Sunday, January 16, 2005
Bank On It
For academic reasons, Sean Banks will be ineligible for the rest of the season. Several of his Memphis teammates have known as much for days."This is where he'll find out how big of a man he is," Memphis senior forward Arthur Barclay said. "I just hope he'll be all right."
This, I believe, is where we'll find out how long Banks waits before declaring for the NBA Draft. I just hope he gets selected.
Hard to imagine that Memphis will be better without a preseason Naismith Award candidate. But at 9-8 after being picked 24th to start the year, it is also hard to imagine the Tigers playing any worse.
His departure might, on the contrary, be a case of addition by subtraction. Perhaps without Sean and Jeremy Hunt, arrested this past week for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Memphis can focus not on players' poor behavior but on winning basketball games. And John Calipari, a coach who needed little talent to win at Massachusetts, might finally lead the depth-less Tigers to over-performance rather than underachievement.
