tommy amaker – Rush The Court

O26 Power 13: WCC Teams Reign Supreme

Tommy Lemoine — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 18:01:57 +0000

With the start of the regular season now just a few days away, it’s time to examine the O26 programs we think will shine in 2016-17. The school atop this list should come as no surprise.

1. Gonzaga — West Coast. No Kyle Wiltjer (20.4 PPG) or Domantas Sabonis (17.6 PPG, 11.8 RPG) this year? No problem. Like a true power program, Gonzaga simply reloads, adding three high-major transfers — guard Jordan Mathews (California), forward Johnathan Williams III (Missouri) and point guard Nigel Williams-Goss (Washington) — along with several elite recruits to an already-talented lineup. Williams-Goss, a second team All-Pac-12 performer in [...]

Previewing Tight Races in the Mid-Majors: Part I

Will Ezekowitz — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 19:21:26 +0000

In this NCAA Basketball preview season, we are bombarded with lists. One common list is that of the trendy mid-major ready to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting college hoops world. Unfortunately, some of these high-quality teams find themselves in the same conference staring each other down for scarce March Madness bids. No mid-major is ever guaranteed an invitation to the Field of 68, of course, no matter how impressive it looks in November and December. Just ask the 2015-16 iterations of Monmouth and St. Mary’s about that. In this preseason post we will analyze several mid-major conference races that should [...]

Bracket Prep: Texas Southern, Harvard & Wyoming

Tommy Lemoine — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 21:40:10 +0000

Let’s finish off the Bracket Prep series with our reviews of each of the weekend mid-major automatic qualifiers to help you fill out your bracket. Here’s a primer on each of the most recent bid winners. The entire series can be found here.

Texas Southern

Texas Southern is going dancing for the second-straight year. (hbcubuzz.com)

SWAC Champion (22-12, 16-2) RPI/Pomeroy/Sagarin = #130/#207/#204 Adjusted Scoring Margin = -2.1 NCAA Seed: #15

Strength: You don’t often see SWAC teams with as much talent as Texas Southern, especially in the backcourt. Conference Player of the Year Madarious Gibbs (14.2 PPG, 4.3 APG), Marshall transfer Chris Thomas (12.6 PPG) and former Nebraska [...]

O26 Weekly Awards: Harvard, Jalen Cannon, Jim Les & Rice

Tommy Lemoine — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 16:01:34 +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

Harvard. One could argue that Harvard’s season was at stake against Yale on Saturday, or at least close to it. The Crimson, 4-1 in Ivy League play, faced the prospect of falling two games back of the undefeated Bulldogs and severely damaging their hopes for a fourth-straight outright conference title. A victory for Tommy Amaker’s group would even up the records with a return game in Cambridge still ahead on [...]

Checking in on… the Ivy League

Michael James (@ivybball) — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 16:31:46 +0000

Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @ivybball.

Looking Back

Home Unsweet Home – We’re over a quarter of the way through the 2015 edition of the 14-Game Tournament and an alarming trend just will not yield. Home teams are just 6-9 (0.400 – lowest of any conference in the nation) in league games thus far this season with both Cornell-Columbia and Harvard-Dartmouth splitting their travel partner series by winning on the other’s home floor. While Yale managed to sweep its travel partner showdown with Brown, it followed the same [...]

O26 Weekly Awards: Albany, Saah Nimley, Ben Jacobson & Dartmouth…

Tommy Lemoine — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 17:01:54 +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

Albany. Last Monday, Albany learned it would be without leading scorer Peter Hooley indefinitely following the junior’s decision to return home to Australia to be with his ill mother. While the move was understandable and even encouraged by head coach Will Brown, it left the Great Danes – in the thick of an America East title race – without one of their most important players… just in time for a [...]

Checking In On… the Ivy League

Michael James (@ivybball) — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 17:01:35 +0000

Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @ivybball.

Looking Back

Rising Tide Keeps Rising – Despite a rocky start to the 2014-15 campaign, the Ivy League is poised to set more records in terms of league quality. Currently, the league sits at No. 13 both in the Pomeroy Ratings and the Massey Composite Ratings, a broad survey of all of the different ranking systems available for college basketball. The Ivies have also cracked .500 in their average Pythagorean Winning Percentage, which means that if all of the league’s teams played [...]

Harvard’s Wake-Up Call Might Not Be So Bad

Tommy Lemoine — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 15:37:03 +0000

Let’s make a few things clear about Harvard and its probably-gone at-large hopes. For one, if the team is worrying about an at-large selection come March, it probably means it lost two or three games in Ivy League play – which would be problematic on its own. For another, Tommy Amaker’s group is no stranger to faltering unexpectedly in the non-conference: in 2012, the Crimson lost to Atlantic 10 bottom-feeder Fordham; in 2013, it fell at home to Vermont; and last season, it suffered a 15-point defeat to sub-.500 Florida Atlantic. Each year, Harvard’s at-large aspirations took a severe hit [...]

RTC Season Preview: Ivy League

Michael James — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:31:29 +0000

Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @ivybball.

Top Storylines

The Forty Year Cycle – On October 31, the AP made official what many had presumed might happen all summer, as Harvard was revealed as a Top 25 team in the preseason basketball writers’ poll. The Crimson became the first Ivy team since Penn in 1974-75 to crack the AP preseason poll, although for the Quakers that was the last of five consecutive appearances in the preseason rankings. In fact, Penn spent time in the AP poll during eight of [...]

Morning Five: 03.31.14 Edition

nvr1983 — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:00:44 +0000

The Final Four field is set and now all we have to do is wait five days for the national semifinals. The first semifinal will feature Florida against Connecticut, which is a rematch of the game in Storrs on December 2 that the Huskies won on a last-second Shabazz Napier jumper. This time Florida will be completely healthy and it will be at a neutral site, but it will be interesting to see if the Gators can beat the last team to beat them this season. The other semifinal features Wisconsin and Kentucky. Despite the fact that Wisconsin is a #2 seed and Kentucky [...]

ACC M5: 03.25.14 Edition

Matt Patton — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 12:31:27 +0000

Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician: Great piece on Jim Boeheim‘s legacy. It’s insane to mention his six double-digit seed losses without mentioning his 30 appearances (where having the chance to lose to a double-digit seed is a compliment). I love asides, so the Keith Smart reminder was my favorite part. Those single-shot “what if” games can be brutal, though (if Gordon Hayward hits that halfcourt heave, how does Coach K’s recent legacy look?). Charlotte Observer: Man this is a tough second-hand account of Marcus Paige (who announced on Twitter that he’s returning next season) after North Carolina’s loss to Iowa [...]

Bracket Prep: Harvard

Bennet Hayes — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 15:31:17 +0000

The first ticket to the NCAA Tournament was punched in New Haven on Friday night, and as each of the 31 automatic qualifiers plays their way into the Dance over the next week, we’ll take some time to give you an analytic snapshot of each team that you can refer back to when you’re picking your brackets next weekend.

Harvard

Tommy Amaker’s Team Is Back In The Big Dance, And The Crimson Aren’t Planning On Leaving The Party Early

Ivy Champion (25-4, 12-1) RPI/Pomeroy/Sagarin = #52/#32/#37 Adjusted Scoring Margin = +11.4 Likely NCAA Seed: #10-#12

Three Bruce Pearls of Wisdom.

Well, well, well – look who we have here. [...]

Morning Five: 03.07.14 Edition

nvr1983 — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 13:00:42 +0000

Much of the next month will be spent with Doug McDermott collecting awards and by now you have heard almost everything about McDermott including his recruitment, how he got passed over despite every major program actively recruiting at his school. Still the piece by Elizabeth Merrill on McDermott is full of interesting anecdotes that might help you get to know him better. To us one of the more interesting things about McDermott is that despite the fact that he seems to have all of features you would expect from a player that the media would shove down everybody’s throat leading [...]

Checking in on… the Ivy League

Michael James (@mrjames2006) — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 17:01:40 +0000

Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @mrjames2006 and @ivybball.

Looking Back

Ivy Race Reset – While 31 automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament will be doled out following the sometimes wild and often thrilling conference tournaments, the remaining one gets decided during the two-month grind known as The 14-Game Tournament. The upside of the Ivy’s unique structure is that (usually) the best team represents the league. The downside is that many teams are effectively eliminated by the middle of February. While Cornell is the only Ivy squad that has [...]

Harvard, Princeton and the Grind of a 14-Game Tournament

Tommy Lemoine — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 20:21:30 +0000

On the road and without its best player, Harvard lost a close game to UConn on Wednesday night in what might be the death-knell for its at-large hopes; at best, Tommy Amaker’s team will be sweating it out on Selection Sunday if unable to clinch the Ivy League’s automatic bid. Which is a shame. By most measures (including the dubious ‘eye test’), the Crimson is an NCAA Tournament-caliber group this season, something it could have cemented with a win against the Huskies this week or over Colorado back in November. But neither of those outcomes occurred, so Harvard’s March hopes [...]