The University of Nevada-Reno will be keeping their highly touted head coach for the near future. Mark Fox, who has done wonders with the program at Nevada, has opted not to move on to a bigger, higher profile campus, in lieu of staying put in Reno for the time being. Many people considered Fox to be a top candidate for a BCS school. He has certainly earned a good reputation. In the past three years he has won three WAC Coach of the Year Awards and been to the Tourney three times.
In a semi-unrelated topic, I would like to address a habit that sport writers have that really grinds my gears. If you read Gary Parish’s article- and he is a main offender- you will notice the obsessive, annoyingly over-dramatic technique of making one short, simple sentence into a paragraph. I would assume that this construction is meant to make his points more meaningful, but when two-thirds of his paragraphs consist of one sentence, one line statements, his points begin to loose their punch.
And it gets really annoying.
And it’s a cheap way to make your article seem important.
While not actually providing much more information.
Oh, well.
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And concert tickets.
Theater, too.
Where fans can buy and sell tickets.
Even to sold-out events.
There was an article today at CBS Sportsline about a recruiting racket run by coaches of summer basketball leagues for high school basketball players. Apparently he was doing research for an article about that subject, got duped by a con man and then was so mad that he wrote this article about his incident.
There is no denying that there are some pretty sketchy recruiters out there, but what I don’t get is how exactly the summer team scam works. Apparently college coaches pay huge money for bogus “scouting reports” from these guys, and then the summer league cons somehow influence the high schoolers to sign with the team who pays the most. The thing that I don’t get is how the summer league coaches get the athlete to do what he wants. Are the coaches paying off the athletes, or do they have some other means of getting the high school basketball players to go to a school (that might or might not be in their best interest to go to)? The article did not directly say.
While mull it over, you might want to check out StubHub.com for NCAA basketball tickets.
There’s some good news coming out of Texas Tech these days, as one of their star players will be allowed to play for one half of the NCAA basketball season this upcoming year. Esmir Rizvic received a rather brutal elbow to the eye in a game versus the Okalahoma Sooners last year. Longar Longar, the redundantly named perpetrator of the foul was ejected and suspended for several games by the Big 12 for his foul. The punishment for the Sooners was harsh, but not undeserved. However, the Red Raiders had lost one of their starters for the entire season, and might have had to lose him this year, as his eligibility was due to run out.
The Big 12 Reinstatement Committee has decided, in a never-before-done move, to allow Rizvic to play “half” of his senior season. What that will entail is unknown at this time. He might be allowed only the beginning half of the season, or the second half, or only be allowed to compete in every other game. Whatever the method, typically furious Red Raiders coach Bobby Knight was “pleased with the outcome.”
You can see Rizvic play by getting Red Raiders basketball tickets at StubHub.com.
The NCAA recently reviewed its legislation about text messaging recruits and found that they should, indeed, ban texting between coaches and high school athletes. There are all kinds of critics of this ban, There are those, like Gary Parrish of CBS Sportsline, who say that banning it is behind the times, and that it is useless to try to limit the ways a coach can get into contact with a potential athlete. He even likes the idea of texting high schoolers because it could be an unobtrusive way for a coach to do all he can to harass a teenage athlete.
Besides the NCAA, there are few proponents of the ban on texting… save for Yours Truly. I think that it’s in the best interest of the NCAA and high school athletes to limit the ways that coaches can contact students. To me, its like making sure that released molesters don’t live near schools. Sure, there are ways around it. But in principle, we should be doing what we can to keep one element away from the other. If coaches had their way, they could give high school athletes money, throw pebbles at their bedroom window at night and play the USC fight song on a boom box held above their heads on the kid’s font lawn. Coaches will find a way to contact players, but setting limits, no matter how arbitrary, is the greater good.
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For many people, even those outside of the west coast, the Pac-10 is the biggest, baddest, most bracket-dominating conference in the NCAA, and the teams haven’t even started practice yet. The Pac-10 had a great showing at the NCAA Tournament last year, and they are expected to get 6 teams to the Tourney this year. Despite losing some key players to the NBA Draft a few weeks ago (such as Spencer Hawes of Washington State and Nick Young of USC), the Pac-10 seems to have suddenly and emphatically gotten bigger and better over the summer.
The hoops “Shootaround” at ESPN.com tells the story about how the Pacific 10 Conference has some of the most talented front line players, and might also be a superior conference when it comes to the backcourt as well. UCLA will probably be the best coming out of the Pac-10, with Darren Collison leading a team which got to the Final Four Last season. Kevin Love, one of the most sought-after big men in the nation is the player they are counting on to bolster their weaponry down low in the arms race out west.
To get Pac-10 college basketball tickets, all you need to do is go to StubHub.com.
Davidson College has been temporarily added to the ACC this year, so they will be put directly into the tough, intense, and always dramatic world of Tobacco Road. You might remember that Davidson upset ACC powerhouse Maryland in last year’s NCAA Tourney. Well, they will have to do more of the same against the likes of Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Boston College and North Carolina State this year. Pat Forde of ESPN.com writes that the road ahead will be though for Davidson, but they might just come out the overall winners if they ever want to be an official ACC member.
In other news, Wake Forest University announced that a long-time Skip Prosser aide, Dino Gaudio, will be his replacement on the sidelines for the Demon Deacons. Prosser was one of the most respected, admired and beloved college basketball coaches in the NCAA before his untimely death just over a week ago. Many people feel that, although Gaudio will be nowhere near Prosser in terms of ability and clout, he will still serve admirably as the Wake head coach.
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There is no denying that there is a real issue in sports today with the perceived fairness of the game. Are athletes using illegal substances, are refs cheating? Is anything fair anymore? Well, to be truthful, players, coaches, fans, and even the custodians of the NCAA basketball arenas, have been trying to gain advantages outside of the lines for years. Jay Bilas of ESPN used to play for Duke back in the day, and he gives us a bit of his insight as to the antics that opposing teams would use to get the edge over the Blue Devils when they were on the road.
Apparently their ACC rival, the Maryland Terrapins, used to turn the heat up in the opposing team’s locker room, making the players feel tired and sweaty before they even got started. The same tactic used to happen to opponents of the Oregon Ducks, the Clemson Tigers and Cincinnati Bearcats. Other tactics include messing with opponents’ practice times and making the visiting team locker rooms far away from the gym. These kinds of things are generally considered “gamesmanship,” and it would be great if that was all that was unfair about sports.
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It seems like only yesterday there were one or two important preseason NCAA basketball tournaments around the country, but there are more and more each year. If you go to ESPN.com, you can check out a list of preseason tournaments for which you could potentially get NCAA basketball tickets. Although the preseason usually doesn’t mean all that much in pro sports, such as the NFL, or the NBA, in college hoops, preseason tourneys are a good way for programs to get better and make a name for themselves in poll lists.
Some of the tournaments this year take place in exotic locations, such as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, or Alaska. A lot of them will showcase high-caliber teams, such as Dickie V’s 2K Coaches Vs. Cancer Tournament, which will have Okalahoma, Memphis, Kentucky, and U-Conn in attendance. One of the most famous Tournaments is the one that Duke usually goes to, the Great Alaska Shootout. This year’s entrants do not include Duke, although you can see Gonzaga, N.C. State, and George Mason there. Check out where you’re team is going to play and then get tickets to see them play in the preseason. This is a great way for fans of a team who happen to be across the country to see their team close to their current home.
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Since the NCAA basketball season is so far away, and there is very little to report in the college basketball world, some of us, even Yours Truly, have resorted to checking out YouTube for some college basketball action. The NCAA will not be starting for months, so there is nothing like a good highlight video to get you pumped for the season when college hoops news is at an all-time low.
Tomorrow Wake Forest will announce their new head coach. But until then you can entertain yourself with some impressive moments from NCAA Tournaments of yore. You can see all the good ones by typing in “NCAA Tournament” or “March Madness” or even your favorite team name. One of my personal favorites is when UCLA beats Missouri in 1995 for the NCAA championship, with Tyus Edney driving the length of the court and hitting a last second lay-up. If you are a Duke Fan, there are plenty of videos to document your team’s successes. The same goes for North Carolina.
Of course, you could see future highlights just by getting NCAA basketball tickets at StubHub.com.
The Butler Bulldogs have become one of the most powerful mid-major programs in the nation over the past decade or so, earning regular NCAA Tournament births with great players, a few famous coaches, and some very loyal fans backing up the team. This year the Bulldogs will be lead by a new coach, who is just 30 years old- the second oldest NCAA D-I basketball coach in the country. The new coach, Brad Stevens, worked under the former coach Collier, and thus comes from a pedigree in the line of Lickliter and Matta. He has the confidence of the athletic director, Barry Collier, who decided to pick Stevens over other assistants and, presumably, many more experienced head coaches looking for a sweet job at a school on the rise.
Collier said of Stevens, “I had basically eight months to interview Brad. By that, I mean I got to observe him with the team in practice, on the road and in games. Age wasn’t a factor because I’d seen his ability shine through during the course of the season.” I’ve never been one to think that age necessarily meant you couldn’t be a good leader. Napoleon was just a few years older than Stevens when he was returning form conquering Egypt, Alexander had taken over most of the know world by his death at age 33- and the same might be said of Jesus of Nazareth.
We at StubHub.com with Stevens luck. You can see him coach by getting Butler Bulldogs basketball tickets.
