When I see this season’s Florida Gulf Coast basketball team, I see the Jacksonville basketball team of 1969-70. They even play in the same conference, something called the Atlantic Sun. Twenty bucks and the home edition of “Jeopardy!” if you can name all 10 members.
BALTIMORE — In need of some good news, the UNLV basketball program received a boost Wednesday when top prospect Dwayne Morgan orally committed to play for the Rebels.
As I scanned the college basketball Twitterverse on Saturday night after No. 1-seeded Gonzaga’s early NCAA Tournament exit at the hands of hot-shooting No. 9 Wichita State, I was perplexed.
The guys from Dunk City had quite a celebration after putting on the show of the NCAA Tournament and sending fans around the nation to their iPads in search of Florida Gulf Coast University.
Finished products in the NBA Draft are like college basketball coaches who marry a Maxim swimsuit model, hold a percentage in a company that is sold for $100 million and lead a No. 15 seed into the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
Pierre Jackson, formerly of Desert Pines High School, now of the Baylor Bears, won the Big 12 basketball scoring title this season with an average of 19.8 points per game.
In what likely was junior guard Jamaal Franklin’s final game at San Diego State, he became a forgotten footnote to the biggest story of the NCAA Tournament. Nothing beats a good underdog story, and this is a great one.
Allergy season is arriving, the Earth will continue rotating toward the east, and in another breaking news story, UNLV freshman Anthony Bennett is close to announcing he will enter the NBA Draft.
Matt Youmans, Review-Journal, 47-44-4 (overall record)
PHILADELPHIA — Build a state university in the south Florida swamplands. Move the athletic program to the highest level in college sports and hire a self-made millionaire coach. When his team makes the NCAA Tournament, say in Year 2 of its eligibility, beat a tradition-rich opponent like a Georgetown.
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Watching film of Louisville demolishing Colorado State will be scary enough for anyone who has to face the Cardinals in the next two weeks.
When I heard UCLA’s Shabazz Muhammad is a year older than his old man has been telling people, it didn’t come as a surprise: The first time I saw him play for Bishop Gorman, he looked like Grady from “Sanford and Son.”
It is March 24, and from mid-November until now, Mountain West basketball teams have played nearly 300 games. They have been ranked, defeated quality opponents, earned good enough results to have entered the NCAA Tournament with the nation’s No. 1 Ratings Percentage Index of all conferences.
Inside the March Madness Man Cave known as Lagasse’s Stadium sports bar on the Strip sits Jen Wilfong, a 48-year-old Indiana Hoosier hoops woman who honed her laser-perfect outside shot on five basketball rims mounted by her daddy on the family farm in Indiana.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Most of the blame is dumped on the coach when a game or a season ends in depression. Dave Rice deserves some criticism at the conclusion of his second season.
