590 to talk about an event he was taking part in here in Omaha as well as his signing with the spurs.  Anthony talked about how playing in the NBA D-League really helped him pick up the NBA game and learn a lot of great things.  He also played in Europe recently to help make a little money.

Watching him play in the Metro Summer League earlier this summer it was neat to see how he has developed in his game and now has a jump shot from 3 and looked so much different.  Kind of ironic though that Spurs fans talk about that Anthony is just a jump shooter. Obviously none of them watched him at Creighton.  Good luck to the A-Train.

Around the Rim–7/20/08

Well, a week away on vacation and a Jay leaves the program and a little more schedule news:

• As most followers of the program probably know already, JC transfer Tom Whitehead has left Creighton after finding out he wouldn’t be granted a scholarship by coach Altman for this year. Whitehead admitted he didn’t work hard enough in practice after joining the team in January and had gotten out of shape. He said he thought that he had picked up the intensity after returning to Omaha in June and he felt as if he was making progress during summer workouts. We are really only hearing one part of the story since Coach Altman isn’t really talking about the situation. That’s too bad. He was consistently playing pretty hard it seemed in all of the summer league games and showed up to play each week. You wonder if there was someone else in mind for the scholarship instead of Whitehead, but Altman said “”We have no plans to do that. I’m not saying we won’t, but at this time, we’re not planning on bringing anyone else in.” I guess time will tell. At this point it sounds like Tom will be trying to play at Dixie State and see where things go from there.
• I guess all the Jays took vacation this week as well as most of them did not play in the summer league games this last week of “pool” play. This next week (26th) is the start of the Tournament which should garner a little excitement and expect that most of the key people will be there for their respective teams. Also a little note that the format for summer league next year will be tweaked a little bit. Next year there will be two different divisions, an elite division and a small college division. There is just too much difference between the two to benefit either level.
• Anthony Tolliver has been playing well for the San Antonio Spurs NBA summer league team. One Eastern Conference executive is convinced that Anthony Tolliver will make San Antonio’s roster as a “shooting 4-man.” In two games of the Rocky Mountain Revue league, AT has been starting and playing some good minutes.  To see the rest of the schedule and a link to watch the games already played and live, you can to go the Rocky Mountain Revue site.
• Another piece of the scheduling picture has come out as Depaul has released their non-conference schedule. As we all know, Depaul is part of the Las Vegas Classic the Jays are playing in around Christmas time. For Depaul’s opening round games, they are playing Liberty (Dec. 17th) and Southern (Dec. 19th) So it appears those might be dates for the Jays playing at home as well in their opening games. It is still a wait to see who the Jays get between Liberty, Southern, South Carolina Upsate and Northern Colorado.