One of the feel-good stories of the offseason was how VCU coach Shaka Smart turned down the lure of the big money and name brand appeal of multiple job openings at schools in traditional power conferences so he could stay at VCU. This was surprising to many because the odds of Smart repeating the success of his team’s miraculous run to the Final Four are exceedingly small. Still Smart appeared to want to stay to help build a premiere program rather than just a flash-in-the-pan success story that was never heard from again. Of course, the jump in his salary from $325,000 to $1.2 million per year also helped persuade Smart to stay in Richmond.

The million dollar man

Although the VCU student body was undoubtedly pleased to retain the head coach that was responsible for the the most successful postseason performance in the school’s history there was the obvious question of who would foot the bill. The taxpayers? That’s funny. The alumni and boosters? Partly, but they are not footing the entire bill. How about the students? According to some reports they may be the ones picking up the tab on this one. Earlier today the VCU administration announced that the overall student fee would increase by $50 per full-time student for the next academic year, which would largely go towards the athletic programs and generate $875,000 in additional revenue for the athletic program. Of that $875,000 nearly two-thirds would go to the basketball program (approximately $583,000). Based on the full-time enrollment numbers from the university that would be a little over $20 per student towards the basketball program.

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Earlier tonight The Big Lead posted a link to an article that Linda Gonzalez, the sister of former Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez, had put up on her personal blog. The post, which is now blocked, was titled “HERE IT IS: AMERICA’S TOP TEN WORST, LEAST CREDIBLE, MOST CONFLICTED SPORTWRITERS ( DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME AND KEEP FROM CHILDREN)”. That is the actual title of the post and it instantly created a mini-firestorm on Twitter. We are not sure what made Linda Gonzalez decide to block her entire blog (perhaps a call from Bobby?), but now it isn’t open to the public. Fortunately, we got to the post before she blocked it and were so enthralled by the ridiculousness of it that we decided to save the post in all of its glory.

Before we give you the list it probably would help to give you a little context about her post. Gonzalez begins her post by providing her own preface:

Preface: The ten media people in this post are writers and media faces who do whatever they want whenever they want to whoever they want wherever they want and in whatever way they choose. Responsibility is not taken into consideration, nor is the destruction wrought with lives affected innocent or otherwise and truth and accuracy are afterthoughts (maybe). They are known to be malicious, cruel, sarcastic, mocking and downright sadistic with ridicule
So…….Right back at ya.

It is pretty clear for her preface that this is in reference to writers whom she believes played a significant role in her brother losing his job at Seton Hall and she is more than happy to take her anger out on them with her blog (and some very disturbing “Prediction fantasy” ideas for what should happen to those writers).

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It’s a traditional rite of springtime, one just as certain as the March rains, the April cherry blossoms and the May political posturing that takes over Capitol Hill as we head into yet another election cycle in Washington, DC.  Jim Calhoun’s Connecticut Huskies spent Monday on the Hill, visiting President Obama in the time-honored American sporting tradition of meeting the president and having him butcher players’ names and stumble over specific facts from his speech.  These events are always somewhat awkward, as the leader of the free world tries to speak knowledgeably about a team he usually knows little about while the team honored does its best to genuflect and not trip all over themselves in front of such a dignitary.  You can watch the entire nine-minute proceeding below, but we wrote up a few of the highlights just in case you don’t want to waste the time.

In keeping with the measured yet light-hearted tone of these things, Obama tried to inject levity into the proceedings throughout.  He began with a comment about how UConn winning the title was bittersweet for him, as he was “reminded once again that [his] bracket was a bust.”  Luckily, he had a ready-made excuse in the form of ESPN’s Andy Katz, who he claimed told him “there’s no way UConn’s winning” the title.  Not to go all factcheck.org on the Prez, but he’s guilty of a little naysaying here — his bracket on ESPN.com finished in the 87th percentile, which is about forty percentage points better than his current approval rating.   

One unintentional piece of humor from the speech was when Obama listed off the names of coaches with three or more national titles to honor Calhoun, now also with three.  After mentioning John Wooden, he listed someone named “Adolph Ruff” as a coach who, along with Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski, represent the group of elite coaching giants that the UConn head man has now joined.  We won’t get into the dripping irony inherent in the first black president of the United States mis-pronouncing the name of a basketball coach [Adolph Rupp, incidentally] who, rightly or wrongly, has come to represent a bygone era of southern white racism, but needless to say that it’ll probably become some enterprising UK student’s senior thesis soon enough [start at the 2:05 mark of the video].    

Jim Calhoun spoke for a few minutes and was surprisingly a little tongue-tied even though he’s been to the White House two other times as a national championship head coach, but he found his bearings the more he spoke.  It was abundantly evident during UConn’s March/April run that Calhoun was in love with his team last year, and he punctuated that sentiment with a remark tying back to Obama’s presidential campaign of 2008: “You know what?  Yes, we can.  [applause]  And like you, Mr. President, yes, we did.”  Obama responded with encouragement to the Huskies to make another run at the title next season, and after some friendly banter with Kemba Walker about playing one-on-one [“as long as he’s wearing street shoes and a suit”] and the receipt of a special B. Obama #1 UConn jersey followed by a few pictures, the event was over.

These things are always fun in the same way that watching Christopher Guest movies are fun — you spend the entire time waiting for something incredibly awkward yet insanely hilarious to happen.  Maybe we didn’t reach that goal in this year’s honoring of the national champion, but presidents tend to get goofier the deeper into their terms they go.  Give it some time.

As the nation’s states, municipalities and university systems continue struggling to shake off the after-effects of a crippling recession that dried up government coffers and has resulted in huge cuts to education and other core social services, well-paid coaches at big-name schools are progressively becoming targets for political posturing and faux-outrage.  The latest coach to take heat for merely doing his job well is Texas’ Rick Barnes, who recently received a $200,000 raise from the university broken into two parts — $75,000 as a standard annual increase written into his contract, and $125,000 to keep his compensation among the top ten highest paid coaches in the country (a provision of his deal with UT).  His total compensation of $2.4M was approved on Wednesday by the UT Board of Regents.

Barnes is Taking Flak That We Feel is Undeserved

While we completely sympathize with higher education systems nearly everywhere in America that are buckling under the dual stresses of spiraling costs and a public generally uninterested in subsidizing those dollars, to place blame on a guy wholly funded by money from non-taxpayer sources is pandering in its worst form.  Check out these quotes from Texas lawmakers on the matter:

• “I’m a big fan of UT basketball and coach Barnes.  But at a time when everyone up here is fighting to come up with money to pay for education, it was disappointing.” — Sen. Kirk Watson (D)
• “I think it’s nuts.”  — Sen. Steve Ogden (R)
• “It’s not appropriate, not at a time when we’re scraping for money for education.”  — Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R)
• “It is bad timing.  They didn’t ask for my advice.”  — Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D)

We all remember how Connecticut gadfly Ken Krayeske caused a stink a few years ago in querying UConn head coach Jim Calhoun about the particulars of his then-$1.6M salary, causing the crotchety coach to fire back with several increasingly snide remarks.  That was bad enough, but this is different.  Not a dime of Barnes’ salary comes from the Texas general fund, which means the taxpayers of the Longhorn State no more pay his salary than they do that of the Prince of Wales.  Notwithstanding the deep coffers that the Texas athletic department has at its disposal, we’re also quite certain that the university reaps untold more millions as a result of Barnes’ salary (the Calhoun argument).

If Texas legislators are disposed to pick a fight over Barnes’ salary, they might want to consider his overall performance rather than fixating on the raise itself — when you consider that Barnes is a top ten coach in terms of annual salary, you would hope that UT would avoid the late season meltdowns of the last two years and he’d have more than a single Final Four appearance under his belt.  Frankly, at a football school like Texas, he’s done enough to enable job security for as long as he wants to coach there, but it seems as if the lawmakers completely missed the boat in their efforts to tilt at windmills today.

This.

FDNY Heroes Cheer a Welcome Demise (NYT)

For once, great news.  We’ll be back to basketball this afternoon.

Any time two college basketball powers meet it is a hot ticket. It can be a traditional rivalry where the teams meet at least twice a year like Duke and UNC or a less frequent match-ups like the Kansas–Kentucky one that we will see next season. In either scenario you can bet that outside the lucky few who are able to land tickets through the school or the random lottery that is online ticket distribution, anybody who gets in will be paying a hefty sum. However, there appears to be one ticket next season that is even harder to get and one that is so exclusive that there will not even be a secondary ticket market.

There is one game where you won't be able to watch Harrison Barnes in person next year.

When Michigan State and UNC announced that they would be playing their inter-conference match-up on a naval carrier on Veterans Day in San Diego it added a special dimension to a match-up that would have had college basketball fans salivating even if it was played on a nondescript outdoor basketball court. It would serve as an enticing start to the college basketball season featuring two of the top ten programs in college basketball. While a loaded Tar Heel team will probably be significantly better than a rebuilding Spartan team there will be plenty of interest to see if Tom Izzo can find a way to counter the talented Tar Heels. In short it will be a ticket that every college basketball fan would love to have, but playing it on a ship raised those tickets to another level and made it so that it would be nearly impossible for college basketball fans to see in person.

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Every March the topic of scheduling rears its ugly head as fans and analysts rip teams for their soft non-conference schedules. Did you ever wonder how teams come up with those schedules? Surely it involves putting together the team statistician, the chairman of mathematics, and the chairman of computer sciences at the university to crunch the numbers to come up with the optimal schedule to allow their school to appease that all-important Selection Committee on Selection Sunday, right? It turns out that it really isn’t that advanced. In some ways, it comes down to a representative of the basketball program putting up a request and basically announcing “call me if you are interested”.

It's cupcake city, baby!

As John Ezekowitz noted it is basically “NCAA Basketball’s Craigslist” where teams try to figure out how to fill their schedules and potentially offer monetary incentives in what are commonly known as “guarantee games”. Essentially a guarantee game is one in which a lesser team is paid (often rather handsomely) to travel to a better team’s arena for a game (read Kyle Whelliston’s account of one such game for more details). These games have often been derided as being against the spirit of the game. Obviously the financial incentive for the proverbial “sacrificial lamb” is a little unseemly and viewed by some as unsportsmanlike. Then there is the competitiveness issue as these games often are blowouts. Some coaches, including Lefty Driesell in our interview with him before this season, have expressed unhappiness at the fact that it does not allow for the traditional home-and-home match-ups that could generate a lot of buzz and ticket revenue for the smaller program, but the bigger program does not want to do so because frankly there is nothing in it for them. If they go on the road and win, who cares? They beat a team that means nothing on the national level and they lost the ability to sell themselves in front of a major recruit. And if they lose on the road? The world ends for a few days as boosters and fans call for the coach’s head and the players have their Facebook walls and Twitter accounts bombarded by all sorts of profane messages.

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The season may be over, but Jimmer-mania is still going strong on the BYU campus. A little too strong, it turns out.

According to an article yesterday by Sporting News’ DeAntae Prince, Jimmer Fredette has been asked by officials at BYU to stop going to class because of the disruption entailed by his presence and the lack of focus exhibited by other students when he would show up. In his attempts to attend lectures like any other college student trying to finish up his final year, because of his popularity, Fredette was evidently set upon regularly by swarms of admirers wanting autographs or some other interaction with the Cougars’ superstar. Prince’s article also notes that this phenomenon was not limited to the BYU campus, but extended to the rest of the city of Provo as well.

We Wonder What Will Happen If He's Drafted By the Jazz

It might be the dream of many college students to be told by officials at their school, “You’re too famous. Everyone loves you so much that you don’t have to come to class anymore. We’ll figure something out,” but this is a shame. It got so bad that Fredette will now have to finish his coursework online. How ironic that certain people within the school and city that Fredette represented and played so hard for have made it so that he can’t really attend the school or live normally in the town.

The most shocking account in Prince’s piece came from Fredette’s father, Al, who once asked his son what he does when he goes out. Al remembered, “He said he wears a hoodie and tries not to make eye contact.”

In a bit of a shocker, St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin revealed through a press release today that he spent his inaugural season as the captain of the Red Storm ship with a diagnosis of prostate cancer hanging over his head.  The 46-year old coach led the Johnnies to their most successful season in a decade, going 21-12 and finishing tied for the third in the rugged Big East before struggling in the postseason when guard DJ Kennedy went down with an injury.  Although prostate cancer is one of thee most treatable forms of the disease, it’s never an easy day when you as a patient hear the “c” word from your doctor.  From the school’s statement:

Lavin Did a Great Job, Especially Considering the Circumstances

My family feels fortunate that through annual health exams, we detected my condition at an early stage.  This past fall I didn’t want to distract our team, but with the season behind us, we are now working with medical experts and taking the proper steps to tackle this health challenge head on.

A physician friend of ours recently told us that cancer patients fall into two distinct categories: 1) those who want treatment immediately, as in, today; and 2) those who don’t want their treatment to get in the way of their busy schedules.  Clearly Lavin falls into the latter category as someone who was willing to put off his own treatment for a six-month period so as to not distract his team.   But wow, mid-40s is awfully young to have a diagnosis of prostate cancer, and it proves again just how important it is for even busy folks to have physicals on a regular basis.

Still, can we get our Big East COY vote back?  Mike Brey led Notre Dame to a fantastic season that culminated in an NCAA #2 seed, but he didn’t do it with the specter of our ugliest disease hanging over his head.  While we’re sure that Lavin wouldn’t have delayed his treatment unless it was completely safe to do so, that doesn’t reduce the stress of knowing that your body is waging war against yourself at the same time you’re trying to build a winning program from scratch.  We were already fans of the job Lavin did in Queens this year, but now we’re even more impressed.  Godspeed on your journey against this thing, Coach.

Brian Goodman is an RTC editor and contributor.

Seemingly every March, pundits put forth the idea that playing on consecutive days in conference tournaments wears teams down for the Big Dance. While Connecticut has laregly debunked the theory, imagine playing nearly every day for the whole thing. Welcome to the reality of the Buffalo Funds NAIA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship, which recently concluded in Kansas City.

Operating outside the parameters of the NCAA are nearly 300 small schools from across the country, 32 of which make the championship’s field. After the 32 schools are selected to compete, a frenzy of 31 games in seven days determines the national champion. All told, the tournament’s finalists played five games in six days, with no days off between the semis and the final. Touting itself as “college basketball’s toughest tournament, ” the event was held solely in Kansas City, which meant nonstop opening round action from 9:00 a.m. local time to around midnight.

Though the schools may be obscure, some of the players are anything but. The tournament featured its share of players with familial connections and histories with some of D-I’s top talent:

• Brian Wanamaker (Texas Wesleyan College) – The twin brother of Brad Wanamaker of Pittsburgh, Brian ran the point this season, averaging 19.1 points per game.
• Michael Stockton (Westminster College, Utah) – Gonzaga fans are familiar with the Stockton family, with David following in the footsteps of his father and NBA legend John Stockton, but Michael isn’t too bad himself, averaging over 18 points per game to go along with four helpers.
• Taylor King (Concordia College) – King’s journey began as a 14-year-old UCLA commit before stops at Duke and Villanova left him a journeyman. Returning home to Southern California, King feels comfortable at Concordia, where he led the Eagles in scoring (15 PPG) and rebounding (7 RPG) this season.
• C.J. Henry (Southern Nazarene, Oklahoma) – The one-time New York Yankees draft pick followed his brother, Xavier, first to Memphis and later to Kansas, but carved out a niche at a smaller school, averaging 13 points per contest.

In Tuesday’s final, televised nationally on CBS College Sports, Pikeville (Ky.) College topped Mountain State (W. Va.) 83-76 in overtime behind 32 points and 17 rebounds from Trevor Setty. Quincy Hankins-Cole, a transfer from Nebraska, also chipped in with 21 and 16.

Pikeville College Won the NAIA Title This Week

Next time they hear about a team losing its legs or looking worn out, a handful of players from a small college in Kentucky can deservedly scoff at their televisions, knowing they conquered a grueling test of stamina to capture a national crown.