The Houston Cougars men’s basketball team won on Tuesday night

ElViento: The Coogs finished off their non-conference slate for the season with a 2-point victory over Western Kentucky.

WKU doesn’t have a great team this year, but they are traditionally very tough at home.

After the game, I didn’t get excited. I didn’t check how the Hilltoppers have fared against good basketball teams this year as a sort of measuring stick for the Cougars. I didn’t check the Conference USA standings to see where we stand for the conference tournament. I didn’t see if Aubrey Coleman kept up his nation-leading scoring pace.

I walked my dog. I texted my girlfriend. I cooked up some potstickers. I watched Jeopardy. I laughed at one of the (female) contestants for looking and talking like a man.

Then I just reminded myself that my team won tonight, smiled, and went to bed. I didn’t even make any nasty posts on any Cougar internet message boards about Tom Penders.

Like I said – I’m going to root for my school for the rest of this year. And I am going to have no illusions that this team will accomplish anything of substance.

It was beautiful and freeing. I cannot recommend highly enough that you try it next game.

BABIP revisited

ElViento: I briefly touched on Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) as a predictive tool in a previous post about Conference USA baseball. As a quick review, the concept behind using BABIP is that a pitcher can only truly control certain things: how often he strikes batters out, how many batters he walks, and how many home runs he allows, for example. But once the batter puts the ball in play, it’s mostly up to chance, and chances are that the pitcher will be somewhere near the league average at opposing hitters’ BABIP. So if a pitcher is victimized by an extremely high BABIP, chances are it’ll regress towards the mean the next year, and his ERA will fall. And on the other hand, if he has a luckily low BABIP, he may not be so lucky the next year, and will probably see his numbers get worse.

Now we already looked at the BABIP of certain entire teams, but as previously mentioned, the big X-factor in BABIP is team defense. Better defenders will have better range, get to more balls, and thus lower their pitchers’ BABIP. So instead of comparing one team’s BABIP to another, perhaps a more worthwhile exercise would be looking at individual pitchers. If one pitcher has a high (or low) BABIP as compared to his teammates in a season, maybe that will predict how well he will fare if he returns for the next season.

Before blindly applying the formula, I decided to run a test case using past results. My test case was the Houston Cougars from 2001 to present. I excluded the 2002 team, as opposing at bats were not available online for that team, making a calculation of BABIP impossible. I considered all pitchers who pitched at least 30 innings in two consecutive seasons, to try and eliminate some small sample size bias.

That left me with 25 data points. I eliminated the four examples in which a pitcher’s BABIP differed from his team’s by less than 10 points, giving me 21 significant examples. Of those 21 pitchers, fourteen improved upon their ERA from one year to the next, while seven worsened.

Of the fourteen who improved, in eleven cases the improvement was predicted by an unlucky BABIP the year before.

Of the seven who worsened, in six cases it was predicted by a lucky BABIP the year before.

To look at it another way, when BABIP predicted a pitcher would improve, he did so eleven out of twelve times. Out of the nine times when BABIP predicted a pitcher would get worse, it was correct six times.

In other words, a statistically significantly lucky or unlucky BABIP was 81% accurate in predicting how the pitcher would fare the next year. Are you impressed? I’m impressed.

Before I continue, keep the following in mind in regard to BABIP: it’s not perfect, and it’s not the be-all, end-all of anything. For example, when Cougar Brad Lincoln improved from decent (4.76 ERA) in 2005 to unhittable (1.69) in 2006, it wasn’t just because his BABIP improved. Lincoln got a lot better at the things he could control. His K/9 rate improved from 9.4 to 10.7. He gave up 4 fewer home runs in 25.2 more innings pitched. And yes, his BABIP improved, and yes, that did help. BABIP is a tool, nobody is claiming that it’s the tool.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s go ahead and apply the BABIP formula to some current examples around the conference.

Rice: If you can believe it, despite his team-leading 2.17 ERA a year ago, Mike Ojala was significantly unlucky (BABIP .031 higher than the team average). Too bad for the Owls he’ll miss the start of the season with injury. Did you know that Ojala struck out 6 more hitters than ’09 Owls ace and Baltimore Orioles-draftee Ryan Berry in 15.1 fewer innings pitched? It’s true.

East Carolina: If the numbers are to be believed, Brad Mincey is the real deal, Seth Manness’ back-sliding from ’08 to ’09 is at least partly due to bad luck, and sophomore Kevin Brandt is in for a falling off this year.

Southern Miss: Both returning ace Todd McInnins and closer Collin Cargill were pretty lucky in 2009. There’s not tons of returning pitching talent, so it’s important to the Golden Eagles that the two don’t backslide.

Tulane: As with USM, there isn’t tons of pitching talent returning. The good news is that starters Conrad Flynn and Matt Petiton pretty nearly nailed the team BABIP, while closer Nick Pepitone (3.26 ERA, 9 sv) was actually unlucky, despite his impressive campaign. It will be interesting to see if he can improve even further.

Alabama-Birmingham: If you like the Blazers as a dark horse in C-USA like I do, the good news is that the numbers suggest that returning starters Shay Crawford and Beau Pender are in for an improvement. If Georgia transfer Ryan Woolley is as good as advertised, the weekend rotation could be pretty solid, to go with lots of returning talent in the lineup. The bad news is that the two key returning cogs from an already questionable bullpen (Nick Graffeo and Blake Huddleston) are due for a regression.

Marshall: If losing Nate Lape and Adam Yeager out of the lineup weren’t bad enough, the Thundering Herd’s two best returning pitchers (Austin Coan and Shane Farrell) seem to have gotten lucky a year ago.

Memphis: The two key returning starters in Brach Davis and Brennon Martin seem to have gotten lucky in 2009. But you can expect improvement on the mound from two-way player Heith Hatfield.

Central Florida: The Knights will be relying almost entirely on an impressive incoming recruiting class. The only halfway-decent returning pitcher is two-way player D.J. Hicks, who will miss the beginning of the season with injury. And he hit his team’s BABIP almost perfectly, so this exercise was pretty pointless as far as UCF goes.

And finally, some bad news for the good guys. Using BABIP, Michael Goodnight and Mo Wiley were right where they belonged, while guys like Chase Dempsay, Jared Ray and Ty Stuckey all actually got lucky, despite their unimpressive numbers. But don’t lose faith. As I said, numbers only tell you so much. Wiley was not 100% in 2009 after an injury towards the end of his high school career. A full season of health should cause his numbers to improve. Same goes for Dempsay and (hopefully) being able to spend an entire season focusing solely on pitching, and not hitting. Ray will be out to begin the season with an injury, but we all already know that he hasn’t yet tapped into his potential. I never really suspected that he had been unlucky, he’s just not pitching as well as he’s capable of. The questions for the Cougars remain the same – will the pitching staff show improvement, and will somebody in the lineup flash some power? The answers to these questions will determine whether or not Houston returns to the NCAA post-season in 2010.

Obituary of Tom Penders’ Cougar Career

ElViento: Can you believe that as recently as two games ago, some idiot was comparing this Houston Cougar basketball team to a hot female? Yikes.

Don’t let yourself get suckered into believing any different; this program will never get off the ground with Tom Penders. I honestly believe that athletics director Mack Rhoades will do everything within his power to remove Penders as coach this off-season, but with the University of Houston athletics department currently saving up for a remodel/rebuilding of Robertson Stadium and/or Hofheinz Pavilion, a buyout might just not be in the budget, which would mean two more years of Penders-coached basketball. Sure, the anti-Penders crowd will have two more years of weeping and teeth-gnashing, but ultimately, those two years will have little effect on Tom’s legacy on Cullen Boulevard. In fact, as the title of this little write-up might suggest, his lasting impression on the Cougar faithful has already been left, and can be readily defined.

Penders is what Art Briles would have been in a few years if he had never left for Baylor. Briles took over a football program that was one year removed from a winless season and guided the Cougars to a bowl game in his first campaign. In his five years at the helm of the program, his teams earned four bowl berths. Up until he left, he was a wildly popular coach among the Houston faithful, largely due to the fact that he was getting us to bowl games on a regular basis. He was achieving the goal most fans had for the program. The Cougar football program had made just two bowl appearances in the fourteen years before Briles, and suddenly bowl games started looking like an every year deal. That’s what we wanted. Now, had he hung around long enough, people would have realized that we would have never gotten to the next level of national prominence under Briles. He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) recruit the big-time kids in the Houston area, opting to go with the hit-or-miss philosophy of recruiting kids from smaller towns and smaller schools. His teams were undisciplined, racking up a mind-boggling number of penalties of the “illegal procedure” and “too many men in the huddle” variety. He placed a frightening lack of emphasis on special teams, which seemed to cost the Cougars a game every year. Eventually, Houston would have thanked Briles for the work he did, shown him the door, and looked for a coach who could take the next step. What actually happened was the best possible scenario. Briles left voluntarily, and in a manner that ensured that nobody would miss him. In stepped a coach in Kevin Sumlin who seems capable of getting Houston back to national prominence. Recruiting is way up, stupid penalties are way down. (And we have more excellent water slides than any other planet we communicate with!…anybody?)

You may remember that back when I was still talking about basketball, I referred to the “anti-Penders crowd” in the third person, disassociating myself from the group, despite the fact that just a few sentences prior, I was calling for Penders to be removed as coach. I honestly do not consider myself part of that group. Allow me to explain why, in characteristically verbose fashion.

Penders is Briles. He took over a program that had just one winning season in the eight prior to his arrival, and just one ten-win season out of the previous five. It was a basketball program in disarray, at least to the extent that the football program was prior to Briles’ arrival. In fact, I would argue that the basketball program was in worse shape. The improvement from Dana Dimel’s last season to Briles’ first was just a game and a half. Look it up, Dimel’s Coogs went 5-7 in 2002, Briles’ Cougars went 7-6 in ‘03. Penders took UH from 9-18 (3-13 in C-USA) to the NIT in  year one. Since then, Penders has won 20 games three times, and never failed to win at least 18 – although he probably will not make it this year. Like Briles, Penders has never been able to pull in the big-time Houston-area recruits. And while his teams have been impressive in some areas (like being near the top in the nation in turnover margin year-in and year-out), there always seems to be a fatal flaw that derails the train – poor shot selection more often than not.

Penders also suffers from the much higher standards that come with basketball. When Briles got here, he immediately began achieving the goal of getting to bowl games regularly. However, in hoops, the goal is the NCAA tournament, and nothing less. So while NIT berths were nice, they were just a stepping stone to the real goal. It’s a pretty stark double-standard. Consider that, as of the 2009-10 athletic year, 57% of NCAA division 1-A football teams make a bowl game (68 out of 120), while just 19% of basketball teams make the NCAA tournament (65 out of 347). Not to mention that you don’t have to worry about the New Hampshires of the world stealing bowl bids the way that lesser teams get automatic tournament berths in basketball for winning their conference. If Penders were judged by football standards, each of his first five teams has been a “bowl team”. And while Briles was praised for quickly getting the team consistently bowl-eligible, Penders gets slammed for not making the NCAA tournament.

It would be dishonest to discuss the Cougar basketball program without discussing some of the difficulties that the program faces. Funding for Cougar basketball is non-existent. So is the Cougar fan base. I love the Hof for all of its history, but it is older than the Pyramids. The city of Houston produces its fair share of basketball talent, but only at a fraction of the rate that it churns out football players. In football, the three hotbeds are California, Texas and Florida. Most basketball talent comes out of the northeast.

Look at all those old, empty seats enjoying the game

The reality of the expectations of taking on the Cougar men’s basketball head coaching job remain, however. Penders knew this when he signed up for the job. It’s NCAA tournament or bust. Even with a shoestring budget, even with sparse crowds, Cougar fans know that UH has been a powerhouse basketball program in the past, and don’t think that occasional tournament teams are too much to ask. And Penders flat-out hasn’t lived up to his “Tournament Tom” moniker. That’s why it’s time for a new coach. Maybe we’ll hire a Sumlin, maybe we’ll hire a Ray McCallum, maybe we’ll just hire another Penders. But it’s time to try something new.

It is the constant vitriol from the majority of the anti-Penders camp that keeps me from associating myself with them. He’s always been nice to me, he cares deeply about this university and this basketball program, and he’s done some very impressive things here. This should count for something. Maybe the modern recruiting game has passed him by, we’ll probably never reach the Big Dance with him, and I hope we have a new coach next year. Just don’t tell me he’s a horrible coach, don’t attack his character, and don’t tell me you’re a true fan while simultaneously telling me you won’t attend games until he leaves.

If this has been Penders’ obituary, here is his epitaph:

Tom Penders (2004-?): Exactly the coach that the University of Houston fan base deserved.

(Photo credit – Hofheinz Pavilion: jtdees, ScottAndHolman.com)

Football announces recruiting class; basketball outclassed by UTEP

ElViento: Okay, let’s go with the good news first.

There weren’t any surprises in store for the Houston Cougars on National Signing Day, with all 25 newcomers joining the program as expected, in addition to the two JuCo players (LB Sammy Brown and DL Matangi Tonga) who are already enrolled.

Head Coach Kevin Sumlin had a lot to say about the class, doing a radio interview, holding a press conference, and hosting a party at Bubba’s Sports Bar and Grill.

Sumlin emphasized that this recruiting class adds depth to every position, noting that the recruiting class goes at least one deep at every position except the O-line, where there are four newcomers. The O-line was also one of the few spots where the Cougars had the depth to redshirt some guys last year, and they lose only one starter on the line, so depth there shouldn’t be a problem. Sumlin admitted that his team wore down a little at the end of the 14-game schedule due to there not being much available depth. If Houston can keep recruiting like this, and can keep these guys in school, that will soon cease to be a problem.

Coach Sumlin stressed that the Cougar coaching staff is concerned solely with their own observations of a player, noting that some teams tend to just recruit by star rankings, or off of a player database, but Houston does not. Sumlin noted in passing that Houston pulled in the top-ranked recruiting class in Conference USA this year, but downplayed the importance of the observations of outsiders.

When asked by an astute observer at Bubba’s, Sumlin said that positions haven’t been chosen definitively for incoming athletes Darian Lazard and Aaron Johnson, but that Lazard is likely to end up on offense, and Johnson on defense.
**************************************************************************
…and the Houston men’s basketball team played on Wednesday. For about ten minutes of the first half, at least.

UTEP looked sluggish and didn’t knock down any shots in front of their typically raucous home crowd, but Houston still didn’t do nearly enough to win. Aubrey Coleman continually forced up ill-advised outside jumpers, nobody could guard Derrick Caracter inside and the Cougars refused to accept a game that the Miners practically gift-wrapped for them with 2-11 three-point shooting, a 62% effort from the line and (outside of Caracter) 34% shooting from the floor.

I won’t let myself be tricked into this team any more. Every game we win from here on out will be a pleasant surprise, but this isn’t a good team. And no amount of glowing Tom Penders quotes about Coleman being the most dedicated player he’s ever coached will convince me otherwise.

Okay? Okay. See you at Hofheinz on Saturday.

So much C-USA baseball statistical analysis, it’ll make your head hurt

ElViento: No sport lends itself to statistical analysis quite like baseball. In baseball, individual performance can be quantified independent of the performance of one’s teammates much more easily than in other sports.* A quarterback depends on his offensive line and wide receivers (and offensive coordinator, etc.) to put up big passing numbers, whereas a .300 hitter can hit .300 even if placed in a lineup with eight total scrubs.

*Which makes it so wacky that the stats that are teammate-dependant (Runs, Runs Batted In, Wins for pitchers) are among the most-cited stats when determining things like MVP and Cy Young awards. But I digress.

So-called sabermetrics haven’t gotten much of a foothold in the college game yet, which is probably why you see things like rampant sacrifice bunting in a league in which you are allowed to use a metal bat and a designated hitter. Sacrifice bunting is usually a dumb idea in lower-scoring, wood-bat, pitcher-hitting leagues, and if you don’t believe that, you’ve clearly never seen a run expectancy chart.

Anyway, I’m off-topic again. So before I start talking about something completely random, like how good Zombieland was (fucking amazing), let’s get down to brass tacks.

College baseball is harder than professional to analyze statistically, because a single season is such a small sample size (50-some games, as opposed to 162), and because players have careers which are so much shorter (max four years, as opposed to 10+ years). Still, I think there are a few concepts of sabermetrics which might be interesting to apply to the Cougars and Conference USA in order to determine what we can expect from the upcoming season. And some of the following won’t be sabermetrical at all, but will simply be another way of looking at numbers. Feeling nerdy? Let’s dive right in.

Idea #1 – BABIP

Yup, we’re getting math-y right away, with a statistic called BABIP, or Batting Average on Balls In Play. The concept possibly first devised by a dude named Voros McCracken (which practically has to be a pseudonym) is that pitchers can only control certain things, like the frequency with which they strike opposing hitters out, walk opposing hitters, and give up homeruns. Statistical analysis suggests that the numbers a pitcher puts up in these areas stay relatively steady from year to year, and true, lasting improvement has to come from improving upon these numbers. Conversely, if the opposing hitter puts a ball in play (doesn’t walk, doesn’t strike out, doesn’t hit it out of the park), a pitcher has very little control over what happens. Often times an MLB pitcher will have allow one of the highest BABIPs in the league one year, and one of the lowest the next, even though his controllable, peripheral statistics remain constant, perhaps just due to sheer, dumb luck. So if we can expect pitching staffs to allow a BABIP that is near the mean for the league, we can expect teams that allowed flukey low BABIPs to struggle a little more this year, and teams that allowed unluckily high BABIPs to benefit from a regression to the mean. The same concept applies to hitting. (For the following analysis, I will use the formula BABIP = (H-HR)/(AB-HR-K)

I accounted for all statistics accumulated by all C-USA schools, both hitting-wise and pitching-wise. For hitters, East Carolina was the “luckiest” team with a .385 BABIP, and Central Florida was the unluckiest at .325. Eliminating the two outliers, C-USA hitters put together a .344 BABIP. (For reference purposes, all of MLB put up a .303 BABIP in 2009.)

For pitchers, Tulane had the luckiest staff (.303 BABIP) and UCF was again the unluckiest (.390). If we eliminate the outliers, we get a C-USA .334 BABIP.

So aside from the extreme examples, C-USA hit and pitched BABIPs that are just .010 different, which is a difference of one hit every 100 at-bats. That difference is probably due to C-USA having slightly better defense, on average, than its opponents. (Defense is the X-factor here. Teams with better defenses will allow lower BABIPs, because their defensive players will get to more balls. Hence, a team like Rice will continue to have slightly “lucky” looking BABIP every year, because their defense is just awesome.)

What it means: The teams that seemed to be significantly lucky or unlucky in terms of BABIP in 2009 are as follows: ECU (lucky hitters), Rice (lucky hitters [.366 BABIP] and pitchers [.310 BABIP]), UCF (unlucky hitters and pitchers), Houston (unlucky pitchers [.359 BABIP]). So, one might expect the unlucky teams to fare better in 2010, and the lucky teams to do a bit worse.

Idea #2 – Pythagorean W/L

A slightly simpler concept than BABIP, Pythagorean W/L is predicated on the radical idea that teams which outscore their opponents over the course of the year will generally win more often than not. By way of example, if a team scores the same number of runs that it allows, but wins 60% of its games, chances are that said team got pretty lucky.

The simplest formula for determining a team’s Pythagorean (or expected) winning percentage is (RS^2)/(RS^2+RA^2). Taking on the league as a whole, C-USA played to a 286-245 overall record, outscoring opponents 3,672-3,361. That gives us an expected record of 289-242. Not bad. Surprisingly, no team in C-USA differed from its Pythagorean W-L by more than three games. Two teams over-performed by three games (Houston and UCF) nobody under-performed by more than two. So we’ll give UH and UCF lucky check marks, nobody an unlucky check mark, and move on.

Idea #3 – Experience Matters

Let’s move away from sabermetrics for a second now. While impact newcomers show up every year without fail, experienced players are still generally better than inexperienced ones. So let’s take a look at which teams return the most in terms of players from a year ago. We’ll take a look at the offense and the pitching staff. Offensively, we’ll look at what percentage of a team’s 2009 at-bats accumulated return, and for pitching we’ll use innings pitched. While this is a pretty crude method (it won’t take into account things like talented players who were injured coming back [Rob Segedin of Tulane] or injured players who are on their team’s roster, but will miss at least part of the season [Jared Ray of Houston, Mike Ojala of Rice]) it should give us at least a basic idea of who has experienced players heading into the season.

Using this metric, Conference USA as a whole returns 63.3% of both its hitting and pitching from a year ago. No joke. So taking that as the baseline, let’s look at which teams return the most and least from last year. (Taking returning hitting and pitching and averaging the two.)

1. Rice: 80%
2. Houston: 77%
3. Memphis: 77%
4. UAB: 69%
5. Marshall: 67%
6. ECU: 65%
7. Southern Miss: 54%
8. Central Florida: 40%
9. Tulane: 40%

Taking the teams that are significantly away from the mean means Rice, UH and Memphis have noticeable advantages in terms of experience returning, and Southern Miss, UCF and Tulane have noticeable disadvantages.

So with these factors in mind, let’s take a look at last year’s team records (sorted by overall winning percentage), with the factors we’ve just looked at noted parenthetically:

Rice: 43-18, 71% (Good: Most experience. Bad: Possibly lucky at both hitting and pitching.)

ECU: 46-20, 70% (Bad: Possibly lucky at hitting)

Southern Miss: 40-26, 61% (Bad: Not much experience.)

Tulane: 34-25, 58% (Bad: Tied least experience)

UAB: 31-26, 54% (None)

Houston: 27-31, 47% (Good: Experienced, unlucky pitching. Bad: Slightly out-performed pythag.)

Marshall: 22-32, 41% (None)

Memphis: 21-32, 40% (Good: Experienced)

Central Florida: 22-35, 39% (Good: Unlucky hitting and pitching. Bad: Slightly out-performed pythag., tied most inexperienced)

Looking at this, what would you think by way of a power ranking for C-USA for the upcoming season? Probably keep Rice-ECU at 1-2, given how much better they were than everybody else. With Rice having the experience edge, you’d keep them at #1, even though ECU won the C-USA regular season title by a game last year. Southern Miss is inexperienced, but not fatally so. So with a 6-win advantage over anybody else, you probably keep them where they are. Tulane, UAB and Houston are all pretty close, and the Cougars have the biggest pluses, so you move them to #4. You probably have UAB leap-frog Tulane, given the Green Wave’s lack of experience. Memphis takes the small step over Marshall due to experience, and UCF stays in last with a lack of experience, despite the possibility of Lady Luck turning their way in 2010. That would give you a 1-9 power ranking that looks like this:

1. Rice
2. ECU
3. Southern Miss
4. Houston
5. UAB
6. Tulane
7. Memphis
8. Marshall
9. UCF

Switch UAB for Tulane, and Memphis for Marshall, and you have the exact order I listed the teams in for my pre-season power rankings. (Before I had looked up or taken any of this into account.)  I’ll justify Tulane staying at the #5 spot due to the fact that Segedin is back (even though I didn’t mention that in my write-up…d’oh!) and did put up a .322/.414/.485 as a freshman in 2008. I wouldn’t argue with anybody moving the Blazers up to the 5-spot, however. I maintain Marshall at #7 over the Tigers, just because I like what returning talent they do have better than I like that of Memphis. So there.

The End.

If you actually read this entire convoluted mess of an article, show up to a Cougar baseball game, find me, and I will give you $20.

(Not really)

Dear Houston Cougar Men’s Basketball Team

ElViento: An open letter to Tom Penders‘ squad,

Sure, Marshall had lost three in a row coming into their matchup with the Cougars on Saturday. But those losses were all closely contested against the likes of West Virginia, UAB and Memphis. And y’all ran the Thundering Herd right out of the gym.

You just played like you still didn’t belong on the same court with Memphis. A Tigers team with two conference losses now. The game before that, you got stomped by one of the worst teams in Conference USA – UCF – at home.

I saw those games. I gave up any delusions I had that maybe this team could make a run in the conference tournament and earn that elusive NCAA tournament berth. I resolved to show up to the games, cheer on my team, knowing that nothing would ultimately come of it. Kind of like a parent watching their 5′7″ son play JV ball in high school. You cheer him on, want to see him do well, but you know he’s got no future in basketball.

I had even found the silver lining: I could watch the emerging star that is Aubrey Coleman, pulling for him to win the national scoring and steals titles, and knowing he’ll probably get picked in the next NBA draft, becoming the first Cougar to hear his name called since Alton Ford in 2002.

Then came the Marshall game. You played all-out defense, holding a 48% shooting team to 38% shooting, and still having a gaudy +16 turnover ratio. AC attacked the hoop, taking 22 shots (and scoring 37) but never breaking offensive rhythm to force anything. Newcomers Maurice McNeil and Kendrick Washington had quietly productive games in the post. You even – gasp! – impressively executed an obvious game plan, fearlessly attacking Hassan Whiteside, getting him in early foul trouble and taking him out of his game. If Kelvin Lewis had knocked down some open jumpers, this would have been an absolute slaughter.

What gives? You’re like a hot ex-girlfriend who is always just a little too crazy, who finally mellows out and tells me she wants to get back together right after I get over her. I know this won’t work out. But that little voice in my head keeps telling me you finally figured it out. You are toying with my emotions. Please stop.

Jackson Jeffcoat commits elsewhere

ElViento: If you don’t already know who Jackson Jeffcoat is, use google. I’m cranky, and I’m not typing it all up again.

Friday’s news is a good reason why so many veteran college football fans don’t follow recruiting. It’ll just drive ya nuts. I have, as of now, spent an unhealthy amount of time obsessing over a football player who will never play for my team. (A football player my team will never even play against, in all likelihood, given Austin’s…um…disinclination to schedule Houston.)

One has to speculate that Jeffcoat’s decision is the nail in the coffin that is the 4-3 defense at Houston. With even less depth on the D-line, Kevin Sumlin hinting about change, and a DC experienced in the 3-4 (granted, Brian Stewart has stated that the defensive scheme that best fits the personnel will win out), one has to think that’s where the Cougars are headed. Can we do what we failed to do last year – get a pass rush, and stop the run – in a 3-4? That’s the question facing Sumlin, Stewart, et al.

If you follow recruiting and are bummed by losing out on Jeffcoat, keep in mind that there is still a very stout recruiting class coming in next year. One of the best in the recent history of this school. We will be alright.

Now some (*cough*Steve Campbell*cough*) will argue against the meaningfulness of Houston remaining in contention ’til the last second in the battle for Jeffcoat’s services. But I disagree. It is true that most pundits didn’t give the Cougars a snowball’s chance in hell of landing the 5-star recruit, but Jeffcoat himself made it impossible to completely ignore UH. When Houston is in contention for a recruit of this caliber again (and that’s a ‘when’, not an ‘if’) the road will be a little bit easier. The pundits will give us a slightly better chance because they’ve seen us there before. The endless parade of friends and family members trying to whisper in the kid’s ear might ask about UH, giving the program more credibility in the recruit’s mind. The Jeffcoat recruitment is a step in the right direction, folks. You gotta walk before you can run.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go vomit at the prospect of a good kid like JJ playing for the enemy.

Conference USA Baseball Power Rankings, Final Part

ElViento: Let’s finish this sucker off

7. Marshall Thundering Herd (22-32, 9-15)

Strengths: Marshall returns a quartet of players who could play for anybody in C-USA in Josh Valle (.337/.459/.487), Victor Gomez (.332, 18 HR), Austin Coan (3.49 ERA, 8 sv) and Shane Farrell (3.88, 8.5 K/9).

Question Marks: Overall team depth, fielding. The losses of Adam Yeager and Nate Lape will hurt the offense, and the one strength of the pitching staff – bullpen depth – takes a hit due to graduation, as well. Starting pitching wasn’t good last year, and there’s little reason to believe it’ll be any better this year. The fielding wasn’t good a year ago either, compiling the worst fielding percentage in conference, and allowing 15 more stolen bases than the next worst offender in C-USA.

Best Pro Comparison: Valle, the short, stocky slap-hitter as Tony Gwynn.

Team Song: Black-Eyed Peas – Gone Going (ft. Jack Johnson)…The Thundering Herd couldn’t crash the NCAA tournament either of the last two seasons with two of the most exciting hitters in C-USA in Yeager and Lape. I have to think their window of opportunity is gone.

8. Memphis Tigers (21-32, 7-16)

Strengths: The top five hitters from last year’s squad return, all of whom hit .285 and above. That experience should make up for the loss of Brett Bowen, who led the team in homers, RBI and slugging. The pitching staff returns almost entirely intact, as well.

Question Marks: Pitching talent, power hitting. Yes, nearly every pitcher who threw significant innings in 2009 is back, but that staff only put up a 6.30 team ERA a year ago. Unless improvement is present, experience won’t matter. With all the starters coming back in the lineup, the Tigers should climb out of the C-USA basement in team batting average, but whether or not they can climb out of the bottom two in HR, 2B and BB will determine how far they go.

Best Pro Comparison: Heith Hatfield as Brooks Kieschnick. Tall dudes who can hit and pitch, but can’t do either particularly well.

Team Song: Elvis – Blue Suede Shoes…Maybe the Tigers have been wearing some, instead of traditional baseball attire. That would explain their play on the field the last couple of years. (Plus: Elvis. Memphis. C’mon, it’s a gimme.)

9. Central Florida Knights (22-35, 9-15)

Strengths: Some quality hitters like Shane Brown (.341, 44 RBI), Beau Taylor (.335, 19 XBH in 164 AB) and D.J. Hicks (.301, 8 HR) are back.

Question Marks: When you put up a team ERA of 7.47, and the only two pitchers on your team who could be described as “talented” or “having potential” (Kyle Sweat and Jaager Good) have graduated, you are probably pretty screwed.

Best Pro Comparison: Hicks as Carlos Lee; big, beefy outfielders who probably should draw a few more walks for how much power they have.
Team Song: BlakRoc – Ain’t Nothing Like You…This song has nothing to do with the UCF Knights. But the prospect of coming up with a song to describe how bad they are depresses me. So they get a kick-ass song.

Conference USA Baseball Preview, Part Two

ElViento: The Houston Cougars announced the hiring of their new head volleyball coach on Monday in the person of Molly Alvey. Alvey was formerly an assistant coach at Ole Miss, where she saw the Rebels earn back-to-back NCAA tournament berths after never reaching that plateau previously in program history. Alvey also was a lead recruiter who did much of her work in Texas. Alvey comes recommended by the head coach of Penn State, the most dominant program in the land.

Okay, on to baseball. As I mentioned in the comments yesterday, the 3-6 spots in C-USA are pretty up in the air. This should be a 4-5 bid league in the NCAA tournament this year, so the competition for these spots should be fierce.

4. Houston Cougars (27-31, 13-11)
Strengths: Six hitters return who batted .280 or higher a year ago, led by Blake Kelso (.335) and Caleb Ramsey (.332). Michael Goodnight (4.43 ERA) is the likely Friday starter, and figures to have a big season.
Question Marks: This Cougar team has a lot of potential, but the question marks are many. Where is the rest of the starting pitching going to come from? Can Mo Wiley shake off a poor freshman campaign (in which he was recovering from injury)? Can freshman Eric Brooks (a two-time all-state selection in high school) make a smooth transition to pitching at the college level? With a much deeper lineup, will Rayner Noble have Chase Dempsay focus on pitching, and can Chase return to his 2008, Freshman All-American form as a closer? Can anyone besides Chris Wallace hit for power? (Freshman M.P. Cokinos, Ramsey, and senior William Kankel seem like the best bets.)

Best Pro Comparison: Dempsay as Rick Ankiel. After a promising pitching career (freshman All-American closer in 2008) is de-railed (5.00 ERA in ’09), Dempsay re-invents himself as an outfielder, hitting .275 in 51 starts. Hopefully Dempsay breaks the comparison by returning to dominant pitching form this year. (Secondary comparisons: Kelso as David Eckstein, Zak Presley as Scott Podsednik.)

Team Song: Cage the Elephant – Back Against the Wall…Noble probably needs an NCAA tournament berth this year to save his job.

5. Tulane Green Wave (34-25, 13-11)

Strengths: The pitching staff. I like Conrad Flynn (3.93 ERA, 8.3 K/BB) as a dark-horse to become an All-American this year. Matt Petition (5.13, 3-3) returns as a weekend starter and closer Nick Pepitone (3.26, 9 sv) provides stability at the back of the bullpen.

Question Marks: Hitting depth. Six of the eight regulars from 2009 are gone, leaving only Jeremy Schaffer (.311, 14 HR) and Nick Boullosa (.298, 22 SB). The Green Wave have an incredible fifteen hitters on the roster in their first year at Tulane. Look for Stetson transfer Frank Florio to make an impact.

Best Pro Comparison: Flynn as Greg Maddux. Flynn is more physically imposing, but shares Maddux’s impeccable control and effectiveness without relying on the strikeout.

Team Song: John Fogerty – Centerfield…With all the losses due to graduation, coach might put me in for the Green Wave.

6. Alabama-Birmingham Blazers (31-26, 11-12)

Strengths: A trio of returning power hitters in Digger Towe (.353, 9 HR), Andrew ManningLuke Stewart (.261, 15 HR). Jonathan Merritt (.317) and Jamal Austin (.318, 10 HR) and (.297) are back after stealing 20 bases apiece in ’09.

Question Marks: Some regulars return from the pitching staff, but it’s a staff that put up a 5.91 team ERA in ’09. If Shay Crawford (5.14 ERA) and Beau Pender (6.16) can improve in the weekend rotation, UAB could be an NCAA tournament team.

Best Pro Comparison: Austin as Juan Pierre; short, speed-burning outfielders who don’t strike out, but don’t walk enough, either.
Team Song: AC/DC – It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll)…It’s not easy to claw your way up to the upper eschelon of C-USA in baseball, but the Blazers are on the right path.

Conference USA Baseball Power Rankings, Part One

ElViento: First things first: Congratulations to Courtney Taylor, who surpassed 1,000 career points in a 63-62 victory over UAB this weekend.

But with both men’s and women’s hoops mired in mediocrity, I think long-time reader SACoog said it best, “Baseball, softball, golf..please give me something to live for, this basketball is downright depressing.”

May I say, SACoog, loyal readers, if you start to get bummed out by Cougar basketball, keep in mind you have the following to look forward to:

-6 days until Jackson Jeffcoat announces his college choice.

-8 days until Zombieland comes out on DVD.

-18 days until Houston hosts Ohio State to kick off the college softball season.

-25 days until Houston hosts Texas State to kick off the college  baseball season.

Along those lines, I present to you the Coog Crew Dustin Pre-Season Conference USA Baseball Power Rankings. (Now With Added Capital Letters!)

1. Rice Owls (43-18 in 2009, 16-8 Conference USA)
Strengths: Brock Holt is the only significant loss from an offense that was already scary-good (.320 team avg, 71 HR) last year. This will be a team that hits for a high average, hits a lot of homeruns (five players return who hit 7+ last year), and can steal bases (six players return who stole 7+ bases last year). Mike Ojala and Taylor Wall are a formidable 1-2 at the front of the rotation.
Question Marks: Who else can pitch besides Ojala and Wall? With Ryan Berry off to the pros, the cupboard of proven college pitchers is pretty bare. Mark Haynes is the only other pitcher returning with 20+ IP and a sub-5.00 ERA. As usual, there is a huge crop of young talent coming in, but the Owls will essentially have to find a Sunday starter, a couple mid-week starters, and build an entire bullpen from scratch.

Best Pro Comparison: The left side of the infield as the left side of the New York Yankees infield. Rick Hague as Derek Jeter, and Anthony Rendon as Alex Rodriguez, the more talented player coming in later, and moving from his natural position of SS to 3B to accommodate the other guy.

Team Song: The Sonics – Have Love, Will Travel…The Owls have the cash and prestige to demand a lot of home games, but every year they put together a tough schedule with a lot of roadies. Keep in mind, Conference-USA is a power conference in baseball, so it’s not like a brutal non-conference schedule is required to get in the NCAA tournament. This year Rice was weekend road series against Stanford and San Diego, as well as mid-week contests at UT-Austin, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State.

2. East Carolina Pirates (46-20, 17-7)

Strengths: Even with a couple of stud hitters gone, the Pirates return a frightening amount of offensive talent, including pre-season first team All-American Kyle Roller (.336, 16 HR). Roller, Trent Whitehead (.376, 7 HR, 10 SB) and Devin Harris (.344, 14 HR, 13 SB) are among the five returning .300+ hitters. Ace Brad Mincey (3.16 ERA, 10-5) is back as well.

Question Marks: Pitching depth, and play on the road. The Friday starter (Mincey) seems set, and closer Seth Simmons (3.69, 9 sv) is back, but after that, it’s unsure how things will shake out. Spot starter Kevin Brandt (3.64, 6 GS) will likely move into the weekend rotation, but there isn’t much proven pitching talent after that. ECU will also have to prove that they can win away from home. The Pirates have a team that is perfectly-suited to play in the bandbox that is Clark-LeClair Stadium, and a raucous home crowd. However, East Carolina was just 13-11 in road games in 2009. The Pirates are a legit College World Series contender in 2010, but they’re going to have to learn to win away from home.

Best Pro Comparison: Roller as Mo Vaughn. Similar size (Both 6’1”, Roller actually listed a little heavier, if you can believe that), similar numbers. Roller’s ’09 line: .336/.451/.578, HR every 16 AB. Vaughn’s best season (’96): .326/.420/.583, HR every 14.4 AB.

Team Song: Counting Crows – Hanginaround…The Pirates have been hangin’ around Greenville for way too long. They’re overdue for a trip to Omaha. Anything less this year will be considered a disappointment.

3. Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles (40-26, 12-12)

Strengths: A talented (if top-heavy) roster. USM used two regular starting pitchers, and a handful of spot starters in ‘09, and the top regular – Todd McInnis (3.73 ERA in 101.1 IP) – and  top spot starter – Jeff Stanley (4.23, 6 GS) – are back, as is closer Collin Cargill (3.55, 13 sv). Kameron Brunty (.336, 7 HR) and Joey Archer (.306, 10 HR) are back for the offense.

Question Marks: Overall team depth. Four of the team’s top five hitters are gone and an already-thin pitching staff takes a couple of hits due to graduation, as well. The Golden Eagles will score some runs, but they might struggle to even duplicate 2009’s mediocre 5.14 team ERA.

Best Pro Comparison: Travis Graves as Mike Matheny. The senior catcher is a thoroughly mediocre hitter (.254/.393/.352), but plays Gold Glove-caliber defense (threw out 20 of 49 would-be base stealers).

Team Song: Steely Dan – Do It Again…Golden Eagle fans got their first taste of Omaha in 2009, in former head coach Corky Palmer’s final season, despite a .500 conference record. Can they repeat the feat under the newly-promoted, long-time assistant Scott Berry? Color me skeptical.

Hope that helps tide you over, Cougar fans. Sorry, I couldn’t put UH in the top 3 in good conscience. They’ll appear early in the next batch of previews tomorrow, I promise.