Did I tell you guys about the Buzz Williams experiment? If so, we’re pushing that to tomorrow. It’s nothing huge or that exciting, but I feel like I mentioned it yesterday and if there are any Buzz Williams fans out there waiting with bated breath, well, keep waiting. Just a bit more.
The NIT Championship
Xavier and Texas A&M. My best read on this is to follow the market and call A&M the favorite. They’re the better team, they’re healthier, their domination of Washington State on Tuesday was impressive, and if whether or not a team’s “clicking” is something we can see and something that matters, that should help them too. That said, Xavier’s talented. Much more purely talented, I would argue. Better individual players than A&M, and Jonas Hayes has done a great job throughout this tournament. It would be unwise to write off Xavier.
Tip-off’s at 7:00 PM EDT on ESPN.
Bruce Arians to the Front Office?
As a Tom Brady insider (not a Tom Brady insider), there’s an angle where Arians heading to the Buccaneers’ front office fits into our Miami speculation. That angle is that if Brady didn’t want to keep playing under Arians, Arians’s departure could have convinced him to either come back or to stay in Tampa Bay once he’d decided to come back. It seems to firm up the indication that Brady’s staying in Tampa Bay, but that’s an odd thing to say, because instability should theoretically breed instability.
At the very least, it’s odd. There’s an oddness to the whole situation, and it might be small, and it might even just be a perception, but it’s there, and it could be large. There are pieces to stories here we seem to not be publicly hearing.
The Conference USA Skirmish Is Over
Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss are all officially leaving Conference USA, ending a spicy little saga in which both Conference USA and the Sun Belt included the three schools on their preliminary football schedules for this fall.
On that topic, the current timeline for the Big 12’s expansion is still up in the air. BYU should join the league in time for the 2023 football season. Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF could join then as well, but might not make it out of the AAC before ’24. Texas and Oklahoma could leave before the ’23 season but also might not leave until all the way in ’25. Still waiting on that, and in the meantime, it doesn’t affect Iowa State’s trajectory very directly. So much going on that the program’s benchmarks remain the same.
Jaden Walker: Gone
On the topic of Iowa State, Jaden Walker is in the transfer portal, as we guessed might happen. That raises the number of open scholarships to two, with Tyrese Hunter, Gabe Kalscheur, Aljaž Kunc, and Tristan Enaruna all theoretical departures but unannounced as of yet, and in all cases but Enaruna, probably more likely to stay than leave. Plenty of connections to incoming transfers, as we’d expect, but nothing firm there yet, so we won’t dig into any of the names today. Expectations for next year remain unchanged.
Shaheen Holloway to Seton Hall
As many expected, Shaheen Holloway is the new men’s basketball coach at Seton Hall. It seems like a good hire, or as strong a bet as you could expect. We caution against making too much of NCAA Tournament results, since it’s such a small sample of games, but Saint Peter’s is finishing the season 102nd in KenPom (maybe a little higher or lower, but in that territory), and that’s technically not the Peacocks’ best finish ever (they were 95th in 2017), but it’s very good for that school and it’s promising for Seton Hall. I don’t think Seton Hall could have made a hire that seems better than this in the present sense.
Elsewhere on the carousel, no high-major jobs are currently opening, but there are a few in the low and mid-major ranks, including San Diego and George Washington. If this is interesting at all and I haven’t mentioned it, San Francisco promoted from within, elevating Chris Gerlufsen to the head role. More could happen as these weeks go on, but things do seem to be slowing down, and one would think few programs would make a new move this late in the proceedings.
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Tonight, our focus here at The Barking Crow is obviously on the NIT Championship. After that, the best viewing is probably Bucks/Nets on TNT (starts at 8:30 PM EDT) followed by Lakers/Jazz (at 10:00 PM EDT). High-leverage time for the NBA.
