moiso most overrated?

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SoCalHoops College News

Moiso "Most Overrated Player?"
Just Ask Mike DeCourcy--(Oct. 22, 1999)

This morning we received our daily dose of The Sporting News' columnists by e-mail (a wonderful thing, kind of like getting your own personal copy of the magazine, but you don't have to leave your home or wade through stuff like hockey, baseball or other sports), and we were intrigued by the topic of DeCourcy's column, which was an examination of the various pre-season basketball publications. Even though he doesn't mention them by name, he's referring to magazines such as Dick Vitale's, Lindy's, Athlon, and yes, even The Sporting News' preseason picks. If you want to read the entire article, you can find it here. DeCourcy analyzed such things as "Most Hackneyed Theme" (Duke's fall from innocence with guys leaving early for the pros, something he contends is neither accurate nor deserved), "Everybody's All-American" (Maryland's Terrence Morris), "Team to Fear" (Temple, which should make Dinos Trigonis exceedingly happy), "Most Consistently Overrated Team" (Georgia Tech--does anyone really care?), "Most Consistently Underrated Team" (Kentucky), "Most Consistently Underrated Player" (Hanno Motolo), and the one category that really piqued our interest, "Most Overrated Player". Here's DeCourcy's take on the latter category:

MOST CONSISTENTLY OVERRATED PLAYER

Jerome Moiso, power forward, UCLA. Yes, this is a player with splendid talents and outrageous potential. And yes, he was only a freshman last season who was new to the game as it was played in the United States. Any more excuses?

Common sense has to count for something.

Certainly, Moiso played enough basketball last season at UCLA that he shouldn't have been taking silly, team-killing perimeter jumpers he had very little chance to make at the close of UCLA's 23rd and 32nd games. He'd played enough by then to know better. Moiso needs to be tougher (only 26 blocks) and more productive (10.8 ppg, 5.8 rpg) to justify the enthusiasm.

Runners-up: Dan Gadzuric, center, UCLA; Kenny Gregory, shooting guard, Kansas; Bobby Simmons, forward, DePaul

We won't comment on this except to present it for what it is, one man's opinion. However we will be interested in seeing what Jim Downs and Tracy Pierson have to say about it. . . .