Tips at noon, so at least we get this out of the way early.
1. Damon Stoudamire spent five years coaching in my backyard at the University of Pacific, and I can’t say that anything I saw there made me think “future high major head coach.” However, our guy was a straight legend at Arizona and put Oregon high school basketball on the map. Despite his middling success in the WCC, this looked like a genius hire near the end of December. They beat Duke, won their holiday tourney, and headed into a Christmas Eve matchup against Nevada with an 8-3 (1-0) record.