The Morning Dish – Tuesday, March 30th
Naismith Coach of the Year Honors a tough second: St. Joseph’s coach Phil Martelli was honored with the Naismith Coach of the Year award, a week after the award was given to his star player Jameer Nelson. It comes as a tough second place trophy for the coach who led his team to a record 30 wins, with only two losses, the latest against Oklahoma State in the Elite Eight. This was Martelli’s 9th season at St. Joseph’s, and the award will join the Henry Iba Award and the Atlantic 10 Conference Coach of the Year awards on his mantle. Pat Summit of Tennessee was given the award as well for her work with the Volunteers women’s team, which is soon to be playing Stanford in their tournament. Summit is the winningest coach is women’s college basketball with 850 wins, and has led her team to six national titles in her 30 years of coaching at the university.
Ratings are up for college basketball: Despite losing one of teams that was getting the most attention in college basketball in Stanford, and only having two number one seeds left in the tournament, CBS announced that its ratings over the first eight days of the NCAA tournament were up 29 percent from last year. The trend was highlighted by the 8.6 Neilson rating and 18 share for the Duke versus Xavier game. For those who aren’t sure what a Neilson rating is based on, the rating is the percentage of all homes with TVs, whether or not they are in use and the share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given program.
Another new head coach: Now that the season is over and many teams are left to decide whether to get a new head coach or allow for the old one (who might now always be to blame) to stay, Florida International has decided to name a new one. Sergio Rouco, an assistant at Texas El-Paso this season, was named coach of the Golden Panthers. Rouco, who has previously coached as an assistant at the school, replaced Donnie Marsh, who had compiled a miserable 5-22 record this season. Texas El-Paso, if you recall, lost to Maryland in the first round of the NCAA tournament this year, and compiled 24 wins this season.
LSU defeats Georgia while UConn dispenses of Penn State: No, it wasn’t Ben Gordon and Emeka Okafor, it was the other UConn, the one with the two time player of the year Diana Taurasi. That’s right, she was the one that Okafor was doing a push-up with her on his back on the SI cover so many months ago. UConn made quick work of a Penn State team that was overmatched by the UConn team that had been to the final four so many times before. LSU on the other hand got a free-throw with 8.8 seconds left to make it a 2 point game, and eventually help them receive their first final four invitation.
Coach Keady wants a capable replacement before leaving: Coach Gene Keady of Purdue wants to make sure that a capable replacement is found if he is to take the coaching offer from San Francisco. Names mentioned as possibilities are ESPN analyst and former Bruin coach Steve Lavin and Southern Illinois coach and former Purdue player Matt Painter. Purdue did not make the NCAA tournament this year, and lost to Norte Dame in the NIT. The school started 14-4 before dropping 11 of its last 14 games.
Tonight’s Menu:
• Live from New York – it’s the NIT. The Semifinals in the battle to be No. 66 come down to four big-conference squads, as Rutgers faces Iowa State in the first semifinal, and Oregon faces Michigan in the second semifinal. The winners will face each other in the finals on Thursday night.
• If you like the ladies, then check out Minnesota versus Duke and Stanford versus Tennessee. All four teams are vying for a chance to play in the final four.
