A Few Quick Hitters
Quick hitters as we reach the latter part of Championship Week:
- Scott Sutton deserves a lot of credit for the job he’s done at Oral Roberts, especially this season. The Golden Eagles won their third straight Summit League title on Tuesday night, knocking off IUPUI. This season, Sutton did it after losing two 2,000-point scorers, although the cupboard was hardly bare as there was plenty of talent still coming back. He also did well to add Robert Jarvis and Portland transfer Marcus Lewis, both of whom contributed a lot to the team’s success.
- Sacred Heart lost a tough one in the Northeast Conference title game last year, then lost the same game at home on Wednesday night. While one has to feel for Dave Bike, a lifer at the school who has seen the program through a transition to Division I, it’s a nice finish for his opposite number. There had been talk that Milan Brown was on the hot seat at the Mount, but letting him go would seem foolish now that he led them to the NCAA Tournament with wins over the No. 1 and No. 3 seeds along the way.
- A tough luck story thus far during Championship Week is that of MAAC runner-up Rider. The Broncs were basically down three starters on Monday night due to injuries, leaving Jason Thompson to have to carry the team. Thompson did all he could, but he couldn’t stop Tay Fisher’s hot shooting from long range. Now, the Broncs hope their season isn’t done and a bid to the NIT or College Basketball Invitational comes their way.
- Of late, there has been increasing speculation that Dennis Felton may be out at Georgia at the end of the season. If that transpires, they might jump right into the Anthony Grant sweepstakes, hoping that they can land him before LSU or South Carolina does. Felton was hired to clean up the mess from the Jim Harrick era and has done so, which would mean he would be fired for not winning enough games or as a move to try to snag Grant before anyone else can.
- The James Madison coaching search has suddenly become a little more interesting. Of late, there have been conflicting stories about whether or not Mike Jarvis is still in the mix, as some say he’s out and some say the job is practically his for the taking. That was before a source familiar with the situation said Duquesne head coach Ron Everhart may be a candidate. It’s hard to imagine Everhart would leave Duquesne, especially at this point as he still has Shawn James and Kojo Mensah for one more year after they transferred there to play for him. In Mensah’s case, there was a lot of controversy surrounding his departure from Siena to play there. James Madison wants someone with head coaching experience and reportedly is willing to pay significantly more money this time around.
- Every year, there’s a story or two that comes out about how the NCAA Tournament allegedly costs companies big money because people pay attention to it during the work day. When those stories hit the wire, I always start wondering how much it cost in wasted time to come up with the figures these stories cite. Surely a firm like Challenger, Gray & Christmas has better things to do with their time than come up with numbers for a non-story like this, especially at a time where job losses are mounting. This is really a non-story by itself, but in a world where forced unpaid overtime and expected 24/7 availability of employees at a number of companies has been well-documented, it’s downright ridiculous. Perhaps John Challenger and his firm could instead try to determine how much money companies forfeit in lost productivity from burning out their employees.
