Horns247 Board

Should texas beat Chaminade as expected, the Longhorns will play the winner of USC-Illinois on Tuesday, Nov. 20 at 10:30pm eastern on ESPN2

I'm going to be Mr Obvious. We need Kabongo back to make it to the finals. Neither Illinois or USC is a very good team; but they are good enough to beat us without our point guard. Hopefully, the NCAA has decided that a three game suspension was enough.

Winning the 1st game is expected. Winning the 2nd would be an accomplishment. If those happen we're getting killed in the champ game. We have 1 pg and he's a mistake prone tiny freshman.

They will not clear Kabongo to play this tourney. I think the best case scenario is they don't have anything tangible on him and will let him sit 5 games before clearing him. I see no way they clear him before 5 games.

I'm just hoping we come out of this with one win...0-3 would really hurt the tourney chances with the non-conference schedule we have left

I hope you're right, but it just seems unlikely they've had this info to investigate for 6 months but chose to not give a ruling before the season started. If they felt good about the situation they would have released him before the season. If they had hard evidence of wrong doing they would have already ruled him ineligible most likely. Just seems they want to make him pay a bit and making him miss a tourney in Hawaii is the perfect chance to do it.

That's where my thinking is on this one. Time will tell.

The thing is te NCAA isn't letting Kabongo travel as they haven't said anything one way or another. It's Barnes deciding to take Kabongo along just like it was Barnes deciding to keep him out these games. He could have been playing all along if Barnes wanted to do that.

Now if Barnes had some info come the back hush hush way from the NCAA and that's why he decided to take Kabongo... We'll that'd be great. I hope that's why he decided to take him and not just because it would be shitty leaving him at home when there's no reason not to take him to Hawaii.

I think if you're suspended then no you wouldn't travel with the team. That's what makes this hard to read because he hasn't been suspended and it's the university keeping him out in hope that if he does get a penalty these early games will count towards fulfilling that. In that situation I'd say he can travel and even play but whatever games he plays the NCAA wouldn't count that as time served towards any penalty they give. To me the reason Barnes won't do that is because he wants to play nice with the NCAA and hope they'll have mercy and come with a cleared ruling soon. If he plays him that could piss them off and prolong the decision. They basically have Myck and the program by the balls right now and just in limbo from what I can tell.

And with the NCAA that probably means I will be completely wrong.

I'll do a Chaminade preview Gerry:

Chaminade... They suck. We should win by 20+ on talent alone.

Chaminade is coming off a 93-83 loss to Western Washington University. WWU was picked #6 in the preseason NABC poll for NCAA Div. II schools. Chaminade does not have any votes in the latest poll.

Before the loss to WWU, Chaminade beat a New Zealand National team in an exhibition 117-103, then beat St. Martin's 87-84 and Western Oregon 84-76, with both games played in Monmouth, Oregon.

Chaminade was picked 6th in the preseason Pac-West poll, behind Grand Canyon, Dixie State, BYU-Hawaii, Azusa Pacific, and California Baptist.

Chaminade plays 5 starters each 29 minutes or more and scoring is shared. While Haskins is currently putting up 18 points a game, the other starters are all between 9.7 and 15.7. As Gerry's preview, shows, the team is small, going 6'7", 6'4" (x3), 6'0". The bench is led by Kevin Hu, who is the only offense off the bench at 8.0 points a game. Three players off the bench are playing between 12 and 15 minutes a game, all sized at 6'6" or 6'7".

The real question is Waly Coulibay, who is a member of the Mali national team, was a starter for Chaminade last year, averaging 8.6 ppg, 4.1 rpg, and hitting 36% of his three pointers. He is shown to have finally appeared for Chaminade against WWU, but only played 4 minutes. Coulibay is a 6'3" guard. I don't know why he wasn't playing before that or if he will be ready to go full strength tonight.

Chaminade is turnover prone (16 a game), relies on guys creating their own shots (only 8 assists per game), and is being just slightly out-rebounded by Div. II opponents(37.0 to 36.3). it isn't a bad three point shooting team, but not a great one, either. Rhys Murphy is 7/14. Mike Green is 1/10 off the bench. How much it better it could be with Coulibay available remains to be seen.

I expect Texas to win the board battle in a big way to control the game.

Team media guide

http://goswords.com/documents/2012/11/6/Chaminade_2012-2013_Media_Guide.pdf