k Page 4292 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Syracuse Orange
1. The Real Slim Shady. Tattooed Orange frosh Eric Devendorf was born in Bay City, Mich., about 115 miles north of Detroit. He guards the perimeter in Syracuse's standard 2-3 while talking trash, which draws comparisons to some other white guy from Motown. Growing up, players labeled the 6-foot-4 co...

Florida Gators
1. Joakim Noah Is A Fancy Man. Everyone knows Joakim Noah is the son of French tennis great Yannick Noah. Joakim not only inherited his father's athletic ability, but apparently he picked up some European style from Yannick as well. Joakim was once photographed on campus wearing some sort of fancy, ...

Bradley Braves
1. They Have Eddy Curry's Old Sidekick. Patrick O'Bryant is Tyson Chandler if Tyson Chandler would have gone to a mid-major college instead of straight to The Association after high school. He's the Missouri Valley's Defensive Player of the Year, and the 7-foot, 260-pound sophomore is long, athletic...

Kentucky Wildcats
1. Fill the Tubb. You already know that Kentucky coach Tubby Smith won a national championship in his first year at Kentucky, and you likely already know that he has been rewarded for that achievement with a constant stream of Kentucky fans who hope to have him fired. But you likely did not know tha...

LSU Tigers
1. But These Go To 11... It has been 20 years since Louisiana State made their last Final Four — when they were a No. 11 seed, still the lowest ranked team to make the national semis. The current Tiger team, which clinched its first outright SEC regular season championship in 21 seasons, is seeded a...

Pennsylvania Quakers
1. Their Home Court Is Famous, And Not Just For Hoops. The Palestra: Penn's home court, often mentioned in hallowed tones, referred to by some as the most historic fieldhouse in all of college basketball. It's home not only to all of Penn's games, but many of the classic Big Five rivarly games as we...

Pacific Tigers
1. They Have An Award-Winning Swede. Sweden's Christian Maraker is the latest international player who has contributed to the recent success of Pacific's basketball program. Maraker was selected as the Big West player of the year after averaging 17 points and nine rebounds this season. Maraker also ...

Duke Blue Devils
1. The Crazies Are Slipping. Real purists will say they haven't been the same since Terry Sanford's "Avuncular Letter", which stopped the days of say, coating a court in panties to greet sexual-assault accused Herman Veal. But campus debate about the Crazies' role has intensified in recent years, wi...

Oklahoma Sooners
1. Longar Longar: Future Cult Hero? I love this guy, and you have to love anyone with the same name twice. Forget the fact that he should shorten it to one name like "Cher" or "Yao"; a 6'11 Sudanese import at a school filled with what Nebraska coach Bill Callahan called "[expletive] hillbillies" is ...

Jim Boeheim Hates Your Guts
In the type of game that gets us so freaking excited for the tournament next week we almost wet ourselves, Syracuse pretty much just clinched a NCAA tournament big by beating No. 1 Connecticut 86-84. The key, not surprisingly, was guard Gerry McNamara, who had 13 assists and hit a huge 3-pointer t...

Four Tiny Tidbits On: The Athletics
We re less than a month from Opening Day, so it s time to start previewing the season. Inspired by an old feature on The Black Table, we re going team-by-team and distributing Four Things You Don t Know about them. If you have suggested oddities on your team, send them to us at [email protected]. ...

Uh, Today Obviously Kind Of Sucks
Obviously, our massive tech issues from yesterday have been anything but resolved; in fact, they're decidedly worse today. We're told this is happening to all the Gawker Media sites, so we're not alone in theis wilderness....

Runaway Enthusiasm For Minor League Hockey
If you weren't one of the lucky ones who got their Runaway Bride bobblehead doll on Sunday, good news — they're available on eBay. The Gwinnett Gladiators, a minor league hockey team in Georgia, had a, um, unique idea for a promotion last week: They gave away bobbleheads depicting Jennifer Wilbank...

Ah, Duke Girls
We've been enjoying Sports Illustrated On Campus' new section that features college students — including our own Jenn Sterger — writing columns, but, frankly, we're really glad they didn't have this feature when we were in college. We would have assuredly tried to write something for it, and had w...

Online March Madness Sure To Be Maddening
We were hesitant to even mention this to you — for purely selfish reasons — but you've surely heard about it anyway: The NCAA Tournament will be available On Demand on your computer for free this Thursday, all games, streaming onto your desktop. That's great, right? We mean, that's the American dr...

Dan Le Batard Horrifies You The Most
Congratulations to Dan Le Batard, who you say has the most terrifying ESPN: The Magazine mugshot. It was a tight race, with Le Batard — who was joking about the mugshots and this poll on his radio show yesterday, quoting from several of our great commenters — edging out Stuart Scott (who actually ...

The Final Four Sleeps With The Fishes
Fascinating story in The New York Times this morning; an economist postulates that, in college basketball, point shaving takes place in about 5 percent of all games with big spreads. The economist, Justin Wolfers from the University of Pennsylvania, has collected results from nearly 16 years of co...

Revisiting A Truly Great Prank
We did a very brief bit on this a couple of days ago, but we didn't give it nearly enough of a heads-up, since, frankly, it's one of the best examples of fan subterfuge we've ever seen....

Authors With Pure Hearts: Sam Walker
When we were on our Caribbean vacation a while back, we spent most of our time on a beach, sipping blue beverages and ... reading about fantasy baseball. Naturally. Specifically, we were reading Sam Walker's Fantasyland, a relentlessly entertaining look at a fantasy baseball virgin attempting to win...

Bruce Pearl Coaches Crackheads. Yeah! Take That!
As longtime readers know, we never miss an opportunity to knock around Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl. We know this isn't fair — he's a great coaching story, he's done a great job and the man is a world champion sweater — but Bruce Pearl's fate was sealed with us back in the early '90s when he was an...