1. The Florida Gators beat Stetson on Monday night for head coach Billy Donovan’s 400th career victory. However, the Orlando Sentinel says Billy the kid has a new nickname — Billy the Forgotten. Despite being the youngest active Division I coach to reach 400 wins, Donovan’s milestone victory was overshadowed and overlooked. Donovan is ready to move past this achievement and just get back to work.  “I think as it relates to fanfare, attention or exposure or things like that I just feel like that’s probably for other people to talk about. I just have a job to do,” Donovan said. “I have respect for Tom [Izzo], certainly what [Mike] Krzyzewski’s done, [Jim] Calhoun, [Jim] Boeheim and those guys, but I think if you’re coaching good enough players, you’re going to eventually win at that level.” Donovan would sure like to get win #401 on Friday when the Gators take on #4 Syracuse. That one might mean a lot more than win #400.
2. The SEC honored Ole Miss forward Murphy Holloway as the SEC Player of the Week. Holloway led the Rebels to wins over TCU and the University of Miami this week. Holloway scored 20 points and four rebounds against TCU, and came back with 13 points and 17 rebounds against Miami. He averaged 16.5 points and 10.5 rebounds in this stretch. Florida’s freshman guard Bradley Beal took home SEC Freshman of the Week honors after he averaged 18.5 points and seven rebounds while leading the Gators to victories over Wright State and Jacksonville. Beal scored a team-high 22 points against Wright State. Congrats to both players for their outstanding performances.
3. Mississippi State played with their full line-up with the return of big men Renardo Sidney and Arnett Moultrie. Conditioning was again an issue as the Bulldogs ran away from North Texas. “I played them until they couldn’t play,” said head coach Rick Stansbury. “One of them was wanting to come out of the game and we just turned our heads and let him stay in the game. We gave up some points in that stretch but he (Sidney) needed that.” Moultrie finished with 20 points and nine rebounds in 30 minutes of action. Sidney continued to struggle as he only managed nine points and 3 rebounds in 20 minutes. Sidney will have to find ways to contribute without being a liability on both ends of the court because of his lack of conditioning. It doesn’t seem that Stansbury is ready to give up on Sidney just yet.
4. Kentucky coach John Calipari is critical of his team’s slow starts so far this season. On Saturday, Portland led the Cats 7-6 going into the first TV timeout four minutes into the game. “The first play was great,” Calipari said. “Then we had about five plays after that (that) were just sloppy.” Calipari’s plea for better play coincides with a big week for the Cats as they face St. John’s on Thursday night and a huge test against North Carolina on Saturday. Kentucky was able to overcome sloppy play against Marist, Portland, and Radford, but North Carolina will require a full 40 minutes of the team’s attention. Despite the slow starts, the Cats opened the week as the #1 team in the country.
5. Tennessee arrived back in Knoxville Friday night after a good effort in Maui. But head coach Cuonzo Martin didn’t expect a letdown against Oakland on Monday night. “We aren’t going to get caught up in any jet lag — Hawaii is in the wind,” Martin said. “This is an important game, and we’re going to have to be focused to win on the road.” Perhaps it wasn’t jet lag, but it could have been that the Volunteers were looking forward to a big game this weekend with Pittsburgh. Regardless of the reasons, the Vols dropped a big one to Oakland by the score of 89-81. Oakland is a strong team at home having won 41 of its past 43 home games. The Vols lost to the Golden Grizzlies by an almost identical 89-82 score last year.

Brian Joyce (333 Posts)

Brian Joyce is an advanced metrics enthusiast, college hoops junkie, and writer for the SEC basketball microsite for Rush the Court.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 at 6:30 am by Brian Joyce and is filed under microsites, sec. Tagged: arnett moultrie, billy donovan, cuonzo martin, florida, john calipari, kentucky, mississippi state, murphy holloway, ole miss, renardo sidney, rick stansbury, tennessee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.