Archives

Gonzaga forward Domantas Sabonis (11) shoots over Saint Mary’s center Jock Landale (34) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Moraga, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar) ORG XMIT: CATA108

Gonzaga’s loss to Saint Mary’s creates multiple possibilities

0 comments by on 1/22/2016

The Saint Mary’s Gaels offered the Gonzaga Bulldogs a chance to steal Thursday night’s West Coast Conference basketball game in Moraga, California. Gonzaga refused the offer. In a game marked by endgame free-throw misses, awful foul calls, and unwise decisions, Saint Mary’s edged the Zags, 70-67. Gonzaga missed big man Przemek Karnowski, a space-eater in […]

??????????????????

The amount of attention you should pay to top-25 rankings? Zero is a high percentage

0 comments by on 1/21/2016

When the NCAA tournament ends, Jim Nantz tells us about “a tradition unlike any other.” Before the NCAA tournament begins, we are being brought in touch with the possibility that this edition of March Madness could be unlike any other. After Wednesday night’s events, which featured Michigan State’s home-court loss to surging Nebraska (the Huskers […]

The Pac-12 most centrally represents college basketball’s current confusion

0 comments by

It’s not as though most conferences in this crazy, cluttered and clamorous college basketball season are portraits of stability and top-to-bottom clarity. Moreover, it’s not as though established powers are uniformly retaining their places in the top tiers of conferences. Duke is in trouble. Kentucky is clearly not the favorite in a very weak SEC […]

For Coach K and Coach Cal, these roads look very familiar

0 comments by on 1/18/2016

It was one year ago when Duke University’s men’s basketball team couldn’t play a lick of defense. It was two years ago that the University of Kentucky wobbled on many of its road trips in the conspicuously weak Southeastern Conference. In January of 2016, Mike Krzyzewski and John Calipari, both Hall of Famers, will once […]

The rules of football (NFL and college) are exposed once again

0 comments by

When I’m (hopefully) 98 years old and still able to draw breath, I hope I won’t have to write about all the awful, horrible, no-good, very bad rules in the football rulebook. Surely, they’ll be changed before too long. However, some of them are still on the books, and when a certain kind of play […]

Iowa eyes big prizes after pounding Michigan State (again)

0 comments by on 1/15/2016

Two years ago, Iowa basketball appeared to be the real deal in the middle of January. Two years later, the Hawkeyes get a second chance to write a happy ending to a season filled with promise. * Before addressing Iowa’s authoritative 76-59 win over Michigan State on Thursday night at the Breslin Center in East […]

College basketball remains endlessly interesting

0 comments by on 1/14/2016

If you’re already in full mourning for the just-departed college football season, here’s a brief note: College basketball is richly and profoundly fascinating in 2016… and you don’t have to wait until March to realize this. Wednesday night, a series of events across the country, in early games and late games, created a tapestry of […]

Alabama Arguments: the case for Saban

0 comments by

Where do Alabama and Nick Saban stand in the larger theater of college football, and in the pantheon of the sport’s history? These topics are the talk of the village this week… if your village cares about college football, at any rate. We have a long offseason ahead of us, especially if you’re not into […]

Fighting the law: Alabama’s defense on championship night

0 comments by on 1/11/2016

I apply my own law to big college football games: The offense-defense matchup which gains a much smaller portion of the pregame buzz is the matchup which will more centrally decide the contest. This law was set aside in the Orange Bowl playoff semifinal, when the confrontation between Oklahoma’s offense and Clemson’s defense — the […]

College basketball: 5 profound coaching dramas

0 comments by on 1/7/2016

The foremost drama of coaching — in terms of regularity, though not in terms of raw emotional impact — is the attempt to avoid being fired. The coaching drama which captures the heart and tugs at the emotions is the attempt of the beloved veteran to finally make a first Final Four, or a first […]

← Older posts
Newer posts →
Quantcast