The ink was barely dry (well, we once wrote for the ink industry) on a recent post that took the web presence "Bleacher Report" to task for general lack of expertise and credibility related to its "Coaches of Impact" offering than the site once again confirms our thoughts about its credibility issues.
Bleacher Report, earlier this week, released its picks for the upcoming season's Player of the Year in every NCAA basketball conference. On the surface, it's a nice topic, one all of us who do preseason previews/predictions take on annually. It always causes considerable debate, and there's nothing wrong with that.
The website's choice for the MAAC's Player of the Year for the upcoming season?
It's Niagara's Juan'ya Green.
Says Bleacher Report: "As often, the MAAC is loaded with high-impact guards, from Canisius' Billy Baron to Iona's Sean Armond. The one in the best position to dominate in 2013-14, though, will be Juan'ya Green."
It would be the logical choice, except for one somewhat significant detail: Green isn't in the league any more. He left the Niagara program in late April, following former Purple Eagles' head coach Joe Mihalich to Hofstra.
That was nearly four months ago, which certainly seems long enough ago for the news to have filtered down to just about any real follower of MAAC basketball. But not, it appears, to those responsible for college basketball content at Bleacher Report.
We all make mistakes, and your Hoopscribe has made his share over the years. But, tabbing a player to be a conference's best when that specific player has been out of the conference ... gone in very public announcements by the school, by Western New York region media outlets and via college hoops message boards ... for close to four months?
Well, that's a whopper of a miscue.
It speaks to the issue of where to find your best information for your favorite basketball league. When that league is a mid-major, like the MAAC, the quality, accurate information available isn't quite as plentiful as it is for the high-major leagues.
But websites like Bleacher Report and a few others try to offer information about all of college basketball, a daunting task. Its content providers, though, rarely have any connection to the mid-major level leagues they seek to provide content about. Its writers who provide much of the material about the MAAC rarely, if ever, appear to actually attend games from the conference, let alone maintain contacts and sources within the league.
Where, then, to read about our favorite league? The newspapers, most of which provide free internet access, near each of the MAAC's member schools almost universally provide accurate, informative information. And, every member school has an active portion of its own website dedicated entirely to athletics. There are a number of other basketball-dedicated websites that do carry mostly reliable insight about our conference, although if I start listing some I'll surely miss a couple.
We hope, too, that you check in early and often to this site, which is dedicated to nothing more than providing insight, opinion, news, features, coverage and just about anything else related to MAAC men's and women's basketball.
And, there's always The Sporting News' College Basketball Preview issue that should be hitting newsstands in the very near future ... we received our "advance" copy in the mail earlier this week, a sign that nationwide release is not far away.
Your Hoopscribe, as has been the case for at least a dozen years, produced the MAAC's preview.
You can be sure I did not predict Juan'ya Green would be the upcoming season's Player of the Year.
That designation went to Billy Baron of Canisius. And, I'm 100 percent sure that he is actually still in the league.
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