0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/23/2016
In a strange college basketball season, the Pac-12 isn’t necessarily stranger than any other conference. However, it’s a lot less defined than many. North Carolina, Virginia, Miami, and Duke are good teams in the ACC. The first three will get particularly high NCAA tournament seeds. The Big 12’s team-specific matchups produce plenty of plot twists […]
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March being what it is — namely, the most wildly unpredictable month in American sports — we could soon see a postseason which undoes the themes created by the college basketbal regular season. Don’t count on it. The Miami Hurricanes’ 64-61 win over the Virginia Cavaliers on Monday night in South Florida was a portrait […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/22/2016
College sports represent an analytical battleground for many reasons, chief among them the smaller sample sizes created by comparatively shorter regular seasons. It’s true that college basketball features a 30-game regular season, two and a half times the length of a football campaign. Yet, an 18-game conference season combined with 12 non-conference clashes — all […]
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The arrival of March — just a week away — means that coaching decisions will be met with a lot more scrutiny. Let’s get into the habit, then, shall we? Two coaches made the same basic mistake this past weekend, and while their teams were already likely to lose, their decisions turned defeat from a […]
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Late February, in the world of college basketball, means that small-conference tournaments are just around the corner. It means that bubble teams are arriving at crunch time. It means that the useless bracket projections made by an Italian American in Bristol over the course of a whole season will finally merit genuine interest. Late February […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/21/2016
“The magnitude of things clearly manifests the wisdom and goodness of the triune God, who by power, presence and essence exists uncircumscribed in all things.” — Saint Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, 1259 * “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.” — Rudyard Kipling, If, 1910 […]
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Any commentator who dives into the pool of news analysis — and makes assessments based on what s/he sees — has to do one thing more than anything else: acknowledge when the flow of events changes. What might have been one week’s accurate-enough analysis can be overturned the following week. Any forceful or firm proclamations […]
PIONEERS, O PIONEERS! Joe Scott has tried to lead Denver to its first NCAA tournament, but after almost a decade on the job, that goal remains elusive. The Pioneering pursuit continues for a man dedicated to the process of coaching.
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/19/2016
In a sport with 351 head coaches, a lot of stories are waiting to be told. Typically, the stories which capture the headlines are the stories of the men who lead their teams into the Madness of March. However, basketball is bigger and broader than just the sweet sound of success. It’s also about the […]
Mark Turgeon
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College basketball differs from college football in so many ways. One of them: time. Basketball coaches might not have an abundance of time on an overall level — look at North Carolina State, Memphis, and other teams which were essentially finished as at-large candidates before February even began. That said, basketball bosses have so much […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/18/2016
The continuing chaos of the 2016 college basketball season emerged in a number of striking ways on a wild Wednesday night which felt a little bit like March. Fact No. 1: Penn State has now beaten both Indiana and Iowa at home this month. Fact No. 2: Penn State has work to do to merely […]
Texas Tech’s Devon Thomas is hoisted in the crowd after Texas Tech defeated Oklahoma 65-63 in an NCAA basketball game Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP Photo/Brad Tollefson) ORG XMIT: TXBT108
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Wednesday night’s game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Oklahoma Sooners wasn’t a classic in the sense of being the best basketball you’ve ever seen. This was not a remarkable showcase of hoops at the highest level, with Buddy Hield struggling (he’s human, ya know) and Texas Tech making only 10 of 17 […]
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One of my favorite tweeps, a college hoops and politics junkie
If not us, who? If not now, when? Those questions echo through the world of men’s college basketball, as it waits for the first female head coach. Nancy Lieberman could soon emerge from the mess in Sacramento, giving athletic directors a chance to make history… and improve their program.
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/17/2016
We’re not too far away from the end of the college basketball regular season. Don’t look now, but March arrives in two weeks. Small-conference tournaments will begin, and power-conference regular seasons will give way to the festival of brackets which fills our lives during the transition to longer evenings and the coming spring. The following […]
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When only 128 people hold a specific job position on the planet, one can reasonably say that such a job is rather exclusive. Such is the case for head coaches of Football Bowl Subdivision programs. If 351 people hold a specific job, it’s not as though the position is terrifically expansive or widely available. Yet, […]
PATRICK DODSON/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER UAlbany’s Peter Hooley (12) shoots a buzzer beater three pointer to beat Stony Brook in the America East championship game at University at Albany’s SEFCU Arena on Saturday, March 14, 2015.
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/16/2016
Is it an embellishment to say that a huge game exists on the Wednesday-night schedule in college hoops… and that oh, by the way, there’s also Duke and North Carolina on your television? Sure. Is it wrong to say that the America East clash between the Stony Brook Seawolves and the Albany Great Danes is […]
