02.24.09 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on February 24th, 2009

Our intern comes through with a great set of links again today.

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02.23.09 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on February 23rd, 2009

We’ll be bringing you these Fast Breaks more frequently thanks our new intern who will be sending me the best of the web, which I will then filter and send out to you, our loyal readers.

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01.29.09 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on January 29th, 2009

Lot of good links today with many of them follow-ups of stories we have reported on in the past.

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01.21.09 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on January 21st, 2009

We have a pretty nice set of links for you today.

  • Thayer Evans and Pete Thamel of the New York Times with a great piece about the influence of Skip Prosser on the current Wake Forest team. Many people don’t realize that Prosser was actually the architect of this team as he recruited all of the current players. However, a great deal of credit has to go to Dino Gaudio for keeping the team together after Prosser’s death in 2007. I’m guessing this will become a bigger story if Wake Forest can stay near the top of the polls late into the season.
  • We have touched on the APR issue before, but now it looks like the NCAA is looking at extending APR ratings to include coaches. I am not sure if this is necessary since coaches rarely switch schools over short periods of time and I have a feeling the methodology will be questioned on how a student-athlete’s academic performance at a school will affect a coach’s APR after the coach has left that school.
  • Arkansas freshman forward Brandon Moore has been suspended indefinitely on DUI charges. I’m not naive enough to believe that underage college students won’t drink, but getting a DUI while being underage. . .
  • Another story out of the SEC as Alabama’s Ronald Steele has decided to forgo the remainder of his senior season citing ongoing injury issues. It is a sad end to what was a promising career. I still remember some of the hype coming out of the South about this explosive guard. We wish Ronald the best and hope he at least got a good education at Alabama.
  • Pete Thamel with an interesting piece on Arinze Onuaku, who will likely be the key to Syracuse’s chances of making a run deep into the tournament in March.
  • An interesting account of Bill Self‘s recent interaction with John Wall, the #1 recruit in the nation. I’m amazed that Self could be this reckless, but to be honest this seems like a rather minor infraction compared to other stuff that goes on.
  • Seth Davis with his take on NCAA’s policy regarding the length of time a player has to enter the NBA Draft and come back to college.
  • A depressing article about former West Virginia star Kevin Pittsnoggle. I’m sure there are several NBA teams who could use a big man who can shoot.
  • Vegas Watch with a mid-season look at the best odds for his top 10 title contenders and the odds he would take them at. Although it is not as exact (calculating the likelihood they would win each round based on their expected seed) as some of his other work, it is still an interesting read.
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01.12.09 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on January 12th, 2009

A new set of Fast Breaks to get your “work” week off to a good start. . .

  • Congrats to Don Meyer for breaking Bobby Knight’s all-time NCAA win mark. I’m guessing this will get a 10 second mention on SportsCenter so we thought we would honor Meyer here.
  • The New York Times with an analysis of the coaching tenure by conference. It is interesting how much longer the ACC coaches tenure has been. The ACC number is obviously boosted by Coach K’s 28+ year run at Duke. I’m not sure if the difference are significant. Does this mean that ACC programs are more successful or that the administrators there are more lenient? Either way I don’t think a conference’s average length of tenure should matter as much to a recruit as a specific school’s track record.
  • Ohio State transfer Anthony Crater will be heading to Tampa to play at USF. A pretty big pick-up for a team that will likely finish DFL in the Big East.
  • RTC touched on academics and basketball a few months back, but a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece (h/t to The Big Lead for finding this) goes well beyond that (imagine that full-time journalists. . .) analyzing SAT scores of football players (it is a Southern newspaper) compared to their “classmates”. Anybody who went to school with big-time athletics programs realizes what a joke the term “student-athlete” often is. We’re planning on digging into this issue (with a basketball focus obviously) a bit more in the near future. It also makes you wonder what kind of grade inflation is going on if someone with a reported 890 SAT (I don’t care if that was as a 9th grader) can pull a 3.81 GPA.
  • A look at Belmont almost 10 months after they nearly knocked off Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament. I doubt Vince Gill goes to many regular season games.
  • A look at how Jamie Dixon is motivating Pittsburgh even after they rose to #1 in the polls. I guess I can see what he is saying since they are only the #3 team in Vegas.
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12.29.08 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on December 28th, 2008

This is the last installment of Fast Breaks for the calendar year, but it’s a loaded one with lots of news before the New Year’s ball drops.

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12.04.08 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on December 3rd, 2008

It’s been a while since we did this consistently, but now that we actually know which games will be played more than 24 hours in advance it’s time to get back into our routine of providing you with the best college basketball links we find each day. If you find something that you think would be of interest to other college basketball fans, leave a link in the comment section and we’ll include it in the next Fast Breaks. Some of these are a few days old, but we have some catching up to do. . .

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5.20.08 Fast Breaks

Posted by nvr1983 on May 20th, 2008

There are a few newsie items floating around out there today…

  • It looks like Iowa will have to turn to someone else for offense as last year’s leading scorer Tony Freeman announced he is transferring to Southern Illinois. Apparently Iowa didn’t value his ability while SIU gave him the respect he wanted. It should be noted that Freeman averaged 13.8 PPG on 37.6% FG shooting and isn’t even ranked in Chad Ford’s Top 100 prospects or any other draft site’s projections.
  • Jeff Goodman is reporting that the nation’s top recruit, Brandon Jennings, still hasn’t officially qualified for enrollment at Arizona.  Well, there’s always the D-League, eh, Brandon?
  • IUPUI coach Ron Hunter gives us reason to believe in humanity again. 
  • Andy Katz listed the results of his polling of various NBA scouts, GMs and other dignitaries, and since it’s Insider, we have no problem stealing it (see below).  There were 26 responses, and each response got one vote as to whether a player would be in the lottery.

Unanimous selections (6)

Jerryd Bayless, Fr., G, Arizona — 26
Michael Beasley, Fr., F, Kansas State — 26
Eric Gordon, Fr., G, Indiana — 26
Brook Lopez, Soph., C, Stanford — 26
Derrick Rose, Fr., G, Memphis — 26
O.J. Mayo, Fr., G, USC — 26

Near-consensus (4)

Danilo Gallinari, F, Italy — 25
Anthony Randolph, Fr., F, LSU — 24
Darrell Arthur*, Soph., F, Kansas — 22
Kevin Love*, Fr., C, UCLA — 22

Last four spots

Russell Westbrook*, Soph., G, UCLA — 21
D.J. Augustin, Soph., G, Texas — 18
DeAndre Jordan, Fr., C, Texas A&M — 17
JaVale McGee, Soph., C, Nevada — 13

Also receiving multiple votes (11)

Nicolas Batum, F, France — 9
Joe Alexander*, Jr., F, West Virginia — 6
Chase Budinger*, Soph., F, Arizona — 5
Donte Greene*, Fr., F, Syracuse — 3
Kosta Koufos, Fr., F, Ohio State — 3
Robin Lopez, Soph., C, Stanford — 3
Chris Douglas-Roberts, Jr., G, Memphis — 2
Roy Hibbert, Sr., C, Georgetown — 2
J.J. Hickson*, Fr., F, NC State — 2
Brandon Rush, Jr., F, Kansas — 2
Marreese Speights*, So., F, Florida — 2

*Still hasn’t officially signed with an agent.

 

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05.19.08 Fast Breaks

Posted by rtmsf on May 19th, 2008

Hope everyone had a superb weekend…

  • Former GW and St. John’s head coach Mike Jarvis is reportedly resurfacing at Florida Atlantic University, not to be confused with fellow resurfacer and former FAU coach Matt Doherty (toiling his wares at SMU (24-37) the last two seasons).  And yes, we know you were wondering, but “Coach Doh” is now “blogging,” as the kids are calling it.  His posts on “Pizza and Ball” and “C-Paul” and  simply brilliant – Agent Zero has nothing on Doh.   
  • Kansas Associate AD Jim Marchiony says nothing to see here with respect to the Darrell Arthur grade-changing scandal in high school.  If Arthur were returning to KU next year, he may face some kind of suspension (assuming all of the allegations are true), but Kansas’ role in validating his HS transcript probably ended when it was accepted by the NCAA Clearinghouse. 
  • Scout came out with its final Top 100 Seniors of 2008 – Arizona’s Brandon Jennings is their top choice.  #71 on that list, Emmanuel Negedu, wants out of his commitment to Arizona, citing coaching confusion as the reason for his change of heart.  Gary Parrish stays in the Pac-10 to rate UCLA as his top class of 2008 (5 players in the top 50).   
  • We know that Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose will be 1-2 in next month’s draft, but who will be the #3 player selected?
  • Are Coach K’s Olympic Team commitments taking a toll on Duke?
  • Egads, so Billy Gillispie isn’t a drunk swimming in hotel pools with topless coeds after all?!?!
  • Oh my, in the Reverand Wright vein of knowing who you associate with, please tell us that Barack Obama knows about these photos of one of his top aides, former Dookie (and TeaBagged) Reggie Love.
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04.28.08 Fast Breaks

Posted by rtmsf on April 28th, 2008

It was a semi-busy weekend as the last few players thinking about declaring for the NBA Draft waited until the Sunday night deadline to make their decisions public…

  • The biggest news is that UCLA guard and all-american Darren Collison will remain in Westwood for his senior year.  It will be an interesting six weeks at UCLA as Ben Howland will await word on which of the remainder of his starters will come back (among Josh Shipp, Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute).  We predict Shipp and Mbah a Moute will return. 
  • In a parallel situation across the country, UNC’s sixth man Danny Green became the third Tar Heel to declare his intentions to test the waters, joining teammates Tywon Lawson and Wayne Ellington.   In a related vein, STF posits that UNC ’09 will be must-watch tv next winter.  We would tend to agree, but only if we can make a deal with ESPN that Vitale/Patrick are nowhere near any of those games.  If not, all bets are off.      
  • Other early entry news.  UConn’s Hasheem Thabeet is sticking around for his junior year, while USC freshman Davon Jefferson will sign with an agent and is leaving for good. 
  • In case you were wondering, Big East POY and Pitt forward Sam Young will remain in school for his senior season.  Along these lines, Vegas Watch thinks that the Big East is in a position of strength (losing the least talent) going into next season.  Jeff Goodman backs that up by putting 8 teams in his post-early entry, pre-draft deadline Top 25
  • Reviews are so far mixed on whether Stanford’s hire of Johnny Dawkins was a good one.  Here’s a good one a mediocre one, and a not-so-good one. 
  • This is why using only stats to decide a champion is absurd.  No way in hell are 92 Duke and 96 Kentucky not 1-2 (either way). 
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