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Colorado Basketball
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April 9th
… CU in the Arena …
UCLA settles on Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin
From CBS Sports … UCLA’s coaching search has mercifully come to an end.
After a messy and bungled search that saw Kentucky’s John Calipari, TCU’s Jamie Dixon, and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes draw interest but ultimately stay put, the school announced it has hired Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin. The news was first reported by CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein.
Cronin was a name constantly brought up in the search, and with buzz of Barnes leaving the Vols for Westwood dying on Sunday, the search shifted back to Cronin.
Cronin has won at a high level during his tenure at Cincinnati, and while his lack of NCAA Tournament success over the years may be a sticking point — he has never made an Elite Eight and only once made a Sweet 16 — he’s highly regarded as a tough-nosed coach and brilliant basketball mind. At Cincy, he has also done more with less; he could do a whole lot more with the talent at his disposal in Westwood.
Cronin has a 296-147 overall record at Cincinnati since he took over the program in 2006 and has made nine consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
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April 7th
… CU in the Arena …
CBS: “UCLA is conducting the dumbest coaching search it could possibly conduct”
From CBS Sports … Early last week, right after The Athletic reported that UCLA had offered Kentucky’s John Calipari a six-year contract worth $48 million, a lot of us who write and talk about college basketball for a living spent a few minutes laughingbecause, well, because it was hilarious. I mean, how delusional do you have to be to think you could get a coach to leave his great job for your inferior job by offering less money than he currently makes to live in a market where the cost of living is drastically higher?
Such a weird pursuit. Such a waste of time.
So we all got our jokes off — mostly via Twitter. Meantime, a man named Michael Hanna, who writes for GoJoeBruin.com, was in those same Twitter streets challenging every national media member who dared mock UCLA and its nonsensical coaching search. From his perspective, this was a classic case of the national media just not understanding what the locals understood. We were all misguided, at best, biased or dumb, at worst. So you can imagine the smile on my face when I saw the following tweet this weekend.
Michael Hanna@MichaelMHanna
Dear national media types I slated earlier this week, like @GaryParrishCBS @PeteThamel @DanWolken @GoodmanHoops and others: I apologize. I was wrong, you were right. This is a cheap-ass clown program and I hope you run wild on every administrator involved in @UCLAAthletics.
Ben Bolch
Jamie Dixon appears to be out as a candidate for UCLA’s basketball coaching vacancy – LATimes
In other words, the same diehards who were rationalizing UCLA’s confusing search a week ago have now turned on the people running, or working on behalf of, the UCLA athletic department they love. And, honestly, who could blame them? UCLA fired Steve Alford on New Year’s Eve and has spent the past three months doing little more than pursuing John Calipari and a bunch of other high-profile coaches who had no real interest in the job. Eventually, school officials figured out what everybody else already knew — i.e., that no great coach with a great job in a great league wants to work at UCLA, where expectations are way out of whack and the hot seat is always just around the corner — and began focusing on a second tier of candidates headlined by TCU’s Jamie Dixon. And that’s when things really got stupid.
… Continue reading story here …
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April 5th
USA Today: UCLA – “Everyone wants it to be Kentucky or Duke and it’s just not”
From USA Today … There was a time not very long ago in UCLA basketball history that a coach who had been to three Final Fours was run out of town. It wasn’t so much that Ben Howland hadn’t done the job well — seven NCAA tournament appearances in 10 years and seven first-round NBA draft picks said otherwise — but he certainly didn’t represent what UCLA romantics thought their basketball program should be.
Personally awkward and defense-focused, Howland was stylistically miscast in a town that has long preferred a plastic smile to the wrinkles and fine lines that come with fading beauty. When a few cracks in Howland’s program started to form, firing him was easy.
But even Hollywood’s best cosmetic surgeons wouldn’t be able to erase the marks of stress that have formed over UCLA’s last few decades.
It says a lot about where the program of John Wooden now stands in the college sports landscape that once UCLA’s three-month-old coaching search finally got serious this week after a laughable attempt to lure John Calipari, it turned its focus away from superstar names that were never coming and instead moved on to coaches who would do well to produce a Howland-era encore.
Multiple reports have placed TCU’s Jamie Dixon — a literal Howland disciple without as impressive a résumé — as UCLA’s current preference, assuming a multi-million dollar buyout of his contract can be navigated. If UCLA can’t nail down Dixon, the Los Angeles Times reported Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin — another coach who lacks flash both stylistically and in his accomplishments — would likely be next in line.
In a rational environment, either Dixon or Cronin would be a reasonable hire and certainly an upgrade over the eternally mediocre Steve Alford. While Pittsburgh fans may have grown weary of Dixon’s earlier-than-expected March exits, he significantly out-performed the program’s history in a very tough Big East and needed just two seasons to lift TCU to its first NCAA tournament in 20 years. Likewise, Cronin hasn’t often advanced deep in the tournament but has found a way to make it in for nine straight years at a school that doesn’t attract many elite prospects.
… Continue reading story here …
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Neill Woelk: What to Expect from 2019-2020 Buffs
From CUBuffs.com … There is no doubt where Colorado coach Tad Boyle expects his team to be a year from now when the 2020 postseason rolls around.
Boyle has made it clear he believes his Buffaloes should be playing in the NCAA Tournament next March.
It’s a legitimate expectation with which Colorado fans no doubt agree. Boyle’s team went 23-13 this year, including a 10-8 Pac-12 record that was good enough for a tie for fourth in the final standings and a fifth-place seed in the conference tournament. The Buffs had two first-team all-conference selections, played well down the stretch — 12 wins in their last 16 games while advancing to the NIT quarterfinals — and perhaps most importantly, boast a team that is expected to have everyone who finished the year in uniform back for the 2019-20 season.
Overall it was a good season, but one that left Boyle and the Buffs wishing they had another chance at some of the opportunities that slipped away, especially early in the year.
Still, it set the table for what could be breakout year for the program. While Boyle has already led the Buffs to four NCAA Tournament appearances, this is a team that will enter next year toting the expectation of spending more than just one weekend at the NCAA’s annual postseason party.
With that in mind, here are five things we learned last year — and five things to look for in 2019-20:
… Continue reading story here …
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April 3rd
“Is Panic Starting to Set in at UCLA over Hiring of a New Basketball Coach?”
From the BruinsNation … Ben Bolch of the LA Times is reporting that the UCLA Bruins’ coaching search is now focusing on Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin and TCU’s Jamie Dixon “after striking out with a slew of top targets.”
Bolch adds: Dixon and Cronin emerged as leading candidates after a bevy of more coveted coaches expressed no interest, were eliminated through the school’s vetting process or declined to be interviewed until after the Final Four.
UCLA hopes to have a coach in place within the next week as the field of potential candidates continues to dwindle, a person with knowledge of the situation said.
This is ridiculous. This indicates that the UCLA Athletic Department learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from the hiring of Steve Alford.
Why is the athletic department imposing an arbitrary timeline, instead of waiting until after the Final Four to interview Tony Bennett? This is exactly the same thing which happened after the firing of Ben Howland.
Instead of waiting until Wichita State had exited the tournament, UCLA panicked an made an obvious mistake of hiring Steve Alford.
Well, it looks like that’s about to happen again. There is absolutely no reason why UCLA cannot wait until Tony Bennett’s Virginia Cavaliers to finish playing in the Final Four.
What difference does it make if UCLA doesn’t hire a new coach for two or three weeks instead of a week, especially if the difference is hiring a coach who just made it to the Final Four instead of a list of guys who have never made the Final Four?
The answer is simple: It doesn’t, and that’s why this news is going to upset most Bruin fans.
… Continue reading story here …
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April 2nd
Report: Buffs add a 6’6″ junior college transfer guard
From the Daily Camera … Maddox Daniels is a southern guy through and through, but a few twists of fate left him playing his senior season of high school basketball in Santa Barbara while living in the Los Angeles area.
Daniels will not be able to make his commitment official until the start of the spring signing period on April 17. He will have two years of eligibility with the Buffs.
During that one-year sojourn, Daniels admits he became intrigued with the possibility of eventually playing basketball in the Pac-12 Conference. What once was a daydream became a reality this week as Daniels, a 6-foot-6 guard from Florida Southwestern junior college in Fort Myers, filled the lone open scholarship at the disposal of Colorado head coach Tad Boyle for the 2019-20 season by pledging a verbal commitment to the Buffaloes at the end of an official visit over the weekend.
“I’ve always had the Pac-12 on my mind,” Daniels said. “When I played basketball my senior year in California, the Pac-12 was always something that was on my mind. I didn’t get to go there right after high school, but it eventually happened and it’s something that I’m really grateful for, the journey I’ve been on. I’m definitely looking forward to the challenge, no doubt.”
… Continue reading story here …
Here is a link to his stats from the 2018-19 season.
Here is a YouTube video of Daniels in action:
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April 1st
McKinley Wright undergoes shoulder surgery
Wright’s tweet with the picture below: “sko buffs! surgery went great! thanks to the man above”
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Stuart
Continue reading...
Colorado Basketball
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April 9th
… CU in the Arena …
UCLA settles on Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin
From CBS Sports … UCLA’s coaching search has mercifully come to an end.
After a messy and bungled search that saw Kentucky’s John Calipari, TCU’s Jamie Dixon, and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes draw interest but ultimately stay put, the school announced it has hired Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin. The news was first reported by CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein.
Cronin was a name constantly brought up in the search, and with buzz of Barnes leaving the Vols for Westwood dying on Sunday, the search shifted back to Cronin.
Cronin has won at a high level during his tenure at Cincinnati, and while his lack of NCAA Tournament success over the years may be a sticking point — he has never made an Elite Eight and only once made a Sweet 16 — he’s highly regarded as a tough-nosed coach and brilliant basketball mind. At Cincy, he has also done more with less; he could do a whole lot more with the talent at his disposal in Westwood.
Cronin has a 296-147 overall record at Cincinnati since he took over the program in 2006 and has made nine consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
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April 7th
… CU in the Arena …
CBS: “UCLA is conducting the dumbest coaching search it could possibly conduct”
From CBS Sports … Early last week, right after The Athletic reported that UCLA had offered Kentucky’s John Calipari a six-year contract worth $48 million, a lot of us who write and talk about college basketball for a living spent a few minutes laughingbecause, well, because it was hilarious. I mean, how delusional do you have to be to think you could get a coach to leave his great job for your inferior job by offering less money than he currently makes to live in a market where the cost of living is drastically higher?
Such a weird pursuit. Such a waste of time.
So we all got our jokes off — mostly via Twitter. Meantime, a man named Michael Hanna, who writes for GoJoeBruin.com, was in those same Twitter streets challenging every national media member who dared mock UCLA and its nonsensical coaching search. From his perspective, this was a classic case of the national media just not understanding what the locals understood. We were all misguided, at best, biased or dumb, at worst. So you can imagine the smile on my face when I saw the following tweet this weekend.
Michael Hanna@MichaelMHanna
Dear national media types I slated earlier this week, like @GaryParrishCBS @PeteThamel @DanWolken @GoodmanHoops and others: I apologize. I was wrong, you were right. This is a cheap-ass clown program and I hope you run wild on every administrator involved in @UCLAAthletics.
Ben Bolch
Jamie Dixon appears to be out as a candidate for UCLA’s basketball coaching vacancy – LATimes
In other words, the same diehards who were rationalizing UCLA’s confusing search a week ago have now turned on the people running, or working on behalf of, the UCLA athletic department they love. And, honestly, who could blame them? UCLA fired Steve Alford on New Year’s Eve and has spent the past three months doing little more than pursuing John Calipari and a bunch of other high-profile coaches who had no real interest in the job. Eventually, school officials figured out what everybody else already knew — i.e., that no great coach with a great job in a great league wants to work at UCLA, where expectations are way out of whack and the hot seat is always just around the corner — and began focusing on a second tier of candidates headlined by TCU’s Jamie Dixon. And that’s when things really got stupid.
… Continue reading story here …
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April 5th
USA Today: UCLA – “Everyone wants it to be Kentucky or Duke and it’s just not”
From USA Today … There was a time not very long ago in UCLA basketball history that a coach who had been to three Final Fours was run out of town. It wasn’t so much that Ben Howland hadn’t done the job well — seven NCAA tournament appearances in 10 years and seven first-round NBA draft picks said otherwise — but he certainly didn’t represent what UCLA romantics thought their basketball program should be.
Personally awkward and defense-focused, Howland was stylistically miscast in a town that has long preferred a plastic smile to the wrinkles and fine lines that come with fading beauty. When a few cracks in Howland’s program started to form, firing him was easy.
But even Hollywood’s best cosmetic surgeons wouldn’t be able to erase the marks of stress that have formed over UCLA’s last few decades.
It says a lot about where the program of John Wooden now stands in the college sports landscape that once UCLA’s three-month-old coaching search finally got serious this week after a laughable attempt to lure John Calipari, it turned its focus away from superstar names that were never coming and instead moved on to coaches who would do well to produce a Howland-era encore.
Multiple reports have placed TCU’s Jamie Dixon — a literal Howland disciple without as impressive a résumé — as UCLA’s current preference, assuming a multi-million dollar buyout of his contract can be navigated. If UCLA can’t nail down Dixon, the Los Angeles Times reported Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin — another coach who lacks flash both stylistically and in his accomplishments — would likely be next in line.
In a rational environment, either Dixon or Cronin would be a reasonable hire and certainly an upgrade over the eternally mediocre Steve Alford. While Pittsburgh fans may have grown weary of Dixon’s earlier-than-expected March exits, he significantly out-performed the program’s history in a very tough Big East and needed just two seasons to lift TCU to its first NCAA tournament in 20 years. Likewise, Cronin hasn’t often advanced deep in the tournament but has found a way to make it in for nine straight years at a school that doesn’t attract many elite prospects.
… Continue reading story here …
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Neill Woelk: What to Expect from 2019-2020 Buffs
From CUBuffs.com … There is no doubt where Colorado coach Tad Boyle expects his team to be a year from now when the 2020 postseason rolls around.
Boyle has made it clear he believes his Buffaloes should be playing in the NCAA Tournament next March.
It’s a legitimate expectation with which Colorado fans no doubt agree. Boyle’s team went 23-13 this year, including a 10-8 Pac-12 record that was good enough for a tie for fourth in the final standings and a fifth-place seed in the conference tournament. The Buffs had two first-team all-conference selections, played well down the stretch — 12 wins in their last 16 games while advancing to the NIT quarterfinals — and perhaps most importantly, boast a team that is expected to have everyone who finished the year in uniform back for the 2019-20 season.
Overall it was a good season, but one that left Boyle and the Buffs wishing they had another chance at some of the opportunities that slipped away, especially early in the year.
Still, it set the table for what could be breakout year for the program. While Boyle has already led the Buffs to four NCAA Tournament appearances, this is a team that will enter next year toting the expectation of spending more than just one weekend at the NCAA’s annual postseason party.
With that in mind, here are five things we learned last year — and five things to look for in 2019-20:
… Continue reading story here …
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April 3rd
“Is Panic Starting to Set in at UCLA over Hiring of a New Basketball Coach?”
From the BruinsNation … Ben Bolch of the LA Times is reporting that the UCLA Bruins’ coaching search is now focusing on Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin and TCU’s Jamie Dixon “after striking out with a slew of top targets.”
Bolch adds: Dixon and Cronin emerged as leading candidates after a bevy of more coveted coaches expressed no interest, were eliminated through the school’s vetting process or declined to be interviewed until after the Final Four.
UCLA hopes to have a coach in place within the next week as the field of potential candidates continues to dwindle, a person with knowledge of the situation said.
This is ridiculous. This indicates that the UCLA Athletic Department learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from the hiring of Steve Alford.
Why is the athletic department imposing an arbitrary timeline, instead of waiting until after the Final Four to interview Tony Bennett? This is exactly the same thing which happened after the firing of Ben Howland.
Instead of waiting until Wichita State had exited the tournament, UCLA panicked an made an obvious mistake of hiring Steve Alford.
Well, it looks like that’s about to happen again. There is absolutely no reason why UCLA cannot wait until Tony Bennett’s Virginia Cavaliers to finish playing in the Final Four.
What difference does it make if UCLA doesn’t hire a new coach for two or three weeks instead of a week, especially if the difference is hiring a coach who just made it to the Final Four instead of a list of guys who have never made the Final Four?
The answer is simple: It doesn’t, and that’s why this news is going to upset most Bruin fans.
… Continue reading story here …
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April 2nd
Report: Buffs add a 6’6″ junior college transfer guard
From the Daily Camera … Maddox Daniels is a southern guy through and through, but a few twists of fate left him playing his senior season of high school basketball in Santa Barbara while living in the Los Angeles area.
Daniels will not be able to make his commitment official until the start of the spring signing period on April 17. He will have two years of eligibility with the Buffs.
During that one-year sojourn, Daniels admits he became intrigued with the possibility of eventually playing basketball in the Pac-12 Conference. What once was a daydream became a reality this week as Daniels, a 6-foot-6 guard from Florida Southwestern junior college in Fort Myers, filled the lone open scholarship at the disposal of Colorado head coach Tad Boyle for the 2019-20 season by pledging a verbal commitment to the Buffaloes at the end of an official visit over the weekend.
“I’ve always had the Pac-12 on my mind,” Daniels said. “When I played basketball my senior year in California, the Pac-12 was always something that was on my mind. I didn’t get to go there right after high school, but it eventually happened and it’s something that I’m really grateful for, the journey I’ve been on. I’m definitely looking forward to the challenge, no doubt.”
… Continue reading story here …
Here is a link to his stats from the 2018-19 season.
Here is a YouTube video of Daniels in action:
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April 1st
McKinley Wright undergoes shoulder surgery
Wright’s tweet with the picture below: “sko buffs! surgery went great! thanks to the man above”
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–
Stuart
Continue reading...