0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/18/2015
Monday’s Kansas-West Virginia game is, like many other single games in a season with thousands of them, receding into memory. If Iowa State can surge in the next few weeks, the Mountaineers’ upset of the Jayhawks might affect the final Big 12 standings and become more memorable in the course of time. Yet, for fans […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/16/2015
It’s one of the many fascinating things we love about sports: Great events, perhaps forgotten due to the relentless march of time, regain their prominence in the eyes of younger generations due to twists in the 24-7 news cycle. This is how college basketball — like any other sport — continues to be the focus […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
We’re in the middle of the month of February, but we’re beginning what is essentially “Bubble Month” in college basketball. We’re just under four weeks from Selection Sunday. In these coming weeks, the bubble will expand and contract and, ultimately, get whittled down to a few teams by March 15 at 6 p.m. Eastern time, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/15/2015
We’re four weeks from Selection Sunday, March 15. Saturday’s results in college basketball set up a number of big bubble games this next week, although the next Saturday on the slate, Feb. 21, is noticeably devoid of big contests. Here are just some of the details worth taking from a plot twist-laden Saturday: * 5 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/13/2015
Over the past week, as you know, two of college basketball’s greatest coaches died. Dean Smith was 83, Jerry Tarkanian 84. Smith retired in his late 60s, and Tark made one last NCAA tournament appearance at age 70. Coaching 19-year-olds is generally not a senior citizen’s profession. Bill Snyder is the exception that proves the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Saturday, a lot of people are going to be drawn to LSU-Tennessee, a bubble game made prominent by the Tigers’ near-upset of No. 1 Kentucky. Others are going to focus on Ole Miss, a team trying to firm up its status as an NCAA tournament group, hosting Arkansas in the Tad Pad. Still others will […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/12/2015
When two iconic figures die within a week’s time, it’s hard for the larger community of human beings to find the space and clarity that are needed to fully recognize the contributions of both people, now gone. How much more difficult it is, then, when two iconic figures die within a week’s time… and they […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/11/2015
At one point, the flood of sports giants leaving us wasn’t tilted to one particular sport. Ernie Banks, Billy Casper, Dean Smith — they left large marks on three separate theaters of competition. Now, though, college basketball has lost two larger-than-life figures in less than a week’s time. Following Dean Smith’s passage late Saturday, UNLV […]
Roy Williams and Dean Smith at the 1991 Final Four in Indianapolis (with Jim Delany being way too happy about the moment in the background).
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/10/2015
In terms of the consistency, depth and height of coaching achievements, it’s very hard to put Dean Edwards Smith above John Wooden or Mike Krzyzewski on any all-time list in college basketball. Wooden’s championships and Coach K’s combination of national titles with Final Four appearances would almost certainly place them above Smith — maybe not […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
It’s a more common kind of task to identify a coach’s greatest games or a team’s most significant moments. However, what about the under-the-radar games which gave rise to a coach’s biggest achievements? For instance: North Carolina State could not have won the 1983 national title with that remarkable win over Houston had it not […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/9/2015
Significant games can be great, and great games can be significant, but they don’t always overlap — far from it. The 1982 NCAA Tournament national championship game (North Carolina 63, Georgetown 62) is quite possibly the greatest basketball game Dean Smith ever coached in, and it’s on the short list of the most significant games […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
On Friday, the story hit: The postseason NIT will experiment with a 30-second shot clock, down from the current 35-second clock. It’s also true that the restricted area underneath the basket (governing block-charge calls) will be expanded from three to four feet, but the shot clock is rightly seen as the much bigger story. How […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/8/2015
For many Americans, Dean Smith is best known as the man who coached Michael Jordan in college. Smith is, quite simply, the man who mentored one of America’s two greatest team-sport athletes from the 20th century, Babe Ruth being the other. (Muhammad Ali, of course, didn’t play a team sport.) Dean Smith also won 879 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Today — Sunday, February 8, 2015 — the men and women who covered North Carolina basketball as beat writers and reporters are remembering Dean Edwards Smith, who died Saturday night at the age of 83. The people who interviewed Dean Smith as part of their jobs, who traveled with him as North Carolina entrenched itself […]
0 comments by TSS LOCKER on 2/7/2015
Dunk of the season? Willie Cauley-Stein of Kentucky might have earned the honors with this frightening open-court finish against Florida, via Matt Clapp:
