It’s time once again for the 2nd annual “From the Swamp” tour of college basketball yearbooks to see what they have to say about this year’s edition of the Flyers and the A-10. My thanks go out to the local Borders for allowing me to lounge in one of their leather chairs and take notes. Uncle Swampy is here to give you all the details and thanks to the folks at Borders, it won’t cost you a thing!

Let’s do this in reverse order, moving from (the absolute) worst to best:

Jim Feist’s College Basketball Preview ($6.99)

Anybody know who the hell Jim Feist is? I don’t either, but he’s got his own magazine! Judging from the black suit, purple shirt, loud tie and mullet, I’m guessing he’s either a pimp or a bookie. Open the inside cover and there’s your answer — a full-page ad for JimFeist.com — the “World Champion Handicapper.” Call me naïve, but I didn’t know there was a ‘World Championship’ for bookies. Do they take bets on who will win it? It turns out that all of the ads in this rag are for betting services — no cars or beer or those magic shoes that supposedly increase your vertical leap by 3 feet. Best of all, if you’re a bookie and you buy a full-page ad, you get to write your own column! Now there’s some editorial integrity for you!

The Feisty one predicts that SJU will be #20. No ranking for UD, but they do have a nice picture of Sean Finn dunking in the A-10 section, which is crammed onto only 2 pages. That’s right, 2 whole pages for 12 teams! Fact is, they devote much more space to the all-important “5 years vs. the spread” statistics — there are 2 teams per page in that section. Where else could you find out that the 2002-2003 UD Flyer hoops team was:

17-11-1 vs. the spread
11-6 at home
6-4-1 on the road
13-10 as a favorite
3-0 as a dog

Bottom-line: Do not, I repeat, do not, under any circumstances, buy this magazine! Anyone who posts on the UDPride.com Message Board could have written a better, more in-depth preview on the Flyers — even SMELL THE GLOVE. They should be paying you $6.99 to read it, not the other way around.

Street & Smith’s ($6.99)

Hey, Swamp — if you’re ranking worst-to-best, what is S&S doing right after that sleaze-ball Jim Feist? Aren’t you the guy who has an S&S collection dating back to 1973 in his basement? Yeah, I do…I’ll get to why they suck this year in a minute.

S&S picks UC #16 and SJU #19. Their all A-10 team consists of: Nelson, Sato, Delonte West, Marques Green and Brian Woodward of URI. UD ranks 8/12 in recruits — Monty Scott gets a mention as a top newcomer. S&S notes that X dominated the regular season, but UD won the tournament, which averaged 11,131 and returns to UD Arena again this year…are you listening, Linda Bruno? There aren’t any pictures of Flyer players, but there is one of a UD cheerleader, although I don’t think it was Knee Brace Girl.

Out of 5 stars, UD gets the following ratings:

Starters 4
Bench 2
Coach 3
Recruits 3

The Class of 2008 recruits get some props: Brian Roberts, Trent Meacham and Jimmie Binnie are all Honorable Mention.

Here’s where S&S totally drops the freakin’ ball: they pick UD to finish 3rd in the A-10 West, behind X and Richmond! The Spiders were 16-13 last year while UD was 24-6; UD beat UR statistically in every single category that S&S had listed, the Flyers have 4 returning starters and yet they pick Richmond to finish ahead of UD…I don’t get it, how can that be possible?

Bottom-line: Shame on you Street & Smith!

Athlon ($5.99)

These guys are always the first to hit the newsstand, a harbinger that college hoops heaven can’t be too far off. Unlike the other mags that list conferences alphabetically, Athlon does it on purported conference strength and wouldn’t you know it, the conference right before the A-10 (C-USA) is the cut-off point for teams getting a full-page each. Athlon’s post-season predictions have UD, X and SJU dancing, with the Flyers “one and done”, X “two and out” and St. Joe’s making the Sweet 16. They talk about BG’s hiring and how OP left the shelves stocked, but they believe that there are question marks after the 4 returning starters.

Brian Roberts and Trent Meacham are listed in the “Next 200 Seniors” after the HS All-Americans. Future Flyer opponent IUPUI receives major coverage in a behind-the-scenes look at what it is like to be a #16 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Bottom-line: Nothing special.

Basketball News ($5.99)

Several cool features separate BN from the 3 previous losers. They have a Top 64 that lists SJU at #17, UC at #20, X at #26, UD at #43, URI at #48 (?) and Miami of Ohio at #54. Another unique segment: “Double Vision” highlighting great tandems that play together — KW and Ramod get an Honorable Mention. In their outlook, BN provides this nugget: “The Flyers are one of 8 teams that finished the season ranked and return 4 starters”. Tell that to Street & Smith’s!

BN sees the A-10 West this way: X, UD and Richmond. Their A-10 1st Team is: Green, Nelson, Delonte West, Sato and (drum roll, please) kW! Ramod garners 2nd Team honors. Of RM they say he is “as versatile as they come” along with Jameer and Romain. On the A-10, BN makes this keen observation: “It’s not a stepping stone for the top young coaches in the country. It’s a place to set up shop and create a tradition.” Gee, I wonder who they are talking about?

Bottom-line: They did their homework.

The Sporting News College Basketball Preview ($6.99)

The Michigan edition had OSU, ND and Dayton — “Taking off into a new era” — in the headlines on the cover, along with pictures of players from IU, U of M and MSU. They pick UC to be #13 and SJU #16 in their top 25. A pleasant surprise for the conference is that they predict that 4 A-10 teams — X, SJU, UD and Temple — will be in the Field of 65. Ramod is ranked as the #18 PG, the only Flyer to be so chosen. The A-10 is rated the #8 conference and they have a nice picture of 2nd team All A-10 selection kW shooting a jumper in the preview. UD “has a new coach and 4 returning starters and is pretty used to winning 20 games or so a year.” That we are.

In a bit of a shocker, TSN says that it’ll be X, UD, LaSalle (!), Richmond (!!), GW and Duquesne in the A-10 West. I like the way these guys think a lot better than the crew at S&S, that’s for sure. I’m not sure that Jerry Wainwright and the Spiders will be too thrilled to read this prognostication, however.

The 3 “Players on the Rise” in the A-10 are Steve Smith of LaSalle, Dedrick Finn of X and the Flyers own Ramod Marshall. They describe RM as “a strong complementary player the past 2 years, Marshall must be the Flyers primary perimeter weapon every night in the season. He can do it.”

In rating the recruiting classes UD is #8, but TSN gets points taken off because they only mention Chris Spears and James Cripe and not Monty Scott, the guy who will almost assuredly have the most impact.

Under their “Best Bets” TSN says that “Time will prove that Fordham’s Derrick Whittenburg, UD’s Brian Gregory and SBU’s Anthony Solomon are good coaching hires, though only Gregory will see much success quickly.”

As for Dayton’s “X-Factor” TSN once again cites Ramod and the fact that while he shot 37.9% on 3 pointers he only hit 65.8% of his FTs.

Bottom-line: Good, solid stuff.

Lindy’s ($6.99)

I used to make fun of Lindy’s in the past, but not any more. These guys really did some digging — hell, it appears they actually talked to BG or at least took the time to read the press guide!

Lindy’s devotes several paragraphs to the story of now BG sat down with Tom Izzo and came up with 5 separate criteria to use in determining what head coaching position he would pursue. Those 5 characteristics were:

–High character players
–Great tradition
–Strong recruiting base
–Passionate support by the University and the community
–Leadership at the University with a clear vision

UD scored at the highest levels in all 5.

Lindy’s has the A-10 as the #8 ranked conference and they pick SJU at #18, X at #34 and UD at #40. Consequently, we get our own full-page spread! “Three A-10 teams in the tourney seems probable again” they state…I can’t argue with that logic. kW is 2nd team and RM is 3rd team All A-10. Did you know Ramod was the #3 assist guy in the league last year, behind Marques Green and TJ Thompson of GW (and ahead of Jameer Nelson)?

Lindy’s also created a chart with 4 year conference standings. UD is #4 behind X, Temple and SJU. Over the last 4 campaigns, the Flyers are 88-39 or .639 and 44-20 in conference.

One misguided prediction: they think Boubacar Coly of X will be the leading rebounder in the A-10 — the guy hasn’t even suited up yet! Lindy’s conveniently ignores the fact that kW is the conference’s leading returning rebounder.

Lindy’s says to keep an eye on Sean Finn, who averaged 13.7 PPG, 8.3 RPG and shot .773 in the A-10 tourney.

BG on kW: ” He needs to practice as hard as he plays and take 300, 400 or 500 jumpers a day.”

BG on MJ: “He is the most consistent worker and had the best spring of anybody.”

“The Great Unknowns”: the 6 freshmen and sophomores.

Bottom-line: If you have to buy one magazine, this is the one.

Last year, profiles from the crème de la crème of college basketball yearbooks — otherwise known as Blue Ribbon — were available online from CNNSI.com or Sportsillustrated.cnn.com or whatever the hell they are calling themselves these days. Bad news, kiddies — my alma mater has replaced the in-depth Blue Ribbon analyses with the rather average stuff from Athlon Hey, it coulda been much worse — they might have signed Jim Feist!

Altho’ not a college basketball yearbook, new this year from TSN is High School Hoops. Don’t buy this mag if you want to read anything in-depth about Messrs. Plummer, Meacham, Binnie, Roberts and Alvarez — they barely get mentioned. Binnie is rated the #2 player in the state of Iowa and Alvarez #9 in NJ. Norm Plummer fails to make the top 10 in VA, although 3 of his Hargrave Military School teammates — Lorenzo Wade, Isaiah Swann and Emanuel Willis — were listed. Norm should have stayed at Brewster Academy in NH — he surely would have cracked the top 10 there! I don’t know about you, but I’m already sick of reading about O.J. Mayo of Cincy being “the next Lebron”…and the kid is only a freshman! One other underclassman of note: the #9 rated soph in the entire US of A is Dayton Dunbar’s 6’4” Daquan Cook who HSH says is already drawing interest from UNC, Duke and OSU…and, I think we can safely assume, BG and crew at your favorite local U.

Well kids, that’s it from the old mag rack. For those of you keeping track at home, that comes to a grand total of $39.94 that you just saved, since I did all of the reading for you.

You can thank me later.