- The announcement by Mike Krzyzewski that he would no longer coach Team USA was not really a surprise to those who have been paying attention as he has been saying for quite a while that he would be giving up the position after the London Olympics. Given Krzyzewski’s age (66) his decision to stop coaching internationally is really not much of a surprise and it should allow him to focus on coaching Duke for the next few years although the way things are going it is hard to imagine him leaving the sideline at Cameron any time soon. It will be interesting to see how Krzyzewski’s international coaching credentials (two Olympic gold medals, one World Championship gold medal, and one World Championship bronze medal while reinvigorating the Team USA experience) impact how he is rated historically when he retires.
- The recruitment of Andrew Wiggins, the #1 recruit in the class of 2013, appears to be winding down as he is planning on taking visits to Kansas, North Carolina, and Kentucky. We are sure that those three schools, which along with Florida State are the four finalists for Wiggins’ services, will bring out all they can to woo Wiggins (presumably within NCAA limits). The most interesting experience for Wiggins may be at Kentucky where the school will honor the 1996 championship team with rings. We doubt this was planned to coincide with Wiggins visit, but given Calipari’s recruiting wizardry we wouldn’t put it past him.
- Jim Boeheim‘s post-game rants are becoming more regular these days, which might reflect his team’s struggles. His latest rant came at the expense of Jeff Goodman, who did not seem to mind Boeheim’s vitriol. As Goodman points out Boeheim’s rants are nothing new and in fact are part of who he is. For our part, we don’t mind when a coach goes off like this as we find it more amusing than anything else and even when we witness it firsthand (never on the direct receiving end yet) in the media room it doesn’t bother us. We will give Boeheim some credit here as he at least went after experienced reporters rather than lighting up some college kid who might have struggled with it more.
- It is not often that you see a conference come out and admit that its officials messed up, but it is not often that you see officials make as many glaring mistakes in crucial situations as the officials in Monday night’s game between Kansas and Iowa State did. In a terse statement the Big 12 admitted that mistakes were made and that the officials who made those mistakes would see a change in their schedules. While a few individuals have called for more specifics on what will be done with those officials we are just happy to see an organization associated with college sports admit that they made a mistake with the promise of trying to rectify it in the future. Now if they could just get the governing body to follow suit.
- We have heard of a lot of questionable decisions by the NCAA, but it appears that they are not the only national college sports organization making strange decisions. The latest example comes from the NJCAA, which declared Indian Hills Community College (26-4 and #3 in the NJCAA) ineligible for the postseason after its president posted bail for one of the team’s players. The tale of how the school and the player got there is fairly complex, but essentially the school played a game about 80 miles away from its campus that featured a large brawl that resulted nine players and one coach getting suspended. One player–Ronald Ross–was arrested for punching the opposing coach’s son, who was neither a coach nor player. Ross was charged with assault and taken to a local jail before being bailed out by the school’s president, who did not want to leave a player/student in jail 80 miles from campus. Unfortunately, when the school reported this to the NJCAA they were hit with probation and banned from this year’s postseason.