BUZZ: Ernie Kent Retained at Oregon. There’d been some buzz about Ernie Kent getting fired at Oregon so that Gonzaga’s Mark Few could return to his alma mater, but that apparently will be put on hold for another season. Oregon announced today that Kent will be retained, but they will also be bringing on former Arizona assistant Mike Dunlap to help turn the program around.
Update: Apparently, the mainstream media is no more reliable than blogs as ESPN was completely wrong about Floyd accepting the Arizona job. Instead, he has decided to stay at USC perhaps comforted by the fact that he has Mike Dunleavy coaching in the same city to make him look like a coaching genius.
After unsuccessfully trying to woo Rick Pitino and reportedly going after Mark Few and Jeff Capel, Arizona is set to name Tim Floyd as its new head coach according to reports. In the wake of the Lute Olson fiasco last off-season, the Wildcats turned to Russ Pennell to lead the team as an interim head coach. Along with Mike Dunlap, who acted as a co-coach, Pennell guided the Wildcats to their nation-leading 25th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance (if you ignore trips that were later vacated). The Wildcats, who in the eyes of many had underachieved all year long with one of the nation’s most talented trios (Nic Wise, Chase Budinger, and Jordan Hill), managed to get to the Sweet 16 with victories over Utah and Cleveland State before getting crushed by Louisville by 39 points to end the season.
Floyd built his coaching reputation at Iowa State where he is the only coach in the program’s history to lead them to 3 consecutive 20-win seasons as he finished his 4 years there with a 81-49 record. However he is most well-known nationally for picking up the scraps of the Chicago Bulls team following the departure of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Phil Jackson, has only been moderately successful at USC making it to the NCAA tournament his past 3 years including a trip to the Sweet 16 two years ago.
Floyd’s first order of business when he takes over in Tucson will be to try to convince his 3 stars to come back next year. If he is able to do that, the Wildcats should be able to make the NCAA tournament. Once he does that he will need to start recruiting again as the Wildcats’ recruiting has fallen off considerably with all the uncertainty regarding their coaching situation the last 2 years.
Ray Floriani of College Chalk Talk is a contributing writer for Rush the Court.
By Ray Floriani
NEW YORK CITY – First the primary items. Baylor defeated San Diego State 76-62 and Penn State held on for a 67-59 win over Notre Dame in the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden.
The final numbers….
What Baylor did to get to Thursday…Shoot the ball. They literally attacked on the perimeter going an unbelievable 11 of 22 from beyond the arc. LaceDarius Dunn had 23 points including 6 of 9 from three. Baylor’s Curtis Jerrells paced all scorers with 25. Jerrells is a problem for defenses as he is a deft penetrator as well as a perimeter threat. Baylor defended , in three NIT games their defensive PPP was over 1.00, largely be forcing 19 turnovers.
What Penn State did well… Defend and hold on. The first half Notre Dame had a .58 PPP and eFG mark of 26%. The Irish missed shots but credit the tough Penn State defense. The second half ND found the range and Luke Harangody (17 points) came alive. The Irish had what was almost a twenty-point deficit, down to a two possession game in the stretch. Penn State never lost the lead largely due to a big Jamelle Cornley (16 points) jumper with just under four to play.
The fans God love them…We are on the baseline press table. Myself and press row neighbor Jeff Bernstein, a former coach, who loves to talk strategy, get into a conversation with a Baylor fan Ryan Lindsey. He’s here in New York with his wife and young son. Turns out he coached ‘select ball’ AAU in Texas terms and noted, “the worst beatings we got were facing Blake Griffin’s teams when he was in high school. That kid was and is unstoppable.”
The conversation ran the gamut from John Calipari going to Kentucky to what happens at Memphis. Coaching openings were pondered until Scott occasionally gets up to holler “sit down Fisher if Freider didn’t leave you’d be at Ann Arbor junior high” in reference to the San Diego State coach who was disagreeing with the officials.
Scott is knowledgeable about schools and conferences around the nation. He tells us the Texas basketball job is a plum. “They pay over 2 million and just don’t want you to embarrass the school.” Translated, football rules.
The discussion goes on. Baylor is puling away and Scott and family have a few more nights in the Big Apple. “We need to go eat,” he says. “What will ten dollars get us? A pretzel?” he adds laughing. Waco is home but he knows the score in New York.
Finally Jeff says, “St. John’s has to get you on the schedule so you can get back to MSG and visit.” Scott says, “we would love it but out of conference Baylor plays ‘directional’ schools and SWAC schools. We had so many SWAC wins we expected their automatic to the NCAA play in.”
The buzzer sounds Baylor wins. “See you on Thursday”, Scott and his wife say. Undoubtedly they are fully enjoying the moment. As other Baylor faithful are.
Normally the McDonald’s All-American game (rosters here) would only be worth watching for the occasional ridiculous dunk or the lack of defense, but the circus in Lexington and the fall-out in Memphis makes this one pretty interesting. At least 3 potential Memphis commits (DeMarcus Cousins, Xavier Henry, and an uncommitted Lance Stephenson) are playing in this game. With John Calipari‘s decision to ditch Memphis for Lexington all of these guys are in play. Everyone knows that Stephenson will go the the highest bidder still hasn’t announced his decision, but Calipari’s decision puts Cousins and Henry back in play.
Note to Doug Gottlieb (if he’s reading): Nice job trying to bring some knowledge on SportsCenter this morning about how Xavier would stay at Memphis anyways because his older brother C.J. Henry would be joining him, but their father already said that both of them are not going to Memphis.
One more thing before we come back around 8 PM for the game, which will be broadcast on ESPN. John Wall, the #1 overall recruit according to several services, is ineligible since he is a 5th-year senior. I just wanted to get that out of the way before someone starts a rant against him being left off the teams. I haven’t seen much film of these guys outside of YouTube clips where they never commit a turnover, miss a shot, or fail to switch on a screen so if you guys have seen any of them, let us know what you think of them.
8:00 PM: Judging by what Len Elmore and his partner (no idea who he is) the economy has hit ESPN’s clothing budget. Not surprisingly the Memphis commits do not want to talk on camera about the Memphis situation, but Cousins has suddenly listed Kentucky as a potential destination.
8:05 PM: Nice. Derrick Favors lost his starting spot for the game because he forgot to put his jersey on underneath his warm-ups and had to run back to the locker room to find it while they announced the starting lineups.
8:10 PM: Whoa. Len Elmore just said these guys go to school to play basketball. What happened to the academics? The student-athletes?
8:12 PM: “John Henson‘s body type is similar to Brandon Rush.” I was actually going to go with a really tall skeleton, but ok. . .
8:14 PM: Lance Stephenson just double-dribbled on a fast break. How is that possible?
Now we’re starting to get to the good stuff. Below is our sweetest of Sweet Sixteens in the RTC Modern Bracket.
We have ten national champions still alive, three runners-up and three at-large teams. There were a couple of minor upsets, but one of our #1 seeds has already exited this Dance.
Explanations of each game below the bracket.
Instant Analysis
#1 Duke 1992 def. #8 Arizona 1988 – Lute Olson‘s Wildcats keep this game closer than you might expect thanks to Sean Elliott, Steve Kerr and Anthony Cook, but Coach K’s trio of Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill pull away in the last 5 minutes. Against most teams Elliott is a nightmare match-up, but Duke has Grant Hill who while not quite at the level he was at in 1994 still can play some solid defense. In the end, Arizona, like many teams, doesn’t have an answer for Laettner who wills the Blue Devils into Sweet 16.
#13 St. John’s 1985 def. #12 Arizona 1998 – While I’m not sure that either of these teams can be considered a Cinderella, we get our match-up of double digit teams. Lute Olson’s defending champs came into the game supremely confident after having knocked off a very good Kansas 2008 team with their next match-up against a team that didn’t even make the the NCAA title game, but Lou Carnesecca’s Redmen have other ideas. Arizona’s heralded backcourt of Miles Simon and Mike Bibby simply run into a better version of themselves in Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson and the Wildcats have no answer for Walter Berry. Next up for Lou Carnesecca, Coach K and the 1992 Blue Devils.
(h/t to L4B for Calipari’s new nickname… but, um, will it stick?)
John Calipari Headed to Lexington. Officially. What does this hire by Kentucky (at a reported $5M+ per year) do? It makes the Wildcat program nationally relevant again. Instantly. With a single stroke of the pen (still pending), every major recruit from 9th to 11th grade (and several in the 12th) who has visions of wearing a hideous suit to meet David Stern on Draft Day suddenly has Kentucky back on their radar screens. At the McD’s game practice today, Xavier Henry has already made it clear that his recruitment is open “to everybody and anybody.” Another Memphis commitment, DeMarcus Cousins, may feel the same way, and who knows where this leaves John Wall (a strong Memphis lean)? With arguably the strongest recruiter this side of Roy Williams and Ben Howland vacuuming up numerous kids with serious dreams of the L, and the commitment to resources that a school like UK brings to basketball, is there any doubt whatsoever that The Squid will have the Cats hunting for Final Fours again very soon? The pressure to win and win big will be gargantuan, but Calipari is one of the few coaches with enough ego to handle it.
Coach, this is Jeff from down in Hyden. Now, about the team’s free throws…
Domino, Motha____ers! And like Doughboy so eloquently stated in BnTH, the dominoes are already falling elsewhere. Georgia reportedly offered over $2M per year to Missouri’s Mike Anderson (although others dispute that) to take over the chronically underachieving Bulldog program, but now there is chatter that Anderson might have an interest in the newly-opened Memphis position. Update: Anderson is staying at Mizzou for a payday nearly doubling his annual salary. Some other names being thrown around for the Memphis job are Tony Barbee from UTEP (former Calipari assistant) and even former Arkansas Razorback coach Nolan Richardson, who regularly mined the playgrounds of Memphis for his stellar 40MoH teams. Whoever takes over this job, a top 20 destination, will be without the services of Tyreke Evans, who also announced his decision to go pro today.
The Other Ego in Kentucky. Louisville figures to be impacted heavily by the arrival of Calipari at Kentucky, if for no other reason than to escalate a rivalry between coaches that goes back to the early 90s and into the NBA (Celtics vs. Nets). Can you believe that two titans of ego coaching such as Pitino and Calipari – both hot-blooded Italians – will be battling for bragging rights in the same basketball-nutty state? Still, if you believe in rumors that won’t die, there is speculation that Rick Pitino is a legitimate candidate for the open Arizona job, vacated by Lute Olson and seat-warmed by Russ Pennell this year. Seth Davis wrote today that he doesn’t believe this rumor for a second, and neither do we, but we could definitely see the other name mentioned for this job, Gonzaga’s Mark Few, getting into the mix down in the desert.
Final Question. It’s not like Billy Gillipie was completely shamed out of Lexington, although it certainly played out so. Still, the guy has a relatively strong coaching resume, and unlike some other epic failures at regal programs (Matt Doherty at UNC; Steve Lavin at UCLA), he’s proven that he can build a program and recruit players to fill those spots. So where will Billy Clyde end up? You have to figure that he’ll be back in coaching next year, and if you saw his interview on ESPN with Jimmy Dykes yesterday, it was painfully apparent that he’s angling for another position with the ‘aw shucks’ persona. Just so long as he doesn’t have to give any advice, cuz, you know, he’s not an advice-giver.
Dykes: Do you think not signing a 30-page contract is gonna affect what you feel is fair to you at this point?
Gillispie: Oh, I have no idea. I mean, I think it’s all gonna work out fine, and I’ve never been involved with too many things that didn’t.
Dykes: What advice would you give to John Calipari if the deal goes down?
Gillispie: I’m not an advice-giver. I heard a long time ago, “The worst advice is bad advice … or giving advice.” And so, I don’t really have a whole lot of advice.
Ben of Dear Old UVa stopped by today to give his takes on their brand spanking new head coaching hire, Tony Bennett.
Now that everyone’s gotten over the initial shock of Bennett’s surprise – to say the least – hire. Virginia need to know what to expect from a Tony Bennett-coached team. Well, there’s good and there’s bad.
The Good
Under Bennett, the Washington State Cougars were an excellent basketball team. A very underrated, excellent team.
Many media pundits laud Bennett for his defense. They’re right too. WSU allowed 55.4 points per game this year, one of the fewest in the Pac-10. Also, WSU finished in the top 20 in terms of defense efficiency each of the three years. They were either first or second in the Pac-10 in defensive efficiency.
The man clearly knows how to coach defense. His teams were well-organized and gritty. I know the Pac-10 gets a reputation as being soft, but last year it was one of the toughest conferences in the NCAA and Bennett’s WSU helped make it that way. They don’t make you turn it over, just force you to take bad shots.
In two years, Bennett had two 26 win seasons. The Cougars were a 3-seed in 2007 and 4-seed in 2008. They were bounced by UNC pretty soundly last year in the Sweet Sixteen.
This year wasn’t an NCAA tournament year, but there’s no reason – given a few bounces here or there – that it couldn’t have been. The Cougars lost close games to UCLA, USC, and Washington, all of which were NCAA tournament teams.
So, in three years, Tony Bennett has compiled a fairly impressive record for an unknown program.
Welcome back. The RTC Braintrust got together tonight and hammered out our 32 first round winners for the RTC Modern Bracket, one step closer to picking the team that we believe is the very best squad of the last quarter-century.
A reminder: we used resume/body of work to select and seed our 64 finalists, but that criterion now takes a step back to how we think teams would perform in head-to-head matchups. So if your favorite team won a title but had a relatively weak inside game, don’t be surprised if a runner-up or at-large from another year with superb inside play knocks you out of the bracket. Yes, we’re looking at you, Illinois fans.
Quick analysis of the numbers: fourteen of our 24 national champions survived the first round, but only eight of our runners-up made it through their first game. Ten of our sixteen at-large teams also survived.
And now, the updated bracket through the first round of matchups, with brief explanations of how we analyzed each game below.
Instant Analysis
#1 Duke 1992 def. #16 Indiana 2002 – Coach K’s best team picked apart the Cinderella Hoosiers while the two Hills – Thomas and Grant – made life miserable for Jared Jeffries.
#8 Arizona 1988 def. #9 Maryland 2002 – In a very close contest, Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott got it done from the perimeter despite Juan Dixon’s heroics to keep Maryland in the game.
#12 Arizona 1998 def. #5 Kansas 2008 – Upset Alert! The defending champs led by Mike Bibby, Miles Simon and Michael Dickerson, took care of a Kansas team that could not bottle up the Arizona guards (think 2.5 Derrick Roses).
#13 St. John’s 1985 def. #4 Arkansas 1994 – Arkansas didn’t want to face a team with a superb PG in this matchup, and they faced one of the best of his generation in Mark Jackson. Jackson continually hit Chris Mullin and Walter Berry for open looks to pull off the upset over the national champion Hawgs.
I took part in my first interview last night as part of Dan Levy’s podcast. I refuse to say that I was on (the name of his show) not that there’s anything wrong with it. You can hear my segment on Dan’s website (also available on iTunes). Dan runs a great show even if he did call us out in a segment the same day he added us on Facebook. My segment is about 1/4th way through the show. It’s the part where they are talking about college basketball if you couldn’t figure that out.
A couple things that I wanted to clarify that I screwed up during the interview:
I’d like to thank Dan for giving me the opportunity to be on his show and would love to be back any time he needs someone to talk about college hoops or anything else for that matter. If anybody else needs us for interviews, contact me at rushthecourt@gmail.com.
Overnight 5: February 16, 2023
2021-22 Rush The Court Preseason All-America TeamsRTC 16: 2021-2022 Pre-Season Rankings
Preseason Stock Report: Buy Now
Preseason Stock Report: Bear Market
2020-21 Rush the Court All-America Teams and Yearly AwardsEight Questions for the Final FourEight Key Questions for the Sweet Sixteen16 Questions For First Round Saturday of the NCAA Tournament16 Questions for First Round Friday of the NCAA Tournament
