1. With yesterday being Memorial Day (or Labor Day if you are Ron Artest) there was quite a bit of talk about veterans and their sacrifices. For some individuals who have been affected in particularly profound ways basketball has played a pivotal role, Dana O’Neil takes a look at few of those individuals. As you can see, for these individuals the commitment to veterans and other individuals who have served our society is more than a one day a year event.A
2. After experiencing last year’s Carrier Classic Michigan State wants another chance to play on an aircraft carrier. With this year’s event apparently out of the question, the Spartans are hoping to play in the 2013 event, which would be held in Florida. Plans for the 2013 event are tentative as the organizers are not even sure what city in Florida the event would be held in, but the Spartans are lobbying to play against Notre Dame, a school they have not played since 1979. Despite the recent success of the Irish, this seems like it would be a poor marketing decision as the event should feature two programs with some brand recognition. The Irish certainly have it in football, but basketball is a completely different situation. The event would generate plenty of publicity by virtue of being held on a naval carrier, but the event would benefit from having a bigger name team especially in its third year.
3. For the most part this conference realignment business has made everybody look bad, but there are a few exceptions and Chuck Neinas appears to be one of them. The Big 12 interim commissioner is starting to get praise for holding together the conference when it looked like it was on the verge of falling apart. Following the tenure of Dan Beebe, which was most notable for the creation of the fake Twitter account, Neinas appears to have acted quickly and prudently while stabilizing the conference according to reports. We take most of these columns with a grain of salt because we do not know who is feeding these writers their information, but if what the writer is saying we would be surprised if Neinas does not get the interim qualifier removed from his title in the near future.
4. We are still having a hard time getting used to seeing Rob Dauster’s face on SI.com next to people like Peter King, but his article on how Georgetown develops its centers is an interesting one. While his father’s centers will be the more historically significant ones, John Thompson III has developed his interior players in a very different way as fits their abilities. So even though the Hoyas may still be defined by their big men they are doing it in a distinct way that reflects not only their roster, but also the different coaching philosophies of the father and son.
5. Most people come up with New Year’s resolutions, but Mike DeCourcy has some for the summer and instead of making them for himself he has a few for college basketball players. Highlighting five well-known players who have had varying degrees of success in their college career DeCourcy gives them a few tips on how to improve their games over the summer to take a step to the next level. While we do not expect these five players to compete for National Player of the Year awards all five of them could play major roles in the teams winning either conference or potentially national titles next season.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 at 5:00 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: georgetown, michigan state. 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.