Rush The Court

For the second time since last spring’s Mario Miracle, the NABC has put out a statement that squarely fixes its crosshairs on Kentucky’s second-year coach, Billy Gillispie.  Certainly you remember the June directive the NABC made to stop recruiting junior high players in the wake of the media firestorm over Gillispie’s recruiting of 8th grader Michael Avery.  We wrote at the time:

Luckily, this may be a situation where coaches were doing it because they felt they needed to avoid a competitive disadvantage.  Now that the NABC has effectively disavowed this as a strategy (although it is still legal), coaches [including Gillispie] appear to be supportive of the line-drawing.

(Ed Note:  apparently another Billy, as in Billy Donovan, didn’t get that memo from the NABC.)Andy Katz now reports on his blog today that the NABC put forth a new statement yesterday that admonishes coaches for using their early autumn ’skill development’ time (2 hours/week) prior to full practices for recruiting purposes.  More specifically, they don’t want schools to bump up their Midnight Madness festivities to a preceding weekend so as to take advantage of a more favorable recruiting scenario (i.e., big football game on campus, local stripper convention, the fact that nobody else is having Midnight Madness that weekend).  Why is this important now?  Because Kentucky and Illinois (with its gimmicky outdoor practice) are planning on having their Midnight Madnesses a week prior to the ‘official’ start of practice.  The NABC statement (via Katz):

The NABC board of directors said that “skill development events should not be open to the public.” The NABC said the initial intent was for coaches to assist their players in skill development and create stronger relationships. But by “making such skill development sessions public events, they appear to be geared more for recruiting than skill development sessions.”

Coach Gillispie, godlovehim, just cannot resist pushing the envelope when it comes to the NCAA rulebook.  We’re not saying that he’s breaking any rules – hell, we’re not even saying that he’s bending them – but like any fastidious attorney, he manages to consistently find the gray nether-regions where legislative intent meets bright-line rule, and he forces those in charge to make decisions.

Bring It On, NABC!  (photo credit: AP/Ed Reinke)

Our take on these early Midnight Madness celebrations is such: we tend to like orderliness when it comes to college hoops, as in…  we’d like to know with assurance when Opening Night will be or when the Final Four will be.  So we’re 100% in agreement with the NABC on this one – can’t we just all agree to have Midnight Madness on the same night, and preferably, AT MIDNIGHT?  If the NCAA has to mandate this, so be it – add another page to the 17-lb rulebook.   

Update (10/1): Jeff Goodman weighs in with this background information about the NABC:

Word is that there were numerous coaches on a conference call who were less than thrilled with Gillispie’s decision. They feel that the NCAA allows the coaches the two hours per week for skill development and Gillispie is taking advantage of the rule.  It was the unanimous decision of the Board that skill development events should not be open to the public.

You really gotta love FOIA.  It allows regular folks access to primary and secondary sources that we otherwise would only hear about through reporters, and who knows if those bozos can be trusted to get it right.  (ed. note: we realize of course that the AP in this case submitted the FOIA request; the point here is meant to be that we don’t have to trust what the AP reporters said about the docs, we can look at them ourselves and draw our own conclusions)

Using FOIA, today the AP released Indiana’s response to the NCAA on the allegation that the school failed to monitor Kelvin Sampson and his staff given his ample history of playing a little loosey-goosey with phone calls to recruits.  From the Hoosier Scoop:

Most of what the university’s lawyers state is this letter is reiteration, often with greater evidence or a different emphasis. There’s not a lot of new news.  The executive summary of primary arguments, found on page four, does its job nicely. Both because it outlines IU’s argument and captures the general tenor of the response: just because we didn’t find the calls right away doesn’t mean we weren’t monitoring and . . . Please believe us!  IU states that it’s compliance measures far exceeded those of similar institutions, and that only four of the impermissible calls could have been caught by those measures (even though they eventually were caught by an intern, a fact IU puffs its chest about repeatedly.) The rest of the calls, it claims, were purposefully hidden by the coaches, and would have evaded even the most stringent monitoring efforts.  That’s really the crux of the argument.  As it has been for some time.

Classic CYA here.  It wasn’t our fault, it was all the guy’s fault who we threw under the bus and who is no longer accountable to us!  We did our best but he and his minions were simply too nefarious in their evil dealings! 

The docs:

• IU’s Response
• Exhibits Part 1
• Exhibits Part 2

Quickly looking through some of the exhibits, two things came to mind.  First, when ripping someone at another school by using quotes to discredit their statements, you might want to remember that all emails at a public university are subject to public disclosure.  Hello, Jennifer Hooker Brinegar!  We’re assuming that Oklahoma’s Melanie Roberts is off this year’s Xmas card list.  (see exh. 2, #33)  Secondly, look at the names (see exh. 1, #29)  of the recruits who Sampson and his staff used up all their phone violations on – Bud Mackey (prison), DeJuan Blair (PIttsburgh), Robbie Hummell (Purdue), Demetri McCarney (Illinois) - not a one ended up at Indiana.  Talk about zero return on your investment!

If nothing else, this long Hoosier nightmare appears to be finally reaching an end.  Whether IU gets additionally screwed or not is up to the NCAA brass, but really, how much worse could they be in 2008-09?  Isn’t Kyle Taber and crew punishment enough?

Are the leaves changing colors in your town?  We’re less than three weeks until Midnight Madness…

• Santa Clara center John Bryant, the WCC’s leading returner in rebounds and blocks (and second in scoring), was literally stabbed in the back this weekend.  He is expected to make a full recovery.   
• Andy Katz takes a look at three teams he expects are ready to rise again this season – Ohio St., Nevada, Wake Forest.
• The NYT reports that Tommy Amaker is continuing to make friends at Harvard.
• Pitt’s Jamie Dixon proves that unproven commodities who are bright and work hard can be just as (if not more) successful than the old retreads.  Why does that sound strangely familiar?  Another one of those unknown coaches, Wright St.’s Brad Brownell, was profiled by HoopWise as well.
• UCLA’s stalwart Darren Collison says he’s back in Westwood to win that elusive national title.
• Jeff Goodman puts a gun to the head of two top recruiting gurus and forces them to predict where the 2009 Top 10 prospects will end up.  If true, Memphis will be scary good in 2010.
• Siena is seeking to become the new Gonzaga, er, Davidson. 

Sad news from Norman last night as former Oklahoma great Wayman Tisdale announced at the OU-TCU football game (via video message) that he is recovering well after a recent surgery requiring doctors to amputate part of his right leg.  They discovered cancer below his knee last year after he had broken that leg in a fall at his home.  On the one hand, we’re glad to hear that he’s doing well after surgery, but we’re disheartened to hear that such a seemingly nice guy who is still quite young is dealing with a very serious form of cancer.  Regardless, it got us to thinking about Tisdale.

Tisdale Was Unstoppable at Oklahoma

While many people may remember Tisdale’s twelve seasons in the NBA as a serviceable big man with a 15/6 average, we always envision him in a blood red SOONERS jersey laying waste to the Big 8 during his three years in Norman.  Seriously, Tisdale invented the word “beast” with his play on the low blocks at Oklahoma.  Playing in an era (1982-85) when freshmen weren’t typically the best players on the team, Tisdale walked onto campus and immediately started dropping double-doubles (25/10) on anybody who got in his way, becoming the first freshman AP All-American in the history of the game.  He carried that average throughout his three year OU career (first team all-american each year), leading the Sooners to two Big 8 regular season titles and one tournament title as Oklahoma became ascended to national prominence under Billy Tubbs.  In fact, Tisdale remains the all-time leader in points scored as a Sooner, with 2,661 in his career.

Music Was Always Tisdale’s Truest Passion  (photo credit:  waymantisdale.com)

We always wondered what Tisdale could have done if he had been completely focused on basketball, because as it turned out, Tisdale’s other consuming passion of contemporary jazz has arguably made him more well-known in that arena than he ever was as a hoopster.  Has any athlete ever been so accomplished in two completely different worlds as Wayman Tisdale?  In addition to recording eight solo albums in the genre, he’s had several #1 hit records, numerous top ten albums and was named the Bassist of the Year in 2002 by the National Smooth Jazz Awards. 

Take a listen to his triumphant return in the YouTube video below, and check out the music at the end of the clip.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Best of luck to Wayman as he fights to stay cancer-free. 

Several sources today are announcing the formation of the 32d Division 1 league, the Great West Conference, which will begin organized basketball operations in the 2009-10 season.  You may recall that the GWC already exists in football as a transitional league between D2 and D1-AA (or whatever they’re calling it now).  The basketball counterparts at most of these schools have largely been relegated to the dreaded Independent status, which forces those teams to schedule games anytime, anywhere, anyplace, in order to complete a full schedule.  One of these teams, the much-maligned New Jersey Tech, made infamy last year with an 0-29 season, earning the lowest Sagarin rating (46.91) of the past several years.

Frankly, despite the league’s spin on the matter, reading down a list of these schools sounds a little like something out of the American Chiropractic Colleges Association manual.  Houston Baptist, Texas-Pan American, New Jersey Tech, Utah Valley, North AND South Dakota. Not to mention the fact that with two Texas schools, a Utah school, two Dakota schools and a freakin NEW JERSEY school, this new league is all over the place (Cal Poly, UC-Davis and Southern Utah, each of whom play in the football version of the GWC, are not expected to leave their basketball conferences – the Big West x2 and Summit, respectively).

In fact, looking at the map below, this ”Great West” conference is 2,194 miles from east to west, 1,639 miles from north to south, and if you decided to drive the circuit between all six schools, it would take you through 22 states, 6,540 miles and approximately 41 Waffle Houses.  Oh, and only one team is even in a “western” time zone, with UVU in MST.

So what’s really going on here?  Of course, money.  The GWC is attempting to become the 32d league that gets an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, and while that may be a decade away (fulfilling all the requirements would take until 2020), Kyle Whelliston thinks that’s a possibility.

NCAA men’s basketball rules require conferences to pass a three-step eligibility check for auto-bid qualification: at least seven fully fledged Div. I members, seven that have been Div. I for at least eight years (known as “core members”), and six core members who have been league mates for five years. The current membership wouldn’t meet all of those guidelines until the year 2020.

You can rest assured that if the GWC eventually gets an automatic bid that the NCAA won’t take away one of the current 34 at-large bids, so the natural response would probably be to add another play-in game to the scorecard.  That would allow for two more teams to “make” the dance, and it would balance the brackets on both sides.  While this makes economic sense from an NCAA Tournament perspective, it’ll end up minimizing the achievements of the MEAC, SWAC and other league champions that have gotten accustomed to playing in the “real thing” on Thursday like everyone else.

And what happens to everyone’s bracket if one of these teams actually beats a #1 seed one of these days?

Between Bruce Pearl and Pat Summitt, UT basketball is the gift that keeps on giving.  From Forbes (h/t Deadspin):

Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt had offseason shoulder surgery, not for a sports injury but because of a tussle with a raccoon.  The winningest basketball coach in NCAA history had problems with her right shoulder after dislocating it while chasing a raccoon poised to attack her Labrador. The attack came near her home on March 5, just days before the Southeastern Conference tournament.  A month later, Summitt guided the Lady Vols to their eighth NCAA title.

Labs are pretty big dogs – it’s odd that Summitt would feel the need to chase down a raccoon…  Of course, maybe she remembers what happened to Vol Mascot Smokey VII. 

Oh, ok. 

It’s officially Autumn, which means cooler air is around the corner and the sweet cacophany of bouncing basketballs echoing through a gymnasium is coming…

• Dana O’Neil gives a pretty good roundup of injured players who are either all the way healed or expected to be so by the time the meat of the season begins.  One of those players, Syracuse’s Eric Devendorf, is back from an ACL injury with another year of eligibility in tow.  Another, Alabama’s Ronald Steele, is a hard-luck guy who RTC is hoping catches a few breaks this year – he deserves it. 
• Tubby Smith’s nephew, William L. Smith, was stabbed and killed last weekend at an off-campus apartment complex in Worcester, Mass. 
• UConn’s Nate Miles, he of the five high schools, was arrested for violating a restraining order.  We’re shocked, I tell you, that Jim Calhoun’s charge is acting up!  Shocked! 
• Jamie Dixon’s deal with Pitt has been extended through the 2016 season at a minimum of $1.3M per annum.
• Remember Pierre Pierce?  The former Iowa star who spent 11 months in prison for a multitude of charges will be allowed to serve his probation in France while playing professional basketball there this winter. 
• Here are six teams to watch in the 08-09 season seeking to break long NCAA droughts.
• More Stephen Curry.  The Wooden Tradition, not to be confused with the Wooden Classic (UCLA v. Depaul; San Diego St. v. St. Mary’s), will feature Purdue v. Davidson and St. Mary’s v. S. Illinois on Dec. 19 in Indianapolis.  In case you were wondering how the new Mr. March spent his summer, click here. 
• HoopsAddict has it’s All-Americans out – Tyrese Rice over Darren Collison is a weak call. 

It’s no secret that we’ve had our issues with the WWL over the last few years, but if you remove its Disneyfied cross-promotional garbage and the regrettably unwatchable Sportscenter, there’s still no better existing production value when it comes to the actual broadcast of games.  And lots of them.  A fair argument can be made that ESPN has done more for the popularity of college basketball since its inception than any other entity, media or otherwise.  Most everyone we know grew up watching Big East or ACC games on ESPN in the 80s and 90s, and as we all know, prior to ESPN’s existence, the NCAA Tournament was largely shown on tape-delay. 

What we’re getting at is that ESPN and college hoops have a long and prosperous history together, and it’s nice to see that continue in the modern era of sports specialization.  With that said, we wanted to point out that ESPN’s decision released today to have an “Opening Day” extravaganza of college basketball is nothing short of brilliant.  We’ve also often bemoaned the fact that, unlike nearly every other major American sport, college hoops really doesn’t have a “start” date.  The season begins when teams start playing in random tournaments sometime in November, and most people are surprised to learn that college hoops has started when they see a Purdue-Florida Intl. score on a random Tuesday night along the bottom line scroll. 

ESPN’s big day of hoops on Nov. 18 (which, interestingly, is a Tuesday and will have no competition with football) will at least make certain that the general sports nation is aware that college basketball is back and people should start taking notice.  Some of the very best nonconference matchups occur in late November and early December while most folks are still paying attention to a handful of teams on the college gridiron, so from a marketing perpective, the initiation of a huge day of solid to good basketball games to “kick off” the season’s coverage is a winner.  We also love how they’re making use of all the time zones to approximate a full 24 hours of coverage.  The schedule is below. 

The hoops bonanza scheduled for ESPN networks on Nov. 18 (all times ET).

• Midnight: UMass at Memphis (ESPN)
• 2 a.m.: Fresno St. at St. Mary’s (ESPN)
• 4 a.m.: Idaho St. at Hawaii (ESPN)
• 6 a.m.: College Hoops Tip-Off Special (ESPN)
• 10 a.m.: Penn at Drexel (ESPN)
• Noon: Liberty at UNC-Asheville (ESPN)
• 2 p.m.: Iowa at Kansas (women) (ESPN)
• 4 p.m.: Centenary at Baylor (ESPN)
• 6 p.m.: Richmond at Syracuse (ESPN)
• 7 p.m.: NIT Regional Final-Purdue (ESPNU)
• 7:30 p.m.: NIT Regional Final-Boston College (ESPN2)
• 8 p.m.: College GameDay-Chapel Hill (ESPN)
• 9 p.m.: Kentucky at North Carolina (ESPN)
• 9 p.m.: Florida Gulf Coast at Kansas (ESPNU)
• 9:30 p.m.: NIT Regional Final-Oklahoma (ESPN2)
• 11:30 p.m.: NIT Regional Final-Arizona (ESPN2)

Wouldn’t it be nice if this were Oct. 19 instead of Sept. 19?

• Which Great White Hope is actually a better player? – maybe we’ll delve into that sometime soon.  Gary Parrish takes a look now.
• The seemingly snakebitten AJ Price from UConn is supposedly all the way back from offseason ACL surgery.  In completely unrelated news, UConn has added Lojack to all of its campus laptops. 
• In a somewhat odd twist, the NCAA directed Indiana to delay its response to the latest allegations from the Kelvin Sanctions scandal last spring.  The university now has until Sept. 26 to craft its response.  Someone go on vacation?
• Seth Davis writes a pretty good recount of what five teams – Kansas, Missouri, Purdue, S. Illinois and Notre Dame – did on their Labor Day weekend trips.
• Remember Illinois guard Jamar Smith? – he received 18 months probation for his alcohol violation stemming from his DUI arrest last spring.  He plans to play for S. Indiana next season (yeah, that’s what we said too).

As you all know, the 2008-09 season will feature a three-point line that is one foot longer than it has been for the last twenty years, moving from the standard top-of-the-key 19 feet, 9 inches that every fifth grader can hit, to the comically tweenerish 20 feet, 9 inches, which is sure to cause mass hysteria and confusion among players, coaches and referees on courts with both the men’s and women’s lines (the women are staying at 19′9″).   In other words, most of the courts in D1 basketball. 

So if someone such as us wanted to take a stab at analyzing what teams this rule change might most impact, how should we approach it?  Here’s the set of assumptions that inform our admittedly unscientific hypothesis – feel free to call us on it in the comments if you like. 

Hypothesis:  Teams that have a large differential in their home/away three-point shooting percentages are likely to have fewer “pure” shooters and therefore will be most negatively impacted by the one-foot longer three-point line next season. 

Assumptions:

• We’re assuming that all team three-point percentages should decrease with the longer distance.
• Teams with “pure” shooters should have high relative three-point percentages no matter where they shoot the ball – home or away (think back to Hickory High in Hoosiers – the rim is still ten feet no matter what gym you’re in).
• There will be a natural dropoff in most team three-point percentages on the road because of adverse conditions, but good shooting teams will remain good shooting teams.  Teams with questionable shooters will show a marked decrease between their home and road three-point percentages.  
• We admit, given turnover of players from season to season, that the predictive value of analyzing 07-08 data on the 08-09 season is tenuous at best. 

Anyway, here goes…  our first chart shows the best three-point shooting teams last year (>38% 3FG) that had large differentials (>6%) between its home and away games.  If our theory holds, these teams could be most vulnerable to the longer three-point line in 2008-09.  Wow, Temple!

The teams in our next chart were also good three-point shooting teams, but they didn’t have nearly as much of a differential (< 4%) between their home and away games.  Again, if our theory holds, we’d expect that these teams won’t be as negatively impacted by the longer line this year – these guys can shoot it consistently under any condition.

Our final chart is just thrown in are, um, the exceptions that prove the rule?  These teams had significant differences between home and away three-point percentages, alright, it’s only that they shot the ball astronomically better on the road than at home.  We have no idea what conclusions to draw from this, so we just called them anomalies (which they are, representing a handful of teams). 

Frankly, we realize that our theory has some holes in it, but maybe we’re just not seeing the total picture here.  That’s what you guys are for.  Thoughts?

Update:  KJ at spartansweblog.com referred us to KenPom’s data set on shot selection and the accompanying percentages at each distance – we only wish we had access to that data.  If the graph is correct, it tells us that an average team may not see much difference in the 3FG% with the new line.  However, it doesn’t tell us much about how good-shooting teams might react.  Nevertheless, good find and more fodder for discussion.

Ray Floriani is the RTC correspondent for the Northeast Conference and an occasional contributor.

In the pressure packed world of college coaching a 25-year career is a rarity these days. Twenty five years at one school ? You can almost forget it, except in the case of Tom Green. The Fairleigh Dickinson mentor, who won his 400^th  game late last season, is entering his 26^th year at the Northeast Conference school. Green is the winningest coach in NEC history. It’s not even close.

Tom Green – Longtime Coach of FDU (photo credit:  FDUKnights.com)

His conference record stands at 257-177, a distant lead over second place Ron Ganulin, who won 129 conference games at St.Francis (NY) from 1991 through 2005. Green is also the NEC pacesetter with 26 conference tournament wins. All told, FDU has reached the NEC semis in 16 of his 25 years and captured four conference post season titles and ensuing NCAA Tournament bids (1985, 1988, 1998 and 2005).

A legacy of success which includes seven 20-win seasons has brought opportunities at other schools. In the past, Green has flirted with other institutions. Each time he felt the Northern New Jersey school was his best fit.

What is his secret of the program’s excellent track record ? For one thing , flexibility. He is able to adjust to the talents of his players. He will push the ball if he has to and play at a slower pace if need be. Last season an injury decimated squad finished up an uncharacteristic 8-20. The coach and staff went over tape and spent hours coming up with combination and ‘junk’ defenses to try to remain competitive.  Another factor is discipline, but not the yelling and screaming type. Green doesn’t need that, and still his players know who is in charge. Discipline is evident as FDU rarely beats themselves. They are well drilled in their system.

FDU has made the NCAA Tournament in each of those aforementioned NEC title years. Each time the top or #2 seed has never rested easy against the bottom seed Knights. Green’s teams are extremely well prepared and play hard.  Most recently, in 2005, FDU gave top-seeded (and eventual national runner-up) all it wanted in its first round game before losing 67-55 (see highlight below). 

Tom Green will not win a national championship at FDU. Regardless, the former Syracuse guard can take solace in knowing he probably assisted on one. In 1985 his FDU team took top seeded Michigan to the wire, eventually losing 59-55. Villanova coaches were scouting that game and noticed the Knights exposed a few weaknesses in their Big Ten opponents. Two days later Villanova upset Michigan in the second round of their championship run.

Interestingly, Jim Boeheim and Green shared an apartment when they began as Syracuse assistants. Boeheim has been at Syracuse over three decades, Green a quarter of a century at FDU. Neither seems in a hurry to leave, which is good news to their respective schools and fans.

It’s no secret around these parts that Lute Olson has experienced a volatile year since he decided to take a leave of absence from his Arizona Wildcats last November.  There were already the rampant rumors that Olson was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, or at minimum, some other undisclosed health issue, accompanied by the not-so-private saga involving a divorce from his second wife, Christine.  Throw in the embarassingly open secret that Olson was unhappy with his replacement, Kevin O’Neill, in addition to the loss of several key players either in or coming into the program (Jerryd Bayless, Brandon Jennings, Emmanuel Negedu) and it’s safe to say that the Silver Fox had a stressful year.  All that said, Olson has gone on record to exuberantly state that he expects to remain the coach at Arizona at least through his current contract, ending in 2011. 

Happier Times for Lute and Christine Olson  (photo credit:  azstarnet.com)

Well why not? – so long as you intend to wilfully flout the NCAA rulebook in an attempt to get recruits to Tucson.  From the AP report: 

The University of Arizona has reported a possible NCAA recruiting violation by men’s basketball coach Lute Olson, who called it “an unfortunate and regrettable error.”  Athletic director Jim Livengood said Monday that Olson had sent a letter to basketball boosters asking for a donation to Jim Storey’s Arizona Cactus Classic basketball tournament, held last May at Arizona’s McKale Center. NCAA rules prohibit institutional representatives or boosters from arranging financial assistance for potential recruits.  “A ‘personal and confidential’ letter was sent to Rebounders Club board of directors over the electronic signature of Lute Olson, requesting that they provide financial assistance to Jim Storey’s Cactus Classic AAU Tournament,” Livengood said in a July 2 letter to Ron Barker, Pac-10 associate commissioner in charge of governance and enforcement. “The letter expressed how important this tournament is to the Arizona basketball program’s recruiting. The letter also stated (correctly) that ‘The athletics department can’t assist in any way.’ Which would include requesting that donors make financial contributions.”

Forget the one-and-dones, Olson has apparently decided that he will simply have his boosters finance players into Tucson.  (sidenote: the #2 PG in the class of 2009, Abdul Gaddy, also commited to the Wildcat program today – was he at this camp?).   

To be fair, Olson disabused reporters of the notion that he knew anything about this letter, which had an electronic signature on it.  Yet numerous poeople within in the program have gone on the record to state that Olson wanted this letter sent out.  Some Arizona fans are suggesting this is a setup propagated by the AD, Jim Livengood, who (the assumption goes) wants the powerful Olson out of the picture.

There’s one thing we can remain certain about – the Lute Olson stories are getting exponentially more interesting the older he gets.  Stay tuned for more out of the desert.   

Still trying to get caught up on newsworthy items from the last few weeks…

• Coach K, fresh off his gold medal coaching victory with Team USA, says that from now on, he’s going to enjoy wins at Duke more.
• Kansas’ best returning player, Sherron Collins, apparently showed up for KU’s Labor Day trip to Canada fat and out of shape.  Bill Self was not pleased, benching the point guard for the trip.  The good news for Self and KU is that their highly-regarded twin recruits, Marcus and Markieff Morris, were declared eligible to play this season.
• Smart, fellas.  KU national champions  Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur got some greenery and some females up in their rooms at the NBA Rookie Transition Program (where the dangers of such issues as greenery and females are ostensibly discussed), leading to a $20k fine for each of them.
• Oklahoma freshman Willie Warren has already made an impression with his mouth, apparently.
• New Mexico State’s itinerant forward, Herb Pope, will transfer to Seton Hall.  He is asking for a medical waiver (the “Tyler Smith Rule”) so that he can play this season.  Mizzou’s Keon Lawrence is also transferring to Seton Hall. 
• Well, that’s disappointing.  UNC-Asheville’s 7′7 behemoth Kenny George will likely miss the season after another foot surgery.
• Jeff Goodman checks in on Pat Knight as he begins his first full season as the head man at Texas Tech.
• Gary Parrish has a nice insight piece on how mid-major programs strategize recruiting against the big boys on the summer circuit. 
• Not quite the SEC deal, but get ready to see more WAC basketball on ESPN beginning next year

This bit of news came across our wire earlier this week, and we’re still shaking off the shivers it initially gave us. 

Mike Broghammer, a 6-foot-8, 220 pound senior forward from Minnetonka (MN) Hopkins, has committed to Notre Dame during his official visit this weekend. Broghammer is the nephew through marriage of Christian Laettner. Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey had recruited Laettner when he was an assistant at Duke.

WHEW.  Nephew through marriage.  THANK.  GOD.  That means there’s no shared plasma between them, so maybe we have a fighting chance that this kid won’t be another arrogant prick of a bastard like his uncle (although the above smirk has us a little concerned).  In fact, if we had to endure that bozo through fifteen years of Thanksgivings and family get-togethers, he might hate the SOB as much as the rest of us does.

And, no, we’re not letting it go.     

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, and we’re trying to get back into gear here…

• Reason #73 to love college basketball – apparently, us.  Sweet. 
• How about reason #70 – Duke is All Things Evil and Sweaty.  We thought that was Sarah Palin, no?  Politically speaking, Washington insider and Terp fan Robert Novak says he will no longer inveigh against Duke after he had his successful cancer treatment at their medical center.
• Kentucky is using an NCAA rulebook loophole to get a leg up on Midnight Madness this year.  Apparently you can use 2 hrs/week for instruction prior to the traditional mid-October practice starting date, and UK will use their 2 hrs on Oct. 10 to get going early. 
• Dickie V. is in the Hall of Fame!  Supposedly his bust will be enshrined perilously close to the Coach K wax figure anus. 
• Patty Mills is back at St. Mary’s enjoying his lavish praise from the Olympic experience, unless you ask this writer.  Editing, people!
• All the BracketBuster information you could ever want…  including 102 teams and nine conferences sending their entire rosters this season (MAC, MVC, OVC, CAA, Horizon, Big West, WAC, MAAC). 
• Kevin Love is the cover boy of 2009 NCAA Basketball (formerly March Madness) for all you gamers out there.

Some older stuff you might have missed…

• American’s Jeff Jones parlayed the school’s first ever NCAA appearance into a nice contract extension through 2014. 
• Tom Crean can’t catch a break (other than his new bitchin paycheck).  His only returning scholarship player, Kyle Taber, injured his knee and will be out of action for 10 weeks.   
• Ty Lawson confirmed that he “probably” would be in the NBA right now had it not been for his “drinking while driving” arrest in June.  If Lawson had left, would Danny Green and/or Wayne Ellington have stayed too?  UNC fans should be thanking their lucky stars for Lawson’s (mis)fortune this season. 
• Wow, do you think the NCAA micromanages much?  Arkansas recently self-reported six violations, and some of them just seem silly.
• Oklahoma’s Mr. Dub-Dub, Blake Griffin, was ticketed for outraging public decency, also known as the piss-and-walk. 
• Thanks to the SEC’s new comprehensive tv package deal ($2B!!!) with ESPN, there will be two more nights of SEC coverage (in addition to Super Tuesday) on the network starting in 2009-10.  In related news, Time Warner Cable has picked up the Big Ten Network (whew!  glad we’ve got Comcast at the RTC abode!!). 

Over the weekend, we too heard the disheartening news that one of the game’s most historically important figures had died.  Don Haskins, longtime coach of UTEP (nee’ Texas Western), passed away on Sunday at the age of 78. 

(photo credit: UTEP)

Most of Haskins’ career was before our time, and it’s not like UTEP games were burning up the airwaves anyway, but the 1997 Hall of Fame coach (719 wins) consistently put quality teams into the NCAA Tournament (14 trips) throughout his 39 seasons in El Paso.  Of course, Haskins will forever be historically notorious for his 1966 Texas Western squad, who won the national title with an all-black starting lineup against the all-white Kentucky Wildcats.   While the real-time impact of that game on a nation embroiled in the civil rights movement can be extensively argued (no major media outlet mentioned this artifact at the time of the game), there can be little question that Haskins’ national championship team represents a significant tipping point in collegiate athletics, particularly in the South.  No longer could it be argued that predominantly-black teams didn’t have the necessary discipline (and coachability) to compete at the highest levels of the game.  Soon thereafter, the floodgate of black athletes at SEC, SWC and ACC schools opened.

With that said, we don’t presume to know much about Don Haskins other than his role in that game, so we’ll leave it to those who did know him and his stories to fill out the remainder of the post.  RIP Coach Haskins.

From CBS Sportsline:

We’ve spent a large part of the past few months hearing about how one politician is breaking barriers and another is putting cracks in ceilings. These are historic times, for sure. But 42 years ago Haskins accomplished similar things in his own little way, only he wasn’t similarly celebrated like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin. Instead, he was ridiculed and threatened and, well, I’ll just turn things back over to Wetzel.

“His friends asked him ‘Don, are you crazy? Are you f—ing nuts?’” Wetzel said. “They said ‘If you play five blacks they’re going to call you the black coach. Even if you win you’ll never get another job. And if you lose and get fired, nobody will ever hire you. And if one of those kids f—s up, then you’re done. Your entire career is done and you’ve got kids to feed. Don’t do this. It’s stupid.’”

Haskins’ response?  “He said ‘F— that,’” Wetzel said. “He said ‘Seven of my best eight players are black, and I’m playing them. I don’t care what the repercussions are.’”  So he played them, started five of them, and you know the story by now.

From the El Paso Times:

So many people in this city have treasured memories of the man … a friendship, a chance encounter, a vision of the fiercest of them all prowling the sidelines. He touched all in this city, one way or another.

We can never forget the fierce man who stalked the sideline, barking at officials, growling at players. He was, quite simply, the ultimate competitor. He had the quickest basketball mind you ever saw. Practice would be going full steam, 10 guys on the court going 110 mph. Nothing else would do. One of those 10 would be out of place, make some wrong move, and that big voice would instantly come booming through the arena and he would charge out into the middle of the action. The man never used a whistle. Didn’t need one. He had that voice.

From the Washington Post:

Recalling the ‘66 team 25 years later, Mr. Haskins told The Washington Post: “That wasn’t the first time I’d started five blacks, and I really didn’t think it was all that unusual. What made it so is that Rupp had an all-white team and didn’t make a secret of how he felt about it.”

Mr. Haskins got his nickname, “the Bear,” not only because he growled and grumped a lot but also because of his burly physique. The fact that he threw a player out of practice one day for trying a behind-the-back pass and once kicked a chair so hard he broke a toe only added to his ornery ursine image.

“Lord knows, I hated that man when I first started playing for him,” said Nevil “the Shadow” Shed, a native of the South Bronx who played on the national championship team. “He really got after us, but he never killed our spirit.”

From Nolan Richardson (ESPN):

“Everyone should remember and never forget that he broke a line that should have been broken years and years before,” said former Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson, who played for Haskins as a junior and senior at Texas Western in the early 1960s.

“Coach Haskins wanted to win and to do what he did at a young age, that’s the kind of man he was,” Richardson said of Haskins’ starting an all-African-American starting five. “It didn’t matter how tall you were, but can you play? Can you take coaching? He was that kind of guy. It’s going to be a big loss for his immediate family and all the guys that played for him and learned their coaching techniques from him. There’s no question that he had a tremendous influence on my life, as a person and as a coach. He will truly be missed by all of us.”

From Bob Knight (Dallas Morning News):

“There is no one who has ever coached that I respected and admired more than Don Haskins. He got more out of his teams and players than any coach who has ever coached college basketball.”

“I have had no friend that I enjoyed more than Don Haskins. There was never anyone like him before and there never will be anyone like him again.”

“Don Haskins was absolutely a pure golden original. He took a school that had no reason to be a basketball giant and made it in to one.”

Haskins’ memorial services will be Thursday in El Paso.  Billy Gillispie, Nolan Richardson and Tim Floyd are expected to speak.

Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC Big 12 correspondent and an occasional contributor. 

In the storied not so storied history of Nebraska basketball established in 1897, the program has never won an NCAA Tournament game.  However, Nebraska coach Doc Sadler is doing almost anything he can to get players that might get them the opportunity, and it appears his tactics might be pushing closer and closer to a recruiting violation.

What’s Up, Doc?

The latest case is Jorge Diaz, a 7 foot prospect that played most recently on the Puerto Rico Junior National team.  Diaz is still an oral commitment to Nebraska, but he has not been enrolled in school and did not sign a letter of intent.  Apparently he has been cleared by the NCAA Clearinghouse, but has not been able to enroll at Nebraska because he hasn’t met their enrollment standards.  The thing holding things up is a checkmark in his application to Nebraska about English not being his first language and he didn’t take a required test to verify he was proficient in English.  But as this gets more and more involved and school officials have started commenting on things, it gets about as close as it can to a recruiting violation. Check this timeline: 

August 29 – the Omaha World Herald Newspaper has been aggressively printing stories on the recruitment of this player.  They start out by mentioning that Diaz’s enrollment was held up because of his English proficiency and point out that “Husker coaches can’t comment on Diaz until he is enrolled.”  He had until Tuesday, 9/2 to enroll at Nebraska

September 3 – The next day after the deadline, the Omaha World Herald published another article updating the Diaz situation, stating that he is still not enrolled at Nebraska yet but printed that AD Tom Osborne and Coach Doc Sadler said that they are “still actively recruiting Diaz.” 

September 4 – the paper published even another article on the Diaz situation saying that Nebraska is re-recruiting Diaz since he was not able to enroll for this semester and the earliest he could enroll now at Nebraska would be after the first semester.  However, the paper quotes Coach Sadler that he is “aggressively” trying to re-recruit the center and is also quoted, ”Hopefully, Jorge will get what he has to get done to be admitted to school.”  Tom Shatel from the OWH also wrote an editorial published that day on the Diaz situation.   

The Lincoln Journal Star at the time had very few updates and articles on the Diaz situation, but it was mostly because they had their 360 degree football helmet on.  However the articles in the LJS didn’t have the same quotes that were published by the Omaha World Herald.  Couldn’t all of these public quotes about a recruit not yet enrolled in school potentially be a recruiting violation?

The status on Diaz—still an oral commit and might be able to enroll at Nebraska in December.  However, Kentucky, Arkansas and other schools are knocking on his door.  

This is the latest fiasco in Nebraska basketball recruiting, but let’s look at the rest of the situations that have occurred just in this year’s recruiting:

• Roburt Sallie—Roburt was originally recruited in 2006, but could not academically qualify to play for Nebraska, so instead went to juco and this year was re-recruited and committed to Nebraska.  However, little did anyone know that in 2006, Roburt enrolled at Nebraska and was in class for a week.  Unfortunately, Big 12 rule 6.2, which says that any student-athlete who enrolls at a conference institution, part or full time, must meet initial NCAA eligibility requirements. Sallie had not met those requirements when he was enrolled as a part-time student in August 2006.  Whoops.  Looks like someone dropped the ball there and Roburt was deemed ineligible to play for the Huskers.  Roburt is now with Memphis.  What a reward for John Calipari.  He seems to get all the luck
• Christopher Niemann–Niemann, a 6-11 center and the other original from the 2-man recruiting class with Roburt Sallie is scheduled to arrive from Germany. He has been declared ineligible by the NCAA for his freshman season but can participate in practices. He’ll have three years of eligibility remaining beginning in 2009-10.  Christopher participated on a German club team that had some professionals on its roster, even though he accepted no pay. The same thing happened last season to players from Iowa State and Washington State who were former teammates of Niemann.  Slingblade for some reason thought he was going to get to play right away this season, but the history of Niemann’s teammates from last year should have said something. 
• Teeng Akol—Teeng was supposed to make a visit to Nebraska and said, “I think I can help them.  I’m not familiar with everything, but I know they’re in the Big 12.”  He originally signed with South Florida over West Virginia, Oklahoma, Xavier, Southern Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.  Akol signed scholarship papers in June with South Florida. However, USF officials suddenly asked Akol to leave the school because of academic reasons, despite the fact he’d already been admitted and was taking summer classes.  So it sounded like the Huskers were going to get a steal.  However, Teeng visited Oklahoma State first and  never looked back.  He didn’t even make his visit to Nebraska.
• Eshaunte Jones—Eshaunte actually did get signed and sealed by Doc Sadler for this season.  However he comes with baggage as well.  He originally committed to Indiana in the fall of 2006. He instead went to Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia, where he played last season. He then signed with Oregon State but was released from his letter of intent when the school changed coaches.  Boy the paperwork that must have been done on that one.
• Brandon Ubel—Brandon, from Overland Park, KS seems like the only normal one in the bunch accepting a scholarship offer for 2009-10, but of course it is still an oral commitment until later this fall when early signing occurs.   

The loser in this whole situation—Paul Velander.  The walk-on that has played significant minutes for Nebraska the past two seasons was originally slated to get the scholarship vacated when Roburt Sallie found out he couldn’t come to Nebraska, but even as the Diaz fiasco continues, poor Paul still doesn’t get a scholarship. 

Yeah, we’re way behind on this story and everything else, but we finally extracted ourselves from under a wet blanket of indentured misery-tude and we can once again focus on what’s really important… like whether Jay Bilas will finally turn around and punch The Redundancy known as Digger Phelps in the schnozz…  or whether Hubert Davis’ high-pitched guffaw will cause rabid bats nesting in the arena rafters to attack the GameDay crew…  or whether Rece Davis’ hair will ever move… 

Still, in the three years that ESPN has been doing College Gameday, the on-air chemistry has steadily improved to the point where it has become must-watch tv for knowledgeable hoops fans throughout its Jan/Feb/March run.  We still can’t figure out why ESPN locks itself into games before the season even begins (unlike its CFB counterpart, whose venue changes on a week-to-week basis), but the majority of the time they pick a nationally relevant game (14 of the 31 games have involved two ranked teams, but last year involved a notable exception: last year’s S. Illinois – Creighton 48-44 stinker on Jan. 26 is one of a handful of games involving two unranked teams in the four-year history of GameDay), and some of the humorous bits are LOL-worthy (see Tebow clip below). 

Irrespective of all that jazz, ESPN released its schedule of 2009 sites recently, and it’s apparent that ESPN is looking to party in college towns aplenty this year – missing are some of the lamer venues such as Syracuse and Durham in favor of more traditionally collegiate beer and babes locales. 

January 17- Chapel Hill, NC (Miami-North Carolina)
January 24- South Bend, IN (UConn-Notre Dame)
January 31- Knoxville, TN. (Florida-Tennessee)
February 7- Spokane, WA (Memphis-Gonzaga)
February 14- Madison, WI (Ohio State-Wisconsin)
February 21- Austin, TX (Oklahoma-Texas)
February 28- Berkeley, CA (UCLA-California)
March 7- Morgantown, WV (Louisville-West Virginia)

Some quick thoughts -

Best Game.  We love the UConn-Notre Dame matchup in South Bend.  UConn should be close to all the way “back” this season, and Mike Brey will have a top 10 team possibly riding a near-50 game homecourt winning streak in South Bend on that night.  Plus we get to see Digger in his ridiculous green tie and marker ensemble.  This night has fun written all over it.  Our runner-up game to watch would be Memphis-Gonzaga in Spokane, a rematch of a fairly entertaining game from last January. 

Likely Stinker.  Nobody wants to watch Ohio St. and Wisconsin play bruiserball in Madison on Valentine’s Day, that goes without saying (coincidence?  we think not).  But the Miami-UNC game on Jan. 17 also has us shaking our heads a little.  If you’re going to show us the prohibitive favorites on GameDay, at least give us the courtesy of matching the Heels up with someone who can challenge them…  Miami?  Hmph – this has 30 point blowout written all over it, and Miami is a Top 25 team!

Who Knows Game.  The Feb. 28 game between UCLA and Mike Montgomery’s newly acquired California team would have been a blockbuster had Ryan Anderson stuck around for his junior season in Berkeley.  But we’re still intrigued to see what Cal can do in a “big” game like this one, exactly the kind of game that Monty built his rep on down at the Farm in the 90s. 

Missing Powers.  No Duke this year, which we really can’t believe since the Devils will be a top 5 team.  There’s also no sign of Bill Self’s national champion Kansas Jayhawks - instead we get a Big 12 matchup in Austin between Oklahoma and Texas.  For the first year in GameDay history, Kentucky will also not be involved in a game this season.   

Cult of Personalities.  GameDay loves to show certain coaches nearly every year.  We mentioned Roy Williams’ UNC squad, who will be making its fifth appearance.  Rick Pitino’s Louisville Cardinals will also be making their fifth appearance, as will Rick Barnes’ Texas Longhorns.  As a brief sidenote speaking of personalities, the Mar. 7 game between Pitino and Bob Huggins could be exceptional.  Louisville should be absolutely loaded next season, and we only have doubts about WVU from their loss of the acrobatic Joe Alexander, but Huggins will have his team sky high for this one anyway.

The Tim Tebow GameDay Clip:

Ok, so we’ve gotten some really good responses the past few weeks from our initial outreach for correspondents from each of the 31 conferences.  We’re still a solid month out from Midnight Madness, though, and we have multiple tasty slots still available.  So come on people, help us take America back as an RTC correspondent! 

Here is a list of the conferences still available.  Hit us up at rushthecourtATyahooDOTcom if you’re interested (and we understand if nobody in America wants to write about the Big 10 – really, we do).

• America East
• Big South
• Big 10
• Big West
• Conference USA
• Horizon
• Ivy
• MAC
• MEAC
• Mountain West
• OVC
• Patriot
• Southland
• Summit
• Sun Belt
• SWAC
• WCC

Become an RTC correspondent – we’ll pay you in timely, well-intentioned platitudes!