Current list of NBA Draft entries

NBA Draft 2006 early entries at Yahoo Sports

Rejected by Lavin?

The NC State job opening is turning into the biggest soap of the summer so far, surpassing both the Indiana and the Oklahoma dramas.

Even Steve Lavin rejected the NC State job? Is that true?

Some NC State fans thought the NC State job was too good for Herb Sendek. Sendek was not good enough for them? Well, from the looks of it, perhaps it was the other way round after all: Herbie was too good for NC State?

I think a reasonable hire for NC State would be Bob McKillop. Being at a bigger stage he would be able to get even more talented recruits and leverage his domestic and international connections...

Who is in the draft now?

As we get closer to the April 29 - the deadline for entry into the 2006 NBA draft, the list of players declaring grows longer and longer.

Some of the college juniors (rising seniors) are declaring simply as a means of "interviewing with the NBA" without hiring an agent and intent on returning to college unless they are guaranteed a high pick or a first-round contract.

ESPN has more resources than I have, so instead of me trying to keep track of them all, here is what ESPN has: Early entries in the 2006 NBA draft

SMU makes a big mistake...

SMU makes a big mistake by hiring walking-disaster Matt Doherty. Matt Doherty had flash-in-the-pan success at both Notre Dame and North Carolina but when the dust settled the truth came out: he is a walking disaster. If you saw him as an analyst on CSTV the previous two years, you would have gotten confirmation of that.

He was able to survive at North Carolina as long as he did because he was Jordan's friend and he played on a national championship team with Dean Smith. If he did not have those connections, he would have been kicked to the curb a lot earlier.

This post may sound harsh, but scoreboard does not lie...

Big 10 Rivals in 2006-07

Brad Sturdy of the Rivals.com network takes a sneak peek at the Big 10 Rivals in 2006-07. Story featured at Yahoo Sports.

Their list is sorted alphabetically.

My sleeper Big 10 recruit for 06-07 is .... Bryce Webster of Minnessooottttaaa.

Keep in mind I was wrong for 05-06 when I predicted Krabbenkroft of Wisconsin to have major impact :-)

CSTV and Mountain West make history!

CSTV and the Mountain West conference make history by launching the first single-conference super regional tv network to cover the MWC.

Cleverly named "the mtn" - not to be confused with mtv - it will carry 36 football games, 150 basketball games and 200+ olympic sports.

The press release can be found here

Shoe Wars: AND 1

While the big boys are battling it out, AND 1 has the following NCAA Division 1 schools: Penn, Pacific, Wyoming, Charleston and La Salle. Nike and Adidas/Reebok need not worry, but they have to start from somewhere :-)

http://www.and1.com/section/team

Today's News

Fun times up ahead at Pepperdine. The Fresno City College coach, famous for teaching his offense to Calipari and Memphis has taken up the Pepperdine job. A collective sigh of relief from some fans worried that Jim Harrick was circling around the area like a vulture :-)

Adam Morrison officially enters his name into the NBA Draft with the blessings of Mark Few and Gonzaga

Leon the Show Powe also enters the draft but will not sign with an agent

Andy Katz wonders what happened to Calipari and NCState in his blog

Former ASU assistant Brooks Thompson takes over at UT-San Antonio.

A bad back is ending the career of former UConn forward Marcus White (now at Purdue) :-(

Can't wait for the next season? Watch the future stars of tomorrow today: FSN and FCS (Fox College Sports) will be airing the championship game of the King James Shooting Stars Classic. Among others participating is the AAU team of OJ Mayo. The game airs live on April 29, but in some areas it will air tape-delayed later on. As always check local listings as both FSN and FCS are regionally aligned and programming varies from state to state and region to region. http://msn.foxsports.com/id/5492010

What is a K-Zombie?

What is a K-Zombie?

A K-Zombie is a basketball player at Duke whose life energy is drained by Coach K, thus becoming a K-Zombie. Just look into the Duke's players eyes and you will see the effects of this - they have become K-Zombies! A recent example: Sean Dockery. Some of them are able retain some of their life energy, others are not. The clever ones transfer or bolt for the NBA before it's too late :-)

Bob Huggins, a paperback writer?

Did the Beatles write that song referring to Bob Huggins? Probably not, but searching for "Bob Huggins" at alibris.com produces almost 10 books co-authored by Bob Huggins, the majority of which are actually technical books on basketball Xs and Os.

On a related note, Mike D'Courcy of Yahoo Sports and Sporting News reports that OJ Mayo and Billy Walker to Huggins and Kansas State is not a slam dunk. Well this qualifies as "no news news" or "master of the obvious derivations", but obviously OJ Mayo will have second thoughts about going to the Manhattan in Kansas. Now if Huggie-Bear was coaching near the other Manhattan (NYC)...

Thanks to "craighoops" of HoosierNation.com

As it has become now a tradition of this blog, we post a Thank you note for everyone who puts a link of this blog to their website or forum. So our thanks go to "craighoops" of HoosierNation.com (part of the scout.com network)!

And off to the NBA they go!

Not a shocker by any means, but some of this year's college underclassmen have recently announced for the NBA Draft.

Rudy Gay and Laptop Williams of UConn

Adam Morrison of Gonzaga

Tyrus Thomas of LSU

Some of the juniors who have declared for the NBA draft may raise some eye-brows, but those who did not sign with an agent, did the right thing: You get a free evaluation by the NBA and you have nothing to lose as long as you play by the NBA/NCAA rules. Think of it as a virtual job interview a college junior has at the university's career center :-)

In some coaching news, Florida's Grant takes over at VCU hoping to become the next Jeff Capel, while Temple assistant Dan Leib. takes over at Hartford.

The biggest job openings are: NC State (Lon Kruger in the mix), Manhattan, SMU (Rob Evans?).

Bob Knight goes hunting...

I kid you not! Bob Knight will be featured on a hunting show on the Outdoor channel. This is a recurring show, not a one-time special. The show's formal name is "Knight and Hale's Ultimate Hunting". The channel name is "The Outdoor Channel".

Search for "knight hunting" at http://tv.yahoo.com/advsearch.

Please check your local cable/satellite listings since there are a couple of channels with similar Outdoor-sy names.

Spin! Spin! The carousel is still spinning...

The carousel is still spinning!

Top job open: NC State, Penn, SMU, Manhattan, VCU

Andy Katz speculates that former OleMiss/ASU head coach Rob Evans is ideally suited for the SMU job.

My dark horse candidate for the NC State job: Davidson's Bob McKillop

Coaches salaries are taking a big jump again. The coaches should be thankful for Indiana ($1.3 million for Kelvin Sampson, $1.7m at Mark Few) but mostly NC State throwing $2+ million at Rick Barnes and John Calipari.

Is it too early to start thinking about the 2006-07 season? Maybe not! Andy Katz is drooling over the Florida-Kansas matchup in late Novemember in Vegas.

And more games we shall have - assuming the proposal is approved by the NCAA big-wigs. The conference tourney will not count against the number of games player. Teams will also get one more game (total of 28), and will be allowed to participate in one exempt tourney per year, instead of two in four years. This will bring the total to 28 regular season games, or 30-31 if they participate in a three-game (eg Maui, Alaska) or four-game (eg preseason NIT) exempt tourney. But you won't see Duke every year in the preseason NIT: This restriction is still in place: a team can only participate once in every four years in the same tourney

TV Reminder: The 2006 Roundball classic will air this Sunday on CSTV. If you miss it, do not worry. It will repeat a few more times on CSTV. This will be a two-hour edited tape-delayed game. Also on CSTV: A rerun of the 2005 Roundball classic on Saturday, and multiple replays of the 2005 Reebok Big time and Adidas ABCD camps on CSTV. The Jordan classic is the following week on ESPN2/ESPNU.

Classic games on TV: The 1989 Air Force - BYU game will air (as usual without commercials) on the BYUTV channel.

Gems from the Blog Visitors: "Is Quin Snyder married?"

Wooden Award, no Wooden

After the recent fallout between John Wooden and the people running the Wooden award, the Wooden award was awarded to JJ Redick by Jim Boeheim. The other four finalists were Brandon Roy, Adam Morrison, Randy Foye, and Shelden Williams.

The women's award went to Simone Augustus, with Jim Boeheim also getting an award for his contributions to the game.

Needless to say JJ Redick did not deserve this award. JJ Redick is severely over-rated and over-hyped because he plays at Duke and because he is (well you know what). His performances in his four years in the NCAA says it all. Yes, another over-hyped over-rated Dookie! Boooooooooooo!!!!!

Friday Recap

Sad news in the world of women's basketball. 28yo Maggie Dixon, HC of the women's Army team died last night from heart arrythmia :-(

Josh Boone declares for the Draft but will not sign with an agent. Fazekas of Nevada does too.

Lehigh of the last "amateur" league forfeits 13 games from the 04-05 season for using an ineligible player. The issue at hand was transfer credits from High Point to Lehigh for a transfer player.

New Jobs! Mike Davis as expected goes to UAB with big fan-fare ($600K to $1million per year), Gonzo (Bobby Gonzalez) finally and rightfully gets his chance at one of the big three NYC/NJ schools (Seton Hall), and Gary Waters downgrades from the Big East to Cleveland State. Meanwhile Painter gets an additional rollover year @ Purdue.

SMU (of Dallas) is now open. Coach Tubbs was fired over alleged NCAA violations. Not doing well scoreboard-wise probably didn't help either. A new AD is coming in soon as well.

Repeat! Repeat! That's what Florida hopes to do, with the three super-sophs announcing that they are returning. Florida was so excited they even purchased the floor they won the national championship on and are moving it to the their home court. That cost them $70,000 but I don't think anyone would mind. They are the National Champions!

Billy Packer takes an indirect shot at Sendek at the bottom of the page. And speaking of Herb Sendek, here is another Raleigh editiorial on Sendek and NCState.

Recovering from the Madness

CBS execs are busy number-crunching the TV ratings of the NCAA tourney. 2006 Tourney TV ratings summary. The final got an 11.2 rating vs 15.0 for last year's final. It did slightly better than the Okafor final (2004). The 26 CBS telecasts averaged a 6.3, up 2% from 2004, but down 9% from 2005 (6.9 rating).

Onto the NBA they go: Rajon Rondo will sign with an agent. Tubby Smith must be secretly hoping he doesn't have to go through another Randolph Morris-like draft-drama with Rondo.

On the fence: Cal's Leon the Show Powe is 50-50.

Former Rutgers coach Gary Waters is heading at Cleveland State. He joins the fraternity of Matt Doherty, Dr Tom Davis, Buzz Peterson, ...

In an Instant Classic, the Women's final went to the Terps in over time. Another loss for the smug dookies! Woohoo! :-)

ESPN's trio of star-analysts already gave us their Top 5 teams for 2006-07. No shockers there, with North Carolina, Florida, Ohio State, UCLA, Texas, Kansas leading the way.

Job Openings: NC State, Oklahoma, UAB. Almost-filled: Temple, Seton Hall. Soon to become open: Penn, Manhattan.

And the Gators are the new Champions!

Unlike John Brady, Billy the Kid managed to outfox Ben Howland, partly because he had superior talent and more versatility with Brewer, Noah and Horford. Mark Few was the other coach who outfoxed Howland but Gonzaga (unlike Florida) had a meltdown of epic proportions.

Some talk during the weekend had been on revenue from new media sources. Myles Brand alluded to that during the annual "Outside the games" hosted by Seth Davis on CBS. What is this new media? Well, there is the internet, satellite radio (XM, Sirius, etc), new college-sports TV stations (CSTV, ESPNU, Fox College Sports), along with regionally aligned channels along with OnDemand and PayPerView. Theoretically, every single Division 1 game or event could be made available on some form of TV and radio accessible anywhere in the country or the world even.

Has CSTV surpasses ESPN's coverage of the NCAA Final Four? Granted CSTV is now part of CBS so they have inherent advantages in their coverage, but apart from that, CSTV's approach is fresh and refreshing. ESPN's coverage has been rather stale and predictable with the same cast of characters and their unwillingness to make any comments that would potentially upset anyone. Doug Gotlieb (a Stephen-A-Smith-wannabe)is the only one speaking his mind without being too PC/sensitive. For example, calling out Howland out-foxing John Brady on the sidelines.

Into the Hall of Fame: The Chuckster, Domique, Sleazo, the Italian godfather of basketball coaches, and the Big East godfather.

Memo to CBS: Please do something with the presentation of the Chevy Player and Coach of the year award. It is very stale, staged and lifeless presentation in its current form. Please fix it!

The Numbers: There's always something funky with the numbers. In this year's Final Four, all four coaches coming into the games had a 66.7% winning record in the NCAA tourney. You couldn't even stage that if you tried. That's incredible. That percentage essentially means they won 2 out of every 3 games they played.

Do you want to relive the Madness??? CSTV will be showing the best 12 games of this year's tourney on Sunday April 9, starting at 5pm Pacific time. 24 hours of action! Set your VCRs/TiVos/Hi8s! As always, check local listings...