Anyone who followed local college basketball in the late 1960s can't forget the name Justus Thigpen. Not only was the name memorable, but so was the player, who starred for Weber State under Dick Motta and Phil Johnson on a pair of NCAA tournament teams.
Now Justus Thigpen is back, making the name famous some 23 years after his father did. This Justus Thigpen is a 6-2, 195-pound guard who plays for Iowa State and leads the Cyclones with a 16.5 scoring average.Last week he was named Big Eight Player of the Week for the second time this year and also Sports Illustrated Player of the Week. When he scored 22 points in an upset win over Oklahoma State last week, Thigpen became the 16th Iowa State player to go over the 1,000-point mark in a career.
His stats are almost identical with his father's after he completed his career at Weber. Thigpen Sr. ranks 15th on the all-time Weber State scoring list with 1,005 points. But young Thigpen has one more year after this one to add to his total.TOURNEY TIME: Conference tournaments are a week later than usual this year. The Western Athletic Conference tournament is set for March 12-14 at Ft. Collins. The Big Sky will be contested the same time at the site of the regular-season winner (either Montana or Nevada), while the Big West tourney will be at Long Beach March 13-15.
The WAC race is still muddled enough that Utah and BYU could finish anywhere from first to fourth. However, if all the contenders win their remaining home games, the Utes and Cougars will go in as the top two seeds. BYU and Utah are both +3 in the road breakthroughs, UTEP is +2, while New Mexico, Hawaii and Colorado State are +1. If BYU holds on to first, it will likely meet Air Force in the opening round.
In the Big West, Utah State may be destined for its usual spot in the 4th vs. 5th game, probably against Fullerton or Fresno State. The Aggies have played in the 4th-5th game the last three years, losing every time.
Meanwhile in the Big Sky, Weber should grab the third-place spot, which would pit the Wildcats against the sixth-place team the first night. In road breakthroughs, Montana leads at +4, followed by Nevada at +3 and Weber at +2. Three teams, Idaho, Idaho State and Montana State are even and the worst of those three would meet the Wildcats in the first round. NCAA NEWS: A couple of weeks ago, the four top seeds for the NCAA tournament looked like shoo-ins. Duke appeared to have a lock on the East with Indiana in the Southeast, Oklahoma State in the Midwest and UCLA in the West.
Since then a few things have happened to shake things up a bit. Duke lost to North Carolina and lost point guard Bobby Hurley for a few weeks. Oklahoma State went in the tank dropping four games, including its last three in a row. Meanwhile Indiana lost to Minnesota, a team it defeated by 46 points just a month earlier.
Duke and UCLA may yet emerge as the top seeds in the East and West, but the other regions are up in the air. Teams such as Kansas, Arizona, Ohio State or North Carolina may grab top seedings.WORST EVER? Prairie View, the team we reported on a couple of weeks ago as having the worst record in the college basketball, is within one loss of tying the NCAA record for most losses in a season.
The Panthers from Prairie View, Texas, are 0-26 going into their final game against Texas Southern tonight. They've already broken the record for most consecutive losses in one season. A loss tonight would tie them with four other teams that have suffered 27 losses in a season, most recently by George Washington in 1989. None of those four teams have gone winless the entire season however.
Ironically, Prairie View Coach Elwood Plummer is completing his 27th year of coaching as he approaches loss No. 27.
"This has been probably the most frustrating year I've ever had out of 27 years of college coaching," said Plummer, who came back for a second term as Panther coach this year. "I've never gone through a year without a victory before. I really don't expect us to be winless."QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Florida Southern coach Gordon Gibbons, explaining what he was thinking as point guard Larry Murphy stepped to the free-throw line with 1 second left in regulation and his team trailing Rollins, 65-63: "What was I thinking? I was thinking about our little pocket schedules. See, Larry's picture is on the cover of our schedule, and you're supposed to have the picture of your best player on your schedule, right? That's how it works. So I'm thinking, since Larry's on the cover of my schedule, that means I have my best player at the line. So I should feel confident."
By the way, Murphy made both free throws, and Florida Southern won in overtime, 78-70.