Basketball Page 871 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

John Calipari Received The Key To The City, And The Plaque Has Typos In The Words "The" And "Its"
John Calipari and the NCAA championship trophy kicked off a whistlestop tour of the state today, and one of the first stops was in Pikeville, Ky., where Calipari received the key to the city. Perhaps the ceremonial plaque was whipped up hastily, but it sports a pair of typos. [Twitter]...

Nerlens Noel Will Play For Kentucky After Shaving Its Logo Into His Hair
Basketball players don't typically play the Signing Day shell game by picking hats off a table, so it's nice to see Nerlens Noel be a bit more creative....

Bristolmetrics: Brittney Griner Got More Mentions On <em>SportsCenter</em> Than Any Kentucky Wildcat
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....

Baylor Hoops Teams Were Really Big On The Illegal Text Messages
Stop me if you've heard this before, but a school that quickly rose to athletic prominence is now facing punishment for a myriad of recruiting violations. This time it's the Bears of Baylor, who were found by an NCAA probe to have racked up nearly 2,000 impermissible phone calls and text messages to...

FIU Survives The Isiah Thomas Era
Florida International fired Isiah Thomas as head coach today, after three seasons in which the Golden Panthers won 7, 11, and 8 games. On the bright side, there have been no major lawsuits or violations. They have not become the laughingstock of college hoops. The program still exists. I would call ...

John Calipari Used To Make A Nets Intern Defend Him By Calling Into New York Talk Radio
Now that John Calipari has finally won an NCAA championship, Adrian Wojnarowski has written something over at Yahoo that posits the Knicks' job as Calipari's potential next step. Wojnarowski is a terrific reporter, so the rationale behind his suggestion—money, the spotlight, leverage, Calipari's bit...

Science! Simulates The Kentucky Wildcats Vs. The Washington Wizards
Paul Bessire runs PredictionMachine.com and created the Predictalator, the most advanced sports forecasting software available today. The technology has the ability to account for all of the statistical interactions of the players, coaches, officials, and fans (homefield advantage) in each game. The...

Baylor Assistant Damion McKinney Wore A Tablecloth As A Necktie To The National Championship
I believe that's Baylor women's assistant coach Damion McKinney as spotted before last night's 80-61 victory that capped off a 40-0 season for the lady Bears. I have no idea what he is wearing as a necktie. Did he eat at Red Lobster and forget to remove his bib? Was he arguing before the United Sta...

Here's What Kentucky's Championship Celebration Sounded Like Over The Lexington Police Scanner
If you weren't tuned in to the Lexington Police Department's radio scanner last night, you missed out on a wild world of sports celebrations that ranged from the violent to the perverse. (The #LexingtonPoliceScanner Twitter hashtag alone was trending worldwide, at one point.) We recorded the whole ...

Next Year's NCAA Final Four Will Be Held In Lithuania
The NCAA would have you dismiss all Dumb Jock stereotypes, but the ribbon board tonight announced a far more important notice: next year's Final Four will take place in "Alanta."...

Commence The Kentucky Fans Shouting Profanities On Live Television
Here's a shot from a few minutes ago on WKYT in Lexington of an ill-advised live shot from the middle of a gathering of Kentucky fans at the corner of Woodland and Euclid, near the UK campus. The horrified reactions of the "hosts" broadcasting from what appears to be an RV in New Orleans makes th...
![[This Headline Has Been Vacated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/17idnngnl0cnojpg.jpg)
[This Headline Has Been Vacated]
That's that: Kentucky's student-athletes defeated Kansas's amateur basketball players, 67-59. Here's a look at some of our tourney coverage: They're cursing on TV in Kentucky » | The celebration scared some radio guy » | John Calipari, honest pimp » | How the careers of March Madness heroes ended » ...

Wilt And Phog, Two Jayhawks Passing In The Night
Forced to retire at 70 years old, Phog Allen landed one last recruit: a tall kid out of Philadelphia named Wilt. Allen coached Chamberlain for one year, on Kansas's freshman team, but it was Dick Harp who led Chamberlain and company to the triple-overtime 1957 title game against UNC, by some telling...

How A Career Ends: Jeff Sheppard, Kentucky's Great Dunking Guard, Quit Because Of 9/11
Tell Me When It's Over is an interview series in which we ask former athletes about the moment they knew their playing days were over. Today: Jeff Sheppard, two-time national champion and one of the best dunkers in Kentucky history. ...

How A Career Ends: George Lynch Was Finished Off By Sore Feet
Tell Me When It's Over is an interview series in which we ask former athletes about the moment they knew their playing days were over. Today: George Lynch, all-purpose star for the University of North Carolina....

Bruce Pearl’s First Con, And The World That Created A Monster (Deadspin Classic)
Over the weekend, one long-running college basketball feud came to a quiet and friendly conclusion: Jimmy Collins, a former Illinois assistant, finally received an apology from Bruce Pearl, the disgraced former Tennessee coach. As an Iowa assistant in 1989, Pearl had accused Collins of offering mone...

John Calipari, The First Honest Pimp
John Calipari is a smarmy greaseball with a habit of making enemies and racking up NCAA violations, and sometimes I think he's the only man who really understands college basketball. ...

Florida's Erving Walker Arrested For Alleged Theft Of Taco
Erving Walker's career as a guard for Florida's basketball team ended with last week's loss to Louisville in the Elite Eight. He's since moved on to becoming an alleged taco bandit. According to the Palm Beach Post, citing a report from the Gainesville (Fla.) Police Department, this is what Walker i...

How A Career Ends: I Went For A Rebound And Realized All The Hands Were Above Mine
Tell Me When It's Over is an interview series in which we ask former athletes about the moment they knew their playing days were over. Today: Luke Witte, Ohio State center and on-court stomping victim. ...

A Stripper's Guide To The Final Four
During the 2007 Final Four, I traveled to Atlanta with a couple of friends to dance at the Pink Pony. We were surprised to find the local dancers questioning why the dancer manager was urging them to work all weekend, then do it again next weekend during the Masters. By the Sunday before the final, ...