Scoop Moves On To The Finals Of Coolest Name Tournament

Scoop barely, and I mean barely, edged out Fab Melo in the Coolest Name in the 2011 NCAA Tournament bracket to move on to the Finals. Meanwhile Bubba Day beat Shabazz Napier (easily) to advance as well.

Who's voting in these things? Grandmothers? Fab and Shabazz are clearly better names. The consolation game is going to be the true championship, IMO.  Anyway you can vote for Scoop to win the title through Monday. Better go do that.

Speaking of Fab, The Juice decided to do a little detective work and found out, if you remove all of the hype and expectations, Fab Melo actually had an above average freshman campaign.

What you can see is that Melo did slightly better than average, but he didn’t do that much worse than Syracuse’s best freshman center in 15 years. Was it disappointing that he didn’t live up to the hype? Yes. But is it surprising? Looking at the production of other freshman centers, I don’t think so. More importantly, is it Melo’s fault that he was given unrealistic expectations by the media? Absolutely not.

Given that Melo performed slightly better than average, I’m inclined to give him a C+. But I think he might even deserve a B-...

Compared to all of SU's notable (and un-notable) freshmen centers, it's true. It is weird to see Craig Forth top a list all about SU centers, but that tells you what you need to know about freshmen.