Wildcats begin search for Smith's replacement
March 24, 2007
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - Tubby Smith is gone, trading life under the microscope at Kentucky for the welcoming arms of Minnesota basketball fans.
Now athletic director Mitch Barnhart must find a coach who can return the Wildcats to the Final Four while appeasing one of college basketball's most ardent fan bases.
University spokesman Scott Stricklin would not say Friday whether Barnhart had made contact with any specific candidates.
"He'll talk to as many people as it takes to find the right coach," Stricklin said.
That doesn't include Florida coach Billy Donovan, Louisville coach Rick Pitino or Tennessee's Bruce Pearl. Not yet.
Donovan, a former Kentucky assistant, brushed aside talk about returning to the Wildcats after leading Florida to a 65-57 win over Butler in the NCAA tournamenton Friday night.
"I cannot control different things that are out there. That's someone else's decision," he said. "It's got nothing to do with me at all. There's always going to be speculation, but I'm not the decision-maker in the process."
Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich said former Kentucky coach Pitino hasn't been approached about the job. And Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton and coach Pearl said they also had not been contacted.
"It's a really wonderful thing for Tennessee basketball if their coach is thought well enough to be considered for one of the best jobs in the country, maybe the best job in the country," Pearl said Friday after his team arrived at the Knoxville airport from San Antonio, where they lost to Ohio State in a South Regional semifinal Thursday night.
Messages left for Barnhart were not immediately returned.
Thursday night, Texas A&M coach Billy Gillispie refused to address the Kentucky opening, and Memphis coach John Calipari brushed aside any speculation on his interest.
Whoever the coach is, he'll get a team that won't include Randolph Morris, who signed a free-agent contract with the New York Knicks on Friday.
Saginaw (Mich.) high school basketball star Draymond Green, who committed to coming to Kentucky in 2008, said he was shocked by Smith's decision to leave.
"I knew there had been talk about Coach getting fired, but there is that kind of talk every year," Green said. "That's just how the Kentucky coach gets treated."
And fans refuse to apologize for demanding greatness.
"We have high expectations here. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, that's what's helped make the program what it is," said John Stacy, as he watched Smith's news conference at Minnesota at a local Mexican restaurant. "I think coach Smith is a nice guy, but we need to get back going to the Final Four."
AP Sports Writers Elizabeth Davis in Knoxville, Tenn., and R.B. Fallstrom in St. Louis contributed to this report.
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Shaw sprained ankle in first-round win vs. Holy Cr
Southern Illinois forward Matt Shaw is listed as doubtful for the Salukis' next NCAA Tournament game against Kansas, ESPN.com's Andy Katz has learned. Shaw is not cleared to practice.
The junior has not played since spraining his left ankle in a first-round win over Holy Cross on March 16.
Shaw is Southern Illinois' third leading scorer, averaging 11 points and six rebounds this season.
The fourth-seeded Salukis face No. 1 Kansas in a Sweet 16 match Thursday.
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College Basketball: Pick a Winner
March 15, 2007
Take a big whiff everybody, it's that b-ball time of year. You've got the men's NCAAs, the women's NCAAs, and the men's NIT. Don't even get us started on Division II, DIII, or the Warriors.
The men's NCAAs tip off this morning at 9:40 a.m., with the Bay Area's only entrant, the Stanford Cardinal, taking on their University of Louisville homophones.
It's hard to say which is more popular these days, watching postseason college basketball or "playing" an NCAA bracket pool or two, or seven.
The bracket, of course, being the scheduling grid that divides 64 of the "best" college teams in the country into four regions to play six rounds of games over three weeks to decide one champion (you listening NCAA football?). Made mathematically neat and tidy by the NCAA's decision to expand the postseason championship tournament to 64 teams in 1985 (sometime in the last decade they tacked on an additional "play-in" game between two tiny conferences for the chance to be a #16 seed), and hyped with massive underdog upsets by North Carolina State in 1983, Villanova in 1985, and Kansas in 1988, and mesmerizing teams like Christian Laetner's Dukies and the bad-ass UNLV squads of the 1990s, the men's NCAA tournament and its attendant office pool have been upwardly spiraling out of control for more than 20 years.
Got picks? Photo by SFist_Chris.
So much so that a new field of pop science called bracketology has even sprouted up around the NCAA pools. Essentially overhyped and overcommented analysis of the tournament fields, bracketology has been the hot word on everybody's lips for the past few years. In fact, bracketology has gotten so big, it's being applied to just about everything in a cross-disciplinary orgy of nonsensical shark jumping that confirms America's ability to bastardize just about anything.
So whether you live for the tournament or are just playing a pool so your buddy will stop sending you harassing emails, the moment of truth has come -- time to fill out the bracket. First question: what type of pool are you playing? Round-by-round points-based winner-take-all, Calcutta, team draft, or some other heretofore undiscovered variety? Are you playing one pool or juggling six different picks sheets for three different pools? Playing your buddy's hand-tallied pool, a corporate online venture, or just playing with yourself? Do you review stats, scouting reports, and experts' predictions to supplement the 29 hours of college hoops you watch every week or do the team mascots and colors determine your picks?
Well, we've got our men's NCAA bracket sheet out and we're ready to jump into the pool. . .
So, let's see, . . . Winthrop, that's a cool name, we'll take them. And, uh Madison is a party town, so let's take the Wisconsin Badgers to go all the way -- that should be an awesome victory celebration. We love to see coaches and mentors face off, so that means Pitt and UCLA to meet in the second round, and we'll take the protege in the Marquette-Michigan State throwdown. Oral Roberts is a given (heh-heh, we said Oral). Even though we're taking ORU, we're hoping they get hammered so we can write "Oral Roberts blows a big one" in our pool summary.
New Mexico State has to win at least one game so we can watch superfly Reggie Theus strut around the sidelines -- he's so cool, we want to be him when we grow up. The Albany Great Danes are a must, and of course we want perennial doormat Vanderbilt to go a couple of rounds, even though it's hard to take them seriously with a nickname like "Vandy." Bob Knight's Texas Tech Red Raiders are in the mix, so we'll go with them and hope for a massive meltdown from the frumpy one. We're going to take a pass on Stanford, because their game starts at 9:40 a.m. PST and we know how college kids hate those early morning classes (the game's at 12:40 Louisville time).
Holy Cross? Holy crap, they've got no chance. Wright State? wrong. It'll be blue balls for the Creighton Blue Jays and Coach K's Ducks of death will say V-CU later to the Rams. Gonzaga's season went up in a mushroom cloud about a month ago, so we'll have to take Hickory to win that matchup.
Florida is the defending champion and odds-on favorite to repeat, but there's a reason why they play the games. Upsets. Upsets are the driving force behind the tournament's popularity. Like NASCAR fans, college hoopheads want to see brackets resplendent in high-seed carnage. Half the fun of playing a pool is picking the upsets. No 16 seed has ever beaten a number one seed, so we'll fight our contrarian urge and go with the top seeds until at least the Sweet 16. However, never have all the number one seeds made it to the Final Four, so somewhere along the line, we've got to pick a couple of shockers to have a chance to win it all.
Or not. That's the beauty of pools based on point totals. If a team that nobody picked like Syracuse in 2003 or Kansas in 1988 wins it all, you could still win your pool without picking the overall winner. Or if you followed the seeding and a favorite like North Carolina, Florida, or Ohio State prevails, you'll be in the mix with about 75 percent of the other players in your pool.
As for our miserable picks sheet, well, we've got Wisconsin, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, and Texas A&M in the Final Four; NC and Wisconsin in the Finals, NC taking it all. Or not.
One thing that playing a pool does is personally invest you in the outcome of every single game, which makes the tournament a lot more exciting, and pertinent. Why else would you give a crap about Belmont?
Posted by chris in News+Sports
2003-2007 Gothamist LLC. All rights reserved.
Bowling Green 68, Miami (Ohio) 64
March 4, 2007
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (AP) -Ryne Hamblet had a career-high 28 points and Martin Samarco added 21 to lead Bowling Green to a 68-64 win over Miami of Ohio on Sunday.
Hamblet shot 8-of-12 and hit six of nine 3-point attempts. Samarco was 7-of-16 and had six rebounds for the Falcons (13-17, 3-13 Mid-American Conference). Nate Miller added 11 points.
The RedHawks took a 31-27 lead at halftime, but Bowling Green went on a 9-0 run to start the second half and never trailed again. Down 49-35 with 13:02 remaining, Miami scored 14 straight points to tie the game at 49 but couldn't pull ahead.
Michael Bramos led Miami (15-14, 10-6) with 19 points and eight rebounds. Tim Pollitz had 18 points and Nathan Peavy added 16. Miami outrebounded Bowling Green 32-27.
The RedHawks shot 43 percent for the game (21-of-49), while the Falcons shot about 46 percent (20-of-44).
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Tigers use balanced attack to extend nation's long
Feb. 25, 2007
CBS SportsLine.com wire reports
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- The depth of No. 7 Memphis was just too much for the Houston Cougars.
The Tigers overcame an early Houston lead fueled by aggressive defense, then wore down the Cougars and coasted to a 77-64 victory on Sunday, extending the nation's longest winning streak to 17.
Chris Douglas-Roberts scored 19 points to lead Memphis. Joey Dorsey added 16 points and 10 rebounds for the Tigers (25-3, 14-0 Conference USA), who also won their 29th consecutive home game.
Memphis weathered the pesky defensive start by the Cougars with a late run in the first half to put the game out of reach. Houston (15-13, 9-5) never threatened the Tigers in the second half.
"We're deep, and that helps us," Douglas-Roberts said. "Eventually, a team that is not as deep as us will get worn out because we're constantly running up and down."
Senior Jeremy Hunt finished with 14 points for Memphis. Dorsey was 8-of-10 from the field.
"Somebody asked me the one player in the league I'd like to have," Houston coach Tom Penders said. "Douglas-Roberts is great. All these guys are great. But Dorsey, he's a stud."
Robert McKiver led Houston with 32 points, hitting 13 of his 28 shots. While McKiver had a stellar day, he was pretty much alone offensively. No other Cougar was in double figures, and the rest of the Houston players were a combined 11-of-30 shooting. That was contrary to one of Penders' keys to keeping up with the nationally-ranked Tigers -- that Houston needed a great game, while catching Memphis on an off-day.
"We needed more guys to step up," Penders said. "We had to have more than one guy show up."
Memphis defeated Houston 79-69 on Jan. 11. Winthrop of the Big South and Memphis are the only teams in the country undefeated in their respective conferences.
The Tigers already had clinched the outright C-USA championship last week, but Memphis players downplayed the accomplishment, saying they wanted to maintain momentum into the postseason.
"What everybody is saying when they are watching our team play is 'Man, do they play hard. Wow, they chase down balls and rebound. They really pass to each other,' " Memphis coach John Calipari said. "The last thing they say is: 'Man, are they deep.' That's the consensus everybody tells me."
Memphis closed the first half with a 19-5 run to erase a 21-19 Houston lead. The run helped Memphis carry a 38-26 lead into halftime.
McKiver led the Cougars with 13 points in the first half, connecting on 5 of his 11 shots. Despite McKiver's conversions, Houston shot 33 percent before the half, including Oliver Lafayette, the Cougar's second-leading scorer, misfiring on six of his seven shots.
Lafayette would end the day with 7 points, missing eight of his 10 shots in the game before fouling out.
"Maybe a lot of that has to do with Memphis," Penders said. "They were focusing on him, and they're quick. He just didn't have a good game offensively."
Houston pressured Memphis out of its offensive rhythm in the first 13 minutes, picking up the Tigers at halfcourt and pushing them outside their normal offensive sets. Memphis missed seven straight shots, enabling Houston to gain a 21-19 lead on Dion Dowell's 3-pointer with just over nine minutes left in the half.
At that point, Memphis started running, getting down the floor before Houston could set up. That contributed to the Tigers taking a 12-point halftime lead.
"They got us two or three times in pressure and transition." Penders said. "For about a 2-minute stretch there, we didn't get any shots off, and they got that thing going. They're a momentum team. I needed about nine or 10 timeouts today."
McKiver kept the Cougars from getting blown out at the start of the second half, scoring 12 straight points to cut the Memphis lead under double digits. That gave McKiver 25 of Houston's 42 points at the time.
McKiver's production wasn't enough to hold Memphis at bay, as the Tigers continued to stretch the second-half lead, eventually reaching 21 points with 1:39 left.
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