- As we have said before several times recently the Big East is on the verge of blowing up and now it looks like the only question is how it will be done. According to various unnamed sources, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall, and Villanova have agreed to leave the Big East and conducted a teleconference with Big East commissioner Mike Aresco yesterday morning to discuss the issue. At this point all that appears to be standing in the way is discussion over exit fees and what will probably be some legal wrangling by the schools in the Big East being left behind. The seven schools will be eligible for an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament if they form a new conference together. What happens next is anybody’s guess (other departing Big East schools could be able to bypass exit fees and the waiting period) and this move will probably trigger more poaching and what can best be described as a free-for-all.
- Louisville center Gorgui Dieng could return earlier than expected from his fractured scaphoid. According to Rick Pitino, Dieng will begin practicing on Sunday and could play as early as December 22 against Western Kentucky. We would not expect Dieng to be on the court much for that game, but should be back at full strength for their December 29 match-up against a disappointing Kentucky team that you know Pitino would love to blow out. While the Cardinals are still a top 10 team without Dieng, his presence on the interior should boost them to another level and into the discussion with Indiana and Duke as the top team in the country.
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It isn’t just players who get suspended. Sometimes it is the coach as was the case with Rutgers coach Mike Rice as he was suspended for 3 games without pay and fined $50,000 by the school for a violation of the athletic department’s conduct policy. According to the school the punishment is related to the use of inappropriate language. We have no idea what he could have said outside of a game that would have warranted such a penalty (cursing barely even registers compared to what some coaches say to officials and something sexist or racist would most likely result in calls for a coach’s resignation).
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If you had not already noticed from some of his recent quotes (and his team’s record), things are not going that well for Wake Forest coach Jeff Bzdelik. Things have apparently gotten bad enough for Bzdelik that he and the producers of his weekly radio show have decided to stop taking live callers on the show. While the show’s producers are doing this under the guise of trying to eliminate long-winded callers and preaching, it is pretty clear that this would not happen if the team was a little more successful. If you want to hear how bad things have been on Bzdelik’s show, check out the YouTube clip from last week’s show (the particularly confrontational segments are highlighted in the uploader’s comments if you don’t want to sit through all 30 minutes).
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Andy Glockner had two interesting columns on a pair of coaches with very different public reputations. The first (by a minute) was on the evolution of Larry Eustachy, the Colorado State coach who is best known for his time at Iowa State (more specifically some pictures of him inebriated with coeds). For those of you who don’t remember the specific incident, Eustachy’s nadir was about as low as a coach can go without having criminal charges. After helping rebuild Southern Mississippi, Eustachy has walked into a Colorado State program that many feel is primed for a NCAA Tournament run, but has to deal with a change in coaching and personality. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Mike Krzyzewski, who is as close to an active coaching deity as there is in any American sport at this time. When he broke Bob Knight’s record for Division I wins last November, plenty of writers penned columns asking which coach was the most likely to match him. The answer: nobody. Now with Krzyzewski approaching 1,000 wins (he could be very close at the end of next season), Glockner asks the question of which coach has the best chance of getting near Krzyzewski and the answer is not one of the young guns you might expect.