NCAA Basketball The Word

Stanford basketball coach Trent Johnson is leaving to take the head-coaching job at LSU, multiple media outlets are reporting.

The news, which was first reported by Emily Turner of KMSS TV, means the Tigers have a proven winner at the helm of their basketball program. Johnson was the Pac-10 coach of the year this season and is well respected for his coaching acumen and his demeanor, even if what got him the most attention this season was getting ejected from a Tournament game. LSU fired John Brady during the season.

Johnson has been a successful coach at Stanford but may be motivated to leave in part because next year's team won't be nearly as talented as the one he led to the Sweet 16 last year. With the Lopez twins leaving for the NBA, Stanford was already going to look a lot different next season. The new Stanford coach will have a tough job ahead of him.

Interesting piece from ESPN's "Outside the Lines" series profiling the unusual hiring of Oregon Athletic Director Pat Kilkenny. Kilkenny was a well-heeled Oregon booster with ties to former Nike founder Phil Knight.

OTL: "The next time you consider hiring or firing a coach will you call Phil Knight first? To see what he thinks?

PK: Yeah, I'd probably would talk to him about it, I would talk to some other donors too.

This kind of stuff makes the NCAA incredibly squeamish, but Kilkenny comes across as honest about the murkier aspects of his ascent and relationship with Knight.

Previously at FanHouse
Oregon's Filthy Rich AD Draws Preschool Teacher's Salary

CBS Sports analyst Billy Packer will call his 100th Final Four game on Saturday, and you'd think all the preparation would keep him pretty busy. But he's not too busy to do something that I find downright creepy -- walk up to complete strangers, all female, and ask them if they'd vote for Hillary Clinton. That's exactly what Packer does, Michael Hiestand of USA Today reports:

He'll tell you that Hillary Clinton's support among women is overrated. He randomly approached 123 women recently - without introducing himself - to ask if they'd vote for her. "None of them knew who I was, or cared," he says. He was surprised only three women blew him off - "you'd think they'd say it was none of my business." (FYI: Only six said they'd vote for Clinton.)

Can you imagine that? You're a woman walking down the street and all of a sudden some old man comes up to you and demands to know whether you'll vote for Hillary Clinton? Do you think maybe you'd be a little taken aback, maybe even scared, and you'd just tell him what you think he wants to hear?

The NCAA tournament brackets have been released and now you sit in your office/breakroom/home trying to fill yours out. Not only do you want to pick the Final Four correctly, but you want to be the smart one that picks that big first round upset. There will be a ton of people who pick the eventual champion ... but rare is the man or woman who correctly picks VCU to beat Duke. If you can't win your office's bracket pool, the next best thing is getting that upset pick correct.

You probably haven't even seen any of these underdogs play. So what are you looking for? Click the link that describes how you want to pick your Cinderella:

1. Pay attention to the front of the jerseys. Sometimes, certain teams can just get it done. Whether it is their coach, or system, or conference they play in ... sometimes certain schools just stand out.

2. Pay attention to the back of the jersey. Forget the school. If they were really that good, they'd be a household name every season. Sometimes it is just a player or group of players that stand out. Remember Davidson's Stephen Curry nearly beating Maryland by himself last year? That is what you are looking for. That guy.

3. Be a bit silly. Some people just like the name of the school ... or the mascot ... or something other than any real basketball related reason. You end up being correct more than the rest of us.

Ten miles separate the spot where UNC student body president Eve Carson's body was found and the house where police finally convinced Laurence Lovette to give up and turn himself in Thursday morning.

But figuratively, there's a lot more distance between Chapel Hill, where Carson was one of the most admired students on the North Carolina campus, and Durham, where Lovette was captured.

For proof, consider another student murdered just as he was getting ready to make his mark on the world. Graduate student Abhijit Mahato was murdered at his Durham apartment in January. Mahato had been working on PhD in engineering at Duke. Unlike Carson's murder, Mahato's was barely a notable local story, much less national news. Partly that's because he wasn't the student body president, and partly because he's wasn't a beautiful blonde, but it also was because murders happen in Durham (the per capita murder rate is 1.5 times the national average).

If you're not from the Triangle (what locals call the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area), you might think that Duke, the expensive private school, would be located in Yuppie heaven, while North Carolina, a state school, would be housed in more of a working class area. It's actually completely the opposite.

Has Memphis basketball coach John Calipari dramatically changed the college football recruiting landscape by convincing the top high school quarterback in the country to concentrate on basketball?

That's the suggestion of Phil Fritz of the Capital Times, who cites "very reliable sources in Memphis" who say that Terrelle Pryor, a Pennsylvania high schooler who has fans of Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State drooling at his ability to run the spread offense, may very well end up at Memphis. Fritz writes that Pryor, who is listed by Rivals as the third-best small forward in the country, is being recruited by Calipari to play basketball.

I don't know Phil Fritz and have no idea who his very reliable sources in Memphis are, but I'm skeptical of this report. Earlier this week, Pryor was asked if basketball would play a part in his college choice, and he said:

"No, it won't," Pryor said. "I really like playing basketball and I'm still considering playing both football and basketball in college, but I'm not sure. I'm leaning toward just football, but I haven't decided for sure."

So, I'll take the word of Pryor over the word of anonymous sources at Memphis, even if they are "very reliable." Having said that, though, if Pryor is interested mostly in his long-term earning potential, as Fritz's report suggests, I do think basketball might be a better sport for him. Until the spread offense catches on in the NFL, I'll have more confidence that a very good high school small forward will make it in the NBA some day than I will that a great high school spread option quarterback will make it in the NFL some day. Maybe that's what Calipari has been telling Pryor.

Michigan State beat Illinois 59-51 Thursday night to improve its record to 24-7 and 12-5 in the Big Ten. The win, Michigan State's second in a row, puts the Spartans on much more solid footing than they were just five days ago, when I noted that they were coming off a brutal February.

But I'd rather talk about Illinois, which fell to 12-18 and 4-13 in the Big Ten, good for 10th place in the conference. Considering that the Big Ten isn't very good this year, 10th place in the conference is pretty bad, and every Illinois fan agrees that this season has been a mess.

So it's a little jarring to look at the Ken Pomeroy ratings, which are probably the single best snapshot of the college basketball season, and see Illinois ranked 39th in the country. The Illini are the highest-ranked team with a losing record, and they're ahead of teams like 25-5 St. Mary's, 25-5 Vanderbilt and 23-6 Davidson. How is that possible?

Theirs is a flawed mission

Sayeth Cuban (emphasis mine):

One summer I visited Indiana and there were some players working out and playing on the Assembly Hall court. After watching a few minutes, I walked in the hall and there were a bunch of other players just standing outside. Waiting. I of course asked why they weren't on the court with their teammates. Turns out that no more than 4 players could be on the court at one time. Imagine telling a cello player they couldn't practice with more than 4 members of their school orchestra.

This was just the first of a list of inane rules that the compliance officer who was at the gym went on to list.

Spend enough time as a fan of college athletics and you almost get numb to the absurdities. Mark Cuban has seen only tip of the iceberg but is already aware of the monster that lies beneath.

The NCAA is an organization that supposedly prides itself on making sure that athletes are students and attend college with the intent to be students. What the NCAA fails to understand, IMHO, is that often students attend college with a specific goal or dream in mind. It may be to graduate and become an accountant, a musician, an artist, a teacher and any number of other professions. Every student who goes to school, post high school is given every opportunity and encouraged to maximize their effort and optimize their resources to achieve their goals. Unless of course they happen to attend a school that is a member of the NCAA and their goal is to be a professional athlete. In those cases, the NCAA does everything it can to make sure that the athlete is not a typical or traditional student.

For these student athletes, rather than doing every thing possible to excel in their chosen field, they face rules and restrictions that are exceeded in quantity and complexity by the US Tax Code.

Bingo. Not every student-athlete will grow up to be a professional in sports. But some do!

Just as the cellist gets roped into general ed courses that have nothing to do with his or her pursuit, the wannabe athlete gets roped into classes they aren't necessarily interested in. That's fine and dandy, but when that's all over there's no matching restriction on time with professors and peers for the cellist the way there is for the athlete.

(H/T: The Wizard of Odds)

ESPN is reporting that Indiana basketball coach Kelvin Sampson has agreed to a $750,000 buyout, ending his coaching career at Indiana and agreeing not to sue for wrongful termination.

It's rather stunning that Sampson, who repeatedly and remorselessly violates NCAA rules, can pocket three-quarters of a million dollars on the way out the door. But Indiana was spooked by what happened to Ohio State, which lost a wrongful termination lawsuit after firing coach Jim O'Brien.

ESPN also reports that, as expected, assistant coach Dan Dakich will serve as head coach for the rest of the season. Given how well Indiana has played, "the rest of the season" could go into March or even the Final Four in April, as long as no players quit to protest Sampson leaving. But if the team Sampson built does make a title run, it will do so without him.

I have to say, that as an Illinois fan I've never exactly been a big booster of Indiana basketball, and when Kelvin Sampson and the Hoosiers took Eric Gordon away from Champaign I was pretty angry. In fact, I was very angry, but in the back of my mind there was a little voice that helped keep me from going insane with rage.

That voice kept saying to me, "Don't worry, Tom. Kelvin is going to get that program in trouble somehow, and karma will set everything straight."

It appears that karma has finally caught up to Sampson once again. According to ESPN's Andy Katz, the NCAA is going to announce some major violations against Sampson and Indiana on Wednesday.

The NCAA sent a notice of allegations to Indiana University last Friday detailing major violations in the men's basketball program, multiple sources told ESPN.com.

Larry MacIntyre, assistant vice president for university communications at Indiana University, confirmed to ESPN.com that the school did receive documentation from the NCAA last week.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday night that the school will make the allegations public on Wednesday. University trustees president Stephen Ferguson told AP that school officials this week reviewed the report, but that the NCAA is not expected to make its ruling until this summer.

Indiana AD Rick Greenspan took a big chance when he brought Sampson to Bloomington, where he left Oklahoma dealing with the ramifications of his active fingers. Now it seems that the Hoosiers are going to pay a hefty price for taking that chance.

(Thanks to Inside The Hall, which is a pretty good blog considering it's about Indiana basketball)