frank haith – Rush The Court

Morning Five: 08.03.16 Edition

nvr1983 — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:30:11 +0000

Yesterday, North Carolina released the latest statement in its seemingly never-ending battle with the NCAA regarding allegations of academic fraud at the university. At this point, the school has basically admitted that there was academic fraud committed although they are still fighting the charges of failure to monitor, but now they are challenging the NCAA’s authority to punish it for academic fraud saying it should be done at the discretion of the school’s accrediting agency and not the NCAA. As much as we have criticized North Carolina for the massive academic fraud at the school, we have to agree with them [...]

Where Missouri Basketball Heads Now Is Anyone’s Guess

Nate Kotisso — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 21:31:55 +0000

I did not grow up in Missouri. I am not a longtime Missouri sports fan or a Missouri, well, anything. In fact, my parents got married and lived in Kansas for the first half of the 1980s. Both Mom and Dad remember fondly watching the likes of Rolando Blackman, Danny Manning, Mark Turgeon, Antoine Carr and Xavier McDaniel bring color to their old black-and-white TV. Eventually, the two of them pulled some money together and moved to Houston back in 1985. That’s where I grew up and my favorite thing to do as a kid was watch Big 12 basketball. I was familiar enough with Missouri [...]

Buy or Sell: Middle of the Pack American Teams

Jared Kotler — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 17:31:34 +0000

Since its creation, the AAC has seen a trend of clearly tiered divisions in the league. This season has been no different, as the top of the conference seems solid with three teams currently ranking among KenPom’s top 30: Cincinnati, Connecticut and SMU. From there things get a bit murkier, but there still seems to be a clear middle of the pack in Tulsa and Memphis. The American has provided unexpected results before: Which of these two middle-tiered teams could make a run to the top of the league? Teaser: One is better positioned for such a surge than the other.

SELL: Tulsa (KenPom Ranking: [...]

Tulsa Primed to Make Noise After Beating Wichita State

Jared Kotler — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 21:25:27 +0000

In only its second season in the American, Tulsa scored a significant early victory in beating #9 Wichita State. Last year, despite a 21-9 regular season record which included only four conference losses, Tulsa was left outside of the NCAA Tournament’s field of 68. One reason for that snub was the lack of quality wins on the Golden Hurricane’s resume. They had played a relatively tough schedule but couldn’t seem to find a way to win the big games, whiffing on non-conference opportunities against Wichita State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State (also of note from last year’s pre-conference slate: an embarrassing loss to Division II Southeast Oklahoma [...]

Tulsa’s Shaquille Harrison Defines Throwback Guard

Mike Lemaire — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 21:01:33 +0000

If you spend enough time mining websites like KenPom.com and Hoop-Math.com for statistical oddities, you are bound to find some numbers that just don’t jibe with your understanding of college basketball and its players. For example, the season that Tulsa’s Shaquille Harrison is having isn’t just at odds with everyone’s understanding of what makes for an effective shooting guard, it is nearly unbelievable. If the season were to end today, there is little doubt that Harrison would be a first team all-AAC performer. The junior has been the best player on the only undefeated team in conference play and he is probably in the mix for conference Player [...]

All the Reasons to Love the AAC Coaches in One Helpful PSA

mlemaire — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 15:31:41 +0000

On Tuesday the American Athletic Conference released what they are calling a “public service announcement” that is really just a quick pump-up campaign featuring some video and stills of the league’s 11 coaches in action. I am probably the only one (at last count, only 38 people have even viewed it), but I loved every second of it and that’s because any content focused on this group of coaches is worth examining. The marketing folks over at conference headquarters are smart to use the coaches as the league’s primary selling point. This is not only because most casual college basketball fans would have trouble [...]

AAC Bests and Worsts From Opening Weekend

Mike Lemaire — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 16:31:38 +0000

“Bests and Worsts” is a new Monday feature where we will recap the best and worst from the previous week of college basketball in the AAC.

For as long as I can remember, DC Sports Bog has been doing its “bests and worsts” piece as an easy and fun way to recap Redskins’ games. I’ve always really loved the recurring feature and think it is an excellent way to summarize, in detail, everything that happened on Sunday. And because I am nothing if not unoriginal, I’ve decided to misappropriate the idea and use it for what I expect to be a weekly recap [...]

AAC M5: 11.17.14 Edition

mlemaire — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 14:45:37 +0000

Now that the first weekend of the college basketball season has come and gone, it’s time to really start tracking the AAC and it is only fitting to start with defending champion UConn. The Huskies set off early alarm bells with a sluggish first half on Friday night against Bryant, but I would prefer to talk about how Terrence Samuel is rapidly becoming one of the program’s all-time glue guys. Practically forgotten amid the hype of the newcomers in the backcourt, Samuel was expected to play a bit role again this season. Instead, he contributed 34 minutes in the season [...]

AAC Exhibition Impressions: Part II

Mike Lemaire — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 16:31:40 +0000

Yesterday we offered our initial impressions of UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis, and UCF in recent exhibition games. Today we are back with more quick-trigger analysis of games that hardly matter.

Depth May be an Issue for Tulsa Head Coach Frank Haith. Haith has never been afraid to roll with a very short rotation if his team lacks depth, and the Golden Hurricane may actually be better off playing that way this season because of the quality of their starters. In a recent exhibition game against Southwest Oklahoma State, the Tulsa starters played a lot of minutes and his bench looked painfully thin. Haith used an eight-man rotation that night but Keondre Dew [...]

AAC M5: 11.10.14 Edition

Mike Lemaire — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:31:14 +0000

If you didn’t catch it on Friday, make sure to take some time to read the Houston Chronicle‘s extensive profile on new Cougars’ coach Kelvin Sampson and his decision to return to the college coaching ranks. There aren’t many shocking revelations here, but it covers his decision to return to college coaching after more than five seasons in the NBA and sheds some light on why he ultimately chose Houston. In fact, the most eye-opening tidbit in the piece was learning that the program — which went to multiple Final Fours in the 1980s — has only one NCAA Tournament appearance since 1992. We are on the record here in saying [...]

One on One: An AAC Preview With Jason Smith

Walker Carey — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 19:15:36 +0000

Rush the Court is back with another edition of One on One: An Interview Series, which we will bring you throughout the preseason with previews of each of the major conferences.

With the college basketball season nearly upon us, we thought it would be a good idea to gather some expert opinions on the nation’s major college basketball conferences. As part of our national preview with the AAC, RTC correspondent Walker Carey (@walkerRcarey) recently had the pleasure of speaking with an AAC expert in Jason Smith (@TheCAJasonSmith), the Memphis Tigers beat reporter for The Commercial Appeal.

Rush the Court: Defending national champion Connecticut obviously [...]

Five Burning Questions in the AAC

Mike Lemaire — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 16:31:28 +0000

The best part about preview season and the lull before the college basketball storm is all of the questions. The meat of nearly every preview of any team or player or coach is the questions surrounding them. Can UConn repeat? How will the Huskies replace Shabazz Napier? Is this the year SMU gets back to the NCAA Tournament? Will Markus Kennedy be eligible? Although it would likely rank among the most boring reads of all-time, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to come up with questions about each player and coach on every team in the conference. For the sake of everyone’s [...]

Five Coaches to Watch in the AAC: Pastner, Brown, Sampson, Haith & Cronin

Mike Lemaire — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 16:31:04 +0000

In the coming week or two, we will be posting as much preview content as possible. We are continuing today with coaches to watch. There is still plenty more to come.

There are only 11 teams in this league so, in theory, you should be able to watch all of them closely without too much difficulty. But what makes coaching such a difficult and unique experience is that no two seasons are alike. Sure, old hats like Jim Boeheim and John Calipari probably know what to expect because they have seen so much in their careers. But even for those guys, every new [...]

Five Players to Watch in the AAC: Purvis, Moreira, Frazier, Cummings & Woodard

Mike Lemaire — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 21:55:59 +0000

In the coming weeks, we will be posting as much preview content as possible. We are starting today with AAC players to watch, but expect more on coaches and newcomers to watch, etc. If you are really lucky, we might even post some stuff where “to watch” isn’t in the title this preseason.

One of the best and also most difficult parts about putting this list together is that the AAC has so many players worth watching. The league doesn’t have the NBA talent that other leagues do, but in some ways that is more fun. We started the list with more than 25 names [...]

Six Questions: Your Unofficial AAC Preview Primer

Mike Lemaire — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:31:10 +0000

The college basketball season is fewer than three weeks away, but more importantly, the college basketball preview season is in full swing. There are literally dozens of excellent previews out there for your consumption, so rather than duplicate the tried-and-true method for season previews, we just figured we would answer a bunch of questions that people may or may not want to know the answer to. There will of course be more focused content published here over the next few weeks, but we figured it best to start with a primer.

1. The conference looks different from last season, what the heck [...]