NCAA Basketball

TAMPA, Fla. -- The University of South Florida's men's basketball program has violated numerous NCAA rules over the past months, a former USF assistant coach, former USF players and other school sources told FanHouse.

Most of the NCAA violations involve USF video and conditioning assistant Terrelle Woody, who was hired Aug. 26, 2008, in a non-coaching position by USF coach Stan Heath (right) as part of a package deal to guarantee the signing of highly touted Maryland transfer Gus Gilchrist.

The violations include Woody providing transportation to student-athletes, watching "open gyms," coaching players and illegally working out USF players.

When Roy Williams was asked exactly where he felt his North Carolina team stood at this point in the season, he responded with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for a weekend with your mother-in-law.

And, being Roy Williams, it was in the form of an anecdote.

"I had a friend of mine tell me, Roy, you have more patience than anyone I've ever seen,'" the Tar Heel coach said. "So I looked at him and said, 'What are you talking about?' He said, 'You haven't used any of it yet, so you've got it all stored up."

Now might be the appropriate time to start using a little.

In the Tar Heels first real test of the season against Ohio State, North Carolina opened with a Broadway worthy debut, pushing around Big Ten title hopeful Buckeyes on the way to a 77-73 victory-slash-statement.

At least for the first 39 minutes.

The remaining 60 seconds served precisely as a reminder as to why Job never picked up a clipboard.

Tina Charles' stat line in the box score looks just fine by almost any measure: 15 points, 11 rebounds in 18 minutes.

Unless the person doing the measuring is UConn Huskies coach Geno Auriemma, who sees the personal fouls that kept her out of the game for much of the first half.

Auriemma has a knack for viewing the glass half-empty when it comes to Charles. Fine has never been good enough to stop the yelling and the cajoling. It is really an existential thing between the demanding coach and his senior center who hasn't always risen to meet his demands.

"It's easy to be frustrated with Tina. If I didn't get frustrated with Tina it wouldn't be any fun coaching this team," Auriemma said Tuesday after the top-ranked Huskies' 83-58 win over Texas in San Antonio. "You watch Tina play for the first six or seven minutes and you will say 'Wow, there is nothing this kid can't do.' She could go for 30 every night.' "

SAN ANTONIO -- I should have known better.

Never leave a Geno Auriemma press conference. At least, not without leaving behind the tape recorder.

LORETTO, Pa. -- Delaware women's basketball coach Tina Martin let the phrase "triple-double'' creep into her comments following her team's season opener Tuesday night, and once it was out, she couldn't reel it back in. But anybody who had watched the highly anticipated, unusually delayed college debut of Elena Delle Donne wouldn't have needed prodding to envision such feats in the future.

"If Coach says it, then yes, I can, definitely. Whatever I can do to contribute to the team the best I can to my ability, I'll try it,'' said Delle Donne, the redshirt freshman who, on her way back to her favorite sport, had once been the best high school player in the country, then one of its best-known victims of intense homesickness.

"We'll see what the future holds,'' she added.

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- In the rematch, Kansas missed the free throws and Memphis had the final shot.
The Jayhawks won again, but not without a tougher-than-expected fight from the undermanned and supposedly overmatched Tigers.

Cole Aldrich had 18 points, 11 rebounds and blocked five shots, helping No. 1 Kansas overcome a sloppy night to hold off Memphis 57-55 in a rematch of the 2008 national championship game Tuesday.

No miracles from Mario, no confetti flying from the rafters, but still another exciting finish.

"I can tell you this for sure: I'm 32 but I'm getting out at 35," Memphis coach Josh Pastner said. "I don't know how these coaches coach until they're 70. It's unbelievable."

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SAN ANTONIO -- Tennessee and Connecticut in the same gym, but not on the court at the same time. Maybe San Antonio will bring Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma back together, but not on this night.

Instead, the top-ranked Huskies and the Lady Vols combined to behave a little ungraciously to their Texas hosts in the ESPNU Road to the Championship doubleheader at the AT&T Center.

Tennessee routed overmatched Texas Tech in the first game, 91-53, while the Huskies had little trouble with No. 10 Texas, winning 83-58.

But the night wasn't going to end without a little excitement. Not with Auriemma in the house.

Jim Phelan will remind you in a heartbeat that he's already in the Hall of Fame, a bunch of them. It's not that he wonders why he keeps getting asked about the one in Springfield, Mass., the one that won't let him in. It's that it doesn't bother him as much as it bothers so many others.

"I really don't care,'' Phelan said Monday morning, after knocking golf balls around the lawn of his home in Emmitsburg, Md., less than a mile from the college he put on the basketball map half a century ago. "When I was active, it was a nice trivia question --- who has the most wins and is not in the Hall of Fame?''

The answer is Phelan, who won 830 games in 49 seasons at Mount St. Mary's, the tiny historic Catholic university in the mountains near the Pennsylvania border. Exactly three men have won more games coaching at Division I colleges: Bobby Knight, Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp. Two, Smith and Rupp, have won more games at a single school. None, at any level, has ever coached more games at one school than the 1,354 Phelan coached at "The Mount'' from 1954-2003.

When John Calipari accepted the Kentucky coaching job, he warned that there are no easy solutions in college basketball. At the time, it was like telling a state full of lottery winners about the value of sound investment strategies.

Thank Miami University for proving your point, Coach.

And thank John Wall for reminding Wildcats fans just why they were so darn excited in the first place.

Wall scored 19 points, including the biggest two of the season, a 15-foot jumper with less than a second left that lifted the No. 4 Wildcats to a 72-70 win over the Redhawks, narrowly avoiding the first major upset of the college basketball season.

What have we learned after one weekend of the college season?

Brittney Griner is a freshman. OK ... that's a little obvious. But we might forget that as we are distracted by the dunking. When Griner picked up four fouls early in the second half against Tennessee, it was a needed jolt of reality. Freshmen, well, they have a tendency to foul at inconvenient times and with maddening frequency. Keeping Griner on the floor may be a bigger challenge for Baylor than breaking in a load of young players.

Jayne Appel isn't 100 percent. Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said as much about her senior center, who is coming off offseason knee surgery for the second year in a row, after the team's win over Rutgers, the end of a very good starting weekend for the No. 2 Cardinal. Appel finished with 11 points against the Scarlet Knights on 3 of 10 shooting, and 12 rebounds. But VanDerveer sounds concerned.

"She has no ups," VanDerveer said. "She doesn't have spring."

Texas swingman Damion James made what seemed to be a difficult decision this past June when he walked away from NBA riches to return to school.

James apparently impressed many as he went through NBA workouts this past spring. But when it came time to be all in, James made the decision to return to the Longhorns for his senior season. James said the choice wasn't hard to make.

"It was cool," James said to FanHouse. "We have a great team, probably the best team in the country and I've come back to lead them. It really wasn't a tough decision at all. It was a great decision."