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Scouting for swingmen

March 18, 2009 05:26 PM | Posted by   Paul Jay  

Making NCAA tourney picks and publicizing them eventually leads to a road to ridicule, since even the wisest prognosticator will get things wrong, and then there on the Internet they will live, for all to see. So take note Barack Obama.

Not that I am wise in this regard, as last year was particularly embarrassing, and this year I must throw up my hands and admit, between watching pro basketball, writing science and technology news as a full-time gig and helping my wife raise a one-year old, I haven't watched as much college basketball as I normally do.

So I, like you, will be watching the tournament this year with fresh eyes, and in particular I'll be looking at players who are likely to be available when the Toronto Raptors make their likely lottery selection.

Eye on the Midwest

Curiously, most of these players are in the same regional bracket, the Midwest. Particularly the top half of the bracket.

For a team looking for potential swingmen, the region headed by the Louisville Cardinals is loaded. Louisville has the point-forward stylings of Earl Clark and the senior scoring of Terrence Williams, Ohio State has the quiet but smooth Evan Turner, who rarely shoots from outside, but mostly because he's too busy driving to the hoop.

Disappointing Arizona has the equally disappointing Chase Budinger, a leaper and jump shooter who has crashed on most draft boards as the season has progressed, but like his team, he could revive his reputation with a strong showing. Wake Forest has two legitimate lottery swingmen in freshman Al-Farouq Aminu and sophomore James Johnson, and a third player, guard Jeff Teague, who could be in the top of the draft. And in the bottom half of the bracket, USC has the athletic DeMar DeRozan, who appeared asleep to start the season but had a monster Pac-10 tournament to once again wake up scouts who had written him off.

There are other players in other regions who might fit the bill for the Raptors, particularly Arizona State's shooting guard James Harden, Gonzaga's lean forward Austin Daye, Duke's Gerald Henderson and Oklahoma's combo guard Willie Warren, but I suspect somewhere in the Midwest a bona fide prospect will emerge that will fit the team's obvious need for an athletic swingman.

What will be great for Raptors fans and pro scouts alike is that some of these players are likely to play each other.

Louisville and Ohio State could meet in the second round, as could Arizona and Wake Forest, and then the winners of these two games could meet in the Sweet 16 match-up. It's a circumstance that could fuel barstool conversations over the next two months, as we debate the merits of Turner versus Aminu versus Clark.

Be wary of tournament hype

Mind you, the tournament is also a place where we can be blinded.

Recall, as I've mentioned before, how dominant Patrick O'Bryant was in his matchup with Aaron Gray of Pittsburgh in 2006, and now look at O'Bryant wasting away on the Raptors bench. Recall as well that Bryant "Big Country" Reeves built his lottery stock in 1995 on a tournament in which his team played and beat Wake Forest, Alabama and UMass, teams with Tim Duncan, Antonio McDyess and Marcus Camby, respectively. Another big man, Erick Dampier, led Mississippi State to the Final Four in 1996 and was selected in the lottery by the Indiana Pacers. That didn't turn out well, either.

Swingmen, too, can cast a spell on eager eyes.

Ron Mercer, Wally Szczerbiak, Rashad McCants all were money come tournament time, but none rewarded the teams that drafted them with anything close to their college success. And longtime Raptors fans can't forget the bullet they dodged in 1995 when the team selected Damon Stoudamire, and not the player they really wanted: Ed O'Bannon.

Still, the tournament also made a name for Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Rip Hamilton, Jason Richardson, Richard Jefferson and, at a level below, Mo Peterson and Mike Miller, and so from that perspective, swingmen have had better luck.

Maybe, just maybe, that means the Raptors will have better luck too. As this season has shown, they'll need it.

(As for my picks, I'm taking Pitt over Wake Forest in the final, with the other Final Four teams being Oklahoma and Memphis. These will all likely be wrong. But I want them here for the record.)

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