John Clay’s Sidelines

Photo by Charles Bertram.

All kinds of reports and rumors this morning linking Tubby Smith with Auburn’s search for a basketball coach.

Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports claims Auburn is about to hire Smith: “Auburn is “close to hiring” Tubby Smith as its new basketball coach, a source that I trust told me Thursday night.”

Charles Goldberg of the Birmingham News writes on the Tubby rumors: “People familiar with the search process say the university is willing to significantly increase what it has paid former coaches in order to attract someone with a proven record to replace Jeff Lebo, who was fired last Friday. A list of candidates includes coaches who could command high salaries, such as Minnesota’s Tubby Smith, who has SEC experience at Kentucky and Georgia.”

Smith’s Minnesota team, a No. 11 seed in the West Region, plays No. 6 seed Xavier today.

Evan Turner

The Sporting News has picked Ohio State’s Evan Turner for Player of the Year honors.

Earlier this week, the magazine picked John Wall as college basketball’s Freshman of the Year.

Excerpt from the Turner story:

During a record-setting junior season, “Evan Almighty” piled up a record seven Big Ten player of the week awards despite missing more than four weeks with a fracture in his lower back.

He joined Jim Jackson as the only Buckeyes with 1,000 career points, 500 rebounds and 300 assists.

He leads the league in scoring and rebounding-as a point guard.

For all of that, Turner joins Lucas, the 1961 and ‘62 winner, as the only Buckeyes to be named Sporting News’ national Player of the Year.

(Photo by John Clay)

I’m back in Lexington after we wrapped up the second and final day of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament Mock Selection Exercise in Indiana. We selected the rest of the field, seeded the 65 teams (or about half of them), then put them into brackets. If the real committee does what we did today, Kentucky fans will be headed for New Orleans, and if two victories follow, then Syracuse.

Note: Eammon Brennan of espn.com was also a mock committee member who blogged on the happenings.

Note: If you missed it, here is my write-up on the first day.

Highlights from today, the final day:

• We started at 8:30 a.m. and were told that Georgetown had won the Big East Tournament and UNLV had won the Mountain West Tournament. That put two of the “at-large” selections into the “automatic qualifier” category, and brought the at-large total to the 34 needed. We were also told that Oklahoma State had won the Big 12 Tournament, and the Cowboys had been in the “under consideration” pool.

• A note about the conference tournaments. Once a team loses in the conference tournament, it is no longer a conference team. It is basically in the large pool of at-large candidates with the rest of the conference tournament losers, in all other conferences.

• Because some at-large teams would win their “mock’ conference tournaments, we had to select more at-large teams. After listing, and then ranking, St. Mary’s, Charlotte and South Florida increased the list to 37. We were then told that three of the “at-large” teams won their conference tournaments. That meant that the three we just picked we’re now in the tournament. The fourth team was Florida. We were told that Duke and Virginia had made the ACC Tournament finals. If Duke beat Virginia, Florida was in the field of 65. If Duke lost, Florida was out.

• We then returned to seeding. We ended up seeing New Mexico 13th, followed by Vanderbilt at No. 14, Temple at No. 15 and Texas at No. 16. Then we went through another seeding group and put Wake Forest at No. 17, followed by Pittsburgh at No. 18, Gonzaga at No. 19 and BYU at 20th.

• We were then told that Sam Houston State, Temple, Kentucky and Purdue had all won their respective conference tournaments. And, drum roll please, Duke had beaten Virginia in the ACC final. That put Florida in the NCAA Tournament.

• Turned out that California was the team with the highest RPI, No. 25, that we left out of the field.

Continue reading ‘Second day NCAA Tourney Mock Selection report’

Back in my hotel room after we wrapped up the first day of the NCAA Men’s Division I College Basketball Tournament Mock Selection Exercise, in association with the US Basketball Writers, here at the NCAA National Center in Indianapolis. Long day. Lot of numbers. Here’s a wrap-up:

• You can see a video about today’s happenings here. (The pic above is a grainy frame of the video.)

• After a series of votes involving moving teams from the “under consideration” category to the “at-large” category, we started seeding teams. The idea is to seed the teams 1-65. As it stands now, and we were told this could all change before we wrap up early tomorrow afternoon, Kansas is the overall No. 1 seed, followed by Syracuse at No. 2, Kentucky at No. 3 and Villanova at No. 4. That would mean that UK would be a No. 1 seed in a particular region. We will start assigning teams to regions tomorrow.

• We ended up seeding just 12 teams. Purdue came in at No. 5, followed by Georgetown, Duke, West Virginia, Kansas State, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Michigan State.

• After our initial ballot, 19 teams were moved into the “at-large” category, meaning teams that would fill the 34 at-large slots to go along with the 31 conference automatic qualifiers, or AQs, as they are called by the committee. The first 19 were, in alphabetical order: BYU, Duke, Georgetown, Kansas, Kansas State, Kentucky, Michigan State, New Mexico, Ohio State, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Syracuase, Temple, Tennessee, Texas, Vanderbilt, Villanova, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

• After the initial ballot, there were 53 teams that went in the “under consideration” category. Judging by the reaction of the NCAA staff members, that appeared to be a high number.

• The next four to go from “under consideration” to “at-large” were Baylor, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M and Wake Forest. That brought the at-large total to 23.

• The next four to go in were UNLV, Rhode Island, Richmond and Northern Iowa. That brought the at-large total to 27.

Continue reading ‘First day NCAA Tournament Mock Selection report’

I’m in Indianapolis the next couple of days as part of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship Mock Selection Exercise, in association with the United States Basketball Writers Association.

I was fortunate enough to be invited as one of 20 participants, including print media, internet media, conference administrators and broadcast analysts, including CBS Sports’ Clark Kellogg.

For the next day and a half, the NCAA will guide us through the process of selecting and seeding the NCAA Tournament, so that we can learn more about how the process works. We will do everything the committee does on selection weekend, from selections to seedings to placing teams at tournament sites, etc.

I’ll be blogging whenever I can, though today’s session is not scheduled to be completed until 9 p.m. tonight.

Check back for details, and reports.

Updated: Poll question added at bottom of post.

John Calipari just sent out a twit pic of photo shoot for Slam Magazine, which apparently has UK players in the new uniforms.

By the way, if you read comments, some think Wall’s jersey reads: “KENTCUKY”.

Updates: Walter’s Wildcat World has some tight shots of the unis. So does Kentucky Sports Radio.

(Raleigh News Observer photo/Robert Willett)

Was on Larry Glover’s radio show Monday night. Glover pointed out that it was not all that long ago Kentucky fans worried that the Cats would be overtaken by North Carolina when it came to all-time college basketball victories. Or that the Tar Heels might reach the 2,000 win plateau before Kentucky.

Then Kentucky hired John Calipari, and North Carolina stopped winning.

The first did not cause the second, but after winning the national title last April, the Tar Heels are struggling this season. Thursday night’s 74-70 loss at Virginia Tech dropped Roy Williams’ club to 13-9 overall and 2-5 in ACC play.

Even before the loss, Sagarin had the Tar Heels 53rd in his computer rankings. North Carolina was 77th in the RPI before the loss in Blacksburg.

Roy Williams after Thursday night’s loss:

“It was a heck of a basketball game, I thought, and the two teams played really hard. But it’s not really a heck of a basketball game unless your team wins, and we didn’t win,” said Williams, whose Tar Heels (13-9) are circling ever closer to NIT, rather than NCAA, territory.

“My team competed harder than we’ve been doing - and I’ve never had a team where I’ve worried about how hard we were playing, but that’s seeped into our poor play lately. But I thought we played with much more intensity tonight.”

Links:

• John Perroto of Baskeball Prospectus on the Carolina slide.
• Robbie Pickeral of the Raleigh News and Observer on Virginia Tech’s win over the Heels.
• Bill Cole of the Winston-Salem Journal on the North Carolina loss.
• Adam Lucas of Tar Heel Blue calls it a cold snap.
• Jimmy Dupree of the Durham Herald-Sun says dry spell doomed Carolina.