Austin Nichols – Rush The Court

With Austin Nichols Gone at Virginia, Who Takes His Place?

Mick McDonald — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 00:46:02 +0000

Earlier this evening, Virginia made a shocking announcement that not only affects the outlook of the Cavaliers season, but that of the entire ACC. Forward Austin Nichols, who sat out last season after transferring from Memphis, has been dismissed from the program. In the announcement, Tony Bennett said, “It’s a privilege to be a part of this program and Austin has lost that privilege. We have standards for our student-athletes and when those standards aren’t met, there are consequences and this is the unfortunate consequence.”

Despite some issues at Memphis, Nichols had (apparently) been a model citizen in Charlottesville during the [...]

ACC Burning Questions: Virginia Cavaliers

Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 16:01:45 +0000

This team preview is part of the RTC ACC microsite’s preseason coverage.

Burning Question: Where will the points come from this year?

It’s been a historic three-year run at Virginia, with 89 overall wins, a 45-9 ACC record, an Elite Eight and a Sweet Sixteen appearance. A stingy pack-line defense has been the cornerstone of Tony Bennett‘s program during this run, but his offensive attack has been better than most realize. Virginia’s point totals never look impressive because of its extremely slow pace of play, but from an efficiency standpoint they have actually finished among the best in the land (i.e., a top-22 finish in KenPom‘s offensive efficiency rankings all three years). [...]

ACC Twitter 2016-17 Must-Follows: Virginia, Virginia Tech, & Wake Forest

nvr1983 — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 18:01:34 +0000

We are rounding out our ACC Must-Follow List for the year with Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest in this post. If there are any other Twitter accounts that you think should be included, send us a tweet @rtcACC or leave a message in the comments section below.

For the rest of our Must-Follow List, check out the rest of our posts for this year. Note that these will release throughout the day on Thursday.

Virginia

Tony Bennett doesn’t have a Twitter account, but there are some good parodies (Getty Images)

@UVAMensHoops – Official Twitter account of Virginia’s men’s basketball team @JeffWhiteUVa – Jeff White, Director of News Content for [...]

ACC M5: 11.01.16 Edition

Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 14:01:56 +0000

Duke kicked off its ACC exhibition season on Friday night with an easy 90-59 win over Division II Virginia State. Sophomore Luke Kennard exploded for 30 points, but the bigger story of the evening was Duke’s ongoing injury woes. Already playing without the services of injured super-freshmen Harry Giles and Jayson Tatum, Mike Krzyzewski lost two more starters to minor ailments within the first six minutes of the game. Senior wing Matt Jones left with a sore hamstring after just three minutes, and junior guard Grayson Allen went to the locker room after taking some shots to his shoulder. Allen later returned to finish with 13 points in 22 [...]

Meet the ACC’s Newly Eligible Transfers

Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 16:01:27 +0000

Compared with just a short decade ago, many more student-athletes are going the transfer route. When we combine that trend with the 60-75 underclassmen who turn professional each spring, the aggregate result is that roster turnover is at an all-time high. When it comes to media coverage of newcomers, the focus tends to primarily be on freshmen. So in order to get familiar with the transfers entering the ACC this season, we have provided the list below that breaks non-freshmen newcomers to the league into four groupings (traditional transfers; graduate transfers; JuCo transfers; sitting out this year). Players within each category are ordered according to the anticipated impact that they will have [...]

Five ACC Storylines to Watch this Offseason

Matt Patton — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 15:01:04 +0000

With the long offseason ahead of us, let’s take a look at five key ACC storylines to keep an eye on over the summer.

NCAA Sanctions: After investigations that surrounded both programs in different ways this season, there should finally be some closure for Louisville and North Carolina. Louisville is still trying to get in front of NCAA sanctions by self-imposing its own (in addition to this year’s postseason ban, the program also recently added recruiting penalties). This strategy has worked well for other schools, but predicting eventual NCAA punishments is an exercise in futility. North Carolina is the more interesting case — the Tar Heels may not receive any sanctions or [...]

Opening Weekend Hopes in the American

Jared Kotler — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 19:31:58 +0000

The American Athletic Conference has the potential to be one of the better leagues in the country this year. As the college basketball season is about to tip off, we take a look at one thing each American team would like to see coming out of their opening weekend of games.

UConn: Shonn Miller averages at least eight rebounds per game.

Grad transfer Shonn Miller looks to make his impact on the boards at UConn this year. (USA TODAY Sports)

A lot has been made this offseason about the group of fifth year transfers that Kevin Ollie has brought to Storrs. Most notable [...]

Introductions to the ACC’s Eligible Transfers

Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 18:01:11 +0000

It’s a well-known fact that transfers have been on the rise in college basketball. According to annual tracking lists compiled by ESPN‘s Jeff Goodman, there were fewer than 300 NCAA Division-I transfers in 2011 (roughly one per school), but that number has climbed to around 700 (roughly two per school) in each of the last two years. Considering that teams in the power conferences are already losing seniors and underclassmen who turn pro, rosters are turning over at an alarmingly high rate. When it comes to newcomers, freshmen, rather than transfers, have traditionally received most of the attention. So to get more [...]

Morning Five: 07.21.15 Edition

nvr1983 — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 14:15:04 +0000

Last night, Harry Giles, the top recruit in the class of 2016, announced his five finalists: Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Wake Forest. Giles, a 6’10” forward from Winston Salem, has been reported to be interested in playing alongside Jayson Tatum, a top five recruit in the class of 2016 and Giles’ roommate while they played for Team US in the U19 FIBA World Championships. Given that Tatum committed to Duke earlier this month it would seem that the Blue Devils would be favorites for Giles although the hometown pull of Winston Salem and the fact that Chris Paul [...]

Morning Five: 07.08.15 Edition

nvr1983 — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 14:45:56 +0000

It has been quite a while since we did our regular Morning 5s for a variety of reason (work, life, etc), but we’re back now and will be doing these more regularly. We won’t be posting these daily until the start of the season at earliest, but we will probably be posting once or twice weekly depending on how much news is out there. We won’t be going over all the news that happened since the last time we did one of these because that would be a 10,000-word post and that is only if we kept it brief.

Lost in [...]

Four Thoughts On Memphis’ Season-Opening Debacle

mlemaire — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 18:31:32 +0000

Another day, another nationally televised disaster for one of the presumed best teams in the AAC. Less than 24 hours after Gonzaga blitzed SMU in Spokane, Wichita State mugged Memphis in a game where the Tigers only looked good once Shockers’ head coach Gregg Marshall emptied his bench in the 71-56 win. Although neither SMU nor Memphis should be particularly proud of the way they played, at least SMU can say it ran into a buzzsaw in a hostile environment at The Kennel. Memphis, on the other hand, lost to a team that didn’t even play particularly well and they did it [...]

AAC Exhibition Impressions: Part I

Mike Lemaire — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 21:55:33 +0000

College basketball exhibition games are no different from preseason games in any other sport. Coaches like to use the inferior opponents as a chance to test strategies on both ends of the floor and evaluate fringe candidates for the rotation through extended minutes. For these reasons and the fact that exhibition opponents are usually Division II/III or NAIA teams with almost no real size, deriving meaningful observations from these performances is usually a fruitless endeavor. These games are a nice opportunity for players to get some run against a team other than themselves, but they don’t mean a whole lot in the grander scheme of [...]

One on One: An AAC Preview With Jason Smith

Walker Carey — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 19:15:36 +0000

Rush the Court is back with another edition of One on One: An Interview Series, which we will bring you throughout the preseason with previews of each of the major conferences.

With the college basketball season nearly upon us, we thought it would be a good idea to gather some expert opinions on the nation’s major college basketball conferences. As part of our national preview with the AAC, RTC correspondent Walker Carey (@walkerRcarey) recently had the pleasure of speaking with an AAC expert in Jason Smith (@TheCAJasonSmith), the Memphis Tigers beat reporter for The Commercial Appeal.

Rush the Court: Defending national champion Connecticut obviously [...]

AAC M5: 11.03.14 Edition

Mike Lemaire — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 14:01:01 +0000

News from last week’s Media Day is still trickling out and that means that we continue to gather evidence that says SMU coach Larry Brown is ready to take on all comers. The Dallas Morning News published a brief but illuminating interview from the event and it features a lot of Brown at his finest. He called the AAC an underrated conference. He called college basketball the “best minor league system” in the world. He challenged Mark Cuban over whether college basketball or the D-League is better at developing players, and he admitted that he wasn’t “excited” about the precedent Emmanuel Mudiay might have set by opting to [...]

Five Coaches to Watch in the AAC: Pastner, Brown, Sampson, Haith & Cronin

Mike Lemaire — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 16:31:04 +0000

In the coming week or two, we will be posting as much preview content as possible. We are continuing today with coaches to watch. There is still plenty more to come.

There are only 11 teams in this league so, in theory, you should be able to watch all of them closely without too much difficulty. But what makes coaching such a difficult and unique experience is that no two seasons are alike. Sure, old hats like Jim Boeheim and John Calipari probably know what to expect because they have seen so much in their careers. But even for those guys, every new [...]