larry johnson – Rush The Court

Tracking The Four: Racers’ Pursuit of Perfection Ends Early

EJacoby — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:18:38 +0000

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. TT4 will cover four selected teams of interest – Syracuse, Indiana, Murray State, and UNLV – by tracking their ups, downs, and exciting developments throughout the course of the season.

It was only a matter of time. Murray State had been narrowly escaping against OVC competition in the past few games, so it shouldn’t come as a huge shock that the Racers lost their first game of the year on Thursday against a Tennessee State team ranked second in the conference standings. The loss certainly hurts [...]

Checking In On… the Mountain West Conference

AMurawa — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:29:51 +0000

Reader’s Take

Take Our Poll

A Look Back

It’s been a relatively quiet week around the Mountain West as teams took a bit of a break to celebrate the holidays. However, despite just eight games in the past week, we’ve had three fairly significant injuries. Boise State was the team hardest hit, as it lost freshman wing Igor Hadziomerovic to a broken foot and will likely play the rest of the season without him, while fellow freshman Anthony Drmic, the team’s leading scorer, missed the Broncos’ visit to Iowa with a sprained ankle. Meanwhile, Air Force lost is leading scorer, Michael Lyons, early [...]

Morning Five: 08.03.11 Edition

nvr1983 — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:15:30 +0000

The Dominican Republic’s national basketball team arrived in Kentucky yesterday before they start their training camp on Sunday. The team from the Dominican Republic is training in Lexington per request of their coach, John Calipari. While most of the college basketball world’s interest in the Kentucky Legends team that is being assembled and will feature many recent NBA stars who recently played for the Wildcats, we are more interested in the Dominican Republic team that has Al Horford (Florida) and Edgar Sosa (Louisville) on it staying in Lexington for at least 2 weeks (the game against the UK Legends is on August 15th) with [...]

Past Imperfect: The NCAA’s Greatest Weekend

JWeill — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:06:49 +0000

Past Imperfect is a series focusing on the history of the game. Each week, RTC contributor JL Weill (@AgonicaBoss| Email) highlights some piece of historical arcana that may (or may not) be relevant to today’s college basketball landscape. This week: the greatest Sweet 16 and Elite Eight ever, the 1990 NCAA Tournament.

By the time the 1990 NCAA Tournament hit its second weekend, fans had already been treated to quite a show: 16th-seeded Murray State pushing top seed Michigan State to the wire; Loyola Marymount’s emotional return to the court following the tragic passing of All-American [...]

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 [...]

Even More Notes From the Mountain West, Atlantic 10 and WAC Tourneys

rtmsf — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 09:17:55 +0000

In our attempt to bring you the most comprehensive Championship Week coverage anywhere, RTC is covering several of the conference tournaments from the sites. We have RTC correspondents Andrew Murawa at the Mountain West Tournament, Joe Dzuback at the Atlantic 10 Tournament and Kraig Williams at the WAC Tournament this weekend. In addition to live-blogging select games throughout the tournaments, they will each post a nightly diary with thoughts on each day’s action. Here are the submissions for tonight’s pair of championship games and the A10 semis.

Mountain West Finals: San Diego State 55, UNLV [...]

Morning Five: 01.15.10 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:00:52 +0000

Knowing what we know about NC State, this idea to use a real wolf as the team mascot will not end well. Then again, maybe the wolf can “escape” and devour Sidney Lowe during a rampage — that might make some of their fans happy. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan pulled no punches in his address to the NCAA yesterday, stating that college basketball is tainted by ‘renegade’ coaches and that the one-and-done rule is essentially an academic sham. The hits keep coming for DePaul. Just days after firing their coach Jerry Wainwright, the Blue Demons lost their best player Mac [...]

RTC Bracket Championship Results: Best Team of the Modern Era (1985-2008)

rtmsf — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:44:59 +0000

Ok, we’re ready for the firestorm. The four of you who are still reading this are going to swim the moat and scale the walls of the RTC castle after you read this post. You’re going to want to string up those responsible by their testicles, and ritualistically flog them until they admit that a grievous error has been made. We’re ready for it.

And the reason we’re prepared for such a thing is because the best team of the Modern Era is one that didn’t even win the championship in its given year (cringe). Hell, they didn’t [...]

RTC Bracket Final Four Results: Best Team of the Modern Era (1985-2008)

rtmsf — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:55:26 +0000

And we’re down to two… the two teams, that in our highly-valued and respected opinion, are the most talented, battle-tested and worthy of the RTC Modern Era.

We’d be shocked if this didn’t inspire some debate, simply due to the fact that all four of these teams were damn near unbeatable in their primes. Still, we had to choose two to advance into the Finals, and while the choices were far from easy, we made them and we’ll live with them. Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly), we’re left with one national champion and another team that didn’t [...]

Breaking Down ESPN’s Prestige Rankings

nvr1983 — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:41:40 +0000

Ed. Note: Don’t like ESPN’s Prestige Rankings? Provide your comment on how to improve them here. We’re going to take this information and create a new set of rankings based on additional factors (and getting rid of the moronic NIT appearance = NCAA appearance (1 point) criterion).

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that ESPN was trying to fill the dead space between the NBA Finals and the Olympics with yet another list. Normally I wouldn’t have even bothered to look at it because ESPN’s lists have been getting progressively more ludicrous (hitting its peak–or nadir–when John Hollinger [...]

Greatest Games: Duke-UNLV 1991

nvr1983 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:48:21 +0000

As you may have heard, for the first time ever the Final 4 will feature four #1 seeds. Although some people have been complaining about the lack of surprises, I was quite content watching Davidson make it to the Elite 8. As for the top 4 teams in the country making it to the Final 4 being the latest sign of the college basketball apocalypse, I really don’t see it as being much different than several other years where only #1 and #2 seeds made the Final 4. Would you really feel any different about this Final 4 if Texas had beaten Memphis? I doubt [...]