barack obama – Rush The Court

Big Ten M5: 03.20.14 March Madness Edition

Jonathan Batuello — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 12:31:32 +0000

It is finally here. Not counting the play-in games (sorry Iowa), the NCAA Tournament is here and the Big Ten sees plenty of action. Four Big Ten teams are in action in the NCAA Tournament today. With this in mind the predictions are final and play begins, and Michigan State got a huge supporter on its already overflowing bandwagon. President Barack Obama made his picks and had the Spartans as the last team standing. With how the Spartans have played lately they have become a hot team to pick as the favorite to make it to the Final Four from [...]

Morning Five: 07.24.13 Edition

rtmsf — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 12:01:50 +0000

Tuesday was the day for the Louisville Cardinals to visit the White House to celebrate their 2013 national championship, and perhaps the very best part of the entire proceeding was the extremely lukewarm applause at the top that Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) received when introduced by the POTUS. Obama gave his standard spiel of light-hearted remarks during the 10-minute event, referencing how Rick Pitino’s motivational technique of promising to get a tattoo “busted” his bracket and avoiding mention of the “other” school where the head coach won his first of two national titles. Pitino, to his credit, exalted the [...]

Morning Five: 07.17.13 Edition

rtmsf — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:01:43 +0000

We’re more than officially in the dog days of summer but only the truly committed scribes work all summer covering the sport we love. Seth Davis is one national commentator who came out of his slumber this week to report from Las Vegas with a Hoops Thoughts column on Michigan’s Mitch McGary. The rising sophomore took the college basketball world by storm last March, going from a role player to a key cog for John Beilein’s national runners-up, but as McGary explained to Davis: “So far I’ve only cracked the glass. Next year I’m trying to break through it.” The [...]

Craig Robinson Notches His Second Win of the Week

Rockne Roll — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 21:59:19 +0000

Oregon State Head Coach Craig Robinson sat in front of the pressroom Friday night after with a smile on his face after his team’s home opener. It was his second win of the week, he said. The first was Tuesday night, when his brother-in-law won another term as President. And while Barack Obama’s final Electoral College score of 303-206 (pending Florida’s final count) over Mitt Romney was significantly higher than the 102-83 final score that the Beavers posted on the Niagara University Purple Eagles at Gill Coliseum Friday, Robinson sympathized with the stress his brother was under. “You think about [...]

Morning Five: 10.05.12 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:31:18 +0000

It’s amazing how a single press conference where a couple of 17-year olds announce a decision can simultaneously cause Twitter to explode as well as create a serious butterfly effect for the rest of an entire sport for the next couple of seasons. Yet ESPNU’s airing of Andrew and Aaron Harrison‘s formal announcement of their college choice on Thursday afternoon did just that. The verdict: John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats, setting in place the opportunity now for the national championship coach to quite possibly bring in the most talented (on paper) haul that the sport has ever seen. The Wildcats are [...]

Morning Five: 09.05.12 Edition

rtmsf — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:31:30 +0000

Reading the tea leaves in the case of Dez Wells‘ whirlwind tour of several prominent basketball schools over Labor Day weekend turned out to be advantageous, as the rising sophomore wing on Tuesday decided to commit to Maryland. If you recall, Mark Turgeon’s program was the only school among the three he visited — Memphis, Oregon, and Maryland — where he tweeted out transparent clues such as #terpnation while he was on campus. The Terps will without question file a petition with the NCAA for an immediate waiver that would allow Wells to suit up next season rather than having [...]

Morning Five: 12.07.11 Edition

rtmsf — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:01:36 +0000

The Big East is expected to announce today that it will add five schools to its football lineup starting in the 2013 season, and the lucky ‘winners’ are quite literally all over the country. Boise State, San Diego State, Central Florida, SMU and Rice Houston will join the league in two years, with BSU and SDSU opting to join as football-only members, while the other three come on board in all sports, including basketball. We honestly never thought we’d see a day where the mighty hoops conference that Dave Gavitt created among a number of small private Catholic schools in the [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: Thanksgiving Day Edition

AMurawa — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:00:36 +0000

We have to start our Turkey Day post by getting right to the team that Pac-12 fans are currently thankful for, the last remaining undefeated team in the otherwise underachieving conference, Stanford. The Cardinal continued their strong start Wednesday night with a thorough 15-point handling of a solid Oklahoma State squad in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score. Senior forward Josh Owens continued his strong start with 21 points on 10-12 from the field, while below-the-radar point guard Aaron Bright had 15 points on 6-9 shooting, with three three-pointers mixed in there. Further exciting Cardinal fans is [...]

UConn Visits the White House: Obama Reflects on “Adolph Ruff”

rtmsf — Tue, 17 May 2011 01:27:28 +0000

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 [...]

Morning Five: 03.16.11 Edition

nvr1983 — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:15:04 +0000

Every year there are a few lucky individuals who beat the odds and end up on top of national pools through a variety of reliable methods (based on team color, mascots, or personal allegiance) for picking their bracket. Other individuals get their brackets analyzed just because of who they are. Two individuals who fall in that latter category are LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Barack Obama. While James and Wade announced their brackets already (picking Ohio State and Marquette, respectively), President Obama will reveal his on the noon edition of SportsCenter today although it has already been revealed that he has gone with chalk [...]

Morning Five: 11.29.10 Edition

rtmsf — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:06:16 +0000

Here’s hoping everyone out there in college basketball land had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The next five weeks will be a blur between now and the new year, but by the time the calendar moves into 2011 we should have a pretty good idea as to who the half-dozen legitimate contenders for the crown are (and the multitudes of pretenders vying to be taken seriously). Even though exams loom and the interminable bowl season kicks off in earnest soon (featuring 2-6 SEC teams!), we’ll happily plod along with our college hoops addiction and of course, invite you all to [...]

Duke Visits White House

rtmsf — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:30:12 +0000

First of Several Meetings Between O & K?

In the annual ceremony for the NCAA Champion at the White House Rose Garden, Duke’s 2010 title-winning team visited with President Barack Obama today in a jocular proceeding where the CiC quipped that the Blue Devils won it all in an effort to stick it to him after he picked UNC to win the crown in 2009. Other than starting off by calling Coach K’s team the “Bluke” (presumably) Due Devils, his best line came later in the speech when he ragged on his assistant (and former Dookie and teabagger extraordinaire — [...]

Morning Five: 05.26.10 Edition

rtmsf — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:00:17 +0000

Vegas Watch aggregates seven pre-preseason top 25s, including yours truly’s. Duke is a clear #1, but Michigan State at #2 and a lot of teams with serious question marks (K-State, Villanova, Pitt, Gonzaga) populate the rest of the top ten. We had Butler (#8) and Georgetown (#10) in our top ten, but few others did. Thanks for doing this, VW. More transfer news — a while back we suggested that the Wear Twins (David and Travis) would end up at UCLA, and that was confirmed yesterday with the announcement that the SoCal-raised pair will be heading to Westwood. They’ll have three [...]

Morning Five: 04.23.10 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:56:51 +0000

Today’s comings and goings were actually very limited for the first time in two weeks. The biggest news in this regard was that Arkansas sophomore guard Courtney Fortson, projected as undrafted in June, has signed with an agent and will not return to school next year. We’ll never quite understand the self-deception that guys such as Fortson must enable to convince themselves that they’re ready for the NBA by giving everything up to chase that dream. Now that Mark Titus‘ career at the end of the bench at Ohio State is over, he ruminates about what the future holds for his [...]

RTC Region by Region Tidbits: 03.19.10

rtmsf — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:59:23 +0000

Each day this week during the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament we’re asking some of our top correspondents to put together a collection of notes and interesting tidbits about each region. If you know of something that we should include in tomorrow’s submission, hit us up at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

South Region Notes (Patrick Sellars)

Everybody expects Baylor to have problems with Old Dominion’s zone in their second round matchup. The zone ODU ran against Notre Dame in their first round game was one of the key reasons the Monarchs came out on top. Here is [...]