darren collison – Rush The Court

Pac-12 M5: 10.30.12 Edition

KDanna — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:01:28 +0000

Oregon opened up its exhibition slate last night, and unlike Washington, the Ducks won rather easily in a 102-75 decision over Concordia. After Concordia opened up the game with a 9-2 run thanks to a couple of threes, the Ducks took care of business in large thanks to the new guys. From what I was able to see (the game was streamed live on the Pac-12 website), the most impressive newbie of the bunch was Dominic Artis, who led the way with 17 points. He dished out some flashy passes and absolutely crossed up a couple of Concordia defenders. He was also able [...]

UCLA Week: Evaluating the Recent Past

AMurawa — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 23:01:26 +0000

There are no two ways around it, so we might as well get right to the punch: The past three seasons at UCLA, even with an NCAA Tournament appearance and win in 2010-11, is in the conversation for the worst stretch of three consecutive seasons in the history of the storied program. Aside from the transition at the end of the Steve Lavin era to the beginning of the Ben Howland era, you have to go back to Wilbur Johns in the World War II era for a string of three such poor seasons in Westwood. All that is bad [...]

Pac-12 Basketball Fantasy League Voting: Championship

Connor Pelton — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 23:44:35 +0000

Our championship game pits fourth seeded Connor Pelton up against the fifth seeded, two-headed monster in Mark Sandritter and Jeff Nusser (CougCenter). Below are the rosters, followed by commentary from the respective owner:

Connor Pelton

Head Coach – Slats Gill, Oregon State Guard – Reggie Miller, UCLA Guard – Isaiah Thomas, Washington Guard – Chauncey Billups, Colorado Guard – Baron Davis, UCLA Forward – Kiki Vandeweghe, UCLA Forward – Klay Thompson, Washington State Forward – Richard Jefferson, Arizona Forward – Jon Brockman, Washington Center – Steve Johnson, Oregon State Center – Robin Lopez, Stanford

Connor’s Take:

Obviously, CougCenter’s team is loaded with talent. Behind my own, of course, it’s my favorite in the field. But you can’t tell me that Darren [...]

Baby Bruins v.2: Comparing UCLA’s Situation Now to Top-Ranked Class of 2008

EJacoby — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:11:55 +0000

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter.

With the news on Monday that top unsigned big man Tony Parker is headed to UCLA next season, the Bruins now have a super-stacked recruiting class for next year that should give Ben Howland’s squad a great chance to become elite right away. Recall that last week we discussed that bringing in an elite recruiting class doesn’t necessarily result in program success, with one of the highlight examples being Ben Howland’s #1 class of 2008 Bruins. That UCLA team brought in the top recruiting class and also [...]

The Four-Year Growth Of UCLA’s Jerime Anderson

AMurawa — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:25:05 +0000

There are a lot of great things about college basketball. There are the student sections going crazy during conference play, buzzer-beaters to clinch tournament berths during championship week, there’s Dick Vitale dropping babies like a butter-fingered politician. But perhaps my favorite thing about college athletics, and college basketball in particular, is seeing kids improve drastically over a four-year career. Just looking around the Pac-12 this year, we have plenty of seniors worth raving about. Jorge Gutierrez at California is the consummate leader on his team and has gotten better bit-by-bit over his time in Berkeley. At Oregon, Garrett Sim has [...]

Boom/Bust Cycle

rtmsf — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:06:06 +0000

It’s a little less than an hour before tonight’s NBA Draft, and this should have probably been done days ago, but we wanted to use our undeniable RTC expertise when it comes to projecting college hoops talent to the pros so we can say “told ya so” when the one undervalued player we said would be a star pans out (while the other ten we said would be don’t, but let’s not quibble). We’ll use Andy Katz’s final mock draft from this morning, and we’re only going to evaluate college players (because we’ve seen them play for at least [...]

Boom Goes the Dynamite: NCAA Tournament Day Two

nvr1983 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:45:05 +0000

We’d like to apologize for our coverage yesterday. We had some technical/communication issues regarding the post yesterday, but I’ll be back covering the games today so everything should be back to normal. Here’s a quick rundown of the games we’ll be covering today:

Early Games

12:15 PM: #14 Stephen F. Austin vs. #3 Syracuse 12:25 PM: #9 Tennessee vs. #8 Oklahoma State 12:30 PM: #11 Utah State vs. #6 Marquette 12:30 PM: #14 North Dakota State vs. #3 Kansas

Afternoon Games

2:45 PM: #11 Temple vs. #6 Arizona State 2:55 PM: #16 East Tennessee State vs. #1 Pittsburgh 3:00 PM: #14 Cornell vs. [...]

East Region Game by Game Previews – 1st Round (pt. 1)

rtmsf — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:09:51 +0000

EAST REGION PREVIEW (By Dave Zeitlin and Steve Moore)

Since there seem to be more than a few obvious picks in the East Region, RTC gives you the bonus coverage you’ve come to expect. Not only do we pick the first-round game – but we also pit a non-basketball alum from each school against each other in a no-holds-barred blog battle. Enjoy.

Thursday Games – Philadelphia, PA

(3) Villanova vs. (14) American (7:20 ET)

SM: Picking a 14 over a 3 is the cool bracket thing to do. Not here. The ‘Nova players could [...]

NCAA Preview: UCLA Bruins

nvr1983 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:40:52 +0000

UCLA (#6, East, Philadelphia pod)

vs. Virginia Commonwealth (#11) Mar. 19 @ 9:50pm

Vegas Line: UCLA -7

Thanks to Vegas Watch for providing these graphs that measure the moving average of a team’s spread (moving avg.) over time vs. the spread for each individual game (indiv). If a team’s moving average is higher than zero, then Vegas currently has a higher opinion of them than Pomeroy, and vice versa.

General Profile

Location: Los Angeles, CA Conference: Pac 10 Coach: Ben Howland, 149-53 08-09 Record: 25-8 (13-5 in the Pac 10) Last 12 Games: 8-4 Best Win: 85-76 vs. Washington, February 19 Worst Loss: [...]

Pac-10 Wrapup & Tourney Preview

nvr1983 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:33:33 +0000

Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

Pac-10 Final Regular Season Standings 1. Washington 14-4, 24-7 2. UCLA 13-5, 24-7 3. Arizona State 11-7, 22-8 4. California 11-7, 22-9 5. Arizona 9-9, 19-12 6. USC 9-9, 18-12 7. Washington State 8-10, 16-14 8. Oregon State 7-11, 13-16 9. Stanford 6-12, 17-12 10. Oregon 2-16, 8-22

Player of the Year: James Harden The third sophomore in Pac-10 history to win player of the year. The others were Jason Kidd (1994) and Mike Bibby (1998). Harden is also the third ASU player to win it following Ike Diogu (2005) and Eddie [...]

Checking in on the… Pac-10

nvr1983 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:30:59 +0000

Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

News & Notes

Washington has clinched their first regular season Pac-10 title since 1985 and with a win against Washington State can clinch their first outright conference title since 1953. Washington State’s first senior class of Taylor Rochestie, Aron Baynes, Caleb Forest, and Daven Harmeling is its first to defeat all nine Pac-10 rivals since 1989. Darren Collison is shooting 91.8 percent (89-for-97) from the free-throw line this year good for second in the nation, and second on the UCLA all-time single-season chart. It may not make Oregon feel any better, [...]

Boom Goes the Dynamite: 02.28.09 Edition

rtmsf — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:05:44 +0000

Welcome back to Boom Goes the Dynamite. It’s Noon eastern and it’s Saturday, so that means we’re affixed to the couch for the rest of the weekend. The day gets off to a little bit of a slow start, but keep in mind that RTC Live will be coming to you from Gampel Pavilion at UConn at 2pm, and we’ll be here for the rest of the action today (all 135 games). Let’s get it going…

12:17pm. We’ve got Villanova – Georgetown on ESPN and Cleveland St. – Butler on ESPN2 right now. UNC – [...]

Checking in on the… Pac-10

nvr1983 — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:46:49 +0000

Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

News & Notes

Lute Olson compiled a 43-6 record against Arizona State. Since he took a leave of absence last year, Arizona is 0-4 against the Sun Devils. Against ASU, Jordan Hill, Chase Budinger, and Nic Wise all logged 40 minutes. For the year the three are each averaging over 35 minutes a game. They are the only team in the Pac-10 with three players averaging over 35 minutes a game. Come Pac-10 tournament time these three horses have to be tiring. Oregon State swept the season series against Cal for [...]

Boom Goes the Dynamite: 02.21.09 Edition

rtmsf — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:06:50 +0000

It’s BracketBuster Saturday, and we’re back with another compelling edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite. We don’t know how it is where you live today, but it’s rainy and chilly here at the RTC Western Compound, which means it’s a great day for huddling up on the couch, firing up the three tvs, ordering up some pie and watching hoops all day. There are some pretty strong games on the slate today, starting with Butler v. Davidson early and finishing with BYU v. UNLV late. Settle in and feel free to make your own observations in [...]

ATB: Who Wants the Pac-10 Title?

rtmsf — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:34:06 +0000

Farking. The Word is Farking, Roy. From last night’s post-game press conference vs. NC State. So Coach, why didn’t you press Miami again?

Game of the Night. UCLA 85, Washington 76. This game was essentially for the top of the Pac-10, because if Washington had won it would have been nearly impossible for UCLA to catch them in the remaining two weekends. The Bruins therefore did exactly what they needed to do, essentially outscoring the Huskies in a key stretch of the late second half behind a Darren Collison mini-run and Josh Shipp’s [...]