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2010 NCAA Bracket
Your NCAA bracket; click on the image below for large, printable version. More commentary to come.
Transplanted New Yorker and now Midwesterner Peter a/k/a Pico writes for Johnny Jungle , doing the Calm Before the Storm posts and also for the Church of Bracketology. Pico is also on Twitter, @ECoastBias.
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2010 Coaching Carousel: More teams hand out pinkslips
An update on the coaches on the hot seat:
Auburn‘s Jeff Lebo, after a 15-17 season, is gone.
Oregon‘s Ernie Kent has told his players that he is not returning.
Iowa‘s Todd Lickliter might “resign.” Under duress.
The hot seat rumors were pretty accurate. See my earlier post on each coach’s record at their school, in conference, and overall. Also see the post on evaluating up and coming coaches.
Addendum – and one I didn’t hear much buzz about before a week or two ago – Boise State fires coach Greg Graham.
Transplanted New Yorker and now Midwesterner Peter a/k/a Pico writes for Johnny Jungle, doing the Calm Before the Storm posts and also for the Church of Bracketology. Pico is also on Twitter, @ECoastBias.
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2010 Coaching Hot Seat: Hawai’i’s Bob Nash fired
Bob Nash, longtime player and assistant coach for the Rainbows (or Warriors, as they call themselves now), was 34-56 in his 3 seasons as head coach.
Links
Honolulu Advertiser: Nash fired as UH basketball coach
Aloha Update: UH Coach Nash Fired After Disappointing Results
KHON: Offsetting the Cost of Coach Nash’s Contract Buyout
Hoop Dirt: Candidates at Hawai’i
Transplanted New Yorker and now Midwesterner Peter a/k/a Pico writes for Johnny Jungle , doing the Calm Before the Storm posts and also for the Church of Bracketology. Pico is also on Twitter, @ECoastBias.
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Binghamton staying home from America East conference tournament
Binghamton University has decided not to continue playing the season after all the well-documented turmoil:
“With the controversy currently surrounding the program it is not appropriate we play in this year’s post-season,” Binghamton president Lois DeFleur said in a news release Monday night.
“This action is being done voluntarily as part of our commitment to move forward as we develop a comprehensive plan to address the recommendations of the recent review,” DeFleur added.
The New York Times indicates that the move was not voluntary on Binghamton’s part.
Transplanted New Yorker and now Midwesterner Peter a/k/a Pico writes for Johnny Jungle , doing the Calm Before the Storm posts and also for the Church of Bracketology. Pico is also on Twitter, @ECoastBias.
Add the East Coast Bias to your .rss feeds; or follow by email.
Watching the NCAAs at NCAA Vault + Other Links
Watching NCAA Sweet 16 games and up from 2000, online? What a way to not get work done. This NCAA Vault full video page with game highlights, cuts by “great plays” and “great finishes” and more…. Even though my team (St. John’s) isn’t in it, this is going to be the hottest thing this month. I can’t wait to watch the Seton Hall team from 2000. Even if that game is after the moment (near halftime, I think?) where Ty Shine said “f**k it” and played like a shooting combo guard against Temple, jacking shots like it was his backyard and ditching the idea of playing point like the hard-to-match Shaheen Holloway.
Also hot this month:
– the (loose, and without games) CBS Basketball schedule, including the air times for the March Tournament games. I expect it will be updated as they know more;
– and March Madness on Demand, which is incredibly good, and a reason I hope CBS doesn’t lose the NCAA Tournament with possible March Madness expansion.
Transplanted New Yorker and now Midwesterner Peter a/k/a Pico writes for Johnny Jungle, doing the Calm Before the Storm posts and also for the Church of Bracketology. Pico is also on Twitter, @ECoastBias. Add the East Coast Bias to your .rss feeds; or follow by email.
Big East Roundtable: Are your bloggers on Twitter?
Now that we’ve discussed the serious questions of collage basketball, I asked my fellow Big East bloggers about communication – do they use Twitter? Twitter has become the way that athletes get in trouble for being prima donnas and jerks, where they make the off-color jokes no one ever told them were not funny, and where reporters break news or add pithy commentary. 140 words is a tiny limit, but as a device to let readers know when something hot is going on… maybe it has some merit.
Orange 44 (Syracuse) – O44
Hoya Prospectus (Georgetown) – HP
I Bleed Blue and White (Villanova) – IBBW
Villanova by the Numbers – VBTN
Eye of a Panther (Pittsburgh) – EoP
Black and Green Irish Blog (Notre Dame) – B&G
Chicago College Basketball (DePaul) – CCB
The East Coast Bias (St. John’s) – TECB
There are 7 questions in total in the roundtable, and they will be up in the next day. It’s a big league, after all, and large group of participants. Enjoy, spread on the message boards and forums, and comment freely (but with civility). Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 were published earlier, go take a look!
Q. Twitter has become influential in broadcasting basketball/ sports information. What’s your opinion of the service? Have you adopted Twitter for your blog? What have been the plusses and minuses?
IBBW: I was the most anti-Twitter blogger you could find at it’s outset. But then after watching it on SportsCenter every morning, I realized it was here to stay. It’s a great way to get updates from people and news outlets you are interested in without having to click refresh every 10 minutes. I’m welcomed Twitter on IBBW and I’ve found that I’ve been able to reach a bigger group of people.
O44: I had been really down on twitter until around last May, when every blogger friend of mine basically demanded I jump on Twitter. I took the New York Bar Exam this summer, so once that was concluded I joined Twitter (@BH_Orange44). So far it has been great, especially during the Orange football debut this past weekend. I was tweeting from the Carrier Dome, and following several friends as we all shared in the collective experience of watching the game. A lot of fun. The plusses are that you have instant interaction and can pass along comments and news instantly. Even faster than a live blog. It is boiled down to good, simple information due to the character limit. The minuses are that it can limit you if you have something long and relatively important to say. Also, while trying to keep up with tweets you are not really paying close attention to the game, which can defeat the whole purpose of your afternoon.
HP: Twitter serves a purpose – spontaneous thoughts, breaking news, etc., but the wheat/chaff ratio can be frustrating. We haven’t adopted Twitter for our blog as we normally don’t break news and aren’t very spontaneous. Other Hoya blogs with boots on the ground use it, to better purpose than we ever could.
VBTN: I like it, though I use it only “situationally”. I followed the World University Games via twitter, having the final scores hours before they were published by the news services. I have not adopted it for Villanova by the Numbers. In the days before I actually began the blog I spent time considering what I wanted to accomplish with VBTN. I decided to focus on the numbers, the state of the team (and program…and the game), more on the “play” rather than the “players”. Twitter is more valuable to me as a “news source/news alert” for events that I know will not get a lot of media attention initially.
B&G: Twitter is decent for sports reporting, but I’ve had such an aversion to it due to its usage as a tool for reporting every aspect of one’s rather uninteresting life. I don’t have an account and likely never will.
CCB: I really like Twitter (@Chicolball). I think that it allows you to share short opinions and links that you would normally write about. While most college basketball coaches use it as a way to broadcast boring messages, some of the good coaching Tweeters actually give relevant information.
EoP: I’m not personally a Twitter fan, but I’m surprised at how much actual news is broken there. It makes sense for athletes and celebrities because they can spread news without having to run a website or go through the media. Other than that, I’m not sure I ‘get it.’ I don’t use Twitter – I’m not sure I’m important enough to have people ‘follow me.’ And while I like the idea of athletes telling me what’s going on during a game, not sure why their coaches would allow it. I’m also amazed that athletes will ‘spill the beans’ on Twitter while giving nondescript answers during interviews.
TECB: I am on Twitter and have found it very useful; it brings eyes from the East Coast Bias twitter page to the blog and allows me to write “micro” posts when a full blog posts seems indulgent and unseemly. The minus is that Twitter becomes another online location to check, and in truth, I still think it’s kind of silly. It really tends towards some of the dumber aspects of people’s communication, trolls, nasty one-sided invective… it ain’t deep. But then, some things are best when succinct.
Links: College Football’s Opening Day
Levi Johnston dishes on life with Sarah Palin and speaks ill of her marriage to Todd in a Vanity fair article – wow, kid, milk that gossip… The US Senate, with less nepotism… Brazil’s racial problems are deep… will the lobbyists for the health care status quo – like the “Million Med March” (aka “protect the doctors’ salaries above all else”) – even listen to a possible bipartisan health care plan that triggers a public option if the insurance companies can’t meet quality/ cost benchmarks? And why is that called a “compromise” as opposed to “bipartisan” in the article? Should tort reform be in the health care bill?… On lighter notes: The end of “Reading Rainbow“… the Fast Food as the Mafia (graphic, funny, non-political)… and 12 most annoying types of Facebookers.
In honor of the beginning of college football, two fun images. First, a billboard bought by former Notre Dame player Tom Reynolds:
And if you haven’t seen this year’s Oregon Ducks uniforms, check them out when they play Boise State tonight… or look at the winged shoulders here:
In what will be a hotly-followed story, Rich Rodriguez is named in a lawsuit about a Virginia condo development… he’s been connected to a banned booster… he’s accused of violating NCAA rules on how much time coaches required players to spend working out… so of course there’s a Fire Rich Rodriguez site.
The Quad blog from the New York Times has Florida as… #2! So Texas is their #1…
Nebraska gets an extra basketball scholarship (14 total), based on an NCAA mix-up on eligibility standards.
Jim Larranaga’s leaving Twitter after poking fun at a silly NCAA rule about being able to give student-athletes bagels but no condiments/ spreads.
Mets third base coach Razor Shines, perhaps, doesn’t scout the throwing arms of the opposing outfielders.
Scout.com has their Top 75 basketball players in the nation (and Canada) for 2011.
Supposedly Nets’ owner Bruce Ratner is looking to make bank by selling the Nets at a premium price and THEN wants to get the new owners to pay him a hefty fee for the right to play in the Brooklyn Barclay’s Arena… whenever it happens. He’d then get the profits of the stadium without the financial drain of owning the team.
And now, the first of many St. John’s coach Norm Roberts job “may be” on the line if he doesn’t win this year. Of course, someone has to speak to why this year is so different than any other year, and what “get it done” actually means. NCAAs? NIT?
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Corey Chandler taking visits to nearby colleges
Following up on the earlier post, Corey Chandler is looking at Binghamton and St. Bonaventure to transfer to now that he has been dismissed from Rutgers. Personally, I’d like to see the Bonnies land an impact player… even though there is some evidence that he has some work to do in his shooting. And those two teams have game planned against him before, successfully:
- He went 1-6 against St. Bonaventure last year (3 points, 2 assists, 3 turnovers) in 19 minutes;
- 2-7 against Binghamton (9 points – 6 free throw attempts, 2 assists, 6 turnovers, 6 rebounds);
And during the non conference schedule, Chandler dropped these clunkers:
- 0-7 against Rider (0 points, 6 assists, 2 steals, 4 turnovers);
- 3-10 against Delaware State (12 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals, 4 turnovers)
Chandler had some decent games as well:
- 7-13 against Lehigh (15 points, 1 turnover)
- 5-11 against North Carolina (14 points, 2 assists, 2 turnovers)
- 7-16 against Pittsburgh (where they looked like they might pull off the big upset until Pitt went to zone defense, slowing Chandler and Mike Rosario in the second half, Corey had 17 points, 8 rebounds, 2 turnovers)
Watching a highly regarded player move from one college to a lower level is always interesting; athletic ability should allow that player to be a superior competitor, but the mental aspect of the game has to come as well. Talent is little without shot selection and knowledge of teammates. Some players transfer and fade into obscurity… others really thrive.
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Anthony DiLoreto to Utah State
Being tall really does get you a chance, as stated earlier: Anthony DiLoreto, famous nationwide for participating in a botched bank robbery (and stealing a tank of gas for said robbery), has a scholarship from the Utah State University Aggies and Coach Stew Morrill.
If he’s good, we’re going to get those gauzy-toned ESPN specials with gentle piano/ organ music, a downplay of what the player did, and how he’s on the right track. I suppose everyone should get a second chance… but I do feel like there are some very hypocritical moralists out there who will say DiLoreto “paid his debt” or “deserves a second chance” or “will be better because he’s living with Mormons” just because he plays for Utah State. Armed robbery is much worse than:
- affairs
- cheating on one’s SAT’s
- and possibly, worse than stealing laptops, like AJ Price and Marcus Williams of U Conn.
Just so you know where I stand.
Official press release from Utah State; coverage from Deseret News.
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St. John’s credentials microblogger for college basketball next season
I’ve been reading Peter Robert Casey‘s stuff for a while on his blog and on his twitter. Now he’s caused a buzz by becoming the first person to get a press pass to St. John’s games to twitter his reports.
Often, I would look at this with skepticism, but for basketball, I’ve found that twitter is bringing more eyes to this blog and allowing me to follow others. And Peter’s stuff is very good. Congratulations to him and to Mark Fratto, Associate Athletic Director for Communications at St. John’s (who seems to be pretty responsive, as well). St. John’s twitter account is http://twitter.com/STJ_Basketball; and big props to getting the St. John’s name out. That’s how it should be; N-Y-C should be in the forefront of cutting edge communications.
More coverage from Mashable, and ESPN, and ESPN’s Andy Katz again.
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