randomness – Rush The Court

CBE Hall Of Fame Classic: Reactions From Night Two

Brian Goodman — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 16:01:56 +0000

Brian Goodman is the lead Big 12 correspondent for Rush The Court. He’s in Kansas City this week for the CBE Hall of Fame Classic. You can follow Brian on Twitter @BSGoodman or the RTC Big 12 Twitter account @b12hoops.

The CBE Hall Of Fame Classic wrapped in Kansas City on Tuesday night, with North Carolina overcoming a hot night from Kansas State to take the title by a score of 80-70. In the consolation round, Northwestern withstood a second half Missouri run to topple the Tigers 67-62.

North Carolina’s late run deflates Kansas State. The Tar Heels and Wildcats traded jabs for most of the night, with Kansas State pulling ahead for [...]

Feast Week Previews: Atlantis, Advocare, Wooden

Andy Gripshover — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:00:04 +0000

Three more Feast Week events begin play on Wednesday or Thursday. As we did with Feast Week events already underway — like Puerto Rico and Charleston, as well as Maui, Legends, CBE and Cancun — let’s take a look at each tournament’s favorite, dark horse, team(s) with the most on the line, and a key storyline and player to watch.

Battle 4 Atlantis

Kyle Wiltjer Leads Gonzaga To The Bahamas (USA Today)

Favorite: Gonzaga. This is not a vintage Atlantis field like those of 2012 or last year. The Zags are barely inside the top 10 and completely untested through two games, but the only other team in [...]

CBE Hall of Fame Classic: Reactions From Night One

Brian Goodman — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 20:54:53 +0000

The CBE Hall Of Fame Classic tipped off in Kansas City on Monday night, with Kansas State walloping Missouri in the opener and North Carolina taking care of Northwestern in the nightcap. Here are the most important takeaways from each team’s performance last evening.

Bruce Weber’s crew had a good night in Kansas City. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Dean Wade steps up inside for Kansas State. Post production on both [...]

Feast Week Previews: Maui, Legends, CBE & Cancun Tourneys

Andrew Gripshover — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 20:01:37 +0000

There are talented tournament fields everywhere this Feast Week. The Gulf Coast Showcase has a relatively strong mid-major field headlined by Murray State, Duquesne (which absolutely BLASTED Penn State on Friday) and Texas Southern. Four capable teams — Clemson, UMass (already a winner over Harvard), Creighton and Rutgers — will tussle in another four-team field in Vegas. Looking further ahead, Atlantis tips off on Wednesday before a handful of other events kick off on Thanksgiving Day and beyond. As we did with Puerto Rico and Charleston last week, here’s a look at the event favorite, a dark horse, and the teams who have the most on the line [...]

Le Petit General: Larry Cordaro Leads NAIA School Past Two D-I Teams

Kenny Ocker — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 19:21:09 +0000

Kenny Ocker (@kennyocker) is a national columnist.

Former Southeastern Louisiana assistant coach Larry Cordaro was given a unique opportunity: Build your own college basketball program, from scratch, in your home state. In his first season anywhere as a head coach in 2014-15, he took the debutant LSU-Alexandria Generals to a 23-4 NAIA record, including Red River Athletic Conference regular season and tournament titles. This year, Cordaro’s team has won five of its first six games, including road wins at NCAA Division I schools Southeastern Louisiana, 82-68, and at Northwestern State, 99-97.

We took the time to talk with Cordaro this week about what it [...]

Evaluating the ESPN Tip-Off Marathon: 29 Takeaways From 29 Hours of Action

Andy Gripshover — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 16:01:02 +0000

My name is Andy Gripshover (@apgripsh) and I watched the entire ESPN Tip-Off Marathon. All 29 hours of it, from start to finish. Here are 29 takeaways from the proceedings.

Denzel Valentine Was the Star of Stars to Finish Off the Marathon (USAT Sports)

I actually like the Oregon court. I really do. It’s unique; it’s fitting for the area; and everyone wastes too much time hating on the brightness in the middle when it’s actually a perfect contrast to the shade of brown used inside a three-point arc that doesn’t get NEARLY enough love. But that court plus the [...]

Giving Thanks in College Basketball

Henry Bushnell — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 16:01:31 +0000

It’s Turkey Day! For many, that’s just an excuse to gather with family, eat good food and watch football. But it’s also a time to give thanks. So what are we thankful for in college basketball?

Happy Turkey Day Everyone!

The short answer is “a lot.” But here are some specifics:

Variety – Why do we love college basketball? Rush the Court counted down the ways in the buildup to the 2014-15 season. But if there’s one word that’s not ‘excitement’ or ‘passion,’ it might be variety. Those 30 reasons conveyed that. Every team has its own identity. There are so [...]

Syracuse-Georgetown Possible Nonconference Rivalry Provides Hope For Others

Chris Johnson — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:40:25 +0000

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Conference realignment is destructive and all-powerful. It is not all-conquering. The most recent frenzy of shifting league alliances, fueled by a nauseating blend of football, greedy athletic department officials and lavish broadcast rights deals, prompted all kinds of doomsday scenarios for college basketball. At one point, as the Big 12 inched closer and closer to a landscape-altering implosion, it looked as if Kansas, one of the true bluebloods of the sport, would be left without a conference to play hoops in. We actually reached the point where Kansas joining the [...]

At Michigan State, Tom Izzo’s Words Are Not to be Ignored

Chris Johnson — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 14:58:22 +0000

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

If there was any debate about who is the most influential sports figure on Michigan State’s campus, a funny exchange before Saturday’s Spartans home football game against South Florida effectively ended it. One week after some Michigan State students refused to leave the student section when inclement weather prompted an evacuation from Spartan Stadium bleachers, athletic director Mark Hollis – known to college hoops fans more for his innovative non-conference scheduling endeavors than anything else – used a different method to urge fans to depart the bleachers when thunderstorms approached [...]

Ohio State and LeBron James Sort of Like One Another

Chris Johnson — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 16:35:02 +0000

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Back when he was Cleveland’s homegrown basketball superstar, leading the Cavaliers to 60-win seasons and stoking hopes of a cathartic end to the city’s tortuously long championship drought, arguably no professional basketball player identified with his home state more conspicuously than LeBron James. LeBron wasn’t just the Cavaliers best player – he was a prodigiously gifted Ohio-born talent, a player no Cleveland fan could possibly dislike, whose selection as the No. 1 pick to Cleveland in the 2003 draft felt equal parts suspicious and fortuitous. Then, the relationship between state and player [...]

Logistics Doesn’t Always Tell You Who Is #1

nvr1983 — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:16:57 +0000

As college basketball fans we like to poke fun at college football for its use of computers to determine its champion (or at least its championship match-up), but we have to be fair and note that we use computers fairly often particularly when looking at Ken Pomeroy’s ratings, which are probably the most trusted computer ranking system in all of sports. At other times computers can be less reliable as the public was made aware after the BCS Championship Game when The Colley Matrix still ranked Notre Dame #1 even after it got destroyed by Alabama. It appears that we have [...]

McDermott Steals the Show, But Creighton’s Defense Is the Story

dnspewak — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:11:16 +0000

Danny Spewak is an RTC correspondent. You can follow him on Twitter @dspewak.

That white towel. That’s the universal basketball signal for “My Night is Over.” When he plopped himself on the Creighton bench with three minutes remaining in regulation on Friday night, Doug McDermott draped this white towel over his shoulders and stared blankly at his teammates on the floor of JQH Arena. His night was indeed over, and judging by the sweat stains on both sides of his jersey, it looked like he’d played pretty hard.

For all of the sweat, McDermott didn’t even set any records in his team’s [...]

Temple Beats Syracuse and Shows Signs Of A-10 Dominance

Chris Johnson — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 02:12:22 +0000

Chris Johnson is an RTC Correspondent. He was at Madison Square Garden for Temple’s 83-79 victory over Syracuse. You can follow him @ChrisDJohnsonn.

If Jim Boeheim’s 900th career victory was a nervous frenzy, the next game was a stroke of unfamiliarity. Over 50 times Syracuse played a non-conference game, and over 50 times Syracuse won. On Saturday, the Orange met their match in soon-to-be Big East member Temple. It was an upset insofar as Syracuse’s No. 3 ranking denotes national standing, and Temple’s unranked status confers inferiority. More shocking was the fact that Temple was itself upended by Canisius at home [...]

Ewing, Reed, Ford, Hall, Monroe, Others Recognized By College Hall Of Fame

Brian Goodman — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:45:26 +0000

Brian Goodman is an editor and contributing writer to RTC.

The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame enshrined its seventh class of inductees Sunday night in Kansas City, paying tribute to 10 players, coaches and contributors who helped shape the game we all love into what it is today. Georgetown legend Patrick Ewing led the star-studded group, which also included Kansas great Clyde Lovellette, North Carolina‘s Phil Ford, Kenny Sailors of Wyoming, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe of Winston-Salem State and another Knicks great, Willis Reed. In addition, former coaches Joe. B Hall of Kentucky and Dave Robbins of Virginia Union were honored as well as contributors Joe Dean and Jim Host.

Patrick Ewing

John Calipari Gives “You” A Tour Of Kentucky’s Basketball Dorms

nvr1983 — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 13:16:40 +0000

Yesterday, John Calipari posted a video on his personal site giving the first public tour of Kentucky‘s Wildcat Coal Lodge, a new dormitory for the men’s basketball team and “other UK students”. Outside of it being a very nice dormitory (let’s just say it is several steps above what either of RTC’s editors lived in as freshmen) it is pretty clear that this just a recruiting tool that is aimed at the top recruits in the nation (or world).

After watching it we only have two questions:

How does this compare to the basketball/football dorms for other top programs? Who are these “other UK students”?

While there [...]