Monday, March 26, 2007

Basketball thoughts

Monday was a big day in the world of college basketball. First things first: Liberty hired Ritchie McKay today. Auburn associate head coach John Cooper was considered for the job before Liberty tapped McKay, the former New Mexico head coach who was fired in February.

It’s too bad for Coop, but good for Auburn. Keeping this staff together can only help a young AU team that should return everyone next season.

In national news, the Associated Press All-America team was announced Monday afternoon. The big news? Freshmen Kevin Durant and Greg Oden made the team. Durant was the only unanimous selection, which is impressive in and of itself. But even more impressive is this: Durant and Oden are only the third and fourth freshmen ever named AP first-team All-Americas. (The others, if you’re wondering, were Oklahoma’s Wayman Tisdale in 1983 and LSU’s Chris Jackson in ‘89.)

I was glad to see Chris Lofton of Tennessee was named second-team All-America. Lofton was probably the second-most impressive player I saw in person this season (behind Texas A&M’s Acie Law, a first-teamer). Lofton is an absolutely unbelievable shooter...anyone who watched UT’s NCAA Tournament win against Virginia saw that he’s totally unafraid to shoot anytime from anywhere.

Joakim Noah was also named second-team All-America, continuing a strange kind of media fascination with him. He’s a good player, but second-team All-America? For a guy who averaged 12.2 points and 8.5 rebounds per game? (By comparison Al Horford, who averaged 13.2 and 9.2 and was generally acknowledged to be the more dangerous player on both ends of the floor, was a third-team All-America. Weird.)

And, in case you were wondering, Auburn has exactly one first-team AP All-America in 101 seasons of basketball: Chris Porter in 1999.

I’ll be back Tuesday with some thoughts on Auburn baseball, which plays at Mercer on Tuesday night. Take it easy ‘til then.