Merry Christmas To All, and To All...?

On the morning of Christmas, all I could think of when I woke up was, NBA! It is back and in full effect. Although this is a NCAA Hoops Blog, we have to pay tribute to the returning of the best basketball league in the world. With a list of 5 games today, I'm not going to be able to help but sit in front of the TV all day.
Starts off with the Boston/New York game where the new look Knicks are going to battle the vets of the Celtics. With the short training camp and pre-season, I have to go with the veteran Celtics squad in this one.

Next up, the NBA Finals rematch. But this time it isn't going to be in favor of the Mavericks. With losing their man in the middle in Tyson Chandler, the Mavericks are going to have a tough time repeating as champs. Do I even need to mention what I think the Heat are going to do. With that nasty taste still in their mouth from last year, D Wade and Lebron are on a mission this year, no questions about it.

Then it's time for the reigning MVP to take the court to a team that now isn't the only contender that plays in the Staples Center. While finishing with the best record in the NBA a season ago, the Bulls failed to make it to the promise land, the Finals. D Rose, arguably the best all around athlete/player in the league, is going to prove why he was MVP a year back. Watch the man in action.

Finishing off the day are two games that have their own fair share of superstarts, including the new Clip show with CP3 in town. Also in action you have Dwight Howard and the Magic taking on, in my opinion, the most unstoppable player in the NBA KD (Kevin Durant.) 

So Happy Holidays to all, and are you ready for some NBA!!!!

(If you didn't get the title of this BLOG, take a look at "Laugh At My Pain" by Kevin Hart, pure comedy!)

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2 Top 25 Teams Go Down

On a busy basketball night, the holiday tournaments are winding down and the Championships are taking place tonight. Last night there were multiple Top 25 teams in action, in which two of them took L's.
In one of them, a struggling Xavier team has lost it's 3rd straight, I think the brawl a couple weeks back had a real negative effect on them.

In the biggest upset of the night, Wagner went into Pittsburgh and took down the Panthers in a thriller. Wagner is another team to watch out for come March. 

On the upside Syracuse kept the #1 spot in the rankings, Baylor takes down West Virginia in OT, and UNLV had a very convincing win against an under-achieving Cal-Berkeley team.

The holiday tournaments taking place in Hawaii and Las Vegas are coming to an end and I'm picking my winners to be The Beach (Long Beach State) on the islands, and the undefeated Baylor Bears in Sin City.

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A Couple More Punches Thrown

It was a night where a buzzer-beater was hit by Darnell Dodson in his first game in a Southern Miss uniform. But earlier in that half there was a little bit of a glimpse of what happened in that ugly Xavier-Cincinnati game.
If you look below around the :30 sec mark, as and ASU player was boxing out, he was caught in the chin with what seemed to be a painless punch. After that he could not help but retaliate.

The basketball court is not the place for this, and what is the deal with all of these one game suspensions? Players need to be taught a lesson that this is not the street, these are established University's that are paying for your degree first, then you entertain on the court. No grades, no play, that is my motto. But these University's handing down one-game suspensions when punches were thrown? I just don't get it!
Start sending a message to the players and coaches, this is not the place for fighting. This is a basketball court, not the street. If you want to fight and throw punches, go to the Octagon, do not come to the NCAA!

Christmas Time!

It is that time of year again. Tree's are covered, houses are lit, and parents are finishing up their shopping for presents. And for schools around the country, that means that coaches are sending their team's home for a quick early season break.
This is not something that coaches love, yes it is time with family and a break away from the team, but ultimately on the other end of the spectrum there is no  way of being 100% sure that your athletes are doing the right thing. Are they working out and getting shots up everyday, or are they sitting around watching TV while stuffing their mouth with that home-cooked meal they have been missing oh so much?
It's all about the self-discipline you have instilled in your team throughout the young season. Is your team the one that everyone tells the coach they are doing the right thing, but in the back of your mind you know that is not true. Or do you have the team that has the player leadership and self discipline where the players really want to win.
Who is going to be that player to go find the empty gym and really work on your game. It's not going to be a last minute talk to the team letting them know what they need to do over break. It is a tone that should have been set Day 1 at the first meeting of the season. My guess is that about 75% of NCAA players are not going to do as much as they can to come back a better player after break. The other 25% is that group of players that really want to win. The players that enjoy playing the game and aren't just on the team to put on the jersey.
So what kind of players are in you locker room, what kind of players do you play with or coach. Think about it, and the truth will tell in the columns of win's and losses.

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The Kat Is On It

If there was a recent article about something that happened overnight at a big D-1 school, the author name more than not is going to be Andy Katz. Since my interest in college hoops picked up to where it is today, it had been Andy Katz reporting the news. He seems to be on top of every story before anyone else even figures out what happened. If there is something about the NCAA basketball season that I need to know, straight to the Andy Katz blog I go.

Here is a quick clip of him discussing the madness that took place at the end of the Xavier-Cincinatti game.

The 4 S's With Coach Calipari

Coach Calipari, current coach of the Kentucky Wildcats talks about the 4 S's in which Point Guards should follow when playing the position.

VideoBLOG: Relieving Wing Pressure

Wing pressure can really slow down any team from getting into their offense. There are different ways to get around that, in my opinion you don't run away from it, attack it. When faced with wing pressure simply run a post to the elbow, enter it with a pass, then have the wing cut to the basket hard. Virtually unstoppable if you time it up right. 

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