With West Virginia’s win over Portland Sunday night in the final of the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif., the Big East has now captured four holiday tournament championships.
GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni insists he won’t feel any twinge of emotion when he faces Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.Read the full story plus the latest on Eddy Curry here.
Doron Lamb is still mulling his college decision while trying to plan a visit to Arizona.
The 6-foot-4 Lamb out of Oak Hill (Va.) Academy has visited UConn, Kansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma. He is the No. 3 shooting guard in the Class of 2010.
“He likes the ones he visited,” his father, Calvin Lamb, said Monday morning. “He’s still up in the air.”
Calvin said a visit to Arizona would depend on both the Oak Hill and Arizona schedules. (more…)
West Virginia established itself as a serious national contender Sunday night by winning the 76 Classic in Anaheim with an 84-66 win over Portland in the final.
The Big East has now accounted for three major holiday tournament championships.
Unbeaten Syracuse (6-0) beat defending NCAA champ North Carolina last week to win the Coaches vs. Cancer event at Madison Square Garden.
No. 4 Villanova (6-0) – the Big East’s preseason No. 1 team – won the Puerto-Rico Tip-Off
And now the No. 8 Mountaineers (5-0) prevailed over a deep field in Anaheim.
Senior Da’Sean Butler was named tournament MVP after putting up 26 points on 10-for-16 shooting. He is now 13th on the all-time West Virginia scoring list with 1,532 points.
“The thing about it is he can score so many ways,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins told MSNsportsNET.com. “He can score off the bounce. He can score in the post. He makes the 3. He’s not a great percentage 3-point shooter but he makes big 3-point shots for us. When he kind of gets it going from 3 then he’s really hard to guard because that opens up his dribble drive.” (more…)
NEW YORK — J.J. Redick is aware of the widespread perceptions of white basketball players.
They are generally described as slower, less athletic and less “talented” than their African-American counterparts.
“I don’t buy into all that,” he said after scoring 7 points in the Magic’s 114-102 victory Sunday over the Knicks at MSG. “There’s perceptions, obviously, if you’re a white player. I think you just deal with it from the time you’re 8 on. It’s second nature, you don’t think about it.
“There’s a perception, who cares? Let’s move on.” (more…)
NEW YORK — Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni says Lawrence Frank was “doomed from the start” because of the Nets’ multitude of injuries.
“Lawrence was kind of doomed from the start in the sense of everyone got hurt,” D’Antoni said before the Knicks played Orlando Sunday night at MSG. “Thats a tough part of the business.”
The Nets fired Frank Sunday after losing their first 16 games of the NBA season. (more…)
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NEW YORK — Coming off Friday’s 68-59 loss to Duke, the good news for No. 13 UConn is that Ater Majok will debut in three weeks.
The 6-foot-11, 233-pound freshman forward becomes eligible to play Dec. 20 against Central Florida. A native of the Sudan who served time in a detention camp in Egypt before living in Australia, Majok joined the Husky roster last January and was eligible to practice with the squad for the remainder of the season, but was not able to play in games.
“Oh, my God,” said senior guard Jerome Dyson after the Duke game when asked how Majok will alter the team’s rebounding efforts. “The rebounding will step up. I definitely can assure that. It’s going to be a bigger lineup. It’s going to be faster. He’s fast, too. And it’s going to be fun to watch.”
Against a supposedly “unathletic” Duke team, the Huskies were outrebounded 56-43, and 25-14 on the offensive glass.
Majok, who dropped 30 points in a Greater Hartford Pro-Am game over the summer, tested the NBA Draft waters but never hired an agent and ultimately pulled his name out. Pro teams in Spain, Italy and Greece were reportedly interested but he opted to return to campus at least in part because UConn coach Jim Calhoun has developed so many NBA big men.
Said Calhoun: “At 6-10 with a 7-foot-7 reach, he’s going to make a major splash in our league.”
NEW YORK — Jon Scheyer hears his Duke team getting criticized for its lack of athleticism and believes it may be because three of its five starters are white.
“That definitely could be,” Scheyer said after pumping in 19 points, 5 assists and 5 rebounds to lead No. 7 Duke to a 68-59 victory over No. 13 UConn in the championship game of the Dick’s Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off at Madison Square Garden.
“Without saying too much I think that’s a possibility,” he added. “I think there’s definitely a thought of that. We have some really athletic [white] guys like Miles and Mason [Plumlee], for example, and I don’t really hear people talking about them being great athletes. So I don’t know what that means. But I do know that.”
A day before Rutgers earned a big 83-75 win over UMass in the semifinals of the Legends Classic, the Scarlet Knights got a big commitment.
Gilvydas Biruta, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound senior forward from Lithuania now playing for Dan Hurley at St. Benedict’s Prep, verbally committed to Rutgers Thursday.
Biruta chose Rutgers over Maryland, Davidson, Harvard and Penn. Arizona and Kentucky also reached out to Hurley in recent days.
“I did it yesterday [Thursday],” Biruta said of his commitment. ”I like the coaching staff and it feels like family.”
Biruta is Rutgers’ second 2010 commit, following shooting guard Austin Carroll of Brewster Academy.
Biruta described himself as a forward “who can step out and shoot a 3-pointer.”
Rutgers assistant Jimmy Carr recruited Biruta, who knows current Rutgers sophomore forward Greg Echenique from St. Ben’s. (more…)
One Jersey coaching legend is helping out another.
Bill Parcells has donated $100,000 to St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, home of legendary high school hoops coach Bob Hurley.
“Coach Bill Parcells is a New Jersey native and has many years’ experience with inner-city kids,” read a statement released by Parcells. “He said “I get it. I’ve coached enough and seen enough to know how important a good, solid education is. I have a lot of respect for what the faculty and staff are doing at St. Anthony’s. I’m glad to help in whatever way I can.”
Born in Englewood, N.J., Parcells coached both the Giants and the Jets, while Hurley has been at St. Anthony his entire coaching career.
He has led the Friars to 25 state titles and nine New Jersey Tournament of Champions crowns.
Two years ago Hurley led St. Anthony to an undefeated 32-0 season and sent six players to the Division 1 ranks.
A documentary film entitled “The Street Stops Here” chronicling that team will appear March 29 on PBS.
This year’s team features four seniors committed D-1: Ashton Pankey (Maryland), Devon Collier (Oregon State), Eli Carter (St. Bonaventure) and Derrick Williams (Richmond).
“Adam Zagoria sees the story behind the daily happenings.”
~ St. Anthony Coach Bob Hurley
Zagoria covers the New York Knicks and Big East hoops for NBA.com and SNY.tv. He also appears as a Big East Basketball Insider on SNY and 1050 ESPN Radio.
He is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in ESPN The Magazine, SLAM, SI and Basketball Times.
