Rebounding, 3s will be big keys
By Jay Bilas
Special to ESPN Insider
There are two terrific national semifinals on tap. Here's a look at the opener:
Ohio State vs. Georgetown (Sat., 6:07 ET)
Both teams have a great mix of veterans and young players, both have looked dominant at times, and both have come within an eyelash of getting bounced from the tournament. Each team has an outstanding big man who is a true center, and each has a hot young coach. It is fitting that they would play each other in the Final Four for a trip to the title game.
Ohio State personnel
The Buckeyes are led by seniors Ron Lewis and Jamar Butler because of their experience, but on the floor, freshman point guard Mike Conley Jr. is the man in charge. Conley (11.0 ppg, 6.1 apg) is a special player who has an extraordinary feel for the game. An outstanding athlete, Conley plays with great pace, but has another gear that he can rely upon, and he makes unusually good decisions. Conley is indispensable, because he impacts the game with points, steals, assists and his control of tempo.
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Few, Grier linked to several coaching vacancies
SPOKANE, Wash. -- Santa Clara University has asked for permission to talk with longtime Gonzaga assistant Bill Grier about its vacant basketball coaching position.
And Gonzaga head coach Mark Few's name is being connected to several jobs, most prominently the new opening at Kentucky.
Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth confirmed Friday that Santa Clara had asked permission to speak with Grier, an assistant at Gonzaga since 1992 and one of the architects of the Bulldogs' success.
Kentucky has not sought permission to speak with Few, Roth said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Santa Clara forced longtime coach Dick Davey into retirement after this season, presumably to seek a coach who could close the gap with the Zags in the West Coast Conference. Gonzaga has won four consecutive WCC tournament championships and been to eight straight NCAA Tournaments under Few.
Grier has reason to think twice before taking any other job. His contract gives him the first crack at the head coaching job at Gonzaga should Few leave.
Grier did not immediately return a request for an interview. Neither did Few.
Roth has often joked that springtime is the time for "the Mark Few sweepstakes," because his coach is mentioned so often for high-profile vacancies.
Few has a 211-52 record at Gonzaga, with his .802 winning percentage the highest of any active coach with multiple seasons of experience. He led the Bulldogs to a 23-11 record and back to the NCAA Tournament through a turbulent season, which seemed doomed when second-leadingscorer Josh Heytvelt was arrested on Feb. 9 for investigation of felony drug possession.
Few's success at keeping Gonzaga among college basketball's elite for so long has made him a hot commodity. The native of Creswell, Ore., attended Oregon. His parents still live in that area and he has ties to major Oregon athletics boosters.
While the Ducks have advanced to the NCAA's round of 16 under Ernie Kent for the second time since 2002, Kent recently mentioned the vacant Michigan job to The Oregonian.
"I have an agent, and he's been contacted by some people," Kent told the newspaper. "All I'm going to say is that I want to be at Oregon as long as they want me there.
"But if they don't want me there anymore, and Michigan wants to talk, Oregon owes me the opportunity to listen."
Few was reportedly a top candidate for the Indiana job last year, before the Hoosiers ultimately hired Kelvin Sampson. On March 11, Few responded tersely during a teleconference when he was asked about Indiana's 2006 interest in him -- but he did not deny he was contacted.
ESPN.com, citing unidentified sources, reported Thursday that Few is expected to be a candidate for the Kentucky job.
Tubby Smith resigned as Kentucky's coach on Thursday to take over at Minnesota. Dan Monson, Few's predecessor at Gonzaga, was forced out at Minnesota early in the season.
Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart came to UK from Oregon State, where he was athletic director from 1998-2002. Before that, in 1983, Barnhart was the regional director for the Duck Athletic Fund at Oregon.
Few is believed to be paid more than $500,000 a year at Gonzaga. He has repeatedly said he is happy at the small, private university. Gonzaga's games are perpetually sold out inside the McCarthey Athletic Center, the 6,000-seat, on-campus arena built three years ago because of the team's success.
Few and Grier have been close friends since attending Oregon during the 1980s. Both men have spent their entire college coaching careers at Gonzaga: Few arrived in 1990 and Grier in 1992. Few has been head coach since 1999, making three trips to the NCAA Tournament's round of 16.
While some have speculated that Few has taken Gonzaga as high as it can go -- with top five poll ratings, NBA-quality players like Adam Morrison and regular appearances on national television -- the cupboard is definitely not bare.
The Zags have perhaps the best recruiting class in their history coming next season. Austin Daye, who averaged 30 points and 14 rebounds per game at Woodbridge High in Irvine, Calif., and three other intriguing recruits will be joining a veteran team.
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COLLEGE BASKETBALL: Rhody hoping postseason is on next year's slate
By: MATT BEZUYEN 03/17/2007
Other years a record of 19-14 would have been good enough to earn an at-large bid to a postseason tournament. But the times have changed and an honest look at the situation revealed getting an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament with a win over the Colonials Saturday night in Atlantic City was Rhody's only hope.
URI head coach Jim Baron admitted his team was a long-shot for the NIT after falling to George Washington in the A-10 final. He held hope, however, the selection committee would look favorably at the fact his team won 10 games in league play and reach the final of the conference tournament.
"I was disappointed for the guys, I thought they showed what they can do," said Baron about not getting into the National Invitational Tournament. "They might have looked at some of our losses, but we were missing Kahiem (Seawright) against Fordham and missing Keith (Cothran) against Richmond."
Making the NCAA or NIT Tournaments is a numbers game, and simply put, the Rams didn't have the right numbers working in their favor.
Their total of 19 wins was actually 17 since a pair of Division II wins didn't count for tournament consideration.
Rhode Island's RPI number was also too high at 108, good for seventh in the Atlantic 10 Conference. Losses to Troy (221 RPI) and Richmond (272) helped inflate that number. With eight regular season conference champions getting automatic bids to the NIT, only 24 at-large bids were left.
As it was, only three teams from the A-10, Xavier, George Washington and UMass, will be playing in the postseason.
Gregg Burke, Rhode Island's Interim Athletics Director, said he had little hope of the Rams getting an at-large bid to either tournament on Sunday.
"No I didn't," said Burke about whether he thought the Rams had a shot at an at-large bid. "But quite honestly I was disappointed Saint Louis and Dayton (from the A-10) didn't get more consideration."
Burke said he has a hobby of picking the teams for the NCAA and NIT fields prior to the announcement of the selections. This season he missed just a pair of teams in the NCAA and one team in the NIT field.
"I'm good at picking the field for one reason, because it's so easy," said Burke.
Burke said his main barometer of who gets in, and who is left out, is based on the RPI numbers. Akron, with an RPI of 66, was the only team among the top-70 left out of the two fields.
"One thing that is worrisome is that the NIT is becoming more of a power conference tournament," said Burke.
The trick for Rhode Island going forward, will be to make sure its record, and RPI, is good enough to avoid these worries next season. Rhode Island reached the championship game of the A-10 tourney for the first time since 1999 and with every player but one returning, the Rams should be in good position to make a postseason run.
Burke thinks it nearly happened this year.
"I believe in my heart, if we started the season with the roster we had when we finished, we wouldn't even be talking about the NIT, we would have been talking about an NCAA team," said Burke. The URI A.D. was talking about the fact the Rams got much better when Keith Cothran was cleared by the NCAA after eight games had gone by this season.
Scheduling will be a big issue for Rhode Island and the rest of the A-10. As of now Burke would only confirm non-conference home games against Providence and Brown and a road game at Boston College for next season. That leaves the Rams with 10 other open dates.
"The trick is to play a non-conference schedule that can help your ranking stay strong and get you prepared for league play at the same time," said Burke. "The basketball coaching staff is working very hard at this."
While the scheduling falls on the shoulders of URI, what the rest of the league does has a great impact on all of the teams in the A-10. The Missouri Valley Conference is a great example of a league that has learned how to play the RPI game well. While many fans in New England would be challenged to name all of the teams in the MVC, they might be surprised the league battled neck-and-neck with the Big East in the conference RPI rankings and finished sixth overall as a league.
"Every conference's ADs need to sit in a room and decide what is best for the league. The Missouri Valley Conference is a great example of that," said Burke. "You have to set aside differences and decide you're going to do things that help the group as a whole."
The Atlantic 10 is a great example of how important this is. Duquesne, La Salle, Richmond and St. Bonaventure all had RPI's greater than 223. Temple wasn't far behind at 183. Having teams with such low RPIs drags down the entire group. A mid-season win over a team in the high-200s brings down a team's RPI, and a loss can be catastrophic.
Burke insists the A-10 is being progressive in its thinking, which should help the whole group.
"We got together as a group a year ago and talked about what we need to do," said Burke about the A-10 Athletic Directors.
Burke says the Atlantic 10's plan involves making sure the lower teams in the league win some more non-conference games, thus improving their RPIs, while having the top teams playing some strong competition. The goals, Burke says, is to have all of the league's teams in the upper half of the RPI index when league play starts.
It appears as if the A-10 is already taking direct action to help the teams within the conference. According to Associate Commissioner Ray Cella the league was set to announce the latest pairings for each of the 14 teams' three home-and-home league games for the unbalanced league schedule. Some of the A-10 Athletic Directors voiced concern over the parings and the league is now going back to the drawing board.
"We're trying to help our teams boost their RPI. If a team is clearly an NCAA team, that team will play other teams that can help its RPI," said Cella.
The NCAA tourney committee says the RPI is a tool, but Burke says simplifying it like that would be like saying a golf club is a tool used to play golf. If you don't have a high enough RPI, you don't have a shot at gaining an at-large bid to either tournament.
"The RPI is part of the process for the committee. They say it's used as a tool, but it is a factor," said Cella. "If there is something we can do to boost our teams' tournament chances, we're going to do it."
Rhode Island now faces the challenge of filling a non-conference schedule as a team that is expected to be strong. The Rams made it to the A-10 final and it's no secret around the nation Rhody will return nearly its entire roster.
"Now we've become a dangerous team. Not everybody wants to play strong teams, but there are a lot of people who want to face good teams," said Burke. "We may have to wait longer than usual to fill our schedule, because now we can have discussions with networks like ESPN. We'll be a team people want o have on television."
@ The Coventry Courier 2007
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Panthers gun down Eagles
March 9, 2007
NY Post
As Pittsburgh was being swept by Marquette in the regular-season, the Panthers - other than star center Aaron Gray - couldn't hit the broad side of an aircraft carrier. But the Big East tournament is another story. When Pittsburgh steps on the Garden floor, they're at their best. Last night was no different, in an 89-79 quarterfinal win over Marquette.
The third-seeded Panthers (26-6) have reached the final in five of the last six years, and are just one win - tonight's 9 p.m. semifinal vs. Louisville - from doing it again.
Gray had his usual dominant performance against Marquette (24-9), with a game-high 22 points and 10 rebounds. This time, however, he had help, with five Panthers in double figures. They were more physical, getting inside Marquette's zone and getting to the line 41 times.
"It motivated us. We just wanted to come out and prove to all the doubters we're still the best team in the Big East," Cook said. "A lot of people were down on us, but we knew if we could get over this Marquette game we could build our confidence."
Sam Young had 17 points, Mike Cook 16 and former Xaverian standout Levance Fields 13. After a first half that saw eight lead changes and four ties, the Panthers were clinging to a 42-41 lead 1:40 into the second half, but a 3 by Antonio Graves capped a 7-0 run and pushed it to 49-41.
QUARTERFINALS Pittsburgh 89 Marquette 79
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Hawaii 81, Idaho 64
March 2, 2007
HONOLULU (AP) - Matt Lojeski scored 20 points and teammate Bobby Nash added 15 Thursday night to lead Hawaii to an 81-64 victory over Idaho.
Matt Gibson had 10 points for the Rainbow Warriors (17-12, 7-8 Western Athletic Conference).
Senior Keoni Watson led Idaho (3-25, 1-14 WAC) with a career-high 34 points on 14-of-27 shooting from the field.
Hawaii took control of the game midway through the first half with a 21-3 run to lead by as much as 23, 39-16, with 5:37 remaining in the half. The Rainbow Warriors led 45-26 at the break.
Idaho forced five Hawaii turnovers in the first three minutes of the second half to close to 47-32 with 17:12 to go.
But the Rainbow Warriors responded with a 19-6 run to build their lead to as much as 28, 66-38, with 7:56 remaining.
The Rainbow Warriors, who were shooting just 33.2 percent from 3-point range on the season, made 8-of-13 3-pointers on the night.
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