luke winn – Rush The Court

The RTC Podcast: No Team is Safe Edition

rtmsf — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 22:45:03 +0000

Another weekend down means another RTC Podcast. In this week’s edition, the guys were pleased to welcome Sports Illustrated columnist and all-around good guy, Luke Winn, who regaled us with stories about some of his favorite pieces over the past few years, a couple of teams that he believes might be overlooked according to the national polls, and his favorite graphic that he’s created in the always-entertaining and informative Power Rankings column. Aside from Luke’s visit, we also found time to run down what was a simply ridiculous weekend of college basketball — Super Saturday, instead — and examine the [...]

Morning Five: 09.05.13 Edition

rtmsf — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 12:01:54 +0000

Wednesday was a day of moves — some planned, others not — as we slowly but assuredly inch our way to the start of season practice at the end of the month. The biggest news, of course, was that former Missouri guard Michael Dixon had been cleared by the NCAA to play at Memphis this upcoming season. Dixon was dismissed from Missouri last fall after a pair of unrelated sexual assault allegations (no charges were ever filed against him), leaving the former Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year something of a free agent last season. Perhaps using the Dez Wells/Xavier [...]

Gonzaga Needs Przemek Karnowski to “Break Out”

Chris Johnson — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 16:01:18 +0000

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

The sophomore breakout formula Sports Illustrated’s Luke Winn has been using over the past few seasons to highlight players expected to dramatically improve in their second years is not like any old fuzzy, subjective, qualitative preseason guessing game. It is grounded in a precise statistical methodology, designed to identify players who evince star potential in limited sample sizes and, in turn, realize that potential over more minutes by putting up big numbers in the coming season. Here’s his explanation: “To qualify, a player cannot have averaged much more than 20 minutes per [...]

Morning Five: 01.31.13 Edition

nvr1983 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:31:45 +0000

Basketball took a back seat at Ohio yesterday after an armed robbery (reportedly over $5) at 9:30 AM at an apartment complex near the campus led the school to suspend classes and cancel last night’s game against Eastern Michigan. Interestingly, the school remained open for another 2.5 hours with the suspect loose before the administration chose to close the campus. In the aftermath of the announcement there appears to have been quite a bit of confusion regarding the school’s intent, but fortunately it appears that nobody was harmed and no further incidents took place although the suspect was still at-large as [...]

Morning Five: 01.24.13 Edition

nvr1983 — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:31:29 +0000

With many observers expecting the NCAA to hand down its notice of allegations soon to Miami, the NCAA instead revealed that it was essentially putting its investigation from the Nevin Shapiro scandal on hold while it hires an external agency to look into a charge of improperly obtaining information for its investigation. The NCAA has retained the services of Kenneth Wainstein, who has previously served in the roles of Homeland Security Advisor, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and FBI General Counsel. It is a rather sudden turn of events and means that both Miami and other involved parties (see: Missouri’s [...]

Morning Five: 10.23.12 Edition

rtmsf — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:31:12 +0000

The SEC media on Monday released its preseason selections for the upcoming season and with the exception of some carpetbagging school called “Missouri” on this year’s list, it looks an awful lot like last year’s list. Kentucky came in as the choice for first place in the 2012-13 version of the SEC race with 17 first-place ballots, with Florida (five), Missouri (one) and Tennessee (one) following up the Wildcats. It appears that not much is expected from South Carolina (#11) or Mississippi State (#12) this season, which gives Frank Martin and Rick Ray an opportunity to immediately exceed expectations if [...]

Morning Five: 10.12.12 Edition

nvr1983 — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:31:52 +0000

Several years ago we posted a column talking about the remarkable recruiting run that John Calipari was putting together in his first year at Kentucky. At the time we questioned if a group including John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Eric Bledsoe represented the greatest recruiting run in modern history. Now we are beginning to think that the debate is over as Calipari has redefined the entire concept of recruiting with his one-and-done program. On Thursday Calipari added top 10 prospect James Young to a class that is shaping up to be among the best classes ever — the Wildcats already have commitments from three of [...]

Morning Five: 09.28.12 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:31:24 +0000

And so it begins? The NCAA has fairly or unfairly taken a beating in recent months over its handling of just about everything from its use of player likenesses to academic scandals to jewelry purchases to replacement refs (ok, maybe not the last one). For the most part, the federal and state governments have kept their noses out of it, preferring to let the NCAA as a private organization operate under its own auspices. But with billions of dollars flowing through the nation’s top athletic universities via lucrative sports media deals, and a general sentiment held by the public that [...]

Morning Five: 09.17.12 Edition

rtmsf — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:31:08 +0000

In the wake of last week’s announcement by Notre Dame that it was leaving the Big East to join the ACC in all sports except football, new Big East commissioner Mike Aresco said on Friday that his league is not dead, and as a matter of fact, is still “the strongest basketball conference in the country.” We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here and assume that when he made reference to conference strength he was talking about the upcoming season only — before he loses the likes of Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame from his lineup of stalwart [...]

Morning Five: 09.06.12 Edition

rtmsf — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:31:54 +0000

The NCAA has ruled on the eligibility of one of the high-profile recruits in the Class of 2013, and it appears it’ll be “see ya next year” for Providence guard Ricardo Ledo. The star prospect who bounced around between numerous high schools in his prep career has been deemed a ‘partial qualifier,’ which effectively means that he can practice with the team during the upcoming season but will have to wait until 2013-14 to put on the Friar uniform and play. Ledo said earlier this week that he planned on staying at the school regardless of the NCAA’s decision, but [...]

Morning Five: 07.19.12 Edition

rtmsf — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:31:43 +0000

Breaking news from the absolutely-no-surprise department, but a couple of days after the Big East announced that it had reached a $7.5 million buyout deal with Syracuse to allow the Orange program to alight for the ACC in July 2013, Pittsburgh followed suit. Even better, the Panthers got the exact same buyout deal of $7.5 million to transfer its conference allegiance to Greensboro instead of Providence. The ACC and the Big East will certainly look very different as basketball leagues starting in 2013-14, but with a total of five schools consisting of two of its best football (Miami and Virginia [...]

Morning Five: 06.08.12 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 11:31:38 +0000

ESPN.com released its list of the top 10 coaching jobs in college basketball yesterday. This article was a capstone piece to a week’s worth of solid analysis evaluating the best-to-worst coaching jobs in each of the six power conferences, and the overall best/worst mid-major positions as well. Just over a year ago we did a similar analysis here at RTC, ranking the top 20 coaching jobs at the time, using the general criteria of attractiveness of the position to potential suitors. This is a bit of a flash point to many fans of top programs who generally go through life [...]

Morning Five: 05.04.12 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:36:07 +0000

In just the last three days, the Atlantic 10 has added Butler, the Mountain West has eviscerated the WAC with its additions of San Jose State and Utah State, and now Conference USA has finished it off as a major conference by grabbing Louisiana Tech to go along with the A-10’s Charlotte and the Sun Belt’s North Texas and FIU. There will be a quiz on all of these moves in mid-August. What does this mean from a college basketball perspective? Probably not much. Neither Charlotte nor Louisiana Tech have been relevant in a long time, and although North Texas [...]

Morning Five: 05.03.12 Edition

rtmsf — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:33:25 +0000

Round and round and round we go… coming on the heels of Tuesday’s announcement that Butler will join the Atlantic 10 beginning in the 2013-14 season, the Mountain West leaked on Wednesday that Utah State and San Jose State are set to join its ranks on Friday of this week. While bolstering the MW in light of its pending losses of TCU, San Diego State and Boise State, this move may effectively finish off the WAC, a high-mid major conference with just shy of 50 years of history behind it. The league may be left with only two football-playing members [...]

Morning Five: 04.27.12 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:33:03 +0000

Yesterday we mentioned that Luke Winn had written a piece handing out eight different coaching awards based on efficiency metrics from the entire season. His follow-up article published on Thursday broke down six more awards based on the data from the 2012 NCAA Tournament. Several of the usual suspects populate this list, but you might be surprised at which head coach had the best after-timeout numbers in the Dance this year — he’s widely considered a very good coach, but probably not to the extent he deserves. Assistant coaches around the country must have thrown up in their mouths Thursday after [...]