Free from Coach DraKula, Elliott Williams flourishes

If you needed any further evidence that Coach K is a DraKula that drains the life energy out of his players, look at how well Elliott Williams is doing at Memphis, a brand new team with a 19yo head-coach! One more player, free from the energy-drain of Coach DraKula is able to succeed in his post-Duke-transfer career.

And the Memphis performance today may have some Tigers fans questioning the coaching skills of Calipari. If a 19yo head-coach-kid is able to almost beat #1 Kansas, what was Calipari doing with a lot better players? :)

Hot action right now!

Run to your local cable or satellite box, or sports bar, or open up ESPN360.com! Hofstra is beating UConn with seven minutes left in the game. And yes, the game is played at UConn - Calhoun is not gonna play a road game at Hofstra!

There's plenty of other exciting games that started or are starting, Arkansas vs Louisville, Gonzaga and Michigan State trying to repeat the excitement of the Ammo-Maui game of a few years ago. Crazy as it may be, there's even a rivalry game going on, the battle of New Mexico and New Mexico State.

And of course the big game of the night with Dookie Vitale calling the Calipari-less Memphis Tigers versus the Kansas Jay-Championship Stealers.

And a great game to watch on replay, Cal State Fullerton (yes, one of the schools Jim Rome used to use in his "academic" takes) managed to beat UCLA at Pauly in double overtime.

Regular readers of this crazy blog may recall how we pin-pointed how bad of a match Ben Howland was for UCLA and Pac-10, but because he was winning very few people complained. But his luck is over, the bubble has burst, and the Lavin super-talented recruits are gone :)

ESPN360.com is a must have for the college hoops fan

If your current ISP has an agreement with ESPN, you have free access to ESPN360.com from your home computer and home network. It is easy to find out, just go to espn360.com and you will know whether you have access.

On top of that, they have a feature where you can create an account there, and when you login with that account, you can also watch games when you are away from home, and the ISP you are using on the road (hotel, school, office, cafe, etc) does not have espn360 access. Of course it still needs to have enough bandwidth to broadcast the video!

There are boatloads of games there, more than you can get with a regular cable subscription for sure, and you can also watch replays of recent games.

Another big plus is that you can move forward and backward in the game, just move the game-marker using your mouse to the desired spot in the game's timeline. It's sort of like having a DVR.

One negative however is that ESPN360.com does NOT show the half-time show of the live TV broadcast, but shows canned segments from previous ESPN featurettes, such as John Wooten, the return of Isiah Thomas, Izzo talking to Andy Katz and such. So if you are watching a replay, be sure to use the marker and move ahead in the coverage!

You cannot jump over commercials once they start, but they are usually very short.

If you are a hardcore hoops fan, it may be worth it to consider switching ISPs if they offer similar plans and your current ISP does not offer ESPN360.

The ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia is out!

If you are the book type, rejoice! The ESPN College Hoops Encyclopedia is out and shipping from Amazon for around $33 with free shipping and handling. This is probably longer than "War and Peace", at 1200+ pages!