Q&A with Jeff Goodman, Part II: on This Year's Freshman, Surprise Teams, and His Gonzaga National Champ Pick

JL: One of the things that college basketball has to deal with is when it starts. Football is full bore; college football talk with the playoff committee is going. There’s no real set blowout weekend to tip it off. Now, we’ll have some big events as we approach Thanksgiving, but there’s no real opening weekend in the sense of a lot of huge matchups. Is that something the sport needs to address or its that just part of how it’s going to be, easing into the season?

JG: No, I think they should address it. I think ESPN has done a good job with the marathon, which is next Tuesday. So they’ve got the Champions Classic at night, and that’s kind of the heavy hitters, Kentucky-Kansas, and Duke-Michigan State. But, I think they could still do a better job, of the Friday night, the first night of college basketball, let’s have some marquee games, let’s have some Friday, one Saturday, let’s have one Sunday, and try to figure out a way that every night let’s have a game you want to see, leading up to some of these events that have kinda thinned out in recent years, there’s just more of them.

Bahamas is the big one this year, down at the Atlantis, it’s absolutely loaded this year, but besides that, they are all just okay. College basketball has to do a better job of consistently through November and December, having maybe one “must see” game each night that people are talking about, that people want to see. It’s not easy to do, because a lot of the big teams, they don’t want to play that many big games. A lot of the heavy hitters, they will play like three good games.

I did something the other day, where I ranked the top non-conference schedules, the top ones, the worst ones. For instance, a team like Louisville is a good example. They have a decent non-conference schedule. Ten of the 13 are on their home floor, they play the game against Kentucky, it’s at home, they play Ohio State at home, and they play both Minnesota and Indiana, two fringe tournament teams, and the only true road game they play is Western Kentucky.

JL: College basketball is different than college football. You know, those teams worry about getting to a bowl game and losing that one game that puts them out. Let’s be honest, Basketball coaches should know how the committee selects teams, and they don’t care if you beat up on the 300th best team, in fact they penalize you for it. You could go 5-10 against tournament teams, and still get in the NCAA Tournament.

JG: Yeah, you’re right. You don’t even have to play anyone in the non-conference, all you have to do is do well in your league. Check out Notre Dame’s schedule. It’s laughable. It’s the worst one of any top 50 team. It’s a complete joke, but they play in the ACC. So even if they don’t do anything in the non-conference, as long as they go over .500 in the ACC this year, which will be the best league in America, they’ll be fine. They don’t play one true road game. Not one.

JL: But they kind of put the pressure on themselves, because if they are right at .500, they could be in trouble.

JG: Correct, but they are just banking on the fact that they can do well enough in league play and it will get them in.

JL: I’m looking at it, and they have Michigan State at home, and UMass on a neutral court–and who knows how good they will be this year–and that is it.

JG: Exactly.

JL: I’ve got a proposal for you–you use your powers at ESPN–I think it would be awesome to have a 16-team past champions tourney, say it is only open to past champions. You could get the heavy hitters, Duke, UCONN, Arizona. You could get programs that won it 50 years ago like Wisconsin and Oregon. You could start the year with that every year with a 16 team event, and those teams would do nothing but benefit from a NCAA tourney selection perspective.

JG: Jason, the problem is, they don’t want their records to be hurt. They’d rather play the cupcakes. In their defense, some of their administrations want the home game because they want the money off it, so they don’t want you playing too many road or neutral sites, because they know they are going to make the money off the gate.

So Indiana, again, they don’t have one true road game. Now they could play one or two, don’t get me wrong. Tom Crean, if he wasn’t fighting for his job right now-even before all this off-court stuff, he was fighting for is job. And he needs to win this year. He’s putting together the type of non-conference schedule that will save him his job, period, and that includes zero true non-conference road games.

JL: I know you wrote about your preseason All-American team. We had a lot of stars, both veterans and the young guys who were drafted highly in the NBA, who are gone. Who are the next generation of stars that maybe the common fan doesn’t know about yet?

JG: What I’ll say is last year the top freshmen got a lot of hype. And this year everybody is kinda wondering, well, what is going to be the story with college basketball? I think these freshmen have a chance to be just as good if not better.

Andrew Wiggins to me didn’t live up to the hype last year. He was a good player, but he wasn’t a superstar in college. He was up, he was down. Just look at his final game against Stanford and four points against Josh Huestis. Jabari Parker’s team got bounced early. Joel Embiid was terrific, but got hurt. Julius Randle, he was very good, but not the best player in the country or close to it.

Honestly, I think Jahlil Okafor, Duke’s freshman, 6’11”, super skilled, could be better than all of them, but he’s not as sexy, his game isn’t as dynamic, and that’s the case for a few of these guys we are talking about, some of the top freshman or top players. Okafor, Marcus Paige, who’s a junior at North Carolina, does not have a dynamic game, is not a high level athlete. Myles Turner, freshman at Texas, same thing, 7 feet, skilled. Now there are some dynamic players. Karl Towns, is a freshman at Kentucky, who is dynamic. Basically, 7 feet, super skilled, can score in and score out.

Arizona’s got a kid Stanley Johnson who is a freshman, a power wing, big, strong and athletic. Kansas has a kid in Cliff Alexander who has a chance to be just as good as Julius Randle.

If you look at it, Okafor can be as good as Jabari Parker. Cliff Alexander can be as good as Randle. Karl Towns can be as good as Andrew Wiggins. Well, those are the top three guys, that’s what we are talking about, right? I’m telling you those guys can match them, and then you have just as much depth, players like Kelly Oubre at Kansas, Tyus Jones at Duke, Stanley Johnson at Arizona, Myles Turner at Texas, Justin Jackson at North Carolina, Domantas Sabonis at Gonzaga, D’Angelo Russell at Ohio State, who is going to be terrific. Daniel Hamilton at UCONN. Plenty of star power at these programs, and they didn’t get the hype, but I think this class has a chance to be better.

JL: Switching gears on that freshman talk, is there a team that has a chance to be this year’s Virginia, a veteran group that puts it together, maybe comes out of a fringe tournament team from a year ago?

JG: Let’s go Colorado. They were without [Spencer] Dinwiddie last year. They learned to play without Dinwiddie, they’ve got some veterans now, they’ve got good balance with [Askia] Booker, with Xavier Johnson, with Josh Scott, with Wesley Gordon. And I think Tad Boyle is one of the most underrated coaches in America, so I would say Colorado is a team that a lot of people are sleeping on.

JL: Then is there a team like Michigan a year ago, people didn’t think they’d be a 2-seed a year ago, a team that has heavy NBA losses, but has the kind of leadership and influx of talent that still can surprise?

JG: I think Michigan can be that team again, to be honest. They still have Caris LeVert. They still have a terrific head coach in John Beilein. Derrick Walton will be better, so they’d be one of those teams I would put in the mix.

Iowa State is another one. Iowa State’s going to be really good. Georges Niang is just that player, who’s not dynamic, not an above the rim guy, but just knows how to play. They lost DeAndre Kane and Melvin Ejim. But they bring in Bryce Dejean-Jones, the UNLV transfer, and Jameel McKay is a kid that people don’t know about, but is going to be eligible at the break, and is a 6’9″ athlete and they haven’t had that. I think Fred Hoiberg maybe goes to the Elite Eight this year, and buh-bye, I think he goes to the NBA. The NBA people I talk to, they love Fred Hoiberg, and he was in the mix for Golden State, finished second to Steve Kerr this past season, and he’s going to be a guy who is constantly in demand.

JL: Now, when you say people love him, is that because of his offense and his understanding of that, or his personality and his connections to the NBA?

JG: Yeah, that’s a good point you make, it’s a combination. It’s the way he coaches in terms of his offense, he creates mismatches and understands how to exploit mismatches. And also his personality, his mentality, he’s very similar to Brad Stevens. He doesn’t get too high, too low, and it’s not all about himself. Right now, that’s what you want in the NBA, guys who aren’t about themselves. That’s why they love Fred Hoiberg, he’s got no ego.

JL: On a personal note, Missouri, new coaching staff . . .

JG: You wanna go there, you sure you wanna go there?

JL: I do, I want to hear it. As a fan, the last couple of years were frustrating. I know they had talent that is not there anymore, it just did not play to where it should be. Are they going to be better coached but the results the same?

JG: Well, they are going to be worse this year. I know people may not want to hear that. I wrote a couple of years ago that Frank Haith was going to get hit hard if not for the NCAA because of the Miami stuff, and he’s fortunate. And now he’s really fortunate he’s making $1.8 million per year at Tulsa, crazy, right? He’s smart, he saw the writing on the wall. They hire a guy in Kim Anderson, who hasn’t coached at the Division I level as an assistant in a long time, who has been a successful D-II coach. What he did–and when they hired him I was really skeptical–but what he did was kept Tim Fuller and he hired Rob Fulford, two really good recruiters. Already Fulford paid dividend getting Gill-Caesar, Fuller helped him keep Jakeenan Gant, and Johnathan Williams is solid, Deuce Bello is a freak athlete. They’re not good enough to do anything this year, but they’ve got some good freshman they can build around, and Wes Clark is going to be better.

I think they’ve got some decent pieces, but they’re young, all their top players are freshman and sophomores. I would expect them to finish toward the bottom of the league this year, but everything I’ve been told by people in the industry about Kim Anderson is high, high character guy, can really coach. If you can bring the talent–Fuller and Fulford can do that–I think they can get back to a point where they are consistent tournament contenders.

JL: Let’s talk feel-good stories in college basketball and also the next Aaron Craft, what team or player could be that lightning rod among fans that generates all kind of responses.

I think it could be Wisconsin, just kind of the target on their back this year, with Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky. Kaminsky is a riot, hilarious, a seven foot goofball. He could be the face of college basketball this year, and nobody knew who he was a year ago today, and now he could be the best player in the country.

The key to Wisconsin is Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky focusing on team rather than the NBA, because people are talking about both in NBA circles.

A great feel-good story, and we saw it the other day, is Austin Hatch at Michigan, who has survived two plane crashes in which his entire family has passed away. He’s back with Michigan, and he was in a coma after the second one. He scored a point in the exhibition game, and I hope he has a chance in the regular season.

JL: What about the negative stories off the court?

JG: The big stories, the negative stories you have to look at are the Carolina academic scandal, and what plays out with that. Is the NCAA–are they going to be tough, or are they going to acquiesce to them? Right now, they’ve been on their heels with everything else lately, what are they going to do with this?

Indiana, Tom Crean, what’s going to happen there? He’s certainly on thin ice. I don’t think he should be fired. Listen, I don’t think he should be fired for this. Do you know how many kids today smoke weed on college campuses? Not just on college basketball teams, but on campuses? It’s rampant. Tom Crean cannot be fired because a couple of kids failed drug tests. He should be fired because they are not winning enough. Let’s see what happens this year. I still think this team can go to the NCAA Tournament. We’ll see.

But those are the two big ones.

JL: North Carolina is one of the sacred basketball institutions, and this story’s been bubbling for years with the football program, but it seemed like there has been some protection of the basketball program for now. When do you think we’ll hit a head one way or the other, in the middle of the season?

JG: I do, yeah, I think in the middle of the season, the NCAA will make a decision on whether they are going to do anything based off the Wainstein report. My gut feel is that they don’t do anything. My gut feel is that the NCAA is scared right now, and it doesn’t want to upset any of the key membership, and the key membership is Carolina certainly, and Syracuse is also going through some stuff. I don’t see either one of those guys getting hit hard. But again, who knows? I don’t think it’s going to happen.

JL: Okay, let’s get your national title pick.

JG: Believe it or not, I know people are going to rip on me for this. Our picks come out Thursday (Hey, here they are!), I’ve got Gonzaga winning it all.

JL: That’s a bold pick.

JG: Yes, really bold. Not just getting to the Final Four, like most people would be content saying they get to the Final Four, but winning it all. This Gonzaga team has no glaring weaknesses.They’ve got two good senior guards, in Kevin Pangos, who’s healthy, who was not healthy last year, and Gary Bell, who can really defend. They’ve got three bigs, this Karnowski kid [Przemek], who is a monster, they’ve got Kyle Wiltjer, who’s good, he played a lot on that crappy Kentucky team two years ago that went to the NIT, and they’ve got Sabonis’ kid, Domantas Sabonis, who as I said, plays hard, not like his dad, but skilled and plays hard.

And then they added Byron Wesley, who was USC’s leading scorer last year, so he’s the wing they needed. And then they bring in the McClellan kid [Eric] from Vandy, who averaged 14 points a game last year before he got kicked off the team. So, there’s no glaring weakness, and Gonzaga’s going to roll through their league, they are going to roll through their tournament, and then it’s just about matchups.

I know people are going to say they’ve never done it before, they were a number 1 seed two years ago with Kelly Olynyk. I don’t know, I just have a feel that this year’s team–that team had Mike Hart as a 3-man, and Mike Hart was a good player, but he couldn’t score, great defender–this team has everything, they’ve got the bigs, they’ve got the veteran guards, they’ve got the point guard who can shoot and pass, they’ve got the guy that can guard with Gary Bell, they’ve got the guy who can score on the wing in Wesley, they’ve got it all, and I think Gonzaga ends up winning it all.

I know people will rip me for it, and I’m ready to take it, but I think this is the year for the ‘Zags, I really do.

JL: Then, you realize they’ve got a big game against Arizona coming up in December?

JG: December 6th, I know, I’m trying to get that game for sideline.

JL: So ESPN has that game?

JG: They do. They do. I’m trying, so if you could put a plug for me to get sideline for that game.

JL: We will. Get Goodman home to Tucson!

JG: Get me to Tucson. I did it last year, it was actually the coolest experience I had all of last year, doing an Arizona game with Bill Walton and Dave Pasch in Tucson. Like, how cool is that? Dave Pasch is the best. He’s so good. And Walton was phenomenal. It was very cool.

JL: Ever smoke any funny-looking cigarettes with Bill Walton? And are you sure you want to pick Gonzaga to win the title?

JG: I didn’t do anything illegal with Walton, and I’m picking Gonzaga.