Notes: Dominicans move closer to qualifying, Wall’s 21st birthday, SI ranks point guards

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Notes from around the UK basketball world on Tuesday:

• John Calipari and the Dominican Republic national team won its second game in the second group round, improving to an overall 5-1 record. The team still has two games left to complete group play, but today’s 84-76 win over Uruguay clinched a spot in the semifinals on Saturday, according to Calipari’s website. A win on that day would send the Dominican team to the championship game and, win or lose in that, advance the team to the Olympics. Regardless of what happens, the team will finish fourth at worst, which would still be the highest the team has ever finished. (And, a fourth-place finish will still enable the Dominicans to play in the last-chance Olympics qualifier in summer of 2012).
• Yahoo! Sports has a profile on John Wall and him wanting to showcase the dominant form he displayed at UK in his second NBA season. Wall said he didn’t begrudge Blake Griffin, a second-season rookie, winning the Rookie of the Year Award. Wall also said he was torched by Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook last season and wants to prove he’s back to his usual self against those guys. “I don’t think anybody respected it,” Wall said of his rookie season in the article. “I don’t want to blame my injuries – things happen in this world – but I think I would have had a better rookie season. You see how I played when I started the season healthy. When I injured myself, I lost confidence. When I injured myself, I didn’t have the energy.”
• Speaking of Wall, the Washington Post deducts from his Twitter account that he spent his 21st birthday with Ludacris at a strip club. My 21st birthday was two weeks ago. I listened to a Ludacris song at some point, which was good enough for a non-NBA star like me to enjoy.
• Luke Winn of Sports Illustrated examined some statistics from point guards in terms of how much value they added over a typical major-college replacement player. None of the Calipari/UK point guards made the cut, but he did still list their values relative to other one-and-dones. Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo finished at the top of the rankings, but the other four occupied the 3-4-5-7 spots (in order, Rose-Wall-Knight-Evans). For comparison, the values of Wall/Knight were lower than 8 of the 10 point guards from the previous 10 national championship teams and their values were about half that of the top overall point guards from 2002-11 (a list that included Ty Lawson, Kemba Walker and Jon Scheyer). The formula heavily weights efficiency, minutes played and possessions used. A full account (the one-and-done section is at the bottom) can be seen here.

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