Daily Tourney Talk (Wednesday)

Recruiting News

CBS buys MaxPreps.com and puts it under the CSTV umbrella

Malik Story (2008) transfers to Oak Hill Academy

California high school basketball state championships to air on Fox College Sports and FSN

Commitment updates from the Hodge Report (CSTV)

Tyreke Evans (top 2008 player) featured on SSoT

Details and links at Recruiting Wars

NCAA Basketball TV Ratings on CBSpress release by CBS

A quick recap of the latest news in the College Hoops Repor(t)

Arena renovations at Tennessee, with luxury suits and fancy scoreboard, but that will cost, in both money and seats lost. Capacity will drop to 21,000.

Revealing in-depth analysis of Arizona's season by the Sliver Fox, Lute Olson.

Superstitious!, a column by Pat Forde on coaches and their quirky superstitions.


Sweet 16 Predictions

Kansas double-scores Southern Illinois, while UCLA beats Pitt 39-38 in overtime :)

Memphis shocks the world as they win a road game against Texas A&M (this is really a shocker since Memphis got beat on the road this season (Tennessee, Arizona)... Meanwhile Ohio State makes another strong comeback to overcome the feisty Bruce Pearls

Tim Floyd comes up with a clever game plan but there's too many players and too much talent at North Carolina and they overcome the cunning Floyd plan. Remember when USC beat Carolina last year at the old LA Sports Center Carolina was without Raymond Lawson (ooops! Tywon Felton... oops! Tywon Lawson!), and without as many offensive weapons (Wright, Ellington, Deon Neon Thompson), and USC had a solid point guard in Ryan Francis... On the other side of the bracket Georgetown will deliver a woodshed beating

On the run-and-gun side of the bracket, Florida will steamroll Butler by 25, while Oregon will outshoot UNLV in a high-scoring high-tempto affair.

These predictions should be treated as contrarian indictors :-)


Transferology

Ben Eaves transfers out of UConn. This type of thing typically happens when a coach wants to give scholarship(s) to better player(s) and "encourages" his 13th/12th/11th players to "seek out new life and civilizations and boldly go away"


Coaching Carousel

Andy Katz: Greg Marshall of Winthrop a hot commodity (New Mexico, South Florida). Of course whoever hires him has to worry that he might pull another College of Charleston on them. According to Katz New Mexico is also looking at Steve Alford, Rob Evans, and a WNBA coach. The $$$-package may be in the 600-800K range.

Tom Davis is apparently retiring again, this time from Drake, increasing the body count of fired/gone coaches in the Valley of Darkness.

Surpring everyone was Joe Scott as he returned to the state of Colorado, this time to take over Denver, leaving Princeton without a coach. Joe Scott is proving to be one of the fastest job-switchers in the industry.

So demanding is Long Beach State that they decided not to renew Larry Reynolds despite giving them their first NCAA bid in 12 years and switching to a run and gun offense. It looks like there is pressure in the WCC and Big West to become the next Gonzaga. That explains why Dick Davey was pushed out of Santa Clara after 30 years at the school (half as head coach, half as assistant).

A Kansas assistant accepts a mid-major job which promotes the delightful D-Manning to an assistant.

TV Guide

TV wars between cable and satellite for the Baseball out of market Pay Per View package

The Sweet 16 press conferences are underway, look for coverage on both ESPN News and CSTV. CSTV will be rebroadcasting their press conference highlights show throughout the day (Full Court Press)

The last two NIT quarterfinals are on tonight on ESPN2 (ESPN has NBA action), at 4pmPT/7pmET, Syracuse at Clemson, and at 6pmPT/10pmET DePaul at Air Force.