jrue holiday – Rush The Court

Catching Up With the Pac-12’s 62 Current NBA Players

Andrew Murawa — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 19:01:56 +0000

The NBA tips off its regular season tonight, which for most college basketball fans means little more than just another sign that the college hoops season is imminent. But it is always nice to keep an eye on former college players that we grew to know and love way back when. With that in mind, we’ll take a quick spin around the Pac-12 today and briefly touch on what can be expected of each of their 62 former players currently on NBA rosters, as well as a handful who you won’t find. We’ll group these guys by their former schools, [...]

UCLA Week: Evaluating the Recent Past

AMurawa — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 23:01:26 +0000

There are no two ways around it, so we might as well get right to the punch: The past three seasons at UCLA, even with an NCAA Tournament appearance and win in 2010-11, is in the conversation for the worst stretch of three consecutive seasons in the history of the storied program. Aside from the transition at the end of the Steve Lavin era to the beginning of the Ben Howland era, you have to go back to Wilbur Johns in the World War II era for a string of three such poor seasons in Westwood. All that is bad [...]

Baby Bruins v.2: Comparing UCLA’s Situation Now to Top-Ranked Class of 2008

EJacoby — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:11:55 +0000

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

With the news on Monday that top unsigned big man Tony Parker is headed to UCLA next season, the Bruins now have a super-stacked recruiting class for next year that should give Ben Howland’s squad a great chance to become elite right away. Recall that last week we discussed that bringing in an elite recruiting class doesn’t necessarily result in program success, with one of the highlight examples being Ben Howland’s #1 class of 2008 Bruins. That UCLA team brought in the top recruiting class and also [...]

SI Story Highlights UCLA’s Downfall Through Ben Howland’s Shameful Lack of Control

EJacoby — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:44:56 +0000

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

The historic UCLA basketball program is in a shocking lull right now, and Sports Illustrated magazine has an upcoming feature story on why it’s not just because of poor performance on the court. George Dohrmann’s piece has been released on SI.com for an early look, and it is a must-read for all the telling details and anecdotes about the Bruins’ culture from the past five seasons. We’ll give you our reaction to the investigative piece and why coach Ben Howland might not last another season in [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

2009 One-and-Dones: Was It Worth It?

rtmsf — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:08:21 +0000

It’s no secret that the high school Class of 2008 was one of the weakest in recent memory. Coming into the 2008-09 regular season, could you realistically point to any one player who would impact their team enough to become another Derrick Rose or a Michael Beasley (class of 2007), a Greg Oden or a Kevin Durant (class of 2006)? No way, right? The consensus #1 player, Brandon Jennings, high-tailed it to Europe when it became apparent he wasn’t going to become eligible to play college ball at Arizona, where he proceeded to burn up foreign nets at the [...]

Boom/Bust Cycle

rtmsf — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:06:06 +0000

It’s a little less than an hour before tonight’s NBA Draft, and this should have probably been done days ago, but we wanted to use our undeniable RTC expertise when it comes to projecting college hoops talent to the pros so we can say “told ya so” when the one undervalued player we said would be a star pans out (while the other ten we said would be don’t, but let’s not quibble). We’ll use Andy Katz’s final mock draft from this morning, and we’re only going to evaluate college players (because we’ve seen them play for at least [...]

You Have Until 5pm Monday, Jodie Meeks…

rtmsf — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:44:31 +0000

Well, we’re down to the wire again this year – the NBA’s early entry withdrawal deadline is 5pm EDT Monday – and there are still several notable players who haven’t made up their minds yet.

Before we take a look at the stragglers, let’s take a quick peek at a few who made up their minds over the last few days. It should be noted that, by and large, these are good decisions. It will be interesting to see if that holds through Monday’s deadline.

Players Returning to School

Gani Lawal, Georgia Tech – interesting [...]

Debriefing the 2009 NBA Predraft Camp

rtmsf — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:03:57 +0000

The 2009 NBA Predraft Camp ended Friday in Chicago, and as we mentioned last week, there were twelve underclassmen who were still on the fence about whether to stay in the draft or return to school. Given that this is a college basketball site, those are the players we’re interested in. So let’s take a look at what we’re hearing about each of the dozen and how that may have impacted their decisions. Thanks to ESPN’s Chad Ford, DraftExpress‘ Jonathan Givony, and NBADraft.net for their reports, which we borrowed liberally from.

Derrick Brown, Xavier – [...]

Welcome to the 2009 NBA Predraft Camp

rtmsf — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:16:22 +0000

Starting today, 52 NBA hopefuls will descend upon Chicago to go through a battery of athletic drills, medical testing and interviews in the hopes that an NBA team will see something dreamy along the way. For our purposes at RTC, the twelve players we’re primarily interested in, the early entries who are still on the fence, are listed below in red. It’ll be very interesting to see how these players perform in these tests, especially considering that unlike past years, there will be no five-on-five games where players can show their wares in a full-court setting.

In [...]

Breaking Down the 2009 Early Entries…

nvr1983 — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:15:23 +0000

The 2009 NBA Draft Early Entry list is now official, and there are 75 collegiate players with eligibility remaining who think they have a shot at the League this year. Keep in mind that there are only 60 picks in the 2009 NBA Draft, and the above number doesn’t even include graduating seniors as well as foreign players. Mathematically speaking, it would serve a number of these players with stars in their eyes well to return to school for at least one more season. Let’s evaluate each of them.

Players With Agents First, the players who have already signed with [...]

04.09.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:57:57 +0000

Would the word flood be an appropriate representation?

Early Entry Fatigue. LSU’s Tasmin Mitchell will test the waters, but he won’t sign with an agent. Ditto for Memphis’ Shawn Taggart. And Miami (FL)’s Dwayne Collins has the same idea. UCLA’s Jrue Holiday is a bit of a surprise given how he struggled at the end of the season, but he too will take a dip. Curry Watch. One player who has yet to throw his hat in the ring is Davidson’s Stephen Curry. Will he be back to make a run at Pete Maravich’s all-time scoring record next season? Nice raise. [...]

NCAA Preview: UCLA Bruins

nvr1983 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:40:52 +0000

UCLA (#6, East, Philadelphia pod)

vs. Virginia Commonwealth (#11) Mar. 19 @ 9:50pm

Vegas Line: UCLA -7

Thanks to Vegas Watch for providing these graphs that measure the moving average of a team’s spread (moving avg.) over time vs. the spread for each individual game (indiv). If a team’s moving average is higher than zero, then Vegas currently has a higher opinion of them than Pomeroy, and vice versa.

General Profile

Location: Los Angeles, CA Conference: Pac 10 Coach: Ben Howland, 149-53 08-09 Record: 25-8 (13-5 in the Pac 10) Last 12 Games: 8-4 Best Win: 85-76 vs. Washington, February 19 Worst Loss: [...]

Pac-10 Wrapup & Tourney Preview

nvr1983 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:33:33 +0000

Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

Pac-10 Final Regular Season Standings 1. Washington 14-4, 24-7 2. UCLA 13-5, 24-7 3. Arizona State 11-7, 22-8 4. California 11-7, 22-9 5. Arizona 9-9, 19-12 6. USC 9-9, 18-12 7. Washington State 8-10, 16-14 8. Oregon State 7-11, 13-16 9. Stanford 6-12, 17-12 10. Oregon 2-16, 8-22

Player of the Year: James Harden The third sophomore in Pac-10 history to win player of the year. The others were Jason Kidd (1994) and Mike Bibby (1998). Harden is also the third ASU player to win it following Ike Diogu (2005) and Eddie [...]