Week #9 of the BlogPoll is out!

Week #9? How time flies! It's almost February! Almost time to start seeing serious BUBBLE-TALK :-) iN OR OuT??? Look at that RPI! What a horrible SOS! But that's a great road victory!!!!!!!

So, here it is, Week #9 of the BlogPoll Top 25. There are four Big East and four ACC teams in the Top Ten. Imagine if these played an ACC vs Big East challenge! Let's look at the hypothetical matchups based on the rankings:

* Duke vs UConn (I would pay PPV to see this one!)
* UNC vs Pitt (muscle vs wine-and-cheese finesse!)
* Wake Forest vs Louisville (first one to 100 wins!)
* Marquette vs Clemson (okay, not as fun as the other three)


West Coast Invasion!
The West Coast is invading the bottom of the top 25, with St. Mary's, Washington, Gonzaga, UCLA buzzing at the bottom of the top 25.


Mid-majors?
Yes, there are mid-majors! The Gonzaga/St-Mary's duo, along with Butler in the Top 15. Butler ranked higher than the bigger in-state unis by the way!

Then we have two mid-major-conference teams, although the programs themselves are by no means mid-major: Memphis and Xavier.

Laughing matters: Kelvin Sampson wants back in

Some people never learn. NEVER. Case in point, Kelvin Sampson wants back in. He has appealed his suspension. Oh dear!

No, this is not an April Fool's day joke!

After all, he only cheated at two different schools and got caught twice. Doing the same thing. Same illegal thing that is, 500 times at a time :)

Perhaps he is building up his street-cred so he can negotiate a good spokesman deal with a cell-phone provider. Right after AJ Price gets an exclusive spokesperson deal with a laptop manufacturer ;-)

Memo to Jay Williams: Stop eating your words!

It must be that high quality Duke education, especially those public-speaking classes the "teacher" Coach K teaches his players. After a handful of years on TV, former Dookie Jay (Jayson) Williams still talks too fast on TV and ends up eating his own words. Literally, not figuratively.

Can't any of the producers at ESPN pull him aside and teach him how to speak without eating his words? :-)

Dookie FAIL: +1

Party on with three Classic Duke Losses!

Duke Haters of the world unite and take over! ESPN Classic will be showing THREE Duke losses in the next few days! On Wednesday, set your DVRs and VCRs for two Wake Forest upsets of Duke, one from the mid-80s and one from the mid-90s! The first game starts at 1pm eastern on Wednesday!

Then on Thursday, at 1pm eastern, also on ESPN-Classic, Virginia Tech and Senor Greenberg beat up the Dookies in 2005. Go VaTech! Go Seth! Go Hokies! Beat those Dookies again!!!

So to summarize, three Duke losses from three different decades, on Wednesday and Thursday on ESPN-Classic.

Thank you ESPN-Classic!

And hopefully by the time the 2009 Wake Forest vs Duke game is over, we will have another Duke Loss to celebrate!

Because we are all Wake Forest fans this week :-)

Suspend Aubrey Coleman of Houston for the whole year

Aubrey Coleman's behavior during the Houston vs Arizona game was horrible. Not only did he step on a player's face while the player was lying on his back, but when he was kicked out of the game, he was smiling and high-fiving his team-mates as if he did something "REALLY COOL" - and he was caught by the cameras doing that, and shown on SportsCenter and Midnight Madness multiple times.

This type of WWF/WWE behavior has no place in college sports. NO PLACE! This is VERY EMBARRASSING for the Houston Cougars. If the player is not suspended by the coach or the AD for the rest of the season, the coach and the AD need to be FIRED.

Tom Penders tried to cover his and his players behind in the after-game press conference, but as shown CLEARLY by the TV cameras, Aubrey Coleman was smiling and high-fiving his team-mates before leaving the court. That's not the behavior of a player who "accidentally" steps on someone's face! FireTomPenders.com?

Jay Bilas, Hubert Davis, and Bob Knight and the other "Game Day" divas were heavily discussing what makes a tough player earlier today. What Aubrey Coleman did defines a COWARD.

Coaches who coached the most games

There's usually a lot of talk about the winningest coaches of all time, but during the pre-game edition of GameDay, ESPN showed another interesting statistic, the most games coached by active coaches. Yes, it's in the four figures, and certainly the current format favors current coaches in boosting their numbers because of the extended regular season and post-season with all the "exempt" tourneys.

So without further ado, here is the list.

1. Jim Calhoun, 1129
2. Sleazy Rat, Chief of the Dirty Dookies, 1089
3. Jim Boeheim, 1069
4. Turnaround Tom, aka Tom Penders, 1034

No winning percentages were given, but I'm sure you can guess who has the lowest of them all. Hint: He is the one who does not have 800+ wins.

Hint #2: "Turnaround Tom" - Tom Penders, currently of Houston.

Not our rival: Duke TOASTS Maryland

Nothing please us more than a Duke loss in college hoops. Sadly, Gary Williams and his long lost son Greivis Vasquez had an EPIC FAIL, a meltdown of double-up proportions at the Duke Cave-arena, with Maryland great Len Elmore having to suffer the game as the ESPN analyst.

So that raises the question, what happened to "THE GARY"? Was it the assistants? Maryland lost a wave of assistants after their major success in the last decade, including Gary's favorite in-game punching bag Jimmy Patsos.

So that sets up a potentially dramatic post-season at College Park. Would they really fire Gary Williams after that he has done for the program, including the national championship? Will the AD et al force him to bring in more experienced or rising assistants? Will they compromise on a Gary Williams early retirement?

Clemson falls apart at North Carolina

Clemson, Clemson, Clemson. You should write a book: "The Art of Falling Apart". Sure, one of the last three undefeated teams. Sure. But can you beat a Sweet-16 team? Can you? Could you? Will you? Do you want to? Are you afraid of success? What's your problem Clemson?

We are saying all that because Clemson fell apart in front of everyone towards the end of the first half at the Dean Dome and could simply not come back. Poor Clemson... We want Clemson to succeed, but we have not been convinced by them the last three years.

This North Carolina team is rather strange. Sure, they could win it all during March Madness, but they could also be upset in the first or second round of the tourney by a tough mid-major team. And no, I'm not talking George Mason mid-major, but "typical" mid-major.

This team just doesn't have the same winner's mentality the 2004-2005 team had. You know, the Felton, McCants and May trio. No matter what the score, you knew that that team could finish off the game in the last ten minutes, almost no matter what.

This is not the case for this team though. Perimeter defense (Lawson/Ellington) are not exactly defender-of-the-year type of players. Ellington does not have the killer instinct the "diva" McCants did. Ed Davis is too skinny to be a "Marvelous Marvin". But this team has its own secret weapon, Danny Green, who continues to be under-rated because of all the other "stars" at UNC. With Ginyard and Zeller likely done until 2009-2010, Green may be the one that gets them the ring in April!

No more undefeated college hoops teams!

It looks like luck has finally smiled at Virginia Tech and Seth Greenberg. After having so many "almost won" moments in high profile games, they manage to de-throne and de-flower the only remaining undefeated college hoops team!

A late comeback by Wake Forest was the proverbial "too little, too late", and the Hokies (DO NOT?) storm the court as they get a very big win - dethroning the #1 team in the country!

Bargain book: Duke vs Carolina Hatorade for $5

If you like college hoops books, Amazon has on special for $5 of the "To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry" book. Free shipping if the total of the order is $25 or more. You can buy an Amazon gift card or online gift certificate to reach the $25 mark.

This book is 384 pages long and published by Harper Paperbacks in January 2007.

Week #8 of the BlogPoll is out: new #1

There is a new #1 in the Blog Poll Top 25! Wake Forest jumped to the #1 spot, jumping over the Pukies. And while the Big East is a giant train, three of the top eight teams are from the ACC.

What could have gotten ESPN some big ratings is if they scrapped the watershed-beating ACC-Big10 "challenge" and replaced it with the "ACC vs Big East" challenge. Now that would have been FUN to watch! And Duke could have actually lost a game or two ;-)

Monty's surprise at Cal is the last team in the top 25 and it can possible get the Cal AD executives fired for keeping Ben Braun there for about six years too many :)

NBA League Pass Free Preview

A week after the ESPN Full Court free preview, there is the free half-season preview of NBA League Pass. The freebie continues until January 25. You must have access to these channels on your cable system or satellite in order to see the free preview. This also depends on what your local or satellite provider is smoking. Some of them may be asleep at the switch, so, to quote Jim Rome, "bang your monkey" if they are not offering it.