Soft Pretzel Logic

Not that I expect to be frequently quoting 18th-century philosophers, but I still remember quite well reading John Locke's famous treatise for which this post is named in a political science class. And there are plenty of stranger cultural references out there on blogs within walking distance of Philly.com's offices.

Tomorrow, I will roll out the first full-featured Crunchy Numbers post. It will include the Pomeroy, Sagarin and RPI ratings for each of the City Six, and any other stats about the teams I find interesting.

Now, I have a lot of friends around college basketball who make a huge deal out of stats and drawing conclusions from them. I agree that some of them are very good things to know. Offensive and defensive efficiency, tempo and ratio of three-pointers to field goals come to mind right away.

But stats aren't everything to me. I still think there's such a thing as clutch, and that a small, cramped gym with raucous students can get in a player's head and make him miss a shot he'd make in a 20,000-seat arena with skyboxes and a few jumbotrons.

I believe that a great player will step up when his team is faltering late on the road and hit a big shot to silence the home crowd, no matter what his usual offensive efficiency is. Randy Foye did it against Penn last season after the Quakers mounted a huge second-half run to cut 'Nova's lead from 21 points to four. With just over a minute to play, Foye pulled a crossover dribble and nailed a 13-foot jumper without flinching in the least. That's something that I don't think a page of stats can accurately represent.

Here's another example. La Salle's best RPI win this season is against No. 234 Texas Pan-American. But I'm impressed that the Explorers' last five losses have been by two, six, three, eight and two points. So while Penn should rightly be favored to beat the Explorers tomorrow night, I wouldn't go assuming that it will be all that easy.

I'm sure everyone I know west of the Schuylkill will call me an idiot for saying that, but it took a while for the Quakers to get going Friday night against a Cornell team only four spots higher in the Pomeroy rankings than La Salle.

At least college basketball hasn't yet become like baseball, where entire franchise organizations run themselves off numbers instead of what you see with your own eyes. I mean, I appreciate a guy with a high OPS as much as anyone, but I love the fact that Phillies GM Pat Gillick flies all over the place to see players the team is scouting in person. Buster Olney wrote a great piece on his ESPN.com blog about Gillick today, and how he's creating a lineup of "players who score high in intangibles among scouts."

I think you can see how that translates to college basketball. Though it will feed the hype machine even more, Kevin Durant is a great example. He got tons of praise from the ESPN2 crew last night not just for his 37 points, but for how and when they came. Fighting in traffic for a putback layup. Moving across the court off the ball to fire a jumper straight in off an inbounds pass. A three to tie the game at 91 with 1:01 to go in the second overtime, and a layup-and-one to give Texas the lead with 12 seconds to play in the third OT.

That's the stuff that defines a great college player to me.

Photo of Randy Foye driving against BC's Sean Marshall in the 2006 NCAA Tournament taken by Yong Kim of the Daily News.