stefon jackson – Rush The Court

Checking in on… Conference USA

rtmsf — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:39:20 +0000

Change

Bob Dylan wrote a famous song, “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” One could make a valid argument that this could be the theme song for the Conference USA Men’s 2009-10 basketball season. For the first time since conference realignment and the 2005-06 season, a new preseason champion was selected (Tulsa), the conference tournament will not be held in Memphis (again, Tulsa) and the de facto commissioner of the league is no longer with us (John Calipari).

How will this “change” translate for the rest of the league? In speaking with many of the [...]

Conference USA Wrapup & Tourney Preview

rtmsf — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:31:08 +0000

Memphis passed its last regular season road test and now only has a few games to go to return to the “promised land” that they’ve never really left.

While the Tigers’ dominance over the rest of CUSA is nearly unparalleled in the history of modern college basketball, it doesn’t mean that every other team is chopped liver. Basically anything can happen in a tournament setting and the Tigers have endured a few close calls this year.

So here are the teams as they are seeded and some pertinent info:

#1: Memphis Tigers

Allen R. of Houston Basketball Junkies is the RTC correspondent for Conference USA.

The moment of truth for Conference USA has come and in the next couple of weeks there will be major tests for the flagship program of the conference: Memphis.

But the biggest story still is the fact that the Tigers have dominated in a year that for all intents and purposes was supposed to be a down year.

1.) Two More Tests for the Tigers: There are only 4 games left on their schedule, but 2 of them will pose serious challenges for [...]

Boom Goes the Dynamite: 02.21.09 Edition

rtmsf — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:06:50 +0000

It’s BracketBuster Saturday, and we’re back with another compelling edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite. We don’t know how it is where you live today, but it’s rainy and chilly here at the RTC Western Compound, which means it’s a great day for huddling up on the couch, firing up the three tvs, ordering up some pie and watching hoops all day. There are some pretty strong games on the slate today, starting with Butler v. Davidson early and finishing with BYU v. UNLV late. Settle in and feel free to make your own observations in [...]

Checking in on… Conference USA

rtmsf — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:41:35 +0000

Allen R. of Houston Basketball Junkies is the RTC correspondent for Conference USA.

CUSA Basketball Standings:

Memphis 12-3 (2-0) Houston 10-3 (1-0) Tulsa 10-5 (1-0) UTEP 10-5 (1-0) East Carolina 9-6 (1-1) Marshall 8-7 (1-1) Tulane 7-8 (1-1) UCF 10-5 (0-1) Southern Miss 9-5 (0-1) UAB 9-6 (0-1) SMU 5-8 (0-1) Rice 5-10 (0-1)

Now that the proverbial dark cloud of non-conference play has passed, there’s the excitement of Conference USA basketball. Everyone is now 0-0 and has their chances (some larger than others) to make a statement in the second half of the season. As this week started it didn’t matter if you were Memphis or SMU, a new season [...]

Checking in on the… WAC

rtmsf — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 19:26:29 +0000

Kevin McCarthy of Parsing the WAC and Sam Wasson from bleedCrimson.net are the RTC correspondents for the WAC.

The End of the (Non-Conference) Road. The WAC may have started off slowly in the non-conference schedule but has picked up the pace over the past two weeks. Over a three day span the league went 9-4 against their opponents including victories over two West Coast Conference schools (San Francisco and San Diego) and a pair of Mountain West Conference schools (Utah and TCU). The four losses were to two Pac-10 schools (Cal and Washington State), the Missouri Valley’s Creighton and [...]

Checking in on… Conference USA

rtmsf — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:01:06 +0000

Allen R of Houston Basketball Junkies is the RTC correspondent for Conference USA.

It was quite an eventful week for Conference USA basketball, but not necessarily for the right reasons.

The issues off the court practically overshadowed the actual games this week as the season has picked up after final exams.

UAB loses four players: It has become a pattern that each year under coach Mike Davis the UAB basketball program loses players to academic, attitude and other off-the-court issues. This past week the Birmingham News reported that Ed Berrios, Armon Bassett, Jeremy Mayfield and Terrence Roderick all were booted off [...]

ATB: Turkey Weekend Wrapup

rtmsf — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:01:08 +0000

And we’re back… We hope that our fair readers had a luckier Thanksgiving weekend than we did. Due to substantial computer issues, we were unable to keep the site updated over the weekend. But we managed to watch a fair number of the multitude of games this weekend, so rather than recapping what has effectively become stale news, we’ll instead offer our observations.

What We Learned.

Old Spice Classic.

Maryland is equally as likely to pull a major upset as to lay a gigantic egg (beating Michigan St. by 18, then losing by 22 to Gonzaga and 27 to Georgetown). Michigan [...]

Checking in on… Conference USA

rtmsf — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:12:46 +0000

Allen R of Houston Basketball Junkies is the RTC correspondent for Conference USA.

Feast week and turkey day are now in the rear view mirror and another week of basketball is in the books.

There were good moments and bad moments, but ultimately this was a positive week for Conference USA basketball. During the UAB/Oklahoma game in the pre-season NIT, ESPN commentator Steve Lavin gushed about the depth of CUSA, talking about how UAB, UTEP and Tulsa could join Memphis in the NCAA Tournament this year. This kind of coverage is the best thing this conference could hope for.