The Tournament That Wasn’t

Posted on March 13, 2020 by Chad

On Thursday, March 12, 2020, the NCAA college basketball season came to an end.  20 conference tournaments that had not yet been completed were cancelled (including the Ivy League whose cancellation was announced two days earlier).  The NCAA Tournament was cancelled.  The coronavirus and COVID-19 brought virtually all sports in America to a standstill, and for the first time since its inception, March Madness was not going to be played.  We here at HoopsHD are college hoops junkies.  We cannot get enough of this stuff.  And while we agree that the decisions made were the right ones, we also wonder, what would have happened if the coronavirus had not struck.  Well, wonder no more!  Over the next several weeks, we will be simulating out every cancelled conference tournament game, creating a Field of 68 that takes those results into account, and then playing out March Madness until a champion is crowned!

Keep an eye on the site on a regular basis for games and updates, and check out the “The Tournament That Wasn’t” link above for all of the details and each and every game.

They may have cancelled the games, but they can never cancel our love for the sport.

Be safe.  Stay healthy.  There will always be another Shining Moment.

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Tourney Talk: HoopsHD interviews Hofstra assistant coach Mike Farrelly

Posted on March 13, 2020 by Jon Teitel

Even though the NCAA tourney has been canceled we can still hear from the players/coaches who were good enough to make it. On Tuesday Hofstra beat Northeastern 70-61 in the CAA tourney title game to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Pride lost to the Huskies in last year’s CAA tourney but bounced back this year to claim the school’s 1st NCAA tourney bid since 2001. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to speak with assistant coach Mike Farrelly about what it feels like to make the NCAA tourney as a coach in 2020 after making it as a player back in 2001/2003.

You played basketball at St. Joe’s for Coach Phil Martelli, where your teams made a pair of NCAA tourneys: what is your favorite memory from your prior tourney experience? Just watching the selection show with my teammates. We did not get an auto-bid but assumed we would get an at-large bid so we just had to wonder what seed we would be. To see our team’s name pop up on the screen is something that I will never forget.

You now work for Coach Joe Mihalich: what makes him such a good coach, and what is the most important thing that you have ever learned from him? He is an unbelievable person and his biggest strength is as a great motivator. He gives our guys the confidence to do things that they might not have thought they could do before. He is a veteran who knows how to run a program and how to deal with any situation.

In the 2019 NIT you had a 6-PT loss to NC State: what did your team learn from that game that helped them this year? I remember that Jalen Ray had an open 3 in front of our bench toward the end of the game that would have cut their lead to 1. It was a great learning experience for us. They got a ton of offensive REB (19) as both teams missed a lot of threes while testing out the experimental 3-PT line. It was a road game in a tough environment, which I think helped us this year when we won on the road at UCLA back in November.

You lost back-to-back 2-PT games in mid-January but have won 12 of 13 since then: how were you able to turn things around in the middle of conference play? Both of those losses involved our opponents shooting an airball toward the end of the game and then putting the ball in the hoop right before the buzzer. I think it allowed us to to really re-focus. We played hard against Charleston and knew that we would get to play them again in February, and Delaware was 1 of our worst transition defense games of the year. It showed that every game really matters and that you have to be solid possession by possession: it does not always come down to the final play of the game.

Your team is top-20 in the country with 78.6 FT%/37.4 3P%: what is the key to being a great shooter? A couple of things. You need to shoot the ball the correct way: using the right form, keeping your elbow in, etc. Then you need to build your confidence by shooting it the right way over and over and over and getting reps in before and after practice. Not everyone is a good shooter when they 1st come to college but if they put in the work they can become an unbelievable shooter. FT shooting is about pure confidence: Coach Mihalich likes to say “Tough kids make FTs”.

Last week SR PG Desure Buie won the CAA Leadership Award and was named 1st-team all-conference: what makes him such a great player/leader? He is such an amazing story. He did not play much as a freshman and we brought in some other PGs to compete with him. To see him take the reins of our team 2 seasons ago and eventually make it his team has been great. Everyone loves/respects him so he can yell at his teammates when he needs to and put his arm around them when he needs to. He kept developing as a player and took an extra step this year as a senior in both workouts and games.

In the CAA tourney title game last Tuesday you had a 9-PT win over Northeastern to clinch the title: how were you able to overcome a halftime deficit, and what was the feeling like in your locker room afterward? We have had tough games with them all year: we needed a buzzer-beater to win at Northeastern and overcame a huge deficit against them at our place so we knew that it would be a battle. It was not a big concern to be down 2 PTS at halftime: we were just worried about getting better shots by trying to get some steals/rebounds on the defensive end. I felt like I was on Cloud 9 to get the win and it is something that I will never forget it.

The Pride have not made the NCAA tourney since 2001: what has the reaction been like since you returned to campus? It has just been a weird situation. Hofstra was shut down this week so there are no students on campus but we had a lot of great supporters in DC with us. It is just devastating that we cannot play in the NCAA tourney next week. We were probably not going to win it all, which means that we would have lost our last game of the season, but this way at least we get to go out with a great victory and an unbelievable feeling.

What kind of seed do you think that you deserved? I think that we were going to a 13 or 14 seed, which is often what our conference champ gets. Not a lot of schools in our range have a road win at UCLA on their resume but we would have had an opportunity to beat someone really good.

Any thoughts on the impact of the coronavirus on college basketball this month? Certainly it is very scary and I am glad that steps are being taken to be cautious. In my heart of hearts I hoped that playing in front of 100-200 people would be enough to go forward, or postponing it to “April Madness” would be an option, but the way things developed in the NBA the night before and then to wake up and see all of the conference tourney games getting canceled meant that the situation was heading in a bad direction. It was a rough night last night and it has been a rough morning today: we put in so much work this year and our seniors will never get that chance again. The NCAA tourney is the biggest thing in our lives: I do not know if people understand how important it is to us.

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Hoops HD, The Coronavirus/COVID-19, and the Cancellation of March Madness

Posted on March 12, 2020 by David Griggs

What is happening isn’t fair.  That’s a large part of how I feel.  I’m not saying that I think any decisions that were made were wrong.  I just hate that a freak set of circumstances denied so many players, coaches, and fans in all divisions of all sports the chance to finish their seasons and play in their championship events.

I’ll be honest, when I first started hearing about the coronavirus I was a little concerned, but it was still very easy to dismiss.  I felt the same when it showed up in the United States.  I felt the same when it proved to be fatal for some that contracted it.  I was sorry for what happened to them, but I still only thought of it as individual tragedies and not a national crisis.  I even felt that way when Chicago State and Kansas City opted not to travel to Seattle for their regular season games.  I admit that I was flippant about it on some of our shows and on Twitter.  I was wrong.  COVID-19 is a serious problem.  While a large part of me feels what is happening isn’t fair, I also respect why the conferences and the NCAA decided to cancel everything moving forward.

Whatever it is you are feeling about this…scared, angry, cheated, concerned, supportive, or whatever, I think you have a right to feel that way.  Over the past year or two, I’ve come to find (oftentimes to my surprise) that there are various people with strong ties to college basketball who follow this site.  For those who were directly impacted by the NCAA Tournament being cancelled, it is you that I and everyone else who works on this site feels for the most.  We all love watching your teams play, and we are all incredibly sorry that you will not get the chance to have that experience this year.  For us, we are just fans.  I wasn’t good enough to even play on my junior high team, much less for a div1 college team.  Games will be back on in November, and we’ll be back doing what we do throughout the season next year.  As sad as we are that The Tournament is cancelled and we won’t get to do the things that are fun for us, that’s not really important.  We have the rest of our lives to be fans.  It’s the players and coaches that we feel for the most.

In addition to being a former bad junior high basketball player, I’m also not a physician or high level science scholar.  What I do understand about the coronavirus/COVID-19 is that we are in the contagion stage and not into the full blown infectious stage.  It is a respiratory virus, which is spread through respiratory droplets and vapors.  In a sport like basketball where players are breathing heavily, and in each others faces, and sweating, and basically producing a maximum amount of “respiratory vapors,” there is a high level of concern of how one player who is infected could cause so many others to become infected.  I get that.  I also get that while the disease is not terminal in most people, particularly college-aged athletes, it is potentially terminal for a certain demographic of people.  In order to mitigate the infection stage, it is important to contain the contagion stage as much as possible.  That is why I agree with the thought process of cancelling these large gatherings even though I hate that it has to happen.

I also noticed that the NCAA was basically the last organization to announce any sort of cancelation.  I would like to think that they were exhausting all possible options to try and figure out a way to play the NCAA Tournament and give everyone a safe, exciting, and meaningful experience.  It wasn’t until that they felt it was impossible to pull off that they finally announced it was cancelled.  I do know that they did not make the decision arbitrarily.  They consulted with medical experts and heeded their advice.  That may not be much of a consolation to some people, particularly the players and coaches, but I do feel like they acted as the experts in the medical community advised them to act.

It’s fun being David Griggs.  It really is.  I think it reminds me of why I love this sport, and really all college sports, so much.  I don’t gamble, or play fantasy sports, or play video games, or have any really expensive hobbies, or anything like that.  I do this.  I love the sport to the point to where I have to do more than just watch it, and Hoops HD allows for me to have that outlet.  I have a blast doing it with all the people who contribute to the site, not just in March, but all year long.  We actually have formed a strong bond as fellow college hoops junkies, I’m sad that we can’t collectively have our annual Selection Committee and NCAA Tournament experience.  But, we will be back!  If making these decisions can help save lives, help the medical community get in front of this as we head into the infection stage, and help get us back to our normal routines sooner rather than later, then I can understand and agree with why it was done.

Be safe!  Stay Healthy!  See ya soon!!

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Tourney Talk: HoopsHD interviews Robert Morris assistant coach Mike Iuzzolino

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Jon Teitel

Even though the NCAA tourney has been canceled we can still hear from the players/coaches who were good enough to make it. On Tuesday Robert Morris beat St. Francis PA 77-67 in the NEC tourney title game to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Colonial lost to FDU in last year’s NEC tourney but bounced back this year to claim the school’s 1st NCAA tourney bid since 2015. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to speak with assistant coach Mike Iuzzolino about what it feels like to make the NCAA tourney as a coach in 2020 after making it as a player in 1991.

You began your college career at Penn State before transferring to St. Francis PA: why did you decide to transfer, and what made you choose the Red Flash? It was just not the right fit for me at Penn State and the opportunities I was hoping for did not transpire. St. Francis was closer to home and Coach Jim Baron did a great job of selling me on playing for him.

In 1991 you averaged 24.1 PPG and were named NEC POY/conference tourney MVP: what is the secret to being a great scorer, and what did it mean to you to win a title? Scoring is just about the work you put in: you have to embrace the daily grind of working hard on your craft. I was not the most athletic person and have never dunked in my life but I had good fundamentals in terms of shooting/passing/dribbling. Winning the tourney was 1 of the highlights of my career: it is really hard in a 1-bid league.

You were also named All-Academic POY: how did you balance your work on the court with your work in the classroom? You have to be committed/dedicated and stay organized about what you want to accomplish in your life. There are very few distractions when you are in a small town. The people around me helped me become successful: I had great professors/counselors/coaches who made sure I got the job done in the classroom.

You played 2 years with the Dallas Mavericks and then overseas in Italy/Greece/Spain: what is your favorite memory from your time in the NBA, and what was the biggest difference between the NBA vs. pro basketball overseas? The 1 thing I am proudest of is that I did not just sit on the bench and collect a paycheck: I averaged 9 PPG during my 2 years. I had some productivity and played a lot of minutes in a lot of games. In my era the athletic nature of the game was different with more athletes in the NBA, but you could see it evolving over time in Europe with great young players who eventually made it to the NBA.

You work for Coach Andy Toole: what makes him such a good coach, and what is the most important thing that you have learned from him so far? He wants us involved in all aspects of the program and wants our opinion before making any decisions. As much as Andy loves basketball he is such a well-rounded person and is very family-oriented. Both of our kids have always been around the program. He has taught me the importance of building a culture within your program and not deviating from that.

You had a stretch in late-February where you lost 3 out of 4 games: how were you able to turn things around 2 weeks ago? We just kept our guys with a very narrow focus on the task at hand as well as tried to motivate them. We just had to change some small aspects to win games.

2 of your starters are Jon/Josh Williams: what is it like to recruit a pair of brothers, and what is it like to have them on the same team? It is very special for them to play together and to win a conference championship. You love coaching high-character kids like them and they work hard every day: I have so much respect for their accomplishments/work ethic.

In the NEC tourney title game last Tuesday you had a 10-PT win over your alma mater to clinch the title: how much of a home-court advantage did you have in Moon Township, and what was the feeling like in your locker room afterward? What makes a 1-bid league so great is that the best regular season team gets to host games in the postseason. It was a great atmosphere but you still have to play the game at a high level and get your guys ready. Our guys worked so hard all year to reach that point: a guy like Dante Treacy had a rough patch as a freshman but came back as a sophomore and had an incredible game en route to being named tourney MVP after nobody even had him on their radar. AJ Bramah came in from a junior college so it was a big experience for him, as well as for our seniors to go out like that with a conference tourney championship.

What kind of seed do you think that you deserved? I never think about that. Most teams from our league are in the 1st 4 as a 16-seed but it does not even matter: I just hope the situation with the coronavirus is resolved so that nobody is placed at risk.

Any thoughts on the impact of the coronavirus on college basketball this month? I am not a medical person but it is heartbreaking for a lot of people. Not just the sports world: some people have lost their lives or are still affected by it. Hopefully there can be some resolution so we can move on with our lives, which I am sure we will do at some point.

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NCAA Tournament Cancelled – COVID-19 Update

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Chad

Virtually all of the remaining conference tournaments have now been cancelled….

In addition, several schools, most notably Duke and Kansas have announced that their athletics are suspended and their players will not compete until further notice.

We are awaiting a statement from the NCAA on what happens next.  At this point, it is down to a question of cancellation vs some form postponement.

4:30 PM Update:  The NCAA has cancelled the tournament and all winter and spring championships.

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Basketball and brains: HoopsHD interviews UMass Lowell Academic All-American Christian Lutete

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Jon Teitel

In these troubling times there are those who wonder about the tension between peace and conflict…and there are those who are actually figuring out how to resolve it. With an economics degree under his belt and a 4.00 GPA while studying for in master’s degree in peace and conflict studies, Christian Lutete might not only decide how to achieve world peace, but also how we can afford to pay for it! He started his college career at Radford and is finishing it with the River Hawks: in between he averaged 11.8 PPG/5 RPG in 121 games. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Christian about scoring 51 PTS in a game last November and the impact of the coronavirus on college basketball.

You began your college career at Radford: why did you decide to transfer, and what made you choose UMass Lowell? The opportunity at Radford just did not work out. UMass Lowell gave me an opportunity and it was a really good fit for me.

Each of the past 2 years you have been among the America East leaders in RPG: how are you able to be such a great rebounder despite standing 6’5”? I just try to play each possession as hard as I can. I take pride in being a high-motor player and helping in other ways besides scoring: rebounding helps us win.

In November you scored a career-high 51 PTS/7-12 3PM in a win at LIU: was it just 1 of those scenarios where every shot you put up seemed to go in because you were “in the zone”? It kind of felt like that, but during the game you are in the moment and doing whatever it takes to win so I did not even realize how many PTS I scored until my coach told me in the locker room afterward. I play my best basketball when I am aggressive and just trust what I can do. It was a great experience.

You and Josh Gantz are the only 2 seniors/grad students on the team: how do you think the team will do next year without you 2 veteran leaders? I think the team will still be good. We have a lot of young pieces that will continue to improve and the coaches are phenomenal. They are great people who run the program with integrity.

Earlier this week you were named an Academic All-American: how do you balance your work on the court with your work in the classroom? I am really honored to win the award because our program/coaches stress the importance of doing well both on and off the court. When I am in the classroom I am giving it 100% and trying to be the best student I can be, and on the court I try to be the best basketball player I can be. They go hand-in-hand: hard work, competition, etc. Education has been important to me since I was young.

1 of your high school teammates at Phillips Exeter was James Foye, who just made the Academic All-American team for the 2nd straight year as a senior at Dartmouth: what was he like back in the day, and did you simply have the smartest basketball team in the entire country? James is definitely smarter than me. We had a great bond during high school and he is a really close friend: we used to work out all the time in the off-season. It is a well-deserved honor because he is a great student/player/friend.

You already earned your bachelor’s degree in economics and now have a 4.00 GPA while working on a master’s degree in peace and conflict studies: why did you choose those subjects, and what is the post-graduation plan? I came here as a business management major but I enjoy economics. I wanted to do something more abstract/creative with my master’s so peace and conflict seemed like the best program: it is about how to create change in the world and what that change looks like. I want to play pro basketball and am working toward that goal, but I also want to be a positive change in the African-American community. I went to a public school in DC and it was not the best, but Exeter is probably the #1 academic school in the country. They are 2 different worlds and I want to bring some equality to education.

Your favorite sports figure was Kobe Bryant: what was your reaction after learning of his death in January? When I heard of his death I was immediately in disbelief. I thought he was like a mythical creature who would never die. I was shocked/sad for a while but seeing the reaction of people to his death shows how much influence he had during his life, which is great. He was not only my favorite player but also my favorite figure: he was tenacious in everything that he did and I love what he stood for.

Any thoughts on the impact of the coronavirus on college basketball this month? I just pray that people do not get sick. It sucks if fans cannot attend the NCAA tourney because they bring a lot of passion to the game. In the greater scheme of things this virus is happening everywhere: the NBA just got suspended yesterday. I hope they figure out a vaccine: our school is suspended as well and I have never seen anything like this in my young lifetime.

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