Villanova press release:

Villanova redshirt freshman forward Omari Spellman (Cleveland, Ohio) will enter his name into the 2018 National Basketball Association Draft process but won’t hire an agent, it was announced today.

Spellman was tabbed BIG EAST Freshman of the Year and Philadelphia Big Five Rookie of the Year for his work in 2017-18. He started 39 of Villanova’s 40 games last season and averaged 10.9 points and 8.0 rebounds as the Wildcats set a school record with 36 victories on their way to the NCAA national championship. Spellman connected on .433 of his attempts from beyond the 3-point arc and led the Wildcats with 59 blocked shots.

“Omari’s intelligence and willingness to be coached allowed him to make great strides last season,” stated Wildcats head coach Jay Wright. “His development as a complete Villanova Basketball player was instrumental to our team’s success. We look forward to working together with Omari and his family in the coming weeks as they go through the process of evaluating the next step in his basketball career.”

The 2017-18 Villanova Men’s Basketball season is presented by KeyBank.

Fahcksticks!

That’s a guy from Boston being upset. I’m not from Boston, but I am upset… and also a little bit amused that Villanova has a sponsor for its press releases. They’ve run out of places to keep all the money. Pretty soon they’re going to have to build a car wash, a la Walter White, to stash all the ongoing capital campaign funds lest they want to build another bridge across Lancaster Avenue. This is so good for business.

Where was I? Ah, right, Spellman. Well that would be a donkey punch to the 2018-2019 Wildcats, who are also losing Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges to the league. If Spellman leaves, I might have to come to terms with the notion that Villanova might not win the National Championship next year. I suppose this is what it feels like to be a Duke fan.

Spellman’s game just oozes NBA. It drips NBA. If he sat on your couch, he would leave behind little NBA stains when he got up. His ability to bang down low and step out and hit the three is perfect for the current iteration of the sport. It’s kind of mind-boggling that he was Villanova’s best three-point shooter. Baby Embiid I’ve called him. With good reason.

This is a smart move for him. He can test the waters and return for a sophomore season if league signals intelligence isn’t favorable. Selfishly, I’d like for that to be the case, but if nothing else him leaving would shut up that dipshit Jalen Rose about Villanova not having any one-and-done players.

Here we sit two days out from yet another championship, calmly piecing together yet another parade plan – mine includes the parade followed by the Phillies’ home opener, where Doug Pederson and, you would think, Jay Wright, will make an appearance – and yet I’m about to write a post about that dipshit Jalen Rose.

It hit me the other night while watching that two-hour pre-game show– just how bad most mainstream sports coverage is. That isn’t to just shred something for the sake of shredding, but to point out what useless filler most of it has become. By the time tip rolled around, the panel was in a consensus that Michigan might win or, at the very least, it would be a very close game. Why? Because talking heads were caught up in the hype of balanced coverage, fan bases and coach speak? I’m not saying Michigan couldn’t have won – far from it – but every sane, statistical-based analysis of the game pointed toward not only a resounding Villanova win, but also a cover of the line with a double-digit delta. Had one person on TBS’ rotating cackle of panelists – including Jim Boeheim, who gave the most old school take on paying players imaginable – predicted a Michigan win, that would’ve been reasonable and in-line with expectations, but pretty much the whole crew did it.

One can live with those sorts of platitudes, especially if they’re in service of pumping up a national broadcast (indeed ratings peaked at 11.0 before diving in the second half once Villanova asserted its dominance). What continues to be difficult to reconcile, and perhaps a reason why so many millennials with access to better, more nuanced or entertaining coverage continue to drift away from this nonsense is the endless hot take filler content that networks use – like NBC Sports Philly airing Quick Slants in the face of spending money to cover just about anything useful – in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

Enter Jalen Rose.

I actually never really minded him, perhaps because of his nexus to Bill Simmons, who I still enjoy. But this butthurt take about Villanova after they WHOOPED his alma mater is ridiculous: Continue Reading