The NCAA College Basketball Tournament is underway. Millions of people had hopes of raking in the cash with Yahoo! and Quicken Loans offering a $1 Billion reward for a perfect bracket. However, most of their hopes have been dashed, thanks in large part to two unlikely upsets. Los Angeles Lakers guard Kent Bazemore is all about it, having played for a mid-major school that made a Cinderella run of its own, stringing along unlikely upsets with Old Dominion from the Colonial Athletic
With the seedings for the NCAA tournament announced today (and my beloved Maryland Terrapins not even making the NIT), college ball takes centre stage for a few weeks. I used to be primarily a college basketball fan. Sure, I loved watching the NBA, basketball is basketball, but I thought of Joakim Noah as a former Florida Gator, not as a Chicago Bull. I thought it was weird that he wasn’t Al Horford’s teammate any more, and wondered what happened to Taurean
One of the busiest weeks in a basketball fan’s year is underway. Bracket Week always keeps avid followers on their toes as they try to keep up with all the action leading up to Selection Sunday, which takes place tomorrow. Typically Saturday is a quiet day for basketball, but with the N.C.A.A. schedule heating up, today was anything but quiet. NBA players who had some time off were cheering on their former schools. @UCLAMBB let's go!!!!!! — Kevin Love (@kevinlove) March 15, 2014 RT
PHILADELPHIA—Did you hear the one about Allen Iverson extolling the virtues of “practice” on a recent trip to SMU? Probably not. And we are unsure if Iverson actually did extol those virtues, although he was brought in to give a pep talk to the team. Why? Because Iverson and Larry Brown still have a bond, and the in-person tutorial was Brown’s idea. And the pep talk helped fuel the team’s rise to a 20-6 record. To fully comprehend the strength of the relationship between
After having scored 180 points in his first two outings of the Division III college basketball season—including his second career game of over 100 points, Grinnell College guard Jack Taylor has people talking yet again. In 2012, it was his 138-point game that turned heads and created a media swirl. Sunday, in a game against Crossroads College, Grinnell scored 109 points. Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal took notice of Taylor’s recent outing, taking to Twitter Tuesday morning to ask fans if
Is Andrew Wiggins still the top pick in the 2014 NBA draft? Wiggins certainly was good Tuesday night, when the Windy City was rocking for the State Farm Champions Classic. But so were Jabari Parker and Julius Randle, who may have closed the gap on Wiggins. The event pitted Kentucky vs. Michigan State and Duke vs. Kansas – traditional powers from major conferences meeting on the hardwood in an early season measuring stick. But while many fans were entertained by the games and
The NCAA early signing period for basketball runs from Nov. 13-20, and even with Tuesday’s commitment by Trey Lyles to Kentucky, there’s still a slew of elite prospects and future NBA lottery picks left on the board. Here’s a look at the top 10 uncommitted and committed prospects in the Class of 2014, including perhaps the projected top three overall picks in the 2015 NBA draft. [Read more…]
Mid-October is not synonymous with the NBA draft. Basketball fans are usually starting to notice the NBA preseason and getting ready for the start of college ball. But unlike past years, there has been a greater focus on the 2014 NBA draft and the overwhelming star power it has. That is why “Tankapalooza” is already part of basketball lexicon. For a long time, this next draft has been called the Andrew Wiggins Lottery, and one year prior to the 2014 draft, the