crazybuckfan40
Head Coach
There is an idea, lets raise ticket prices, even know they are the highest in the league right now.
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
This will probably not increase the attendance for BB games.
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crazybuckfan40
Head Coach
See it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Even know you are close I hear.
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
See it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Even know you are close I hear.
I forgot my sarcasm font...
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Any assistant coach who leaves Buckeye basketball now needs career management counseling. Badly.
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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/seth_davis/02/02/hoop.thoughts/index.html
Kings of the clipboard
Handicapping the national coach of the year race
Posted: Thursday February 2, 2006 1:35PM; Updated: Thursday February 2, 2006 5:45PM
Ohio State coach Thad Matta has led the Buckeyes to a 15-3 mark this season.
Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images
Because this is the time of year when every college hoops "expert" is unveiling one list or another, I figured I would provide my take on the national coach of the year race. Suffice it to say, much could and will happen between now and the end of the season to rejigger this ranking. So consider this, like all other midseason lists, a snapshot of a rapidly moving picture. Herewith, then, my top 10 candidates, presented from the bottom up:
10. Karl Hobbs, George Washington. Now in his fifth year in Foggy Bottom, Hobbs has the Colonials ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll for the first time in 50 years. He really knows how to use his up-tempo system. If he hadn't played such a wimpy non-conference schedule, he'd be higher on my list.
9. Thad Matta, Ohio State. I realize everyone in Columbus is more excited about next year's recruiting class, but let's be sure we take time to appreciate the job Matta is doing with this group. The Buckeyes are limited in talent but long on experience, and they play with the smarts and toughness that is reflective of the man on the bench.
8. Ben Howland, UCLA. No highly ranked team has been more decimated by injuries than the Bruins, yet Howland has done more than just keep this team together. He has it in first place in the Pac-10 and has a legit chance to make the Sweet 16. If you saw the Bruins erase that huge deficit against West Virginia a couple weeks ago before falling short, you know that few coaches teach mental toughness better than Howland does.
7. Greg McDermott, Northern Iowa. UNI's primary competitors in the Missouri Valley Conference have dealt with more attrition and injuries, but I chose McDermott as a nod to how he has brought this program along over the last three years. The Panthers will be a tough out in the tourney because they know how to slow down a game and limit their turnovers, which will prevent big-name schools from pressing their athletic advantage.
6. John Beilein, West Virginia. It takes a couple of years to master Beilein's Princetonesque offense, which is why the senior-dominated Mountaineers are so difficult to defend. But with so much attention given to the way this team scores, it's easy to overlook its defense, which is predicated on Beilein's decisions to switch formations according to feel.
5. Jay Wright, Villanova. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and Wright has done a masterful job shaping his four-guard offense in the wake of Curtis Sumpter's knee injury. The Wildcats' uniqueness and their ability to hide their flaws make them the most enjoyable team to watch in the country.
4. Billy Donovan, Florida. Donovan would have been higher were it not for the Gators' recent stumbles, but there's no question he has done a marvelous job fomenting chemistry on a team that lost its top three scorers from last season. Now we'll see if Donovan can instill a blue-collar toughness that's missing from this squad.
3. Bruce Weber, Illinois. Even those wacky Illini fans couldn't have imagined their team would be tied for first place in the Big Ten when the calendar turned to February. Everyone talks about how Illinois lost Deron Williams and Luther Head off last year's NCAA runner-up, but the Illini also lost their heart-and-soul glue guy Roger Powell up front. Dee Brown has made a good adjustment to running the point fulltime, but Illinois' effort and execution on defense is the main reason it is sitting where it is. That's a tribute primarily to Weber.
2. Bruce Pearl, Tennessee. It's hard to recall an instance where a coach came into a moribund program and did a better job applying the defibrillator. The pressing, running style Pearl coaches used to define the SEC, but now it stands out as creative and anomalous. Even more impressive is the way Pearl has sparked the fans to fill up UT's massive arena, even before the Vols rose to 13th in the rankings.
1. John Calipari, Memphis. Everyone talks about how talented this team is, but there's a difference between being athletic and having talent. The reality is, most of Memphis' players have limited basketball skills, but Calipari is masking those flaws by getting them to play tenaciously on defense and unselfishly on offense. Most of all, Memphis has five freshmen and three sophomores in its nine-man rotation, yet it is ranked No. 3 and likely headed for a No. 1 seed. I also admire the brutal (yet inspired) non-conference schedule Calipari put together in anticipation of the weak competition his team would get from Conference USA.
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Dispatch
2/7/06
2/7/06
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Iowa leads tight pack in Big Ten title race
Schedules could be critical factor in end
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
</IMG>
If his team should need a reality check, Iowa coach Steve Alford need go no farther than the archives in his desk. He can dust off the results of the 2000-01 season to show his players what happened to the last Iowa team that started a Big Ten season as well as this one has.
That team, built around senior point guard Dean Oliver and junior transfers Reggie Evans and Luke Recker, was 6-2 halfway through the conference schedule. Recker injured a knee and the Hawkeyes went 1-7 in the second half.
"Teams have got to stay healthy. Teams have to continue to improve. We’re no different," Alford said.
For now, at least, the Hawkeyes are healthy. That and three other factors — a veteran lineup, a one-game advantage in the loss column and an agreeable schedule down the stretch — give them an apparent edge in what could be the tightest Big Ten championship race since 2002, when four teams tied for the title with five losses apiece and two others finished within two games of them.
Iowa is 7-2, but five other teams — including Ohio State — are only one game worse in the loss column and Wisconsin is two.
"What it’s going to come down to is who gets on a roll and can steal a couple of road wins and protect their home court," Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. "Right now . . . it’s up for grabs. It’s one of those situations where the strong are going to survive."
Iowa’s schedule is the most favorable based on the .467 winning percentage of its remaining opponents.
It plays four of its next five games on the road, but the opponents include Northwestern and Minnesota, which are a combined 2-6 at home in the Big Ten. However, the Hawkeyes have lost at Northwestern four of the past five years and needed three overtimes to beat the Gophers in Iowa City in January.
Alford said winning on the road will come down to preventing big runs by the home team and playing well enough to be in position to win with four minutes to go. Then, he said, "It’s about making plays.
"I think our team has benefited from having a lot of juniors and seniors that have been in the league and understand that that’s winning time.
Fortunately, so far, the guys have been able to make plays, and for us to win, they’re going to have to continue to do that."
Winning on the road against the Big Ten’s four also-rans — Penn State, Northwestern, Purdue and Minnesota — could be the difference in the race because the seven contenders are 28-3 at home. Of the seven, though, only Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin have as many as two road games remaining against the bottom four, and Indiana and Wisconsin are a combined 1-6 on the road in the conference.
Ohio State has the toughest road, playing Michigan, Wisconsin and Michigan State away from home in the next three weeks. The three are 11-1 at home in the Big Ten.
"I appreciate you reminding me," Matta said.
After a Feb. 14 game at Iowa, which it beat by 30 points in January, preseason favorite Michigan State plays four of its last five games at home. That will balance a schedule that had the Spartans on the road for four of its first six games.
Like those first six were, though, the last six will be against the other six title contenders. No other team faces more demanding competition in the final three weeks.
"I don’t feel great about it," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "Even though you’ve got them at home at the end, it’s still getting up for six major games in a row, and I think that’s difficult for anybody. But it is what it is."
Izzo said he thinks a 12-4 record will win the championship.
"And we have three losses," he added, "so we don’t have a lot of room for error."
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Dispatch
2/9/06
2/9/06
Mother, sons a study in perseverance
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
</IMG> NEAL C . LAURON | DISPATCH Ohio State basketball player Ron Lewis gets special attention from his mother, Sheila Carter, left, and his brother, Lamont Carter.
When Ron Lewis transferred to Ohio State from Bowling Green in 2004, he and his mother had a vision of receiving their diplomas on the same day this June.
Reality intruded. Not all of Lewis’ credits transferred, resulting in a change of majors, which lengthened his track to graduation.
The two extra quarters he will need, however, are nothing compared to the academic marathon his mother has run at Ohio State.
"I’ve been going since 1987," Sheila Carter said.
Her persistence in the face of long odds has been an inspiration to her sons. Carter is a single, working mother who had her first child, Lamont Carter, at age 14; Ron, a Brookhaven High School graduate and a junior on the Ohio State men’s basketball team, came along 10 years later.
"Seeing what she had to go through for us to make it, for us to be successful and for herself to be successful, was a blessing for us, something for me and my brother to see that we can’t fail," Ron said.
"There’s no option to fail. If you get down, get back up and try again."
Sheila Carter was 26 when she moved to Columbus in 1986 with Ron, then 2, and 12-year-old Lamont. She had recently returned to her native Sandusky from Chicago, where she had moved after high school, and enjoyed Columbus while visiting with a friend.
"I thought it was a good place to raise my kids," she said.
She found a job as an office assistant in Ohio State’s College of Pharmacy and soon started on her road toward a degree in fashion design. She said she has averaged about one class per quarter as a part-time student.
"I’ve been sewing since the seventh grade," Sheila Carter said. "It was another way to help me raise my kids, to supplement my income, by doing tailoring work. I make clothes for high-school kids, for their proms, and do alterations and things like that."
Carter made two of the longcut suits that distinguished Ron on the OSU bench last season while he sat out his transfer year. She also made a pair of jeans and a jeans jacket he wore in high school. His name was embroidered on the back of each.
"Those were her experiments trying to get where she wants to go," Ron said, "and I was willing to wear them."
Carter’s pursuit of her degree was interrupted for five years when she left Ohio State for a job in the Ohio secretary of state’s office. She resumed classes in 1997 when she returned to the university as an administrative associate in the College of Human Ecology.
What has it been like all these years . . . "wondering whether you’re going to finish?" Carter said, laughing as she finished the question.
It has been difficult at times to see the light at the end of the tunnel, she acknowledged, "especially when you’re taking the harder courses. But with a supportive staff (at work) and your family encouraging you to go ahead and finish, you start seeing the end of the tunnel."
No one was more supportive than Lamont Carter, who put his own dreams on hold so Sheila and Ron could chase theirs.
Lamont graduated from Beechcroft High School in 1992 and enrolled at Ohio Valley Christian College (now Ohio Valley University) in Vienna, W. Va., where he planned to play basketball. But after one semester his mother needed his help.
"I remember it vividly. I had a 2.8 (grade-point average) and I had to give it all up and come home," Lamont said.
"Ron was in middle school and thought he could do what he wanted, so Mom called in the reinforcements. I told him if I had to come back home, it was going to be my way or no way. Mom gave me free will to keep him in order so he could get through school and go to college by any means.
"I worked customer service, worked in the malls and tried to guide Ron through life, tried to show him he could do things the right way without compromising himself. Thank God he listened."
Sheila said she would be remiss not to also acknowledge the divine intervention in her journey.
"We couldn’t have done this first and foremost without God," she said. "As an African-American female raising two boys as a single parent, odds are they don’t make it to where they are and you don’t have an older brother teaching a younger brother. It’s very rare, my older son stepping in and training Ronald to get where he is."
Lamont had been raised by his grandmother for seven years in Sandusky while his mother lived in Chicago.
"They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I’m living proof," he said. "I went to school from 8 to 3 and my grandmother worked from 3 to 11.
Luckily I had family members on the same street, but my grandmother instilled the fear of God in me early. No matter what, I’d be held accountable.
"When my mom came back to get me, I was 12 going on 18. I was the ultimate latchkey kid. I was very responsible. I’d had two younger cousins to look after. When we moved to Columbus, I ran with it, having the responsibility of being the big brother."
Ron said Lamont has been more than sibling.
"I don’t call him my dad, I call him my brother, but he took the role of my dad," Ron said. "He’s been there to discipline me, he’s been there to pick me up, he’s been there to be my brother. He’s been there for everything."
Lamont had planned to return to college and play basketball before he injured a knee in a recreation-center game in 1998 and needed reconstructive surgery. Since then, he not only has continued to help his brother get ahead but volunteered his time helping other inner-city youth pursue their basketball dreams.
"I love basketball more than anything besides God, my family and breathing," Lamont said. "You do what you do to pay the bills, but my heart’s always been in helping. I couldn’t imagine not holding on to it."
Lamont said he started taking college classes at Columbus State a couple of years ago but had to drop out again because of an illness in his wife’s family. Now, he’s home taking care of their newborn child while his wife works. But he’s already plotting his return to campus once his mother and brother graduate.
"This is how it’s been," Lamont said. "I was supposed to make sure they were OK. That’s what a father does. You’re always last.
"But hopefully in another year, when they’ve graduated, I’ll be enrolled in school again. I’m going to transfer to Ohio State. Then we’ll have three degrees from Ohio State."
Just like his mother, Lamont could graduate from college 20 years after he started.
"Statistically, we shouldn’t be here," he said. "It’s a testament to perseverance."
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Dispatch
2/9/06
2/9/06
Tights keep you warm, and they’re oh so cool
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Rob Oller
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
NEAL C . LAURON | DISPATCH J.J. Sullinger figures his tights — white at home, red on the road — keep him on the cutting edge on college courts.
Michael Redd of the Bucks has taken to wearing tights.
J.J. Sullinger is following the lead of NBA supermen by going to the tights.
The Ohio State senior forward insists, however, that his choice of "underwear" has nothing to do with keeping up with Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.
Those two stars are attempting to forge a new fashion statement by wearing spandex-style, ankle-length tights under their uniforms. James, laboring with a knee, says the full-length tights keep his knee from stiffening when he sits on the bench.
Sullinger’s reasons for first going the Robin Hood route against Florida A &M last week alternate between warmth — "I get real cold out there," he said — and well, he hinted that becoming a trendsetter might have had something to do with it.
"Is (warmth) the reason I’m wearing it? Probably not," he admitted. "Honestly, I was walking through the mall and saw it. I thought I might as well be the first one in college to do it."
It’s impossible to say whether he actually deserves the title of "first men’s college player in pantyhose," but he probably should be in the running.
Speaking of running, track athletes and Winter Olympians began wearing the $30-to-$50 stretch tights more than 25 years ago, and NFL players have worn them for a decade. But not until James and Bryant donned them did the NBA join the act. Michael Redd and Allen Iverson also wear a version of the underpants.
"If my name can be in there with those guys, I’m doing all right," said Sullinger, who wears white tights at home and red ones on the road. "These things keep me warm, so I’m cool."
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Latest stats.......
Foster 14.8 points and 4.7 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game
Dials 13.9 points and 7.1 rebounds per game
Lewis 12.5 points and 3.3 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game
Sullinger 10.3 points and 6.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game
Butler 9.1 poinst and 3.3 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game
Sylvester 8.0 points and 2.7 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game
Foster 14.8 points and 4.7 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game
Dials 13.9 points and 7.1 rebounds per game
Lewis 12.5 points and 3.3 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game
Sullinger 10.3 points and 6.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game
Butler 9.1 poinst and 3.3 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game
Sylvester 8.0 points and 2.7 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
With four guys averaging in double figures its hard to concentrate on one guy. I think we still have 4 guys shooting over 40% from downtown, that is impressive.
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