Quick July Flame links

Since the Women's World Cup game on Sunday is the big to-do, if you want to listen to a couple of analysts with some humorous insights about the semi-final games, here's ESPN's Off the Ball podcast

Drew Cannon over at Basketball Prospectus talks about predicting freshmen performance. There's nothing shocking here, but it's a nice review to back up the truisms like "bigs develop more slowly" or "too much is expected of incoming freshmen."

In Big Ten basketball news, promising incoming Junior College player and interesting storyline Anthony Hubbard has left Iowa due to "homesickness." Iowa still has four starters coming back as well as incoming frosh Josh Oglesby & Gabe Olaseni who should contribute off the bench, and Aaron White might be a sleeper, but now the Hawkeyes are really going to need improvement out of Devyn Marble if they hope to get to the postseason. And uh, also some combination of Archie and Brommer to hold down the center-spot, which may be a much taller order.