So, kind of interesting about the suspensions that UConn handed out for the two point guards.
Connecticut suspended guard A.J. Price for the entire 2005-06 season as a result of his arrest on charges of trying to sell stolen laptops this summer, but has allowed co-defendant Marcus Williams to return to the team in December.
Marcus Williams is arguably the best point guard in the Big East, while A.J. Price has yet to actually play in part because of a brain hemorrhage he suffered prior to the start of last season. Price has not actually been given medical clearance to play as of yet.
Interesting to note that the person who actually (allegedly) stole the laptops was a friend of Marcus Williams (who does not attend UConn), yet Williams got the lighter suspension for the three of them conspiring to sell the stolen goods.
Maybe there is more to it than appears — and there usually is — but it still smells a bit.
Then there is some great stuff in this column about Big East Media Day (via College Basketball Blog). From people lining up for the Seton Hall job before the first game has been played, to insulting Memphis Coach John Calipari.
… Maybe the Big East should’ve found a way to bring John Calipari into its league. Calhoun and Pitino sure do disdain Calipari – and the feeling is mutual, rest assured – but this league blocked Coach Life Skills at every turn.
Pittsburgh and St. John’s rejected Calipari’s embarrassingly eager overtures to get those openings, and the Big East presidents chose sad-sack South Florida over Memphis for the 16th and final spot. Calipari has a better chance getting on the Jayson Williams defense team than he does one of these tables at Big East media day.
…
As Huggins so eloquently declared, John Calipari is now the highest-paid mid-major coach in the country, left behind in the charred remains of Conference USA.
Then there were the statements from Jim Calhoun about the future.
“So many schools, with so many different agendas,” one high-ranking conference official would say, surveying the room.
What’s sparing the Seton Halls and Providences in the short-term has to be the miserable state of Syracuse and Pittsburgh football, the fact Big East football can’t break away with so little BCS cachet. Calhoun has never done well with company lines, “Hypothetically, if Notre Dame and Penn State want to come East, I think you’d see some dancing very quickly with football schools,” Calhoun said. “If this did happen, it would be a heck of a football league with those two joining. And a heck of a basketball league. That would be a perfect storm where you would see the structure we have now would no longer be the structure.
“It could happen while I’m still coaching. I think there’s jockeying going on, even at 16 [members]. I don’t think it’s settled yet.
He thought for a moment. Yes, he was sure.
“It’s not settled.”
His hypothetical is unlikely, but he is right that “it’s not settled.”
Then there is this story on the Big East and Mike Tranghese, and what nearly happened after the ACC raid.
With the football membership in disarray, it seemed the Big East was ready to ditch that sport and focus on basketball.
Tranghese, who acted as the league’s midwife in 1979 and has served as its commissioner since 1990, has always been a hoops guy at heart. But when faced with the possibility of leading the breakaway basketball group, Tranghese balked.
“It wasn’t a personal thing,” Tranghese said. “You can’t dissolve a league and then, as the commissioner, say, ‘I’m going to work for one of these entities.’ It just wasn’t gonna work.”
The second meeting broke up without a final decision being made. About a month later, the presidents told Tranghese they had changed their minds. They wanted to keep the league together.
I find it surprising that the basketball schools were the ones so eager to break away. Given the poor state most of the programs were in at that time (heck, still are, mostly). All the b-ball juice in the BE was with the football schools — Syracuse, UConn, Pitt and even BC still.
I am not surprised about this, though.
But the biggest prize — the thing Tranghese lobbied for with all his might, calling in all his markers — was the BCS bid.
The BCS and the Big East were ridiculed last season after Pitt finished in a four-way tie for first place, got a Fiesta Bowl berth with an 8-3 overall record, then was whipped by Utah, a team from a non-BCS league. Meanwhile, California and Boise State, which both went unbeaten in the regular season, wound up in second-tier bowls.
One bowl official confided that the Big East, despite being a founding member of the BCS, had all but lost its automatic berth until Tranghese began his full-court press.
“For a year, I virtually did nothing else,” Tranghese said. “We had earned the right to be given a chance. That was my message.”
And somehow it got through. That was why I thought the Big East stayed together, because of the football schools needing Tranghese. He had all the personal contacts, connections and favors owed. He really was the only one at that point who could keep the Big East in the BCS. Read the whole thing.
Moving to the Fan Fest, Carl Krauser was in a good mood.
The Pitt senior point guard, who decided to return to the Panthers for his final season after exploring the possibility of entering the NBA draft this year, signed autographs with a smile, played basketball with a smile and greeted reporters afterwards with a smile.
Indeed, it was a big smile all day long.
“Just being back here makes me appreciate the game more,” Krauser said at the end of a day at Petersen Events Center that was designed for Pitt fans and dubbed “Pitt Fan Fest.”
But Krauser savored the day perhaps more than any fan.
“It’s a great feeling to be back in Pittsburgh,” he said. “Today, seeing all the kids and all the families makes it all worthwhile to be back here. In the NBA, it’s a business. But in college, it’s about one thing, and that’s to win a championship.”
Also at the event was Brandin Knight and a couple possible future Pitt players: Aliquippa High School Junior Herb Pope and JUCO Gjio Bain.
Freshman forward Sam Young put on a little show during the scrimmage.
Two dunks and a 3-pointer.
And that was just in the first few minutes.
Sam Young, who wears No. 23 in honor of his basketball hero, Michael Jordan, gave Pitt fans something to think about Saturday at Petersen Events Center.
…
Young capped the men’s scrimmage last evening in the closing seconds with his final dunk — a thunderous jam off a teammate’s missed shot — that drew a collective gasp from the sparse crowd that remained.“It’s not surprising. We see him do it all the time,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “We saw it when we were recruiting him. He’s getting better and better every day. He works hard. He’s hungry. He’s a good kid. He loves being here.”
Defense will be the thing the entire team needs to work on in the weeks leading up to the season.
