BEVERLY HILLS (MI) — How do you describe what the Flyer Faithful were forced to endure in watching the Sons of Anthony Grant “perform” vs. VCU on Saturday afternoon?

Lack of preparation?

Bad coaching?

Non-existent on-the-floor leadership?

All of the above?

Richmond ain’t Philly, so we can’t blame bad cheesesteaks this time around.

Whatever it was or wasn’t, the Red and Blue army is gonna find out right quick whether the VCU debacle was merely an anomaly or the shape of things to come. SLU ain’t no joke. One can only hope that the #22 Billikens’ lack of in-conference competition thus far will play to UD’s advantage. We shall see on Tuesday.

— A telling quote from ESPN’s Paul Biancardi:

January is when you usually find out which teams have leadership in CBB. Who is the voice in practice & in the locker room? Who leads by example? Who has positive words during tough times? Do you recruit leaders? Develop leaders? Leadership is vital as teams start to separate.

— One reason I resisted the temptation to switch channels was to see the young guys play. RJ Blakney had a productive 8 minutes with 7 points, 3 rebounds, 1 block and a +5. Zimi ended up tied with Jordy for game high scoring “honors” with 10 markers. It was nice to see Luke Frazier finally get some burn.

— I’ve become the unofficial curator of the “Obi Toppin New York Knicks Game Thread” on the UD Pride MB:

https://www.udpride.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34609

After games like the VCU disaster it’s nice to have something else to fall back on, hoops-wise.

The best place I have found to follow Obi’s exploits is The Knicks Wall on Twitter. Par example:

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheKnicksWall/status/1353828584398446592

— Speaking of Obi One, here is a cool video entitled “Hometown Hero”:

https://twitter.com/concretenewyork/status/1331618118700060680

Obi is sponsoring a drive to collect money to buy 100 brand new winter coats for kids in Brooklyn. Help out if you can:

https://secure.givelively.org/donate/operation-warm-inc/join-obi-toppin-to-give-coats-to-brooklyn-kids-in-need

— More than one out of every four coaches surveyed say conference tournaments should not be held this season:

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/more-than-one-out-of-every-four-coaches-surveyed-say-conference-tournaments-should-not-be-held-this-season/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

— Found this really cool Twitter account called College Basketball Classics, featuring lots of archival pictures and videos:

https://twitter.com/ClassicsCBB

I’ll save you guys the trouble — I scrolled thru all of their postings and found not a single Flyers contest highlighted. The fact that most of the games are from the 1990s might have something to do with that.

— How Stephen Curry’s ‘organized chaos’ fuels his record-breaking career — and the Golden State Warriors’ rebuild:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30742095/how-stephen-curry-organized-chaos-fuels-record-breaking-career-golden-state-warriors-rebuild

— One piece of good news to emerge from Flyerland in the last week was former Dayton QB Brandon Staley being named the new Head Coach of the LA Chargers. As usual, Arch has a great profile:

https://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/archdeacon-moms-influence-inspires-ex-flyers-meteoric-rise-to-nfl-head-coach/7A6U67YCGZHJTN45A57FQNCORM/

That’s it “From the Swamp”
You can email me at: [email protected]