Midnight Madness is fast approaching which means media outlets are officially into their NCAA basketball preview schedules. SI has put together a rundown of the Top 16 College Backcourts and ranked St. Mary's #15 in all the land. Although much of SB Nation Bay Area's college coverage covers Cal and Stanford, the St. Mary's Gaels, based across the Oakland Hills in Moraga have been one of the more successful basketball programs of late, and thus we will certainly shower them with coverage.
↵The Gaels backcourt consists primarily of MIckey McConnell and Matthew Dellavedova. The two of them combined on 25.9 points per game, 9.6 assists per game and 2.6 steals per game.
↵↵↵Most of attention -- for good reason -- was on center Omar Samhan during the Gaels' trip to the Sweet 16. But St. Mary's has a pair of ultra-efficient, workhorse guards in Dellavedova (right, who averaged 36.4 minutes with a 117.5 Offensive Rating) and McConnell (left, 36.1 minutes, 126.2 OR). McConnell actually shot a higher percentage on threes (an absurd 51.0) than he did on twos (50.6), making him one of the nation's accurate long-rage gunners.
↵