Draft buzz

Stanford 65, Washington 51

I'm not going to dwell on last night's Cardinal game, which wasn't televised at all (Can someone work on this? Please?) except to note a rather remarkable number from the box score-- Stanford allowed all of FOUR assists in this game. Overall Stanford's conference opponents are averaging a mere 9 a game; on the season, it's 9.5. Those are pretty remarkable numbers. Essentially what they're saying is that the only way to score on the Cardinal is to penetrate or somehow isolate one guy. Stanford's won 6 games out of 8 with both Lawrence Hill and Anthony Goods in severe shooting slumps, and that goes a long way toward explaining how. Defense doesn't go into a slump, I guess.

And now for something completely different...

In the wake of last night's modestly stunning Cal upset of Washington State 69-64 at home, noted Norse god and 30-point scorer Ryan Anderson seems to have finally popped onto the national radar screen. Kind of. The powers that be in the college game continue to studiously ignore him (apparently his 1.5 points per adjusted shot can't beat out OJ Mayo's 1.2 for a Wooden Award finalist's nomination, in spite of the fact that--even without adjusting for tempo and ball usage-- he's still outscoring and outrebounding Mayo on a per-game basis), but the guys who are actually paid to evaluate talent-- NBA scouts-- are starting to take a bit of notice. He was also "mentioned in dispatches" by ESPN's Andy Katz, for whatever that's worth. Katz points out that he's made 20 of 37 3-pointers this year, which is incredible for a conference that plays the kind of defense (see above) that the Pac-10 does.

In this piece, Chad Ford ranks Anderson as a rising talent. He's still listed as a late first/early second round pick on ESPN's big draft board, but I suspect if he keeps dropping 27 on good defenses like he did last night, he'll probably make his way up the chart pretty quickly. He sees the key to Anderson's potential value as his improved rebounding skills-- often an indicator of a willingness to "get physical" and something that might inveigh against the popular stereotype of jump-shooting white big men, which is that they're not willing to bang for balls.

In this piece, John Hollinger analyzes the draft class according to a metric he's developed to help predict the NBA success of college players-- and Anderson comes off extremely well, given that he's perceived as being primarily a scorer who lacks the freakish athleticism that NBA coaches crave. He is, in fact, the second-highest rated non-freshman, and the formula suggests that Anderson should be as high as a late lottery pick this year and definitely a first-rounder.

It's going to be extremely interesting to see where Anderson's stock ends up after this season, especially relative to teammate DeVon Hardin (who was far bigger on the radar screen prior to the season) who provides a pretty easy point of comparison. My hunch? He'll declare for the draft, but pull his name out and stay another season to ensure that he'll get picked very high, along the lines of what Brook Lopez did last season.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Twin seems like a near-lock for a top 10 (probably top 5) pick after this season, which sadly more or less guarantees that he won't be returning for his junior year. He's pretty much capable of scoring at will at the college level at this point. That's the curse of today's college game-- the better the players get, the more likely they are to leave. Being a minor league baseball fan must be a similar feeling. I continue to wish that the NBA would abandon the ridiculous one-year rule (creator of media abominations like O.J. Mayo) and institute a system akin to baseball-- let guys go pro out of high school, but give a college 3 years of a player before he can declare as a junior.

As usual, no one asked me.