Daily Tourney Talk (Friday, March 30, 2007)

Did you know? CBS and SI personality Seth Davis wrote a book called Equinunk, Tell Your Story: My Return to Summer Camp. This is not a basketball book, but rather Seth Davis chronicles a summer at Camp Equinunk.

Billy Packer on CSTV: "tourney expansion is a political deal". He does not support expansion, "nice as it is right now". Also not very keen on the play-in game.

T-Shirt Gate 2007!. A scandal of major proportions broke out at the NIT. West Virginia played like a team, so the NIT decided to take out the "i" from "Virginia" in their championship team t-shirts ;-)

List of recruits affected by the Coaching Carousel has been updated with the Iowa and Arkansas recruits

Final Four coverage from John Feinstein at Washington Post (no registration required). Some highlights: Boeheim joked about taking the Kentucky job at $8 million per year and he probably joked about actually scheduling road games (!!!)... Folger thinks Tubby is very happy now free from the Big Blue Storm that has been around him for the last few years... Latest rumor is Kentucky offers $4m per year for Donovan... Leonard Hamilton at Arkansas?... Tubby Smith and Steve Alford joked about their exit strategies... Larry Schyatt at South Florida?... It was Schaytt that got Billy Donovan the championship after all (the defensive co-ordinator; as much as Florida denounces this)... Read all about it in John Feinstein's column!

Kentucky Coaching Idol 2007: Mark Schlabach's story at espn.com says that sources point to Kentucky making Billy "the Kid" Donovan an offer starting at $2.8m per year ($3.5m with incentives/bonuses). Donovan currently makes a mere $1.8m per year. Sources say that Florida was willing to pay Donovan up to $2.5m before the Kentucky bidding war... Meanwhile Kentucky hired the same executive search firm that got Tubby the TimberGophers job, which fuels the fire of a staged and pre-agreed upon exit strategy designed by both Tubby and Kentucky. As you may recall a few weeks ago Pitino warned Kentucky not to fire Tubby. By Tubby leaving on his own, both parties saved face (sort of)... According to "sources" the top paid coaches are The Dirty Rat (Coach K) and Ole Roy (he needs every penny for his "Coke habit")... Izzo comes third with $2.6m... This is before any retention, trigger and special bonuses are accounted for... Meanwhile, Aaron's UK basketball blog has wall to wall coverage on the coaching situation, including stories on Donovan, Calipari, Gillespie, Patrick Patterson, Jai Lucas, comments from legendary C.M. Newton, and Tubby too... Meanwhile a TCpalm.com story makes a case why Kentucky is a much better job than Florida... Let's not forget that if Billy Donovan was the Kentucky coach, he would have probably been fired in 2005 after five years of subpar performance after the 2000 NCAA final appearance...

AP Awards: Kevin Durant named AP College Player of the Year, the first freshman ever to win this award. Andy Katz on will he stay or will he go (to the NBA?). Best selling singer Tony Bennett won the singer (oooops!) coach of the year award.

Billy Gillespie's deal will be at $1.75 million per year (a jump of a mere half a million!). Billy won't sign the deal until he returns from the Final Four (perhaps waiting for the Kentucky bid after Billy Donovan quickly declines?). ESPN story. This means the pressure on Gillespie to deliver will increase now. No longer every win will be a celebration. Things like "we are paying you $2m per year to bring us championships" will start coming up... Meanwhile Arkansas has conceded that they lost Gillespie. Perhaps they should rehire Stan Heath?

Mascot Madness with Jeff Corwin and Lee Corson is coming to you on Sunday night on the Animal Planet channel. It includes a discussion of what's a good mascot, how a school decides which one to select, and viewer rankings. It will play three times on Sunday. If you miss it, it will repeat on Thursday as well. Animal Planet is typically a standard cable channel.

Girl Power! Goodyear selected one college student from each Final Four team to shoot a basket from 500 feet above the ground in a Goodyear blimp into a giant basket on the ground. Of the four, two were men, two were women. Both men missed their shot, both women made their shots!

One day before the tourney starts!

Right now, (10amPT/1pmET), coverage from the Final Four on both ESPN-News (press conferences) and CSTV (live 3-hour show from Atlanta, including team practices). If you miss it, CSTV will repeat its 3-hour show at 6pmPT/9pmET.

My predictions? Florida over UCLA, but I have a hard time picking the Georgetown vs Ohio State game...

Donovan McNabb is trying to break a record by appearing in every single show produced by ESPN in Bristol, CT, including a Sportscenter anchor audition using a shot sheet (industry term) for a basketball highlight.


Speaking of March Madness, you can enhance your college basketball dvd collections with some of these titles:

Some of these are the official NCAA DVDs produced in association with CBS Sports, some of them are produced by the individual teams, all sold on Amazon:

The pictures are links to the Amazon summary product page, with more details on these. I have not reviewed any of these (yet), so please do your research before purchasing... Some of them have full games, some of them have highlights, some have both...

1978 Duke-Kentucky NCAA Championship game

1979 Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson final

1980 NCAA Championship Louisville vs UCLA

1981 NCAA Championship: North Carolina vs Indiana

North Carolina 1982 - Flashback

1985 Villanova championship - a family's legacy

Syracuse 2003 Champions - Finally Orange

UConn Huskies 2004 Champions (ConnQuest)

2004 Women's Final Four

2005 Destination Indianapolis - Women's Final Four

2005 Lady Bear Brilliance - Official NCAA Women's championship

North Carolina 2005 Champions - Team Carolina

2006 Women's Final Four

2006 Women's Final Four in Boston

2006 Gator Glory

2005-2006 Florida Gators

Magnificent March - Official 2006 NCAA Championship, includes three full games (three Final Four games: national semifinals and final) and highlights and specials

Un4gettable the 2005-2006 LSU Journey

2006 West Virginia Highlights - Sweet Memories

Billy Donovan - Mastering the Full Court press

Mastering the Flex Offense by Gary Williams

John Wooden's UCLA Offense Book/DVD package

100 years of Duke - guaranteed to fill up your TV screen with Coach K smug-pixels :-)