fast breaks – Rush The Court

11.10.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:58:18 +0000

In getting all the preview stuff together, we lost a little track of the news other than the endless suspensions and injuries…

NCAA Not Backing Down on Renardo Sidney. If the information that Gary Parrish wrote in his “Three Storylines” articles is true, then Mississippi State’s Renardo Sidney may not play this season at all. According to the Sidney family attorney, the NCAA requested additional evidence beyond what the Sidneys gave them two weeks ago — specifically, “records that identify the sources of each [bank] deposit, cellular phone records for every family member since Jan. 1, 2006, records to indicate where every payroll [...]

10.22.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:31:54 +0000

It’s coming fast and furious now. Eighteen days…

Adidas/Nike Flap at UCF. So you probably know that Michael Jordan’s other son (the one not acting all wishy-washy at Illinois) is a freshman guard at Central Florida. It didn’t take long, but Marcus Jordan has already become notorious in the national media for something other than his play on the court. The issue is that UCF allegedly promised him during his recruitment that he could wear Nike shoes (hundreds of millions of dollars to the trust fund might have something to do with that), but the school has an airtight agreement [...]

10.16.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:45:35 +0000

The countdown clock is under 12 hours, and we’re all absolutely dripping with giddiness for real games in the next month…

Memphis Responds to the NCAA. This didn’t get a lot of pub because it was released during college football Saturday last weekend, but Memphis sent its response to the NCAA regarding the Derrick Rose scandal. Their argument is based on how the NCAA used the legal doctrine of “strict liability” to effectively punish the Tiger program without direct evidence as to their culpability. In plain English, the NCAA is saying that Memphis is responsible for sanctions due to playing [...]

09.30.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:41:20 +0000

You know what tomorrow is, right? Yeah, October. Us too.

Scare at Tennessee. A very frightening story out of Knoxville earlier this week was that Vol sophomore forward Emmanuel Negedu collapsed while lifting weights on Monday and reportedly had to be revived by UT medical staff prior to his transport to the hospital. He’s spent the last two nights there under watch, and doctors continue to perform tests on him to make sure that he’s not suffering from something deadly. We all know the stories over the years, from Len Bias to Hank Gathers to Reggie Lewis, and these [...]

09.21.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:15:41 +0000

It was a very quiet weekend in college hoopsland, which is a good thing, because the RTC staff is working madly behind the scenes to get things together for the upcoming season. You guys realize that we’re seven weeks to the day away from the first game, right (Nov. 9 – FIU @ UNC in the CvC)?

Jeff Goodman wrote a post on his blog last week that asked the question of which teams in 09-10 could be categorized as the deepest in college basketball. He concluded that Big 12 stalwarts Kansas and Texas along with Kentucky are all [...]

09.14.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:43:28 +0000

In the last week or so, we’ve noticed that the days are distinctly shorter than they were, which means only one thing… darkness.

What, no Matt Doherty? Carolina celebrated its 100 years of basketball with a blowout extravaganza two Fridays ago featuring such UNC luminaries as Dean Smith, Michael Jordan, Vince Carter, Phil Ford, Larry Brown, Antawn Jamison, George Karl, Julius Peppers and a bunch of other dignitaries, both past and present. The tribute video they presented at the beginning of the evening should be mandatory viewing for every recruit that steps into Chapel Hill (sidenote: 2010 #1 Harrison [...]

09.03.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:50:40 +0000

On the eve of college football’s start… let’s get caught up on the news and notes from the last week in roundball.

Preaching to the Choir. Gary Parrish wrote an article that was ostensibly about the A10’s financially-motivated decision to move from its ancestral home of Philadelphia to its Sun Belt environs of Newport News, Virginia, but morphed into a scathing critique of the rapidly increasing revenue gap between the power conferences and the mid-majors. We liken this a little bit to what has happened in major league baseball over the past twenty years or so. It’s not an issue of there once being equality where [...]

08.21.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:52:45 +0000

It has been a loooooong week around these parts, but now that we’ve crowned a Team of the 2000s, let’s move on to some other goings-on and nuggets of news floating around the college hoops world…

Comings and Goings. There have been a few announcements of players who are out for the upcoming semester as we’re heading into fall matriculation. The most notable are Villanova wing Reggie Redding and Florida big men Eloy Vargas and Adam Allen. Redding was suspended by the university arising out of an incident where marijuana was allegedly found in his car at an accident, but he [...]

08.11.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:29 +0000

With the rate of news coming out these days, this’ll feel a little more like slow breaks…

Academic Headstart. This got almost no play over the weekend, but it should have because it has the smell of something that ends up being more important than anyone previously thought. The NCAA Basketball Academic Enhancement Group (chaired by Derrick Rose?) recommended a requirement that each school should make an academic assessment of its incoming freshmen each season to determine whether the student-athlete is adequately prepared for college-level schoolwork. If they are not (presumably using some objective measure other than the Jim Harrick, [...]

08.04.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:30:47 +0000

News has slowed to a barely discernible trickle, but we here at RTC have a few things coming down the pike, so stay tuned…

Renardo Sidney Saga. So… the NCAA gumshoes had their meeting with the Sidney family last week, if you haven’t heard, and they’re asking for tax returns. Most everyone in basketball believes that the Sidney family is dirtier than Roberto Alomar’s toilet seat, but they are entitled to a reasonable right to privacy with respect to their bank records and such. Of course, the Sidney family has lawyered up and their representative, Donald Jackson, has already burned [...]

07.29.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:30:09 +0000

Things were VERY quiet over the weekend, but as always, RTC brings you the hostess with the mostess…

Summer Hypocrisy Trail. We spend a lot of time around here criticizing the NCAA, its administrators, coaches and enablers for their acute sense of self-serving righteousness mixed with hypocrisy as it relates to their various policies of doing business. A couple of stories caught our eye to this effect over the past few days. The first was Pete Thamel’s NYT piece exposing how summer camp organizers are charging exorbitant fees to coaches for the privilege of watching its players in the stands (along with a [...]

07.23.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:38:55 +0000

It’s actually been a fairly busy week in the world of college hoops despite the mid-summer lull, so let’s take a look at some of the other key stories coming down the pike…

Hoop Dreams, 15 Years Later. This week in his Hoops Thoughts column, Seth Davis pushed us down memory lane to the grungy days of 1994, a year of Cobain, Madonna’s undies and OJ’s white Bronco, but also of a bedraggled jewel of a documentary called “Hoop Dreams.” We have a fair amount of younger readers on this site, so if you’ve never seen this movie, stop what you’re doing RIGHT [...]

07.20.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:59:11 +0000

Is there a worse time of year for roundball fans than July/August? Well, is there? Let’s see what’s been cooking over the last week or so…

Economics, NCAA Style. Have you guys heard that we’re in a recession – that the economy may not exactly be whirring along at a blistering pace? Inevitably, college athletic departments are starting to feel the crunch nearly as much as your local Citibastard – some are cutting expenses such as chartered flights and media guides, while even the venerable and uber-rich Stanford athletic department is cutting employees. Meanwhile, schools such as UCLA, Cal, and others [...]

07.06.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:33:08 +0000

Hope everyone had a brilliant ID4…

Class of 2009. Evan Daniels of Scout.com wrote an interesting piece on how wishy-washy the high school class of 2009 was before finally settling on a school. Six of the top ten players – John Wall, Xavier Henry, Lance Stephenson, Renardo Sidney, DeMarcus Cousins, Derrick Favors – had what Daniels terms an ‘interesting’ recruitment. Interesting in the sense that the propect took forever to decide on a destination, had eligibility concerns, switched up commitments, or all of the above. From our view, this is a predictable byproduct of the NBA’s 1-and-done rule, which is now [...]

07.01.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:04:33 +0000

Already halfway through the calendar, which means that we’re almost equally distant from Midnight Madness as we are from last Selection Sunday…

Rumors Be Damned. In case you missed it, the rumor mill has been flaring up considerably this week. Lance Stephenson to Cincinnati – confirmed. Xavier Henry and brother CJ to Kentucky – denied. Coach K to the Lakers – not a chance. RTC to Vansterdam – pending. The rumor that had us vexed was the Henrys leaving KU story. When your father is going on talk radio shows and spouting off about his kids’ unhappiness and unwillingness to stay in a particular place [...]