2009-2010 College Basketball Season...

[Headache in a Suitcase]

the coaching moves continue... one very surprsing one as well.

steve donahue will be moving on from cornell to BC... not really that surprising that he got a big job after cornell's run.

what is surprising, however, is that danny hurley is taking the job at Wagner, and bringing along bobby to boot. considering his father has always turned down college jobs to stay in the high school ranks, i always figured danny would do the same.

the other mid-majors in the new york area should be frightened by these turn of events. heck, even st. john's should be worried.

 

[PhilsFan]

Why I don't root for Duke: Coach K's need to get every call. It's the little things: overreactions to contact, all five guys jumping up and pointing their direction when a ball goes out of bounds, that image of Coach K in the ref's ear every single time a player of his picks up a foul ...

This coming from someone who has every reason to root for Duke.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

the thing i really don't get about the duke hatred is the idea that they get every call and complain about not getting calls, as if every single coach in the history of basketball isn't also always in the ref's ear.

basketball coach's complain to the refs... it's a large part of what they do, largely due to the fact that every referee in basketball history sucks.


i really think if they had a different uniform on people wouldn't pick up on these things as much as they do... much like they don't pick up on sissy mary pocketbook slappers in baseball as much as they do when they play for the yankees.

 

[PhilsFan]

I hate coaches who do that as much as Coach K does. It's not limited to him. He doesn't argue bad calls, he argues all calls.

 

[DRay9911]

someone needs to photoshop in a pair of high heels

 

[DRay9911]

not happy with what i'm reading about the scheduling of next year's 96 team tourney

 

[mikal]

not happy with what i'm reading about the scheduling of next year's 96 team tourney

yep. if it ain't broke....

 

[DRay9911]

i was putting together my own schedule to see how it would look then i started doing a bit of research on how the ncaa wants to handle it.

it looks like instead of starting the tournament early by a couple of days for the opening round games, the extra round is going to be on tuesday/wednesday and force the better teams to play 3 games in 5 days:

(09 v 24) v 1
(10 v 23) v 2
(11 v 22) v 3
(12 v 21) v 4
(13 v 20) v 5
(14 v 19) v 6
(15 v 18) v 7
(16 v 17) v 8

1st round, games in parentheses
day 1 - thursday march 17th, 2011
day 2 - friday march 18th, 2011

2nd round, winner of 1st round v top 8 seed
day 1 - saturday march 19th, 2011
day 2 - sunday march 20, 2011

-----

regional quarterfinals day 1 - tuesday march 22, 2011*
regional quarterfinals day 2 - wednesday march 23, 2011*
(these games may be at the 1st & 2nd round sites)

regional semifinals, day 1 - thursday march 24, 2011
regional semifinals, day 2 - friday march 25, 2011

regional finals, day 1 - saturday march 26, 2011
regional finals, day 2 - sunday march 27, 2011

-----

national semifinals - saturday april 2nd, 2011

championship game - monday april 4th, 2011

 

[speedracer]

there's been one incident involving duke in K's entire career... corey maggette, and even that incident had nothing to do with duke themselves... maggette's AAU coach paid him (and every other player on his team) and got caught. did the duke coaching staff know this? maybe, but i'll say that they didn't based on their history. quinn snyder may have known... but he's been sort of exiled after all of his issues once he took over at missou.

as for bending of academic standards?

a friend of mine from high school played basketball at Yale. His older brother, who was my age, had a higher GPA and higher SAT's. but he wasn't 6'8" with a jumper, so he got wait listed at Yale, while his younger brother got in... and didn't have to pay for anything other than books, at a school that doesn't give athletic scholarships... and they're rich.

now the younger brother did have 90's and a 1300 SAT score... so it's not like he was a dumb dumb. but he did not have grades that would get him in to yale on their own. ironicly enough, the older brother ended up going to duke.


does this same thing happen at duke? do players who normaly wouldn't get accepted to the school get in because they have a great jumper? of course. this happens at every school that has athletics in the nation. it also happens with legacys, musicians and other artists as well.

every college has their minimum standards that they list on their info... nobody gets in by those minimum standards unless they have some sort of special talent to go along with the grades.

these kids at duke aren't minimum qualifyers, they aren't kids who had no credits, went to a prep school for a year and all of a sudden were honor students and passed the clearinghouse with flying colors, and these aren't kids who need to have someone cheat for them to get them in.

there is so much dislike and hatred for duke that if they were blatantly bending and breaking rules someone would bring them down. information would be leaked. there would be a smoking gun.

but there isn't.

I've taught math at both an Ivy League school and an elite public university, so I know full well about the standards for athletes in the money sports and how teams try to steer athletes towards soft majors, and I hate it.

Duke basketball's graduation rate was very strong the last couple years, but for a number of years in this decade it was hovering in the 60-70% range and one year dipped to 50% at a time when they weren't sending lots of players to the NBA early, and they have had a couple players get busted for academic fraud. None of this is particularly exceptional, but that's the point -- it isn't exceptional. They're pretty good compared to the national average for major teams, but they're way below the ~95% graduation rate for the university as a whole and the ~90% figures that football and basketball teams like Stanford and Notre Dame post year after year. If the players are all academically fit, they should be able to graduate given all the academic support they receive.

As for recruiting violations, there was the bit about Chris Duhon's mother getting a job in NC while Duhon was playing for Duke. Now this sort of stuff probably goes on all over the place, I personally don't don't have a problem with college athletes getting paid, and you could certainly argue that stuff like this is none of the NCAA's business. But the NCAA does have rules against this stuff, and it's hard to believe that everything was above board here.

Again, Duke basketball certainly isn't a cesspool of corruption like UConn or Maryland, but they're not God's gift to college sports either.

 

[CTU2fan]

That schedule sucks, way to packed in.

I hate this whole expansion thing, I really do. The silver lining though, and this from a guy who hates the whole "mid-major" thing (yeah yeah, bitter, George Mason...bite me)...hopefully some of the smaller schools have more of a shot to actually win a game this way. As it is now they get matched up with the absolute best teams in the country, and they really have no shot. So I'm happy for those schools.

I also think they need to give 2 automatic bids, and let the regular season champions of the small conferences in. Of course they won't, but if they're adding 31 teams I don't see why half of them can't be these smaller schools, as opposed to some "big" school that stumbles their way to 7-11 in their conference and makes my eyes bleed when I watch them.

a cesspool of corruption like UConn

Ouch...wanna come over and kick my dog too?

 

[Hewson]

(09 v 24) v 1
(10 v 23) v 2
(11 v 22) v 3
(12 v 21) v 4
(13 v 20) v 5
(14 v 19) v 6
(15 v 18) v 7
(16 v 17) v 8

I think you have the alignment backwards, it would be:

(09 v 24) v 8
(10 v 23) v 7
(11 v 22) v 6
(12 v 21) v 5
(13 v 20) v 4
(14 v 19) v 3
(15 v 18) v 2
(16 v 17) v 1

So assuming the higher seeds win the openers, you're back at the normal starting point of 1 vs 16, 5 upset by 12, 8 vs 9 etc.

Otherwise you would have 1 playing 9 while 8 plays 16.

 

[speedracer]

Ouch...wanna come over and kick my dog too?

Did your team ever post a 0% graduation rate? No? Then you're better than Maryland.

 

[Imperor]

I wonder how many of the people who bitch about there being too many bowl games are happy about the prospect of a 96 team tourney.

 

[speedracer]

I wonder how many of the people who bitch about there being too many bowl games are happy about the prospect of a 96 team tourney.

Letting the mid-major teams whale on each other for an extra game before they play the top seeds?

 

[speedracer]

Duke basketball's graduation rate was very strong the last couple years, but for a number of years in this decade it was hovering in the 60-70% range and one year dipped to 50% at a time when they weren't sending lots of players to the NBA early,

Actually, I think these figures may include Brand/Avery/Maggette, who all count as dropouts and may or may not have been able to graduate.

 

[DRay9911]

I think you have the alignment backwards, it would be:

(09 v 24) v 8
(10 v 23) v 7
(11 v 22) v 6
(12 v 21) v 5
(13 v 20) v 4
(14 v 19) v 3
(15 v 18) v 2
(16 v 17) v 1

So assuming the higher seeds win the openers, you're back at the normal starting point of 1 vs 16, 5 upset by 12, 8 vs 9 etc.

Otherwise you would have 1 playing 9 while 8 plays 16.

oops. makes total sense. my bad

 

[CTU2fan]

Did your team ever post a 0% graduation rate? No? Then you're better than Maryland.

When I was there UConn really wasn't bad, not sure how it is now but I suspect they've slipped on the academic/ethics end of things.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

basketball across the board has slipped. it's a cesspool. it's as bad as it's ever been, and will stay that way until they can effectively control and/or eliminate the current AAU system.

they worked so hard in the 90's to "clean it up"... keep players away from agents, gamblers, "friends of the program", etc. etc. but what they did was essentialy push it underground, where it's grown exponentialy, and has hurt the all around level of play in american basketball to boot.

sneaker companies, agents and runners now simply pay a middle man instead of paying the kids themselves. the ncaa created this, but were happy with it as long as the players themselves weren't openly getting paid. they're only now begining to understand the effects of letting this go on and get out of control, and they are making rather lame attempts to change things (see iHoops).

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

YouTube - Head coach Brad Stevens Butler on David Letterman HD 1080p

 

[DRay9911]

damn near everyone on the kentucky roster, 3 of their cheerleaders and 2 guys in the band declared for the nba draft

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

and the countdown to the vacating of the 2010 SEC title begins...

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

st. johns should hire tim cluess out of c.w. post on long island... dude has about an 80% winning percentage everywhere he's been, from a nationaly ranked high school team to a nationaly ranked juco to now a nationaly ranked D2 school.

but they won't... just like they passed on bob mckillop to sign the bigger name mike jarvis. that worked well.

Cluess, Grasso to Iona

Tim Cluess is the new Iona head coach and will be introduced Friday at a press conference.

The presser is tentatively set for 11 a.m., but could be moved back to the afternoon.

Cluess will also bring in Jared Grasso as his top assistant. Grasso, the former Fordham interim head coach, is a tremendous recruiter with deep ties to Jersey City (N.J.) St. Anthony and Paterson (N.J.) Catholic.

Fran Fraschilla was originally thought to be the favorite for the head job once former coach Kevin Willard took the Seton Hall position.

But Fraschilla opted to remain at ESPN instead.

Louisville assistant Steve Masiello was also heavily considered but Iona athletic director Pat Lyons ultimately opted for Cluess, who built CW Post into a Division II power and played college ball at St. John’s and Hofstra.

In four seasons at the Long Island school, he went 19-11, 26-5, 30-1 and 23-6. This past year he won 19 of his final 21 games. He is 98-23 overall at the school.


“He’s a winner, he’s won everywhere he’s been,” an Iona source said. “And he’s inheriting a team that’s built to win right now.”

The source said Cluess beat out Masiello because he has head coaching experience.

“I think [Masiello] was very close but it was just a tough decision and the fact that he was a winner and called timeouts before, he’s called plays before, that says something,” the source said.

With Cluess leaving CW Post, that makes 10 schools in the New York-metropolitan area that have had or will have coaching changes. Seton Hall, St. John’s, Hofstra, Fordham, Iona, FDU and Wagner all named new coaches, while Siena, CW Post and St. Francis of Brooklyn must now find new coaches. (FDU kept Greg “Shoes” Vetrone after a search.)

If Rutgers head coach Fred Hill is let go, that would make 11 coaching changes this season alone.

aaaaand we have a big winner in the NYC coaching carousel...

brilliant move out of Iona by nabbing not only Cluess but Grasso as well.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

the person on top of this image capture from facebook is an imposter... the person on the bottom is one of kentucky's top recruits who apparently thought the imposter was the real guy.

oops.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

John Calipari’s team performed well on the hardwood this season, but not so well off it.

The Kentucky basketball team posted a cumulative GPA of 2.025 in the fall, the lowest of any of the 20 athletic teams at the SEC school and the lowest for the men’s basketball team since the spring of 2002, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

That number was significantly lower than eventual NCAA champion Duke (3.01), Louisville (3.0) and Kansas (2.95).

“I was disappointed,” UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. said recently, according to the Herald-Leader.

“It’s not something we’re happy with, I’ll tell you that,” Sandy Bell, UK’s senior associate athletic director and the person in charge of student services, told the paper. “And we’ll be working on it to get it up. We certainly anticipate that going up in the spring” semester.”

That would be something, considering the team was busy playing an SEC schedule and reaching the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament in the spring.

Five Kentucky players, including four freshmen and likely No. 1 pick John Wall, declared for the June 24 NBA Draft.

Four players had a GPA of 2.0 or lower, but players needed to carry a 1.8 in the fall to play in the spring.

“It’s not the freshmen,” Bell told the paper. “It’s not the seniors. It’s not any one group. It’s kind of across the board and for a lot of different reasons.”

 

[DRay9911]

was going to post that yesterday just for you

 

[DRay9911]

metro and meathead were talking about world wide wes this morning.

i was wondering if they were going to bring in headache to break down the wes, cal, bron connection

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

intererference brings you knowledge

 

[DRay9911]

He's with Nell now

RIP Mr Wooden

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Very, very glad that Izzo is staying in East Lansing.

 

[No spoken words]

Very, very glad that Izzo is staying in East Lansing.

Me too, for a few reasons.