Running 2010-11 BKC thread

My beloved Cougs beat USC last night. Hours later, WAZZU star Klay Thompson, the Pac-10's leading scorer, is found to be in possession of drugs. He won't play Saturday vs. UCLA, at the least.
I say, unless he can prove innocence beyond the shadow of a doubt by then, he sits out next week's Pac-10 tourney. Which means the Cougs don't have a shot at making the Big Dance at all. That sucks, but I'd more rather see the team miss the Big Dance without its star than for Thompson to lead the team into the Big Dance and then say, "Oh yeah, I was doing drugs."

 

They'll need to be patient. Oliver Purnell willingly left Clemson, so it's not like the school had to settle for any coach floating about the Final Four hotel.

After seeing Purnell's work at Dayton and Clemson, he could be the right guy, but DePaul needs to show some patience if it wants to be competitive in the Big East.

 

Says something about Clemson that he felt like he had a better chance to succeed at DePaul. Now, I know DePaul did pay more than $2 million a year, so I wonder if it's a bottom line decision or if he really thinks he has a real shot at making DePaul a winner.

He's soon to be 58, so an extra $750k a year over, say, five years is roughly $3.75 million. A cynic can say he was just trying to boost his retirement funding by a few million dollars if he's able to survive five years to 63. And if he manages to find a way to win, he can retire a hero.

It's funny how you look at jobs when you are 40 and how you look at them when you are 58. I wonder if a 40-year-old Purnell coaching at Clemson would take the DePaul job or just leverage it for more money from Clemson.

 

Interesting take on Purnell. DePaul is lucky because I suspect that Purnell has been around the scene long enough to remember when DuPaul was a daunting program under Ray Meyer, fueled by stars like Terry Cummings.

Given the background of the other long-time ACC schools, Clemson is quite the deviation from the norm. Rick Barnes bolted for Austin, a school known for caring about football much, much more than basketball. Thing is, I think Barnes felt like he could do more with Texas in the Big XII than he could with Clemson in the ACC (i.e., saw more of a chance to compete with Kansas for king of the conference hill rather than stay in the ACC, where he openly feuded with Dean Smith and wasn't likely to climb over Duke or Chapel Hill). Larry Shyatt didn't get it done, and Purnell's scenario was somewhat similar to that of Barnes' in that he left before the building job was complete.

The impression I've always had is that Clemson's ACC basketball ceiling is limited - in part because it has always considered itself a football school - and that successful coaches are either bumping their heads on it or getting fired. It just has never come across as that place where a coach can build something big and remain there long term.

Oliver Purnell had things rolling and probably could have stayed in Clemson for a while. Yet he wanted to see if he could rebuild the mess at DePaul.

 

I always felt that for many of the traditional private school powers, the key to staying relevant is, well, staying relevant. In other words, if Villanova slipped to a lowly status for any sustained period, it would be harder for them to come back than ever people because college sports, even basketball, is increasingly becoming more the domain of big-money state schools.

There are the obvious exceptions, starting with Duke and I may be way off on this, but I just get the feeling that the more resources you have total in your athletic department, the better chance you have. Of course, it's not the only factor. I wouldn't want to coach at Clemson, for example.

Let me put it like this: I'd rather try to turn things around at, say, Alabama or LSU, where interest isn't there but resources are. As bad as things have been at Auburn, they still built a new arena. LSU is awful, but they still built a new practice facility. It's called having access to resources.

If you can find a way to win, you'll gain interest, which gives you increased access to resources. If you are at DePaul or Providence and you win, the resources are still relatively limited, unless you can push it to a Duke level of success which is hard to do without first having the resources.

I may be way off on all this, but that seems to be the direction we're headed in to me.

 

Dear Seth Greenberg:

Just because you beat Duke, that doesn't mean your team is necessarily in the Big Dance yet.

Losing to Clemson isn't going to help matters. You better win the ACC tournament.

Yours truly,

The NCAA Tournament Committee

IPTAY is leading VaTech, 68-58, :31 left in game.

 

Why would CBS leave a top-25 game and one of the best rivalries in the country before it was decided in most markets, including KC apparently, to show the start of Arizona pounding a bad Oregon team or a mediocre Big Ten game?

 

I don't know but the local KC CBS affiliate is getting hammered by people on its Facebook page. I would also imagine it's a rough day for whomever answers the phones there.

It was a really terrible call on someone's part, but there are now KC sports radio personalities saying KC now has its Heidi game and that jobs should be lost because of this. Seems a bit extreme.

But KU wins its 7th straight Big 12 championship, outright, and snaps Mizzou's 17 game home win streak. And the Tigers are limping into the Big 12 tournament.

 

UConn on a 13-0 run against ND after Hansbrough fouls out with about 8 minutes left. It was a questionable decision at best to put him back in the game w/4 fouls at that point (and with an 8 point lead as well). But a dumb foul by Hansbrough, who was in the game for about 10 seconds before fouling out because of an obvious shove.

 

ND ends up winning because of the zone, however. UConn couldn't beat it.

 

Bruce Pearl.

Mike Anderson.

As far as this TigerVol is concerned, DePaul can have them both!

 

Michigan punches its NCAA ticket and kicks flop-of-the decade Sparty into the NIT.