Power-Ranking Big Ten Starting Small Forwards
The small forward list had a little bit of everything—three-point shooters, slashers, defensive stoppers and even back-to-the-basket players. While this complicated the rankings, it was easy to determine the three classes of players in this list—the top two shooting forwards, third- through eighth-ranked three-forwards and the bottom-four small forwards.
Here is a recap of the 12 starting small forwards in the Big Ten this past season, ranked solely on this season’s performances.
This is the third of five lists analyzing Big Ten starters. We’ve reached the midpoint of these rankings so feel free to share your insight.
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Cody Zeller: Big Man Comes Up Small as No. 1 Seed Indiana Flops vs. Syracuse
The worst-kept secret in college basketball this season was how to beat Indiana and slow Cody Zeller. The two went together like Jim Boeheim and a zone defense.
It was Boeheim’s zone that would end the Hoosiers’ renaissance season, 61-50, on Thursday night in Washington, D.C. Only Indiana’s destiny was decided months before Thursday night’s Sweet 16 matchup.
When the Hoosiers and Zeller got to run and play their way this year, they were a joy to watch. They were unbeatable. No team scored like the Hoosiers when they were clicking. No player got his point easier when the machine was rolling.
Then Bo Ryan had to screw the whole thing up.
Much like Wisconsin and Minnesota did to Zeller, Syracuse threw length at Big Handsome and made him look Big Average.
The Orange made all the Hoosiers look average by taking away all of their easy looks. In fact, they looked like a team that had never seen a zone defense before.
Zeller, IU’s star and the consensus preseason player of the year, did not get his first shot until 12:26 into the game. He made it. But it was one of the last good looks he would get.
Zeller shot another 10 times. Two more went in. Five were sent back by the long arms of the Orange. And really, it wasn’t all Zeller’s fault.
Indiana coach Tom Crean knows—or, at least, he should know—of his big man’s limitations. All season, asking Zeller to score over defenses has not been the most effective strategy. Sometimes he succeeds. But Zeller has been at his best when he’s either beating the other team back by running to the rim or when he attacks facing up and uses his quickness to get past other bigs.
Most games the Hoosiers did a good job of creating those opportunities in transition or creating angles for Zeller to attack. Syracuse’s zone, much like Wisconsin’s half-court defense, took those angles away.
So too did Indiana’s inability to hit outside shots, put together multiple successful passes or probe the zone without turning the ball over. The Hoosiers gave it away 18 times, and the third-best three-point shooting team in college basketball made only 3-of-15 threes.
That put Zeller in a bad spot and he could not bail his team out.
Zeller has helped bail out the Indiana program. The Hoosiers won 12 games the season before he arrived on campus. They’ve won 56 since and were a No. 1 seed for the first time in 20 years.
If the sophomore big leaves for the NBA, he should be credited with putting the turnaround in Bloomington in motion.
And if Zeller decides to come back, the Hoosiers should once again be considered preseason title favorites and Zeller should once again be considered a preseason player of the year candidate. He could benefit from another year of strength and conditioning and crafting his back-to-the-basket game.
Maybe then Cody Zeller will become so dominant that a defense like Boeheim’s will not be able to render him ineffectual. But that wasn’t the case this year.
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March Madness 2013: Small Conference Teams Who Could Be This Year’s Cinderella
This year college basketball has seen an enormous amount of parity as we gear up for an exciting tournament. So many teams have a chance to walk away champions, including schools not from a power conference.
Great teams like New Mexico, Creighton and Saint Louis have been in the national spotlight this season, so if they make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament then we can’t really call them “Cinderella.” There are, however, some lesser-known teams that are going to receive higher seeds that can fit that mold this year.
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Small lineup gives North Carolina postseason hope
A modified lineup of smaller players has given new hope to North Carolina men’s basketball.
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NBA’s new reality will hit small- and large-market teams
Recent small market trades are a sign of the times, but the reality is this is beginning
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Playing Small Ball Won’t Be Easy, but It’s Necessary for the Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics have made a ton of changes over the past month thanks to the return of Avery Bradley, the injury to Rajon Rondo and now the season-ending back surgery that Jared Sullinger will undergo. All this is going to force this team to play small ball, and it’s going to be a trial.
In Boston’s 106-104 win over the Los Angeles Clippers, they were able to get contributions from everyone who played and just hold on long enough to win.
It’s maddening watching them continue to win games despite every bit of common sense flowing in the opposite direction, but they’ve been able to play well since the injury to Rondo.
The Celtics are a perfect 4-0 since Rajon Rondo went down with a torn ACL. (Boston was 0-6 in Rondo’s last 6 games before injury).
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) February 3, 2013
If you ask me straight up why the Celtics have won their first four games since Rondo’s injury, the only thing I would be able to come up with is that they’re winning out of spite.
They’re still doing a lot of the same things with the starting lineup, and it’s working, but after that it gets weird. They haven’t suddenly inserted some new big man into the lineup to soak up Sullinger‘s free minutes.
They’ve turned to going small.
Kevin Garnett is going to be stuck in his 27-35 minutes per game range for the remainder of the season in order to keep him healthy for the playoffs, Chris Wilcox is going to have to be playing out of his mind if he ever hopes to see more than 10 minutes in a game and Jason Collins will get a little more love than he has in the past month, meaning he’ll actually see the court.
Otherwise, that means we’re going to see a lot of Jeff Green at the power forward spot, and even a minute or two of Paul Pierce playing the four.
For those of you keeping track at home, that means Pierce has played every position this year besides the center spot, and that one’s not too far off.
For a solid four minutes in the first half, Boston ran out a lineup of Jason Terry, Leandro Barbosa, Avery Bradley, Jeff Green and Chris Wilcox. Hell, for a few seconds they even ran Courtney Lee into the mix instead of Wilcox.
That put the Celtics on the floor with a point guard, two combo guards, a ‘tweener forward and a slow, angry, short center.
Things are going to get weird for the Celtics.
A positive that comes from Green playing at the bigger forward spot is that he’s actually played better as a big man this season, despite standing 6’8″ on a good day, and 6’9″ if you listen to what the Celtics have him listed as.
The Celtics have watched as Green as a power forward has helped the offense pick up the pace of the offense, and the defense hasn’t fallen apart in the process. The C’s average 1.3. points more per 100 possessions than they give up.
What really makes this difficult for the Celtics is that they’ve been a team with a painfully slow offense for years now. Suddenly changing that for the sake of a new system is going to be a difficult ordeal.
The starting lineup will continue to play as they’ve always played, as the only real difference now is that they’ve got Courtney Lee in the starting lineup instead of Rajon Rondo.
That’s going to be a bit painful for the flow of the offense, which is frightening to think about after they’ve limped this far into the season. But in the end they’re just going to be doing what they’ve always done; playing nasty.
Boston’s playoff blueprint is to ugly the game to a horrific degree, have it come down to a small number of possessions, and control those
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) February 4, 2013
Now that we’ve seen the Celtics play a few games without Rondo I’ve got a bit more faith that they can make the playoffs without him, although it’s still very much up in the air.
However, it’s going to be very interesting to see what they do when the playoffs do come along, should they be included.
Are they going to go ahead and pile minutes onto Kevin Garnett, or are they going to see what they can do with a small-ball lineup out on the floor every once in a while?
It seems as if they’ve got a lot of time to figure it out, so it’s got to be something to keep an eye on over the course of the next few weeks.
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Small School, Big Game: Top 5 College Basketball Players You May Not Know
Warriors guard Stephen Curry, still smiling after inking a $40+ million dollar contract, is the poster boy for the “small school, big game” adage. While most of the top high school talents flock to the traditional powerhouses and blue blood institutions like North Carolina, Duke and Kentucky, there is a bevy of talent around the country at much smaller schools.
In the 2012 NBA draft, first round picks Damian Lillard (Weber State) and Andrew Nicholson (St. Bonaventure) proved that talent does indeed rise to the top and there is first round talent from the Big Sky and Atlantic Ten conferences, respectively.
As the college basketball season is set to begin, this preview highlights some of the best players from the small conferences and small colleges around the country. These players are relatively unknown save for the college basketball junkies tuning into ESPN 8 “The Ocho” at midnight EST to watch the WCC championship. It’s likely that the average watcher will not have the opportunity to watch any of these players play until March Madness rolls around, but one or two of these five players just might end up playing for your favorite NBA team.
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Nash has small fracture in fibula
Photo by Stephen Dunn | Getty ImagesThe Lakers recently released a press release with an update on the injury to Steve Nash that happend against Portland:Los Angeles Lakers guard Steve Nash was examined by team doctor Steve Lombardo and had an MRI exam. Results of the MRI showed a small non-displaced fracture in the head of his fibula (left leg).The injury occurred in the second quarter of Wednesday night’s game in Portland against the Trail Blazers. Nash is expected to be out a minimum of a week. He will be re-examined and an update on his condition will be given at that time.
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Nash has small left leg fracture, out another week (Yahoo! Sports)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Steve Nash has a small fracture in his left leg and will be out of the Los Angeles Lakers’ lineup for at least another week.
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Sorting out the New Orleans Hornets’ Small Forward Quandry
Small forward is the weakest position on the New Orleans Hornets‘ roster. Current starter Al-Farouq Aminu is a promising young defensive specialist, but he doesn’t have much experience or offer much in terms of offense. Aminu has all of 35 starts under his belt for his career and has never averaged more than 6 points per game in a season.
The other possibility for the Hornets is offseason addition Ryan Anderson. Anderson, who was acquired in a trade with Orlando over the summer, is better suited to play power forward. However, his impressive shooting touch for a big man as well as the presence of rookie Anthony Davis at power forward could see him playing more minutes at the three.
Neither man is an ideal choice for the starting small forward job, as both have their pros and cons. The same for veteran Hakim Warrick, acquired in a trade from Phoenix this offseason. Warrick begins the season as the chief backup at small forward, but could make his case to crack the lineup with some strong play.
The case for Aminu is that he brings an element to the table that is at a premium in the league. In today’s offense-friendly NBA, the need for a defensive stopper like Aminu is crucial. Aminu played so well defensively down the stretch last season that he was able to steal the starting job away from another defensive specialist in Trevor Ariza.
In a Western Conference that will see the Hornets face the likes of Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant many times, the Hornets could use Aminu in the lineup to hinder the league’s best scorers. Last season, opponents shot 42.8 percent from the field and 31.4 percent from behind the arc. He also reduced opponent scoring by nearly seven points per game when he was on the court.
Solid defense like that comes at a cost, though. A team as offensively-challenged as the Hornets can’t really afford to risk having one of their starters sacrifice their offense in exchange for excellent defense. The team needs someone who can take the scoring load off of the shoulders of oft-injured guard Eric Gordon.
That’s where Anderson can make his case. Anderson is the anti-Aminu. He’s one of the league’s best shooting big men and led the league in three-pointers last season en route to winning the NBA’s Most Improved Player award. With his size, rebounding ability and shooting touch, Anderson is like a homeless man’s version of Dirk Nowitzki (as in, he’s a step lower than a poor man’s Dirk).
The problem with starting Anderson full-time at small forward is that he’s the equivalent of a turnstile on defense. Quicker forwards will blow right past him because he’s not skilled enough on his feet to defend them. While Anderson’s offensive game may be on the perimeter, he’s better served banging bodies in the paint on defense.
Having Anderson on the court with the team’s other bigs, Davis and Robin Lopez, may give the team a size advantage, but it’s not a rotation that works out as a permanent lineup. As for Warrick, he’s too much of a ‘tweener to be a starter. He doesn’t shoot well enough to start at small forward and he’s too light to be a true power forward. He’s best suited being relegated to the second unit.
In the end, going with Aminu at small forward is the better idea. It doesn’t have the same offensive impact as having Anderson in the lineup, but Aminu can only get better as a scorer. The kid is still only 22 and he’s entering his third NBA season. Plus, what he brings to the table on defense can make this defense special alongside shot-blocker Anthony Davis.
Anderson deserves to see some time in the lineup at small forward, but he’s probably best utilized as the team’s sixth man. With his ability to play both forward spots and center, his versatility will come more in handy off the bench.
Granted, you may want more out of a guy that you’re paying $36 million over the next four years, but the team will find ways for Anderson to justify his contract.
Aminu has earned his chance to start. Based off of last season and his showing in the Olympics, he is quickly becoming an elite defender. He’s not someone you can draw offensive plays for just yet, but he can create offense in transition while making life miserable for opponents.
Aminu vs. Anderson is the classic case of defense vs. offense. As bad as the Hornets are in need of scoring, the smart move is to go with defense this time around.
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