If you are a regular reader at Mixed Multitudes, you will know that I enjoy writing about Jews and basketball. Maybe its the fact that I still want to be a professional basketball player (I’m just working on my left right now and I’ll be set), but I just like hearing about Jewish players.
So with the NCAA College Basketball Tournament coming up this Thursday, I was hoping to compile a list of the Jewish players in the tournament.
Easier said than done.
Going through the rosters of the teams, I realized that most of this would be guess work. And that isn’t fair. I shouldn’t be assuming that just because someone has a Jewish sounding name, that they automatically Jewish. And if someone has a generic sounding name, they automatically aren’t Jewish.
With this in mind, and me realizing that looking through the rosters of 65 teams takes longer than I thought, I have a list of two people I KNOW are Jewish and a list of 4 people who MIGHT be Jewish.
First, the people who might. Once again, this is on name only: Alex Jacobson (Arizona), Tom Herzog (Michigan State), David Fine (Binghamton), David Liss (California).
Now for the confirmed: Not only is Jon Scheyer Jewish, but he is also one of the top players, and the best pure shooter on the Duke Basketball team. I don’t really have anything against Duke (people tell me they are like the Yankees of College Basketball. I don’t root for anyone in College Basketball, so I don’t really care) so I’m rooting for Jon to have some strong games in the tournament.
The other confirmed player is Derek Glasser of Arizona St. While not the best player in the country, Glasser averaged a respectable 8.5 points per game this season.
It should be noted that both Scheyer and Glasser are going to be playing for Team USA at this summer Maccabi Games in Israel.
If you want to root for schools that have high Jewish populations, your best bets are Maryland, Binghamton, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan…the list goes on.
