RTC Summer Updates: Ohio Valley Conference

Posted by Brian Goodman on August 9th, 2011

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 Ohio Valley Conference correspondent, Catlin Bogard. You can read more of Bogard’s work at OVC Ball.

Reader’s Take

Summer Storylines

  • Movin’ On Up: Two teams will feature former assistant coaches in new roles in 2011-12, although each school took a much different path to the same decision. In March, Steve Payne was named the new head coach at Tennessee Tech for the retiring Mike Sutton. The longtime Golden Eagles assistant had coached the team previously, as Sutton was sidelined with a horrible health condition that threatened his immune system. Over at Murray State, Steve Prohm will head the Racers after an offseason that saw former head coach Billy Kennedy’s name come up in at least three job searches before he eventually accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M. The late-season coaching change didn’t leave Murray without options, as former Racer and current NBA assistant Popeye Jones’ name was one of many mentioned for the opening before the Racers eventually named Prohm as Kennedy’s successor.
  • Ten-Man Class: Morehead State lost its biggest player when Kenneth Faried graduated and was drafted by the Denver Nuggets, but coach Donnie Tyndall is cashing in on the Eagles’ success last season by signing ten players for the 2011-12 season, including three juco transfers. The cupboard wasn’t exactly bare for the Eagles either, with ten players scheduled to return for Tyndall, so how he slices his rotation is something well worth monitoring for any Eagles fan.
  • Transition Period: Quite possibly the biggest news of the offseason will not even affect the OVC until next season. Belmont will join the conference in the 2012-13 season, leaving the Atlantic Sun after ten years of dominance. Also in 2012-13, SIU Edwardsville will become a full member of the conference, making the OVC a 12-team league. This year, the Cougars will play a full OVC regular season, but will be ineligible for postseason play as they continue their transition into Division I. How long it will stay a 12-team conference is up in the air, though. Jacksonville State is openly searching for a FCS football conference to move to, and Tennessee State was recently offered a chance to rejoin the SWAC.

Faried Will Be Missed in the OVC (But Not By His Opponents)

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this story

Sometimes This Stuff Writes Itself. . .

Posted by nvr1983 on March 12th, 2009

Here at Rush the Court we like to think of ourselves as one of the more intellectual college hoops sites out there, but on occasion we like to follow the advice of Chris Rock who once told the audience at the VMAs to “Take off your thinking caps and lower your standards,” when he introduced Kid Rock. Well today is one of those occasions. I was going through my RSS Reader when the title of an article caught my eye: “Longtime Arkansas State coach Dickey Nutt hired at Southeast Missouri St“.

I’ll let that name sink in for a while. Are you done laughing yet? Ok, now we can continue Dickey, who is the brother of current Mississippi and former Arkansas football coach Houston Nutt, falls into a long line of oddly named people who have spent time in the state of Arkansas. The state produced perhaps the most infamous Internet headline ever when ESPN titled a column “Coach Nutt replaces Johnson with Dick against the ‘Cocks,” which was later edited to the tamer version that you see now. And of course there is this famous photo:

arkansasAside from all the jokes about his name, we have to wonder how desperate Nutt was for a job. He is going from coaching a respectable program (189-186 in 13 seasons although he resigned last season after going 9-17) to one that is coming off a 3-27 season and faces potential NCAA sanctions. Apparently the Southeast Missouri State program can’t even cheat right. You would figure that cheating should at least get you to .500 playing against Ohio Valley Conference competition, but the Redhawks went winless in conference play.

Share this story