elton brand – Rush The Court

ACC M5: Opening Day Edition

Matt Patton (@rise_and_fire) — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 13:40:14 +0000

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: I’m starting to notice a trend with articles written about teams picked to finish in the bottom third of the ACC. Writers and coaches use phrases like “hope to compete” in lieu of buzzwords like “confident” or any mention of the league title. Miami is no different. The most impressive statistic Christy Chirinos drops at the start of this article is that the Hurricanes return one percent of their assists from last season. One percent. That’s insane. Luckily, Manu Lacomte may be the best player on Jim Larranaga’s roster, so assists may be the one area that [...]

National Championship Game Showcases Rare Treat: The Nation’s Two Best Players

EJacoby — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:36:22 +0000

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

This year’s National Championship game not only features the two winningest programs in college basketball history, but from a more tangible matchup standpoint it also pits the two best players in the country against one another. After Kentucky dispatched of Louisville on Saturday and Kansas survived the physical battle against Ohio State, we now get that rare matchup – Anthony Davis against Thomas Robinson in the National Title game. Why hasn’t this pairing received a flood of media attention? When’s the last time the country’s two [...]

Duke’s Post Players: Has Reality Caught Up with Perception?

mpatton — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:45:03 +0000

For the last ten years, fairly or unfairly, Duke has had the perception of being all backcourt all the time. Long gone are the days where Christian Laettner, Elton Brand or Carlos Boozer graced the court in Durham. In describing his recruitment decision to attend Michigan last week, Mitch McGary let it all out: “all [Duke’s] big men do is set screens and rebound and that they don’t get a lot of touches.”

Josh McRoberts' Relative Lack of Success at Duke Still Haunts the Blue Devils

Duke Hoop Blog looked at this perception, which moves closer to reality as the [...]

Duke and UNC Will Square Off In An Alumni Game on November 17

KCarpenter — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:15:59 +0000

Even though real, meaningful basketball has started, indulge me for a bit more while we talk about one more meaningless game. Nolan Smith hinted at it on Twitter a couple of weeks ago and it turns out that the rumors are true: There will be a Duke–North Carolina alumni game featuring some of the very best players in each program’s respective histories. To return to one of the more tragic themes of this fall — the sadness of NBA fans is transmuted into joy for college basketball fans. Due to the NBA lockout, this alumni game is expected to include [...]

RTC NBA Draft Profiles: Marcus Morris

nvr1983 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:28:02 +0000

Player Name: Marcus Morris

School: Kansas

Height/Weight: 6’9/230 lbs.

NBA Position: Power Forward

Projected Draft Range: Mid- to Late Lottery

Overview: On a roster full of potential first round draft picks, Marcus Morris established himself as the team’s top player. Although the team did not live up to expectations as it fell in the Elite 8 to a hot VCU team, anybody following Marcus had to consider this year a major step for him individually as he was named Big 12 Player of the Year and 2nd team All-American while averaging 17.2 [...]

Breaking Down the 2011 Preseason Wooden Award List

nvr1983 — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 03:36:48 +0000

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Athletic Club announced its preseason list of the 50 candidates for the Wooden Award. Among those listed are names of players with whom we are all familiar, like Kyle Singler, Kalin Lucas, and Robbie Hummel, but there are also many lesser-known but still talented players like Nikola Vucevic and Kawhi Leonard (feel free to yell “East Coast bias!” in the comments). Even though this is one of about a thousand Player of the Year awards it holds a special place for most college basketball aficionados because of its namesake, the late John Wooden, and especially [...]

Is Calipari’s Three-Year Recruiting Run the Best Ever?

rtmsf — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:24:18 +0000

An interesting question came up among the Twitterati over the weekend when it was learned that Rivals #8 (and rising) recruit in the Class of 2011, Anthony Davis, had formally committed to Kentucky. Davis’ commitment marks the third top ten recruit in that class to have committed to John Calipari’s Wildcats, and the seventh in the 2009-11 recruiting cycles, a ridiculous feat.

John Wall (#2, 2009) DeMarcus Cousins (#3 , 2009) Brandon Knight (#4, 2010) Enes Kanter (#7, 2010) Michael Gilchrist (#1, 2011) Marquis Teague (#5, 2011) Anthony Davis (#8, 2011)

Throw in a few other high-level recruits such as Daniel Orton (#19, 2009), Eric Bledsoe (#52, 2009), Terrence [...]

Team of the 2000s: #4 – Duke

nvr1983 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:29:05 +0000

Ed. Note: Check the category team of the 2000s for our other entries in this feature.

As we mentioned in our earlier “Team of the 2000s” posts, we felt that the top-tier programs fell into a few clear clusters. There was some debate amongst the RTC braintrust about where certain teams fell within those clusters so we can understand if you disagree with where a team is ranked (that’s what the comment section is for). Teams in the top five either have made it to every NCAA tournament this decade (a sign of at least being respectable every [...]

Boom Goes the Dynamite: Regional Semifinals Day Two

nvr1983 — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:01:36 +0000

We’ll be doing a full BGtD today so you won’t have any interruptions in coverage tonight. Honestly, last night’s games were kind of disappointing. Pittsburgh–Xavier was entertaining, but that was the only game that I would say was memorable from a pure basketball standpoint. Now the other games did have their own interesting subplots. UConn rolled over Purdue in a game that was close at points in the 2nd half, but I never really got the sense that the Huskies were in any danger of losing. I was particularly impressed with how the Huskies played despite the media [...]

Sweetest NCAA Memories #3: Loved, Hated, But Never Ignored

rtmsf — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:10:19 +0000

RTC asked its legion of correspondents, charlatans, sycophants, toadies and other hangers-on to send us their very favorite March Madness memory, something that had a visceral effect on who they are as a person and college basketball fan today. Not surprisingly, many of the submissions were excellent and if you’re not fired up reading them, then you need to head back over to PerezHilton for the rest of this month. We’ve chosen the sixteen best, and we’ll be counting them down over the next two weeks as we approach the 2009 NCAA Tournament.

An NCAA victory over [...]

UNC: Let’s Not Go Sucking Each Other’s [redacted] Just Yet

rtmsf — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:10:40 +0000

Yeah, like most everyone else, we’re equally in awe of what Carolina has been able to do thus far in the season. We are on record saying that the Heels wouldn’t be able to get through a pretty tough first month of the season without taking an L due to the loss of Marcus Ginyard and Tyler Hansbrough to injuries, and we couldn’t have been more wrong. The Heels have been nothing short of awesome through the first quarter of the regular season, beating eight opponents (two of which were in the preseason top 10) by an average of [...]

Is Duke losing its cachet?

rtmsf — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:00:51 +0000

With the news Wednesday that Duke whiffed on PF Patrick Patterson (who opted for Kentucky over Duke and Florida), combined with yesterday’s news that Roy Williams has extended his contract with UNC through the 2014-15 season, we started to wonder if we’re seeing an unusual blip in Durham, or if last season and the presumed immediate future signal a larger problem there.

Be-Deviled?

The last time Duke had such a blip was in the mid-90s. In 1995, with Coach K’s back hurting and Pete Gaudet at the helm for two-thirds of the season, Duke went 13-18 (2-14) and [...]