Daily bubble talk (Wednesday)

Bubble Talk

Thanks to the CAA Hoops blog for the link! The CAA Hoops blog covers Colonial Assocation basketball. Yes, that's the conference that produced George Mason. Speaking of the CAA, this week's episode of CSTV's Crystal Ball features Hofstra's coach Tom Pecora as a guest coach. (CSTV usually brings in active coaches during their March Madness coverage, so you may see more of him - unless of course he is busy with post-season action.

Daily TV listings are posted below, Comprehensive March Madness listings here (or the link on the left-hand column)

Austin Peay needed overtime to stay alive and prevent itself from becoming the first NIT automatic bid.

Jay Bilas was lecturing on the negatives of the RPI and the need for a replacement, but he didn't provide any replacement alternatives. Are there any?

Cry me a river: Jim Boeheim was criticizing teams for playing tough schedules and increasing their SOS/RPI because they lose to tough oppoenents (he said). Well Jimmy at least they didn't stay at the Carrier Dome and ate cupcakes. You can't have 20+ guaranteed wins every year by getting 10 guaranteed cupcakes wins at the Carrier Dome and at the same time have a high SOS/RPI. Not happening Mr Boeheim, unless you are appointed by the NCAA to redesign the RPI formula :)


How large is the bubble?

There are 34 at-large bids and 6 "bcs" automatic bids. Of those I project (based on current records _and_ a projection of what will happen) that 27 of them are guaranteed to be given to BCS teams. The remaining 13 bids (best case scenario assuming conference tourneys are won by "tourney locks") will be split between 21 "bcs" teams and all the other conferences. The pool will be further reduced by secure bids from so.illinois/creighton, a combination of AF/UNLV/BYU/SDSU since they can't all win their conference tourney. So a reasonable best-case scenario is a bubble of around 10 teams. This will get smaller if Memphis, or Nevada lose in their conf tourneys and the MVC tourney winner is someone other than Creighton/S.Illinois. This will get further reduced if the "bcs" conference tourneys are won by anyone other than the "bcs" locks. A bid is lost regardless but if a bubble team wins the automatic bid, the bubble gets smaller. If a non-bubble team wins an automatic bid, the bubble pool remains the same size. So if your team is on the bubble here is who you should root for: 1) the "locks" to win 2) the bubble teams to beat non-bubble teams when automatic bids are at stake (eg conference finals, or no locks remain in the field)


Not Bubble Talk

Conspiracy theory nominee Was the whole Vitale/Noah/Horford/NBA-scouts controversy a motivational ploy by Billy Donovan to fire up Noah? Everyone knows that Vitale can't keep his mouth shut... (and it didn't work last night). What makes this conpsiracy theory nominee sounds quasi-reasonable? Pitino is known for using motivational ploys and Donovan is a Pitino disciple.

Blast from the Past: Towards the end of FSN's "In Focus" series on the Duke/Carolina rivarly it was alleged that Coach K told Ole Roy (at Kansas at the time) after he beat him in the Final Four: "If you come to Carolina I'll beat your ***". Well Coach K that's not happening. Ole Roy is beating you handily recruiting-wise and on the court too as of late...

Revisited: Thad Matta's gum putback (3 second or 5 second?) and Appleby's refusal to shake hands with Oregon's Aaron Brooks (following the incident in last year's pac-10 tourney)


Mini-review of the Pistol Pete Diaries on Fox College Sports

An excellent original six-part series presented on Fox College Sports

It covers the life of Pistol Pete, the stories being told by Mark Kriegel, author of the latest book on Pistol Pete.

The only problem I have is that Fox College Sports has a problem with volume adjustment. The Diaries are much lower than the commercials, so you end up with a sonic boom when you get loud commercials.

Episode I: Mostly Pete's dad's story (Press Maravich), starting from his days in Steeltown

Episode II: Dad's story continues, including John Wooden and Clemson, and Pete's early years

Episode III: NC State, and Pete's first two years at LSU

Episode IV: debuts next week

Check my daily tv listings or your local tv listings for airtimes or read the book for all the details.

TV listings: Wednesday February 28, 2007

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust elsewhere...

LIVE games or new shows

4pm, villanova at uconn, espn. prediction: uconn wins!

4pm, indiana at northwestern, espn2. prediction: purple wins!

4pm, seton hall at cincy, fullcourt/CSN, prediction: seton hall wins!

5pm, 3am, rice at marshall, cstv. prediction: Morris Almond scores 45

6pm, Texas A&M at Texas, ESPN2. Offense vs defense. Acie Law vs Kevin Durant! Wow! It's awesome baby! Prediction: Muddy crystal ball, I predict two overtimes, 51 points by Kevin Durant, but I can't see the winner.

6pm, Maryland at Duke, espn. Go Gary! Go Terps! Go Turtles! Beat the Dooookies!!!!!!! Prediction: Duke wins on a last second controversial basket (sadly it happens so often that I am afraid my prediction will come true).

9pm, tulsa at smu, cstv. SMU, fire Matt Doherty before he ruins your program. Look at what he did at/to NC. Fire him now! prediction: tulsa wins

9pm, 9am, college gamenight, espn.


Classic games and repeats

9am, lake love (oops lake oswego) at mater dei, fox college sports. UCLA-bound super prep Kevin Love plays

9am, 4pm, episode III of the Pistol Pete Diaries, an original fox college sports presentation

11am, from 2001, duke at maryland, espn classic.

12pm, arizona at arizona state, fox college sports

5pm, 3am, Hardwood Heavens, on INHD. Contradictory listings, it's either the Carrier Dome or the (Dean) Smith Center

7pm, 1030pm, portland at sf, csn

5am thur, sacred heart at monmouth

Daily Bubble Talk returns!

You probably won't hear about this on ESPN for obvious reasons, but Dick Vitale got in trouble (if that's possible), by saying that Billy Donovan told him in confidence that NBA scouts would make a mistake if they rank Noah ahead of Horford. The AOL Sports blog has the story

An excellent website, http://www.truthaboutduke.com to visit and bookmark! For example, a comparison between Dean Smith and Coach K (aka AMEX). I would also like to point out that the American Express tv ads with Coach K are major recruiting violations because Coach K was essentially recruiting everyone watching by saying things like [I want you to play for me, and be passionate, and be successful and similar type of bs]. Even more so because those ads aired during a quiet period (recruiting wise). But the NCAA is not going to do anything about that. Instead they'll take it out on Rick Majerus for buying a $7 sandwich instead of a $5 sandwich for a player who had just suffered a major family tragedy (Van Horn). Or they'll take it out on "directional small state school" for giving the players one too many drinks of gatorade, while they'll slap Kelvin Sampson on the wrist with a feather for making over 500 excessive recruiting calls. Fair and Balanced Mr Myles Brand?. More on the AMEX commercials.

Comprehensive March Madness and Championship week TV listings post, continually updated as listings become available and get updated by the broadcasters.

I have created a new and continually updated post to cover all things NIT since the NIT doesn't get as much love as the NCAA. NIT Central. It's also a link towards the top of the left-hand column.

Tuesday games on TV are posted below

A concerned Butler fan told me that the NCAA's official RPI is counting Butler's split-crowd games at Conseco against the other Indiana schools (Domers, Purdue, Indiana) as home games. This is clearly not fair, as these games are essentially NCAA tourney-type games, and since they involve in-state teams they should be considered neutral court games. This is similar to the Big 5 games in Philly played at the Palestra in front of bi-partisan crowds.

Today's issue of (the print and presumably the online as well) edition of USA Today has expanded college basketball coverage (every Tuesday). Today's edition has a cover story on Winthrop (this year's George Mason?), Jim Tressel's impact on the Buckeyes basketball team, a comprehensive coverage of upcoming conference tournament games/schedules, and features on Arizona's flip-flopping, and Pat Summitt. No room for Dick Vitale this week presumably because of the expanded conference tourney coverage. Also mentioned in the paper were the overnight TV ratings for two college basketball games: The #1 vs #1 slugfest of Wisconsin at Ohio State got a 3.1 rating (2.4m households), CBS's highest this season. This beat the NBA game on ABC (Bulls vs Pistons) who got a 2.3 (1.8m households). Meanwhile the Florida at Big-Baby-less LSU got a 2.0 rating (1.5m households).

Thanks to Neel Mehta blog for the link!

The TheBracketBoard has been updated today. Also make sure you bookmark their One Stop Shop page with comprehensive coverage of all conference tourney brackets in a very readable format! Click on each conference at the bottom of the page to see its brackets.

Meanwhile the latest brackets posted by Joey Brackets are as of Monday. Joey Brackets being the street name for ESPN's Joe Lunardi. By the way, the "Dr Bracketology" segment on Sunday's College Gamenight was great. I hope ESPN continues and expands on it!

March Madness All Season has comprehensive conference tournament previews posted. An index of all their previews

Jerry Palm's top seeds presented on CSTV's Full Court Press: UCLA, Florida, Ohio State, and Wisconsin.

New book on Cinderellas and George Mason

New book on March Madness: Cinderella: A Season inside the Rise of Mid-Major College Basketball (Hardcover), by Michael Litos, 275 pages, currently at $15.61 on Amazon and eligible for free shipping (with orders over $25)

The book foreword is written by Jay Bilas (yes the Dookie Jay Bilas).





Here is the book description from Amazon
Cinderella is an inside look at the NCAA's mid-major basketball programs, which fight for one shot to battle the association's elite teams for the national championship. The rise of mid-majors has been one of the biggest sport stories of the past few years, and never more so than now.

Michael Litos spent the 2005-06 season on the frontlines of the Colonial Athletic Association. With complete access to coaches and players, he found expected tales of pressure and passion. He also found the unexpected: a player being shot; another accused and eventually acquitted of rape. And he was there for George Mason's historic run to the Final Four.

In what was dubbed "The Year of the Mid-major," Cinderella delivers the ultimate story of what it means to be an underdog, and how the sport of college basketball is being transformed.

NIT Central

Last update: Wedn 3/14/07

You can watch NIT games on the ESPN family of networks, but you can also watch some NIT games online via XOS Live Streaming! (I do not know if it is free to watch them online). Details and schedule at the official NIT page


NIT at-large field projections at:

NITology.com

The Bracket Project

The Backboard

NIT Selection show to air on ESPN2 this year!
Great job by the NCAA since taking over the NIT!. They are making it more like a smaller-scale NCAA tourney by cutting down the teams to 32 (instead of the unbalanced number of 40), and now they will be having a selection show broadcast on ESPN2, on Selection Sunday, 2 hours after the NCAA brackets are announced. The "NIT Selection Show" will air on ESPN2 at 6pm pacific/9pm eastern, on Selection Sunday, Sunday March 11, 2007. Check my March Madness TV listings for comprehensive tv coverage of both championship week and march madness (NCAA and NIT tourneys).

The 32 NIT bids will be awarded as follows:

To all the regular season conference champions who do not earn an automatic NCAA bid or at-large NCAA bid. Each conference's tie-breaker system will be used to determine who gets the automatic NIT bid.

The remaining spots will be filled by the best available teams using similar principles as those used by the NCAA tourney selection cmte and by trying to minimize travel for teams.

NIT Automatic Bid Projections: EIGHT (8)

Austin Peay (Ohio Valley)

East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun)

Marist (MAAC)

South Alabama (Sun Belt)

Toledo (MAC)

Vermont (America East)

Delaware State (MEAC)

Miss Valley State (SWAC)

Realistically two conference tournaments remain that could result in an NIT at-large bid. One more if BYU loses and they are not given an NCAA at-large bid. So the size of the NIT at-large pool is much more predictable right now...

At this point a number of regular season conference championships have been decided, and the conference tourneys are around the corner. So the regular season champions who are not considered for an NCAA at-large bid, they have an "NIT safety net" in case they fail to win the automatic NCAA bid by winning their conference tourney and they don't get an NCAA at-large bid.

These are the NIT "Safety-Net" teams:

Big West: Long Beach State

Independents: They do not qualify for an NIT automatic bid. Utah Valley State has the best record among them

Ivy League: Their regular season champion gets the conference's NCAA bid, so judging from the language in the NIT selection regulations (see link below), they can't get an automatic NIT bid (they can still get NIT at-large bids if their teams are deemed to deserve them)

Mountain West: BYU

Southland: Texas A&M CC


The remaining conferences do not get an automatic NIT bid because their regular season champions are projected to be safe NCAA at-large teams:

The six "BCS" regular season conference champions (whoever they maybe)

C-USA: Memphis

Missouri Valley: Southern Illinois

WAC: Nevada

Conference standings at Yahoo! Sports

So the maximum of NIT automatic bids to be given are 21, and the minimum is zero. Thus the NIT at-large bids will be from 11 to 32. The "bcs" teams who usually take the NIT for granted will have to earn it this time around, and they have to root for the regular season mid-major conference champions to get their conference NCAA at-large bid so they don't eat up an NIT automatic bid.

With this in mind, take a look at
NITology.com that has a breakdown of the NIT at-large field.

The official NIT website has details and dates of the NIT tourney games. These are the official NIT Selection Procedures

To refresh your memory, these are the results and TV coverage of the 2006 post-season NIT tourney

TV listings: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 (college basketball)

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***

LIVE GAMES and new shows

look for increased college hoops coverage on all the ESPN daily shows such as Cold Pizza, PTI, Around the Horn, Jim Rome, ESPN News, etc...

USA Today (the newspaper) has extended college basketball coverage in the sports section every Tuesday

2pm, Full Court Press, CSTV. Highlights from coaches press conferences.

4pm, Michigan at Michigan State, ESPN. In-state rivarly and NCAA implications at the same time. Michigan can help their cause by winning. Prediction: Izzo State wins comfortably

430pm, Pistol Pete Diaries, Episode III on FoxCollegeSports, an original 6-part series.

6pm, Florida at Tennessee, ESPN. After Florida's road woes (@Vandy, @LSU) this game just got more interesting. TN is strong at home, and Bruce Pearl is excited about winning an Oscar for makeup for his body-paint performance at a recent women's bball game (Oscar was awarded by the ESPN Gamenight crew). Prediction: Florida reminds everyone (on national tV) that they are the defending national champs. Possibly an instant classic game! Pat Summit alert!!!: Pat Summit has promised that she will do something in return to Bruce Pearl's painted body appearance at the women's game. Pat has dropped a hint perhaps, she said she was a cheerleader when she was young.

6pm, 9pm, 7am Wedn, BYU at Air Force, CSTV. Two of the top four teams in the MWC battle it out in a game with serious NCAA implications. Bzdelik got in trouble with the MWC beauraucrats for criticizing the schedule, which probably means that he struct a nerve. Prediction: AF wins!

6pm, Kansas State at Oklahoma State, FullCourt/CSN. Bubble Game!. A win would be more beneficial for Huggins since it would be a road win.

9pm, 9am Wedn, College Gamenight, ESPN


Classic and Repeats

7am, 12pm, Washington at Oregon, FoxCollegeSports

9am, 9pm, 430am Wedn, North Carolina at Maryland, FoxCollegeSports Good game!

11am, Cal at USC, FoxCollegeSports

11am, from 2000, Tennessee at Florida, ESPN Classic

130pm, 3am wedn, Arizona at Arizona State, FoxCollegeSports

3pm, 8pm, overnight, Crystal Ball on CSTV. Includes an Xs and Os analysis of Carolina's secondary break offense by Steve Lappas and Hofstra's Tom Pecora. Highly recommended show!

330pm, 9pm, Stanford at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports

6pm, Hardwood Heavens: Allen Fieldhouse of Kansas, INHD (high definition channel)

1130pm, Portland at SF, CSN

Monday Night Quarterback

Rumors

Flip Saunders (NBA head coach at the Pistons, formerly of the MN T-Wolves) to take over the Monson-less Golden Gophers???

Fact, not Fiction

56 is the current streak of made free throws by Gonzaga's Derek Raivio. Puke's JJ Redick couldn't get past the 40s...

Coach K on how to win road games: "Have more talent than the opponent". This from his own coaches show. A nominee for the Master of the Obvious Oscar category! I can't believe it!!!

AAU-style battle in the paint but in college: First half of Louisville at UConn, with Derrick Caracter going after Thabeet of UConn.

A Bo Ryan joke on officiating (paraphrased): "A coach finds a cell phone after a game. He grabs the official and tells him that he dropped his phone. The official asks how do you know it's my phone? The coach says... it has 10 missed calls.

Creative Fans segment: USF fans were holding signs advertising their team's webpage (on ESPN's Big Monday).


Opinion segment O'Reilly style

Great job by the NCAA since taking over the NIT!. They are making it more like a smaller-scale NCAA tourney by cutting down the teams to 32 (instead of the unbalanced number of 40), and now they will be having a selection show broadcast on ESPN2, on Selection Sunday, 2 hours after the NCAA brackets are announced. The "NIT Selection Show" will air on ESPN2 at 6pm pacific/9pm eastern, on Selection Sunday, Sunday March 11, 2007. Check my March Madness TV listings for comprehensive tv coverage of both championship week and march madness.

The 2007 McDonalds All-American rosters have been announced. As usual there is plenty of controversy with a handful of selection, most notably Taylor King, Jai Lucas and Nolan Smith. (Two of them Dookies, the other one recruited by Coach AMEX). More coverage at Recruiting Wars

Is LSU a better team without Big Baby?. They looked so in their last two games (Kentucky, Florida)! There was great movement, great blend of shooters/penetrators (Tasmin, Martin, Mason), and stability from Lazarre. LSU without Big Baby = Lazarus???

Memo to ACC schedulers: You are crazy! Carolina vs Maryland games are instant classics based on style of play, yet they only play once in the regular season! This is crazy! Do whatever you need to do and make it so that they play each other twice in the regular season. And no, I'm not interested in excuses :)

If I was voting in the polls I would not give Ohio State a #1 vote after that horrible slugfest against Wisconsin. This is how the Big 10 gets its reputations as unwatchable. It takes two to play a fun game, don't blame Ohio State (hint: blame Wisconsin and most of the other teams in the Big Eleven). That game was supposed to be the game of the week, yet both the Louisville at UConn and North Carolina at Maryland were much more watchable games. Speaking of Louisville, is Pitino copying the AASAA offense from his friend Calipari who copied it from Vance Walhberg? There were a couple of plays by the Cardinals late in the game (at UConn) that looked like textbook AASAA offense (although one can also point out that passes and skip passes are not exclusive to the AASAA offense)

Beating 13 RPI 101+ teams is wonderful if you want to pile up hundreds of wins throughout your career, but it won't get you to the NIT, let alone the NCAA. Why? Because RPI 101+ teams do not get at-large bids in the NCAA or the NIT. (Yes, I am talking about you, UConn!)

Desperate times at Duke as Coach K (on his coaches show) was listing all his players playing professional ball, not just the NBA but also in the Euroleague and everywhere else. Translation: "Come play for me and you will make lots of money as a basketball pro". Thankfully fewer and fewer top caliber recruits are buying into his vaporware these days.

Is the Air Force team wearing down because of a short rotation? This also happened to Arizona earlier in the season when Lute Olson was playing five players most of the time.

The proposed requirement to have a 50-50 or better conference record before a team can be considered for the NCAA is invalid because most of the major conferences play unbalanced and uneven schedules. The way to make the selection more fair is to include deserving teams, not to make up more rules as a workaround.

Should Bill Self be fired if Kansas loses in the NCAA 1st round for the third year in a row? That's an interesting question, and an answer may not be easy to come up with...


Media Segment

ABBA's song "Fernando" was discovered by a new generation of Wisconsin Badgers fans as it was re-recorded (by fans) as a tribute to "Alando" (Tucker)

Props to ESPN for featuring Doris Burke as a men's basketball analyst. For some reason it's considered okay for men to coach/analyze women's games, but the other way round seems to be a big issue. When Doris is a sideline reporter she usually makes the more basketball-savvy comments compared to the in-game color analyst (eg Vitale) and even the in-studio analysts. So it's great that she also gets a chance to be the in-game analyst.

TV listings for Championship week and March Madness in progress

FSN needs to learn how to count! They showed Washington's Appleby with 14 points and 5/6 on three-pointers. Someone forgot to press the recalc button!

Tim Brando is still struggling to properly pronounce the name "Vasquez" (Maryland's talented freshman). How hard is it? And this from TB: "inducing a foul". Come on! And CBS is using this guy for the NCAA tourney?

Mike Patrick did it again, this time he described the Jamar Smith accident as "bizarre". Len Elmore was speechless after he made that comment. I would describe it as sad, tragic, unfortunate, an error in judgment, a mistake, but bizarre? Where did that come from?

But they were perhaps both outdone by Bob Wenzel when he referenced "the RPI poll". RPI is a poll? WoW :-)

New TV ads with Dick Vitale!, with Hooters and an old-school Vitale in a new (it's not delivery, it's) DiGiorno.

Are TV commentators scared of Jim Calhoun??? Both Dan Bonner and Kevin Harlan (who imho is one of the most solid play-by-play guys) were talking as if UConn was an NCAA bubble team. Are they that clueless or perhaps they were afraid of drawing the ire of Jim Calhoun? (insert "appeasing the lion" here). UConn was a Big East tourney bubble team until recently, and they are barely an NIT bubble team according to NITology.com

In or Out with Digger Phelps: If it's a Big East team, you can predict the answer: IN!

You know you watch too much ESPN when you can tell which ones of the features they are showing are stock footage (eg Tom Izzo's free throw story)

March Madness TV Listings

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***
*** this is a work in progress, it will be updated frequently ***
*** updated March 13, 2007


2008 update!
Just posted, the 2008 March Madness TV listings.


2007 March Madness TV listings
The post below covers the 2007 NCAA March Madness tv listings.

Tuesday March 13, 2007

Three classic NCAA upsets on ESPN Classic

classic games on CSTV

4pm, NIT game, Utah State at Michigan, ESPN2

430pm, Florida A&M vs Niagara, NCAA Opening Round game from Dayton, Ohio, ESPN

630pm, NIT game, Alabama at UMass, ESPN

10pm, College Gamenight, ESPN


Wedn March 14, 2007

Four classic NCAA upsets on ESPN Classic

classic games on CSTV as well

4pm NIT games on both ESPN (South Alabama at Syracuse) and ESPN2 (Fresno State at Georgia)

8pm, NIT game, Austin Peay at Air Force, ESPN2


NCAA Tourney CBS TV schedule

Detailed schedule with tip-off times and announcer teams

Easier to read, less detailed CBS schedule

General CBS Sports tv schedule

To find out which games will be shown in your area, check the website of your local CBS affiliate.

New this year: Two NCAA games will be shown on CSTV as follows:
* Thursday 2pm PT/5pm ET: Vandy vs George Washington
* Friday 9am PT/noon ET: Albany vs Virginia (upset alert!!!)

more coming soon...




Daylight Saving Time Alert!: The time change will happen earlier this year, namely at 1:59:59am on March 11 the clocks will spring forward to 3am. Because of this some of the TV listings you may find online are one hour behind for listings on March 11 and later. My TV listings are adjusted for DST. So please keep this in mind if you are looking at TV listings before March 11...

ESPN News Alert!: All ESPN family of networks games (80+ games) of Championship week, March 1 through March 11 will be broadcast for free online at espn360.com. Thanks to ESPN for making all these exciting games available to fans on the net for free! Thank you ESPN :-)

NCAA Tournament available free online!: The NCAA tourney will be available for free online (just like last year). Details at NCAASports.com



Selection Sunday, Sunday March 11, 2007

9am, Road to the Final Four (1 hour), CBS

2pm, Bracketology (1 hour), ESPN.

230pm, Crystal Ball (30 minutes), CSTV

3pm, Brackets Revealed on CBS (1 hour)

3pm, Sportscenter with bracket updates as they are revealed, ESPN

4pm, Bracketology (2 hours) - analyzing the brackets, ESPN.

4pm, March Madness Bracket Breakdown (1 hour) on CSTV.

6pm, NIT Selection Show (30 min), brand new this year! on ESPN2.

630pm, ESPN2 changed their upcoming listings from SportsCenterU (ESPNU's version of Sportscenter) (90 min) on ESPN2 to Bracketology. Not sure at this moment if this is a different Bracketology show than the one shown on ESPN earlier on. The ESPN version will be two years long.




Championship Week, March 1-11 2007
Tuesday February 27

11pm, MVC Tournament Preview, Fox College Sports

Thursday March 1

10am, 12pm, 6pm, 8pm, four CIAA Quarterfinals on ESPN Classic

Friday March 2

3pm, 530pm, two CAA round one games, ESPN Full Court

4pm, and 8pm, CIAA Semifinals, ESPN Classic

730pm, 930pm, two MAAC Round 1 games, Iona vs Rider, Canisius vs St. Peters, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

Saturday March 3

9am, Classic game, the 1985 NCAA final, Georgetown vs Vilanova, CSTV

11am, Big South final, VMI vs Winthrop, ESPN2.

1230pm, 130pm, 430pm/1230am, 7pm, MAAC quarterfinals, Siena vs Manhattan, Marist vs Canisius/StPeters, Niagara vs Iona/Rider, and Fairfield vs Loyola Maryland, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

1pm, Atlantic Sun final, ESPN2.

3pm, Southern final, Davidson vs ApplSt/CoCharleston, ESPN2

5pm, Ohio Valley conference final, ESPN2

5pm CIAA final, ESPN Classic

Sunday March 4, 2007

9am, 11am, America East semifinals, ESPN Full Court

11am, Missouri Valley final, CBS

1230pm, 5am, Sunshine State final, a division 2 conference in Florida, FoxCollegeSports.

1230pm, 230pm, CAA semifinals, ESPN Full Court

3pm, 530pm, MAAC semifinals, FoxCollegeSports

630pm, 830pm, WCC semifinals, Gonzaga vs TBD, then Santa Clara vs TBD, ESPN2

Monday March 5, 2007

4pm, Colonial (CAA) final, ESPN

430pm, 7pm, SunBelt semifinals, ESPN Full Court

6pm, WCC final, ESPN

6pm, MAAC final, ESPN2

Tuesday March 6, 2007

4pm, Midcontinent final, Oakland vs Oral Roberts, Oral Roberts gets an automatic NIT bid if they lose this game. ESPN

6pm, Horizon final, Wright State vs Butler, Wright State gets an automatic NIT bid if they lose this game. ESPN

6pm, Sunbelt final, North Texas at Arkansas State, ESPN2. The winner will be a candidate to play the NCAA Opening round game next Tuesday. ESPN2

Wedn March 7, 2007

9am, 11am, 4pm, 6pm, Big East Round 1 games, ESPN.
* 9am #9 Villanova vs #8 DePaul
* 11am (1120am really) #12 UConn (wow! they was #1 last year) vs #5 Syracuse
* 4pm #10 Providence vs #7 West Virginia
* 6pm (620pm really) #11 St Johns vs #6 Marquette

4pm, NEC final, #2 Sacred Heart vs #1 Central Connecticut State, ESPN2. If Central Conn St loses, they have an automatic NIT bid.

6pm, Big Sky final Weber State/Portland State vs NAU/Montana, ESPN2. If Weber State loses they have a guaranteed NIT bid.

6pm, 830pm, Pac-10 first round games, FSN/FoxCollegeSports
* 6pm, #8 California vs #9 Oregon
* 8pm (820pm really) #7 Washington vs #10 Arizona State


Thur March 8, 2007

9am, 11am, 4pm, 6pm, Big East quarterfinals, ESPN

9am, 11am, 130pm, Big 10 first round, ESPN2

10am, 1230pm, 4pm, 630pm, and overnight repeats, Conference USA quarterfinals, CSTV

12pm, 230pm, 6pm, 830pm, Pac 10 quarterfinals, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

4pm, ACC Round 1 Game 3, ESPN2

6pm, Big 12 Round 1 game, ESPN2

this is probably the craziest day of all of championship week with dozens of games on TV

ESPN Full Court Games
* 9am, 11am, 6pm, ACC Round 1, Games 1, 2 and 4
* 9am, 11am, 4pm, MAC quarterfinals
* 930am, 12pm, 4pm, Big 12 Round 1 games
* 10am, 1215pm, 430pm, 645pm, SEC Round 1 games
* 11am, 130pm, 5pm, 730pm, WAC quarterfinals



Fri March 9, 2007

9am, 11am, Big 10 quarterfinals one and two, ESPN

9am, 11am, 4pm, 6pm, ACC quarterfinals, ESPN2

130pm, Patriot final, ESPN2

4pm, 6pm, Big East semifinals, ESPN

4pm, 630pm, Conference USA semifinals, CSTV

6pm, 830pm, Pac-10 semifinals, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

6pm, 830pm, Mountain West semifinals, CSTV


Sat March 10, 2007

830am, Conference USA final, CBS

9am, America East final, ESPN2

1030am, 1230pm, ACC semifinals, ESPN

1040am, 1250pm, Big 10 semifinals, CBS

11am, 1pm, Big 12 semifinals, ESPN2

3pm, Pac-10 final, CBS

3pm, Atlantic-10 (14 really) final, ESPN

3pm, MEAC final, ESPN Classic

4pm, MAC final, ESPN2

4pm, Mountain West final, Versus (formerly OLN)

6pm, 12am, Big East final, ESPN (a rare (these days) game repeat on ESPN)

6pm, WAC final, ESPN2

8pm, Big West final, ESPN2

Sunday March 11, 2007, Selection Sunday

see on top of the post for Selection Sunday shows
*** updated to reflect early DST change ***

10am, SEC final, CBS

10am, ACC final, ESPN

11am, Southland final, ESPN2

12pm, Big 12 final, ESPN

1230pm, Big 10 final, CBS


Monday March 12, 2007

Four classic NCAA upsets on ESPN Classic




The 2007 NCAA Tourney!

The games will be on CBS (except for the opening round game on ESPN). Some games may be available in HD (high def)

DirecTV (subscription satellite service) and NCAA sports (free online) have access to every single game played

Opening round game in Dayton Ohio: Tuesday March 13, 630pm on ESPN

Round 1, Thursday and Friday March 15, and 16

Round 2, Saturday and Sunday March 17, and 18

Sweet 16, Thursday and Friday March 22, and 23

Elite 8, Saturday and Sunday March 24, and 25

Final Four, Saturday March 31

The Final, Monday April 2


The 2007 NIT Tourney!
A preliminary NIT schedule can be found at the official NIT website


*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***


If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

TV Listings: Monday February 26, 2007 (college basketball)

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES and NEW SHOWS

Later Today: Comprehensive March Madness TV listings, starting with Championship Week (March 1 to 11), Selection Sunday, the NCAA and the NIT. The listings will be a work in progress and they will be frequently updated, so double-check the day of the game with your local provider/listings to be sure.

4pm, Georgetown at Syracuse, ESPN, just like the old days of Boeheim vs Thompson and Ewing, except it's TNG. Prediction: Boeheim cunningly steals this one

5pm, 8pm, 11pm, and more overnight repeats: Crystal Ball on CSTV, with Seth Davis, Lappas, Pete Gillan, Brian Curtis (of Taking Issue fame), Greg Amsinger (their version of Rece Davis) and Seth Greenberg

6pm, Kansas at Oklahoma, ESPN. Also part of Big Monday. Prediction: Kansas by 22

7pm, Gonzaga at San Diego, FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Zags by 8

7pm, Portland at SF, CSN. Prediction: SF

9pm, Long Beach State at Pacific, ESPN2. The Big West gets a rare Big Monday appearance in the west coast slot, usually devoted to the Zags

9pm, 9am Tue, College Gamenight, ESPN

Repeats and Classic Games

9am, Southern Miss at Tulane, CSTV

11am, from 1991, Syracuse vs Georgetown, ESPN Classic

11am, 5am, Arizona at Arizona State, the duel in the dessert with FSN's Marques Johnson and Steve Psychioc, FoxCollegeSports

11am, BYU at SDSU, CSTV. Two at-large hopefuls from the resurgent Mountain West Conference

12pm, 1pm, Stanford at UCLA, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

130pm, 930pm, 3am, North Carolina at Maryland, FoxCollegeSports. It's a shocker that these two teams play only once in the ACC. ACC schedulers are you crazy?. These games are instant classics! Whatever you do make sure they play twice in the regular season

3pm, 1am, Cal at USC, FoxCollegeSports

530pm, Iona at Manhattan, FoxCollegeSports. Jeff Ruland is not a happy camper.

11am Tuesday, from 2000, Tennessee vs Florida, ESPN Classic


If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

All you can eat Fridays

Why did Oregon sweep Washington State?. Because Ernie Kent made a big discovery that escaped all other coaches: You score more points on Washington State by hoisting wild shots from all over the court than by going up against their set half court defense. The proof? Oregon is the only team (so far) to beat Washington State twice, and the only team to beat them at Pullman!

Complete weekend (saturday and sunday) TV listings of college basketball games on CBS, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, FSN, CSN, and Fox College Sports are posted below. No ESPNU.

Props to Fox College Sports for covering the winter university games. I'm not a fan of winter/snow sports, but covering them was a great idea by FCS. Having three channels seems to be a great way to cover events like the Olympics, with multiple competitions going on in parallel. Something other tv networks should look into when they are covering the Olympics or March Madness...

New drinking game idea: Every time Lorenzo Mata makes (or misses) a free throw shot. This was inspired by the "hot dog/combo meal friendly bet" between the FSN commentators during the Cal-UCLA game. And by drinking I mean milk, or soy milk, or green tea or carbonated water, or orange juice or vitamin water :-)

A review of this week's edition of Seth Davis Generation Next on CSTV.

One more opening this spring: New Mexico. Failing to turnaround New Mexico to Pit past glory days standards, McKay will be bought out at the end of the season. Apparently the Lobos AD wants to have an early start on the pool of candidates. Mike Montgomerry might listen if you are willing to hand over the team to his son after 5-10 years. After the success of Tony Bennett at Washignton State, this may be the year Monty can force a deal of this nature. But let's not forget that Tony Bennett was his own man, he worked under other coaches (not just his dad) and he even had a brief stint in the NBA, while Monty's son is just a five-year senior at LMU.

Wild March Madness Prediction: Washington State to the Final Four. If you watched last night's game at Oregon, you may have been surprised by two relatively new players in their rotation, guard Hopson (Hobson?) (jersey #1) who recently became eligible, and guard Cross (jersey #21). Let's not forget Dick Bennett made it to the Final Four (like father like son). This Cougars team is actually intriguing to watch, a rag tag group of efficient and effective players, and teamwork is everything. With the NCAA games being played tightly, they get an advantage. And unlike Dick's slow teams, they can speed it up so they are not necessarily doomed if they fall behind.

Speaking of the Pac-10, UCLA may seem to be going faster this year, but leave it to Ben Howland to use fastbreaks for defensive purposes. If you pay close attention you will notice that sometimes UCLA runs on fastbreak not to score, but simply to put pressure on the defense and then run their own offense. To the casual fan it may appear that UCLA is running. But Ben, you can't fool everyone :-)

Home Winning streaks: Memphis 16, Winthrop 14, Ohio State and Bucknell: 11


Of Brackets and Men

Latest RPI numbers at KenPom RPI. You can also see some interesting things by looking at the teams at KenPom's: ranked by SOS, and ranked by non-conference RPI

Updated as of today, The BracketBoard, along with their Lockbox.

College Basketball TV Listings: Weekend edition (Sat/Sun February 24, 25)

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***



Judgment Week: Saturday February 24, 2007

730am, Basketball Weekly with Bob Wenzel, CSTV

8am, College Gameday, AM edition, ESPN

8am, Three point club, CSTV. SEC preview

8am, Siena at Marist, ESPN2. Watch or tape this game if you have not seen Jared Jordan play yet. You will sound like a genius when you discuss the upcoming NBA draft with your friends. This guy is a potential triple-double, although he doesn't look it.

830am, Courtside with Rick Pitino, CSTV. Includes some very basic Xs and Os breakdown of upcoming Big East opponents, of interest to hoop junkies and current/aspiring coaches

9am, Syracuse at Providence on ESPN. Zone Wars 2007!. Both teams are known for their zone defense. Prediction: Providence wins!

9am, Oklahoma State at Texas Tech, CBS. A Big 12 bracket buster game! Prediction: Texas Tech!

10am, College of Cremins at Georgia Southern, ESPN2. College of Charleston was a mid-major darling before mid-majors became mainstream darlings (eg Gonzaga).

11am, Pitt at Georgetown, ESPN. NCAA seeding is in play!. Prediction: Georgetown delivers a beatdown and exposes Pitt to those who think Pitt is an elite 8 team :-)

11am, Illinois at Penn State, ESPN. Prediction: After two moral victories against Oden State, the Fighting Paternos get a real W against the off-court troubled Illini (injuries, accidents, DUI, NCAA-deemed-offensive mascot).

1230pm, regional action on ABC: , Georgia Tech at Virginia, Marquette at Notre Dame, and Gonzaga at San Francisco. Predictions: All three road teams win! After the games are over "Free Ticket Inside College Basketball" airs (3pm). Airtime may vary depending on timezone.

1230pm, Pistol PEte Diaries, FoxCollegeSports

1pm, Florida at LSU. This sounded like a great game when CBS came up with their schedule. Now it's the Desperate Bradys vs the Galloping Gators. Prediction: Florida by a lot

1pm, Rutgers at Nova. Mr Jersey is a couple of years away from being competitive and fending off schools like Nova from grabbing the top level Jersey-area talent. Prediction: Nova by a lot

1pm, Texas at Oklahoma, CSN/FullCourt. Prediction: Texas wins, Kevin Durant triple double with 32 points, 13 rebounds, 11 blocks, 7 assists, 4 steals, 6 turnovers.

1pm, 630am Sun, Southern Miss at Tulane, CSTV. Post-Katrina Tulane faces post-alcoholic Turnaround Larry Eustachy. Prediction: Southern Miss by 8

2pm, The Valley of Darkness:, Wichita State at Creighton, ESPN2. Prediction: Debbie Downer-Whiner (aka Mark Turgeon) would love to win this game. But he won't because Creighton got the funk!

2pm, 1am, Florida International at Western Kentucky, FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Home team wins!

3pm (or a bit later), Free Ticket Inside College basketball presented by Chase Freedom on ABC. Featured: Wisconsin Badgers

3pm, Iowa State at Kansas, ESPN. Prediction: Kansas wins by 44!. Iowa State coaches cries in a towel like Josh Cry-Baby McRoberts.

3pm, midnight: BYU at SDSU, CSTV. Prediction: A MWC bracket buster game. SDSU must win this game and they will.

3pm, 1am, 5am, Stanford at UCLA. Prediction: The Lopez twins are strong enough to protect the paint, the threes are not falling for the Bruins and they lose their first home game of the season.

5pm, 11pm, Cal at USC, FSN/CSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: USC wins but just barely. The whispers of DeVon Hardin making a return get stronger and they are not attributed to the 420 cloud hovering above Berkeley ;-)

5pm, Gameday pre-game edition, ESPN. With Bilas, Phelps, Davis (Rece and Hubert), Katz, Erin and Dookie Vitale.

6pm, Indiana at Michigan State, ESPN with Dick Vitale. Izzo starts crying again. It worked the last time when they beat Wisconsin as it got his team a lot of media attention and got him lots of interviews on ESPN and such. Prediction: Izzo wins and cries too.

7pm, McNeese at Lamar, FoxCollegeSports

730pm, 7am, Washington at Oregon, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Both teams need the win. They want the win. Prediction: Oregon will get it.

730pm, Santa Clara at Loyola Marymount, CSTV. Dick Davey won't go away quietly. Prediction: SCU wins on the road.

9pm, Midnight Madness, ESPN. The day is not over until Tom Brennan, Doug Gottlieb and Dave Revsine recap the action and provide a fresh(er) perspective from the tired and predictable (to some) routine of Vitale, Bilas and Phelps.

ESPN Full Court: 20 games today! Check the ESPN website or local listings for channel numbers and airtimes. Games shown: Cincy at DePaul, Purdue at Northwestern, Tennessee at Arkansas, Clemson at Boston Collage, Missouri at Nebraska, Baylor at Texas A&M, Michigan at Minnesota, all three regional ABC games (great idea ESPN, I wish CBS did this with CSTV), Texas at Oklahoma, Kansas State at Colorado, Auburn at Alabama, Ole Miss at South Carolina, Arkansas State at Arkansas Little rock, South Florida at Seton Hall (someone has to win), Wisc Milw vs Green Bay (no Brett Favre), Illinois Chicago vs Loyola chicago, Fresneck State at New Mexico State.



Judgment Week: Sunday February 25, 2007

6am, Game of the Week replay, ESPN Classic. The ESPN braintrust selects the game for replay. The game chosen is sometimes announced at the end of Midnight Madness on late Saturday

830am, Hardwood Heavens: Allen Fieldhouse of Kansas on INHD with Brett Musburger.

9am, Louisville at UConn, CBS. UConn wants the win so they can make the tourney (the Big East tourney that is). Prediction: L-Ville continues to roll and squeaks by the young huskies.

11am, Duke at StJohns or Houston at Memphis, CBS. Prediction: Duke and Memphis, but Norm Roberts please beat the Dookies!!! Memo to CBS: I'd rather watch the Memphis game. Please show the alternate game on CSTV now that CSTV is part of CBS Sports. It's common sense! ESPN does it with ABC regional games on ESPN Full Court.

1pm, GAME OF THE WEEKEND!, Wisconsin at Ohio State. The last game of the CBS triple-header. Ohio State has been shaky (see two Penn State games) while Wisconsin has shown they are not invincible. Prediction: Ohio State with Oden getting his first triple double in double overtime.

1pm, repeat of yesterday's Fresno State at New Mexico State, CSN. Your chance to watch the Reggie Theus all-transfer squad before they play in the NCAA/NIT tourney.

2pm, ACC Sunday Night Homer Hoops, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

230pm, North Carolina at Maryland, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. While the Wisconsin/Ohio State game promises to be the game of the week, this promises to be the most entertaining game of the weekend. Prediction: Carolina wins 105-101 (no overtime)

5pm, Arizona at Arizona State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Normally a one-sided non-rivarly rivarly game but after Iona Tech got its first victory and Arizona is stumbling even at home, this may actually be competitive (perhaps for a half). Prediction: Arizona wins.

530pm, Iona at Manhattan, FSN/FoxCollegeSports/FullCourt. Prediction: Manhattan wins and Jeff Ruland gets even angrier inside.

9pm, 130am, College gamenight, on ESPN. It gets a rare late night repeat even.

ESPN Full Court: 3 games today: Boston U at Albany, Kentucky at Vandy (payback game?), Iona at Manhattan
If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

College Hoops on TV: Friday February 23, 2007, Judgment Week!

*** all times pacific; please add +3 for eastern ***

Weekend (Saturday, Sunday) TV listings will be posted later today

11am, from 1988, LSU vs Florida, ESPN Classic

12pm, Stanford at USC, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

1230pm, Outside the Lines: Georgetown feature!. Today's Centerpiece feature on OTL is on "Second Generation", the sons of Big John (John Thompson) and Patrick Ewing (and they have the same first names) at Georgetown. OTL details

230pm, Big 12 Preview show, CSTV

330pm, Basketball Weekly, CSN/CSS. Preview of the weekend action with Bob Wenzel

4pm, 2am Sat, Seth Davis Generation Next, CSTV

430pm, LIVE GAME!, Sacred Heart vs Monmouth, Fox College Sports/ESPN Full Court PPV

9pm, College Gamenight, ESPN2.

9pm, Pistol Pete diaries, episode II, FoxCollegeSports

midnight, division 2 game from Wisconsin, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

3am Sat, Washington State at Oregon, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. A nicely played game that actually finished in less than 2 hours.

Weekend (Saturday, Sunday) TV listings will be posted later today

Mid-week repor(t)

Good news, NC State coach Sidney Lowe is released from the hospital

Will Oregon officially change its name to "the Nike Ducks?" Their new AD (athletic director) is a very very very generous booster who recently sold his insurance company for many many many millions. He is close with Phil Knight (Nike's founder) but the new AD has no experience in managing intercollegiate athletics. No, the insurance company in question is not Aflac (the duck non-connection)

How do you rate a conference? Is it the conference with the best teams on top? the conference with the most NCAA-worthy teams? the conference with the most NCAA/NIT-worthy teams? Or the conference with the best teams top to bottom? Using the last one would point at the SEC where LSU and South Carolina are presumably the bottom two teams of the league, and they are not that bad, when compared to the bottom four of the Big East, the bottom two of the Pac-10, Big 10, Big 12 or the ACC.

Big Brother Says.... The "NCAA on Campus" documentary has an "Ask Myles" feature where students ask NCAA czar Myles Brand a question and he answers plainly and truthfully without any spin. This month's question was: "Will Division 3 players be allowed to redshirt again?". To paraphrase Myles's answer/spin: "NO!".

Bob Knight was smart. He made his comments on "one year NBA players in college" before they got beat by Texas. That way he wouldn't sound like a sour loser", but rather just "bitter and jealous".

What happened to FSN's Countdown to Signing Day? Bobby Cremins returned to coaching but i'm sure they can find another coach/expert to sit next to Dave Telep. Has it been cancelled or simply not carried by Fox College Sports anymore? Anyone?

OJ Mayo mania today!. On ESPN2. Check the tv listings below for details. OJ Floyd will be watching for sure (tape-delayed since his team is playing tonight)

This on CSTV's Crystal Ball (a highly recommended weekly show on college hoops): According to Seth Davis, Mark Few is struggling on what to do with Josh Heytvelt, Theo Davis situation. He has been calling many coaches in the profession for opinions.

Why is Fran Frachilla so reluctant to talk about teams on the bubble? Because as a coach he spent too many years on the wrong side of the bubble. Counselling may be necessary!

Fake Plastic Trees:: Coach K is a bad actor. His act of "OMG I didn't know it was my 700th win" wasn't convincing.

Mid majors want more coverage but with that you have to take both the good and the bad. Mark Turgeon sounded like "Debbie Downer-Whiner", whining version of SNL's Debbie Downer during his press conference after a loss. This was shown nationally on CSTV's Full Court Press. How things change: Last summer he would have commanded more than a million a year in salary at a BCS school but he turned them down. And who is George Mason again?

Mid-major NCAA bracket-buster candidates: Texas A&M Corpus Cristi, North Dakota State and Appalachian State. More on mid-majors at the Mid-Majority Repor(t)

Will Nancy blame Bob Huggins for this too?: Cincinatti football program is trouble after alleged sex-tape scandal involving football recruits. Time for the people of Cincinatti to come up with signs like "Fire Nancy, rehire Huggins!"

Image Improvement Attempt. Bo Ryan tried to show some personality by joking around during his halftime interview with Holly of ESPN (at Michigan State). An attempt perhaps to put Wisconsin on the map and get them some respect since most people still don't consider them a national championship contenter.

Dick Vitale gave some juicy details on his firing from the Detroit Pistons during his weekly call-in appearance on Mike & Mike. Apparently Vitale was trying to tell the Pistons owner how to run the franchise and his wife told him "you are going to get fired", but Dickie V didn't believe it until it happened baby. The Pistons loss is college basketball's gain!



Judgment Week: Louisville and Kentucky
It's only fitting to talk about those two bitter rivals together:
Louisville: In the summer Louisville looked very good on paper, with depth, talent and some experience. The optimism from the fall Canadian trip quickly faded as new and old injuries took their toll on Padgett, Palacios, Jenkins, and McGee (among others). Louisville was struggling and a rerun of last season was possible, or even worse, not even an NIT trip (eight fewer invites this year). But the injuries healed, and the freshman started to deliver, first Earl Clark and now the program-changer of this class, Derrick Caracter. Now Louisville looks like a hot team that could make a run to the Final Four providing no one else gets (re)injured and Caracter continues to make progress. However Pitino teams have been known to have highs and lows, and this could simply be their high. But some patterns of the classic Pitino teams of the 90s were barely visible in recent games, such as effective pressure, and turnover margin/efficiency. The Cardinals blew out St Johns without the three pointer, another positive sign. If At Louisville continues at this rate, they are going to be a top 8 seed (top 32 teams) (currently projected as a 7 seed by Joe Lunardi)

Kentucky: Kentucky's season was the opposite of Louisville. Kentucky started under the radar, their four-man recruiting class flew under the radar because of the all-star caliber recruits elsewhere, Randolph Morris was largely ignored because of his NBA non-draft. Slowly but steadily the Wildcats managed to string up some wins and crept back into the spotlight. However a losing streak burst that bubble, and the team almost lost to a baby-less LSU team. A "one-game losing streak" can create a stir in Lexington, so when it's more than one, one can imagine the stir... Kentucky is in the NCAA tourney (barring an 0-for-rest result) but their seed is not going to be high. While the four freshmen look like a good foundation class, the rest of the roster is not "Kentucky-caliber". Bradley looks like a 3rd guard that should come off the bench to provide a spark, not a starter. Crawford is not living to his expectations and even for a college tweener he looks a bit slow/heavy. Morris posts good numbers, but he is not a game-changer inside like one would expect from someone of his size and experience (compare his game-impact (not numbers) in the paint to Greg Oden's). Perry, Thomas, Obrzut are good rotation players but none of those guys are PTPers. However, if they listen to Tubby and play ball-line defense as he teaches them to, and if the four freshmen give them an offensive spark, they could make the Elite 8 and could even take down a number 1 seed along the way (eg as an 8/9 seed).


These Voting Records are public!
ESPN Personalities/experts (Bilas, Katz, Vitale, Lunardi, Gottleib, Schlabach, Glockner, and Howie Schwab) vote their Top 16 Power teams. Here is their voting record. If you look at Schwab's and Vitale's list, well, someone is cheating :-) The latest Power 16 is here. Since we are talking about ESPN, here are the latest brackets from Joey Brackets (aka Joe Lunardi).

College Basketball TV Listings: Thursday, February 22, Judgment week!

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***

LIVE GAMES, new shows!

4pm,OJ Mayo mania on ESPN2!. Huntington of West Virginia has two of the top players of the class of 2007 hosts Saint Patrick's of New Jersey. The other top player being also the top uncommitted player of the class, Patrick Patterson. More at Recruiting Wars

4pm, Rice at Memphis, ESPN. High-scoring machine Morris Almond of Rice goes up against the AASAA Tigers of John Calipari. A road trip for the (Midnight) Madness trio of Tom Brennan, Doug Gottlieb and Dave Revsine. Prediction: Memphis by 22

430pm, 730pm, 12am, Seth Davis Generation Next, Episode IV, on CSTV.

5pm, 9pm, 1am, Temple at Saint Joseph, CSTV. Goon-Gate but without the two protagonists of Goon-gate. Fran D is actually letting the players run and gun a little bit more than Chaney ;-)

6pm, Duke at CLEMSON, ESPN. Go Clemson! Beat the Dookies! Because if you don't beat the D00kies, it's Hello NIT!. Prediction: Duke wins on a controversial call at the end of the game (sounds familiar?) Unlike Arizona or Oregon who have better chances of surviving a losing end of their season because of signature out of conference wins, Clemson has 17-0 vs the cupcakes. And as we have seen from years past the selection cmte will give the edge to the teams with the toughest schedule.

6pm,Washington at Oregon State, FSN/FSN+/FoxCollegeSports. For all of today's Pac-10 games the listings can be sketchy, so check with your local stations to find out exactly what is shown in your region. All four Pac-10 games are available nationwide on Fox College Sports tonite. Prediction: Washington wins because they must.

730pm, California at UCLA, FSN/FSN+/FoxCollegeSports (FCS). A 30-minute pre-game show (7pm) and a 30-minute post-game show will air on FCS and some regional FSNs. Prediction: CALIFORNIA PULLS THE UPSET!. Most likely outcome: UCLA wins by 19

730pm, Stanford at USC, FSN/FSN+/FoxCollegeSports. Interesting game on paper. Could turn into a slugfest. Prediction: Stanford bigs beat up the Trojans and win!

8pm, Washington State at Oregon, FSN/FSN+/FoxCollegeSports. Must win game for the Mighty Ducks of Nike. They beat Georgetown and Nebraska is slugfests so they have it in them this year. Can they do it against the Fighting Tony Bennetts? Prediction: Yes!

9pm, 9am, College Gamenight, ESPN. The west-coast-bias edition (or so they claim)


Repeats and Classics

No classic game at 11am today on ESPN Classic

11pm, from 2000, USC vs UCLA, Lavin vs Bibby. Fox College Sports

9am Friday, USC at Arizona State (aka Iona Tech), Fox College Sports

11am Friday, from December 1988, LSU at Florida, ESPN Classic


If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

College Hoops TV Listings: Wedn February 21, 2007 (Judgment week)

*** all times PACIFIC; add +3 for eastern; please adjust appropriately for other time zones ***

LIVE GAMES, new shows

9am, 8pm, Pistol Pete Diaries, Episode II, FoxCollegeSports. An FCS original six-part series.

1030am, NCAA on Campus, ESPN Classic. A magazine show from the world of NCAA sports, with the stamp of approval of Big Brother (the NCAA). It would be ironic if content on this show caused an ...NCAA violation.

4pm, Boston College at Virginia Tech, ESPN. To those who think the ACC will get nine bids think again. Games like this make it impossible. Why? Because some teams have to lose. Just like the Pac-10, there are not enough wins to go around to support that many teams. Prediction: The Greenies rise to the occasion, the VaTech fans do their Coca Cola ritual all night long, and they storm the court at Blacksburg!

4pm, St Johns at Louisville, ESPN2. Watch out for the Rick Pitino Express!. The injuries (Palacios, Padgett, Jenkins, McGee) are healing, Derrick Caracter is delivering. Prediction: Cardinals by 22

430pm, 1130pm, 230am, Taking Issue with Brian Curtis, CSTV. A 30-minute weekly show taking a look at some of the controversial and high profile issues in college sports.

5pm, Penn State at Ohio State, CSN/FullCourt. In what is now becoming a consistent theme, can the Buckeyes deliver two top-level halves? If not, their March Madness chances would not be as good. Prediction: Ohio State wins

5pm, 9pm, 3am, Southern Miss at Central Florida, CSTV. Two of the most underappreciated teams in Conference USA. Turnaround Larry faces one of the largest universities (in student population). Can UCF upgrade its program to parallel its size? Prediction: Turnaround Larry wins!

6pm, Texas A&M at Oklahoma State, ESPN2. The undermanned Suttons face the overflowing bench of A&M. It's amazing how well the Cowboys played with just seven players, however NCAA bids are given based on how a team plays, and they badly need this win. Prediction: OKi State squeaks by and gets an NCAA-bid-saving win.

6pm, NC State at North Carolina, ESPN FullCourt. Prediction: Payback time or "getting owned"? The TarHeels failed to deliver a "payback" when they got swept by Virginia Tech who matches up well with the TarHeels because of their athleticism, depth and tall, strong, experienced guards (Gordon, Zabian Dowdell). However NC State has a very short rotation and I predict a payback beatdown by 30+

10pm, College Gamenight, ESPN, 20-minute edition


Repeats and Classic games

11am, from 1994, Florida State at South Carolina, ESPN Classic

12pm, from 2001, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports. Steve Lavin vs Henry Bibby. The "glory days of SoCal"?

1pm, Texas Arlington at Texas A&M Corpus Cristi, FoxCollegeSports. This (A&M CC) is a team to watch. They created a big splash with some high profile wins as an independant and now they are ruling their own conference. Look out for their 6-5 mobile agile space-eater (whose name I forgot). March Madness Bracket Busting Team Alert!

5pm, 330am, Hardwood Heavens: Allen Fieldhouse, with Brett Musssburger, INHD

7pm, San Francisco at St Marys, CSN

8am Thursday, Duke at Maryland, FoxCollegeSports. Thank you FoxCollegeSports for re-airing the manhandling of the Dookies by the TerraGarys!

No classic games on Thursday on ESPN Classic

Silly News Alert: New Hooters TV ad with Dick Vitale!

Dick Vitale has a brand new Hooters TV ad airing on ESPN and other places. Perhaps Dick Vitale would rather be in the "Hall of Hooters" than the (basketball) "Hall of Fame"? Good luck getting the "Billy Packer" votes after this new ad :-)

College Basketball TV listings: Tuesday February 20, 2007 (Judgment Week!)

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES, and new weekly shows

12pm-3pm, the Hot List, on ESPN News. Usually has some college basketball coverage with game previews and guest apperances by Andy Katz, Doug Gottlieb and Joe Lunardi (Mondays and Fridays). (You may have noticed the new ESPN News marketing blitz by ESPN turning Michael Kim of Stanford into an ESPN ad star)

2pm, 2am, 3am, Full Court Press, CSTV. A one-hour highlight show of college basketball coaches's press conferences.

4pm, Wisconsin at Michigan State, ESPN. Prediction: Wisconin wins in overtime. Drew Neitzel cries in a towel like Josh "Big Cry-Baby" McRoberts

4pm, DePaul at Notre Dame, ESPN2. Prediction: Don't count out the poor man's Zen Master. No, I'm not talking about Mike Dookie Brey. I am talking about Jerry W of DePaul. DePaul wins!

430pm, Pistol Pete Diaries, Episode II on FoxCollegeSports. This is an FCS original six-part series revisiting the life of Pistol Pete Maravich. It will repeat throughtout the week. Check my daily listings for airtimes.

5pm, Kentucky Wesleyan at Western Kentucky, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Western wins

6pm, LSU at Kentucky, ESPN. Somebody has to win which is a relief for these two coaches because they know that exactly one of the two will come out with a win tonight. Prediction and upset alert!!!, LSU steals one at Rupp Arena

7pm, 12am, 7am, Air Force at UNLV, CSTV. The Fighting Krugers want to win this game badly because they want to dance in March. Prediction: UNLV on a buzz beater

9pm, 9am, College Gamenight, ESPN


REPEATS and CLASSIC games

10am, Oregon State at California, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Overtime game, with time-management non-controversy getting Oregon State an extra 2 seconds that got them a "Hail Mary" three pointer that led to the overtime.

11am, 1994, Kentucky at LSU, ESPN Classic

12pm, Oregon at Stanford, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. A close game until Stanford shifted gears and roasted the ducks. (I hope PETA is not reading this!)

430pm, One 2 One with Rick Pitino, with Seth Davis on CSTV. Seth Davis does a good job of covering Pitino's career in 25 minutes.

6pm, Hardwood Heavens: Assembly Hall, with Brent Musberger, INHD (high definition channel)

630pm, 530apm, USC at Arizona State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Iona Tech gets its first conference win. They could have made history by being the most critically acclaimed team not to win a conference game, but they screwed up by beating USC. You may want to skip the first half because it is a slugfest of major proportions. The score was stuck at 2-2 for quite a few minutes.

11am Wedn, 1994, FSU at South Carolina, ESPN Classic

If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

NIT as a post-season "safety net"

This year's NIT will have 32 teams (as opposed to 40 the previous years). On top of that, this is the 2nd year the NIT will hand an automatic bid to the regular season conference champions who do not get an NCAA bid. This is a great idea by the NCAA and the NIT people. That way a team gets rewarded with guaranteed post-season play by winning their regular season conference. Great idea!.

This means that fewer "bcs" teams will get a chance to play in the post-season NIT, and this is a good thing because a number of them had taken NIT for granted or dissed the NIT or stumbled their way through it. Now they have to really earn it.

So let's look at some NIT "safety net" bid candidates. NIT is their post-season "Safety net" if they don't get an NCAA invite. These are teams leading their conferences (or they have a chance to win the regular season championship), but they are not likely to get an at-large bid.
You will see some of these teams in the post-season NIT:

Vermont or Albany

East Tennessee State or Belmont

Rhode or UMass or Xavier

Weber State

Winthrop or High Point

Long Beach State or CSF

VCU or ODU or Hostra or Drexel

Wright State (Butler would get an at-large)

Utah Valley State (although I don't know if the Independents count as far as NIT automatic bids)

The Ivy League gives their champion the automatic NCAA bid. I do not know if the 2nd place teams gets an automatic NIT bid

Marist or Siena or Niagara

Akron, or Kent State, or Miami (Ohio) or Toledo

Oral Roberts

Delaware State

BYU or UNLV (Air Force is an at-large)

Central Conn St

Austin Peay

Holy Cross or Bucknell

Appalachian State or Davidson

Texas A&M CC or Sam Houston State

Jackson State or Texas Southern or Miss Valley St

South Alabama

Santa clara, Gonzaga or SF

New Mexico State or Utah State (but Nevada has a two-game lead and they are a lock)

The six BCS conference leaders, the regular season champ of the Missouri Valley (S.Illinois or Creighton) and Memphis are not included because they are very likely to get an NCAA at-large bid.

Standings at Yahoo Sports

For a breakdown of NIT at-large bids, check NITology

The latest from the Injury Repor(t)

The complete report from the Sports Network via Detroit News.

Some significant injuries/unavailabilities:

Aaron Bruce, Baylor, two weeks

Toney Douglas, Florida State, 2-3 weeks

Josh Heytvelt, Gonzaga, herbs/mushrooms, out

Miami might as well shut it down, unlike the Boston Celtics they won't get the #1 pick in the ACC Draft. A. King, Thomas, Nass and Hicks are unavaiable

Mike Anderson (coach's son), Missouri, DUI/out

Jamel White, Nebraska, out/violation of team rules

Aaron Gray, Pitt, questionable for today's game with Seton Hall

Bamba Fall, SMU, 2-3 weeks

Armondo Surratt, SF, questionable for tonight's Big Monday game on ESPN2

Chad Gray, South Carolina. The Fighting Odoms went into so much trouble to get him eligible but now he is out for one week (toe injury)

Anthony Goods, Stanford. Doubtful which also describes the Cardinals chances at sweeping the SoCals without him :-)

Sports and SciFi

Sports fans are also big scifi fans, so you might be interested to find out that a couple of DVD sets are on sale at low prices at Amazon. Firefly at $20, also Lost Season 2 at $30, and the Stargate movie (ultimate edition) for $6, all eligible for free shipping.

Judgment week preview

ESPN coined this week as Judgment week where the fate of a lot of teams will be determined or significantly affected.

Here are some TV games of importance:

Mon: Villanova at Marquette. Detailed TV listings below. Check this blog for daily TV listings covering ESPN, ESPN2, FSN, Fox College Sports, ESPN Classic, CBS, ABC, Versus, CSTV, and Comcast Sports Net. No ESPNU listings are provided because Comcast does not carry ESPNU. Comcast add ESPNU now :-)

Tue: Wisconsin at Michigan State, DePaul at Notre Dame, Air Force at UNLV

Wedn: BC at VaTech, Texas A&M at OKlahoma State

Thur: Duke at Clemson. MUST win for NIT-bound Clemson!

Fri: nada

Sat: Oklahoma State at Texas Tech (in or out game), Syracuse at Providence, BYU at SDSU, Washington at Oregon, and many more

Sun: Wisconsin at Ohio State (#1 tourney seed in play), North Carolina at Maryland


Judgment Week: Arizona
Numbers don't lie. Arizona suffered their two worst point-margin losses at home this year during the Lute Olson era. Numbers don't lie. This team looked very impressive early in the year when they played the five ball-handlers almost all the time. But other teams caught up, the five players wore down, and the Silver Fox did not develop his bench early in the season (granted all but two non-conference games were against NCAA/NIT-competitive teams). Their strong SOS (currently #1) and their brand name recognition in the tourney will make it very hard for Arizona to be left out of the NCAAs and unless they don't win another game they are in. However, this team is starting to look like the team that lost to Louis Orr and Andre Barrett (Seton Hall) a couple of years ago than the team that had a 12-game winning streak earlier in the season. The root cause? Arizona is a defense-optional resort :-)

Judgment Week: Gonzaga
Without Heytvelt the Zags faced Memphis in a very important game for their at-large hopes. The game started as most people expected with Memphis having a lead and the Zags trying to bite but never able to tie or take the lead. This was the expectation. However the Zags managed to not only make it a game but send it to overtime and have a chance to win it at the buzzer. On top of that, this became the Game of the Week on ESPN Classic. This bodes well for the Zags at-large hopes, but they have to win games from now on. Since they are likely to be a #1 or #2 seed in the WCC conference tourney they have very little margin of error in picking up Ws, they will only play one or two games in the WCC conference tourney. If they win all their WCC games and lose the WCC conference final to Santa Clara, they could get an at-large bid since Santa Clara has quitely climbed up on the Respect-RPI. Anything else for the Zags means NIT or win the conference tourney or Heyvelt returns...

College basketball TV: Big Monday February 19, 2007, Judgment Week!

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***

LIVE GAMES and new shows on Judgment Week (nice term coined by ESPN)

4pm: Villanova at Marquette, ESPN. Two nicely matched Big (y)East teams squaring off on Big Monday presumably with Bilas/Raftery/McDonut. Prediction: Marquette in triple overtime with Damion James scoring 30 points with 7/11 in three pointers. (now that's what I call a prediction!)

5pm: Pitt at Seton Hall, CSN/FullCourt. Prediction: Even without Aaron Pitt, the Grays will win :-)

5pm, Texas Arlington at Texas A&M Corpus Cristi, FoxCollegeSports

5pm, 8pm, 9pm, 10pm+ Crystal Ball on CSTV. Brand new one hour episode covering all things college basketball with Seth Davis, Greg Amsinger, Steve Lappas, Pete Gillan, Seth Greenberg (the highs and lows of this season!), and Brian Curtis among others. Highly recommended! I wish ESPN would do something like this as well!

6pm: Kansas at Kansas State, ESPN. Prediction: Huggins vs Self, the newcomer vs the established, no Billy Walker, no win for Huggie-Bear

730pm, high school game from wisconsin, not sure who plays, FoxCollegeSports

9pm: SF at St Marys, ESPN2. Wow a WCC game on ESPN without Gonzaga! Prediction: St Marys by 11

9pm, 9am, College Gamenight on ESPN.


REPEATS, and CLASSICS

11am, from 1991 Big East Conference tourney, quarterfinal, Pitt vs Seton Hall, ESPN Classic

11am, 330am, USC at Arizona State, FoxCollegeSports. First conference W for arIzONA Tech (blend of Iona and Cal Tech).

11am, 3am, UAB at Houston, CSTV

2pm, texas at baylor, FoxCollegeSports. Not sure if this will actually be shown. Could be a listing error.

630am Tue, Oregon State at Califorina, overtime game, FoxCollegeSports

11am Tue, from 1994, Kentucky at LSU, ESPN Classic


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Basketball Hall of Fame 2007: IN or OUT?

Hall of Fame Nominees - In or Out?, an opinion. Complete list of 2007 nominees at the official Hall of Fame website

The 1966 Texas Western (UTEP) team: IN!. Their accomplishment was significant above and beyond the basketball court. (Don't blame them for Tim Hateaway's comments).

Dick Vitale: IN!. He may be loud, obnoxious, self-promoting and inappropriate at times, but he is also the face of college basketball on and off campus. I was a bit surprised that he didn't make it the previous two times (2004, 2006) he was on the ballot. I suspect the reason is that a segment of "basketball purists" such as Billy Packer are not particularly thrilled with "the Dickie V show" taking the focus away from the game.

Phil Jackson: IN!. He is the Zen-Master, he got the Rings, he got the super-stars. I wonder how he would do without two superstars though... But regardless winning with two superstars is not easy. It's like asking Madonna to sing backup vocals to Whitney, or Mariah to sing backup to Celine Dion.

Roy Williams: IN!. He was considered by the "screening committees" before, but this is the first time he is a finalist on the ballot. His national championship in 2005 may have not been what got him nominated, but rather his 2005-2006 performance after the massive exodus of the 2005 champions to the NBA. As we are seeing this year, two other Hall of Famers, Coach K and Jim Calhoun are struggling mightily in a similar situation, yet Roy was cooking with gas. Roy was the fastest to 500 wins and has the highest winning percentage of active coaches with 10+ years, along with 10+ years as Dean Smith's prized pupil. At the rate the Zags are losing he may pass Mark Few in the under-10-years category as well.

Eddie Sutton: OUT!. I personally do not consider the personal issues (alcohol) a reason to exclude him. However, even if the basketball-related scandals are taken out of the equation, he is still on the bubble as a Hall of Famer in my opinion. He should definately be in the upcoming "College Basketball" hall of fame, but his record along with the basketball scandals are not enough in my opinion for the "Basketball Hall of Fame". He may get in if the "John Chaney co-efficient" is given significant weight (taking kids everyone else gave up on, giving people 2nd/3rd chances and succeeding with most of them, etc, etc).

Adrian Dantley, Chris Mullin: BUBBLE!. I don't have a strong opinion either way. Dantley is probably a step ahead of Mullin.

Bobby Hurley Senior: IN!. If you are not sure, read the book, The Miracle of Saint Anthony. (this is a basketball book, not to be confused with books on religion with similar names). Also available as a $5.49 bargain hardcover (Bargain hardcover books are brand new - but with marks/stamps that they are overstocked books, not to be sold at full price).

I only have an opinion on those who I am very familiar with. For the rest, I do not know, thus no In or Out.

Weekend Rewind

An exciting round of Bracket Busters with an ESPN2 marathon on Saturday. Rick Majerus was featured on the spotlight game of Southern Illinois at Butler and how appropriate since both teams are big on basketball fundamentals. Is Chris Lowry the next Bill Self? A number of teams helped themselves (especially the ones with road wins), the biggest one perhaps Appalachian State, no longer just a stop along the ...Trail :-)

One more reason not to have your son on your team if you are the basketball coach of a high profile "bcs" program: D U I (Mike Anderson of Missouri). Also a good reason not to give your son the same name :-) And let's not forget the "daughter" comments, even from Jim Rome (The Jungle) when Tubby's son played on his team.

What do blind resumes of teams do? They expose the limits of RPI, SOS and win/loss records as exclusive evaluation tools.

The Lasme show! This player made a splash in his freshman year when UMass was quasi-relevant in the grand scheme of things, but after UMass/Lappas continued to struggle, Lasme fell off the radar. But no more! He's back on the spotlight with three triple-doubles so far.

Never too early for senior night. Arizona's Shakur and Radenovic played their last home game last night. More on Arizona later on.

Ben Howland is a REBEL! At least that's what the card he was holding said.

17 is the magic number this season. Keep this number in mind when filling your brackets in March

What's this new trend with coaches mixing it up with players? First it was John Beilein (who also had an incident at a Pitt airport last summer) vs Pat Ewing, this time it is Kevin Stallings vs Joakim Noah. Funny that the players behaved more like mature adults in both situations!

Media Segment

Only Phil Martelli could do this: He (mistakenly) mentioned matter of factly that Bob Dylan is dead. This on his weekly Hawk Talk coaches show airing nationally on CSTV.

Fake basketball analysts: Please stop using the 20-win rule of thumb to decide if a team is in or out. Crossing 20 doesn't work anymore. Who did you play, when, where and how well? That's what matters. Lining up a dozen of cupcakes (or more since everyone can host an exempt tourney at their home court nowadays) in the out of conference schedule can even give a team who may not make the NIT 20 wins. So please stop saying "they need 20 wins". Stop! Stop! Stop! :-)

ESPN was trying to advertise a Duke Lacrosse game without actually mentioning the words "Duke" and "Lacrosse" together. I wonder why...

While this is not an "E!" blog, (and no I don't have any pictures of a shaved head Britney) one would have to try hard not to avoid noticing what Brett Musburger was wearing during the NASCAR promos. Was that a blend of Nascar-GQ with Golf-TV?

Just in: 2007 Basketball Hall of Fame Finalists

Some nominees:

Ole Roy, aka Roy Williams!. The power of an NCAA championship and the brilliant job the year after

Zen Master (Philip), aka Phil Jackson

Dookie V, aka Dick Vitale

Eddie "scandalous" Sutton

The 1966 Texas Western team, as a team. Send them in Jerome!. They deserve it more than anybody else!

Chris Mullin, Adrian Dantley, Bob Hurley Sr, Bill Davidson, Van Chancellor

College Basketball TV Listings: Saturday and Sunday February 17-18, 2007

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


Bracket Buster SATURDAY FEBRUARY 17, 2007

730am, Basketball Weekly, CSTV

8am, College Gameday, AM edition, ESPN

8am, Three point club, CSTV

830am, Courtside with Rick Pitino, CSTV. (breakdown of Big East teams on a general Xs and Os level)

9am, Georgetown at Villanova, ESPN. Prediction: Georgetown!

10am, UCLA at Arizona on Florida at Vandy or Army at Navy, regional coverage at CBS. Prediction: UCLA completes an LA sweep of Lute Olson (how the mighty Lute has fallen!), Florida in overtime, and Navy on a buzzbeater

11am, Washington at Pitt, ESPN. Upset Alert Special!. Conventional wisdom says Pitt, however Brockman is Pitt-tough, and Washington has the raw talent to win if they can remain focused for 40 minutes. Washington wins!

1230pm, Texas A&M at Oklahoma or UConn at Syracuse or Tennessee at South Carolina on ABC. Prediction: All three road teams win, despite conventional wisdom. The games are followed at 3pm (or later) by a new episode of "Free Ticket Inside College Basketball" presented by the Chase Freedom credit card. The longest name in basketball show history?

1pm, Indiana at Michigan on CBS. Theme song/album: The Who/Tommy (ouch!!!). Prediction: The Indiana "Sooners" deliver a Kelvin Sampson physical beat-down

1pm, Southern Illinois at Butler, ESPN2. Bracket Buster Must See TV!. Prediction: Butler wins 40-39. Digger Phelps laughs at the low scoring game and predicts Notre Dame gets a 4 seed in the NCAA tourney ;-)

1pm, 1230am, Division 2: Clark of Atlanta vs Morehouse, CSTV

3pm, Memphis at Gonzaga, ESPN. Informal bracket buster. Heytvelt or no Heytvelt, it will be hard for Zags to beat the AASAA Tigers in the Spokane arena (not the Kennel). Memphis wins.

3pm, Northern Iowa at Nevada, ESPN2. The Valley of Darkness is killing off the chances of MVC teams. Nevada is hard to beat at home. Nevada wins.

3pm, oregon state at california, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Cal as they beef up their NIT resume, which may be harder to get an at-large bid than the NCAA tourney :-)

3pm, 4pm, unlv at utah, Versus and VersusGolfHD. Prediction: unlv steals one in triple overtime

3pm, iowa state at kansas state on CSN. Prediction: Huggins!

3pm, 730pm, uab at houston, CSTV. Prediction: Turnaround Tom wins!

330pm, Hardwood Havens: Rupp Arena, INHD

5pm, Bradley at VCU ESPN2. A matchup between the Colonial and the Valley of Darkness. Prediction: Bradley road win!

5pm, 8pm, Oregon at Stanford, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: The Oregon Lilliputians outfox the Stanford Goliaths!

5pm, College Gameday, pregame edition. ESPN

6pm, North Carolina at Boston College, ESPN. Prediction: Carolina takes out all their frustrations on BC and wins by 22.

6pm, Louisiana Lafayette at Denver, FoxCollegeSports

7pm, Drexel at Creighton, ESPN2. A sub-theme of the bracket-buster, the CAA-MVC challenge. Prediction: Drexel wins!

8pm, Pistol Pete diaries, episode 1, featuring author Mark Kriegel. FoxCollegeSports

9pm, Ohio at New Mexico State, ESPN2. Prediction: Not even close. TV coach wins by 20.

9pm, Midnight MadnesS, ESPN, with Tom Brennan and Doug Gottlieb

midnight, repeat of the 2006 college basketball skills, jams and three pointers, ESPN

midnight, 230am, repeat of episode 3 of Seth Davis Generation Next, CSTV

that's all for Saturday. Check the ESPN website for FullCourt pay per view listings


SUNDAY FEBRUARY 18, 2007

6am, Game of the Week Repeat on ESPN Classic. The game choice will be announced at the end of Midnight Madness on Saturday late night.

10am, Georgia Tech at Duke, or Oden State at Molinari State, regional coverage on CBS. Prediction: Duke and Ohio State. But I want Georgia Tech to win! Beat the Dookies Paul Hewitt! Please!!!!!! :-)

12pm, Binghmampton at Vermont, FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Vermont wins!

3pm, st marys vs st dominics, high school game, FoxCollegeSports. Not sure if any major d1 prospects or signees are playing

5pm, USC at Arizona State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: arIzONA state gets its first conference win in triple overtime with a buzzer beater and three controversial calls by the zebras.

1030pm, college gamenight, ESPN

No ACC Sunday Night Hoops???

11am Monday, from 1991, Big East quarterfinals, Pitt vs Seton Hall, ESPN Classic


If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

All you can eat Fridays!

Lorenzo Mata is the definition of "wrestlemania defense": Last night he blocked the head of an Arizona State player while trying to block his shot. I'll try to find/post a picture of that play. Speaking of the winless Iona State (oops Arizona State) FSN analysts Dan Belluomini and Barry Thompkins speculated that ASU may be next year's Washington State.

Philly rumors: Geno's is better! Ooops wrong rumor: Jay Wright to the 76ers? Dick Vitale pleaded for Jay Wright to stay in college baby!

One year after the story of J-Mac captured the hearts of people all around the world ESPN featured a story on the impact of the J-Mac story on the Connelys who have a three year old autistic child. Incidentally Terry Connelly (the father) played at Richmond when they upset Syracuse in the NCAAs a few years ago. Both parents are basketball coaches.

TV review of this week's episode of Seth Davis Generation Next at Recruiting Wars

Don't miss Kevin Durant as special correspondant on Jim Rome in Burning today. Details at my TV listings post below.

Scottie Pippen considering a comeback ?!?!?!

It's bad enough that athletes, coaches and sports fans in general have to deal with certain negative stereotypes from the non-sports-fan segment of society. Tim Hardaway's breakaway hatorade dunk doesn't help in bridging the gap...

Media-savvy John Calipari appeared yesterday on "Jim Rome is Burning". Calipari pointed out that he likes to have as many neutral games in his the non-conference schedule as possible, because the NCAA tourney is played on neutral courts most of the time, so true road games are not as helpful. But he also pointed out that last year's Regional Final was played at "Pauly Pavilion" (basically implying that even though Memphis was the #1 seed, the game was played just 5 hours away from the UCLA campus in Oakland, in an arena filled with UCLA fans). So perhaps a couple of hostile road games can help in situations like that? Calipari couldn't help but mention that Derrick Rose is coming next year!, and what a brief what-if segment if Amare Stoudamire and a couple of other NBA draft picks showed up on campus.


ACC segment

Memo to ACC Purists: For years you have been telling everyone that the ACC is the best conference top to bottom. Well, how come two Big East football schools are sitting on top of your elite basketball conference?????. Explain that please :-)

Coach K was caught by the ESPN cameras acting like Coach Krazy during the game at Boston College.

Coach K has a number of seminars for business/inudstry leaders on leadership and success. I imagine it may be hard to promote these seminars with a losing conference record. But I'm sure Coach Krazy is smart enough to re-market his seminars as "Handling Advertisity", "Understanding Defeat", "Winning by Losing" and "Losing with Dignity" :-)


Of Brackets and Men segment

Let's give the NIT some love! NITology.com> predicts the field of the NIT. This year the NIT will be even more difficult for the "bcs" teams to make. The number of teams has been reduced from 40 to 32 so it can have a more NCAA-like feel with balanced brackets and regional sites. A recent change giving the regular season conference winners an automatic NIT bid won't make the "bcs" teams happy either. Theoretically a maximum of 31 of the 32 bids could be automatic if the winners of every conference's regular season don't get an NCAA bid. In practice, the winners of the regular seasons of the six "bcs" are almost guaranteed to get an at-large bid, so that number is down to 25. Historically a large number of non-bcs regular season conference champions earn at large NCAA bids, so the number of automatic NIT bids will be much less than 25. So when you look at the NIT projection table at NITology.com, you can assume that at least the last four teams In will be left out because of automatic NIT bids.

TheBracketboard.com has a bracket-implications preview of the weekend action.

Beano Cook on ESPN News: Cap the number of bids per conference! Beano wants at most half of the teams of a conference to get NCAA bids (eg max 8 from the Big East, max 6 from the ACC, SEC, max 5 from the Pac-10, and the Valley of Darkness). While Beano's intentions are noble, such a move would inhibit the "free market" nature of the selection progress. With just 5 teams from the Pac-10, one of these would be left out: Arizona, or Oregon or Stanford. And how about the ACC? Only one of these teams would get a bid: Georgia Tech, Florida State, Clemson, Maryland, NC State. I'm no Dan Bonner (ACC homer), but that doesn't seem fair. Beano makes a good point that the smaller (conference) teams should be given a chance to play in the NCAAs, but you don't do that by capping conference bids, you do that by giving mid-major teams bids, just like they did last year with George Mason. It's no secret that the last few years the bias has been towards the "bcs" conferences. Beano also makes a good point on the opening round game which deprives one of the smaller schools from the real March Madness experience. I would have no problem if they reduced the field to 64. But it may be even more fun if they have a four game opening round bracket buster where the last four in face the last four out. Or if the NCAA is feeling bold, they can square off four "bcs" teams vs four "mid-major" teams. How about that?

College Basketball TV Listings: Friday February 16, 2007

* all times pacific; add +3 for eastern *

12-3pm, Joe Lunardi's Bracketology segment (around 10 minutes long) on the Hot List on ESPN News

130pm, Kevin Durant on Jim Rome is Burning on ESPN. Kevin Durant will be the "correspondant" in today's episode

330pm, 9pm, Pistol Pete Diaries, Episode 1 of 6, on Fox College Sports. This is a brand new FCS series that revisits the life and career of the one and only Pistol Pete Maravich.

4pm, Bracket Buster:, Winthrop at Missouri State, ESPN2.

7pm, Basketball Weekly, CSN, with Bob Wenzel previewing the weekend action, mostly focusin on the "bcs" conferences.

830pm, repeat, Oregon State at Stanford with Marques Johnson and Steve Physioc, FoxCollegeSports

9pm, College Gamenight, ESPN

1030pm, 230am, Seth Davis Generation Next, CSTV

weekend tv listings will be posted later today

Thanks for the links!

Thanks for the recent links to:

TheBracketBoard.com, covering all things bracket-related on a daily basis

GT Sports, a blog covering Georgia Tech and ACC sports.

Good News in College Sports, covering good and inspirational stories in college sports that sometimes fly under the radar.

NcaaHoopsHaven blog

College basketball TV Listings: Thursday, February 15, 2007

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES and new shows

1230pm, Outside the Lines, ESPN. The issue of sports-related concussions and depression is revisited, along with Tim Hardaway's comments that spoiled David Stern's All Star Weekend party.

4pm, Providence at Notre Dame, ESPN, a Big East Bracket Buster. Prediction: The Domers win baby!

430pm, Rutgers at StJohns, CSN/FullCourt, a Big East Tourney Bracket Buster. How the mighty have fallen. They may not even make it to the conference tourney on their own court at MSG! Prediction: The Johnnies win!

430pm, 9pm, 2am, 5am, Seth Davis Generation Next, CSTV. Brand new episode with Seth Davis and recruiting experts Vance Coleman and Tom Konchalwski (sp?).

5pm, 10pm, 3am, Division 2 action:, Paine at Stillman, CSTV.

530pm, 1am, 7am, UCLA at Arizona State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: UCLA by 7

6pm, UMass at Fordham, ESPN2. Prediction: UMass in a high-scoring game

730pm, Oregon State at Stanford, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Stanford by 21

730pm, USC at Arizona, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. USC has a good chance of sweeping the Wildcats just like Washington State did. Defense is not Arizona's forte (unless Jordan Hill controls the paint), so can their offense overcome USC's defense?

9pm, 9am, College Gamenight, ESPN


Repeats and Classics

9am Thur, St Mary's at Gonzaga, FoxCollegeSports

10am Thur, from 2006 the College Dunk and 3-point all-star game, ESPN

11am Thur, from 1993 Arizona at UCLA, ESPN Classic

8pm, from 2004, the McDonalds all-star game dunk and three point competition on ESPN2. A certain LeBron James is involved. Why the rerun at this time? Because it's the NBA All-(injured)-Star weekend!

5am Fri, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports

9am Fri, Washington State at Washington, FoxCollegeSports

11am Fri, from 1993, Maui invitational, Arizona vs Kentucky, ESPN Classic

11am Fri, USC at Arizona

If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

Coach Meltdown Alert!

Colorado football coach Dan Hawkins had a meltdown of the Greg Escherick variety on National Signing Day when he received an anonymous letter from a parent of one of his players complaining that the student athletes are only getting two weeks of vacation instead of three weeks. This inspired Sportscenter to have a "Top 10 Meltdowns/Rants" segment, which included Iverson's "we are talking about practice", Pat Riley's "the team quit, quit, quit", Dennis Green's "The bears are who we thought they were", John Chaney vs John Calipari, and Mike Tyson vs the media. No Greg Escherick "he's just a kid", and no Jim Rome and "Chris Everett" turning the tables on him, and no "I wanna eat his children" by Mike Tyson.

To balance this with some good karma, check the latest stories on Good News in College Sports, including a Valentine's day themed story.

Games postponed due to the weather

From the ESPN News newsroom: A handful of games have been postponed for bad weather, including Indiana at Purude, NW at Iowa, Lafayette at Bucknell, Holy Cross at Navy, Iona at St Peters, Manhattan at Marist.

Also at ESPN.com, the following poll: Which team is the most disappointing this season? Duke leads the way with a near majority, followed by LSU, UConn and Arizona (four teams in the poll). Go to espn.com and search for keyword SPORTSNATION.

Secrets revealed by the RPI!

Won't lose a first round game??? - assuming they get a high enough seed: These teams are undefeated against teams with RPI 50+, but they have lost to teams with RPI 1-50: Kentucky (3-7, 15-0), Florida (7-2, 16-0), Memphis (1-3, 20-0), Duke (5-7, 13-0), Clemson (5-5, 14-0), Florida State (4-9, 13-0). Interesting list!

Most cupcake games (RPI 201+) among the RPI Top 50 teams: Oregon, Butler, Washington State, Clemson, Nevada, Florida, Air Force, Georgia Tech, VCU, Texas (7 or more). Some of them are by choice, others are because of conference affiliation

RPI Top 40 teams with Losing records against teams RPI 1-50 (in RPI rank order): Kentucky, Memphis, Villanova, Georgetown, Nevada, Alabama, Missouri State, Texas Tech, Florida State, Michigan State, Arkansas. Can they make it to the Sweet 16?

RPI Top 60 teams with losses to RPI 201+ teams: Oklahoma State, BYU, Vandy, Old Dominion, Providence, Appalachian State (3 of them). Tourney Upset Candidates???

Best records against teams RPI 1-50: North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, UCLA, Ohio State, Southern Illinois, Boston College, Creighton, Oregon. Could do well if they avoid a 1st round upset?

Data courtesy of KenPom RPI

Conference standings can be misleading...

With unbalanced scheduling in effect in all the major conferences (with the exception of the Pac-10 and the Valley of Darkness), simply looking at the conference standings at any point during the season does not necessarily tell the whole story.

For example Notre Dame is 6-5 and Nova is 5-5. But who did they play?

Notre Dame wins: Villanova, Louisville, Seton Hall, @Syracuse, West Virginia, South Florida

Villanova wins: Notre Dame, Louisville, @Seton Hall, @Georgetown, @Providence

Notre Dame losses: @Villanova, @DePaul, @Georgetown, @StJohns, @South Florida

Villanova losses: @Notre Dame, DePaul, @Syracuse, Pitt, @West Virginia

Just comparing the above shows that Villanova played a more difficult schedule, got two good road wins @Georgetown and @Providence with just one bad loss (DePaul), while Notre Dame split games with bottom-feeder South Florida, with just one road win (@Syracuse), but no home losses. So Nova's 5-5 is actually better than Notre Dame's 6-5.

.



Statistics courtesy of http://www.kenpom.com/rpi.php

Of Brackets and Men

TheBracketboard.com updates their projections after Tuesday's games, with Kansas State (road loss) stepping out, and Georgia Tech (road win) stepping in. TheBracketBoard has daily coverage of GOI (games of interest) with regards to the bubble, so that's a good place to bookmark if you are a "bracketholic".

Bracketology101 is updated as of February 12, with the ACC getting 8 teams and the Valley of Darkness (for Billy Packer) getting 3.

Jerry Palm is projecting the field at CSTV, as of last Friday

Bracketography.com is updated as of Sunday night

And to ensure equal coverage for the mid-majors, here is the latest from the Mid Majority Repor(t)

Big Brother's Guidelines (Jan 2006) for creating the brackets. (Big Brother being the NCAA). Big Brother is also posting their official weekly RPI. Speaking of the RPI, here is the latest from KenPom RPI

Ed Williams of NBCSports looks at the impact of all the recent upsets, and the (in)significance of the polls (aka beauty contests, or as I call them, the Billboard Hot 25 Chart). Actually the last part may come true, the teams could be ranked based on how many downloads their highlights get on YouTube and iTunes! Billboard are you listening? :-)

Tuesday Rewind

Good news, Illinois Brian Carlwell's condition is improving after the car accident.

The official site of Pistol Pete Maravich. A brand new Fox College Sports production, a six-part series, is airing on Fox College Sports called "Pistol Pete Diaries". It features an interview with Mark Kriegel. My previous post with all the Pistol Pete books here. The series premiered last night, and each episode will repeat a few times each week. New episodes will air on Tuesdays at 430pm pacific, with the last one on March 20, 2007.

Longest home winning streaks after Gonzaga's 50 was taken away by retiring Cinderella Santa Clara: Air Force, BYU and Memphis, in the high 20s.

The TO effect:: Basketball players dancing on the logo of an opponent when they win on the road. Sad and unsportsmanlike or let the kids have some fun? You decide...

Innocent or MILF hunting?: Lavin was sending Valentines wishes to a certain MSU player's mom...

Seth Greenberg has officially arrived after beating both Duke and Carolina in the triangle in the same year. I jumped on the Seth Greenberg bandwagon a couple of years ago. Too bad I didn't buy any stock :-)

Another excellent installment of CSTV's Crystal Ball. In this week's episode we learn that Steve Lappas is not a good florist and Brian Curtis says that not winning a national championship would be a disappoitment at UCLA (what was he drinking and how much of it?). They also introduced a new entertaining tourney feature with spirited discussion called "Buying, Crying or Keep Trying", putting bubble teams into one (or two) of those three categories. Also of interest to Xs and Os basketball fans or current/aspiring coaches, they had a short feature explaining the Air Force offense and defense with coach Jeff Bzdelik. The offense has similarities with the offense the previous Princeton-style coaches but he did away with the false motion and increased the speed in some situation. On the defensive end he incorporated NBA-style defensive principles after looking at the defensive statistics from the previous season. (Now if you have trouble spelling his name like I do, here is an easy way to remember it: Busy-Deli-K, Bz-Deli-K. Bzdelik)

Who's praising me now? Me!. This is a tongue-in-cheek segment, a copycat of the segment with the same name. In today's edition, I look back at my surpringly successful predictions: On Tuesday I predicted Texas Tech beating Texas A&M. On Monday, I predicted Louisville beating Pitt, Georgetown beating up on West Virginia. On Sunday I predicted a comfy Maryland win over Duke. On Saturday I predicted Arizona over Oregon. One last note: I forgot to mention that almost all of my other predictions were completely wrong :-)

Hoops on TV: Wednesday February 14, 2007

*** all times are pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***

LIVE GAMES and new programs

9am, 6pm, 8pm, Pistol Pete Diaries, FoxCollegeSports. A FoxCollegeSports production looks back at the legacy of Pistol Pete Maravich. This episode features writer Mark Kriegel, whose book on Maravich was released a few days ago.

4pm, Ohio State at Penn State, ESPN. PRediction: Ohio State wins! ODen gets close to a triple double!

4pm, Maryland at NC State, ESPN2. Prediction: Maryland energized by beating the Dookies (who doesn't these days?) gets a road W

5pm, 8pm, 11pm, 430am, Tulsa at Memphis, CSTV. You have to try hard to miss this game on CSTV :) Prediction: Memphis by 29

5pm, Florida Atlantic (free from the corrosive rein of Matt Doherty) faces Western Kentucky on FoxCollegeSports and the Western Kentucky satellite network.

6pm, Duke at Boston College, ESPN. Go BC! Go Eagles! Prediction: BC flexes Duke, Paula, McRoberts and Chris Collins start crying on the bench, and the students storm the court as BC wins by 20.

7pm, Utah at Air Force, Versus and VersusGolfHD. Prediction: Home court rules in the MWC, AF wins!

7pm, Washington State at Washington, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: A must win for the Huskies and before you count them out, remember a couple of years ago when they started 0-5 in the Pac-10 and had a crazy run that ended with an instant classic in the NCAAs against UAB. That was the game that established Nate Robinson as a rising star. Huskies win but it won't be easy.

7pm, The O'Reilly Bob Knight Show, FoxCollegeSports. Knight's endorsement-athon with Pat Knight actually doing the show and Bob doing all the ads :-)

9pm, 9am, College Gamenight, ESPN


Repeats, Classics and reruns

2pm, 1-hour drive-thru edit of the 1992 NCAA Elite 8 (regional final) between Duke and Kentucky, ESPN Classic. The Christiana Laettner shot.

3pm, 1-hour drive-thru edit of the 1989 Duke vs Michigan game, ESPN Classic

5pm, Hardwood Heavens: Assembly Hall, INHD. Narrated by Brett Masburger

11pm, 3am, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports

5am Thur, Long Beach State at UCSB, FoxCollegeSports

530am Thur, NW St at SFA, FoxCollegeSports

9am Thur, St Mary's at Gonzaga, FoxCollegeSports

10am Thur, from 2006 the College Dunk and 3-point all-star game, ESPN

11am Thur, from 1993 Arizona at UCLA, ESPN Classic

Monday Rewind

A little incident that was self-contained between Patrick Ewing's son and John Beilein. Beilein had a little incident at an airport a few months ago. It looks like he's human after all...

Props to Digger Phelps for not shying away from putting Duke squarely on the bubble!. Of course CBS will cancel their $6 billion tv contract if Duke is not selected, but that's a different story.

Rick Barnes just passed Turnaround Tom as the winningest coaches of Texas-Austin. Oklahoma State laid another egg on the road. This pattern may cost them a big drop in seeding.

Rick Pitino is back!. He stung Pitt at home, a team he was 1-7 before last night. But it's the players that deserve the credit as the injuries are slowly healing (Palacios, Padgett, Jenkins, etc), Earl Clark is starting to play at his talent level (he was a summer all-star last year), and even Derrick Caracter is contributing. March Madness Bracket Buster Alert!: Louisville could make a run to the Final Four if Derrick Caracter continues to make progress. Let's not forget this guy was at one time going head to head with Greg Oden. While Oden continued to develop in a stable environment, Caracter was dealing with all sorts of issues, some self-inflicted. However Pitino is not one to shy away from risks if that means getting a (Pontiac) game-changing performer. As you may recall he gambled on Bassy (street name for Sebastian Telfair) when he had a choice of Lofton or Rondo (or both?). At least Tubby only passed up Lofton, Pitino passed up on both! You may have seen flashes of what Caracter can do offensively against the Pitt frontline. His defense is a work in progress, but he could wreak havoc in the paint.

Bob Knight, the Christiana Laettner Elite 8 buzzer beater, the Chaney vs Calipari Jerry Springer moment, and Jimmy V were among the highlights included in Sportscenter 30K. Not included was the Escherick outburst of "he's just a kid!" when complaining about uncalled fouls on space-eater Mike Sweetney.

Following the example of Dookie Josh McRoberts's crying in frustration, Santa Clara's 300-pound center was crying on the bench after getting a couple of quick fouls and a quick hook from the coach. The tears did not last long as the Broncos were the first time to beat the Zags at the new Kennel, and break their 50-game home winning streak. At least the Zags managed to get to the round number of 50 before losing. Zags fans can thank Heytvelt for that. Interestingly Mark Few did not play his two big men, 7-3" Foster and 6-10 semi-space-eater Burgess. They would matchup against Santa Clara's own space-eaters inside. In the meantime Santa Clara's Dick Davey looks like he's going to create some noise this year before he retires. Perhaps cause enough noise that the AD will be forced to beg him not to retire? Andy Katz may tell you that the selection cmte doesn't have time to think about matchups, but I bet if Santa Clara makes it to the NCAA they'll face Arizona or North Carolina. Just a hunch... Dick Davey may have to wait until April before he can go fishing and use Mark Few's retirement gift.

Hoops on TV: Tuesday, February 13, 2007

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern ***

LIVE GAMES and new shows

All day: The print edition of USA Today has college basketball stories every Tuesday

12-3pm, The Hot List on ESPN News usually features game previews or Andy Katz and Doug Gottlieb

2pm, 1am, 3am, Full Court Press on CSTV. Highlights from basketball coaches press conferences. One hour long.

3pm, 8pm, 2am, Crystal Ball on CSTV.

4pm, Kentucky at Tennesse ESPN. Prediction: Kentucky by 5

4pm, Texas Tech at Texas A&M, ESPN2. Prediction: Bob Knight pulls the upset!

430pm, Pistol Pete Diaries, FoxCollegeSports. Not sure what this is. Will report back after it airs.

430pm, Niagara at Canisius, FoxCollegeSports

6pm, Michigan at Michigan State, ESPN. Prediction: Izzo State wins!

9pm, 9am, College Gamenight, ESPN.


Repeats

11am, from 2004, Kentucky at Tennessee, ESPN Classic

12pm, 1030pm, 630am, Stanford at Washington, FSN/FoxCollegeSports (the 2nd half is a slugfest)

5pm, Arizona State at Oregon State, FoxCollegeSports

7pm, Portland at Pepperdine, FoxCollegeSports

7pm, Northwestern State at Stephen Austin, FoxCollegeSports

no 11am classic game on Wednesday on ESPN Classic

Roy Williams vs Coach K vs Jim Calhoun

People frequently compare coaches based on their championships, final fours, conference championships, and wins. However, it is rare that we get a chance to compare high profile, successful coaches on down years back to back. And we can this year!

Roy Williams won the national championship in 2005 and his top seven players were gone (graduation and NBA early entries). He brought in a foundation class of solid players, but with nowhere near the same talent and experience as the 2005 team. Everyone expected a mediocre season and a trip to the NIT. Instead Roy had a stellar season, and if it wasn't for George Mason, they would have ended their season in the Sweet 16 (or even Elite 8).

Coach K went to the Final Four in 2004 (although if the zebras split the 50-50 calls, Thad Matta's Xavier would have been in the Final Four), and he had a strong team last year with JJ "Cry me a river" Redick and The Landlord Sheldon Williams. But unlike Roy, who didn't even have as much raw talent last year as Coach K has this year, Coach K has been unable to have a similarly successful year, infact his team is going down hill.

Jim Calhoun won the championship in 2004 and had a solid team in 2006 that was a George Mason short of the Final Four. Just like the other two, Calhoun lost players to the NBA (graduation and early entry) but he brought in a number of talented and inexperienced players. Just like Coach K's team, the Huskies have been struggling and are going downhill as the season progresses.

It is no coincidence that Roy Williams is the fastest to 500 among active coaches. He may have his quirks (eg not looking at the scoreboard) but his success on a down year (2005-2006) is something that sets him apart from Coach K and Jim Calhoun right now. Some also criticize Roy for having a deep rotation (including Doug Gottlieb), and playing at a frantic pace, but then again Roy doesn't lose Top 100 players to transfer because they don't get any playing time (Eric Boetang, Jamal Boykin). Martynas Pocius would benefit from a transfer as well but that's a different story. So as of right now, among active basketball coaches, Roy Williams is a step ahead of everybody else.

NCAA and Reporters prepare mock brackets

NCAA and Reporters prepare mock brackets An inside look by Andy Katz, who ever since that event has become a big defender of the Selection Committee. The story includes the complete mock brackets (PDF or GIF file) generated by the Reporters Selection Cmte. ESPN's Pat Forde also participated and has his own writeup of Bracket Camp

Did Dick Vitale cross the line?

In his weekly appearance on Mike and Mike (ESPN Radio and ESPN2), Dick Vitale was talking about the Jimmy V Foundation, a great organization raising money to fight cancer. Dick Vitale himself is doing a lot of great work to raise money against cancer and other causes, and for that he should be applauded.

However, during this segment he (intentionally or not, I don't know) tried to emotionally manipulate the audience by using an example of a young girl battling cancer and getting very emotional about her situation. This is a similar technique used by certain televangelists and others who try to manipulate people's emotions and convert them into a donation. Now if Vitale was just an average Joe making an emotional plea for others to commit their resources to this great cause it would be one thing, but this is coming from someone who flies around the country in a private jet and lives in a palace. Surely if this is such a desperate situation the V foundation could use the extra funding if Vitale made the sacrifice of taking commercial flights and living in a smaller palace. When you make desperate emotional pleas for a great cause, you are subject to the "practice what you preach" test. (you may remember the Benny Hinn story on network TV a few years ago flying around the country like a rock star in private jets while begging people to give and give and give).

Dick Vitale, being who he is, has been able to get away with doing a lot of things and saying a lot of things on TV that most people would get in trouble for. However, even for Vitale there are limits. Did he cross the line this time?

Duke is out of the BillBoard Top 25 Basketball Charts

The unthinkable happened, Duke is out of both beauty contests, the AP and the ESPN/Coaches polls. Oddly enough the Coaches drop UCLA from #3 to #7, even though they lost without Darren Collison, and UCLA is now one spot below Texas A&M which they beat earlier on. Once again the writers show more basketball savvy than the Coaches, although in fairness, the ones who vote in the coaches polls are probably student managers, interns or their grandpa/grandma. Oh the silliness of polls!

Meanwhile a reasonable rumor from Mike DeCourcy's Inside Dish, Santa Clara pushed out Dick Davey Denny-Crum style because they want to have a shot at hiring former Stanford and Golden State Warrior coach Mike Montgomerry. Santa Clara is (as of right now) the only available NoCal job, and if Monty wants to stay in the area, and be able to watch his kids compete in SoCal, this is about as good of a job. But bigger openings will also become available this summer, so if Monty (who is currently doing TV analyst work for FSN and Comcast Sports Net) decides to return to coaching, will be do so as a WCC coach or take a shot at the national championship again by going to a "BCS" program?

Today on OTL: The Loss Leaders at Cal Tech

Today's episode of Outside the lines have a centerpiece on "The Loss Leaders", the story of the Cal Tech basketball team that recently broke a very long winless streak (10+ years and 200+ games). The anti-Woodens if you like. Airs at 1230pm pacific / 330pm eastern. Details at OTL at ESPN

WHAT IF segment

This new segment will be looking at various WHAT IF possibilities and scenarios for entertainment and speculative purposes only :-)

What If Tubby Smith goes to the NBA?
What if Tubby is offered boatloads of money to coach in the NBA? What if he gets tired of unsatisfied KY fans who expect a Final Four every year and a national championship every four years? Then where does Kentucky go to? Here are some what-if names: Rick Majerus is a familiar face they remember from the 1998 championship. But is he in the proper physical shape and can he recruit high-profile early-entry top 100 players? Larry Brown is available, but he's a professional journeyman. On top of that, he wasn't patient enough to play rookies and younger players in the NBA, so who would he play in college since they are at the same age? How about Mike Montgomerry? He won many games at Stanford, an improbable place to have a basketball power program, but how many Final Fours did he go to despite having top seeds and highly rated teams with NBA talent? Just one. Probably not good enough for demanding KY fans. How about Billy Donovan? Before he won the championship last year, that could be a very reasonable thing to consider, but why would he leave now on the verge of a Repeat? How about Rick Pitino returning? That could cause riots... How about Kyle Macy? Well, you don't want to risk another "Matt Doherty situation"... The good thing with "What If" questions is that they can be left open-ended and unanswered :-)


What If the NCAA tourney expands?
Logistics aside, here are some ideas on how to expand the NCAA tourney. I say logistics aside because making any changes would require changing the schedule of conference tourneys and the start of the NCAAs
1) Take the Last Four In and make them play the Last Four Out in a double-header made-for-TV event on a neutral court in a tourney-style environment.
1A) Use the S-curve to determine these eight teams playing for four at-large bids. This would be the most conservative approach
1B) Now if the NCAA wants to be brave, bold and creative, they can pick the top 4 remaining "BCS" teams and match them up with the top 4 remaining "non-BCS" teams, and let them face-off each other. It could create extra-buzz and higher ratings, a Bracket Buster event of greater importance.
2) Do the same as #1 but instead play-in 6 or 8 bids, again made for TV. Essentially a limited expansion of the field, without having to jump to 96 or 128


What if the "BCS" conferences got all the at large bids?
Right now 34 bids are at-large and 31 are automatic. "BCS" conferences, the Big 6 "power" conferences, get most of the 34, but not all of them. So let's look at a hypothetical, alternate reality where Billy Packer and his BCS homer friends get their wish and all 34 bids are given to them. Those along with the six automatic bids would put 40 "BCS" teams in the NCAA. So who gets the bids??? Please note that the intend of this post is not to predict exactly who is in and out, but rather make a WHAT IF statement. The order of the teams and their classification of In/Out is off the top of my head, I have not looked at extensive numbers and schedules yet

In (more or less) (total of 25)

ACC: North Carolina, BC, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Duke (CBS will cancel their contract if they are left out)

Pac 10: UCLA, Oregon, Washington State, Arizona, USC

Big East: Georgetown, Marquette, Pitt, West Virginia, Louisville

Big 10: Ohio State, Wisconsin, Indiana

Big 12: Texas, Texas A&M, Kansas, Oklahoma State

SEC: Florida, Vandy, Kentucky

In or Out? - 15 of the 21 teams below would get an NCAA bid!!!

ACC: Clemson, Maryland, Florida State, Georgia Tech, NC State

Pac 10: Stanford, Washington

Big East: Notre Dame, Syracuse, Villanova, Providence

Big 10: Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue, Michigan

Big 12: Texas Tech, Oklahoma

SEC: Arkansas, Georgia, LSU

So if you drop the last team from each conference listed above, you have the 40 "BCS" bids. Sounds very BCS-friendly as you can see a number of "shaky" teams making to the NCAA. Re-arrange the order if you like, add/drop a couple of teams, but the result is more or less the same: Middle of the road teams getting NCAA bids.

Fortunately this scenario can only happen in Billy Packer's DreamLand. A number of non-BCS teams have already earned or will have earned at-large bids by March 11. Here are some examples:

Memphis, Butler, Winthrop

Nevada, Gonzaga (?), New Mexico State (?)

Creighton, Southern Illinois, Wichita State (?)

Xavier

Air Force, San Diego State, UNLV, BYU

ODU, VCU, Hofstra. Even George Mason if it's too close to call: CBS will jump up and down to try to get them back in for the ratings! They are paying billions for this tourney.

a few more that I forgot to mention or they are emerging as we speak (eg South Alabama, Wright State)

Weekend Rewind

Quotes of the Week

Tom Brennan: It's ironic that Rick Majerus lost the national championship to a guy named Tubby. Explanation: Word play on the word Tubby, which happens to be the name of the Kentucky coach, Orlando "Tubby" Smith

Rick Majerus: "The Beauty and the Beast": When describing a video clip where he was trying to defend Stacey Dales in an attempt to explain an offensive play by Notre Dame or DePaul. Majerus was wearing a very large shirt but the shirt was about 3-4 sizes smaller than him, so he looked even bigger in size.

Greg Oden: He seriously considered redshirting when he got injured earlier in the season. He said that on Outside the Lines last week.

Doug Gottlieb: Duke on the bubble? This was even before they got manhandled by Maryland.


Coaches Corner

Calling a time-out can be a dangerous thing. Just ask Ernie Kent of Oregon!

Two-minute lesson: During ESPN's Gameday Tubby Smith and Jay Bilas gave us an overview of Tubby's Ball Line Defense

Poor Bruce Weber: He just can't get a break against Indiana. This time around a home-cooking timing "error" may have cost him a road win at Assembly Hall. Not only they took Eric Gordon away, they just stole a W from him! Ouch!

It is refreshing to see a coach flat out admit he made a mistake. Thad Matta said he screwed up by not taking Greg Oden out of the game late in the 1st half of the Purdue game.

Why on earth is UCLA playing West Virginia? Well think about it: Ben Howland was the coach at Pitt, he played in the Backyard Brawl with West Virginia when he was at Pitt, so...

Pete Gillan seeks Validation: His recruits are doing very well this year at Virginia, and Ben Howland is using a Gillanesque "early and often" timeout taking strategy.


Media Segment

How hard is it to learn how to properly pronounce the name "Vasquez", especially if you are going to repeat it three dozen times during the broadcast? Yet another sign that Tim Brando is clueless

Four weeks until Selection Sunday airs on CBS, and the brain trust at ESPN analyzes all the brackets all night long

Please plan this game for next year and make sure it is on national TV: VMI at North Carolina. Why? Because they will get close to breaking a number of NCAA single-game scoring records!

A certain ESPN anchor who shall remain unnamed said that Washington State got closer to UCLA after UCLA lost to West Virginia. One minor detail: West Virginia is not a member of the Pac-10. Just a thought...


Everything else

The power of the 2006 class If you needed yet another validation point that the 2006 freshman class is one of the best ever, look at this stat: 21 freshmen have scored over 30 points in a single game this year. The last two to join the club? DJ Augustin of Texas and Chase Budinger of Arizona.

ESPN is apparently expanding its ranking and rating services. Steve Lavin ranked Oregon cheerleaders as #1 in the Pac-10.

Definition of a slugfest: The second half of Stanford at Washington. The once upon a time run and gun Pac-10 is down to just three run and gun teams: Arizona, Oregon and Washington, so that's just six run-and-games out of 90 conference games.

Hofstra beats George Mason once again. But they can't change the 2006 at-large bid selection.

North Carolina scores 100+ to honor the 1982 national championship team in attendance and honored during Saturday's game

Memo to Jerry Collangelo: Time to look for a new Team USA head coach.

Winning streaks: Florida and Memphis. They could both finish the regular season undefeated. But they can't both finish the season undefeated :-)

Recruiting mumblings and a TV review of the latest edition of Generation Next at Recruiting Wars

Thank you Maryland! Fear the Turtle!

Thank you Gary Williams! I knew I could count on you to beat the Dookies once again! Thank you Turtles, players, students, coaches, professors, interns, student managers, cheerleaders, fellows, post-docs, janitors, MBAs, parking assistants, fans, alumni, Comcast, Len Elmore, Lefty Driesel! Thank you for beating Duke! :-)

Hoops on TV: Monday February 12, 2007

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES and new shows

Joe Lunardi's Bracketology segment on the Hot List on ESPN News. The Hot List is 3 hours long, starts at 12pm. Lunardi usually has one segment (around 10 minutes) at some point during the show. Tape it or TiVo it if you don't want to watch the whole thing.

4pm, Louisville at Pitt, ESPN's Big Monday. Pitt is the logical pick, but, yes but, don't look now but Derrick Caracter is back, and after a 16pt/10reb game vs South Florida he is big enough to content with Pitt's ...Biggs (pun intended). Other interesting matchups: Padgett vs Aaron Gray (overrated), and LeVance Fields vs Sosa. Prediction: Upset alert: Pitino wins!

430pm, 1am, FDU at Monmouth, FoxCollegeSports. Monmouth could cause troubles in March!

5pm, Northwestern State (Steve Alford's favorite mid-major) at SFA, FoxCollegeSports

5pm, West Virginia at Georgetown, CSN/FullCourt. Both teams coming off nice weekend Ws. Prediction: Georgetown delivers a beatdown.

5pm, 8pm, 9pm, midnight, etc: Crystal Ball on CSTV. A weekly hourly show covering college hoops and predicting and analyzing matchups. Includes Seth Davis, Pete Gillan, Steve Lapas, Greg Amsinger, and road correspondants Seth Greenberg and Brian Curtis.

6pm, Oklahoma State at Texas, ESPN. A Big Monday rematch of the triple overtime instant classic of last month. Prediction: Texas wins 201-199 in seven overtimes!

9pm, Santa Clara at Gonzaga, ESPN2. The Battle for #1 in the WCC!. Gonzaga trying to recover from the Josh Heytvelt Herbs and Mushrooms incident. Santa Clara wants to send off Dick Davey into (Denny Crum style) retirement with a conference title. Prediction: Gonzaga wins in a very close game, but not an instant classic

9pm, 9am Tue, College Gamenight, ESPN.

9pm, high school game from Wisconsin, FoxCollegeSports. Not sure if any major D1 prospects are playing.


REPEATS and CLASSIC games

9am, 1am, Stanford at Washington, FoxCollegeSports. The second half is a total slugfest.

9am, Navy at Lafayette, Patriot League action on CSTV

11am, from November 1994, UConn vs Duke, ESPN Classic. Beat the Dookies please!!!

11am, UTEP at UAB, CSTV. UAB may be struggling this year, but next year they have three productive "BCS" transfers (Toney, Vaden, Sharpe) and a solid recruiting class including a forward who was a teammate of OJ Mayo and Billy Walker. Ooops, this is a TV listing post, not a recruiting post. Back to the tv listings...

11am, 12pm, Saint Mary at Gonzaga, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. The Zags first game without Heytvelt. Infact this game was played the morning after.

1pm, 11pm, Arizona State at Oregon State, FoxCollegeSports

1pm, Stone Hill at Bentley, Division 2 action on CSTV.

330pm, ACC Basketball Today, FoxCollegeSports. Weekly ACC magazine show full of ACC homers and homerisms

7pm, from 1999, USC at Oregon, FoxCollegeSports

9pm, from 2000, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports. Steve Lavin vs Henry Bibby

11pm, Division 2, UW River Falls vs Oshkosh, FoxCollegeSports

5am Tuesday, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports

7am Tuesday, Duke at Maryland, FoxCollegeSports. Duke LOSS! Party On!

7am Tuesday, Long Beach State at UCSB, FoxCollegeSports

11am Tuesday, from 2004, Kentucky at Tennessee, ESPN Classic



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Special announcement from the ACC!

Reported by FSN during their ACC Sunday Night Hoops. The twelve 2007 ACC Legends have been named, including Florida State's Bob Sura, Christiana Laettner (Duke), Tom Gugliotta (NC State), James Forrest (Georgia Tech), Bimbo Coles (Virginia Tech). One per team, even though some of these players didn't actually play in the ACC. That is a little bit strange, don't you think? :-)

Breaking news: Two Gonzaga players suspended

Mercurial forward Josh Heytvelt and redshirt candidate Theo Davis have been suspended indefinately by Mark Few of the Zags because of their arrest last night on possession of a certain herb and a certain kind of mushroom, or something along those lines.

While this may seem like a disaster for the Zags chances for an at-large bid, it may not be necessarily so: The Zags have big players on the bench that now may get an opportunity to play, such as the their 7'3" slim center and the space-eater Burgess. As we have seen with Arizona's Jordan Hill, when you get the opportunity, you have a beter chance of delivering than when sitting on the bench or coming in for spot-up duty or in blowouts. The Zags can experiment with a big line-up but they can also go with a smaller team with Mallon, Kuso or even Pendo as the "center".

TV Hoops: Weekend Hoops - Rivarly Week!

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2007

lots of games and a handful of preview shows as well! Warm up your VCRs, empty your TiVos!

730am, Basketball weekly, weekend preview show on CSTV

8am, College Gameday from Lexington, Kentucky, ESPN

830am, Three Point Club, an SEC preview show, CSTV

830am, Courtside with Rick Pitino, CSTV. Usually he breaks down Big East teams in basketball terms. Might be of interest to hardcore fans, current or aspiring coaches

9am, Marquette at Georgetown on ESPN. Now this game is as good as it looked at the start of the season. Both teams have matured and advanced enough to make this a high level game (at least on paper). Prediction: Georgetown wins, unless Dominic James hits four impossible three pointers in the 2nd half.

9am, Southern at Arkansas Pine Bluff, ESPN2

9am, 3am, Division 2 action, Stone Hill at Bentley, CSTV

10am, UCLA at West Virginia or Illinois at Indiana, the Eric Gordon Chronicles - Volume II, on CBS. Prediction: UCLA (although as Digger Phelps likes to point out the 1-3-1 zone may confuse UCLA) and shock! Illinois wins and Bruce Weber goes wild.

10am, 7pm, 3am, Valpo at Oakland, FoxCollegeSports

10am, from the 1992 WAC conference tourney, BYU vs UTEP, on BYU-TV (a religious channel), commercial free game!

11am, Iowa at Wisconsin on ESPN. Prediction: Wisconsin by 19

11am, Middle TN St at Western Kentucky, ESPN2. Western by 12

1130am, Penn State at Northwestern, on CSN/FullCourt. Prediction: A 0-0 soccer draw.

1230pm, Arizona at Oregon or Kansas at Missouri on ABC and ESPN Full Court. Prediction: Arizona and Kansas. It's all about the road teams on network TV this weekend :)

1pm, Hofstra at George Mason on ESPN. After dissing George Mason and sending them to ESPN360 for next week's Bracket Buster, ESPN tried to make up for it by symbolically upgrading this game from ESPN2 to ESPN and sends the Knights vs Suttons to ESPN2. Prediction: Hofstra beats them once again!

1pm, Texas Tech vs Oklahoma State, the Fathers & Sons game, on ESPN2, as the Knights battle the Suttons on the bench. Prediction: OK State wins and Doug Gottlieb storms the court ;-)

1pm, 730pm, Navy at Lafayette, CSTV

1pm, Quinn at Central Conn St, FoxCollegeSports

3pm, Providence at Pitt on ESPN. UPSET ALERT SPECIAL!: Providence wins!

3pm, Creighton at Southern Illinois, ESPN2. Digger Phelps is perhaps anxiously anticipating a low scoring game so he can diss the MVC once again?

3pm, Colorado at Kansas State on CSN/ESPN+/FullCourt. Huggins wins!

3pm, 7am, Arizona State at Oregon State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports, ASU's last best hope for a conference win, Oregon State's last best hope for a doubling their conference wins. Prediction: Oregon State in quadruple overtime

3pm, 930pm, UTEP at UAB, CSTV. Prediction: UAB

3pm, Free Ticket Inside College Basketball presented by Chase Free rewards or something like that on ABC (it repeats a few days later on ESPN2)

5pm, Xavier at George Washington, ESPN2. Prediction: Xavier in overtime

5pm, Saint Mary's at Gonzaga, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Gonzaga actually needs to win this week if they want to beef up their at-large resume. Although I would like to point out that this Gonzaga team may have a better chance of March Madness success as an underdog, just like they did before they became a Designer Cinderella.

5pm, College Gameday, the pre-game edition, from Lexington, KY. Prediction: Bilas gets dunked on by Randolph Morris

6pm, Florida at Kentucky, primetime action on ESPN

7pm, LB State at UCSB, FoxCollegeSports

9pm, Midnight Madness on ESPN. A recap of the day's action with a fresh perspective: Tom Brennan and Doug Gottlieb



SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2007
LIVE GAMES

6am, Game of the week rerun, selected by ESPN Classic. I do not know which game it will be, they may announce it during Midnight Madness on Saturday night. This depends on what happens on Saturday. A few candidates off the top of my head: the Duke vs Carolina men and women games, Texas at Texas A&M.

930am, Outside the Lines, former Penn State center John Amaechi comes out

10am, UConn at Georgia Tech on CBS. I am predicting 5 for 5 on the road teams on network TV (CBS and ABC games). UConn wins. This prediction is as shocking to me as it is to you. Why on earth did CBS select this game for national broadcast? Rewind the clock back three years, the 2004 final was Georgia Tech vs UConn and before that they met in a great game in the pre-season NIT which Georgia Tech won.

1130am, ACC Sunday Night Hoops triple-header Tip-Off Show on FSN/FoxCollegeSports

12pm, Boston Collage at Florida State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Both teams need the win but FSU has to win, and they will win! Al Thornton vs Jared Dudley matchup!

1pm, Fairfield at Loyola Maryland, FoxCollegeSports. Mid-major action!

2pm, 1am, 3am, Duke at Maryland, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Once upon a time CBS and ESPN were fighting for this game. Now it's been relegated to FSN's Sunday Night Hoops. Go Gary! Go Gary! Beat the Dookies once again! Prediction: Maryland wins by 20!.

4pm, 1am, Stanford at Washington, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. A must win for Washington, nice to win for Stanford. Lopez Twins vs Spencer Hawes matchup!. Every game Washington loses from here on, it is potentially a "Hello NIT" game for them. Prediction: double-overtime, but I can't see a winner. Too close to call

9pm, College Gamenight, ESPN


repeats

430am, 830am, 10am, 1030am, 11am, 1130am, Hardwood Heavens on INHD covering famous basketball arenas such as the Smith Center, Rupp, Assembly Hall and the Roy Williams Fieldhouse in Kansas :-)

9am, St Marys at Gonzaga, FoxCollegeSports

9am, UTEP at UAB, CSTV

1pm, Globetrotters documentary on some PBS stations

2pm, 5am, ASU at OSU, FoxCollegeSports

830pm, 3am, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports

11pm, 7am, LB State at UCSB (Santa Barbara), FoxCollegeSports

530am, StFrancis PA at R.Morris, FoxCollegeSports



Sneak Peek at Next Week

Next week features the Bracket Buster weekend on the ESPN family of networks (Friday, Saturday, Sunday).

Monday: Louiville at Pitt, W.Virginia at Georgetown

Tuesday: Texas Tech at Texas A&M, Pistol Pete diaries (not sure what this is yet)

Wedn: Duke at Boston College, Utah at Air Force

Thur: USC at Arizona

Fri: Start of Bracket Buster weekend

Sat: UCLA at Arizona, Memphis at Gonzaga, Washington at Pitt, Carolina at BC, Southern Illinois at Butler, and more Bracket Buster games

Sunday: Binghampton at Vermont!


If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

ESPN's Gay Week (B-story to Rivarly Week)

While the A-story this week at ESPN is Rivarly Week, the B-story is the John Amaechi story. ESPN has just redefined the way to manufacture stories for profit:

ESPN Books will be publishing his book with a pun-inviting title "Man in the middle" (currently ranked #349 in the Amazon Book Best Seller list)

ESPN the Magazine will be having an interview

ESPN Sunday's "OUTside the Lines" just added another pun to its name - it will have an exclusive interview with John Amaechi's coming out story. If this was Comedy Central they would change the OTL graphics to go all pink and gay, but ESPN would probably get in trouble if they did that.

Penn State finds itself in the middle of two "gays in sports" stories: The Rene Portland discrimination case (settlement) where she allegedly discriminated against a heterosexual player because she was not feminine enough for her standards (or liking perhaps?), and the ESPN John Amaechi story.

DeadSpin.com has an inside scoop on some of the stories in the book, and a dead-spin take on the story. Others covering the story: AOL Sports, yaysports.com, Sportsline

As expected the story created some buzz, with reaction by many people including Charles Barkley, David Stern worried his league will be re-branded as NBGay, Doc Rivers, PTI, and even LeBron James. LeBron's comments, as pointed out by the award-winning PTI duo, show the value of life experience and perhaps a college education when commenting on hot-button social issues. Let's not forget that LeBron, - insert Greg Escherick's "he is just a kid!" audio link here. Then again there is the sophisticated Duke education showcased in Shav Randolph's comments

All you can eat Fridays! (Rivarly Week edition)

Coaches Corner

This weekend is the "Suits and Sneakers" cancer awareness weekend where college basketball coaches will be wearing suits and sneakers to help raise awareness about cancer. This event will be highlighted in just about every college basketball game shown on TV.

Phil Martelli: Don't miss Hawk Talk, on CSTV. This is a very unique coaches show. Despite having not one, but two basketball people, the show rarely covers basketball. The two basketball people are coach Phil Martelli, and Mr Bracketology and St Joe's employee Joe Lunardi. If you haven't seen Hawk Talk before, make sure you watch at least one installment! In this week's episode you will find out that Phil Martelli will be publishing a brand new book, with an expected release date of October 2007. It will be titled "Don't call me Coach", a variation on a theme on the Wooden book "They call me coach". Marteli is collaborating with an acclaimed PhD writer (I don't recall his name) on this book, who said the book has a distinctive Martelli style and character (as it should). I don't know if they checked, or if it matters, but there is already a book with the same title from 2002...


Battle of Tobacco Road Revisited

Was Josh McRoberts crying when he got his fourth foul? Or were those tears of ...frustration? Cry-baby Dookies? As you may recall JJ Redick was not shy about crying either :-)

Jay Bilas and Hubert Davis tried so hard to sound unbiased and impartial when analyzing the Duke vs North Carolina game they went out of their way to overly praise their rival and exaggerate their strong points while softening their weakness.

Memo to the people of ESPN: Can you please stop interrupting live games with the silly 30/30 updates? You even interrupted the Duke vs Norht Carolina game? How sacriligious is that in a basketball sense? With all the updates at the bottom ticker, the halftime show, updates before/after time-outs, and half a dozen ESPN-branded tv networks, do you really think it is necessary to interrupt a game and show stock footage of Bill Parcells and say that they are still looking for a coach in Dallas? Can't you just do the updates in a voice-over while still showing the game full-screen? ESPN, you are not CNN, you are a sports network!


Battle of Los Angeles (USC vs UCLA) Revisited

The Governator sought the blessing of the Wizard of Westwood as he was leaving Pauly after he made a brief guest appearance during the USC vs UCLA game.

I forgot which USC player made this very astute observation but he was right on the money by calling Ben Howland's style of play at UCLA a hockey program!. I couldn't agree with you more USC player!

Tim Floyd was so upset with the officials that he adamantly refused to comment on them. Because if he did, he would have been fined and suspended. But we all know he thought the officials were really horrible. So perhaps the NCAA will start fining coaches if they hint or imply that they thought the officials were horrible by refusing to comment on them. On a totally unrelated note, Myles Brand will be playing a new sophisticated version of Big Brother (no moustache this time) in a brand new adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 - just kidding on the movie part, but just barely :-)

But did the zebras give the game to UCLA? I think not... As you may recall late in the game the zebras messed up an out of bounds call (USC player standing on the endline) and gave the ball to USC instead of UCLA. But after that the zebras overcompensated by giving UCLA a series of calls, including a technical foul.

National FSN didn't pick up the USC vs UCLA game! How crazy is that? :-) The game was on Prime Ticket, SoCal's secondary FSN channel, and carried on Fox College Sports, with UCLA prime-homer Don MaClean


Etc

Numbers: Louisville lost to Georgetown yet they committed just one turnover. Yes, just one. After the game Pitino said if they played 10 times Georgetown would have won 9. (the other one a 0-0 draw?)

Is Skip Bayless becoming the Bill O'Reilly of basketball? First he dismissed college basketball as boring with mediocre level of play and talent compared to the NBA, and he said he'd rather watch two NBA contenders play a regular season game than watch March Madness. This during Cold Pizza but thankfully Greg Anthony was there to set him in his place and explain to him the difference between the NBA and NCAA. Later on Skip found out that he is inspiring Allen Iverson because of all the hatorade he's been drinking in Iverson's name. The Skip O'Bayless Factor?

Good news for the Pac-10: first time ever that six Pac-10 teams were ranked in the AP Billboard Hot 25 chart (that's my new name for the basketball polls).

TV Hoops: Friday February 9, 2007

*** all times pacific ***

11am, from 2001, Florida at Kentucky, ESPN Classic

12pm-3pm, Joe Lunardi's Bracketology segment will be featured at some point during the Hot List on ESPN News. TiVo or tape it and fast-forward if you only want to watch Lunardi's segment.

1230pm, Brand new! Greg Oden centerpiece feature on ESPN's Outside the Lines

1230pm, 1pm, California at Washington, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

230pm, Big 12 Preview show, CSTV

3pm, Basketball Weekly, CSN

330pm, Hawk Talk, on CSTV. This is a very unique coaches show. Despite having not one, but two basketball people, the show rarely covers basketball. The two basketball people are coach Phil Martelli, and Mr Bracketology and St Joe's employee Joe Lunardi. If you haven't seen Hawk Talk before, make sure you watch at least one installment! In this week's episode you will find out that Phil Martelli will be publishing a brand new book, with an expected release date of October 2007. It will be titled "Don't call me Coach", a variation on a theme on the Wooden book "They call me coach". Marteli is collaborating with an acclaimed PhD writer (I don't recall his name) on this book, who said the book has a distinctive Martelli style and character (as it should). I don't know if they checked, or if it matters, but there is already a book with the same title from 2002...

4pm, 230am, Seth Davis Generation Next, CSTV

430pm, Saint Francis NY at FDU, FoxCollegeSports. Live Game!

6pm, Mevada at Fresno State, CSN

9pm, College Gamenight, ESPN

4am Sat, USC at UCLA

6am Sat, Arizona at Oregon State, FoxCollegeSports

Weekend listings coming later today

TV Guide: Basketball movies on cable and satellite

*** All times are pacific; Check local listings for your local airtimes ***
*** some of these movies are available on DVD; click on the DVD Reference guide on the left for details ***


Through the Fire, the Sebastian Telfair Story

Monday Febr 19, 11am on ESPN2, 2pm on ESPN Classic

Hoosiers

Monday February 12, 10am, on AMC (2h 30minutes), with commercials

Coach Carter

On The Movie Channel multiplex, commercial-free

Fri Febr 9, 12pm; Sun Febr 11 8pm, Wedn Febr 14 8am, Fri Febr 16 730pm, Sat Febr 17 11:50am, 11:10pm, Wedn Febr 21 3:45pm

Glory Road

On the Starz multiplex, commercial-free

Thur Febr 8 8pm, Friday Febr 9 11:20am, 6:10pm, Sat Feb 10 1am, Thur Febr 15 3am, 9:50am, 430pm, Monday February 19 3am, 11am, 6pm


Others movies airing the next 14 days

Rebound

Air bud

Juwanna Mann

Harvand Man

the Sixth man

Sunset park

CSTV Recruiting additions and improvements

CSTV's Recruiting with Bill Hodges continues their excellent resource, but they have also added a daily slog (sports blog) by Bill Hodges, instead of the daily text-based updates. They still maintain their archived columns.

They have also consolidated their recruiting coverage under the "Generation Next" brand, which happens to be the name of their TV show with Seth Davis.

Also Van Coleman of Hoopmasters is contributing to CSTV's recruiting coverage with various online features and TV appearances.

They have also posted their Top 250 of 2007, Top 150 of 2008, Top 60 of 2009, and Top 40 of 2010. They also have team and player databases, multimedia coverage of teams and players along with message boards.

(The CSTV recruiting website is a bit heavy on multimedia and things flashing and jumping around, which can be a bit annoying if you are doing multiple things at once on your computer as they eat up a lot of computer resources).

Unlike most of the other major recruiting sites (Scout, Rivals, ESPN, HoopScoopOnline), CSTV is providing free coverage to the masses. And no, I don't work for CSTV :-)

Of course there is one area of recruiting where I am well ahead of all the recruiting sites and recruiting professionals: I am the only one (as far as I know) to have ranked Embryos :-)

Of Brackets and Men

It's about time to start looking into bubbles bursting and things like that!

The thing we have to consider each year is that the number of at-large bids is fixed, regardless of how good or how bad teams are. So we may end up with some solid teams off to the NIT or some iffy teams off to the NCAAs. (The other variable of course being the winners of the at large bids).

One thing I keep pointing out is that it's very hard for the Pac-10 to get more than six teams unless there is a miracle run (or two) during the conference tourney or a very specific patterns of wins and injuries by the bubble teams. The conference plays a true round-robin system, and there are simply not enough wins to go around. Even if you take the ASU and Oregon State games as guaranteed wins, that's only four. You still have to win games, and with an eight team field, there are simply not enough wins to go around. Now what if Washington goes to Pitt and beats them? (it didn't work the last time they tried doing that at NC State but they still got in), what if UCLA goes to Morgantown and beats the Fighting Logos? If West Virginia beats them, look for the Pac 10 coaches scrambling to adapt Beilein's 1-3-1 and two-guard offense to their own teams :-) The Fighting Logos you ask? Yes: Jerry West, West Virginia, NBA Logo, thus the Logos, not the Locos.


Here is a sampling of some brackets:

Bracketology 101 as of February 5. They also prepares a handy color-coded picture of their bracket projections. Nice!

Daily coverage of bracketology and GOIs (Games of Interest, I presume) at The Bracket Board

A visual and colorful snapshot of the bracket situation at the Lockbox

Joe Lunardi, aka Phil Martelli's sidekick

College RPI


And if you have read all you can read about brackets and you are tired of reading about athletes and coaches getting in trouble, how about taking a positive half-full look at the world by reading the Good News in College Sports. Stories from all over the country including Bucknell, Texas A&M, and a cardiologist turned basketball coach.

TV review: The O'Reilly Bob Knight Show

I skimmed through the Bob Knight coaches show on Fox College Sports. I was so impressed with his advertising skills, so I checked all the ads in the show. Here is what I counted. Here we go:

Official name of the show: The O'Reilly Bob Knight Show (I kid you not)

O'Reilly Auto Parts name or logos visible throughout the show one way or another

Bob Knight appears in ads for the following sponsors: Federated Insurance, Sergeant's pet care joint health supplements, Lee Lewis Construction company

Also advertised: Bob Knights basketball camps

Before or after every commercial break you get this message: The show is brought to you in part by O'Reilly Auto Parts, Federated Insurance, Sergeant's pet care, AT&T/Cingular

Pat Knight was actually the one doing the show. Bob Knight was not in the show, but he appeared in a number of ads or in highlight clips from the game or stock footage.


If you are a big fan of Bob Knight, make sure you buy products and services from the above corporate sponsors :-)

Perhaps Knight is an even better Marketing/Advertising executive than a coach? :-)

To be fair I would like to point out that Bob Knight he is not the only one doing this, for example Billy Donovan drinks orange juice, Thad Matta does a number of PSAs, Pitino and Tubby have an ad together promoting Kentucky farm products, etc, etc...

Thank you Virginia, Florida State, and North Carolina

Thank you for beating the dookies!!!

Thank you Virginia, Dave Leito, players, coaches, cheerleaders, professors, janitors, students, alumni, donors! Thank you Pete Gillan for recruiting these players! Thank you Dave Matthews Band!!!

Thank you Leonard Hamilton, and Florida State! A big thanks to the coaches, players, fans, students, alumni, trainers! If I had an mp3 of the Florida State chant I would insert it here! Thanks!!!

Thank you Ole Roy for beating the Dookies despite a mediocre performance from NC! Thank you for withstanding the initial Duke burst at the beginning of the game (who knows what Coach K did to the players to come out like that, it would probably be illegal or banned by the American Psychological Association). Thank you Carolina players, fans, alumni, coaches, students, graduates, professors, research triangle residents, NC State, Sidney Lowe. Thank you Coca Cola for energizing Ole Roy with a fridge-full of Coke bottles!

This is so wonderful, Duke has a good chance of having a losing record in the ACC! Go ACC teams! Beat the Dookies! And let's not forget the Johnnies! Norm Roberts can save his season by beating the Dookies, even if his team fails to make the Big East tourney played right there at MSG.

TV Hoops: Thursday February 8, 2007, Rivarly Week!

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES and new shows

1230pm, Outside The Lines: Jesse Owens, their centerpiece story on ESPN. Not a basketball story but of great importance to the world of sports

4pm, Women's Hoops, game of the day Duke at North Carolina, ESPN2. Prediction: Ivory carves up the Duke defense. Carolina wins! Carolina wins! Carolina wins!

4pm, Notre Dame at DePaul, ESPN. Digger Phelps's favorite teams square off. Prediction: DePaul by 17

430pm,1030pm, 2am: Seth Davis Generation Next, CSTV. Episode 2 of the new season covering the world of recruiting with Seth Davis of CBS and SI hosting.

5pm, 830pm, 3am, Rhode at UMass on CSTV. CSTV continues to pick up the conferences ignored by ESPN and FSN. Prediction: Rhode gets a ...roadie! :-)

6pm, Memphis at UAB, on CSTV. Prediction: No Mike Anderson, no win for UAB! Now if Vaden and Sharpe were playing...

730pm, California at Washington, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Washington 20+ or even 30+

730pm, Arizona at Oregon State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Jay John is a former Lute assistant so that makes the game closer than it should have been. But still, Arizona should win.

930pm, 930am Fri, College Gamenight, ESPN. The west-coast bias edition as it covers Pac-10 and west coast action

10pm, Nevada at Fresno State, tape-delayed on CSN. Live on FullCourt a couple of hours earlier. Prediction: Fresno State wins! Fresno State wins!


Repeats and Classics
* from 1992, Arizona at Stanford, ESPN Classic
* 12pm, Stanford at California, FoxCollegeSports
* 5pm, 5am, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports. Barn-burner with the zebras giving the game to UCLA to make up for a missed out-of-bounds call. Bad zebras! Bad zebras!
* midnight, Houston at SMU, CSTV. Houston almost beat them by 20! Thank you Turnaround Tom :)
* 530am, St Francis of PA at Robert Morris, FoxCollegeSports



If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

Rivarly Week quick hitters

Roy Williams is 3-7 against Duke

Coach Puke-K is 31-30 vs North Carolina

Duke is 16-4 in the last 20, 2-2 the last four

Happening right now, Louisville is officially putting Denny Crum's name on their home court floor. No need to wait for the new arena. Live on ESPN with Len Elmore and Dan Shulman!

Tennessee has been in the top 5 in attendance in Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, and Football

TV broadcasters occasionally mention "good success". As opposed to what? "bad success", or "unsuccessful success"?

Brett Massburger to Steve Lavin: "Are you going to coach Santa Clara?" Dick Davey is retiring Denny-Crum style at the end of this season.

Advertised on ESPN yesterday was a book by John Feinstein, "Last Chance: Behind the scenes at the Final Four". The book was published in February 2006 and covers the 2005 Final Four.

Dream Job? CSTV's Hoops Odyssey

CSTV has sent two of their people across the country, visiting many different colleges along the way. They are not joking when they say odyssey, look at their itinerary. One visit per day, from January 2nd through March Madness. They post texts, pictures and vidoes from their adventures. This is the ground control page for the Hoops Odyssey

I am so tempted to write a DennisMiller-style joke on Odyssey but I don't have any :-)

TV Hoops: Wednesday February 7, 2007 (Rivarly Week!)

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES

Look for likely extended coverage of Duke/Carolina on all the daily shows on ESPN, from SportsCenter, Cold Pizza, PTI, Around the Horn, Jim Rome, Quite Frankly, the Hot List (ESPN News), etc, etc

4pm, Georgetown at Louisville, ESPN. Not a rivarly, but promises to be interesting. Prediction: Georgetown wins.

4pm, Illinois at Northwestern, ESPN2. Granted it's a rivarly game but if Illinois really needs this one. Prediction: Illinois gets it

4pm, Pitt at West Virginia, CSN/FullCourt. Funny how ESPN dropped this game and instead went with Illinois/Northwestern, when this game is a lot more fun to watch and a lot more relevant in the grand scheme of things. Prediction: The 1-3-1 confuses Pitt (i'm starting to sound like Digger Phelps) and Beilein wins!

5pm, 3am, Houston at SMU, CSTV. Prediction: The severely overrated Matt Doherty loses by 20+ to Turnaround Tom

5pm, Hardwood Heavens: The Smith Center, on INHD. Appropriate to show it the day of Duke/Carolina.

6pm, Kansas State at Kansas, CSN/FullCourt. After Billy Walker went down a lot of people (including me) wrote off this season's team. But don't count out Huggie-Bear! He managed to make them competitive and now they could easily come away with a W at Allen Fieldhouse. Everyone else seems to be able to do so... Prediction: Kansas wins

6pm, GAME OF THE MONTH!, yes of the month, with Dick Vitale, NORTH CAROLINA at DUKE, on ESPN. Prediction: North Carolina wins rather comfortably by at least 7. Beat the Dookies Ole Roy!

7pm, TCU at UNLV, CSTV. A resurgent Mountain West is starting to make noise again. UNLV wins.

730pm, The Battle for Los Angeles, on FSN/FoxCollegeSports, USC at UCLA. Wild Prediction Alert!: USC wins!. This time Tim Floyd manages to outfox the wrestlemania Bruins and the sideline-violation-technical-waiting-to-happen Ben Howland.

940pm, 940am, College gamenight on ESPN



Repeats and classics

11am, from 2004, Duke at North Carolina, an overtime game, ESPN Classic

11am, Oregon State at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports, a blowout victory. Meet the UCLA bench players

12pm, 6am, StFrancis (Pa) at robert morris, FoxCollegeSports

3pm, 9am thur, washington state at arizona state, FoxCollegeSports, a bizarre low-scoring game

5pm, pacific at long beach state, FoxCollegeSports, a blowout W and a jersey retirement

1130pm, santa clara at st mary's, CSN

1130pm, 330am, Florida State at Duke, FoxCollegeSports. JJ Redick's jersey retirement party spoiled (THANKFULLY) by Florida State who deserved to win last season's game at Cameron Opendoor stadium. Thank you Florida State. Tape this game, save it, TiVo it, burn it on DVD! It's awesome baby!

1230am, Air Force at San Diego State, CSTV

7am Thursday, SF at Gonzaga, FoxCollegeSports

11am Thursday, from 1992, Arizona at Stanford, ESPN Classic. Thursday is Pac-10 day so ESPN celebrates it with the only Pac-10 games it has access too. Old games :-)

If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

Winningest active coaches at one school

According to ESPN College Gamenight, the winningest active coaches at one school with 500+ wins:

1. Jim Boeheim, 742
2. Coach K, 698 (let's keep it under 700)
3. Bob Knight, 662
4. Lute Olson, 584
5. Jim Calhoun, 500 (got it last night on Big Monday against Syracuse)

New book on Pistol Pete released today!

A brand new 400-page hardcover book on Pistol Pete is released today, titled "Pistol Pete: The Life of Pete Maravich" by Mark Kriegel. More details on the book in the Amazon product page including three user reviews.


Thanks to blog readers HoopsMaven and PistolPeteFan for pointing out another recent book called "Maravich" by Wayne Federman, Marshall Terrill, and Jackie Maravich. This book was published at the start of this basketball season (Oct 2006).




Some older books on Pistol Pete:

Forever Showtime: The Checkered Life of Pistol Pete Maravich (Hardcover), by Phil Berger

Heir to a Dream (Paperback) by Pete Maravich (Author), Darrel Campbell (Author), Frank Schroeder (Author)

I Remember Pete Maravich: Personal Recollections of Basketball's Pistol Pete by the People and Players Who Knew Him (Hardcover) by Mike Towle. Also available in paperback

Monday Rewind

Newspaper alert! Every Tuesday, the multicolor fishwrap (Jim Rome's term for USA Today) has increased college basketball coverage and features, including a column by the one and only Dick Vitale. The stories usually appear at usatoday.com as well.

Shape of things to come for Texas A&M in the NCAAs? A Final Four caliber crew was officiating the Texas-TexasA&M game last night. Even though the game was played at College Station, A&M was called for a number of fouls, putting most of their players on the bench. If refs start calling all the wrestlemania fouls that Texas A&M and UCLA usually get away with, they will have an unpleasant March. After all, the game is basketball, not wrestling, not bodybuilding, not WWF, not pushing/shoving/bumping.

Jeff Ruland is officially the new Debbie Downer of college hoops. He blasted his players in public for celebrating their first win of the season.

We should really stop praising teams simply because they have 20+ wins. Twenty wins alone are not a good indicator. Who did you play, when and where? Take UConn and Syracuse, they stay at home and get 10-12 almost guaranteed out of conference wins. So they only need 8-10 conference/tourney wins and they automatically have a 20-win season. I suggest including an RPI/SOS rating next to a coach's winning record!. Now who wants to calculate it? :-)

Virginia is enjoying great success this year and don't look now but their five starters were recruited by... Pete Gillan!

Vitale Alert! Dick Vitale has switched his player of the year from Wisconsin's Alando Tucker to Texas's Kevin Durant. On a totally unrelated note the switch was made yesterday when he was doing a Texas game. Perfect timing baby ;-)

How the darlings have fallen!. George Mason went from everyone's favorite Cinderella to now being relegated to ESPN360 for its Bracket Busters game.

As if his past troubles were not enough, Todd Bozeman got in trouble in a restaurant by allegedly making physical contact with a waitress, after a team loss. Ouch!

You Decide: Doug Gottlieb has repeatedly made the point of critizing Roy Williams (both at Kansas and at North Carolina) for having a deep rotation and because of that his teams are not able to maintain a flow. He also claimed that he has lost some NCAA games because of this. Good point or not?

You know what the basketball polls remind me of? The Music Charts! Teams go up and down slowly and steadily, even if they play like a low-major (Alabama) or if they lose back to back games (Duke, Oregon). Also teams creep up when other teams/singles lose (fall down), even though they don't really deserve to go up... So let's call them The BillBoard Hot 25!.


Winningest Active Coaches
Let's recap so far. Two interesting battles are taking place, Coach K creeping up on the Silver Fox, and Jim Boeheim regaining lost ground on Jim Calhoun)
1. Bob Knight, 884 (42 season)
2. Silver Fox, (aka Lute Olson, not Olsen), 776 (34)
3. Coach AMEX ShoeChefSki K, 771 (32)
4. Jim Calhoun, 748 (35)
5. Jim Boeheim, 742 (31)


Media Segment

With football and the SuperBowl out of the way, watch for increased college basketball coverage on all the daily shows on ESPN, such as Cold Pizza, award winning PTI, Jim Rome, Quite Frankly, Outside the Lines, Around the Horn, ESPN News's The Hot List, and even Mike & Mike.

Props to CSTV's Crystal Ball. Even though ESPN has a lot more resources, a lot more analysts, and half a dozen channels, they have not been able to make a fun and versatile show like CSTV's Crystal Ball. It gets my unofficial award for Weekly College Basketball Show. Each new show debuts on Monday at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern, and repeats a few more times later on. It blends highlights, predictions of upcoming games, coach segments, spirited discucssions, chalk talk, campus visits with Brian Curtis, HBCU player of the week, in-studio guests, even simulated games via video game promos.

If you like blended movie trailers with basketball promos, you will love the new "Ghost Rider" movie promotion that blends in ESPN's college basketball coverage.

The National media (ESPN, FSN Sunday Night Hoops) gets frequently criticized for crawling with Dookies, from Jay Bilas, honorary Dookies Dick Vitale and Mike Patrick, Mike Gminski, Feinstein, Jay Williams, the interim Duke coach, etc, etc. However let's get the FSNs of SoCal some love for being UCLA homers, the most obnoxious one being Don MacLean who is also doing Bruins radio (which unlike TV, it is allowed to cheer for the home team). Other UCLA homers crawling on the SoCal FSNs: Jack Haley, Sean Farham. The only one of the UCLA alums that is not a total homer is the one and only Marques Johnson (which explains why he is the #1 basketball analyst on FSN).

Just after I finished praising Seth Davis for being a rising star in the basketball analyst world, he starts cheering for Duke like a Cameron Crazy on CSTV's Crystal Ball.

Stacy Delles Shuman (not the right spelling) is now the new Big Monday analyst with a fresh perspective on things. ESPN has gone with a men's/women's duo of Digger and Stacy, instead of having two sets of analysts for Big Mondays. Women's games are usually on ESPN2 on Big Monday.

OTL - Who should be the #1 pick in the NBA Draft?

While OTL continues to deal with the SuperBowl and football, their poll question is who should be the #1 player taken in the 2007 NBA Draft. Their five candidates are... Kevin Durant, Greg Oden, Brandan Wright, Joakim Noah, Alando Tucker. I can understand Alando Tucker being the player of the year in college basketball, but the #1 Pick in the NBA Draft? Am I missing something? :-)

OTL website

TV Hoops: Tuesday February 6, 2007 (Rivalry Week!)

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES!

4pm, Michigan at Ohio State on ESPN. Rivarly game on paper, this would be a good opportunity for Michigan to show the selection cmte that they can beat top teams. Prediction: Ohio State walk in the park.

4pm, Saint Joseph at Villanova on ESPN2. A Big Five game! Hawk Talk vs the New Nova! Prediction: Nova

430pm, Cincy at Providence on CSN/ESPN FullCourt. Cincy is fighting for its life and a chance to make it to the Big East conference tourney. Providence is fighting for a chance at the post-season. Prediction: Home team wins comfortably

6pm, LSU at Tennessee on ESPN. Game of the day! Both teams need the win, LSU is desperate for a W, TN has to defend home court. Prediction: LSU in a grinder

6pm, Hardwood Heavens: Rupp Arena on INHD.

7pm, 11pm, Air Force at San Diego State on CSTV. A top-level game in the Mountain West on CSTV (probably an mtn production). Prediction: SDSU in double overtime

940pm, 940am, College gamenight on ESPN



Classic games, repeats and reruns
* 11am, from 1990, Ohio State at Michigan on ESPN Classic
* 1230pm, from 2000, USC at UCLA, FoxCollegeSports, a Lavin vs Bibby classic, preparing you for tomorrow's USC at UCLA game on FSN/FoxCollegeSports
* 230pm, Gonzaga at Pepperdine, FoxCollegeSports
* 430pm, 1am, 9am Wedn, Kevin Love Alert!, Lake Oswego at Mater Dei, FoxCollegeSports. Watch UCLA-bound Kevin Love, with Ben Howland and the Godfather Sonny Vaccaro in the stands.
* 630pm, 3am, Stanford at Cal, FoxCollegeSports. A rerun taking advantage of Rivarly week
* 830pm, Washington State at Arizona State, FoxCollegeSports. A Twilight Zone low scoring game
* 1030pm, Pacific at Long Beach State, FoxCollegeSports. Big West action.
* 4am Wedn, Florida State at Duke, FoxCollegeSports. A Duke Home Loss! Record it! TiVo it! Tape it! DVD it! DV it! Take pictures of it! A Duke loss!!!
* 5am Wedn, Portland at Pepperdine, FoxCollegeSports



If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

Weekend Rewind

We found this year's Tyrus Thomas!. Who is it? You may have guessed it, Arizona's Jordan Hill!. Mark it down!

Teaching Brad Nessler: It is fascinating that after doing hundreds of college basketball games over many years, Nessler does not know the difference between a "true freshman" and a "redshirt freshman" when talking about NC State's Brandon Costner.

Congratulations to Herb Magee for becoming the winningest coach in Division 2 history in men's college basketball.

Congratulations to Iona and Jeff Ruland for getting their first win. They were quite possibly one of the best last-D1-teams-to-win-a-game. But regardless, don't go anywhere near Jeff Ruland this year...

Basketball coaches did you watch the SuperBowl?. You can win it all without being an obnoxiously abusive bully like Bob Knight and Bill Parcells. Tony Dungy should be your new role model!

Wednesday is college football's national signing day. ESPNU will be having a seven hour extravaganza, two hours of which will be on ESPN2. CSTV will throw its own signing day party with a three hour Generation Next.

It's hard not to feel bad for Riley Wallace. Not only he is shown out the door Denny-Crum-style by Hawaii after many many years there, but the zebras blatantly gave the game to the Nevada Foxes (Mark Fox, foxes, wolves, Wolfpack).

Why isn't Florida on national TV more often? What else do they have to do? They are the defending National champions and all of their stars returned to college. So many tv channels, not enough common sense?

Words of wisdom by the Duke Zen Master Jay Bilas: "Concentrate on your path"

Great job by Seth Davis on his One to One documentary/interview with Rick Pitino that debut on CSTV last week and will repeat many times more. It was an insightful look with good questions that covered most of Pitino's career in about 25 minutes. One of the things mentioned was the 1986 Sports Illustrated cover with Rick Pitino portrayed as "possessed". Pitino was offended by the word "possessed", he's rather see "obsessed". Check local listings for repeats!

Being Michael Jordan's son is not guaranteed NBA greatness. Eric Gordon played more like a Jordan than his sons. Granted those are unfair expectations to put on anyone. So after that I have to change my rankings of the "Best Embryos, Class of 2025" ;-)

Congratulations to Sidney Lowe!. He managed to do what Herb Sendek couldn't, despite having just six players. NC State fans were unhappy because Sendek could not beat Duke or Carolina. Sidney Lowe just did!

Are the Arizona Wildcats back? The return of Brett Brillmaier (a steadying influence off the bench) and the emergence of Jordan Hill as a game changing performer in the paint have allowed his favorite five ball-handlers to return to their more natural positions: Radenovic doesn't have to battle centers all the time, Marcus Williams and Budinger don't have to battle power forwards. Even if Lute doesn't reduce their minutes significantly, they won't take as much beating from bigger players. In fact he tried M-Will at the point against the Huskies, instead of Nic Wise and Daniel Dillon. So why did Arizona slide so much? Part of it was because Lute Olson, despite his 1000+ game experience, made a big mistake: he fell in love with the five ball-handler line-up (Shakur,McClellan,M-Will,Budinger,Radenvoic). Yes he had his excuses (meltdown at Virginia, Kirk Walters unavailability), but by playing those five guys all the time in the preseason he didn't give the bench a chance to get valuable playing time and in-game development. Had he done so in the preseason, Jordan Hill could have emereged in late December instead of late January... So Lute, start reading my blog :-)

Blogging this blog: An Inside Look (sort of)

One of the things you do when you start a blog is to find out if anyone is actually reading it, and how do they find your blog (link, search engine, etc). This can be done by using one of many free counters. Most of the readers of this blog come from search engines (mostly Google) and from a number of links from other basketball blogs. However, this was not the interesting part of looking at the visitor counts...

What was interesting was the type of things people were searching for... One of the most popular ones continues to be Josh McRobert's Mom. Apparently Rick Majerus is not the only enthusiastic member of her fan club.

The Coca Cola commercials are quite popular searches as well, both the Virginia Tech (Hokies, you stopped doing your routine and your team lost!), and Roy Williams and his ... Coke habbit.

Another thing I picked up was the number of spammers that try to find email addresses by searching for common names (eg Jones, Smith, etc), and then send them the "you won the lottery" and male enhancement spams. Since player names are mentioned here, they find their way to this blog. So spammers, this is a great email address for you, GoAwaySpammers@StopWastingBandwidthWithYourStupidSpams.com

And then the most entertaing thing are the searches that border on the nosy, the silly and the bizarre. Off the top of my head here are three presented in a Q&A format:

Search Question: "how many wins for an NCAA bid for an Atlantic 10 team"?
Answer: As we have seen last year with George Washington, the number of wins alone is not a factor. The quality of the wins is important. Who did you play, where, when, and how well did you play are among many others factors to consider.

Search Question: "Is Steve Lavin gay?".
Answer: Well, he got married to a woman last summer from what I recall. How did this end up on my blog? Because of a classic Majerus line - one of about 10000 it seems; there is actually a website that tracks Rick Majerus quotes by the way. When evaluating UConn's Rudy Gay, Majerus said: "I'm not a Big Gay Guy" (meaning he is not a big fan of his game). This happened in studio with the camera pointed at Majerus and Lavin. It was almost impossible for Lavin not to start laughing after Majerus said that.

Search Question: Searching for a coaches name and violations, even for coaches who are clean, perhaps hoping of unearthing some dirt on an opposing coach?

If this segment is of interest I will try to remember more of these and write them up on a regular basis. Let me know...

Hardwood Heavens on DVD!

Hardwood Heavens covers some of the most historic college basketball venues such as Assembly Hall (Indiana), Smith Center (North Carolina), Allen Fieldhouse (Kansas), Rupp Arena (Kentucky). Some of the episodes of the series narrated by Brett Massburger are now available on DVD! If you don't want to buy the DVDs, 25-minute versions of these documentaries air on the HDTV channel INHD.

But if you are a hardcore fan, you probably want the whole documentary to add to your collection. Amazon has three of them available for $13 each. According to the Amazon product description they are 90 minutes long each. I have not watched these DVDs so unfortunately I don't have any more details other than what is already published there.

Allen Fieldhouse (Kansas)

Assembly Hall (Indiana)

Rupp Arena (Kentucky)

Hoops on TV: Monday, February 5, 2007, Rivalry Week!

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES and new shows

12pm-3pm, Joe Lunardi's Bracketology on the Hot List on ESPN-News. The show is three hours long, Lunardi's segment comes on at some point, but not sure exactly when.

4pm, Syracuse at UConn on ESPN. Oh the two Jims badly need the W. Especially Calhoun. Not to make the NCAA, not to make the NIT, but to make the Big East tourney. Oh how they mighty have fallen - after six NBA draft picks :-) Prediction: Calhoun wins!

430pm, Monmouth at FDU, FoxCollegeSports

5pm, 8pm, 2am, Crystal Ball on CSTV. One hour show covering the world of college basketball with Greg Amsinger (CSTV's Rece Davis), Steve Lapas, Seth Davis, Pete Gillan, Brian Curtis and special correspondant Seth Greenberg

6pm, Texas at Texas A&M, ESPN. Hot off the heels of their statement comeback against Kansas and personal friend Bill Self, Billy Gillespie brings Dick Vitale to College Station for a Big Monday Rivarly Week game. Common sense points to an A&M win, but my crystal ball adamantly points to a Texas win! as DJ Augustin carves up the A&M defense like a pumpkin. Not Durant, but DJ Augustin will be responsible for this win

7pm, 11pm, 1am, Portland at Pepperdine, FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: The team whose name starts with a P wins :-)

9pm, Gonzaga at Loyola Marymount on ESPN2. Prediction: Under the watchful eye of daddy Montgomerry the Lions are zapped by the Zags.

930pm, 930am College Gamenight, ESPN.



Repeats, and Classic games

730am, 2pm, Washington State at Arizona State, FoxCollegeSports. A very bizarre and low scoring game!

930am, Gonzaga at Pepperdine, FoxCollegeSports

11am, from 1992 UConn at Syracuse on ESPN-Classic. A Jim vs Jim epic, preparing you for the Big Monday game

1130am, 830pm, Florida State at Duke, FoxCollegeSports

12pm, 830am, Stanford at California, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

12pm, Duquesne at St Bonaventure, CSTV. High-scoring game!

130pm, ACC Basketball Today, FoxCollegeSports

2pm, New Mexico at Colorado State, CSTV

5pm, repeat of the Kevin Love invitational, Lake Oswego at Mater Dei, FoxCollegeSports, grand opening of their new facility

730pm, some high school game, FoxCollegeSports

That's all folks! Come back tomorrow for more!

11am Tuesday, from 1990, Ohio State at Michigan on ESPN Classic. Keep up the good work on the classic games ESPN Classic!


If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

Goodbye SuperBowl, Hello March Madness!

With the SuperBowl officially over, and the bizarre cover of "All along the watchtower" by Prince out of our heads, we are now officially in March Madness Season!.

Speaking of March Madness, you can sign up for March Madness On Demand!. According to their website you can watch the games online for free this year, just like last year. As you may recall a couple of years ago they tried a paid subscription model, but last year they switched to FREE, which they are continuing this year. FREE is better :-)

All you can eat Fridays!

Nice to see Gene Keady back at Purdue. He even had a segment as a guest analyst on ESPN alongside former assistant Steve Lavin and Brett Massburger.

You know the expression "among the trees" when a player drives in the lane occupied by taller forwards/centers. Well this sentence takes a whole new meaning at Stanford where the lane is occupied by two 7-footers, the Lopez Twins, and Stanford's mascot is The Cardinal (a tree).

Outsmarting the smarties: Josh Heytvelt. As he was walking towards the bench after he fouled out of the game at Stanford, the Stanford fans were showering him with the "left, right, left, right" chant. Heytvelt smiled and pointed at the scoreboard!.

Coach Speak: "Chasing two rabbits" used by Kelvin Sampson

Seventeen is a bad number when it comes to winning streaks this season. Wisconsin lost theirs at 17, just like Clemson and Florida. Florida is the new frontrunner with 12 wins in a row, chased by a couple of mid-majors.

So much for Bob Knight not caring for the all time winningest coaching record!. He framed his game plan for the New Mexico game and presented it to Rick Barnes to thank him for not letting Kevin Durant score 50 on his Red Raiders :-)

37 days til Selection Sunday. Before you know it we will be crowning the next national champion! In order words, it's just five Sundays after this Sunday... It's awesome baby! It's unbelievable!

The Silver Fox is sliding. Game mismanagement by the coaching staff at Arizona. With the team being down the whole game, someone from the coaching staff or the players should have noted that the team only had four fouls, so the strategy to start fouling with 11 seconds failed... Lute is so stingy with time-outs while Ben Howland uses them almost as fast as Pete Gillan. The difference is that Howland uses them when his team is doing well.

New opening for the spring of 2007: Dick Davey of Santa Clara will be retiring. A recap of the Coaching Carousel so far

TV Hoops: Saturday and Sunday February 3, and 4, 2007!

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2007

730am, Basketball weekly, a 30-minute preview of the weekend action on CSTV.

8am, College Gameday on ESPN

8am, 3 point club on CSTV, covering the SEC

830am, Courtside with Rick Pitino, CSTV. He actually gives a high level breakdown of opponents, so it might be of interest to hardcore fans, coaches or aspiring coaches

9am, SMU at Memphis, ESPN. The AASAA Tigers looking to hammer the SMU Doherties, one of the most overrated and corrosive coaches by the way. I hope Michael Jordan is not reading this :) Prediction: Memphis wins

9am, Louisvilel at Nova, ESPN2. Could be a fun game to coach with up and down action and lots of scoring. Prediction: Tempted to say Villanova, but Louisville matches up well with them, and they are playing well as of late, so it's too close to call...

1030am, Washington at Arizona, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Must win for Arizona. Their high SOS and history in the NCAAs can still get them a bid (just like a couple of years ago), but it's a good idea to win home games in conference. Washington has a chance to pick up another W and don't look now, but didn't Washington do the same thing three years ago when they started a miraculous comeback after an overtime win at Oregon State. That game started the Nate Robinson bandwagon... In theory Arizona should win. In practice, who knows...

11am, Indiana at Iowa, ESPN. Of course ESPN wouldn't pass up the Steve Alford vs Indiana game. How could they? Prediction: Iowa wins - but just barely...

11am, 8pm, 3am, Duquesne at St Bonaventure, CSTV. An inspiration season for Duquesne after the tragic shooting of last summer. Prediction: Duquesne wins!

11am, Southern Illinois at Wichita State, ESPN2. If the score is under 60 they may hear about it from Digger Phelps once again ;-) Prediction: Wichita State has to win, and they will win.

12pm, 230am, ACC Basketball Today, enjoy your favorite ACC Homers predicting 15 NCAA bids for the ACC :-) at FSN/FoxCollegeSports

1230pm, Regional action: North Carolina at NC State or Kansas State at Texas on ABC. No Billy Walker so it spoils the fun for ABC. Durant will score 37 this time and Texas will win. Logically one would give the game to North Carolina since they have a 10+ rotation and the fighting Sidney Lowes have just 6. I predict the game will be much closer than anticipate but Ole Roy will escape with a win.

1230pm, Oregon at USC, CSN/FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Oregon sneaks out of SoCal with a very very close W.

1230pm, 7pm, St Francis of PA vs Robert Morris, FSN/FoxCollegeSports

1230pm, 830pm, Gonzaga at Pepperdine, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Once upon a time the game of the year in WCC, this will be a Gonzaga win, even if they stumble through the game. The AASAA Waves are about two years away from becoming a thread...

1pm, Ohio State at Michigan on CBS. Not a football game CBS. What were you thinking? I highly doubt Michigan can win, although I'm sure Jay Bilas will find ways to defend Amaker after they lose by 20 :)

1pm, Wright State at Detroit, ESPN2. Who says ESPN2 doesn't love mid-majors?

1pm, Northeastern at Hofstra, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Hofstra wins!

230pm,1130pm, 1am, Oregon State at UCLA, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Jay John dreams of getting this upset. Dreams don't always come true. Prediction: UCLA holds them under 50 and gets a comfy W.

3pm, Free Ticket inside College Basketball on ABC. 30-minute "reality-style" look into one of the "BCS" basketball programs. Not sure which one this time. If you miss it, it will repeat on ESPN/ESPN2 at a later date

3pm, Samford at Eastern Illinois, ESPN2. Home team wins! (Translation: I don't know enough about these teams to make a prediction)

3pm, 10pm, New Mexico at Colorado State on CSTV. BRAWL ALERT!. Rumor has it Jerry Springer and his crew will be there to cover it ;-)

4pm, Santa Clara at St Marys, CSN

430pm, Pacific at Long Beach State on FSN/FoxCollegeSports

430pm, 3am, Washington State at Arizona State, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. As funny as it may sound, this may be Herb Sendek's best chance at a win in the Pac-10 because they are probably the only team that slows the game down more than Wazzu. They may lull Wazzzzzu to sleep and win? Who would have thought that a Pac10 game would be played in the 40s? Prediction: Washington State wins after they fall behind in the game.

5pm, Hawaiiii at Nevaaaada, ESPN2. Prediction: Fazekas gets a 20/20 and a W

5pm, College Gameday - pregame edition, ESPN

6pm, ESPN Primetime: Texas A&M at Kansas, ESPN. Promises to be a dogfight if Kansas can't score. Talent wise Kansas should blow them out by 20. But talent doesn't always get its way. If Kansas loses, Bill Self will be bombarded with the questions he doesn't like to answer... Prediction: Kansas wins, but not sure if it will be a dogfight or a walk in the park...

630pm, Stanford at California, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Prediction: Since it is a rivarly game Cal should probably win, but I predict Stanford. They seem to be tough enough to recover from the Zags loss. Mark Few got his REVENGE for losing to Trent Johnson in the NCAAs, although this win was nowhere near as significant as the NCAA game.

830pm, Lake OSwego at Mater Dei, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. New Arena Alert!. Well not really an arena, but Mater Dei will be having the grand opening of their new basketball facility by hosting Lake Kevin Love. A game of interest especially to Bruins fans since Kevin Love will play at UCLA next year.

9pm (or later), Midnight Madness on ESPN. A recap of Saturday's game. Tired of the same old same old from Dick Vitale, Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas? Well you are in luck! Midnight Madness features the trio of Tom Brennan (with great lines such as "sometimes you are the pigeon, sometimes you are the statue"), Doug Gottlieb and Dave Revsine.

3am, repeat, Virginia Tech at Maryland, FSN/FoxCollegeSports.

that's all folks :-)





SUPER-BOWL SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2007

6am, Game of the week!, a repeat of what the ESPN braintrust thinks was the most exciting game of the week, on ESPN Classic. Every Sunday. I do not know which game. Gonzaga at Stanford won't be it because it was on FSN. It could even be a game from Saturday...

10am, 1am and 5am (Mon): Repeat of Oregon at USC, FoxCollegeSports

1030am, Tip off Show, FSN Sunday Night (???) Hoops, FSN/FoxCollegeSports.

11am, 1030pm, 1am,3am, Florida State at Duke, FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Come on Florida State I know you can do it! Beat the Dookies!!!!!!! Prediction: The zebras give Duke an 80-20 advantage of 50-50 calls and Duke wins.

4pm, Hardwood Heavens: Allen Fieldhouse, featuring Kansas with your favorite host, Brett Massburger, INHD (HDTV channel)

5pm, 730am, Washington State at Arizona State ,repeat, FoxCollegeSports

7pm, Fresno State at Idaho, CSN

7pm, Oregon State at Washington, repeat, FoxCollegeSports

830pm, Carnasie at St Dominics, high schoo, repeat, FoxCollegeSports

11pm, Oregon State at UCLA, repeat, FoxCollegeSports

3am, Stanford at Cal, repeat, FoxCollegeSports



COMING UP NEXT WEEK!

11am Monday, from 1992, UConn at Syracuse, ESPN Classic, preparing you for the Big Monday matchup between the two Jims

The family of ESPN Networks goes into RIVARLY WEEK mode, with all sorts of rivarlies, including North Carolina at Duke (Wedn), Michigan at Ohio State (three days after they on Saturday - the wonders of TV scheduling!), Kansas State at Kansas (Wedn), USC - UCLA (FSN), Pitt at West Virginia (wedn), and many many many more. Check back next week for all the details...



If you find these listings useful, you can encourage this blog to continue posting them by making your Amazon.com purchases via the affiliate link here or the Amazon logos in the blog.

Early Coaching Carousel (just updated!)

UPDATE Friday February 2, 2007 New opening at the end of this season. Santa Clara's Dick Davey, after 30 years at SCU, 15 of which as a head coach, will be "retiring" at the end of this season. This looks more like a "Denny Crum-like retirement", meaning the AD and adminstration are heavily encouraging him to retire so they can bring in a new coach (I seriously doubt they can find a Rick Pitino).


UPDATED Thursday November 30, 2006: Apparently this post was slightly prophetic. Dan Monson (Monsoon?) of Minnesota has just resigned (read: fired) after a rather disappointing start of the season (three losses at the inaugural Old Spice Classic (aka Disney classic), and a really bad blowout home loss last night to Clemson in the ACC-Big11 Challenge).

This is rather premature, but it looks like university administrators are starting to mimick the NBA. At least three jobs are open for the 2007-2008 season:

Colorado: Ricardo Patton is stepping down at the end of this season

Hawaii: Riley Wallace is not going to get renewed at the end of this season

Minnesota: Dan Monson just fired today. (Technically he resigned after being given 1 million dollars to do so)

Santa Clara: Dick Davey is retiring at the end of the season

All four coaches have been at their universities for a long time.


Coaches on (or projected to be) the HOT SEAT
*** does not necessarily mean they are at risk of getting fired ***

Jim Molinari at Minnesota (Interim)

Tommy Amaker the Dookie at Michigan

Ernie Kent of Oregon (despite the hot start, if the team doesn't perform in the Pac-10,...) Update 2/2/07: This sounds very silly as of right now :)

Bill Self of Kansas if he loses in the first round of the NCAA for the third year in a row

Dave Odom at South Carolina

Mike Brey the Dookie at Notre Dame

Bill Carmody at Northwestern

Jim Baron at Rhode Island

Matt Doherty at SMU

Steve McClain at Wyoming

Neil Daughterty at TCU (the word implode described the current state of that basketball team)



Top available coaches:
* Mike Montgomery
* Nolan Richardson
* Larry Brown
* Flip Saunders


The broadcasters:
* Rick Majerus
* Pete Gillan
* Steve Lavin
* Steve Lapas
* Perry Clark
* Paul Westphal
* Mike Jarvis


Recently fired/resigned/retiring and available coaches
* Dan Monson (ex of Minnessota)
* Ricardo Patton
* Riley Wallace
* Dick Davey


Comeback long-shots
* Gene Keady
* Eddie Sutton
* Bennett Senior (Dick)


If Bobby Cremins made a coaching comeback after half a dozen years of broadcasting, I wouldn't be surprised with any of the above making a comeback either...

TV Hoops: Friday February 2, 2007

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES and first airings

230pm, Big 12 Preview Show, one of the most self-explanatory TV show names ever! CSTV.

3pm Basketball Weekly, weekend preview show on CSN.

430pm, Long Island U at Sacred Heart, FoxCollegeSports

Weekend listings coming up later today


REPEATS, Classics and such

9am, 12pm, 11pm, 5am: Oregon at UCLA, on FSN/FoxCollegeSports (boring game)

11am, Game of the day!, from 1993, the ACC semi final featuring Jimmy V's NCState vs North Carolina on ESPN-Classic

11am, 1pm, 8pm, Washington State at Arizona, FoxCollegeSports. If you haven't seen Washington State yet, take a lot! This team is going to be painful and frustrating to beat in the NCAAs, especially if they have the lead! They will bust your brackets!

11pm, Pacifica at UC-Irvine, CSN.

TV what to watch: Thursday February 1st, 2007

*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern; adjust for other time zones ***
*** predictions are not the most likely outcomes ***
*** predictions attempt to catch the randomness of each game ***
*** FSN/FoxCollegeSports games may be regionally aligned. YMMV ***
*** by the law of averages, I am bound to have some incorrect listings ***
*** please double-check with your local listings ***


LIVE GAMES!

4pm, Loyola vs North Central, ESPN2. High School game. Details at Recruiting Wars. Prediction: Home wins team (rearrange words for secret prediction)!

4pm, Georgetown at StJohns, ESPN. Big East slugfest on paper. Prediction: Georgetown wins!

430pm, 1130pm, Seth Davis Generation Next debuts on CSTV. First show of the season.

530pm, Battle of the Saints: Louis vs Joseph, ESPN2. Prediction: Lunardi's team wins!

530pm, Washington State at Arizona on FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Must win game for the Fighting Lute Olsens. The Singing Bennetts have nothing to lose which gives them an upset alert edge. If Arizona can't win this game, it's Hello Calhoun, Bruce Weber and NIT!

6pm, Duke at Virginia on ESPN. Go Cavs!!! Fill up your shiny new JPJ arena and beat the Doooookies! Prediction: The zebras give the game to Duke.

7pm, Pacific at UC-Irvine, CSN. Prediction: Eating ants helps in getting a W (semi-cryptic prediction)

730pm, Oregon at UCLA, on FSN/FoxCollegeSports. Game of the Day!. Go Ducks! Beat the Wrestlemania Bruins! Maybe this will teach Ben Howland to start playing basketball instead of WWF! Prediction: UCLA wins in double overtime


Repeats, Classics, and other assorted

11am, Repeat of the first episodes of ABC's "Free Ticket inside College Basketball" on ESPN2. This is a rename of the previous reality-style show on ESPN following teams around for a week. I forgot its previous name

11am, from 1984, St Johns at Georgetown, ESPN Classic, preparing you for their game later on

230pm, Pepperdine at StMary's, CSN

830pm, Robert Morris at St Francis of PA, on FoxCollegeSports.

330am Friday, Boston Collage at Duke, on FoxCollegeSports.

530am Friday, Virginia Tech at Maryland Tech (ha!), on FoxCollegeSports.

7am Friday, from 1986, a 1-hour Drive-Thru edit of the Maryland - North Carolina game. ESPN Classic

9am Friday, repeat of today's Oregon at UCLA, on FoxCollegeSports.

11am, from 1983, the ACC Semifinal of North Carolina vs NC State (Jim Valvano!), on ESPN Classic. Repeat of the day!





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