preview-capsules Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Mississippi State Bulldogs
1. Erick Dampier, Basketball Guru. Mississippi State's best postseason performance came in 1996. (Insert high-larious joke about Dishwalla, the movie "Bulletproof," or Bob Dole here) The Bulldogs won the SEC tournament by surprising eventual national champ Kentucky in the conference finals. They the...
Kansas State Wildcats
1. Beas-who? One wonders how Kansas State University, a school that has lacked a dominance on the hardwood in recent years, manage to resurrect Jesus Christ himself in the form of a 6-foot-10, 235-forward from the Washington D.C. area. Well, Michael Beasley was coached by in an AAU summer league and...
Oklahoma Sooners
1. His One Shining Moment?: True freshman Blake Griffin hasn't gotten the same amount of hype that super froshes Derrick Rose, Kevin Love or Michael Beasley have received, but his 15 points and 9 boards per game are the biggest reason the Sooners are back in the NCAA Tourney field after a mediocre 1...
Tennessee Volunteers
1. Mr. and Mr.s Smith. If the NCAA tourney was played 3-on-3 hoop-it-up style and each team could only field players that had the same name, Tennessee would be considered the greatest college team of all time. Despite some broadcast announcers this season repeatedly insisting that there is a fourth ...
Clemson Tigers
1. "Clempson," as some locals refer to it, resides in the city of Clemson in the northwestern region of South Carolina known as "The Upstate." It was opened in 1893 as a military academy exclusively for Caucasian males, serving as one of the rare instances of racial discrimination in the South. The ...
Ohio State Buckeyes
1. The System Guard. Jon Diebler holds the Ohio high school record for the most points in a career with 3,208. He averaged 40 points and 13 rebounds per game his senior year and was the biggest cog in one of the state's most explosive offenses. (He once scored 77 points in a game his junior season.)...
Mississippi Rebels
1. Ride Like the Wind. Ole Miss is allegedly a football school, due to the endless parade of Mannings who went there. However, they have had some success in basketball over the past several years. Though they have claimed at least a share of the SEC West division title four times since 1997, they ha...
Vanderbilt Commodores
1. It's Shan "Rhymes With Pain" Foster. Perhaps more peculiar than the spelling of his name is the form of his jump shot: Foster shoots the ball with his hands virtually behind his head. This causes trouble for almost every defender, as he is able to get off any shot with a defender in his face. He ...
Cornell Big Red
1. Cornell is so fucking nerdy. The actual Mission Statement for Cornell Athletics is: "We offer a diverse program of physical and outdoor education, recreational services, and intercollegiate athletic competition, equitably administered with special attention to the needs of women and members of un...
UAB Blazers
1. Alabama-Birmingham My Ass It's UAB. Do we call the Bruins California-Los Angeles? No. So quit pretending that UAB is some sort of second-tier affiliate state school on the order of Louisiana-Monroe. Even though Alabama-Tuscaloosa refuses to play UAB in basketball due to an age-old recruiting riva...
Oral Roberts Golden Eagles
1. Three In A Row. It's the third consecutive tournament appearance for the Golden Eagles, and their seed seems to grow each year. Two years ago, they were a No. 16 seed, and one major national basketball analyst predicted them to beat No. 1 seed Memphis. (Didn't happen.) In 1973, the team reached t...
Texas Longhorns
1. Never Gonna Give You Up. Strangely, after last year's second-round loss to USC (which is almost fitting, really), the people least confused by the Texas Longhorns' early exit were their own fans. The prevailing opinion was one of satisfaction that was unexpected six months prior. Who can blame th...
Siena Saints
1. Fun facts Siena is a Catholic college established in 1937 by the Franciscan order, named after Saint Bernardine of Siena. (Who's the patron saint of gambling addicts, actually.) The campus was built on an old asparagus farm....
Notre Dame Fighting Irish
1. Thank God We Don't Need a Shirt Solidarity Day. It is no secret that last fall Notre Dame football was pretty dismal. After an 0-3 start, I received the following email from Student Government:...
Baylor Bears
1. Dave Bliss was a real dick. Much has been made of the job Scott Drew has done to clean up the mess that was left him, but you really can't quite overstate it. To remind you, former Baylor coach Dave Bliss made illegal payments to his players, and, when he was busted, after the death of Patrick De...
Winthrop Eagles
Get to Know Winthrop. Winthrop University is a public school in Rock Hill, SC, across the state line from Charlotte. It's considered to be the best academic university in the state of South Carolina and one of the best public universities in the southeastern United States. Winthrop gets its name fro...
George Mason Patriots
1. They've Been There. All right, so "experience" is incredibly overrated; after all, the Mason team that made the Final Four run had none of it whatsoever. But having been there is better than not having been there, right? Still on this team from the '06 run is point guard Folarin Campbell (no rela...
Gonzaga Bulldogs
1. More Than A Few. Since he took over at Gonzaga in 1999, Mark Few is among the winningest coaches in the county. In a nine-year career that includes nine 20 win seasons and nine NCAA tournament berths, Few has an overall record of 204 wins, 53 losses. Gonzaga's West Coast Conference record during ...
Rhode Island Rams
1. Crazy Eights. The Rams jumped out to one of their best starts in team history this season, starting 19-3 and reaching the 20-win plateau faster than any team in school history. Their other best years? 1977-78, 1987-88, and 1997-98. URI reached the big dance in each of those seasons, having the mo...
Southern California Trojans
1. At Guard, Super Dave Osborne. One of the keys to last season's surprising Sweet Sixteen run was then-freshman Daniel Hackett's aggressive tournament play: He was all over the place, grabbing boards, causing turnovers, ending Kevin Durant's college career earlier than expected. The dude doesn't kn...