Editor’s Note: Whether coaching or forecasting, Bobby Gonzalez knows college basketball. He went 8-0 picking games in the Sweet Sixteen a year ago, 7-1 in that round this year and 3-1 in last weekend’s regional finals. This is not some Bozo. It’s Gonzo. He knows what he’s talking about. It was 1991 and I was standing in the crowd at the Final Four as a New York City high school coach, watching All-American Larry Johnson of the dominant, unbeaten UNLV team
Bob Huggins is 8-2 lifetime against coach John Calipari, with most of the games taking place when those two coaches were leading Cincinnati and Memphis. That was years ago. Now they are with West Virginia and Kentucky, and folks are wondering whether Huggins’ personal .800 winning percentage will have an impact on the game. I provided my answer to that question, along with telling my best Bob Huggins story (from back when I was an assistant under Pete Gillen at Xavier), in
Once upon a time, coach Bobby Gonzalez took an underdog Manhattan team to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, where hey were national darlings and a Cinderella story. This year, the lowest seed to advance out of the first two rounds of the tourney is UCLA, and we would be hard pressed to describe them as a Cinderella in any way, shape or form … not with that school’s history. This year’s Sweet Sixteen is loaded with quality teams, from the
What are we going to say about Andrew Wiggins four or five years from now? That was the question I was asked tonight on AM1280TheZone in Salt Lake City, and I prefaced my answer with a few words of caution — keep as close of an eye on Jabari Parker of Duke as you do on young Mr. Wiggins from Kansas via Ontario. Parker may be the better prospect, even if my NBA draft writer has him slotted at No. 2 in our
CHICAGO — Three headlining freshmen. Three spectacular performances. Julius Randle? All he did was take his youthful Kentucky Wildcats and rally them with a dominant second half performance of 23 points and eight rebounds against Michigan State, one of the more consistently well coached and talented teams in college basketball. [Read more…]
The first weekend of the NCAA Tournament is pure mayhem; games begin and end simultaneously, buzzers sound from TV’s, iPads, iPhones, and computers, celebrations are loud … and defeat is inevitable for more than three-quarters of the field… Which brings us to these next four days of college basketball: Games are fewer than the week before, but the stakes continue to rise as the Sweet Sixteen turns into the Elite Eight, and, eventually the Final Four. [Read more…]
Hot lingo among the internet world when discussing a player similar to one from years past is to refer to said player as “so-and-so 2.0.” It is a tech term for an upgrade. Well, Draymond Green of Michigan State seems to be Anthony Mason 2.0. Green is not left-handed, and it took a long time before Mason became a trusted jump shooter. But Green is an excellent combination of size and skill. He possesses the rare combination of post-up ability at the