AP Photo/Ed Reinke

UAB's Robert Vaden leads the Blazers' guard-dominated lineup this season.

Can UAB create guard-centric "havoc"?

By Jeff Shelman
Special to ESPN.com

Mike Davis has been looking back in time, trying to learn from the past.

After an offseason filled with big man after big man leaving UAB for other locales, the Blazers coach began a marathon film session.

Davis' goal was simple: Figure out how to win with a roster of very good perimeter players, but almost no inside players. That's what has to happen when four big men -- Walter Sharpe, Reggie Huffman, Zisis Sarikopoulos and Jeremy Mayfield -- leave the program before their eligibility expired.

"If I knew, I would have recruited a little differently," Davis said.

That's much of the reason why Davis is spending his summer back in 2006. More specifically, he's been spending a lot of time watching an undersized Villanova team come within a game of the Final Four. Under coach Jay Wright, that Wildcats team -- one that featured guards Randy Foye, Kyle Lowry, Allan Ray and Mike Nardi -- started four guys between 6-foot-1 and 6-4 and was a very difficult matchup for opponents.

"I've watched a lot of Villanova," Davis said. "I've watched Duke, I talked to [Michigan State coach Tom] Izzo, who went small when he went to the Final Four [in 2005]."

While UAB might not have quite the same amount of perimeter talent -- Foye and Lowry are in the NBA and Ray spent some time there -- the Blazers are well-equipped to go small, especially since Robert Vaden pulled his name out of the NBA draft.

Vaden, who followed Davis to UAB from Indiana, is a tremendous outside shooter. He averaged 21.1 points per game last season while shooting 40 percent from behind the 3-point line.

Paul Delaney III returns for a fifth season after blowing out his knee early last season. Delaney's desire and ability to get to the basket is a tremendous complement to Vaden's outside stroke. As a junior in 2006-07, Delaney averaged 15.5 points per game.

Throw in highly touted wing Terrence Roderick and water-bug point guard Aaron Johnson, and the Blazers certainly have a decent perimeter quartet. Whether that be enough to make UAB a true contender in Conference USA and an NCAA tournament team remains to be seen.

That conversation, however, wouldn't even be happening if Vaden had stayed in the draft or Delaney's knee wasn't getting better.

Davis wasn't sure if Vaden would return to school until very close to the NBA draft deadline to withdraw in mid-June.

"It's a big-time plus for us," Davis said. "It was a great experience for him. I thought he played well in Orlando. He showed he can do more than shoot the basketball."

Delaney said he and Vaden sent text messages on a near daily basis. When he heard Vaden was going to come back to school, he knew what it would do both for the Blazers and for his own game.

"It makes our team a lot better," Delaney said. "It's going to make it harder for teams to guard us both. They have to pick their poison because we both do some things well."

But there is that lingering question of just how the Blazers are going to rebound the basketball. Lawrence Kinnard, who averaged 11.1 points and 6.8 rebounds per game last season, will be UAB's primary big man. Howard Crawford, who played about 10 minutes per game last season, is the only other player on the roster taller than 6-7.

While Davis hasn't completely decided how the Blazers will play defensively -- he says they have to full-court press at least some of the time -- he knows that playing passive isn't going to get things done.

"The one thing that has stood out with the teams I've watched is their toughness," Davis said. "You can't have guys out there waiting for the rebound to come to them. I thought Jay Wright did a heck of a job getting his guys to really compete. They did a lot of good things. They all played bigger than they were, they pressed a little, they changed up defenses.

"We have to come up with something for our personnel that can cause havoc for other teams."

Five things to watch in '08-09

By Jeff Shelman
Special to ESPN.com

• Will Memphis continue to dominate?
When Conference USA went from being the league that featured Louisville, Marquette, Cincinnati and Memphis to being what it is today, C-USA has been the Tigers and everybody else. In the three seasons since the change, Memphis has gone 45-1 in league play and has won 33 consecutive regular-season C-USA games. Add in the C-USA tournament and Memphis has gone 54-1 against the rest of the league and its winning streak is at 42. The last time John Calipari's team lost to a C-USA opponent was March 2, 2006 at UAB. Will it continue? With Derrick Rose, Chris Douglas-Roberts and Joey Dorsey all gone, the Tigers aren't going to be quite as dominant as they were last season. Does that mean that UAB, Tulsa, Southern Miss, UTEP, Houston and the rest of the conference has a chance? The Tigers still have the most talent in the conference, but the gap isn't what it once was.

• A multibid league?
In three years of the current conference alignment, Conference USA has earned exactly four NCAA tournament berths. Other than UAB's at-large berth in 2006, C-USA has been limited to only Memphis' three automatic berths. Last season, only four teams ended the regular season in the top 100 in the RPI. East Carolina, SMU and Rice all had sub-250 RPIs. Last season, only Memphis had a victory over a top 50 RPI team and the other 11 were a combined 0-18 vs. the RPI top 50 and a combined 7-32 against the top 100. If Conference USA is going to be more than simply the Tigers and everybody else, the other 11 schools are going to have to win some games of note. Tulsa, for example, has games this season against Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and possibly Illinois. UTEP could potentially play two teams from the top six conferences at the Anaheim Classic. If C-USA teams can beat some quality opponents that will help the league's chances come March.

• Can Tulsa build on the CBI?
There was some scoffing in the college basketball world when the College Basketball Invitational was announced. After all, if the NCAA tournament has the best 65 teams in the country and the NIT grabs the next 32, did there really need to be a tournament to determine just who was No. 98? Well, the CBI turned out to be a good thing for Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane won the best-of-three final against Bradley. Combine the CBI with a surprise run to the championship game of the C- USA tournament and a strong finish to the regular season, and Doug Wojcik's team went 15-4 after Feb. 6. How that will impact the 2008-09 season is unclear, but the Golden Hurricane players certainly learned more about what it takes to win.

• A continuing trend
Coincidence or not, Conference USA seems to be a place where coaches get another chance. There's former Texas coach Tom Penders at Houston, former Iowa State coach Larry Eustachy at Southern Miss., former North Carolina coach Matt Doherty at SMU and former Indiana coach Mike Davis at UAB. Now there's one more coach to add to that list. Less than two weeks after being fired at California, Ben Braun was hired at Rice. Braun, who previously led Cal and Eastern Michigan to the NCAA tournament, is one of only 17 active coaches with more than 500 victories. The Golden Bears were only 6-12 in Pac-10 play each of the past two seasons.

• Thirty for the record
Entering their senior seasons, the Memphis duo of Robert Dozier and Antonio Anderson has known little other than winning. In three seasons, the Tigers have won 104 games. If Memphis can win another 30 games this season -- certainly a good possibility -- the Tigers will have won more games in a four-year span than any team in NCAA history. Duke currently holds the record with 133 victories from 1998-2001. Memphis' 104 victories put the Tigers in a tie with Kentucky (1996-98) for the most wins in a three-year period. If Memphis is going to be a contender again for a deep tournament run, Dozier and Anderson are going to have to assert themselves offensively. Both have shown signs of being scorers and both were key parts in last season's success, but neither player averaged double figures in scoring.

If I were Conference USA commish …

By Andy Katz
ESPN.com

Conference USA needs to make some more changes. It can't dump teams (even though it would help), but it really makes sense to get current Mountain West member TCU in the fold. Having TCU in for football and marrying TCU with SMU would certainly help create legitimate rivalries in Texas.

Temple is flirting with the MAC. The Owls currently play football in the MAC, but they would be a great fit for hoops in Conference USA if C-USA were to expand. Temple has basketball tradition and is a better fit with C-USA than the MAC. Having Temple in with Memphis, UAB, Houston and UTEP would be decent theater.

Also, C-USA had only one NCAA tournament team last season. This league needs to work on its identity beyond Memphis.