- It seems like we have been saying this could be the year that Northwestern makes the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever for several years now. The hopes this year took a massive hit yesterday when they announced that senior center Alex Olah would be out indefinitely with an injury to his foot. Olah, who had been averaging 12.8 points (on 59.8% FG), 6.5 rebounds, and 2 blocks per game, helped lead the Wildcats to an 11-1 record (they sit at 12-1 after a win last night over Loyola) with their only loss coming against North Carolina. Northwestern will rely on freshman Dererk Pardon, who had 6 points (3-3 FG) and 4 rebounds last night, to fill in for Olah, but if they have any realistic hope of making the NCAA Tournament this year they will need Olah back pretty soon.
- With several conference tournaments being played every year in Las Vegas the NCAA’s refusal to have any of its postseason events there has always seemed strange to us. Now that the NCAA has expressed some interest in softening its stance and considering Las Vegas as a potential postseason site some within the city are beginning to push hard for inclusion. While including Las Vegas in NCAA postseason tournaments probably wouldn’t do much to affect the city’s bottom line (it is basically hosts multiple conventions every single day of the year) it would help lend a sense of legitimacy to the city and also be used as a springboard into talking to the NCAA and other states about increasing the reach of legalized gambling.
- Over the past few years we have noted the proliferation of cable networks dedicated to conferences and in some cases teams (we will get to the latter in a minute). These networks have been cited as one of the driving forces behind conference realignment as network contracts in addition to the ones they sign with established networks help drive large sums of money into the pockets of the schools within the conference. The most unique of these arrangements is The Longhorn Network, which as its name suggests is dedicated to Texas. While Texas is undoubtedly one of the biggest brands in college sports (it tops most lists in terms of licensing revenue) the school’s revenue-producing sports (basketball and football) have struggled recently and the network itself has not been doing well financially. While the details behind those struggles are more complex than just the school’s on-field/-court struggles (those details are in the article), it does serve to underscore the tenuous nature of some of these television contracts.
- Former Cincinnati assistant coach Al Hmiel decided to come clean recently regarding his history as a college basketball “slimeball”. Hmiel says his decision to “come clean” was the result of hearing about Louisville’s ongoing scandal and how some people were trying to use the recruits as scapegoats. Hmiel basically admits to doing just about every conceivable thing you could imagine to make a player eligible or, in some cases, ineligible. Hmiel’s comments will probably generate a fair amount of reaction over the next few weeks particularly from former players and/or coaches who were mentioned or were at the school when Hmiel was there, but based on the response we have seen online the accusations might not be that ridiculous.
- Normally the suspensions of student-athletes for impermissible benefits lead to a bunch of media outrage so we were a bit surprised to see the eight-game suspension of Vermont guard Dre Wills for reselling his textbooks didn’t generate more ridiculous headlines (ok, it did from some of the usual suspects). Wills, a junior who was averaging 6.8 points and 5 rebounds per game, apparently violated his athletic scholarship by selling back his textbooks. It’s not really clear how much money Wills got from reselling those books (from personal experience we can tell you it was probably very little), but since his scholarship almost certainly paid for those books we can understand why he can’t just resell the books and collect the profit.