The Morning Dish – Thursday, June 19th:
Today’s the day for underclassmen to stay in the NBA Draft or return to school – assuming that they haven’t signed an agent.
Coming Back: Morehead State announced that guard Ricky Minard has decided to return for his senior season, thus opting out of the NBA Draft. Minard, the Ohio Valley Conference player of the year last season, averaged 22.5 points and 6 boards per game as a junior.
ACC-Big Ten Set: The fourth ACC-Big Ten challenge schedule is set with nine games slated for December 1st-3rd. On the undercard December 1st, it’s Northwestern at Florida State. The next night, it’s Indiana at Wake, NC State at Michigan, Illinois at UNC (at Greensboro Coliseum), and Wisconsin at Maryland. Finally, on the third day, Georgia Tech is at Ohio State, Clemson at Purdue, Minnesota at UVA, and Duke at Michigan State. As you’ll recall, ten days after the showdown with Duke, Michigan State faces Kentucky in Ford Field in Detroit, while Duke will play down the road at Michigan.
‘Cuse in the Rose Garden: President Bush hosted National Champion Syracuse, along with women’s champ UConn, men’s hockey winner Minnesota, and women’s hockey winner Minnesota-Duluth. Earlier Syracuse was hosted by New York’s congressional delegation. Bush had already congratulated two-time winners UConn and Minnesota, and Minnesota-Duluth’s women’s team has won 3 of the past 4 National Championships.
New Scenarios: The latest on the ACC-Big East scrap is that perhaps the ACC will only add Miami, as the ACC postponed a vote on expansion. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Andy Katz is proposing that the Big East, even if they lose Miami, along with BC and Syracuse, will raid Conference USA for Marquette and Louisville, in addition to the A-10’s Xavier. This would create a 8-team football conference, and 16 basketball schools, with 8 basketball-only schools. Additionally, it’s rumored that the ACC will lobby to have a conference championship game even with only ten member institutions, and another rumor has Virginia Tech joining the ACC fray as the 11th/13th team. One of the additional wild cards is Notre Dame, and whether they jump to a different conference, or even join one for football.
Rebel Yelp: As previously mentioned, Mississippi is looking to update its school mascot, colors and logo. Yesterday, the school announced that they are dropping Colonel Reb, its elderly southern gentleman mascot in time for football season. AD Pete Boone indicated that there is no movement to change either the “Rebels” mascot, or the Ole Miss nickname, and that it was more about updating the school image than removoing Confederate symbols, although that’s a parallel effort.
New Ram: Fordham has announced the hiring of a new assistant to Dereck Whittenburg’s staff. Travis Lyons, formerly an assistant at Manhattan, rounds out the Fordham coaching staff. Lyons, who was at Manhattan for the past two seasons, has experience as an assistant to Fran Fraschilla at New Mexico, and played under Fraschilla at Manhattan in the mid-90s.
New Tiger: Clemson has announced that Ron Bradley has been hired as a associate head coach on Oliver Purnell’s staff. Bradley, who was associate head coach at James Madison last year, and was previously head coach at Radford from 1991 to 2002, worked with Purnell both at Radford and at Maryland. Bradley takes the position vacated by Ron Jirsa, who was announced as Marshall’s head coach on Monday.
