darrin horn – Rush The Court

SEC Morning Five: 03.14.12

EMoyer — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:30:42 +0000

South Carolina’s Darrin Horn became the third head coach from a BCS school (joining Bruce Weber of Illinois and Doc Sadler of Nebraska) to lose his job this month. South Carolina fired Horn after four seasons in Columbia. He could not build on his 21-10 first season and interest in the team sagged. Quoting the AP account of the story “average paid attendance this season was 8,900 people in the 18,000-seat Colonial Life Arena – down about 1,500 fans – with most games seeing less than half of the announced number actually in the stands.” David Cloninger from GamecockCentral.com speculated on possible [...]

SEC Morning Five: 02.24.12 Edition

Brian Joyce — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:30:20 +0000

Florida received bad news with the report that forward Will Yeguete is likely out for the remainder of the season with a broken foot. Yeguete was sidelined twice already this season, both for concussions. Billy Donovan confirmed the news that the foot is indeed broken and that Yeguete will miss a minimum of four to six weeks. Yeguete was averaging 6.3 rebounds and 4.5 points so far this season. Donovan will likely attempt to replace the defensive stopper with a committee of younger players. Freshman Cody Larson will probably see increased minutes, and Donovan has the option of playing additional guards in that forward slot [...]

SEC Morning Five: 01.27.12 Edition

Brian Joyce — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:30:33 +0000

Mississippi State guard Jalen Steele knows his role on the team, as do his teammates and coaches. “I’ve always said that Jalen (Steele) is the one guy that does something different on this basketball team,” coach Rick Stansbury said. “He is capable of doing what he did, jump up and make shots. He’s the one guy, if you ask me what his role is — it is to make shots.” And that is exactly what Steele did on Wednesday night against LSU. While the Bulldogs were just five of 14 from beyond the arc, Steele contributed to more than half [...]

SEC Morning Five: 01.05.12 Edition

Brian Joyce — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:31:58 +0000

Florida coach Billy Donovan is pleased with the development of guard Erving Walker into more of a multi-faceted point guard. Walker is second in the SEC with 5.2 assists per game, which is an increase of almost two assists per contest over last season. “The thing I’m most pleased with tonight more than anything is that Erving Walker could take four shots last game and not be in the flow of the game and then he can come back in this game and score 23 points,” Donovan said. Walker and guard Kenny Boynton have improved their shot selection as evidenced [...]

Checking In On… the SEC

Gerald Smith — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:10:02 +0000

Gerald Smith (@fakegimel) is the RTC correspondent for the Southeastern Conference.

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The Week That Was

That’s Why You’re Mad: Kentucky was seeing red on Saturday as they dropped a game to Indiana. Coaches across the country (especially in the SEC) had a good look at the blueprint to upset Big Blue: Hot outside shooting, strong post play, and good interior defensive positioning to take charges on driving Wildcats. Much has been made about Terrence Jones‘ malaise and Marquis Teague‘s resurgence. Although the Wildcats have plenty of time to lick their wounds the pride of being the last undefeated SEC [...]

SEC Set Yer TiVo: Dead Week Edition

Gerald Smith — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:15:26 +0000

Students across SEC schools are finishing up their term papers and cramming for finals before the Christmas break. To help their students, most schools have scheduled a bunch of high-calorie cupcakes for this week’s game. Beware of the sugar crash! A team might sleep through their on-court exam and end up with an embarrassing grade.

Which games are worth the extra case of Red Bull, and which you should just sleep through?

Tennessee at Charleston — Wednesday, December 14 at 9 PM on ESPN2 and ESPN3 (***)

In the midst of a three-game losing streak — including an embarrassing 74-70 home loss to [...]

SEC Morning Five: 11.16.11 Edition

Brian Joyce — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:30:27 +0000

Kentucky looked a little rusty on offense in the first half against Kansas on Tuesday night. There might be a good reason for that. Calipari says the Cats have just gotten around to installing necessary things like out-of-bounds and late-game plays. This doesn’t seem that unusual as practice time is limited, and games seem to be sneaking up earlier and earlier in the calendar each season. After watching the Wildcats dismantle a good KU team last night, however, it is scary to think how dominant this team can be with some additional time together. Jay Bilas went all access with Kentucky [...]

SEC Morning Five: 11.11.11 Edition

Brian Joyce — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:30:07 +0000

Alex Poythress surprised the recruiting world by choosing the Kentucky Wildcats yesterday. The 6’8″ forward, ranked #16 in the class by Scout.com, also considered Memphis, Vanderbilt and Florida. Experts were stumped as to where the third best small forward prospect in the 2012 class would choose to take his talents. When asked about his decision, Poythress said, ““I just wanted to go to a place where I can get better and a place I feel comfortable at.” Kentucky has had the number one class three years in a row dating back to John Calipari’s first year in Lexington. Poythress’ commitment [...]

SEC Morning Five: 10.27.11 Edition

Brian Joyce — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:30:53 +0000

In last night’s annual Kentucky Blue vs. White game, Sophomore Terrence Jones went off for 52 points setting a record for most points scored in the intra-squad scrimmage. While just an exhibition game, the barrage of points has to be encouraging for Wildcat fans hoping for a new and improved Jones. Freshman Anthony Davis guarded Jones for most of the evening, but it didn’t seem to matter who was on him as he scored from just about everywhere on the court. Jones was 24-31 from the field, finishing with 16 rebounds and six assists. Scrimmage or not, 52 points is [...]

20 Questions: Which Coaches Are Feeling the Heat This Season?

rtmsf — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:27:40 +0000

Question: Which Coaches Are Feeling the Heat This Season?

It’s the nature of the business that college coaches are hired to be fired. With only a handful of exceptions around the country, job security among the coaching fraternity is hard to come by. Every offseason roughly 15 to 20 percent of the profession turns over, with approximately half of those open jobs coming as a result of some unfortunate soul’s termination. As we entered last season, the names of the men on the hot seat were easy to predict, and four of the five coaches listed didn’t let us down — Paul [...]

SEC Morning Five: 10.21.11 Edition

Gerald Smith — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:30:15 +0000

Rally the troops! Sound the Horn of Nerdfighting and CHARGE! The ESPN/USA Today Preseason Top-25 poll has been released! The Southeastern Conference has four members on the list: Kentucky at #2 (with one 1st place vote), Vanderbilt at #7, Florida at #10 and Alabama at #17. (Future SEC member Texas A&M checks in at #19.) Mississippi State was the only other SEC school receiving votes from the coaches. Returning all five starters helped Vanderbilt garner their highest Preseason Top-25 ranking since 1965. Those 1965-66 Commodores, led by legendary coach Roy Skinner, were coming off their first NCAA Tournament Elite Eight appearance. [...]

ESPN’s Toughest Arenas Survey: Analyzing Coaches’ Responses

rtmsf — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:32:29 +0000

ESPN.com had an interesting series of stories that went up today regarding various folks’ favorite college basketball arenas to visit and the toughest ones to play in. As always when you read blurbs of primary source information, it’s enlightening to see the reasoning behind their choices. For example, we never knew that NC State’s old home was such an ACC snake pit, but ESPN commentators Jay Bilas and Hubert Davis both independently cited Reynolds Coliseum as the toughest arena they ever played in. Davis even claimed that he never scored “on the opposite basket away from our bench in the first half” [...]

RTC Summer Updates: Southeastern Conference

Brian Goodman — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:00:07 +0000

With the completion of the NBA Draft and the annual coaching and transfer carousels nearing their ends, RTC is rolling out a new series, RTC Summer Updates, to give you a crash course on each Division I conference during the summer months. Our latest update comes courtesy of our SEC correspondent, Gerald Smith. This season he will be covering the NCAA Basketball with zeal, nerd-culture references and a fistful of silliness at halftimeadjustment.com. You can also follow him on Twitter (@fakegimel).

Reader’s Take

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Summer Storylines

One Big, Mostly-Happy Conference: After several years of divisional [...]

Set Your Tivo: 03.03.11

Brian Otskey — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:00:12 +0000

***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live **** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home *** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later ** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2013 * – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Brian Otskey is an RTC contributor.

It’s a light night across the college [...]

Checking in on… the SEC

Brian Goodman — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:00:03 +0000

Jared Quillen is the RTC correspondent for the SEC.

A Look Back

Interestingly, Kentucky coach John Calipari cursed at Terrence Jones repeatedly during a time-out in Kentucky’s 66-68 loss to Alabama, and ESPN got the whole thing, audio not included. While it was largely a non-issue until Calipari issued an apology, it was later discussed on “Around the Horn,” perhaps the most boring show in sports, and “Pardon the Interruption.” While some have blown it out of proportion, others have regarded the whole situation as silly, saying that Calipari had no need to apologize. That’s just coachspeak. I [...]