John Pelphrey’s doing fine, thanks, and he appreciates your asking. The firing from Arkansas still stings a little, but he’s back at Florida as an assistant under Billy Donovan, a position he’s held before to considerable acclaim. While he seems happy to be back in a familiar place doing a job he loves, being a head coach again at a “network conference” school is something he won’t (and shouldn’t) allow to fall off his radar. We like following the career arcs of coaches in situations similar to the one Pelphrey’s in right now, to see how and where they bounce back.
Last week, SI.com’s Luke Winn stepped up with yet another tour de force, this time an in-depth examination of the “commitment behaviors” of players listed as top-100 recruits in the recruiting rankings. Winn and his staff put some serious time into this investigation, so we don’t want to give away all of his findings, but his data revealed — and this is just one interesting factoid among many in the article — that kids who transferred high schools were almost twice as likely to eventually back out of a college commitment. Fascinating stuff here in the midst of these days of extreme college basketball “fickleness,” as Winn describes it.
It’s only a matter of time until those rudimentary free markets and the walls at, say, People’s Basketball Collective #17 are awash with Duke merchandise and photos of the inestimable Mike Krzyzewski, if they aren’t already. We hope they’ve packed their guidebooks and downloaded those vocal translator apps, because the Blue Devils are off to China next weekend with a little side jaunt to Dubai thrown in there, too. Not only will the 13-day trip help Coach K see how his five new incoming frosh fit in with his returning charges, but, as Krzyzewski says, it also helps forward their “initiative to become a global entity.” Wait, you mean…they weren’t one?
Last month, Notre Dame incoming freshman Eric Katenda was in Washington DC playing a pick-up game. He went up for a rebound, came down, and an opposing player went for the ball, but hit Katenda in the left eye…severing his optic nerve. While there’s plenty of research out there aimed at regenerating optic nerve tissue after it’s been cut, medical science isn’t far enough along right now to help Katenda regain his vision in that eye, so his college basketball career is already in question and he hasn’t even fully enrolled yet. We hate hearing things like this and we can’t imagine the disappointment Eric is feeling, but we were happy to read that Notre Dame still plans to honor the young man’s scholarship, whatever happens.
Herb Magee has amassed 922 wins in his coaching career, ALL at Philadelphia University, and as of 48 hours ago he assumed his rightful place in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. We’re sure you’ve already heard of Coach Magee and his coaching excellence, and how he’s known as The Shot Doctor. But that’s not just because he’s good at helping others with their form from distance. In his day, Magee could — actually, he still can — make it rain. He scored 2,235 points in his career (that’s 24.0 PPG) and was known as Baby Jesus, a nickname you don’t earn in Philly unless you deserve it. If he’d have had the three-point line, his numbers would have been even more impressive. The Philadelphia Inquirer did a great piece on Magee and his shooting prowess a day ahead of his HOF induction, and we recommend it highly. We love how Magee’s friends rib him about how his #4 jersey that hangs in the gym’s rafters isn’t so much his jersey number as it is his career assist total. Outstanding.
If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.
General News
Jon Hood scheduled for surgery: “Just a quick note on the recovery process of Jon Hood, who tore his ACL a couple of weeks ago and will most likely miss the season. Hood was on Twitter commiserating with North Carolina guard Leslie McDonald, who suffered the same injury recently, when he noted that he will be undergoing knee surgery on August 12th.” (Kentucky Sports Radio)
McDonald Has Knee Surgery: An update on Leslie McDonald, who underwent durgery on Wednesday morning. (Tar Heel Fan)
Coach Cal Makes Twitter Waves: “During an appearance on a Memphis program this morning, Coach Cal talked about college athletics and his ideas to change it and all of the other good nonsense that usually comes with those appearances. During the course of it, he touched on restrictions regarding phone calls and issued a line that launched a blog post at CBS and a million (that’s an estimate) re-Tweets about his ”shot” at Coach K.” (Kentucky Sports Radio)
DePaul was dealt a big blow yesterday when incoming freshman Shane Larkin announced that he would not be going to DePaul this fall due to an undisclosed medical condition. According to Shane’s father (baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin) Shane has a medical condition that requires him to be closer to his home (presumably for family support because we cannot think of a single medical treatment that you can get in Orlando that would be considered significantly better than what you can get in Chicago). We wish Shane a speedy recovery from whatever he is going through and hope to see him on the court someday soon.
The brackets for the Maui Invitational were announced yesterday and unlike the other early season tournaments we mentioned in yesterday’s Morning 5 this one is stacked. In fact, outside of the few match-ups that we mentioned yesterday the opening round match-ups where Belmont faces Duke and then Memphis is much more intriguing that most of the match-ups we saw in the other early season tournaments including potential championship round match-ups. As for the actual games in Maui, let’s just say that it deserves its own post.
West Virginia and Illinois will be staging one of the more unusual college basketball games that we can remember later this month when they play at Aviano Air Force Base in Italy on August 17 as well as running youth camps for children of military members stationed there. Both teams were going to be in Italy on separate tours, but were not going to meet in accordance with NCAA rules, which prohibit teams from playing against each other during this period. Fortunately they were granted a waiver by the NCAA yesterday and will be allowed to play against each other and run camps for the military members and their families. [Ed. Note: When you count the decision to let Hayden Humes transfer without penalty that makes two reasonable decisions by the NCAA in two days, which is the most certain sign of the apocalypse that we can remember.]
USA Basketball announced its roster for the World University Games National cutting its group of 14 finalists to a team of 12. Interestingly, the last two players cut–West Virginia’s Aaric Murray and Connecticut‘s Shabazz Napier–were relatively big names while at least two of the players that made the team–Yale‘s Greg Mangano and UC-Santa Barbara‘s Orlando Johnson–are less well-known to the casual college basketball fan. Having said that, we are excited to see what Mangano and Johnson can do playing with a group of players from much bigger programs on daily basis. Given the limitations (top college players wanting to stay home) it seems like Team USA picked a pretty solid group even if they do lack a little on the inside.
Former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl was offered the position of head coach of the NBDL Texas Legends yesterday with a reported salary of $500,000. While that figure is a long way away from the close to $2 million per year that Pearl was getting at Tennessee it is a pretty competitive offer for a disgraced coach who would be coaching in a league that nobody ever watches. Of course, for Pearl this would merely be a stepping stone to a NBA job or possibly another college job down the road. We doubt that Pearl would get a college job that he would be interested in even after the imminent show-cause penalty expires, but the possibility of Pearl coaching a team run by Mark Cuban is something that we could definitely see happening.
Earlier today, John Calipari was reported to have made the following comment on a Memphis radio show:
Police each other, give it to league commissioners and schools to deal with. If it goes beyond that, there’s a board there that’s ready to deal with it. (…) You’ve got coaches being fired over phone calls and text messages. Some. Other guys can make phone calls and it’s not that big a deal.
Now, we admit we didn’t hear the interview, let alone the segment that produced the above quote. We heard it first in the audio that’s embedded in the original story at CBS’ college basketball blog. We can’t tell you what the interviewer asked Calipari that prompted that answer. The audio also has the rest of Calipari’s response (there’s a little bit more after the quoted section), which is more on how he’d change how college basketball is policed. Taken by itself, the quote above could easily be construed as a little jab at Mike Krzyzewski, given the alleged minor violation Coach K may have committed during the July recruiting period wherein he supposedly communicated with a recruit and shouldn’t have. That’s a typical reaction, since that incident is fresh in the collective hoophead mind.
Even If It Was a Jab, What's More Important Is...Was What He Said True?
If you listen to the rest of the audio, however, in the full context it sounds like Calipari is referring to a larger problem in the profession — wouldn’t it be a safe assumption that if the world knows about Krzyzewski’s possible mistake that John Calipari knows other coaches who have done the same thing but haven’t been fired for it? — as opposed to intentionally getting in a dig against one guy. At worst, if it’s a dig, it’s an unintentional one. We’re not saying Calipari or any coach is above such a thing, but frankly it just doesn’t sound like he’s trying to zing one person when you listen to the available audio.
If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.
General News
2011-12 Florida Basketball Non-Conference Schedule Includes Ohio State, Arizona, Syracuse: “Billy Donovan’s Florida basketball team won’t be dining on the typical buffet of cupcakes in the 2011-12 non-conference schedule. Instead, these Gators will follow up their Elite Eight run in the 2011 NCAA Tournament by playing one of the toughest non-conference schedules in college basketball this coming season.” (Alligator Army)
St. John’s and Arizona to square off in Coaches vs. Cancer Classic: “The 2K Sports Classic revealed Wednesday that the Arizona Wildcats will face the St. John’s Red Storm in the second semifinal game of the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament on Nov. 17 at Madison Square Garden in New York.” (Arizona Desert Swarm)
2011 Puerto Rico Tip-Off Bracket Released: “We’ve known the field for the Puerto Rico Tip-Off – Maryland basketball’s preseason tournament this year – for months now, but we had no idea who the Terrapins were going to play. The full bracket was released earlier this morning, and that question has been answered: the Terps will play Alabama in the first round on November 17 at 5:00pm.” (Testudo Times)
Wichita State to play Colorado in Puerto Rico Tip-Off: “The brackets have been released, and Wichita State opens the tournament against former assistant coach, Tad Boyle and his Colorado Buffaloes at 6:30 Central, on November 17th.” (Shocker Hoops)
Garrett Green takes final visit to Wichita State: “The recruitment process is coming to a close for Garrett Green, who announced he would leave Louisiana State to play his final season elsewhere on July 18. In the 16 days since that announcement it’s been a whirlwind for Green, who is now on his fourth visit in a little over two weeks. The 6-foot-11 center, who averaged 6.3 points and 5.1 rebounds in 18 minutes per game last year at LSU, confirmed this morning via Twitter that his current trip to Wichita State will be his final visit.” (Inside the Hall)
Rick Pitino press conference notes: Take-home points from Pitino’s 40-minute press conference. (Card Chronicle)
The match-ups for several early season tournaments were released yesterday. Looking through the match-ups we have to say we are kind of underwhelmed. By far the best bracket released yesterday was from the 2K Sports Classic, which features Texas A&M against Mississippi State and St. John’s against Arizona. With four intriguing teams we would be interested in all four of the games played there including the consolation game. Outside of that the only interesting match-ups are the opening round match-up between Iona and Purdue in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off and a potential match-up between Vanderbilt and Texas in the Legends Classic. Of course, our perception of what is deemed a quality early season tournament might be skewed by the upcoming Maui Invitational.
On Tuesday we pointed out how weak Connecticut‘s non-conference schedule was. We won’t be doing the same with Florida‘s non-conference schedule where they are scheduled to play against six teams that made the NCAA Tournament last season. The most daunting games are trips to Ohio State and Syracuse (both of which should be ranked in the top 5 in the preseason rankings). Outside of that the Gators will play against Arizona, Florida State, and UAB in Gainesville and a neutral site game against Texas A&M. That has to be one of the most brutal non-conference schedules in the country and if Billy Donovan has any questions about his team they should be answered relatively early in the year.
Yesterday there was a lot of buzz on Twitter about an article in The Wall Street Journal about Jerron Love, a 15-year old basketball player, and his father Jerry, who runs his own recruiting site. The basic premise of the article is that Jerron is a “phenom” who some are calling the country’s top eighth-grade basketball player. The catch? The person calling him that is his father. We didn’t have a chance to follow every comment on Twitter about this story, but it seemed like everybody thought the entire story was ridiculous (here’s our tweet about it). The more amusing thing was how they were interviewing people who were raving about Jerron based on the ranking and did not even realize that it was his father doing the ranking.
For years sports fans have made jokes about Boise State‘s blue football field. Now, thanks to Northwestern, we may have the college basketball version. The school is designing the court at Welsh-Ryan Arena and has offered it fans (and curious onlookers) four options from which they can reportedly choose the new court. We aren’t sure how much impact the fan voting (done here), but we would like to direct your attention to option 3. We are hoping that option 3 is a joke or we might have to make another post similar to the one we did for Oregon‘s court.
The NCAA granted Toledo transfer Hayden Humes a waiver to play next season at the University of Illinois-Chicago after Toledo’s program lost three scholarships due to low APR scores. As a freshman Humes averaged 5.7 PPG and 5.1 RPG and he will be expected to contribute to a team that finished last in the Horizon League (7-24 overall, 2-16 in conference) and graduated its top three rebounders from last season. While Toledo will miss his production on the court they might miss his 3.43 GPA as a freshman even more as it may have been more helpful to the program in the long run.
With the completion of the NBA Draft and the annual coaching and transfer carousels nearing their ends, RTC is rolling out a new series, RTC Summer Updates, to give you a crash course on each Division I conference during the summer months. Our latest update comes courtesy of our Atlantic 10 correspondent, Joe Dzuback. You can read more of his in-depth writing and analysis at Villanova By The Numbers.
Reader’s Take I
Summer Storylines
Bobinski to Chair NCAA Selection Committee: While the conference again sent seven teams, half of its membership, to the postseason — three to the NCAA, one to the NIT and three to the CBI, the Final Four runs by Butler (Horizon League) and Virginia Commonwealth (Colonial Athletic Association) overshadowed a showing, Xavier’s loss to Marquette excepted, that exceeded 2010’s NCAA results. The NCAA announced that Xavier Athletic Director Mike Bobinski will succeed Connecticut’s Jeff Hathaway as Chairman of the 2012 NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Bobinski just completed his third year of a five-year term on the Selection Committee. While the Atlantic 10 has been the most successful non-BCS conference in placing teams in the tournament field (with 20 NCAA bids allotted to six teams since 2004), its representatives have tended to draw the short straw when it comes to seeding, and Bobinski will likely lobby hard for that cause.
The Coaching Carousel: The conference had two coaching vacancies during the early phase of the coaching carousel. If the 2010 offseason saw coaching turnovers due to firings, the 2011 offseason saw suitors come to call on the Atlantic 10 coaching fraternity. Tennessee, having fired Bruce Pearl on March 21, made its first call to Xavier to talk with Chris Mack. Mack reportedly turned aside an offer of $2 million per year to coach the Volunteers in favor of staying in Cincinnati with the Musketeers. Richmond’s Chris Mooney signed a 10-year contract extension, his second extension in two years, ending Georgia Tech’s courtship. Mooney’s decision triggered a spate of articles (see “Old coaching assumptions are fading” by Dana O’Neil for example) about non-BCS coaches who pass on BCS offers to stay with their programs. The Yellow Jackets turned their attention to Dayton’s Brian Gregory, who succumbed to the lure of the BCS and packed his bags for Atlanta on March 28. Dayton conducted a six-day search and hired Archie Miller, brother of former Xavier head man Sean Miller, away from Arizona to succeed Gregory. In late April, George Washington’s Athletic Director, Patrick Nero, fired 10-year veteran Karl Hobbs. Nero, who succeeded retiring AD Jack Kvancz on June 30, was hired on April 20, and wasted no time in turning over the men’s basketball staff. Nero reached into his old stomping grounds, the American East Conference, and hired the league’s premier head basketball coach, MikeLonergan of Vermont, on May 6 to replace Hobbs. The resignation of Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis on May 24 (DeChellis took over the Navy program) triggered a few tense days among the Duquesne faithful as coach Ron Everhart landed an interview for the Happy Valley position. The Dukes exhaled on June 1 when Everhart withdrew his name from consideration in favor of staying with the Pittsburgh school next season.
Media Coverage: The Atlantic 10 and ESPN renewed their deal to have eight games (selected by ESPN) televised on either ESPN or ESPN2 in each of the next two seasons. The ESPN networks are committed to broadcasting the Women’s Championship and up to 32 appearances in each of the next two seasons.
If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.
General News
Austin Hatch Makes Slow Progress: An update on Hatch and his family. (UM Hoops)
Immediate help on the way? 2011 PF Jaylen Bond commits to UT: “Much has been made of the lack of depth in Texas Basketball’s 2011 – 2012 frontcourt. The Horns return seniors Alexis Wangmene and Clint Chapman as their only experienced post players. Obviously, Texas needed some help in the frontcourt, and they might have gotten it this evening with the commitment of 2011 Plymouth Meeting, PA PF Jaylen Bond.” (Burnt Orange Nation)
Rotnei Clarke will not be a Sooner after all: “Clarke has instead chosen Brad Stevens and the Butler Bulldogs as the destination for his final year of eligibility. Clarke will have to sit out the upcoming season due to NCAA transfer rules. It was believed that Clarke was on the verge of choosing OU, however when news broke last week regarding the NCAA/Tiny Gallon issue that caused enough uncertainty on Clarke’s part to go another way.” (Crimson adn Cream Machine)
The Dominican Republic’s national basketball team arrived in Kentucky yesterday before they start their training camp on Sunday. The team from the Dominican Republic is training in Lexington per request of their coach, John Calipari. While most of the college basketball world’s interest in the Kentucky Legends team that is being assembled and will feature many recent NBA stars who recently played for the Wildcats, we are more interested in the Dominican Republic team that has Al Horford (Florida) and Edgar Sosa (Louisville) on it staying in Lexington for at least 2 weeks (the game against the UK Legends is on August 15th) with the, um, crazed Wildcat fans around them. If ESPN or any network decided to follow this team while they were in Lexington we would definitely tune in.
UNLV‘s hiring of Dave Rice was widely praised as a sign that the program was headed in the right direction, but don’t count Runnin’ Rebel legend Larry Johnson in that group. The 1991 National Player of the Year has come out recently and been very critical of the program and the direction it has taken under an administration that is headed by Jim Livengood, who came from Arizona, which has led Johnson to say, “It’s not UNLV Runnin’ Rebels no more, it’s UNLV Wildcats right now.” Johnson concedes that former coach Lon Kruger had made some attempts to bring some of the former UNLV players back into the program. When Kruger left Johnson put his name in for consideration, but was reportedly not even contacted by the current administration. While Johnson does not have any coaching experience that we are aware of and his name probably doesn’t carry a lot of weight with players who are entering college or younger, it is pretty clear that the UNLV administration made a mistake here by not even reaching out to Johnson even if it was only for show. Given UNLV’s recent efforts to land local recruits having someone of Johnson’s reputation on their side would be a major pull even if it was only the AAU and high school coaches who knew how good “Grandmama” used to be.
After arriving at Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon talked openly about installing a 4-guard offense. That task and creation of a rotation to make the feasible became harder earlier this week when rising sophomore Haukur Palsson announced that he was heading back to Europe to play professionally. Normally the loss of a player who averaged 2.8 points and 2.1 rebounds per game would be relatively minor, but with Palsson’s ability to play inside and outside he would have been an ideal player to use in the rotation as a guard who could also battle underneath for rebounds. With Palsson gone the Terrapins only have eight scholarship players and fitting them into an unconventional offense could be a big challenge for the new head coach.
When we first saw the headline mentioning that Jabari Parker, one of the stars of the class of 2013, was seriously considering BYU we brushed it off as just more ridiculous Internet speculation until we remembered that Parker is a member of the LDS Church. While BYU has had its share of star players they very rarely land a major recruit (Danny Ainge is the only even close to Parker’s level that I can think of). The hype on Parker is already getting to ridiculous levels (Mike Krzyzewski has compared him to Kobe Bryant and Grant Hill and Seth Davis has already written a feature story on him for Sports Illustrated), but don’t think that just because Parker is a member of the LDS Church he will be a guaranteed commit to BYU. Our older members will remember that when 1997 Sporting News National Player of the Year Chris Burgess turned down BYU then head coach Roger Reid told him that he was letting “the other 9 million members of the LDS Church down” (before he let millions of Duke fans down with his play during his two years there).
When former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl was fired in March there was plenty of speculation about where he would head next. While the logical choice seemed like a TV studio or announcing booth, it looks like Pearl wants to get back into coaching. With a NCAA show-cause penalty imminent Pearl would have to head to the NBA (former Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson’s hiring is a pretty clear indication that the NBA doesn’t care about breaking NCAA rules). It appears that the Texas Legends, the NBDL franchise for the Dallas Mavericks, are interested in hiring Pearl as a head coach. Pearl will meet with the team on Thursday in Dallas and reportedly has the job locked up if he wants it. Even though we will miss Pearl’s antics and his excellent coaching we have a feeling that this may be a sign that we won’t be seeing Pearl around college basketball any time soon.
With the completion of the NBA Draft and the annual coaching and transfer carousels nearing their ends, RTC is rolling out a new series, RTC Summer Updates, to give you a crash course on each Division I conference during the summer months. Our latest update comes courtesy of our Mountain West correspondent, Andrew Murawa.
Reader’s Take I
Summer Storylines
A New Look League: In the aftermath of last summer’s conference shake-ups, the Mountain West is a slimmer volume this year than last, and will look even different next year. Last year’s regular season champion, BYU, is off to pursue football independence, with membership in the West Coast Conference for basketball and some other sports a byproduct of that decision. Secondly, Utah jumped at the opportunity to become a member of the new Pac-12 conference. In the 12 years in which the two Utah schools were a part of the MWC (okay, since its unveiling of their new logo in July, the league office wants the conference to be abbreviated as MW, rather than MWC, and we’ll try to do that from here on), they won a combined five outright regular season titles between them (BYU three, Utah two) and twice shared the regular season titles. However, the MW did not sit idly by and let its conference dissolve when the Utah schools left. It snapped up Boise State to give the Mountain West eight teams in the 2011-12 campaign, with Fresno State and Nevada due to join in 2012-13 just as TCU departs for the Big East. In the long run, the three losses are bigger than the three additions, but the newcomers are strong enough to keep the MW chugging along.
Coaching Shuffle: We knew heading into the offseason that there would be at least one new coach in the conference, as Wyoming pulled the trigger on firing Heath Schroyer during the middle of the conference season. In late March they announced the hiring of Larry Shyatt, an associate head coach at Florida, back for his second stint as the head man in Laramie. But when Lon Kruger announced a day later that he had accepted the head coaching job at Oklahoma, arguably the most attractive job in the conference opened up at UNLV. Ten days later, UNLV announced the hiring of Dave Rice, most recently the associate head coach to Dave Rose at BYU, but previously a player and assistant coach under Jerry Tarkanian in Vegas. With Rice’s brother, Grant Rice, the head coach at Las Vegas Bishop Gorman High – not coincidentally the high school of 2012 top ten recruit Shabazz Muhammad – the hiring opens further inroads for the Rebels with local recruits. To tie everything up in a nice little bundle, Schroyer was hired by Rice as one of his new assistants, along with former Rebel star Stacey Augmon and former SDSU assistant Justin Hutson.
Transfer Hotbed: Every year, the Mountain West seems to be the landing spot for some big transfers, guys who have struggled in their first stop in a BCS conference and who are ready to start over a rung down the ladder. UCLA as a feeder school for the conference is a well-worn path, having sent Chace Stanback to UNLV and Drew Gordon to New Mexico in recent years. This year, another former Bruin will be active in the MW, with forward Mike Moser joining Stanback in Las Vegas for the Rebels. No less than five other former-Pac-10 players will show up on MW rosters this season, with Drew Wiley (formerly of Oregon) joining Boise State, Demetrius Walker (formerly of Arizona State) joining New Mexico, and Xavier Thames (formerly of Washington State) joining San Diego State, all of whom will be eligible this season. Arizona’s Daniel Bejarano and USC’s Bryce Jones also announced transfers to Colorado State and UNLV, respectively, but neither will be eligible until the 2012-13 season. UNLV also welcomes former Marquette point Reggie Smith to compete with incumbent point guard Oscar Bellfield this season, while CSU inked former Minnesota center Colton Iverson, eligible in 2012-13. Then there’s the Aztecs, who signed Utah transfer J.J. O’Brien and St. John’s transfer Dwayne Polee. While O’Brien will sit out a year, Polee, who attended Los Angeles’ Westchester High, has applied for a hardship waiver, given that his mom is suffering from an undisclosed medical condition. While these waivers aren’t often granted, if it happens in this case, Polee could be a big boost for the Aztecs’ 2011-12 hopes.
Steve Fisher maxed out an experienced team in 2011, but will need former role players to step up this season. (Kent Horner/Getty Images)
