njit – Rush The Court

Giving Thanks: Setting the Table for the Rest of the Season

Shane McNichol — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 14:31:56 +0000

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday by a significant margin. From the moment I wake up to the moment I slide into a food-induced coma at the end of the night, I have a wide smile on my face. My relationship with college basketball is much the same. It’s my favorite sport by a comparable margin and I certainly find my share of smiles throughout the season. The two are unquestionably intertwined, with Turkey Day acting as an unofficial turning point of the season. Everything prior feels like two boxers dancing and feeling each other out, but once Thanksgiving comes and [...]

Where 2015-16 Happens: Reason #28 We Love College Basketball

rtmsf — Sat, 17 Oct 2015 18:33:27 +0000

Here we go… headfirst into another season heralded by our 2015-16 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight rather than 30 days from now. Over the next month you’ll get one reason per day until we reach the new season on Friday, November 13. We’ve captured what we believe were the 30 most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head in astonishment. You can find all of this year’s [...]

O26 Weekly Awards: St. Francis, Denzel Livingston, Jeff Neubauer & Texas Southern

Tommy Lemoine — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 17:31:17 +0000

Throughout the season, the Other 26 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, including team, player, coach and whatever else strikes our fancy in that week’s edition.

O26 Team of the Week

St. Francis (PA). After going 7-6 down the stretch last season and winning 10-plus games for the first time since 2011, St. Francis (PA) entered this season with more optimism and higher expectations than it has had in a while. Not only were the Red Flash picked fourth in the NEC preseason poll, but they even received a first-place vote – major respect for a program that hadn’t finished in the [...]

Dan Monson’s ‘Buy Game’ Compensation Raises Eyebrows, But Isn’t Unique

Tommy Lemoine — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 17:01:54 +0000

Long Beach State head coach Dan Monson has assembled one of the 10 most difficult non-conference schedules in college basketball for each of the past six seasons, a tactic he’s on record as claiming helps with recruiting and toughens his players, among other benefits. The fact that The Beach also receives sizable paychecks from many of those contests – road trips to schools like North Carolina, Arizona and Ohio State – is also an understood reality, if less frequently discussed. What has not been known until this week, however, is that Monson himself reaps personal financial benefits as a result. San Diego Union Tribune’s [...]

Can Michigan Survive This Storm?

Bennet Hayes — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 20:11:06 +0000

Last weekend was not a good weekend for John Beilein’s Michigan team. Most notable among the afflicting issues was a ground-shaking loss to NJIT, the biggest upset by point spread (NJIT was a 24.5-point underdog) in college basketball in over seven years. If that wasn’t bad enough, Oregon and Syracuse both lost convincingly at home, rendering the Wolverine’s two biggest wins of the young season that much smaller. It was about as traumatizing as a December weekend can get for a Big Ten team in the Top 25, but come Monday, it was only the pain of the weekend that [...]

Big Ten M5: 12.10.14 Edition

Brendan Brody — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 14:31:06 +0000

Michigan did it again Tuesday night, as the Wolverines once again fell victim to an unheralded foe at home. Eastern Michigan knocked off John Beilein’s team, 45-42, and offensive woes were the culprit in this one after issues on the defensive end caused the loss to NJIT on Saturday. Michigan shot 4-of-21 from the three-point line against EMU’s zone, and put up a pedestrian 0.70 points per possession as a result. They also turned the ball over 13 times, and now, after notching good wins against Oregon and Syracuse, Michigans has two pretty bad losses on its resume that could burn it come NCAA Tournament time. Speaking of tournaments, it [...]

O26 Weekly Awards: SFA, John Brown, Marvin Menzies & NJIT…

Tommy Lemoine — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:01:03 +0000

Throughout the season, the Other 26 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, including team, player, coach and whatever else strikes our fancy in that week’s edition.

O26 Team of the Week

Stephen F. Austin. The Lumberjacks’ season began (in earnest) with a home loss to Northern Iowa – the team’s first defeat in its own building since February 15, 2012 – and a pair of road losses to Xavier and Baylor. All respectable games to drop, sure, but the latter two weren’t even close, as SFA was bludgeoned by margins of 18 and 16 points, respectively. They certainly weren’t the types [...]

Revisiting the Wildly Upsetting Weekend: Yale, Green Bay, NJIT, USC Upstate & North Florida

Tommy Lemoine — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:31:32 +0000

It looked like the upset of the weekend on Friday night: 3.5 seconds on the clock, Yale down two to Connecticut; junior guard Jack Montague slipped to the far corner in front of his own bench, caught the baseline inbounds-pass and drilled a game-winning three-pointer to knock off the defending champions in their own building. The loss was the Huskies’ first in 68 games against intrastate opponents, and the shot – complete with frenzied, ecstatic hugging and hands-on-head dejection – was something of an iconic early season moment: six-foot-nothing Ivy League guard with a Shakespearean last name hits clutch shot [...]

Morning Five: 12.08.14 Edition

nvr1983 — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 12:15:29 +0000

It is beginning to seem like eventually every conference tournament will be held in the New York metro area. The latest conference to join the trend is the Big Ten, which hold its 2018 tournament at Madison Square Garden. According to the Big Ten, this is only part of a rotation as they will be going through different cities over the next four years: Chicago (2015), Indianapolis (2016), and Washington, D.C. (2017) before going to New York City. While the conference is saying all the right things about this being part of rotation the need to play in New York City [...]

Morning Five: 02.13.14 Edition

nvr1983 — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 13:00:28 +0000

After legal haggling between the school, state, and the new AAC, Rutgers has agreed to pay $11.5 million as an exit fee to leave the AAC and join the Big Ten. The sum might seem fairly small compared to the numbers thrown around for other schools attempting to leave a conference, but it is worth noting that Rutgers had already announced its intention to join the Big Ten even before the AAC played its first game. We hope that other schools and conferences can reach relatively quick compromises as well, but realize that might be hoping for a little too [...]

Who Won the Week? Duke, Marcus Smart, and NJIT…

rtmsf — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 22:04:46 +0000

Who Won the Week? is a regular column that will outline and discuss three winners and losers from the previous week. The author of this column is Kenny Ocker (@KennyOcker), a Spokane-based sportswriter best known for his willingness to drive (or bike!) anywhere to watch a basketball game. And man, will those be tested this winter.

WINNER: Duke

Parker Has Been Outstanding So Far This Season

The Blue Devils went 3-0 in the past week – star freshman Jabari Parker had 21 points in each of the games, with 10 rebounds in two of them and nine in the other – [...]

The Unvictorious

jstevrtc — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:11:17 +0000

After Florida State’s victory over Duke last night, there are but four undefeated teams left in D-I college basketball: San Diego State, Kansas, Syracuse, and the heir apparent to the #1 ranking on Monday, Ohio State. You’ve probably heard about that today just as much as you’ve heard the analysis about how hard it is for a team to go undefeated any more (no kidding). Soon, we’ll make our predictions on when the remaining four undefeateds will lose. Because they will.

Kyle Randall and UNCG Have Made It Just Past the Midpoint of Their Schedule Without a Win

If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

Top 25 Games

#3 Kansas 78, Cal 63: “Kansas won the Pac10 grabbed their first true road victory of the season with a win over the Cal Bears. The late tipoff Wednesday night seemed to fit the Jayhawk play at times as a Kansas team that clearly looked like the more talented team, once again couldn’t manage to stay out of their own [...]

Around The Blogosphere: December 22, 2010

nvr1983 — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:05:28 +0000

Top 25 Games

#2 Ohio State 96, UNC-Asheville 49: “Shaking off a shooting slump that saw him fail to reach double figures in four straight games and shoot just 32% over the last six, David Lighty broke out of his offensive funk with a 29 point performance to key Ohio State’s 96-49 blowout victory over UNC-Asheville tonight in the Schott.” (Eleven Warriors) USC 65, #17 [...]

The Great West Conference Finds a Home For Its Champion

nvr1983 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:12:37 +0000

Last year we brought you news about the creation of the newest Division I basketball conference, the Great West Conference, which will start organized operations this season. As we noted at the time, the league wasn’t exactly a “Who’s Who” of basketball powerhouses. In fact, the most notable program in the league was the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which went 0-29 in the 2007-2008 season before finally winning a game last season.

The full list of GWC members:

Chicago State University Houston Baptist University New Jersey Institute of Technology University of North Dakota University of South Dakota University of Texas-Pan American Utah Valley University