Pickin' Splinters » Portsmouth

A10 bounce

Casey — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 01:16:23 +0000

Press conference for the hiring of Archie Miller (courtesy of UD athletics)

A weekly round-up of the latest comings and goings of Atlantic 10 men’s basketball.

Dayton Names Archie Miller New Men’s Basketball Coach

Miller served as the Associate Head Coach at Arizona the last two seasons.

DAYTON, Ohio – The University of Dayton has selected one of the top young assistant coaches in the country to be its new men’s basketball coach, naming Ryan “Archie” Miller today. Miller, 32, comes to UD from the University of Arizona where as Associate Head Coach he helped the Wildcats to a 30-8 season that ended with an Elite Eight berth. Miller succeeds Brian Gregory, who was named head coach at Georgia Tech last Monday.

Miller has a recent connection to two teams that just missed the Final Four this year. Prior to the last two years at Arizona, he was at Ohio State for two seasons.

The Beaver Falls, Pa. native was at Arizona the last two seasons, where his brother Sean is head coach. After going 16-15 in 2009-10, the Wildcats had the biggest turnaround of any top program in the country, improving by 14 wins to 30-8.

Xavier’s Chris Mack Named 2011 Skip Prosser Man Of The Year Award Winner

The Skip Prosser Award was established in 2008 to honor those who not only achieve success on the basketball court but who display moral integrity off of it as well.

April 4, 2011

CINCINNATI, Ohio – Xavier University second-year head coach Chris Mack has been named as the recipient of the 2011 Skip Prosser Man of the Year award. The Skip Prosser Award was established in 2008 to honor those who not only achieve success on the basketball court but who display moral integrity off of it as well.

“It’s an honor to receive an award that has Skip Prosser’s name attached to it,” said Mack. “It means an awful lot to me because Skip is the one who jump-started my coaching career and gave me a chance. I think about him every day. He was not only a great coach. It’s fitting that we honor his integrity and the person that he was. Skip was the most genuine person and friend that I have ever met in this business. Skip continues to be a great role model for me and everyone in this profession on how it should be done.”

Delroy James Set to Play in Portsmouth Invitational

Rhody standout among the top 64 seniors nationally invited to pre-NBA Draft showcase

KINGSTON, R.I. — Delroy James is among 64 players nationally who will participate in the 59th annual Portsmouth Invitational – a showcase for outstanding men’s basketball players in their senior year of college.

The tournament, which began in 1953, will be held from April 6-9 at Churchland H.S. in Portsmouth, Va.

Chicago’s Powell commits to Rhody

White to visit Bonnies

Saunders & Clark to Participate in Portsmouth Invitational Tournament

Duo joins Aaron Jackson as the second and third Dukes chosen for the P.I.T. in the past three years

PITTSBURGH – Duquesne seniors Damian Saunders (Waterbury, Conn./Notre Dame Prep) and Bill Clark (Redondo Beach, Calif./Worcester Academy) are among 64 college seniors who have been selected to participate in the 59th annual Portsmouth Invitational Tournament it was announced today.

The P.I.T., which is routinely attended by representatives from all 30 NBA teams as well as a number international scouts, is the only post-season event for college seniors prior to the NBA Pre-Draft Camp and the only post-season event to include game competition.

Fifty-seven former P.I.T. players are on NBA rosters with many others in the top leagues in Europe.

Gurley gets invite to Portsmouth

Anthony Gurley’s chances to impress professional scouts got a significant boost Wednesday when the University of Massachusetts guard got an invitation to the Portsmouth (Va.) Invitational Tournament. Gurley, a third-team, all-Atlantic 10 selection who averaged 18.7 points as a senior and scored 1,520 points in his college career, was a late addition to the event, which began play Wednesday night. Portsmouth annually serves as a showcase for seniors who want to play professionally. Scouts from the NBA and overseas professional leagues attend the event.

Porter Moser Named Head Coach at Loyola Chicago

Bills’ associate head coach returns to head coaching post

ST. LOUIS – Porter Moser was introduced today as the new head men’s basketball coach at Loyola University Chicago. He spent the previous four seasons as an assistant on the Saint Louis University coaching staff, the last three as associate head coach.

“We wish Porter and his family all the best at Loyola,” SLU head coach Rick Majerus said. “Loyola is getting a coach who truly embodies the Jesuit mission. We are thankful for his four years at the University and the impact he had on our student-athletes.”

GW’s Johnson and Fitzgerald Granted Transfer Release

WASHINGTON, DC — George Washington University sophomore Tim Johnson (Harvey, IL/Lee Academy) and freshman Chris Fitzgerald (Swansea, MA/Northfield Mount Hermon) have notified the GW men’s basketball coaching staff that they will not return to the team next season, GW head coach Karl Hobbs has announced. The University has granted their request for a release.

“Tim and Chris both have decided to continue their college careers elsewhere,” Hobbs said. “The coaches and myself appreciate what both Tim and Chris have done for our program and we wish them both the best in their futures.”

Coming soon

Stay tuned for the first annual Pickin’ Splinters rundown on the A10′s incoming class. Fans can get an in-depth look at all the new student-athletes to play next season in the Atlantic 10.

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The EPL in May: My Favorite Time of Year

Rey — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:00:17 +0000

by Patrick ‘Rey’ Reynell

www.dailymail.co.uk

The question arises every sports season. When is the best time of year in the sports world?

Football fans, January and February probably seems like heaven. The BCS bowls and National Championship followed by the pinnacle of the pigskin: The Super Bowl.

Maybe you’re a baseball fan. The best times of year are certainly book ends for you. Many try to suppress elation when pitchers and catchers report, but most find their pastime bliss in October and early November.

Basketball and hockey fans seem to have an eternity of a season. Ask most and you’ll certainly here about June.

For me, none qualify as the best time in sports. As the title states, the best time of year is the end of May. Not because the English Premier League will be crowning a champion, but due rather to the battle at the other end of the table: the fight against relegation.

For those unfamiliar with relegation in soccer, allow me for a moment, soccer connoisseurs, to explain to those novices like me reading.

Take all levels of professional baseball for example: A, AA, AAA, and the Major League. Eliminate the whole farm system affiliations and make each team its own business entity that can hire and fire as it pleases.

The EPL replicates this idea with the Premier League (Majors), League Championship (AAA), League 1 (AA)and League 2 (A). The only difference is the top three teams get promoted at season’s end, and the bottom three teams get relegated.

So based on last season, The Washington Nationals, Seattle Mariners, and San Diego Padres would be competing this season in AAA. The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, Louisville Bats, and Pawtucket Red Sox, all of the International League, would be playing Major League baseball in 2009.

Think of how that might change professional sports in America.

Even though I’m a basketball guy, the last few weeks of May present to us something quite unique in sports.

The majority of sports fans are average Joes, but more times than not, professional sports is a tale of nobility. The biggest, strongest, richest, and athletically gifted win the championships. Players who could not be further from who we are or the roles we have in society prevail while the ordinary begin reciting the infamous sports maxim, “there’s always next year.”

Sure we want our favorite teams to win, but since that is rarely the case, we often look for an underdog. Why? Because the underdog represents us.

Why do you think the best story come March is a Cinderella team? It’s a reflection of who we are.

Every season, The bottom the EPL becomes a perfect microcosm of middle-class America. The CEOs, like Manchester United, continually challenge for the top spot while the average employee, such as Sunderland, just wants to survive another day with the company.

The rich prosper and bask in the glory of championships and trophies. Meanwhile, the peons like me struggle to make ends meet month-to-month and are left only with delusions of grandeur.

American sports are unrealistic. If a team fails miserably, there’s no consequences. In fact, fail bad enough, and teams get rewarded with picking the new hot shot player for next season.

Not in the EPL. Finish in the bottom three and it’s a punishment. Moreover, teams won’t be bidding on top players; they’ll struggle to keep those who are good enough to be loaned to Premier league team. That’s more representative of life.

Time and again we see smaller clubs fighting for their Premiership lives by the end of May. Big clubs like Liverpool and Chelsea may feel dejected if they don’t win a championship, but smaller clubs, like Fulham last season, feel uninhibited respite when they narrowly avoid being relegated.

The joy of fans’ faces as the referee blows the final whistle exudes a feeling not often seen in sports: the feeling of accepted mediocrity only relative to those bidding adieu to the topflight football.

West Bromwich Albion, Middlesbrough, Hull City, Newcastle United, Sunderland, and Portsmouth will all be playing for the Premiership lives in the final two weeks of the 2008-2009 season.

Their respective matches are sure to be entertaining and hard fought. Fans will either sob for their club’s demise, or, for those lucky clubs who narrowly avoid the bottom three, revel in the fact that for another season, even if by only an inch, they can say that they’re competing with the best.

I’m a little guy. I love my teams, but they aren’t me; they suffer no consequences if they tank a season.

So you can have your NBA Finals, Stanley Cup, and game sevens. Take your Super Bowl Sunday and Mr. Octobers. Every year, I can’t wait for the end of May to watch the purest form of sport on display in any professional league.

Where teams are playing at their highest level until the very end. Where fans are more than proud to finish seventeenth. Where the common man takes center stage and plays with more heart and grit than a jaded, inflated payroll ever could.

Pomp(ey)ous Decision: Redknapp goes to Tottenham

Rey — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:38:57 +0000

I wish players would all spend their careers with one team. I’m not an idealist; I know this wasn’t even the case before free agency. But it would be nice, you know? Even more bothersome are the coaches who seem to bounce from team to team. It’s like Larry Brown was throwing darts and…bulls eye! “Thanks Detroit, off to the next city before I’m actually expected to win on a regular basis.” Doesn’t anyone want to stick around and prove just how good he is anymore? Is longevity just a virtuous pastime in sports?

Vince Lombardi. Tom Landry. John Wooden. Joe Pa. These coaches built and molded magnificent teams. They laid the groundwork for successful players with assembly line-like precision season after season. Now-a-days more credit is given to the General Manager for a team’s short lived success. Longevity is in the coaches, though. The coaches.

I noticed the same thing happening in soccer after the 2008 European championship. It bothered me, sure, but it didn’t surprise me. I haven’t been bothered by a managerial move until my post last week on Tottenham. A manager abandoning his team mid-season to join another team? In the same league? Who, by the way, is performing worse than the team he’s currently employed with? No, can’t be true…

Harry Redknapp is apparently a great coach. He’s salvaged a few teams on the verge of relegation, which is what he’s built his reputation on. Ultimately he’s the man responsible for Portsmouth FC’s (or Pompey as their fans call them) success and even existence in the English Premier League. Pompey won the Division One title in 2003 with Redknapp at the helm, thus earning promotion to the Prem. In Portsmouth’s first premier league season, Redknapp left in November, a third into the season, to become Southampton’s manager. Unable to keep them from relegation, he stayed on for one more season and when they did not regain promotion, he left in December 2005 – again, midseason.

Portsmouth welcomed him back with open arms as they had been spending dismal seasons at the bottom of the premier league table. It took some time, but Redknapp had Pompey on the road to success, finishing in the eighth spot which qualified them for UEFA cup, the club’s first European competition in their history (they even went on to win their first game, which sent them to the group stages).

Redknapp with FA Cup

The dream season for Pompey reached its climax in the infamous Wembley Stadium where they won England’s coveted FA Cup, their first. It was doubly sweet because they defeated Manchester United along the way. So all was well in the Port City, and Redknapp and his club went into this season with some high expectations. With England’s own David James in goal, Jermain Defoe, and the addition of Peter Crouch, things were looking up. Many picked them to finish in the top half of the table again, including me.

Perhaps the fear of actually having expectations other than, “just make it so we don’t get relegated, Harry!” scared old Redknapp off. He recently took the offer to manage Tottenham. Yes – the team who spent hundreds of millions of dollars only to be in danger of relegation. Oh – and lest we forget that he once again screwed Pompey by leaving halfway into the season. What was that conversation like?

“Hey Harry, old chap? Stop fulfilling people’s dreams there in Portsmouth and come to North London where expectations are irrationally set by our fans. We’re in dead last and have no money to spend, so you have to win with what we got. And don’t worry about leaving us midseason. If you don’t get the bloody job done, we’ll run you out of here. So what’ya say?” He said yes to this offer? Talk about fear of success, Harry.

But wait – here’s the kicker: Redknapp was given an award by the city of Portsmouth two days after he resigned and took the Tottenham job – and he actually showed up! Don’t believe it? You can watch the video at Dave’s Football Blog.

I’ve read about how Portsmouth has achieved as much as possible - the pinnacle reached - and that they don’t have the money to continue to contend like they’d wish. So it is therefore unforgivable for Redknapp to go to a club that can reach a level of success that continuously qualify them for European play. But to me, it seems like another typical move by a cowardly manager who feared lofty expectations by his own creation.

So what do guys like Harry do? Find a place where there is nowhere to go but

Redknapp with his new club, Tottenham

up so everyone will revel in your brilliance. Such is the current state at White Hart Lane, as Tottenham won their first game under Redknapp’s guidance and then upset Liverpool this weekend 2-1. But don’t stay to celebrate too long, Harry, because you might be expected to actually improve and achieve something other than getting out of the basement.

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On the flip side of Redknapp we have fellow Scotsmen Sir Alex Ferguson and David Moyes. Ferguson, the manager at Manchester United has been there since 1986 and his accolades are unmatched. He’s apparently announced his desire to step down in 2010. Naturally United fans want to know who will replace him. One name that has recently been mentioned is Inter Milan’s manager, Jose Mourinho.

Mourinho is the thriving clubs’ version of Redknapp. He won the Champions League while at FC Porto, then went on to Chelsea and steered them to their

Enjoy this image while it lasts, Inter fans

first premier league title in over fifty years. He won another and then left after some disappointing finishes in Champions League. His departure was perhaps more due to the unrealistic expectations of the fans and owners than Redknapp’s. Now he is at Inter Milan priming them for a return to stardom, trying to solidify the club ahead of traditional Italian powers Juventus and AC Milan.

My advice to United is to keep looking. Apparently there is something with this guy that causes management and fans to turn against him after only a

Sir Alex has brought titles galore to Old Trafford

little success. Don’t make a mess just to temporarily uphold what Ferguson has established at Old Trafford. You have to look at these candidates and think long-term.

You won’t replace Sir Alex, so don’t try to. Find someone with a little thing called commitment. I hate to say it, but Everton’s David Moyes seems all too perfect for this. He is dedicated, evidenced by recently signing a new contract extension

Next Scotsman at Old Trafford?

for a club that is incessantly inept in off-season acquisitions. Despite this, Moyes praises the club and expresses his dedication to make things right at Goodison Park. I’d love to see him take over Scotland’s national team some day, but with United available, maybe Moyes will be the next Scot to manage at Old Trafford. At least you can trust that he won’t be like Redknapp or Mourinho and leave after what he achieves what he wants.