Me and the kid will be making the trek down on Sunday to the always hyped semifinals, and this year's CAA tournament seems to be even more of a clusterfuck than usual, with five or six teams having a solid shot at taking the automatic berth into the NCAAs. At one point, both William & Mary and Old Dominion were also considered legitimate threats to get an at-large bid, but let's be honest... the major conferences hog that shit. They could expand the field to 128 teams and they'd make all the BCS conference members get in before they took a third or fourth quality team from something like the Colonial Athletic Assocation. And my kid can't even make the finals because she's just started pointe in ballet class (last year, we actually were having discussions comparing Eric Maynor floating jumper gracefulness to great ballet, and how similar they were), but I'll be there bitch, hopefully rooting for the stupid VCU Rams. Here are the top 14 returning players ranked by who's scored the most in previous CAA tourneys...
#1: Danny Sumner (William & Mary forward; 83 previous points in the CAA tournament) - The Tribe was the hot pick to win the league and maybe even get an at-large berth into the NCAA tourney earlier this year, and that was built upon the solid shooting back of one Danny Sumner, a soft spoken dude who fits that William & Mary image perfectly. (It's a nerd school with high rates of suicides and gay/lesbians and future poets of America, so thuggish ruggish black dudes don't really fit in.) A lot of his previous tourney points came two years back when William & Mary went from the opening day round all the way to the championship game, where they finally ran out of juice. This year, they can rest on the opening day today, and get ready for whoever wins the Drexel/James Madison nightcap tonight.
#2: Gerald Lee (Old Dominion forward; 68 previous points in the CAA tournament) - With Eric Maynor now gone, Gerald Lee is without a doubt the most dominant player in the CAA, and he's led ODU to a #1 seeding going into the CAA tourney. He just dropped 23 on VCU last week in a regular season closing game that locked VCU out of a first round bye in the tourney, and had NBA scouts on hand to watch Larry Sanders, who was mostly shut down. Last year, he had a sprained ankle in the tourney, denying us a showdown between him and Maynor, but this year he's healthy, and will probably dominate the Monarchs into the title game at the very least.
#3: Charles Jenkins (Hofstra guard; 68 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Jenkins, a Senior, comes in the star of this Hofstra team, but they're going to be fighting out of the 7th seed, playing Georgia State in tonight's first game, and having to claw their way through every day in the hopes of an upset NCAA berth.
#4: Pierre Curtis (James Madison guard; 63 previous points in the CAA tournament) - You've got to feel for a guy like Curtis, who has been a hot shot for James Madison and is in his Senior year, because the team is built for next year, with a transfer from Texas A&M getting his CAA feet wet this year, plus a younger hot shot in Julius Wells. Still though, as James Madison was mired in the lower levels of the CAA, Curtis was always highlight reel material, meaning he'll go to Europe somewhere.
#5: Josh Thornton (Towson guard; 61 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Towson is the tightest most gangsta swagger team in the CAA (which can be white as fuck sometimes), and even though they're just an 8 seed, Towson has a reputation for being disruptive in the tournament, which could make for a more than exciting Saturday afternoon opener against #1 seed Old Dominion. This is Thornton's last year, so he could get all small-time Kobe Bryant on motherfuckers and make it happen.
#6: Larry Sanders (VCU forward; 60 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Big Larry Sanders is a junior who last year with Eric Maynor made up one of the few non-super programs in college that had arguably a pair of bonafide first round NBA draft picks. And Sanders still gets lottery pick hype now and then, and has a ton of tattoos since last year, but he hasn't dominated like he did when Maynor was on the team with him. Still, students made up big Larry Sanders Has A Posse banners and shit last year, and it's only grown larger this year, and hopefully the big, soft-spoken, tattooed goofball who never touched a basketball until his junior year of high school can go buckwild in the CAA tournament this week, and get VCU at least into the semifinals when me and my daughter have tickets, so we can be emotionally invested in the bullshit we're paying good money to watch. (Maybe not good money, I actually traded my food stamp balance for the tickets in late January.)
#7: Manny Adako (Northeastern forward; 60 previous points in the CAA tournament) - In the usually small triple guard line-ups of today's college basketball, to have a pair of guys 6'8" or better like Northeastern does, especially at the mid-major level, is to be a dominant force inside. Manny Adako is the 6'8" forward Senior, who along with 6'9" Senior center Nkem Ojougboh, has made the Northeastern Huskies a tough out for anybody else in the CAA, and set them up in the 2nd seed spot, which means they can avoid the three CAA tourney homestate heavyweights of Old Dominion, George Mason, and VCU until the championship game at the earliest.
#8: Louis Birdsong (George Mason forward; 60 previous points in the CAA tournament) - The last link (albeit a redshirted guy at the time) to that Final Four team, he was a starter and then underplayed his way onto the bench, and now does what he does. Sometimes he hits his stride and can take over a game, and other times he plays like a guy who should be on the bench of a upper-middle-of-the-pack team in an upper mid-major basketball conference. Still, it's his Senior season, so he could end up lighting it up on Saturday afternoon in George Mason's first game of this year's CAA tourney.
#9: David Schneider (William & Mary guard; 54 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Solid well-rounded mid-major school type who can snag rebounds banging the glass from the outside, and can post up in the corner for to drain a 3. The Tribe is full of dudes like this, and a refreshing change of pace from the standard CAA one or two big fish in small pond driven offenses.
#10: Matt Janning (Northeastern guard/forward; 48 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Every CAA team, no matter how good, needs a rock solid whiteboy, by conference by-laws, and Janning is that dude for Northeastern.
#11: T.J. Gwynn (VCU forward; 46 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Man, it seems like T.J. Gwynn's been playing for VCU since I was in college. He's the perfect example of a fan favorite - a guy who's not super noteworthy on the stat sheet, and doesn't dominate any particular scoring category; but live in the game, he has a floppy hyper intensity that's impossible to not love, and it's the type of thing that gives a team momentum. He's the type of guy who rips down a rebound in retarded-looking fashion, and then somebody else guns down a 3, and next thing you know, they're on a 14 to 0 run.
#12: Cam Long (George Mason guard; 43 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Long is the type of player who, when he gets hot, you are fucked. But he can also be stifled by aggressive defense. Which can be a sucky proposition, because then it falls into the hands of the officials. Will they call ticky-tack fouls and allow a guy like Long to go buckwild, or will they let 'em play, as they say, and a dude like him will have to fight twice as hard for half the points? I prefer the latter personally, but I have never been well-known for my finesse.
#13: Joe Dukes (Georgia State guard; 38 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Joe Dukes is the big gun on a not-so-scary team. They are the #10 seed and face-off against Hofstra tonight in the early game, and will probably be lucky to go beyond even that.
#14: Troy Franklin (Towson guard; 36 previous points in the CAA tournament) - Troy Franklin is a sophomore, meaning all his previous points came in last year's tourney run by Towson. It also means he's the youngest guy on this list of returning players, making him this year's Larry Sanders to get big hyperbole next season. This year, maybe they get hot and win two games to make to Sunday's semifinals.
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