B-RadHoops - March 2008

March 30, 2008

Our players are in the midst of off-season training.  But other Radford student-athletes are beginning conference play in their sports.  Our men’s tennis team is 7-0 and will move up in the national rankings this week.  They are really good.  I love watching tennis and I encourage anyone within driving distance of campus to check out Mike Anderson’s squad.  These guys can play.  #1 Martin Sayer is among the best singles players in the country.  I watched some of his match last week against Elon.  He is fiercely competitive and fantastically poised. Cool as a cucumber.  His opponent was good and kept trying to intimidate Martin after winning some tough points with defiant stares across the net.  Martin’s game face calm and clutch play must have been demoralizing to his opponent as Sayer won tie-breakers in both winning sets for the victory.  I am going to encourage our players to watch our tennis team and specifically Martin in action.  He is a visual lesson in mental toughness that our guys can learn from. 

Our coaching staff heads to San Antonio on Thursday for the Final Four and the National Association of Basketball Coaches Annual Convention.  And what a Final Four field we have.  UNC, UCLA, Memphis & Kansas.   These teams are so good. All number 1 seeds.  Rosters filled with HS All Americans and future pros.  Here are some thoughts from watching the Regional Finals: Carolina is deep, wears opponents down and has one of the most competitive players to ever play college hoops.  As TV analyst Jay Bilas aptly states in defining Tar Heel center Tyler Hansbrough, “his will exceeds his skill, and his skill is considerable”.     

Memphis is fast, quick and aggressive.  That’s a nice trio of traits to possess.  I have known John Calipari since he was a senior at Moon HS in Coraopolis, PA and I was recruiting him a bit for American University my first year out of school in 1978.  John is on his way to being a Hall of Famer.

UCLA has one of the most fundamentally sound young “bigs” you will ever see in Kevin Love.  And he’s just a freshman – yikes.  This makes three straight Final Fours for Ben Howland and UCLA.  It reminds me of something Bill Walton always mentions about UCLA.  “At UCLA it is not about making the Final Four, it is about winning national championships”.  Can you imagine how much pressure there must be on Ben Howland and the Bruins to win it all this year?  

Kansas has as many big-time athletes as any team in the country.  They are big and long and extremely quick.  Davidson double teamed their post players and that bothered them early.   And they did not do an especially good job in special situations like inbounding the ball and defending out of bounds plays.   They could win it all but Davidson exposed some weaknesses.

I was sorry to see Davidson lose today.   Bob McKillop is one of the best coaches in the country!  I have known Bob since our days playing playground ball at Prospect Park on Long Island when I was a HS player and he was playing at Hofstra.  We still kid about who has next game at Prospect.  I have watched him coach teams at two different Long Island HS’s and now at Davidson.  He is simply one of the best in the college game.   And who knows….maybe next year.

Next stop San Antonio. Go Highlanders.

Brad 

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March 23, 2008

It's here--March Madness--and RU played five games this past season against teams who made it to the dance. One is still alive and in the Sweet 16.

We knew West Virginia was good when we hosted them in Dedmon this past season. But this good? Bob Huggins has WVU playing outstanding defense and rebounding aggressively. Mountaineer forward, Joe Alexander, who didn’t have a D-I scholarship out of HS, is developing into a pro prospect.

We knew Georgetown was really good when we played them earlier in the year as well. All their guys had D-I scholarships out of HS! And they have a lot of NBA prospects on their team. But that didn’t keep Davidson (where RU Assistant Coach Ali Ton is still the Wildcats all time leader in career assists) from outplaying them in the 2nd half to reach the Sweet 16. And it allows me the opportunity to reveal the real story about Virginia Tech’s recruitment of Davidson star Stephen Curry. Tech was out of scholarships after getting early commitments from Nigel Munson and a player by the name of Tyrone Appleton. An offer was extended to Curry to walk on for a year and then receive a scholarship. Ironically, had he agreed to do that he would have had a scholarship for all 4 years as Appleton did not qualify academically. Whatever happened to Appleton? He recently committed to Kansas for next year after starring the last two seasons at Midland TX JC.

Texas is also in the Sweet 16. But did you see DJ Augustin miss the first of two free throws with 1 second left and Texas up 2 on Miami? Some people think he is the BEST PG in college basketball ready to jump to the NBA. He shot an air ball short by a foot! We all have to remember these are young men not pros. And not immune to pressure unlike anything they have been through before.

The Division III Final Four was held this past weekend in Salem. I went to the Championship Game on Saturday and saw Washington University of St. Louis play Amherst. Congrats to Wash U coach Mark Edwards. He's been there for 27 years. He also happened to be an assistant at Washington State University in 1977, when I was a freshman guard on that Cougar team. 

This week I plan on making progress with our schedule for next season. We now have 18 games with Big South scheduling partners. That's because Gardner Webb officially joins the league next year, and Presbyterian is a scheduling partner despite those games not counting in conference standings. That allows us to schedule up to 11 more games against non-conference opponents to reach the NCAA limit of 29 regular season contests. Here are six non conference matchups I'm in the process of negotiating for next season: West Virginia, James Madison, William & Mary, Virginia, George Mason and Wake Forest.

I'm not sure they will all work out, but we're doing our best to play non-conference teams that will help build even more of a following and attendance for RU Men's Basketball. 

Go Highlanders

Brad

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March 16, 2008

When you have 23 wins under your belt, and have a chance to earn some more W’s you deserve EXTRA attention from B-RadHoops. Those 23 wins belong to the Coach Jeri Porter’s team who played their hearts out earlier today in a tear-jerker Big South final against Liberty. It took a Megan Frazee prayer in the lane with two-tenths of a second left to defeat RU 66-65. But Coach Porter and her team will be making the first post-season appearance since 1996 in the WNIT and that is a tremendous accomplishment all Highlanders should be very proud of. We’ll find out all the details for the WNIT on Monday night after the Women’s NCAA Selection Show. Congratulations ladies. It’s an honor to share Dedmon Center with you.

Go Highlanders

Brad

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March 16, 2008

March Madness is not limited to college hoops.  This past week and weekend our staff traveled to watch more State Tournament action in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.  And it was great timing. Earlier in the week, I heard from former RU star Correy Watkins who has a cousin on Charlotte’s East Mecklenburg HS team, a team we watched win a state title in Raleigh on Saturday night.   

 In more alumnus hoop news - Antoine Dalton, a former player at RU, has been invited and has agreed to serve as a representative for President Kyle and Radford University at the upcoming Winston Salem State Presidential Inauguration of Dr. Donald Julian Reeves. 

 As an American U alum, I was excited to be able to attend the Patriot League championship game in Washington, DC on Friday.  The Eagles will dance for the first time.  Congrats to Coach Jeff Jones. Our guys are back in town and we start off-season workouts Monday morning.  Watching conference tournaments and champions being crowned has made our staff even more motivated to get back into the gym with our players.  

We want Digger and Jay and the rest of those talking heads singing Highlander praise in the very near future.  So while we aren’t allowed real team practices again until next fall, it is during the “off” season that players can and must make tremendous strides.  The work ethic exhibited during these times will tell us a lot about which of our players really want to get better. You never know where you will get a scouting tip on a possible prospect.  But it has come to my attention thru a scouting ‘birddog” of mine that on a spring break Norwegian Majesty cruise some RU students including a kid from Connecticut with hops talked up Radford Basketball.  I now refer to my brother Seth as “Bones” as in Bones McKinney, the legendary Wake Forest coach. 

Why – because after SG won his second ACC Coach of the Year award in just his fourth year in the league he joined Bones and Bobby Cremins as the only coaches with multiple COY awards in their first four seasons in the ACC.  Selection Sunday is a day of controversy.  So I might as well join the mix with an opinion or two.  With 341 Division I teams and the mix of automatic and at large bids, you will always have some worthy teams disappointed after the brackets are revealed.  It is not a tournament where the 65 best teams participate.  And RPI (ratings percentage index – too confusing to understand), SOS (strength of schedule), top 50 wins, unbalanced league schedules, and other tools and factors can be manipulated by anyone to strengthen the cause of one’s favorite or challenge the worthiness of someone else’s. 

The only given is there will be teams on the outside looking in that are better than some in the field.  That’s life.  And this year two of them are Virginia Tech and Arizona State.  In Virginia Tech’s case the probable reason they were not selected would be not enough “top 50 wins”.  In Arizona State’s case it would be a poor overall strength of schedule. 

But if you are a fan of VT you can quickly point to a 4^th place finish in the #1 RPI league in the country.  And if you are ASU you’re arguing two wins and a higher league finish than Arizona.   That’s life. And one more given – RU Assistant Coach Ali Ton will be in Raleigh at the end of this week to watch his Davidson Wildcats in action against Gonzaga.  Go Highlanders.

Brad

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March 9, 2008

It is strange to be on the sidelines watching teams from leagues all across the country still playing regular season games while the Big South tournament champion has already been crowned. Congrats to Winthrop on their win at Asheville Saturday when they shut down Asheville’s backcourt, got a huge game from senior Michael Jenkins and once again played their way into the big dance. We played Winthrop three times this past season and they were the only Big South team that played consistently well for the entire season. They will represent the conference well.

It’s Spring Break for our players and the rest of Radford’s student body. It is the only “normal student” break our players have gotten to experience all year. In a team meeting last Thursday I told them to enjoy the time away because we will get back to work on the 17th with intense strength and conditioning, and individual workouts on the court as per NCAA off-season rules.

We need to make a quantum leap at the defensive end next year and some of our individual workouts will focus on defensive fundamentals. We need to improve our positioning and footwork guarding the ball. We want to be more aggressive defensively next season and do a better job guarding three point shooters where this year’s opponents shot .36% against us.

We also need to improve our ball-handling skills. We have to become better dribblers and passers. We committed an average of 17 turnovers a game this year. Our opponents only committed 14 turnovers a game and as a result they got 5 more shots a game than we did. That’s not good.

HS state tournaments are now underway and our staff watched games and prospects in Virginia and North Carolina this past week. Good luck to Radford Hall of Famer Doug Day’s Blacksburg Bruins who are on their way to Richmond for an AA final four game later this week.

I was hoping to watch future Highlander Art Parakhouski next week in Hutchinson, Kansas at the junior college national championships. But the College of Southern Idaho was upset Saturday night in their region championship game. Here’s a link to a story about their semifinal win on Friday night.

http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2008/03/08/sports/local_state/132379.txt

If you know someone who would enjoy reading B-RadHoops please pass this along.

Go Highlanders

Brad

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March 2, 2008

It's Big South Conference tourney time. An 8 team, win you keep on playing, lose one and you are finished tournament. We play Tuesday night in Rock Hill, SC at Winthrop. They lost at home on Saturday afternoon to UNC Asheville giving UNCA the regular season Big South title. When Kenny George suits up for UNCA, they are very hard to beat. He missed a number of games midway through the conference schedule and that's when UNCA slipped a bit. He came back a few games ago and at full strength, the Bulldogs are once again very tough to beat.

Winthrop boasts an All League backcourt and there are three keys to us beating them on Tuesday. (1) We have to be able to contain Chris Gaynor and Michael Jenkins along with forward Taj McCullough --all double figure scorers. (2) We have to run our offense with precision making aggressive moves with the ball to drive, and hard cuts without the ball to catch it in a good scoring position against a very sound defensive team. (3) And we must match their physicality and "man up" against a team that usually plays with a winning swagger. How much of that swagger is still there will become evident on Tuesday. Winthrop has been king of the Big South hill for a long time and surrendering the regular season crown to UNCA will probably motivate them to a new level. But it could also result in being psychologically dinged up a bit and tight. We've been getting off to good starts in most of our games of late. That was the case in our game at Winthrop earlier in the year. It's important that we get off to a good start on Tuesday to send Winthrop an early message that we are going to be mentally and physically tough for 40 minutes. That's what it will take to get to advance to the Big South semis in Asheville on Thursday against the winner of the Coastal Carolina vs. High Point game.

This past week we lost two games. Our effort against High Point was the only "off" game in our last ten. We didn't defend the way we had been. And if you don't defend Arizona Reid he can and will and did beat us on his "Senior Night". We played a much stronger and competitive game on Saturday at Liberty on another Senior Night. But it was Liberty Junior Anthony Smith that did the most damage against us that night. The Liberty loss ended our chance for a first round home game but our spirits are high, our will is strong and we will travel to Rock Hill tomorrow with a game plan that is sound.

If you know someone who would enjoy reading B-RadHoops please pass this along.

Go Highlanders.

Brad