j’mison morgan – Rush The Court

The Sad Saga of Baylor’s J’Mison Morgan Ends With a Dismissal

dnspewak — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:15:38 +0000

Five years ago, long before reality set in, there was a big kid with a world of potential. He committed to play for Ben Howland and UCLA, which had just wrapped up a run of three straight Final Fours. They wrote things like this about him:

J’Mison Morgan Represents Untapped Potential Personified

Rated the No. 3 center and the No. 23 overall prospect in the Class of 2008 by Scout.com … listed as the No. 4 center and the No. 25 overall prospect in the Class of 2008 by Rivals.com … rated the No. 2 center in the nation by [...]

Contrary Opinion: UCLA Story Salacious, But Nothing New Here

AMurawa — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:43:10 +0000

Yesterday about this time, when news broke that George Dohrmann would be publishing a “highly negative” piece about the UCLA basketball program, there were plenty of people who immediately expected the worst. I, for one, figured that today I’d be writing about potential NCAA violations and speculating on who may be the next basketball coach for the Bruins. While the Sports Illustrated piece is certainly not something that is going to be framed and hung on the wall in Ben Howland’s office, compared to those previous expectations, Bruin fans can take a deep breath and relax. Sure, there are loads [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: 01.26.12 Edition

AMurawa — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:00:55 +0000

One of the running themes of life in the Pac-12 this season has been important players leaving their teams, for one reason or another, in the middle of the season. There have been dismissals, academic problems, and abrupt transfers, and there have been enough of them to put together a pretty strong team: try Josh Watkins, Jabari Brown, Keala King, Reeves Nelson and Richard Solomon on for size. Aside from the debilitating headache any coach immediately suffers upon so much as seeing those five names together, that’s an awful lot of talent that has disappeared from Pac-12 rosters just since [...]

Is Ben Howland’s Job in Jeopardy?

AMurawa — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:20:27 +0000

The UCLA basketball program is 0-2 for the first time since Steve Lavin’s final disastrous year in Westwood. An 0-2 record isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but the Bruins haven’t exactly come by their record in the same way that Belmont did (with losses to college hoops powers Duke and Memphis). The Bruins have lost their opening two games to Loyola Marymount and Middle Tennessee State – and not in particularly compelling fashion either. Along the way, last year’s leading scorer and Sports Illustrated cover boy Reeves Nelson was suspended for behavioral problems, sophomore center Joshua Smith tweeted [...]

Big 12 Team Previews: Baylor Bears

dnspewak — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:45:21 +0000

Predicted finish: 2nd

2010-11 Record: 18-13, 7-9 (7th, Big 12)

Head Coach: Scott Drew, 9th season

Key Losses: Lacedarius Dunn (19.5 PPG)

It’s been an up-and-down stretch lately for Scott Drew at Baylor. In 2007-08, Drew led the Bears to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in decades, capping a remarkable turnaround for the program just five years after the ugly Patrick Dennehy murder scandal. With high expectations the next season, though, the Bears flopped; they then recovered for an Elite Eight appearance in 2009-10 before tumbling to a 7-9 record in Big 12 play last season. If the trend continues, perhaps BU will make a Final [...]

RTC Summer Updates: Big 12 Conference

Brian Goodman — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:11:05 +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 Big 12 correspondent, Evan Pfaff.

Reader’s Take

Take Our Poll

Summer Storylines

Round Robin Scheduling – For the first time since the Big 12 was formed, the conference will implement full round-robin scheduling, meaning each school will play a home-and-home with each of the other nine schools in [...]

Conference Report Card: Big 12

Brian Goodman — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:00:01 +0000

Brian Goodman is an RTC editor and contributor.

Year In Review

Before the start of the season, pollsters bought into Kansas State as the sexy pick to take the Big 12 in 2011 on the heels of an Elite Eight appearance in 2010. The Big 12 was not overly impressive in non-conference play, as the Wildcats fell hard to Duke in a de facto home game in Kansas City, and Missouri did the same against Georgetown in one of the more thrilling matchups of the early season.

As league play began, the preseason #3 Wildcats disappointed, starting [...]

ATB: UCSB Continues Surprising Upset Week

rtmsf — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:13:50 +0000

The Lede. Upset Week and We Never Saw It Coming? A quiet week has turned into a not-so-quiet one as now two nights in a row at least one ranked team has dropped a home game to a visiting mid-major. Tonight’s victim was the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, who ran into a team in UC Santa Barbara that acts as a sort-of nemesis to the desert school. The two teams don’t play on a regular basis, but they have played a few times in the past dozen or so years since the Rebs left the Big West, and UCSB [...]

Morning Five: 09.14.10 Edition

rtmsf — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:15:32 +0000

Delving into the phone call issue in the wake of Bruce Pearl’s self-reported violations last week, Gary Parrish anonymously interviewed ten NCAA coaches across the spectrum, and guess what, they all admitted to making impermissible calls themselves. We certainly understand the point that several in the article make about the difference between fifteen and two hundred impermissible calls, but with so many of the coaches also agreeing that the calls make little difference in the recruit’s ultimate destination, why do they continue to do it? Someone in this game once said not to [...]

Morning Five: 04.27.10 Edition

rtmsf — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:10:57 +0000

It’s not often that you see a BCS-level coach leave his position for a mid-major job (even a very good one), but that’s what will happen today when Iowa State’s Greg McDermott takes over for the departed Dana Altman at Creighton. McDermott was clearly on thin ice with a 59-68 (18-46 Big 12) record in four seasons in Ames and little prospect for improvement in the near future, so this has every hallmark of a pre-emptive strike. McDermott of course was at Northern Iowa in the MVC for five years prior to taking the ISU job, and he did very [...]

Comings & Goings: Oregon Chasing Tubby; Tim Floyd to UTEP – Really?

rtmsf — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:59:43 +0000

The big news today is that Oregon and Mr. Moneybags Phil Knight have made a formal offer to Minnesota’s Tubby Smith, which (you know the drill) Smith vehemently denied. In an effort to keep Tubby in Minneapolis, the Minnesota president has gotten involved and said that they hope they can put together a contract extension that will result in Smith retiring from basketball at the school. Another source near the Duck program says that Pitt’s Jamie Dixon has been offered the job. We’re really not sure what Oregon is thinking here. Sure, they want a big name, but [...]

Morning Five: 01.14.10 Edition

rtmsf — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:42:08 +0000

Ken Pomeroy does what he does and concludes that, when you break down games by minutes 1-40, it’s the first minute of the game where offenses are the least aggressive. Somewhere, some coach will read this and try to put his energizer bunny reserve in for the first couple of minutes of the game. Guaranteed. UCLA’s J’Mison Morgan will miss at least two weeks with a torn quad in his right leg. Despite his pedigree, Morgan doesn’t play much (only 8 MPG), but it’s been that kind of a year for Ben Howland in Westwood. Rutgers transfer Greg Echinique will re-surface at [...]

UCLA Implosion Continues: Drew Gordon Transferring

rtmsf — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:03:05 +0000

The sputtering Ben Howlands took yet another hit today in a season that is quickly turning into a nightmare for the bluebloods from Westwood. UCLA announced this afternoon during the coach’s regular press conference that starting center Drew Gordon, one of the few bright spots on the team so far this season, will be transferring. It’s no secret that Gordon and Howland had gone at each other over the last year-plus since the player’s arrival on campus, but this particular decision appears to have been precipitated by a quiet two-game suspension from practice that the coach levied on [...]

RTC 2009-10 Impact Players – Wrap-Up

rtmsf — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:02:32 +0000

Over the course of the last ten weeks we’ve broken down sixty players from around the country whom we expect will have the biggest impact on college basketball this season. We performed this exercise geographically, choosing five high-major and one mid-major player from each of the somewhat arbitrary ten regions of the country. If you’d like to read through the individual regions (and we highly encourage that), you can check all ten here.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to read through all of the previous posts, we’ll summarize here for you by [...]

Cooler Than You: Some Of The Best Of College Basketball

jstevrtc — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:00:12 +0000

Just about anyone can name the best teams in college basketball, and, as far as individual players, if you’re reading this site you can most likely reel off three or four of your own personal All-America teams. But what about those individuals who specifically excel at a few of the more exciting aspects of the game? There are certain plays that make everyone come out of their seats: a massive and powerful dunk that liberates some poor defender of his pride; a ridiculously long three-pointer, especially at crunch time; and a blocked shot where the ball goes into orbit. And [...]