I feel bad for Uconn, Hartford is still a pretty large TV market (30th) but you have to wonder how much them losing 2 million to go to the Fiesta Bowl and basketball probation and unknowns hurt them. Louisville is a garbage school academic wise but they are good addition athletic and location wise.
SJU steamrolled South Carolina last night by 25. SC sucks, but it was still nice to beat a team from a major conference.
SJU needs experience, So even though SC sucks it does not really matter. They need this type of win to build confidence.
Gotta love the stability of UCLA. Two players quit the team last week. First Tyler Lamb quit, then Joshua Smith. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/28/sports/la-sp-1129-ucla-northridge-20121129
Ben Howland is a joke and benefited from some very generous officiating during his three year final four run. and once again, despite great recruits, he is showing how poor of a coach he is. losses to Cal Poly and San Diego State; just pathetic.
Hard for any Villanova fan to celebrate a victory at Vanderbilt after losing back-to-back games to Columbia and Lasalle
Could not stand him while he was at Utah but he recruited players maybe better then any non BCS Conference Coach ever... Andre Miller, Keith Van Horne, Andrew Bogut, among others but he put quite a few guys in the NBA. His Ball State team nearly beat UNLV in the Championship year and if not for some bad luck in the final minutes would have. The man had a great mind for the game and his passing is sad. Lamb already visited UNLV... he was at the Hawaii game on Saturday. We play our 1st road game of the season playing the Portland Pilots tomorrow night. People might wonder why we would play those guys on the road but it's a homecoming for Mike Moser. Good to see the MWC continue to own the PAC 12 in hoops as SDSU rocked UCLA in Anaheim and Wyoming beat top 25 Colorado the other night. Even weak link Boise beat top 15 Creigton on the road last week. We should have 3 teams ranked and a few others getting votes. Very exciting for MWC hoops. sadly we lost to Oregon at home (our 1st home loss in over a year) last weekend but it was good learning experience for our guys.
UCLA's Shabeez Muhammad declared ineligible, then rumors of an NCAA lawyer prematurely spilling the beans and screwing up their case leading to attorneys for Muhammad hinting at taking action being against the NCAA o/b/o their client, then suddenly, suddenly, Muhammad is declared eligible by the NCAA-pronto (one $1,600 payback later). Okey... Meanwhile, the NCAA continues to drag its feet and keep St. John's Orlando Sanchez sitting in limbo. Total bullshit and time for a writer to pick up the ball and press the NCAA about this delay.
I wrote a message to ESPN about it yesterday. They're clearly aware of it because they talk about it every SJU broadcast. Doubt there will be any piece written about it though.
It's typical for the NCAA, they've always played soft when dealing with UCLA even though it was quite apparent they were cheating for a long time before most of us were born. Instead they went after a guy like Tark who didn't play their game. A guy who gave kids a 2nd chance after screwing up. Did he have his faults? Of course Lloyd Daniels is a perfect example of that. The real mockery of the shicanery of the NCAA is the 2 kids from Indiana. Because their AAU Coach gave the school a grand total of 180 dollars almost 30 years ago they were suspended 9 games. Adidas and UCLA were able to buy Mohammed and his sister being a shitty pro tennis player who was about to be dropped by Adidas may have influenced his decision just a bit... I wonder if Baz's brother will follow the family tradition of chasing Adidas dollars or will he actually have a choice in where he is going?
The NCAA has long had it's favorites. We talked about Duke last year, where a player was given $100,000 in jewery from a store and did not pay it back. The story went away as soon as the store got paid. They didn't even say if the former player paid the bill or if someone else had. The NCAA should have determined why the kid was given that type of credit in the first place but they didn't bother. It all happend 2 years ago when they won the national championship. There seem to be just a few teams on that list. I had always thought Ohio State was one of them but they crushed them over a tatoo. UNLV is not on that favorite list neither is SU (as we will soon see with a player pot smoking investigation from 6 or 7 years ago that is ongoing).
Ohio State's punishment was a self imposed bowl ban. Same with Miami, we'll see what happens with their Miami investigation but in all honestly they let Penn State off easy. I'm sorry but the school is still making tons of money off the football program and they still had 100K people at all their games supporting a school that covered up 40+ cases of sexual abuse on children. The Duke thing is garbage, it's the second time they've swept it under the rug. Junc will probably remember but Corey Maggette claimed he recieved improper beni's from an AAU coach and the NCAA swept it under the rug. That was on their 2001 Championship team. I've always said the reason the NCAA allows Duke to get away with things and calls their games differently is because they beat UNLV and Tark at a time when not even the NCAA could beat them. Basically by essentially ending Tark's reign and UNLV's they became golden children and are now above certain rules... is my opinion biased? Absolutely but I feel it has some merit.
Watching the Georgetown-Texas game on ESPN and one of the commentators (Jay Bilis) is taking the NCAA to task because of yet another NCAA delay, this time in rendering a decision about UT's point guard Mike Kabongo. Bilis went on to say Kabongo was innocent of any wrong-doing and that the delay by the NCAA in reinstating him was "wrong and embarrassing."
the NCAA is clearly in the wrong here. They've just left Kabongo and Texas hanging for weeks. I'm also watching and the loss of Kabongo continues to hurt Texas. They're turning it over at a record pace.
