Amateur Hour

I am telling you nothing new when I say that Duke's Zion Williamson has captured and controlled the headlines more than any other college basketball player in my lifetime. No one in the nation can match his combination of size and explosiveness; and his defensive versatility, his passing ability, and his overall feel for the game transform him from an athletic anomaly to the best player in the country. Zion creates enough of an advantage for Duke off of his talent alone. But there is one extra dimension to his game that could  easily be taken away with a little meticulousness and attention to detail; I'm talking, of course, about the amount of perspiration he leaves in his wake.  Three times this year, I have witnessed an opposing team slip on what I'm assuming to be a mini-pond of Zion sweat. The man is a mammoth. At 285 pounds (let's be real...Duke 100% exaggerates his weight to give him that extra mystique. He's probably closer to 260), we can reasonably esti...

This post should probably just be titled "Riley Davis' All-Conference Teams," but I wanted to make it sound like these selections came from a legit sports media collective. But it's really just me. Maybe some day.  (Some insight into my thought process: when I made these teams, I heavily factored in team success--I want to reward the good teams as much as possible and not just hand out awards to guys putting up empty stats for hopeless units. I also tried to weigh a player's defensive impact (or lack thereof). That's why you see someone like Texas Tech's Tariq Owens on the All-Big-12  Second Team , despite only averaging 8.6 points and 5.7 rebounds per game; he controls the paint for the best defense in the country. A similar principle applies to Kentucky's Ashton Hagans, who routinely locks down the opposition's best guard.) Without further ado, here are my All-ACC, SEC, Big 12, and Big Ten teams... ACC 1st: RJ Barrett - G/F, Duke...

In my eleventh grade AP Literature class, I remember learning about the importance of avoiding cliches in my writing (shoutout to Mrs. Szymborski if you're reading this). That principle proved especially helpful in college, as I chose to major in English. Yet it seems to me that a good chunk of folks in sports media would benefit from Mrs. Szymborski's lesson. With basketball coverage in particular, we're peppered with cliches like paintballs, each one imprinting itself on our brains like a paint stain. You probably don't have to think too hard to know what I'm talking about: "make some noise in the tournament," "high upside," "nonstop motor," "peaking at the right time," "live and die by the 3," "lid on the basket," "spark off the bench," and "giant killers" all come to mind.  One of the first times I heard a famous sports cliche occurred on my middle school football team. I had a ...