0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/7/2016
Anyone ready for Championship Week? The big bracket is the one announced next Sunday on CBS, a little after 5:30 Eastern time. Before we arrive at that moment, however, we have a week filled with other bracketed tournaments, the conference collisions which will set the selections and seedings for the field of 68. The brackets for […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Madness of March is delightful… but not 100 percent of the time. This is a great month, but precisely because it’s the one month when every American sports fan really cares about college basketball, March is a good time to study the landscape. This is when it’s important to reveal (or magnify) the excesses […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/6/2016
Roy Williams’s resplendent Hall of Fame career runs through some of the central veins of college basketball history. The sometimes-painful irony of that fact is that it’s all too close to the path carved out by his most famous predecessor and mentor, the late Dean Smith. Williams and North Carolina won another regular season ACC […]
CHAMPAIGN, IL – OCTOBER 24: Head coach Bill Cubit of the Illinois Fighting Illini is seen during the game against the Wisconsin Badgers at Memorial Stadium on October 24, 2015 in Champaign, Illinois. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
0 comments by Terry P. Johnson
Wait and see. That’s my advice to everyone watching the Illinois coaching situation. Let’s be honest: that won’t be an easy thing to do. When I first learned that new athletic director Josh Whitman fired Bill Cubit, a number of different things crossed my mind. Was it right for Whitman to dismiss Cubit without even […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
See the asterisk in the title of this piece? Words are attached to asterisks. In this case, the words are “not really.” No, the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks did NOT clinch an automatic bid to the 2016 NCAA Tournament on Saturday night in Huntsville, Texas. A decisive win over the Sam Houston State Bearkats lifted […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/5/2016
Billy Kennedy and the Texas A&M basketball program both share one fundamental trait on the final weekend of the 2016 regular season: They’re both healthier than they’ve been in years. Just a matter of weeks before he coached his first live game at Texas A&M in 2011, Billy Kennedy was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Kennedy was the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/4/2016
The American Athletic Conference — so ascendant in football this college sports cycle — has not been as fortunate in basketball. The American way has not been the easy way. SMU would be a 4 or 5 seed in the NCAA tournament, but the Mustangs were barred from the event, so Sunday’s game at Cincinnati […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The West Coast Conference Tournament could be the scene of a memorable event in the coming days, but history tells us to expect one result more than anything else. The WCC Tournament unfurls its quarterfinals on Saturday, before taking a BYU-based break on Sunday and swinging into its semifinals on Monday. Everyone’s waiting to see […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The first weekend of March is the last weekend before Selection Sunday. It’s that time of year, so when you begin your Saturday and Sunday, you want to watch the games with maximum bubble implications. We’re here to help. Let’s get right to it. * SATURDAY, MARCH 5 – ALL TIMES EASTERN VANDERBILT at TEXAS […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/3/2016
No one wants to be underappreciated. We want our efforts and our skills to receive due recognition. In some cases, we might be appreciated by others, which certainly soothes the soul. Yet, een if it’s obvious that our achievements and acumen are admired, the outside world might never fully know just how much we overcame […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Oregon Ducks have played the second half of this college basketball season without Dylan Ennis, the transfer from Villanova who was supposed to be a vital cog in the Eugene Machine. The Miami Hurricanes ventured to South Bend, Indiana, on Wednesday night to play the Notre Dame Fighting Irish without third-leading scorer Ja’Quan Newton. Oregon […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
A fever has swept through the Southeastern Conference. As a result, what once figured to be a fascinating conference tournament has quickly been drained of its drama. SEC basketball is defined by
CHAMPAIGN, IL – DECEMBER 30: Caris LeVert #23 of the Michigan Wolverines brings the ball up court during the game against the Illinois Fighting Illini at State Farm Center on December 30, 2015 in Champaign, Illinois. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
0 comments by Bart D
Caris LeVert will walk into the Crisler Center on Saturday for the final time as a Michigan basketball player. He won’t play a single minute, but he’ll be praised loudly by an adoring home crowd, one that’s watched him grow immeasurably from niche, wiry defensive freshman to potential All-American in four years. About this time […]
Head coach Tad Boyle of Colorado leads his team against Illinois in the first half of their NCAA Tournament second round game on Friday, March 22, 2013, in Austin, Texas. (George Bridges/MCT)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/2/2016
It’s a reality which merits constant examination: College basketball is a house with many rooms. It’s a sport in which coaches can find many different niches, many different jobs where they can establish themselves and enjoy a certain kind of lifestyle. Naturally, the differences among college basketball programs are most easily found when dividing schools […]
Stony Brook plays UMBC in an NCAA Division I men’s basketball game at Island Federal Credit Union Arena on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016.
0 comments by Matt Zemek
In a few weeks, the college basketball community will be focused on Roy Williams, Tom Izzo, Bill Self, John Calipari, and the other leaders of big-name programs. This week — this fortnight, really — belongs more to the coaches we don’t pay that much attention to during the season. They’re the coaches who — if […]
