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Tuesday, January 31, 2006
No Clue
It's a slow news day. Unless you want to read a story announcing Bucknell's opponent (note: Northern Iowa's nickname does not include the color purple) in the Bracket Buster, there really is not much out there this morning.

Days like this are when we dig real deep for something, anything, new to use for a morning update.

That is what took us to Fox Sports, where we found a Bucknell team report that included this misinformation on the "Strategy and Personnel page:
PLAYER ROTATION: Usual Starters -- G Abe Badmus, G Kevin Bettencourt, C Chris McNaughton, F Charles Lee, F Darren Mastropaolo. Key Subs -- G Jason Vegotsky, C Josh Linthicum, F John Griffin.
Uh ... err ... not exactly. First, Griffin is a guard. Second, Donald Brown is the first guy off the bench for Bucknell and arguably the top sixth man in the league now that Joe Knight is back in Lehigh's starting five. Fox doesn't even mention him. Ditto for Tarik Viaer-McClymont, who actually is Bucknell's backup center, not Linthicum.

Viaer-McClymont averages over 10 minutes per game and has played in all but 2 of Bucknell's contests. The two he missed were due to injury. Linthicum, on the other hand, has seen spot minutes in 15 games, his 3.5 minutes per game average inflated by mop-up minutes. Matter of fact, Rob Thomas has played more than Linthicum thus far (15 games, 3.8 minutes per game).

That got us looking at the reports from the other league teams.

In the Lehigh personnel report, freshman guard Matt Szalachowski is listed as a key reserve. That is curious, since we saw Lehigh's last three games and never saw Szalachowski even take off his warmups. James Anderson, who is not mentioned, played in all three and actually earned a start against Holy Cross.

Then there is the Lafayette Notes and Quotes page, which notes:
Lafayette drifted to the perimeter too often against Lehigh, resulting in a 76-58 loss. The Leopards attempted 27 3-point shots and made just nine.
Forget the fact that the report is 10 days old and focus instead on the flawed analysis. A) 9-of-27 from the three-point line (33.3 percent) equates to 27 points on 27 shots. The Leopards would need to shoot 50 percent inside the arc to get that same production. B) The three is a key part of Lafayette's offense. Lacking any true inside force, the Leopards have averaged over 23 three-point tries a game. Against Lehigh, Lafayette was 12-for-29 (41 percent) inside the arc. Maybe they should have shot more threes. What actually cost the Leopards against Lehigh was defense; Lehigh shot 66 percent for the game, 72 percent in the second half to blow open what was a 2-point game at the intermission.

It gets even better when you look at the Lafayette personnel report. Listed as a key sub: Marcus Harley, who has played all of 4 games all season. Not mentioned: Matt Betley, who has appeared in all 20 games, starting three.

By the way, these reports appear to be identical to the ones on CBS Sportsline, so take those with a grain of salt as well.
Published at 9:18 AM by Hoop Time.
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