Email from the Sports Information Department alerts me to the year-by-year records portion of the basketball media guide where year-by-year captains are listed. My point that they made a sorta bigger deal about it stands, but, the point that I'm a huge idiot stands slightly taller.

Sippin on Purple: Always guaranteed to be right, some of the time.
Now I'll go back to not checking my email.

Weird press release yesterday, as Juice Thompson and Jeff Ryan were named Northwestern basketball's captains heading into their trip to Italy next week. I'm not saying they don't deserve it - they do. In fact, the fact that they deserve it so much is what makes this whole thing noteworthy.

Quick: who were the captains for Northwestern's football team last year? Even if you don't know, you can think about it: who went out to the coin flip every time before kickoff? There was a photo of them locking arms with Morton Schapiro on their way out to do a coin flip. If you have to look it up, it's easy: just go to the archives for last year's news and there's a prominent press release announcing who was named captain - much like the one NU released yesterday, and the ones they had released in years past for the football team.

Now think: who were Northwestern's captains on the basketball team last year? Don't know? How bout the year before? The year before that? Look it up. It should be in the archives, right?

It should be. But to the best of my knowledge - and my knowledge is a quick skimming of recent player bios, the "history" section of the media guide, and using my apple-F function to search NU basketball's press releases since 1998 - Northwestern hasn't named team captains for their basketball team. And if they have, they haven't announced it. And if they announced it, they hid it very deeply, which doesn't seem to make much sense. (Correct me if I'm wrong, seriously, tell me if NU has ever had a captain before. But, to the best of my knowledge, this is true.)

But here we are, reading a press release about how these two seniors are newly selected team captains.

What is a captain? In college football, it's the guys who do the coin tosses and decide which direction to go in and whether they want the ball. In the NBA, only the captains on a team are allowed to talk to the referee about rule clarifications during a timeout - although referees rarely if ever call technicals explicitly for violating this rule. In soccer, the captain wears an armband and also participates in a coin flip. 

In college basketball, there's no explicit mention to them as far as I can tell in the rulebook. It's just an honorary term. 

So why does Northwestern need one, let alone two?

With Kevin Coble gone, a lot of people became convinced Northwestern's basketball team was doomed for failure. They can't even keep their best player - their leader, their senior star - on the court instead of keeping him from hitting the books. 

Making a big deal out of naming a captain makes it clear that the team isn't rudderless. For no apparent reason, they've deemed two specific players - neither of them a scoring leader, one of whom only played in one game last year - leaders. Guys to look up to. Guys that are there, ready to do things despite the 6-foot-8 hole in all the team's plans that everybody loves to talk about. That's why we had this weird press release out of the blue. Congrats to Juice and Jeff - hope they realize how absurd and important them being captains is.

NU also released the dates of their four Italian games - they're against low-level competition that NU really shouldn't lose to in the second- and third-divisions of Italian basketball. Only two of the teams have Wikipedia pages, which is a pretty good indicator of how good a group of people is at basketball. 

Better question: Is he already?

For the most part, Northwestern fans have been busy lamenting and whining about how screwed we are and how nothing ever goes right for us over the past few days. It's understandable. People have emotions and stuff. And it's led to some really thought provoking posts: we've seen multiple people lamenting by listing the litany (ALLITERATION, PUNKS) of terrible things that have happened to NU basketball. We've seen multiple people say Coble leaving is indicative of a greater tradition of indifference, and that NU is a program with a losing attitude problems that extend off the court that will prevent us from ever winning anything.

I'd like to focus on basketball. 

College basketball people who know what they're talking about seem to think Northwestern - despite the crippling loss of Kevin Coble - still looks like a pretty damn good team. Click those links. All three. 

What The Only Colors focused on was the similarity between Kevin Coble and John Shurna. They're alarming. So let's look into them.

First, let me say one thing: I'm obviously not saying that because the two are such similar players, it's better for Northwestern that the two won't be on the same team. This is silly. As the cloning thread at my other favorite website, Posting and Toasting, tried to point out through science fiction, the effects of having two identical players could be very beneficial. The fact that LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are both very athletic scorers who have spent their entire careers dominating the ball does not bode poorly for the Miami Heat. (They're very different players, but, you get the point.)

Let's hit the jump:

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The photo of Kevin Coble above is the saddest photo I've ever seen. 

As I've mentioned a couple of times, I was the basketball writer for the Daily Northwestern last year. One day, after class, I headed up to practice to write a story on Drew Crawford, but Drew was still changing, so I did what I always did: popped a squat on the sidelines and watched the players warm up. 

Kevin Coble was always there. Home games, road games, practices. But this day, he decided to hang out directly in between me and the guys taking layup lines, and I couldn't get over how poignant an image it was. Here's a guy on crutches - a guy who clearly couldn't play basketball, a guy who had no reason to be at practice - just watching guys take layups, over and over again, passing errant balls back to players, and watching. (I'm sure he probably was required by coach Carmody to show up, but he could've done what injured walk-on Matt Steger did all season long and halfheartedly pretend to be working on his left.) 

So I whipped out my iPhone and took some photos, of him standing there, clearly longing to play, but standing helpless on his crutches. 

I fell in love with the photo. I asked the editor of the Daily if we could run it with a Coble feature someday - uh, no, you took that on an iPhone, we have no need for a Coble feature, and we also have actual photographers - but continued to hope someday I'd use the photo. 

Today's that day. 

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Julian Finney - Getty Images

Alex Marcotullio's sixth place finish greatly displeased Her Highness Queen Elizabeth the Second. "That shooting guard has no left," said Her Royal Majesty the Queen. "Just like Craig Moore."

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With Saturday's 103-92 loss at the hands of Israel (!), Alex Marcotullio's tour of duty on the Great Britain U-20 Basketball Team is over.  Marcotullio dropped 23, hitting 5-12 from downtown and adding five assists, but the Israeli squad, featuring Davidson's Jacob Cohen, was too much, giving the UK a sixth-place finish. For Alex Marcotullio, this means a few things: first off, he can chill out in Europe for the next month-and-a-half, until Northwestern basketball begins its Italian tour August 28th. (I, personally, would not want to pay twice for airfare to-and-fro the continent, and Austria is close enough to Italy.) Secondly, it means he'll probably never again have to listen to the British National Anthem and fight the urge to sing the lyrics to "My Country Tis of Thee".

Thirdly, it means if he's reading this, he'll have to click the jump to read the rest of my analysis.

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Ethan Miller - Getty Images

I definitely value "photo awesomeness" over "photo relevancy" from time to time.

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So we all acknowledged the awesomeness of John Shurna prepping for next year with the US Select Team, which - gasp - balled with the US National team during their mini-camp in Las Vegas. Errbody was on top of this. There was even a story on the Dagger over at Yahoo. But now that the camp - which lasted from July 20-24 - is over, I decided to search for evidence that this actually happened.

Don't get me wrong - any experience Shurna had is unbelievably awesome. But it's kinda hard to find him in camp coverage.

Now, it's no secret that the Select Team balled against the US National team in scrimmages - we have all types of reports, photos, and videos (on the USA basketball website.) But very little evidence of John Shurna. In fact, in each of those categories, we only have one tidbit.

Reports:

Lots has been made of how good Georgia's Trey Thompkins has looked, and I've seen shoutouts of players like Jacob Pullen and Dayton's Chris Wright, but, obviously, for the most part, the focus hasn't been on the select team in the scrimmages - it's been on the potential national team candidates as Coach Mike Krzyzewski looks to cut his roster down to 12. However, one site, the Hoops Report put up a post focusing on how certain players on the Select Team were looking, featuring analysis of Shurna's game:

Most of the college players appeared too slow for the NBA game, primarily Chris Singleton, John Shurna, Lavoy Allen and Jimmer Fredette. 

Moving on!

Photos

I looked through all the photos from days 2-4 - when the scrimmages occured - and out of those 60+ photos, we only have one featuring Shurna. 

I can't put the photo up here - copyright infringement, homie! - but I will describe it. If you've ever taken a basic photography class, you're familiar with the rule of thirds: that you should be able to divide a photo into three parts vertically or horizontally, because that's just how the human eye comprehends photos to be interesting. This photo does a great job of that.

Right third: Kevin Durant is awestruck by Andre Iguodala's phenomenal dunk. It looks like he's going "whoooo!"

Middle: A perfectly lit, flexing Andre Iguodala making a funny face and dunking.

Left third: John Shurna trailing, wearing a No. 80 jersey.

Not sure why Shurna is No. 80 - if you'll notice, every player, even the stars,  is wearing something above No. 40, and this has been true of USA practices for several years. You may also remember photos of Shurna wearing high numbers in last year's U-19 camp. My personal theory is that this is related to having to somehow shed individuality by avoiding players fighting for numbers, and that it's a motivational tactic making players "earn their jersey" since all international players have to wear a number between 4-15. Either that, or USA Basketball just can't afford normal numbered jerseys. 

The USA Basketball website also features an understandably segregated Select/Senior team group photo, with Shurna smiling besides Washington Wizards center JaVale McGee, if you've ever wondered what Shurna would look like besides JaVale McGee. (Answer: a lot like he does when not standing next to JaVale McGee.)

UPDATE: Reader John (no, not John Shurna) found this photo, of a very giddy Shurna looming in the background while less smiley teammates are saying hi to Gerald Wallace. More on this later.

Video

This video isn't explicitly a video of Shurna, nor is it a video of people playing basketball, nor is it possible for me to embed it on my website. It's the first one on this page, a video of the US Select Team serenading Gerald Wallace with "Happy Birthday" You see how after the song is over, all the Select Team players go over to give Wallace dap. 

(Note: in attempting to type that paragraph, I accidentally misspelled "Shurna" as "Sunra". I cannot think of two more different human beings than John Shurna and space jazz innovator Sun-Ra.)

Then, it comes Shurna's turn. What will happen? Will No. 80 and Wallace have a pre-prepared handshake? Will Wallace ignore Shurna's attempted love-showing due to a bitter feud between the two? Will Shurna work up the courage to talk to Wallace, then sheepishly succumb to his emotions and walk away with his tail between his legs?

The world will never know, because the cameraman pans away for the critical two-second interval in which the two interact. A moment, lost in time. Shurna-Wallace was a clash of two worlds, instead, we just see group stretching. 

Note that Shurna - like basically every other player - is wearing Nike Hyperfuses. (I notice these things because of a mild obsession with the kicks game.) Adidas makes ugly, uncomfortable basketball shoes, which is why I try to ignore the fact that NU players are obligated to wear Adidas all the time. 

So there you have it. That's all the evidence we have of Shurna at USA camp. This was a phenomenal opportunity for Shurna, and I'm sure he made the most of it. It's not unsurprising that somebody noted he looked a little slow - first off, the guys on the USA team make most NBA players look a step slow. Durant, Westbrook, Rondo, Gerald Wallace, Andre Iguodala - not easy stuff. Take an average defender from the Big Ten, the least springy of major conferences, used to playing zone defense, and putting him out there against the world's best seems like it could exploit his weakness in the speed department a bit. The fact that's all that there was to say about him shouldn't be worrisome, though: he's a really good player, but he's playing against the world's best, and even if there's barely any sign he was there.

Being named to the Select Team shows that someone in USA Basketball saw something that made them think that they'd be a suitable fill-in for elite competition. Although this post seemed to be joking about Shurna at times, I'm not trying to detract from his accomplishments - seriously, this was a really big thing. It's cool to see Northwestern players talked about nationally, and Shurna has gotten that accomplished.

I'm really interested to see if Shurna can build himself into a second-round NBA prospect over the next two years. Right now, his resume isn't quite where it would need to be - some tournament publicity as a junior and senior always helps. 

Via FBC, we get the news that Kyle Rowley's destination appears to be Saint Mary's College, the tiny California school that has developed into somewhat of a West Coast Conference powerhouse over the past few years with talent like Patty Mills and Omar Samhan. 

Not a bad fit for Kyle - decent program, and Kyle has never shown difficulty being able to play well against tinier opposition. The problem is, the Big Ten has a lot of not tinier opposition, and the reason Omar Samhan is a household name isn't because of his ability to dominate the WCC, but because of his ability to dominate against schools like Villanova. Rowley will immediately become the only player taller than 6-foot-9 on the Gael's roster.

And most importantly for Kyle, he'll get to sit out a year due to NCAA transfer regulations, which will give him what he needs more than anything else: time to practice and learn how to use his size in a practical way on a basketball court.

So, goodnight, sweet Kyle Rowley. Evanston's average height will be slightly shorter without you, although, we around Evanston will probably feel slightly taller without you around, because you are very tall. Best of luck with the Gaels.

(And yes, Kyle will get the "Sayin' Goodbye Like Tevin Campbell" treatment later on.

According to this article posted yesterday on ESPNChicago.com, Northwestern has gotten a commitment from David Sobolewski, a 6'1" combo guard from nearby Benet Academy who will be a senior in the fall. Sobolewski averaged 16 points per game last season while leading his team to a Class 4A super-sectional, and said that signing with the 'Cats "was a no-brainer for me when they offered." While it's nice to see a kid sign early and seem excited about the prospect of playing for Northwestern, it's easy to see why his decision was such a no-brainer, as the other schools interested in Sobolewski were Bradley, Bucknell, Harvard, Northern Iowa, Princeton and William and Mary; not exactly college basketball's elite.

Clearly Sobolewski is smart if Harvard and Princeton were interested, but it's unclear how talented he is, as it's a bit concerning that he didn't have one offer from a big-time program. In 2011, Northwestern will lose Kevin Coble and Michael Thompson and will need freshmen to step in and contribute right away, and I'm highly skeptical as to whether a guy who was only drawing mid-major interest and hasn't been dominating high school basketball can step right into the fire in the Big Ten. Of course, I provided a similar analysis back in March about Johnathon Loyd, who at the time was only getting mid-major offers but eventually drew interest from heavyweights Michigan State and Florida before signing with Oregon, so it's conceivable that Sobolewski will prove to be a diamond in the rough and end up being a Craig Moore/Jason Bohannon type player. Unfortunately, I think it's more likely that he ends up being like another smart local Polish guard; you remember, this guy.