A Quick Quiz...Name all of the players who have gone straight from high school to the NBA whose career PPG is 20 or higher. Thanks to One More Dying Quail, we now know and it's not as hard as you think. There are six and five of them are active. Ready?
Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Amare Stoudamire and LeBron James make up the actives, and Moses "Fo' Fo' Fo'" Malone is the old man.
Nothing too surprising there, but what is interesting is the sharp drop off after that. The next highest average belongs to Rashard Lewis at 16.4 ppg, but the vast majority of the 45 prep-to-pro leapers are all clustered around the 9 ppg mark.
We can't quite close the book on some of these guys--most notably Dwight Howard (15.0 ppg) who is becoming a force--but nearly 85% of the players who never had the opportunity to wear a t-shirt under their jersey were never more than a role player.
Interesting and nearly irrefutable. Stay in school, or...
Screw school...Former Cornhusker Brandon Jackson told the Omaha World-Herald yesterday that he was pleased with his decision to forgo his senior season. According to that same article, The Hair (aka Mel Kiper, Jr.) has Jackson as the third best back in the draft.
Honestly, I'm shocked but it does lead credence to a theory I was kicking around during the 2006 football season.
It seemed like a minor miracle that Nebraska was able to use four different backs in modern college football and keep them all happy (or the dissent under wraps). My only explanation was that these 19- and 20-year-olds realized that, even if they weren't getting a ton of touches, they were building an impressive pro resume.
Take Jackson for example. Coming in to 06, nobody would've have put him anywhere near Marshawn Lynch and Adrian Peterson. Hell, he wasn't even a favorite to start, but he flourished in the WCO. His ability to pass protect and catch the football out of the backfield, in addition to running in a pro-style system, makes him an absolutely intriguing pro prospect. He's not a physical specimen. He's not a burner, but he is experienced in a way that many college backs are not, and that seems like a pretty good pitch when you've got 3 or 4 talented backs.
Problem now for Cornhusker fans is that none of the remaining backs is currently healthy enough to even get that sales speech. You go from worrying about how to split 40 carries between four candidates one day, to wondering if anyone can even handle the workload the next.
The preseason hype will be there for Nebraska next year, but it looks like they have a lot more question marks coming in than they did last year. Could be bad news for Billy C. in what everyone is calling a make or break year.
A Note of Congratulations...Jeff over at Double Extra Point, one of the top two Husker blog around for my money, is going from the unwashed blogging masses to being able to afford soap and shampoo thanks to his new gig writing for the groundbreaking AOL Fanhouse. (Actually, that's pure speculation on my part, but I assume soap and shampoo would at least be covered.)
For those of you who don't know, the Fanhouse actually plays bloggers to write for them and has been a smashing success thus far.
The good news for we Good Lifers is that he plans to keep DXP up and running which means continued Cornhusker coverage for us.
Congrats, Jeff.
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Well it took me long enough, but thanks a ton Brandon, for the congratulatory note. Kind of a bummer with spring practices being closed. How are we bloggers supposed to get all up in arms over silly coaching moves, if we don't even know they are taking place?
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