The absolute bible of college BB magazines.
I just ordered my subscription. For all you hoop heads I suggest you do the same or purchase one when they hit the newsstands next month.
Here is a teaser I got from them to subscribe......
Blue Ribbon Report Staff
1. Gonzaga—Another year, another Zags team at the top of our preseason poll. Here’s what’s remarkable about that. Last season, the Zags had to replace four of their top six scorers, but because of some astute recruiting and transfer pickups, coach Mark Few and his staff still put together a team that, just as most pundits suspected, had the goods to go all the way to the national championship game.
Evidence of that came early. The Zags became the first Division I team to beat four opponents ranked in The Associated Press Top 20 in its first seven games. And the West Coast Conference tournament championship win against BYU (88-78) was their 23rd straight consecutive double-digit victory, which broke the record of John Wooden’s Bill Walton-led UCLA team in 1971-72 as the longest such streak.
Gonzaga was outmatched by Baylor in the NCAA title game and lost stars Jalen Suggs and Corey Kispert from that team as well as key piece Joel Ayayi but retained two stars in forward Drew Timme and point guard Andrew Nembhard, signed another experienced transfer in Rasir Bolton, and brought in 7-0 Chet Holmgren, the No. 1 high school player in the country, along with two other five-star talents—guards Hunter Sallis and Nolan Hickman.
There is plenty of depth as young players are eager to step into bigger roles.
“I think the real challenge for us this year is going to be how young we are,” Few says. “We’re young. Chet’s going to play. Hunter’s going to play. Nolan’s going to play. And Dom Harris and Julian [Strawther] got minutes last year, but they were backup minutes.”
Few’s history would suggest the Zags will figure things out. Since 2016, their record is 164-16, with two appearances in the NCAA finals.
2. UCLA—The team Gonzaga dispatched in the Final Four with a miraculous shot by Suggs is back, largely intact with a lineup that includes bucket maker Johnny Juzang, point guard Tyger Campbell, and fellow starters Jules Bernard, Jaime Jaquez, Jr. and Cody Riley, all of whom are capable of making winning plays at any time.
To that veteran mix, coach Mick Cronin added five-start wing Peyton Watson and 6-10, 255-pound Myles Johnson, a Rutgers graduate transfer with a 7-7 wingspan who last season averaged 8.5 boards and 2.4 blocked shots.
“I've just been doing this long enough that I know that it's about the players, and we’ve just got good guys on our team,” Cronin told Blue Ribbon.
Good and talented.
3. Kansas—Indicative of how the college game has changed, mighty Kansas had to alter its recruiting strategy a bit to fill some glaring needs.
“We just tried to approach what our needs were,” coach Bill Self says. “Moving forward, we’d like to sign kids from high school with the number of people you know are leaving and maybe fill in recruiting through the portal with the kids that leave who you don’t anticipate leaving. This past year was a little bit different. We were just trying to get our roster filled. So, we probably leaned on the portal more this past year than I think we will be moving forward.”
The portal was good to the Jayhawks. To an experienced lineup that includes center David McCormack, guards Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun and wing Jalen Wilson, Kansas blends in a big-time point guard KU found in the portal—former Arizona State star Remy Martin, the kind of breakdown guy the Jayhawks didn’t have a year ago. The Pac-12’s top scorer last season, Martin was even better (21.5 ppg) in conference play. He was a three-time All-Pac-12 choice and a first-team selection the last two seasons. As a freshman, he was voted co-Pac-12 Sixth Man of the Year. Martin’s four 30-point performances last season were the most in the conference, as were his 12 games with 20 or more points.
The portal also provided athletic guard Joseph Yesufu from Drake and Jalen Coleman-Lands, a 6-4 shooter who’s on his fourth college stop having played at Illinois, DePaul, and Iowa State previously. Last season Coleman-Lands scored 20 in both Iowa-State Kansas games.
4. Texas—After Shaka Smart left for Marquette, there was no other choice to coach the Longhorns than Chris Beard, who played at Texas and had built a reputation as a quick fixer-upper at Little Rock and Texas Tech. Within weeks after taking the Texas job, he showed why. Beard and his staff put together what might be the best-ever transfer portal recruiting class. Every year ESPN.com produces a credible ranking of transfers, and the Longhorns nabbed four of ESPN’s top 16—No. 1 Marcus Carr (Minnesota), No. 4 Timmy Allen (Utah), No. 5 Tre Mitchell (UMass), and No. 16 Christian Bishop (Creighton). Texas also signed No. 23 Dylan Disu (Vanderbilt) and No. 30 Devin Askew (Kentucky).
Those battled-tested newcomers will team with holdovers Andrew Jones and Courtney Ramey to give the Longhorns, a surprising NCAA tournament washout under Smart’s watch, into a team that has a chance to advance deep into the tournament.
5. Villanova—The Wildcats ended 2020-21 losing two senior starters and an early entry into the NBA Draft, and less than three weeks later got those two starters back. That has Villanova poised for yet another run at a national championship.
The experience and leadership point guard Collin Gillespie and forward Jermaine Samuels bring for a fifth season are unparalleled. Guard Justin Moore and forward Brandon Slater also are expected to take a step up, and a healthy Bryan Antoine would add valuable skills—shooting, speed, and defense—to the cause. Jeremiah Robinson-Earl’s departure certainly leaves a gap in rebounding and interior defense, so coach Jay Wright’s task is to fill that role.
“I don’t think we’re going to have a guy like that,” says Wright, who in the offseason was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and won an Olympic gold medal as an assistant coach for Team USA. “But I think we do have a lot of other guys that have been waiting for that responsibility. I think Justin Moore is in a position to step up. We know what Jermaine and Collin can do, but I think Brandon Slater is in a position to step up. So I do think we’re going to do it differently. We just won’t have that guy.”
I just ordered my subscription. For all you hoop heads I suggest you do the same or purchase one when they hit the newsstands next month.
Here is a teaser I got from them to subscribe......
Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook’s 2021-22 Preseason Top 25
Blue Ribbon Report Staff
1. Gonzaga—Another year, another Zags team at the top of our preseason poll. Here’s what’s remarkable about that. Last season, the Zags had to replace four of their top six scorers, but because of some astute recruiting and transfer pickups, coach Mark Few and his staff still put together a team that, just as most pundits suspected, had the goods to go all the way to the national championship game.
Evidence of that came early. The Zags became the first Division I team to beat four opponents ranked in The Associated Press Top 20 in its first seven games. And the West Coast Conference tournament championship win against BYU (88-78) was their 23rd straight consecutive double-digit victory, which broke the record of John Wooden’s Bill Walton-led UCLA team in 1971-72 as the longest such streak.
Gonzaga was outmatched by Baylor in the NCAA title game and lost stars Jalen Suggs and Corey Kispert from that team as well as key piece Joel Ayayi but retained two stars in forward Drew Timme and point guard Andrew Nembhard, signed another experienced transfer in Rasir Bolton, and brought in 7-0 Chet Holmgren, the No. 1 high school player in the country, along with two other five-star talents—guards Hunter Sallis and Nolan Hickman.
There is plenty of depth as young players are eager to step into bigger roles.
“I think the real challenge for us this year is going to be how young we are,” Few says. “We’re young. Chet’s going to play. Hunter’s going to play. Nolan’s going to play. And Dom Harris and Julian [Strawther] got minutes last year, but they were backup minutes.”
Few’s history would suggest the Zags will figure things out. Since 2016, their record is 164-16, with two appearances in the NCAA finals.
2. UCLA—The team Gonzaga dispatched in the Final Four with a miraculous shot by Suggs is back, largely intact with a lineup that includes bucket maker Johnny Juzang, point guard Tyger Campbell, and fellow starters Jules Bernard, Jaime Jaquez, Jr. and Cody Riley, all of whom are capable of making winning plays at any time.
To that veteran mix, coach Mick Cronin added five-start wing Peyton Watson and 6-10, 255-pound Myles Johnson, a Rutgers graduate transfer with a 7-7 wingspan who last season averaged 8.5 boards and 2.4 blocked shots.
“I've just been doing this long enough that I know that it's about the players, and we’ve just got good guys on our team,” Cronin told Blue Ribbon.
Good and talented.
3. Kansas—Indicative of how the college game has changed, mighty Kansas had to alter its recruiting strategy a bit to fill some glaring needs.
“We just tried to approach what our needs were,” coach Bill Self says. “Moving forward, we’d like to sign kids from high school with the number of people you know are leaving and maybe fill in recruiting through the portal with the kids that leave who you don’t anticipate leaving. This past year was a little bit different. We were just trying to get our roster filled. So, we probably leaned on the portal more this past year than I think we will be moving forward.”
The portal was good to the Jayhawks. To an experienced lineup that includes center David McCormack, guards Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun and wing Jalen Wilson, Kansas blends in a big-time point guard KU found in the portal—former Arizona State star Remy Martin, the kind of breakdown guy the Jayhawks didn’t have a year ago. The Pac-12’s top scorer last season, Martin was even better (21.5 ppg) in conference play. He was a three-time All-Pac-12 choice and a first-team selection the last two seasons. As a freshman, he was voted co-Pac-12 Sixth Man of the Year. Martin’s four 30-point performances last season were the most in the conference, as were his 12 games with 20 or more points.
The portal also provided athletic guard Joseph Yesufu from Drake and Jalen Coleman-Lands, a 6-4 shooter who’s on his fourth college stop having played at Illinois, DePaul, and Iowa State previously. Last season Coleman-Lands scored 20 in both Iowa-State Kansas games.
4. Texas—After Shaka Smart left for Marquette, there was no other choice to coach the Longhorns than Chris Beard, who played at Texas and had built a reputation as a quick fixer-upper at Little Rock and Texas Tech. Within weeks after taking the Texas job, he showed why. Beard and his staff put together what might be the best-ever transfer portal recruiting class. Every year ESPN.com produces a credible ranking of transfers, and the Longhorns nabbed four of ESPN’s top 16—No. 1 Marcus Carr (Minnesota), No. 4 Timmy Allen (Utah), No. 5 Tre Mitchell (UMass), and No. 16 Christian Bishop (Creighton). Texas also signed No. 23 Dylan Disu (Vanderbilt) and No. 30 Devin Askew (Kentucky).
Those battled-tested newcomers will team with holdovers Andrew Jones and Courtney Ramey to give the Longhorns, a surprising NCAA tournament washout under Smart’s watch, into a team that has a chance to advance deep into the tournament.
5. Villanova—The Wildcats ended 2020-21 losing two senior starters and an early entry into the NBA Draft, and less than three weeks later got those two starters back. That has Villanova poised for yet another run at a national championship.
The experience and leadership point guard Collin Gillespie and forward Jermaine Samuels bring for a fifth season are unparalleled. Guard Justin Moore and forward Brandon Slater also are expected to take a step up, and a healthy Bryan Antoine would add valuable skills—shooting, speed, and defense—to the cause. Jeremiah Robinson-Earl’s departure certainly leaves a gap in rebounding and interior defense, so coach Jay Wright’s task is to fill that role.
“I don’t think we’re going to have a guy like that,” says Wright, who in the offseason was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and won an Olympic gold medal as an assistant coach for Team USA. “But I think we do have a lot of other guys that have been waiting for that responsibility. I think Justin Moore is in a position to step up. We know what Jermaine and Collin can do, but I think Brandon Slater is in a position to step up. So I do think we’re going to do it differently. We just won’t have that guy.”
