It’s Tough to Stay Perfect in Conference
The chance for the first unbeaten Division I team since Indiana in 1976 ended a few weeks ago, but there are still a few teams undefeated in conference play.
Through Thursday’s games, there were six schools with perfect league records and four are ranked in the top 10.
The nationally recognized teams with an “0” on the right side of their league records were No. 2 Duke, 10-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, No. 3 Memphis, 7-0 in Conference USA, No. 5 Gonzaga, 9-0 in the West Coast Conference, and No. 8 George Washington, 9-0 in the Atlantic 10.
Bucknell was 10-0 in the Patriot League, and Penn was 4-0 in the Ivy League.
Two teams -- Davidson in the Southern Conference and Pacific in the Big West -- made it through conference play last season without a loss. Gonzaga is looking to go unbeaten in the WCC for the second time in three seasons.
On the opposite side of the win-loss ledger, five teams had yet to win a league game.
St. Bonaventure was 0-10 in the Atlantic 10, South Florida was 0-9 in the Big East, the Citadel was 0-10 in the Southern Conference, Texas State was 0-9 in the Southland Conference and Prairie View was 0-10 in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
In 2004-05, only Campbell of the Atlantic Sun failed to win a conference game.
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This season’s race to lead Division I in scoring has a different twist than usual: The leader will apparently come from a team that has a chance to be a factor in the national championship chase.
Through Monday’s games, Adam Morrison of No. 5 Gonzaga was on top of the scoring list with an average of 28.4 points per game, and J.J. Redick of Duke was right on his tail at 28.1.
Since 1980, there have only been three national scoring champions whose teams were ranked in the top 25 and were considered to have a chance to advance in the NCAA tournament.
Glenn Robinson of Purdue averaged 30.3 points per game in 1993-94. Bo Kimble of Loyola Marymount led the nation in 1989-90 at 32.7. Hersey Hawkins of Bradley was the leading scorer in 1987-88 at 36.3 points per game.
Keydren Clark of St. Peters’s was fifth in the latest statistics at 25.6 points per game as he attempts to become just the third player to lead Division I in scoring for three straight seasons. Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati did it from 1958-60, and Pete Maravich of Louisiana State did it from 1968-70.
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The United States Basketball Writers of America honor their player of the year each season with the Oscar Robertson Trophy. The award, which will be presented this year on March 31, now has a permanent home.
Robertson, who played at Cincinnati, won the first two awards presented by the USBWA in 1959 and 1960. The trophy, bearing his likeness and named in his honor in 1998, will now be housed in Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
Robertson led Crispus Attucks High of Indianapolis to Indiana state titles in 1955 and 1956, making it the first all-black school to win a championship.
Although Robertson was born in Tennessee and lives in Cincinnati, he believes the trophy belongs in Indiana.
“You look all around the country at New York players and Kentucky and California, but this is where basketball started,” he said. “This is the cradle of basketball.”
Robertson played in 12 NBA All-Star games and helped the Milwaukee Bucks to a championship in 1971. He is the only player in NBA history to average a triple-double for a season.
Indiana University’s 1976 and 1981 national championship teams also will be honored on March 31 in Indianapolis at the Final Four.
Quinn Buckner, a star for the 1976 Indiana team, said Robertson was a great all-around player who embodied the same team-first attitude used by those Hoosiers, the last Division I team to go through a season unbeaten.
“Oscar Robertson, when I was growing up, was the player everybody wanted to be like,” Buckner said.
Ray Tolbert, a member of the 1981 team, thanked Robertson for helping to pave the way for black players and said the honor was deserved.
“You go out to L.A., you see a statue of Magic Johnson. You go to Chicago, you see a statue of Michael Jordan,” Tolbert said. “But before Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, it was Oscar Robertson.”
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Three Rivers Community College Coach Gene Bess is about to reach a milestone no one else has ever approached -- 1,000 wins.
Bess, who has won two national championships at the Missouri junior college, had a 998-257 record after Wednesday night’s overtime loss to Southwestern Illinois. The 71-year-old Bess has been coaching at Three Rivers for 36 years.
Dean Smith of North Carolina is Division I’s leader with 879 wins and Harry Statham of McKendree College, an NAIA school, is the winningest men’s coach at any four-year school with 909.
Bess is the winningest coach in junior college history with 73 more wins than Bob Kirk of Allegany (Md.) Community College.
Three Rivers plays MSU-West Plains on Saturday, and Mineral Area on Feb. 18. If the Raiders (20-6) don’t get Bess to 1,000 in those games, there are two more regular-season games before the playoffs.
“It’s so much bigger than me,” Bess said of reaching 1,000. “I’m the figurehead for thousands of people that have contributed. As much as anything, it’s been the players, the assistant coaches and those people that work very closely with our team.”
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The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame presents the Bob Cousy Award every year to the nation’s outstanding point guard. Fans will have a hand in deciding this year’s winner by being able to vote for their favorite candidate at www.cousyaward.com.
The award, sponsored by the Hartford, will be presented at the Final Four in Indianapolis on April 3.
The finalists: Jose Juan Barea, Northeastern; Mark Borders, Tampa; Dee Brown, Illinois; Keydren Clark, St. Peter’s; Adam Dauksas, Illinois Wesleyan; Jordan Farmar, UCLA; Daniel Gibson, Texas; Jeff Horner, Iowa; Daniel Horton, Michigan; Kyle Lowry, Villanova; Carldell “Squeaky” Johnson, Alabama Birmingham; Carl Krauser, Pittsburgh; Gerry McNamara, Syracuse; Shelden Pace, Southwest Baptist; Darius Washington, Memphis; Kyle Witucky, College of Wooster.
The previous winners were Jameer Nelson of St. Joseph’s and Raymond Felton of North Carolina.