Forde Minutes: Our Biggest Questions Leading Into Champ Week

Will coaches and national media make a statement by shutting out Alabama’s Brandon Miller and Nate Oats from awards voting?

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college basketball (#FreeMerrimack T-shirts sold separately in North Andover):

Five Burning Questions Before the Big Dance

Selection Sunday is … this Sunday. We’ve about made it to the big bracket reveal, but don’t wish the week away—there is plenty of great basketball to be played between now and then. As we dive into Championship Week, there are some issues to address.

Should Alabama win the Southeastern Conference’s individual awards?

The league will announce its all-league teams and other honors this week—one set voted on by the coaches, another set by media members via the Associated Press. Among the awards: Freshman of the Year, Player of the Year and Coach of the Year. Voting for those awards might be more controversial than usual.

In a performance-only vacuum, the winner of both Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year is a no-brainer: the Crimson Tide’s Brandon Miller (1). He leads the league in scoring and three-pointers made, is fifth in rebounding and seventh in three-point accuracy. He is the only SEC player in Ken Pomeroy’s metric-based top 10 candidates for national Player of the Year. Miller is by far the best player on by far the best team in the conference.

But there is, of course, more to Miller than just the on-court story. The late-February revelation that Miller delivered a gun in his car to the scene of an alleged murder has shaken the sport. He didn’t miss a second of playing time after being at the scene of the crime. The continued use of a “patdown” routine by a teammate during pregame introductions for weeks after the killing of Jamea Jonae Harris drew further outrage until Alabama put a stop to it.

If voters were looking for an FOY alternative, there really isn’t one. Kentucky’s Cason Wallace has had a good season, but injuries have curtailed his production of late.

The POY contenders are similarly scarce. Defending POY Oscar Tshiebwe hasn’t been as dominant as he was last season, and the Wildcats haven’t been as good. Wade Taylor IV of Texas A&M has had a huge last month of the season, and Tolu Smith is productive at Mississippi State, but they’re not as impactful as Miller.

Then, there is Coach of the Year voting and Alabama’s Nate Oats (2). His team was picked fifth in the preseason and dominated the league, assuredly locking down an NCAA tournament No. 1 seed along the way. Oats is the obvious choice, if not for his tone-deaf, win-at-all-costs approach to the aftermath of having one of his players (Darius Miles, since expelled) charged with murder.

There are other voting options beyond Oats: Missouri’s Dennis Gates (picked 11th, seeded fourth for the tournament), Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams (picked sixth, seeded second), Vanderbilt’s Jerry Stackhouse (picked 12th, seeded sixth).

There is precedent for something of a protest vote for COY in the league: In 2019, when LSU won the regular-season title for the first time in a decade while coach Will Wade was engulfed in scandal related to the federal investigation of corruption in college hoops, the coaches and media voted for Mississippi’s Kermit Davis, whose team finished tied for sixth.

Both coaches and media members have to decide for themselves: keep their voting strictly tied to what has happened on the court or weigh other factors. Voters have no impact on who cuts down nets, but they decide who wins subjective awards. Will statements be made?

Can the refs handle officiating Oscar and other big men?

Tshiebwe (3) is a handful to defend in the post, and a handful to officiate. In a replay-monitor-dependent era of heightened sensitivity about high elbows and flailing arms, the Kentucky post player is a lightning rod.

On Saturday at Arkansas, the officials let Tshiebwe play through two incidents that could have warranted ejection. He appeared to fire an elbow to the head of Makhi Mitchell early in the game but was not whistled for a flagrant-2 foul, which would have gotten him tossed. Instead, Tshiebwe was given a technical foul—along with Arkansas’s Anthony Black—for the ensuing dust-up. Tshiebwe then was called for a flagrant-1 foul later in the game for hitting Kamani Johnson in the face with a forearm. Tshiebwe played until he fouled out with 4:53 remaining; the Wildcats led by nine at that point and won by the same margin.

The mayhem spread outward from Tshiebwe—there were 52 fouls and multiple technicals called, and Arkansas guard Davonte Davis was ejected for a double technical early in the second half. The refs lost control of the game and struggled to get it back.

In Nashville this week at the SEC tournament, officials will be under a microscope in their assessment of flagrant fouls, particularly shots to the head. Players have become dramatic actors in search of flagrant calls, and games can get bogged down as refs hover over monitors trying to decipher what happened.

But this isn’t just an SEC thing. Big Ten refs have to determine what’s allowable contact involving Purdue’s Zach Edey; ACC refs have the constant entanglements of North Carolina’s Armando Bacot; and so forth. It’s a hard job, and it will be a significant part of what transpires over the rest of this month.

Who gets the fourth No. 1 seed?

The candidates are Purdue (4) and UCLA (5). The choice is not easy.

The top three teams look solid at this point: Houston, Alabama and Kansas. Then it’s a tussle between the Boilermakers and Bruins.

The NCAA NET ratings have UCLA No. 4 and Purdue No. 5; Ken Pomeroy has the Bruins No. 2 and the Boilers No. 6. The selection committee itself gave Purdue the edge when it revealed its early top 16 on Feb. 18—Matt Painter’s team was No. 3, while Mick Cronin’s team was No. 8. At the time, Cronin labeled his team’s ranking as “laughable.”

Since then, Purdue has gone 3–1, and UCLA has gone 5–0. The gap assuredly has closed, but how much? If it were up to The Minutes, UCLA would get the final No. 1 seed.

Which conference tournament has the most bubble drama?

The Big Ten convenes in Chicago with four teams near the cut line (6). This is fitting for a league that went into Sunday with 11 of its 14 members between 11–8 and 8–11 in the standings.

Rutgers should be in the field but lost to last-place Minnesota on Thursday to inject some anxiety. Penn State has won five of its past six while living on the edge, with its last four games decided by four points or less. Wisconsin is in tossup territory, having not won back-to-back games since Dec. 30 to Jan. 3. Michigan worked its way into the mix with consecutive wins against Michigan State, Rutgers and Wisconsin but since then has lost to Illinois and Indiana.

Could the ACC fail to land a single team within the top 16 seeds?

It’s possible. This has been a humbling year for the conference.

Right now, Virginia (7) is the best candidate, landing on the No. 4 seed line in many mock brackets. Miami might be able to play its way up to a fourth seed if it wins the ACC tourney. Possibly even Duke, which takes a six-game winning streak into Greensboro.