Rush The Court

After my trip to Chapel Hill last weekend where rtmsf handled all of the duties for Boom Goes the Dynamite while I mingled with ESPN personalities and college basketball stars, I will be in charge of today’s edition while rtmsf does relationship stuff with his significant other. Pretty weak if you ask me. . .

11:00 AM: Although we are a men’s college basketball site, we feel that it’s appropriate to mention the passing of Kay Yow, the former NC State coach, to breast cancer (or more precisely complications related to breast cancer). We can’t really do justice to her impact on the women’s game so it’s probably better just to refer you to a chronology of her life.

11:10 AM: The Notre Dame GameDay crowd looks a lot larger than what I saw last weekend at UNC. I am not sure if it is just a bunch of camera tricks by the GameDay crew, but they definitely have more signs. It may be that UConn is much, much better than Miami was last week or that the UNC crowd may be a bit jaded, but the Chapel Hill crowd was not as into the GameDay experience as I expected them to be.

11:45 AM: Digger Phelps has been doing a good job of working the crowd, which he also did last week at Chapel Hill (even off camera), taking the homer pick of Luke Harangody as his choice of tough player after the other analysts picked Blake Griffin, Tyler Hansbrough, and Stephen Curry to boos. As expected the crowd went wild with Digger’s pick. A little later in the show, the crowd gave the stereotypical college crowd response to a Duke segment by chanting “overrated”. Not surprisingly, the analysts all defend Duke. Appropriately enough, Bobby Knight calls out the Notre Dame students by questioning their education. It looks like he is getting more comfortable with his role on ESPN.

11:50 AM: Another awful half-court shot. Where does ESPN find these guys? He deserved to be embarrassed like that on national TV for popping his collar. Someone should tell him that hasn’t been cool since. . .actually it has never been cool. Congrats on the airball.

Noon: Wow. All of the GameDay guys except Knight picked LSU to beat #13 Xavier. I guess it’s in Baton Rouge, but Xavier is definitely the better team. Least surprising pick of the day: Digger picks Notre Dame. Knight abstains from picking a team.

12:15 PM: Duke is off to a good start against Maryland after Jon Scheyer opens the game with two 3s. What’s going on with Brian Zoubek? He actually looks like a legitimate center today. I have seen him play several times this year and he certainly has improved from last year, but he has never played like this. If he can do this even for spurts this year, Duke might have a legitimate chance to win the title this year instead of their usual great regular season and flop in March.

12:20 PM: Villanova is tied at 10 with USF 6 minutes into the game. Dante Cunningham has 8 of Villanova’s 10 points. I don’t have much else to say about this game since I don’t have ESPN360 available since I am out of town. If anybody has this game on TV, let me know if anything interesting happens.

1:00 PM: Duke goes into halftime with a 25-point lead despite having one of the ugliest possessions I have ever seen to end the half. Do you remember when the Duke-Maryland games used to be the best games of the season? I still remember trying to figure out where I could go to watch the game on TV my freshman year of college. (My school didn’t believe in providing cable to dorm rooms.) Meanwhile in Tampa, Villanova is struggling against USF (tied at 32 at halftime).

Be back with more after halftime.

1:10 PM: Nice. Len Elmore with a foreclosure joke after ESPN ran a segment about how Krzyzewski-ville residents responded to Greivis Vasquez‘s comments about owning Cameron Indoor.

1:30 PM: Duke is up by 44! I wish they would just turn the cameras to focus on Gary Williams. That would be more interesting than this massacre. I’m looking forward to his post-game handshake with Coach K. I’ll be back when there is something worth commenting on.

1:50 PM: It looks like we found something worth commenting on. Villanova is only up by 1 on USF with 11:39 left. I would have found this earlier, but Brighthouse Networks is having some problems with it programming guide. Almost makes me miss Comcast.

1:55 PM: Villanova is up by 6 points with 5:28 left. Dominique Jones, USF’s leading scorer, just fouled out of the game. Looking at the box score since I just found out where this game was on TV it looks like both teams have struggled at the line.

2:00 PM: Going into the time out, USF has the ball down by 5 with 3:40 left. The Bulls have been in position to pull off a couple of upsets this year, but have come up short both times (5-point loss to Syracuse and 3-point loss at West Virginia). What’s going on with Scottie Reynolds today? 5 points and 6 assists? Jay Wright needs Reynolds to step up in the last 3:40.

2:10 PM: The lead was down to 2 with 1:34 left before Dwayne Anderson made a driving lay-up and rebounded his FT miss on the “and 1”. If Villanova had lost (likely if Augustus Gilchrist hadn’t went 1 for 4 down the stretch from the FT line) and Notre Dame loses (not a stretch since they are playing #3 UConn), the Big East could be “down” to 6 teams in the top 25. People have been talking about the good Big East teams beating up on each other, but I don’t think anybody would consider USF a good team. Is it possible that there are really only 2 great Big East teams (Pittsburgh and UConn), one team that is coming around (Louisville) and a bunch of other inconsistent good teams (Syracuse, Georgetown, Marquette, Notre Dame, and Villanova). I still have to give Villanova some credit for pulling out a road win.

2:30 PM: Some early updates on the 2 PM games: Marquette is up by 7 against DePaul midway through the first half. Butler is up 7 against UW-Milwaukee at the same point in the game. I have the Marquette game, but I don’t have the Butler game so feel free to pass along updates.

3:00 PM: Marquette and Butler are both up big at half. Dominic James is having a ridiculous first half with 9 assists going into the half. I’ll throw another update when something interesting happens.

3:20 PM: DePaul has cut the lead to 8 with 14:17 left after coming out of the half on an 11-5 run. We’ll probably be following this game as Butler is pulling away from UW-Milwaukee 45-21 right now.

3:30 PM: A couple of other interesting games to keep your eyes on: BC is up 50-47 on NC State with 11:30 left after being up by 20 a few minutes ago (according to the TV analysts) and NJIT is down 54-41 with 3:17 left against powerhouse Longwood (guess that’s the end of their winning streak). Arkansas really needs to think about moving to the Big 12. They lost 73-51 to Auburn today dropping them to 0-4 in the SEC.

3:45 PM: BC is starting to pull away from NC State (up by 7 with 5 minutes left). Marquette and Kansas also appear to have their games under control. We’ll update you if anything changes in these games.

4:15 PM: We’ll be focusing on Memphis-Tennessee (CBS), Wisconsin-Illinois (ESPN), and Baylor-Oklahoma (ESPNU) for this set of games, but if anything interesting happens outside of that let us know and we’ll flip over to those games (assuming we get that channel).

4:20 PM: The New York Times has an interesting article on Brandon Jennings today. Apparently Brandon isn’t too happy in Italy. Look out for our take on this some time next week (potentially the first “Brandon Jennings Watch” update that we promised a while back).

4:30 PM: Antonio Anderson just hit a big 3 at the buzzer to cut Tennessee’s lead to 1 going into half. Poor defense by the Volunteers letting him get a clean (if long) look in that situation.

4:35 PM: Oklahoma with an 11 point lead with 8:45 left in the first half. Willie Warren is off to a big start with 13 points and hasn’t missed a shot yet. Washington is hanging in there with UCLA so far (24-21 with 7:45 left in the first half). Illinois has a 5 point lead over Wisconsin with about 7 minutes left in the first half. Somebody needs to find out if Virginia’s team has gotten out of bed yet because they are down 20-5 against FSU.

4:40 PM: CBS is reporting that Kentucky’s Ramon Harris collapsed at halftime of their game at Alabama. We’ll update you when we get some more information. In other news from that game, Jodie Meeks has 22 of Kentucky’s 40 points.

5:00 PM: Oklahoma is destroying Baylor right now (58-31 at half).  Blake Griffin has a double-double at half (14 points and 11 rebounds) and Willie Warren still hasn’t missed a shot today. This will drop Baylor to 1-18 in their last 19 games against ranked teams.

Update on Ramon Harris: He was taken to a local hospital for evaluation. Apparently he was injured back in December in a collision with teammate Michael Porter. We hope that this is merely a dehydration issue and isn’t related to the prior incident.

5:15 PM: Good games in Knoxville (Memphis up by 1 with 10 minutes left with Antonio Anderson going to the line for 3 FTs) and Seattle (UCLA up by 1 at halftime). We suggest you flip to either of these games preferably CBS since that game is closer to the finish.

5:45 PM: Interesting finish in Knoxville with neither team scoring in the final 2:34 (except for a FT by Tyreke Evans with 1.9 seconds left when the Vols had to foul). Some of it was awful shooting but there was also some good defense with the highlight being a huge block by J.P. Prince on Robert Dozier with 2:09 left with Memphis up 53-52. The Vols had a decent look off a length-of-the-court pass with 1.1 seconds left, but were off to the left. Evans led the Tigers with 17 points (14 in the 2nd half), but he continues to be a great talent who does not seem to fulfill his potential. It will be interesting to see what his draft stock is like in June compared to Brandon Jennings. Both guys have struggled, but have done so in very different environments.

6:05 PM: Illinois hangs on for the win against Wisconsin despite a nice comeback from the Badgers who were down by 15 earlier in the 2nd half. Interestingly, I don’t see the Illini’s newest scholarship player in the box score.

6:10 PM: Washington has opened up a 13-point lead on UCLA with a little over 90 seconds left. We told you yesterday that Ben Howland and the Bruins should be cautious of their trip to Seattle. Josh Shipp has had a big game for the Bruins, but none of his teammates decided to show up today. Interesting stat from this game: The Huskies are 31/37 from the FT line while the Bruins are only 8/13.

6:30 PM: Big win for Washington. It seems like the national media hasn’t been paying attention to the Huskies but with this win they have staked their claim as contenders for the Pac-10 title. Isaiah Thomas led the Huskies with 24 points and had some good support (4 other guys in double figures). Shipp was the leading scorer in the game with 25 points, but Howland didn’t get much out of the rest of his team. It looks like the Pac-10 title is up in the air this year.

I’ll be back in about an hour once the UConn-Notre Dame game gets underway.

7:45 PM: And I’m back. . .Nice set of pics from ESPN on Harangody who is having a big game tonight on Hasheem Thabeet. You may remember that Thabeet wasn’t that impressed with Harangody. And just as I saw that Harangody gets dunked on. . .again. Seriously, the man is becoming the college basketball version of Shawn Bradley.

7:50 PM: How is that for some promotion? Dick Vitale is hyping up Mike & Mike, which he appears on every Monday, and wants to debate the Big East versus the ACC. Oh yeah, the game. . .UConn is up 30-29 at half.

7:55 PM: Erin Andrews with her hair tied back today. I’m guessing this will lead to about 100 blog posts and 10,000 message board comments debating which way people like her hair.

8:30 PM: Highly entertaining 2nd half so far in South Bend. After UConn got the lead up to 10 and threatened to run away from the Irish, Notre Dame has come back to cut it to 4 despite a poor shooting performance from Kyle McAlarney.

8:40 PM: UConn has opened up a double-digit lead off an 8-0 run. Jeff Adrien (9 points and 15 rebounds) and Jerome Dyson (14 points and 9 rebounds) are both having huge games for Jim Calhoun and helping to off-set Harangody’s beatdown (24 points and 13 rebounds) of Thabeet.

9:05 PM: I think UConn has made a legitimate claim to be #1 in the country. A nice balanced effort by the Huskies were more than enough to beat Luke Harangody who must feel like Josh Shipp today. I’m not sure what happened to UConn against Georgetown at the end of December, but the Huskies are looking like potential NCAA champs right now.

9:45 PM: Xavier and Texas have opened up healthy margins in the 2nd half. If those games get close, I’ll update you, but if they maintain those margins, I’ll be shutting down for the day.

10:15 PM: Xavier was able to overcome a huge game from Marcus Thornton (30 points) with big games from Derrick Brown (22 points and 9 rebounds) and B.J. Raymond (21 points). It looks like Bobby Knight and I are the only ones who know something about basketball. . .

Meanwhile in Austin, Damion James led the Longhorns to a 67-58 victory over Texas A&M with 28 points and 7 rebounds. And with that we are done until tomorrow.