Every year, in every draft, there’s a player or two or four who falls farther than expected. Whether it’s a projected Top-5 pick who sticks around until the double-digits, a Green Room guy who stays in the arena longer than everyone else, or a first-round talent who drops to the second, it’s an annual tradition.

Then there are those guys who wait by the phone all night and never hear their name. This year’s most notable snubs… Read More »

It’s a great day for Georgia Tech and Texas. The slept-on Yellow Jackets get their high-energy, athletic power forward back from the brink of the NBA Draft. Gani Lawal decided to withdraw his name to go back to Atlanta for a chance at doing serious damage in the ACC alongside Derrick Favors.

And Texas is getting another possible first-rounder back. Damion James will return to Austin instead of going towards the bottom of the first round. He makes UT the class of the Big 12, and a real Final Four contender next year. Read More »

His team’s back is against the ropes and their legs are wobbly, so Dwight Howard pulled the only card he had left in the motivational playbook: He made a guarantee. Sort of. “You want me to get up here and say the season is going to be over tomorrow? That’s not what anybody should do or anybody should think,” Howard told reporters going into today’s Game 5. “I believe that we’re going to be going back to L.A.” So it didn’t exactly have the bravado of Jim Fassel’s “We’re GOING to the playoffs” poker speech, or even Mo Namath’s “We’re the best team in basketball” line from the Cavs/Magic series, but Dwight got the point across … Read More »

For any coach, winning in college basketball has everything to do with two things: Actual coaching (game planning, X’s-and-O’s, etc.), and recruiting. As Pete Bell painfully found out in Blue Chips, you can be the best in the world at Column A, but you won’t get very far without success in Column B.

That’s what makes the 7-versus-10 matchup in this year’s East regional so intriguing. Read More »