Under the Radar Game of the Day: Stephen F Austin at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 3:00 PM Eastern, espn3
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Entering play today, only three conferences remain with more than one team still undefeated in league play. One of those conferences, the Ivy League, has only seen each team play 2-3 games so far, so it is not surprising that Princeton, Columbia and Yale are all undefeated (Princeton and Yale do meet tonight). The second of those conferences, the Big West, features a pair of teams, UC-Irvine and Hawai’i, sitting at 6-0 and 5-0 respectively. The third conference amazingly has three teams that are each 7-0 for a combined 21-0 against the rest of their conference competition. The conference is the Southland, and the teams are Houston Baptist, Stephen F Austin and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. Houston Baptist will have a tough home test today against Sam Houston State, but the UTR Game of the Day is the battle between the later two of the three teams as the Lumberjacks of Stephen F Austin will be heading down to Corpus Christi to take on the Islanders.
Stephen F Austin enters play today with a record of 14-5 overall. Their KenPom rating of 98 is the best amongst Southland teams. Unfortunately, they struggled in non-conference play, failing to capture a signature win while losing games to Northern Iowa and Tulane. The ‘jacks also did something that we tend to frown upon here at HOOPS HD by scheduling the maximum number of non-D1 games (4). That being said, they have not lost since Southland play began and if they keep winning, a top two seed in the SLC tournament (which comes with a bye into the semifinals) could be in store — and then they would merely need to win two games to be back in the Big Dance. The Lumberjacks are led by senior Thomas Walkup. Walkup is having another excellent season, including just coming off a 22 point effort in a win over Lamar.
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi is presently an impressive 16-3 on the season, and although KenPom has them rated below SFA, the Islanders RPI of 130 is the best in the Southland (SFA is at 172). The Islanders only three losses on the season came at Texas, at Texas A&M and at Wisconsin, none of which are bad by any means. Unfortunately, none of their wins were against teams of note (the best one probably having come at Elon), which leaves this team’s only realistic shot at an NCAA bid coming by winning the SLC tournament. That being said, a win today gives the Islanders an inside track on one of the top 2 seeds in the conference tournament. Corpus Christi is led by Rashawn Thomas, who is coming off of his sixth double-double of the season last time out against Southeastern Louisiana.
One final note about the Southland: In these days of unbalanced conference schedules, which the SLC and its 13 members have, a quirk in the scheduling has given us a bit of a gift this year. The top three teams (Houston Baptist, SFA and Texas A&M-CC) will all play each other twice, home-and-home, during the regular season. Further, the fourth best team in the league, Sam Houston State, will also play all three teams twice this season. Thanks to that, the two teams that do win the top seeds in the conference tournament this year will certainly have earned their spots.
Throwback Thursday: A March To Madness (Part 2)
Click here for David Griggs’ News and Notes for January 28, 2016
Click here for Chad Sherwood’s UTR Game of the Day and #LopesWaiver Petition
When we originally focused on John Feinstein’s book A March To Madness two weeks ago (click here for Part 1), we took a look at all 9 teams in the ACC going back to the 1996-97 season. We looked at the teams, but didn’t really go too much in depth to the coaches themselves.
North Carolina has Dean Smith, who could best be described as the first patriarch of the ACC. He began coaching in the 1960s after replacing Frank McGuire. Smith was originally a member of Kansas’s basketball teams under the legendary Phog Allen and honed his coaching skills both at Kansas (as the last man off the bench) and as a coach for an Air Force travelling team during his tour of duty; this is not to be confused with Air Force University in the Mountain West. Smith would go on to win numerous ACC Championships, two national titles and reached what was then the all-time win record in 1997.
The second patriarch is Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. He attended West Point and was the captain not only for Bob Knight’s team at Army, but also a captain in the U.S. Army during his post-academy tour of duty. After completing his service, Krzyzewski would spend a year as an assistant for Bob Knight in Indiana before taking the Army job in the 1975-76 season and ultimately the Duke job beginning with the 1980-81 season. Even back surgery in 1995 could not derail what has been a hall-of-fame career for Coach K, who has 1,000+ wins, 5 NCAA titles and counting.
Gary Williams was another fascinating coach; his career included stops at American, Boston College and Ohio State, but Maryland was his first and last home. After his playing career at Maryland and a teaching gig at Camden High School in New Jersey, he was encouraged by Tom Davis, his former assistant at Maryland, to join him as a full-time assistant at Lafayette College in the early 70s. The only catch was that he also had to be the head women’s soccer coach for Lafayette as well. Even though he had never played or coached soccer, he did learn how the game was played and actually had a decent career as both soccer coach and assistant at Lafayette (and later Boston College) under Tom Davis. He restored Maryland to prominence it once had under Lefty Driesell and even exceeded it with 2 Final Four appearances, including the 2002 NCAA Championship.
Rick Barnes also has a fascinating back-story as it relates to his beginnings in the coaching ranks. He was originally scheduled to interview for an assistant’s position at Davidson under Eddie Biedenbach during the summer in the 1970s. Barnes actually sat in a hot gym for over 12 hours waiting for Biedenbach, but ultimately did get the job. He did double-duty between the assistant gig and early morning shifts at a nearby lumberyard. He would ultimately land head coaching jobs at George Mason for a year and Providence for 6 seasons before taking the job at Clemson. While he did reach the Sweet 16 at Clemson, he would ultimately make a bigger name for himself at Texas while leading the Longhorns to the Final 4 in 2003.
While Williams was an assistant at Lafayette, another up-and-coming coach by the name of Pat Kennedy would begin his paid coaching career as an assistant at Lehigh under Brian Hill. Kennedy had actually been a student-coach at Kings College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; he coached their JV while he was a varsity player for Kings. After stops at Kings and Lehigh, he took the Iona job after Jim Valvano moved on to NC State. Kennedy actually led Iona to multiple NCAA Tournaments, but as the Big East began beating Iona for prized recruits, Kennedy moved on to Florida State. He led the Seminoles to the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 in 1992 and 1993, respectively. He even turned down the UNLV job in between the aforementioned years. He was never able to replicate that success; he also coached at DePaul after leaving Florida State following the 1996-97 season.
Both Dave Odom and Jeff Jones had Virginia connections; they served as assistant coaches at one time under Terry Holland. Odom actually saw the assistant job at UVa as a promotion from his head coaching job at East Carolina; while he was unable to have any consistent success at East Carolina, he did lead Wake Forest to their most consistent stretch of success since the 1960s. Thanks to players like Randolph Childress, Rodney Rogers and Tim Duncan, Odom was able to reach the Elite 8 in 1996 and also had 2 other seasons where they made the Sweet 16. Odom would also eventually move on to South Carolina and became the only coach to lead a team to back-to-back NIT titles.
As for Jeff Jones, he was also a member of Virginia teams in the early 1980s that included Ralph Sampson, Othell Wilson and Jeff Lamp. Jones as a head coach made it as far as the Elite 8 in 1995, upsetting the hometown Kansas Jayhawks in the Sweet 16. After getting dismissed at Virginia, Jones took a sabbatical from coaching before resurrecting himself at American and Old Dominion.
Bobby Cremins had built Georgia Tech up from nothing when he took the job in the early 1980s; he also had success in his first head coaching job at Appalachian State. He was a fabulous recruiter (Mark Price, John Salley, Dennis Scott, Kenny Anderson, Travis Best and Stephon Marbury all had notable careers) and had reached the Final 4 in 1990, the Elite 8 in 1985 and the Sweet 16 on 3 other occasions. He would also coach for a few seasons at Charleston before hanging up the whistle for good.
Herb Sendek was an interesting coach at NC State in quite a few ways. He was the polar opposite of legendary Jim Valvano from the public point of view, but he was also responsible for a lot of Miami of Ohio’s success in the mid-1990s. He also recruited a lot of players that ultimately made the Sweet 16 under Charlie Coles in the 1998-99 season. Sendek was able to give NC State fans a ray of hope in the 1996-97 season with their improbable run to the ACC Championship in 1997 with wins over Georgia Tech, Duke and Maryland. He ultimately led the Wolfpack to 5 straight NCAA Tournaments (including a Sweet 16 in 2004-05), but it was not enough to satisfy a fan base in the Triangle that was tormented by Duke and North Carolina’s success. He would move on to Arizona State, where he was able to get the Sun Devils to the NCAA Tournament twice in 8 seasons.