NCAA – Page 137 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

2010 Final Four Inspired Tyus Jones

Posted on March 25, 2015March 25, 2015 by David Shama

Tyus Jones and his Duke teammates will try to win the South Region of the NCAA Tournament this weekend and advance to the Final Four in Indianapolis. It will be fitting if the Blue Devils freshman point guard from Apple Valley High School returns to Indy where several years ago as an eighth grader he was inspired by the Final Four.

Al Nuness, the former Gophers basketball captain, took Tyus and his grade school age brother Tre to Indianapolis in 2010 when Duke won the national championship in a field that included Butler, Michigan State and West Virginia. As a Jostens executive, Nuness had to be in Indianapolis for the Final Four, so he drove his young cousins, the Jones boys, to see college basketball played on its biggest stage.

The weekend had a lasting impact. “I think that (experience) solidified what he (Tyus) wanted to do,” Nuness told Sports Headliners. “He sat there as a student of the game. They both did (Tyus and Tre). We went to practices and they wouldn’t leave.”

At the time it was Tre—this winter a freshman starting point guard for Apple Valley—who was a big Duke fan. Tyus? He was all in for Michigan State. Ironically, the Spartans could be part of the Final Four field when the teams start playing on April 4 in Indianapolis.

Nuness won’t travel to Houston for this Friday night’s South Region Sweet 16 game between Duke and Utah, but if the Blue Devils win that game and the regional title on Sunday, he will head for Indy to see Tyus play. Nuness, though, knows March Madness is unpredictable and is concerned about Duke’s lack of depth behind star freshman center Jahlil Okafor. “He goes down, they got nothing,” Nuness said.

The NCAA Tournament’s one-and-done format seems like the best of places for Tyus who in both high school and college has shown exceptional poise and ability to make clutch plays when needed. “That’s a gift and there are few that have that kind of gift,” Nuness said. “His gift is the game slows down for him. He sees the game at a different pace than the normal person sees the game. He’s not exceptionally quick. He’s not exceptionally fast, but he’s on point with decisions and passes.”

Nuness’ memories of the trip to Indianapolis in 2010 included his surprise about the many college coaches that knew of Tyus. He and the boys were at a shopping mall when a Michigan State assistant coach told Tyus the Spartans wouldn’t worry about winning if they had a guard like him.

“I said, ‘These guys all know you’?” Nuness recalled.

Back then Tyus was attracting attention as an outstanding AAU player and eventually became a McDonald’s prep All-American at Apple Valley High School. And in Indy that year he and Tre got noticed for their shooting skills. At a convention where Nuness had business there was a shooting contest that attracted participants including college-age kids. Tyus won the contest and Tre finished second.

For first place Tyus won uniforms for his Apple Valley team. “It was an unbelievable trip for those guys (Tyus and Tre),” Nuness said.

It was pretty memorable for Nuness, too, who ended up securing the national championship ring order from Duke for Jostens. Nuness and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski knew each other as high school players in the Chicago area. When Krzyzewski learned Jostens wanted him to buy rings from the Minnesota-based company, he had a message for Nuness: come see him at Duke.

Nuness did exactly that and it didn’t take long for the legendary Blue Devils coach to good-naturedly go after him. The two men had played together on an all-star team in the 1960s. “You never passed the ball at all,” Krzyzewski said.

Nuness laughed in recalling the accusation and, of course, denied it. But there’s no denying he would love to join Tyus, Coach K and the rest of the Blue Devils in Indianapolis next week.

Worth Noting

Kevin Garnett played his first game this season for the Timberwolves on February 25 in a Target Center win over the Wizards. Since then Garnett has been in and out of the lineup to rest his 38-year-old body and bothersome knee. His last game was March 7. The Wolves record since February 27 is 3-11 and it’s evident Garnett’s presence on the roster hasn’t changed the losing ways of the Wolves who are 16-54 for the season which ends on April 15.

The Vikings have the No. 11 first round pick in the 2015 NFL Draft to be held in Chicago April 30-May 2. Fans can hope the Vikings are fortunate enough to find a player who develops like a couple of the more famous all-time No. 11 selections. That list includes NFL Texans defensive end J.J. Watt and Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

The Gophers football team, off from spring practices since March 12, resumed workouts yesterday. The Gophers practice tomorrow starting at 4:15 p.m. and Saturday at 9:50 a.m. Both sessions are at the Gibson-Nagurski Football Complex and open to the public.

Last weekend’s WCHA Final Five attendance at the Xcel Energy Center was up 34.8 percent from the previous year when the two-day tournament was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Total attendance was 15,048 compared with 11,162 in 2014. Minnesota State won the WCHA Final Five and is in the NCAA Tournament’s 16-team field with fellow league member Michigan Tech.

Brad Frost, who Sunday coached the Gophers women’s hockey team to a third national championship in four years, has made a career of coaching women. The Bethel graduate and native of Ontario started his career as an assistant girls hockey coach at Eagan High School from 1996-1999. Then he was a men’s assistant coach at his alma mater from 1999-2000 before becoming a Gophers women’s assistant in 2001 and taking over as interim head coach in 2007.

When athletic director Joel Maturi was looking to permanently fill the head hockey coaching position he worked diligently at searching for candidates of both genders. At the search’s end in 2008 he decided the best candidate was a person already on staff, Frost. “His success speaks for itself,” Maturi told Sports Headliners this week.

Maturi said Frost relates effectively to his players and can “push the envelope” when needed. He has the respect of the young women who are on the team. Frost is likeable too and relates well with others including media and boosters. “His humility comes through,” Maturi said. “He’s not a big ego guy.”

Women’s teams in town have achieved championship success including Frost’s Gophers and the two-time WNBA champion Minnesota Lynx. The Gophers swimming and diving team recently won a fourth straight Big Ten championship. Former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak offered this Facebook post earlier in the week:

Be it hockey or basketball/
Or even swimmin/
When Minnesotans want a title/
We turn to the women

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Big Ten Teams Did U No Favors

Posted on March 20, 2015March 20, 2015 by David Shama

Minnesotans who hate the Big Ten Conference for forming a hockey league a couple of years ago with six teams—including the Gophers—could see their collective blood pressures soar again this weekend.

The Gophers are on the spot today in the Big Ten Tournament in Detroit against Ohio State. A loss likely eliminates Minnesota from selection for the NCAA Tournament, a postseason party the Gophers have attended the last three years.

If the Gophers win today (3:30 p.m. CDT start, Big Ten Network) they advance to the Big Ten Tournament championship game on Saturday. Minnesota coach Don Lucia said earlier this week on his 1500 ESPN Radio Show his team has less than a 10 percent chance of being selected for the NCAA Tournament on Sunday if the Gophers lose to the Buckeyes. Minnesota won three of four games against OSU during the regular season.

The Big Ten Tournament title game on Saturday starts at 7 p.m. and will also be on BTN. The winner receives automatic entry into the NCAA Tournament.

But will the NCAA Selection Committee still call the Gophers’ name if Minnesota loses on Saturday? The Gophers won the regular season Big Ten championship with a 12-5-3 record but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The Gophers were once the No. 1 ranked team in college hockey, later fell out of the top 20 and now are No. 13 in the USCHO.com national poll. No other Big Ten team is even ranked in the top 20, an indication of the six-team hockey league’s lack of strength this year. And while the Gophers were the best in their league, the nonconference record was a not so impressive 9-7.

No doubt (cue the blood pressure tests) the overall weak performance of the Big Ten as a hockey league this season hurts. “When the whole league is down it affects all the teams trying to qualify for a playoff position,” said Lou Nanne, the former Gopher and passionate fan. “Whenever you’re in that situation you have very few teams make it PairWise (see below).”

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee uses “mathematical and other criteria” to determine 10 of the 16 teams for the tourney, according to USCHO.com. Six other schools are automatic qualifiers as conference champions. USCHO.com explains on its website that the selection committee compares teams against each other and then puts them in order based on comparisons won. USCHO uses a process called PairWise rankings which it says ranks teams similar to what the selection committee does because of the same data. The PairWise rankings on USCHO.com indicate, as of now, the Gophers would be invited to the tourney if they lose on Saturday.

Fans grumble about missing the old days when the Gophers were members of the WCHA, a powerhouse hockey league with Minnesota rivals like North Dakota and UMD. North Dakota, Michigan Tech, Denver and UMD are programs that once were WCHA rivals of the Gophers and this week are ranked No. 1, 4, 5 and 8 in the USCHO national poll.

Big Ten decision makers concluded awhile ago the conference should have a hockey league and a lot of that decision was driven by the Big Ten Network’s need for programming. The Gophers have won the first two regular season championships in the new league, but that won’t be perfect consolation if they miss out on the NCAA Tournament.

Nanne said leagues have good and bad years. In the long run he isn’t concerned about Big Ten hockey competing with the country’s best leagues. What he is upset about, though, is this season’s Gopher TV schedule that had the team playing on so many different channels and days and times it became frustrating for him and other fans. “Anybody tells you this doesn’t hurt Minnesota hockey, they’re nuts,” he said.

What happens with the Gophers’ TV schedule is the Big Ten Network is the rightsholder and has first call on games. Then the ESPN family of networks including ESPN2, ESPN News and ESPNU can pick and choose. And Gophers games can also end up on Fox Sports North. Regardless of network, games aren’t just televised on traditional Friday and Saturday nights anymore. TV dictates that some games are on other days and aren’t always played in the evening. The good news was 31 of the team’s 36 games have been televised—the best coverage of a college hockey team in the country.

Nanne does worry about fan interest in the Gophers program. “I just want more teams (in the Big Ten),” he said. “I think we gotta get to eight teams somehow. I think that will drive more interest.”

For now, though, the Gophers are on a two-day, two opponents Big Ten schedule.

Worth Noting

The WCHA Final Five tonight matches (first game) No. 2 seed Michigan Tech against No. 3 Bowling Green, followed by No. 1 seed Minnesota State playing No. 4 Ferris State at Xcel Energy Center. The tournament features three of the nation’s top 10 teams, according to both the USCHO. com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls, with No. 2 Minnesota State, No. 4 Michigan Tech and No. 9 Bowling Green. The fourth team competing for the Broadmoor Trophy and an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament is Ferris State, a preseason top 10 team that is 7-1-1 in its last nine games.

Minnesota State, Michigan Tech and Bowling Green give the WCHA an NCAA-best (tied with Hockey East) three of the nation’s top 10 winning percentages . The Mavericks are tied for the best at .777 (27-7-3), the Huskies (tops nationally with 28 wins) are third at .763 (28-8-2) and the Falcons are seventh at .671 (23-10-5).

Also taking place locally is the men’s NCHC Frozen Faceoff at Target Center where No. 1 ranked North Dakota plays No. 18 St. Cloud State tonight followed by the No. 5 Denver against No. 6 Miami game. Those conference tournament games are scheduled to start at 4:08 and 7:38 p.m. Minneapolis time.

Tickets are sold out at Ridder Arena, official capacity 3,400, for the NCAA Women’s Frozen Four that starts today on the University of Minnesota campus. Despite the sellout status the first 100 students to show their college IDs at the Ridder Arena box office for both the semifinal session and championship game will receive complimentary tickets. Questions should be directed to the Gopher Sales & Service Department at 612-624-8080 (option 2).

Minnesota, the No. 1 tournament seed, plays No. 4 Wisconsin starting at 5 p.m. today. The Gophers, 32-3-4, are trying to win their third national title in four years. The other Frozen Four teams are Boston College and Harvard, No. 3 and 4 seeds. The national championship game is at Ridder on Sunday starting at 3 p.m.

The Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award honoring the best female college hockey player in the country will be announced tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. at the McNamara Alumni Center on the Minnesota campus. The Gophers Hannah Brandt, along with Alex Carpenter from Boston College and Marie-Philip Poulin of Boston University, are the three finalists.

Marlene Stollings achieved a personal best head coaching win total with the Gophers’ 23-9 record in her first season at Minnesota. In two previous head coaching assignments (two seasons at VCU and one at Winthrop) Stollings didn’t win more than 22 games in a season, nor did her teams qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Her Gophers are in the NCAA Tourney for the first time in six years. They are the No. 8 seed in the Oklahoma City Region and play No. 9 seed DePaul starting at 4 p.m. today in South Bend. Brittany Hrynko leads the Blue Demons with a 19.6 points-per-game average. The senior is a finalist for the Dawn Staley Award, given to the nation’s top guard.

Lynn Holleran, director of the McNamara Academic Center for student-athletes at the University of Minnesota, starts her new position later this month at Penn State as senior associate athletic director for administration. Holleran’s partner is former Gophers women’s basketball coach Pam Borton. The two were married last year.

Hamline’s Cinderella men’s hockey team hopes to keep “dancing” tomorrow when the Pipers (14-10-4) travel to UW-Stevens Point for an NCAA Tournament quarterfinal game starting at 7 p.m. The winner plays at Ridder Arena March 27 as part of the semifinals leading to the national title game on March 28 at the Gophers’ arena. This is only the second time in school history Hamline has advanced to the NCAA men’s hockey tourney and follows a 2-22-1 season last year.

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College Basketball in Need of Changes

Posted on March 18, 2015March 18, 2015 by David Shama

It will sound like heresy, bringing up the subject during March Madness. Fans wait all year for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament that started this week with a 68-team field and ends with the Final Four determining a champion next month in Indy. But timeout!

College basketball isn’t as exciting as it should be, and the games are too damn long. The action has slowed down through the years as college basketball has evolved from fast-paced to tortoise speed. TV commercials are so frequent the games can seem secondary to peddling products. Coaches squash the flow of play and excitement by calling numerous timeouts—sometimes almost back-to-back.

The college game’s image took a hit in the March 9 issue of Sports Illustrated. Seth Davis authored an article headlined “Foul Play” and it begins like this: “College basketball is facing a crisis. The combination of physical play and a plodding pace has created a game that stinks to watch.”

Davis offers a chalkboard full of statistics to make his case including references to team scoring and points per possession being in decline across the country. Physical defense and lack of rules enforcement by referees slows the game down, just like deliberate offenses favored by coaches who prefer their teams use nearly all of the 35-second shot clock. The mantra is: “take as many seconds as needed to get the shot we want, and we’ll do it while denying our opponent possession of the basketball and also running time off the game clock.”

A slower pace is an advantage for an inferior team but better (more talented) teams also play deliberately. Coaches are by nature control freaks and they will try to maneuver for any advantage the rules allow—or are unclear about. When coaches find their teams trailing late in games, they instruct players to deliberately foul to stop the clock and thereby they turn the last couple minutes into an even slower pace.

Coaches are allowed five timeouts per game and combined with the eight mandatory TV breaks for commercials—along with the deliberate playing style favored by many teams—the college game has slowed down to a pace that annoys those who watched the sport decades ago when there was more scoring and the teams raced up and down the court for minutes at a time with no stops in play. Basketball is a beautiful game that when played at its best, has 10 players flowing back and forth without unceasing interruptions.

When Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan was in town earlier this month to play the Gophers he brought up the length of games. Just like decades ago college games consist of two 20 minute periods but the actual duration of those games, including timeouts and halftime, is much longer than ever before. Ryan asked reporters if they knew what the percentage of actual activity is by the players in a typical game. Someone guessed 35 percent. “It’s about a third,” answered Ryan who had directed research to determine the figure.

For fans that means the majority of two hours is spent watching and listening to commercials, TV replays of game highlights or controversial plays, commentators analyzing the game, bands playing, cheerleaders cheering and teams huddling around coaches.

What to do? Cut back the number of TV breaks for commercials during the game from eight to six (the pregame, halftime and postgame are loaded with advertising too). Explain to network and Madison Avenue executives that a faster-paced game on the court means better TV ratings and more eyeballs on commercials. Have fewer commercials but charge advertisers more money to keep total revenues at today’s levels.

Coaches don’t need and shouldn’t be given five timeouts each. Reduce the timeouts to a total of three for each coach per game, and make two of them 30 second timeouts and the other 60 seconds. Remember coaches also have all those TV timeouts, plus 15 minutes during halftimes to make adjustments.

The college shot clock needs to be changed from 35 seconds to 30, perhaps even 24 like the NBA. It’s a no-brainer because a shorter shot clock means more possessions and increasing possessions boosts scoring.

Other changes that will help are widening the lane from 12 feet to 14 feet, and moving the three-point line back by a couple feet from the existing 20 feet, 9 inches. Both changes will create more space for players to maneuver and score by reducing the crowding on the court (it’s easier to play defense in a smaller area).

Rules makers should also instruct game officials to strictly limit physical play. Critics may scoff about implementation but years ago the NBA went through a period when basketball thugs were controlling the outcome of games with their mauling play. The NBA cracked down on the rules and mandated enforcement by the referees, and the word finesse could again be used to describe plays in the pro league.

Yeah, the college game is popular and no more so than during March Madness when you might even find a little tournament wagering in the local church basement. But there are also a lot of college games where attendance and TV eyeballs aren’t all that impressive. The overall environment of the game is often a big YAWN and that’s the point: College basketball needs a fix and could be so much better.

Worth Noting

Attention Gophers basketball fans: Raise hands if you noticed Minnesota wasn’t invited to the NIT but the state of Iowa has three teams in the NCAA Tournament—Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa. Also in the Big Dance are neighbors North Dakota State and Wisconsin. South Dakota State is in the NIT.

Sports Illustrated writer and CBS college basketball analyst Seth Davis made a surprise prediction by including Northern Iowa, a No. 5 seed from the East Region, in his Final Four picks along with Arizona, Duke and Kentucky. UNI starters include 6-6 forward Marvin Singleton from Minneapolis and Hopkins High School. He has started all 33 games for UNI his senior season, averaging five points per game.

Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg, the former Timberwolves player and executive, ranks with the best in-game college basketball strategists. His attacking, fast-paced offense will find and go after weaker defensive players. Hoiberg, 42, will have a second heart operation this summer. His pro playing career ended abruptly at age 33 after undergoing open-heart surgery to repair an aneurysm in his aortic root.

Steve and Dorothy Erban’s Stillwater-based Creative Charters has availability for fans to travel via motorcoach to South Bend, Indiana and watch the Gophers women’s basketball team play in the NCAA Tournament. Minnesota faces DePaul starting at 4 p.m. on Friday. The Gophers, in the tourney for the first time in six years, are the No. 8 seed in the Oklahoma City Region while DePaul is No. 9. The deadline to sign up with Creative Charters is noon today. More at Creativecharter.com.

Erban said this time of year he is usually sold out for his Kentucky Derby trip but four spots are still open. The trip will be April 27-May 3.

Last Friday’s Wall Street Journal included a feature story on Jim Harbaugh, proclaiming “the Michigan coach’s energy has made him the game’s foremost celebrity.” Writer John Bacon wrote that Harbaugh’s father Jack used to tell his kids “to attack every day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.” Bacon noted that with his players on spring break earlier this month, Harbaugh “popped up” as the first base coach for the A’s during a spring training game. Michigan hired Harbaugh as its coach in January.

Gophers football coach Jerry Kill, talking on last Sunday’s WCCO Radio Sports Huddle program, said true freshman offensive lineman Tyler Moore from Galena Park, Texas shows a spirited attitude during spring practices. He compared the freshman’s demeanor to Cameron Botticelli and Zac Epping, two players no longer with the program but who displayed exceptional fervor when competing. Moore enrolled at Minnesota this winter.

Another new player who has Kill’s attention in practice is 6-5, 273-pound Montana University transfer Noah Scarver. A redshirt freshman tight end for the Gophers who will be eligible to play next season, Scarver attended Washburn High School before starting his college career.

“He’s always been a good football player,” said Giovan Jenkins who coached him at Washburn. “I’ve known for a long time that he could play at this level (Big Ten Conference) but he did get bigger. He’s about 30 pounds heavier from when he graduated high school (2013) and it’s all muscle.”

Jenkins, now a volunteer coach for the Gophers, said Scarver needs to improve his blocking but is a “technician” at running routes and has “pretty good hands.” The blocking “will come as he continues to learn,” Jenkins said.

Derrin Lamker from Osseo High School will be the head football coach for the North and Brian Vossen from Lakeville North will lead the South in the June 27 MFCA Tackle Cancer All-Star Game in St. Cloud. The Minnesota Football Coaches Association’s game showcases many of the state’s best graduating seniors and raises funds for the Randy Shaver Cancer Research and Community Fund.

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