Basketball On The Internet.

BOB'S CORNER: Our man on the spot in the US, Seattle-based former Canberra import BOB CRAVEN, has taken a good hard look at the man threatening to revolutionise the NBA's San Antonio Spurs, 224cm Victor Wembanyama, who lately is putting up Kareem Abdul-Jabbar numbers.

VICTOR Wembanyama, the 224cm rookie wunderkind of the NBA, has had a pretty sensational rookie season so far. 

A couple of his latest achievements recently include his second-triple double of the season, but it was an unusual and historic one:  it didn’t include assists, as most do. 

He had 27 points, 14 rebounds and 10 blocks. He also added five assists.

The 10 blocks are a new career high.  He is just the fourth rookie to record a triple-double that included blocks.  The other three were Mark Eaton and Ralph Sampson (once each) in 1983, and The Admiral, David Robinson, who did it three times in 1990. 

Wemby is also the youngest to do it by far.  He’s only just turned 20.  Eaton and Sampson played four years in college, and Robinson spent two years in the Navy after graduating from the Naval Academy.

Triple-doubles aside, only five rookies have ever had 10 blocks in a game:  Josh Smith, Dikembe Mutombo, Harvey Catchings and Mark Eaton (once each), and Manute Bol (five times). 

Only three other players have ever recorded an overall stat line of at least 27 points, 14 rebounds, 10 blocks and five assists — Hakeem Olajuwon, Ralph Sampson, and Kareem.

Just a few days after posting this triple-double, he had 27 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists, five steals and five blocks in only 31 minutes. 

This made him just the 15th player to post a ‘5x5’ stat line, i.e., record at least five points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals in the same game — and he, again, is the youngest to do that.

He fell one assist shy of doing the same thing in the game before this one.  The Spurs still lost the game.

THE recent NBA All-Star game was a terrible thing to watch — I’m getting old-fashioned, I guess, but I can’t watch this stuff anymore, and given the comments by some of the retired stars in attendance, I’m not alone in that view. 

Defence was optional, sometimes even accidental.  Hall of Famer Rick Barry used to call it “the matador defence”.  It was really just shooting practice. Tyrese Halliburton of the hometown Pacers made five three-pointers in a span of 1:32 in the first quarter, and Karl-Anthony Towns of the Timberwolves scored 50 points in 28 minutes, 31 of them in the fourth quarter. 

The East won it by scoring 211 points, the last three of which came on a three-pointer by game MVP Matthew Lillard from 13 ½ metres out.

A variety of b-ball news nuggets:

Hall of Fame college coach Lefty Driesell passed away recently at 92.  Most known for coaching Maryland into the big time, he also had successful runs at Davidson, James Madison and Georgia State. 

He was the first coach to win more than 100 games at four different D-I schools.  His 17-year tenure at Maryland ended with the cocaine-fueled death of All-American Len Bias, just days before he would have been drafted No. 1 by the Celtics.

Driesell also launched the tradition of Midnight Madness in 1971—holding practices and scrimmage games at midnight of the first day official practices were allowed (back then, it was October 15). 

Almost all colleges now do this.  He also helped knock down racial barriers in the college game.  He made George Raveling the first Black coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference when he hired him as an assistant coach in 1969. 

His efforts to recruit future NBA all-star Charlie Scott to Davidson helped Scott become the first Black scholarship athlete at North Carolina for HOFer Dean Smith.

SOUTH Carolina continues to run away from the rest of the D-I women’s teams as the undefeated and unanimous No. 1 in the country.  And despite having lost two of their last four games, Iowa is still in the top 5 in the rankings. 

One of those two losses was to Nebraska, which was led by Aussie Jaz Shelley, a graduate transfer from Oregon. She led the Cornhuskers in scoring and hit the go ahead three-point dagger with 30 seconds left.

More importantly for Iowa, superstar sharpshooter Caitlin Clark in now the all-time leading scorer in women’s D-I history.  She is now only 50 points behind Pistol Pete Maravich’s all-time D-I men’s record.

NCAA D-I men’s teams have had a different type of season than teams on the women’s side, where South Carolina is the undefeated cream of the crop. 

Just in the past 10 days, three different men’s teams have occupied the top spot in the polls, and all three almost immediately lost their next games.  Purdue, UConn and Ohio State (and others) will be battling it out down the stretch for ranking into the post-season Big Dance.

UCONN women’s coach Geno Auriemma has now passed retired Duke men’s coach Mike Krzyzewski as the second-winningest coach in college basketball history, six wins behind Stanford women’s coach Tara VanDerveer.