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In a modern college basketball landscape in which prominent players rarely exhaust their college eligibility to instead pursue greener (we’re talking money, folks) pastures professionally, those players that DO stick around establish residence in our brains like a song that we can’t quite get out of our head.
There’s a special place in our hearts for the guys that are capable of eliciting a “wait he’s still playing college basketball?” response from fans as we look up from our phones in between tweets.
That class of Guy includes players like Perry Ellis, the entirety of Ohio State’s 2015 recruiting class, and Duke’s Token White Guy in a given year. They’re becoming increasingly scarce, but college basketball junkies are always able to snuff them out.
So without further ado, here are the Holy Shit That Guy Is Still Around (HSTGISA) All-Stars for the 2020-21 season.
Josh Langford - Michigan State
Langford was a member of the highly touted 2016 Spartan recruiting class that included a future lottery pick in Miles Bridges and one of the most universally loved players of the past decade in Cassius Winston. Injuries, however, kept him on the sidelines for the last 17 games of the 2018-19 season and all of the 2019-20 campaign.
Missing a year and a half of your career with a nagging ailment would be a perfectly valid reason for hanging up the Nikes, but Langford is back as the lone senior for a top-five Michigan State team. He’s also rocking a shaved head now. He never reached the star power of Bridges or Winston, but he has the chance to put a nice bow on a bumpy career if he can stay healthy for Sparty.
Seventh Woods - South Carolina
The “Seventh Woods Is The BEST 14 Year Old In The Country! CRAZY Athlete” mixtape came out in 2013. 2013!!!! Seven years ago!!
Woods was one of the pioneers of a movement that deemed certain highlight reel phenoms to be “built different” or “a problem for real bro” by 14-year olds on Twitter named Braydynn or Jaxley. His aerial acrobatics and mixtape-worthy handles landed him a top-50 recruiting ranking and a scholarship at North Carolina. Surely he would have lived up the hype and become one of the next great Tar Heel guards?
Reader, no he would not.
In 94 career games with the Tar Heels, Woods started one (1) game and averaged less than 10 minutes per game. He’s scored in double figures just once in a 2018 matchup against Gonzaga in which he poured in 14 points. After redshirting last year, he’s now at South Carolina where he’s still seeing only spot minutes off the bench.
There will always be that mixtape though.
Jalen Coleman-Lands - Iowa State
Some members of the 2015 recruiting class are already signing lucrative contract extensions in the NBA like Ben Simmons, Donovan Mitchell, and Brandon Ingram. Others are at their third school and using their fifth season of eligibility in six seasons.
Jalen Coleman-Lands is in the latter group.
The No. 37 recruit in the 2015 class landed at Illinois initially but transferred to DePaul following head coach John Groce’s dismissal after the 2017 season. A broken left hand cut his 2018-19 season short after just nine games, but he bounced back and started all 32 games for the Blue Demons last year.
Coleman-Lands is now a graduate transfer and the second-leading scorer for an Iowa State team that might not win a game in the Big 12 this year.
Brad Davison - Wisconsin
[verbal meme]
Kid: Mom, can we get Aaron Craft at the store?
Mom: We have Aaron Craft at home
[The Aaron Craft at home is Brad Davison]
Craft will always be the gold standard for being the guy that every other Big Ten fan HATES with a burning passion. Brad Davison has given him a run for his money though as a store brand version of Craft.
Between the incessant pursuit of drawing charges on opponents, dirty crotch shots, and general shit-heel style play, Davison can stake a claim to being college basketball’s biggest villain. He’s a pure distillation of Every Wisconsin Guy of the last 20 years.
Brad Davison sucks. Wisconsin basketball is the plague. I want him gone NOW.
Brady Manek - Oklahoma
Manek was a member of the Sooners’ 2018 class that included Trae Young, Trae Young, and also Trae Young. Young set college basketball on fire for a year, while Manek had a solid showing as a stretch four during his freshman campaign.
As the years have gone by though, Manek is developed in the NCAA’s No. 1 All-Time Larry Bird Cosplayer. I mean COME ON:
Just a powerful, powerful aesthetic from our guy here. Manek wants to come over to your house on a hot summer day, help you redo your back deck, then house a few Miller Lite’s before hopping into his ‘84 Chevy Blazer to call it a day.
Anyways, Manek is a four-year starter that’s averaging a career-high in points (16.7 PPG) and hitting 45% of his threes. He’s good.
Cameron Krutwig - Loyola Chicago
This guy is one of the most well-rounded big men in college basketball:
As a freshman, Cameron “That’ll be $40 for parts and $60 for labor” Krutwig was a focal point of Loyola Chicago’s Cinderella run to the Final Four in 2018, and he’s been one of the best bigs in college basketball since. Our large, rowdy lad has been carving up the Missouri Valley with Big Boy Buckets in the paint and a Jokic-Esque ability to pass from the high post. He’s a college basketball unicorn and he is handsome. Expect a lot of “Oh yeah I remember him!” reactions when Loyola is up on Iowa late in the second round of the tournament.
KJ Walton - Ball State
Walton may not have the name recognition that others on this list have, but he’s another top 150 recruit from 2015 that’s still hanging around. Walton spent two years as a periodic starter for Missouri during Kim Anderson’s final two seasons in Columbia. Remember Kim Anderson? He’s coaching at Pittsburg State now, a D-II school with an ELITE logo.
Powerful Planet Of The Apes energy there.
Walton transferred to Ball State, where he’s been for four seasons now. He had one redshirt year due to transfer rules, and a second redshirt year last year due to a lingering ankle injury. Now he’s using his final year of eligibility to terrorize opposing defenses alongside Ishmael El-Amin. Yes, that’s who you think it is. Yes, you are old.
Alterique Gilbert - Wichita State
Vance Jackson - Arkansas
We’re going to double-dip with a pair of former Kevin Ollie Guys. Let’s start with Gilbert.
The former McDonald’s All-American was a highly touted prospect whose left shoulder simply did not want to let him thrive. A torn labrum resulted in season-ending surgery after just three games as a freshman, and then he reinjured that same shoulder just six games into the 2017-18 season, once again leading to season-ending surgery. After two inconsistent seasons following Dan Hurley’s hiring at UConn, Gilbert departed to play for Gregg Marshall and Wichita State, which uh, probably isn’t going the way he anticipated.
Jackson has had an even more erratic journey. The former top 100 recruit spent just a single season in Storrs before taking his talents to New Mexico. With the Lobos, he was a member of a 2019-20 Lobos squad that was an all-time Remember That Guy highlighted by former name-brand guys like Carlton Bragg and JaQuan Lyle, amongst other transfers.
But he’s still not done! Jackson is coming off the bench for Eric Musselman at Arkansas, which appears to be well on its way to becoming a transfer safe-haven ala Fred Hoiberg’s Iowa State teams.
Eron Gordon - Valparaiso
This one will probably only be of interest to you if you spent a significant portion of the 2012-13 season on Indiana message boards trying to ascertain what Evan Gordon’s tenure with the Hoosiers meant for Eron Gordon’s recruitment. Eron is the third Gordon to roll through college basketball, following in the footsteps of older brothers Eric (insane talent) and the aforementioned Evan (fine).
Eron initially committed to Seton Hall in 2016, where he struggled to find minutes during his first two seasons before ultimately transferring to Valparaiso. In his two years there, Gordon has averaged just a little over five points per game. Ho-hum.
Nonetheless, we (me) will always have those countless message board hours arguing with mid-40s insurance salesmen about whether or not offering Gordon as an 8th grader had any impact on Tom Crean’s tenure at Indiana (it didn’t, btw).
Espresso Shots
Here are some things I enjoyed in the world of college basketball this week.
Eli Boettger put together a really comprehensive analysis of the varying levels of Return On Investment across the college basketball landscape for AthleticDirectorU. Highly recommend giving it a look if you’re curious about which schools and conferences get the most bang for their buck.
The ACC announced earlier this week that Jim Phillips will named as the next Commissioner of the ACC after spending the last 13 years as athletic director at Northwestern. Friend of the newsletter Ben Goren penned a thought provoking thinkpiece on how we view the success of an AD and who it really is that AD’s serve.
Nick Sherod was supposed to be an integral part of a Richmond team that is top 25 good and could be a threat for a March Madness run. Instead, an ACL injury that he decided will end his career has him trying to still to remain engaged with the team. He wrote an op-ed for Mid-Major Madness trying to encapsulate what it’s been like to watch his teammates chase success this season. Sherod could have a lucrative career as a media member if he desires. He’s great.
Without the presence of fans, it was reasonable to expect the impact of home-court advantage to be less than it traditionally is, but by how much? Ken Pomeroy (folks have you heard about this guy?) determined that it’s been roughly 60% of what it’s been in past seasons ($$$). One big reason? There’s a smaller discrepancy between fouls called on the home and away teams.
So far this year, teams with first-year head coaches have struggled offensively. Andy Wittry has a full breakdown of how those first-year coaches have fared overall.
Here’s a minor nitpick that I noticed during Sunday’s Creighton-UConn game: the benches being on the near side of the broadcast are a bit of a nuisance when the action is near the sidelines. There were multiple times where Greg McDermott or Dan Hurley covered up the player with the ball, and it can hard to differentiate between players on the bench and in the game when they’re standing up.
David Duke praise on a Fox broadcast? Folks sometimes the joke just writes itself.
See you next Monday. Enjoy the hoops.
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