“Some unfortunate things happened,” Pitino said. “She opened up my pants.”

“Did you have sex that night?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marisa Ford asked. 

“Yes, very briefly,” Pitino answered.

Oh Rick, bangin’ a waitress after hours must be a rough life.  How unfortunate that a former model ‘opened your pants.’  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 1,000 times – if you’re famous, going to cheat, and going to do so in public, the least you can do is get your monies worth.  ‘Very briefly’ had sex?  Rick, let me introduce you to fellow legendary coach, with legendary hair, and now enough stamina to go all night, Jimmy Johnson: 

Not only should no one be shocked, no one should even raise an eye brow over this.

Sure, Armstead would have been one of the best players on the Ducks 10-11 squad, and showed flashes last year that let the mind wander a bit. But, come on….Oregon stinks, and will continue to stink in the next couple of years regardless of whether Armstead stuck around. Don’t let Duck homers/apologists fool you, this is absolutely the right move for Malcolm. Honestly, at times I feel like I’m the only sober guy at the bar, amongst a bunch of people 4 Jager bombs and 6 Ninkasi’s deep when it comes to Oregon athletics. How can no one else see what is to come? I mean, obviously the players do. From now on I would like to be known as the ‘arbiter of truth’ when it comes to talking Ducks (Klonoski, Brags, Gums, and others be damned).

Why would a player with any negligible amount of game stick around for the Dana Altman era? What, did anyone expect the cries of ‘hey he did develop Kyle Korver’ to resonate with anybody? Come on now, the guy came from the state of Nebraska, and no not the large state college in Lincoln, but the private school in Omaha that is more known for pumping out dentists than anything in athletics.

Five players have now defected since Big Ern got canned (still the right move, just an awful hire) and my question at this point is, do the Ducks even have enough players to form a squad….

Sadly, they probably do. But hey Duck fans be happy. Sure, all Ernie could do was recruit, but he was awful at in-game coaching, right? That’s why everyone wanted him gone, and it looks like we got the exact opposite now. Not only can Altman not recruit players to come to Oregon, but he can’t even make a pitch to them to make them stay. But hey, I hear he teaches a great off-ball screen and works wonders with nonathletic guys plodding along on their way to text book power lay-ins!

Here is to depleted rosters, bad records, uninspiring hires  and half full $200 million dollar arenas funded by state insured bonds.

Go Ducks!

One of the Madison Memorial’s star players, Vander Blue, will now be one of Wilson’s teammates at Marquette.

Ho hum, I mean it’s just a highly sought after recruit leaving.

We still got Dunnigan to lead the charge on underachieving players that were bestowed the honor of being a Golden Arch selection.

I’m sure Wilson is good, but it doesn’t bother me that he’s leaving. The Oregon program stinks and maybe it’s for the better to purge the roster as much as possible and just start from the bottom. Besides if you ever watched a Creighton game, it’s clear that Coach Altman doesn’t have much use for long and athletic players.

www.firedanaaltman.com

Unlike a lot of college coaches I think that Izzo would have been successful in the NBA. The big problem that college coaches facewhen they jump to the NBA is that they can’t teach NBA players like they would college kids. NBA players make millions of dollars a year, they don’t need some coach to come in and try to teach them life lessons along with basketball all they need are X’s and O’s. And the main reason that Izzo would do well in the NBA is that he knows how to coach defense along with having a good offense. The main problem with Mike Brown when he coached the Cavs is that he might be one of the worst offensive coaches I’ve seen (The worst is still Nate), you have Lebron on your team and you go through stretches where you just can’t score any points is unacceptable. Izzo would have had that offense running smoothly and efficiently, along with a strong D.

So have fun ruling college basketball for years to come Tom, and hey I bet that fat paycheck will be awaiting you in Oregon again whenDana falls flat on his face.

Izzo in 2015.

Pros

-More money

-An opportunity to succeed at the highest level of basketball (if in fact that is a desire)

-He could be coached by LeBron James (if LeBron decides to return as player/coach/GM)

-More money

Cons

-Leaving a top-notch college program

-Misses a chance to be in the elite category of coaches like Wooden, Smith, and Coach K(ing floor slapper)

-If LeBron doesn’t come back to Cleveland, it would an unprecedented disaster of a decision

I don’t know why Izzo is considering this jump right now.  Generally a coach needs to decide to make, or not make, the jump to a better college program or the NBA within a reasonable amount of time.  This slots his timeline well before the free agent summit and ensuing signings that will change the landscape of the NBA (regular season, that is.  It will take injuries for the Lake Show and Celtics to not be the best playoff teams next year anyway.) 

At face value, there is a lot to respect and like about Izzo.  He’s boisterous on the sidelines, his teams generally over achieve, they play well-coached team basketball, and he has the cheeseball look of a college head coach. 

But this off season has really brought out how much he likes to be courted.  A guy with his credentials should be courted by a team that is stacked.  Not an organization that is a train wreck.  The Cavs have no GM, don’t know if their best player is returning, they’ve put another couple players on the trading block, and they just fired a head coach who won 60 games in consecutive seasons. 

WTF is Izzo thinking?  I think the best argument I could buy right now is that this is another Pete Carroll bail-while-you-can situation.

— Members of the men’s basketball staff exchanged at least 160 impermissible telephone calls and at least 191 impermissible text messages with recruits.

— Former student manager turned sports agent Josh Nockimson provided impermissible benefits to a recruit.

Rest of the Story

Yeah, a little too much legal jargon for my liking but you get the picture: Jim Calhoun and Co. have been caught cheating.  Period. 

Whether it’s prominent throughout college or not, whether all or part turns out true or not, the NCAA should come down pretty hard on these guys.  They might take away some wins, maybe a final 4 and/or title, but that won’t mean diddly poo.  If the recruiting and the providing benefits business that governs college basketball is to come to a stop, or at least be tamed, UCONN needs to get a handful of years suspension from post season play.  

To completely stop all the rule bending and cheating that goes on in college recruiting would take, well, the end of the world.  But the most fear that can be put into a program is suspension from post season play.  That immediately eliminates most, if not all, top recruits from signing.  It also renders your season virtually pointless, especially in the eyes of the the world outside the team’s city. 

I’m not for the death penalty – not for any school, in any situation.  As much as the NCAA promotes its sports for being for the ‘student athletes’, it should realize the players are recycled much too quickly to warrant the death penalty.  I’d rather see them force a coach or AD out of his position before banning a team forever.

But if they want to take a stand and make a point, then this is a platform to do so.  A major player in the most popular conference with a legendary coach.  Or they could take the easy way out like they do with most recruiting violations.  Who knows WTF they’re doing…

Sallie has shown the ability to score in bunches, tallying 35 points against Cal State Northridge in the ’08-09 season. He’s also a very good three-point shooter who shot better than 40 percent behind the arc during two years with the Tigers.

This is what you get for stealing Kenny Payne and his connections with World Wide Wes, Coach Cal!

You take our best recruiter, we take a player from one of your previous stops. Are we even now???

Call me crazy, but doesn’t this seem kind of odd? Like, how many years does a guy get to play? Though, I’ll take academic risks and bad dudes every time, and twice on Thursdays and Saturdays. Any chance we can get Joey Dorsey as well as some sort of a package deal?

So the question is: who are they playing?  As a Duck fan, even though the final score just maaaay be tipped in the visiting team’s direction a tad, I would love to see Oregon get that chance.  What do they have to lose?  Every team gets demolished by Coach Cal’s teams the last few years.  He has like 8 losses in 3 years.  And from Oregon’s standpoint, they’ve been getting demolished by just about every team on their schedule for a couple years now.  A new coach, hopefully a new style, hopefully a new attitude – who knows, hopefully a new result.  If not, BFD, it’s one game before Pac 10 play begins. 

To my surprise, Calipari wouldn’t divulge what teams they were considering.  Even though it’s against the rules, he generally acts as if those don’t apply to him anyway.  Calipari mentioned it is between 2-3 teams which has to be between the Ducks, Beavers, and Pilots, right?  No chance Rose Garden officials, or whoever signs off on this deal, allows a team from Washington in to play this game.  Even Gonzaga. 

Do you want to see the Ducks play Kentucky this year?  If not, what team do you want to see go up against 3 or 4 2011 NBA lottery picks?

With no letter of intent signed, the fans in Seattle knew anything was possible.  The stardom that Kentucky can bring to a kid can be overpowering, especially when the one-and-done philosophy is embraced in Lexington.  Calipari brought his very successful NBA transition system from Memphis to Kentucky last year.  And his system is simple, do what it takes to get the absolute best talent assembled for one season for a run at the Final Four, no need to plan for two years.

The allure of Lexington was too much.  As of last night, Terrence Jones will play for Calipari in Lexington this fall.  A bitter UW fan base is left to erase their dreams of dominating the PAC-10 this upcoming season.  Husky venom towards Jones is being spewed via sports radio, email, and message boards.  No doubt the Jones family won’t be vacationing in Seattle anytime soon.

Ooooooohh.  But wait.  A small opportunity for revenge is on the horizon for the Husky dog pound.

In late November … both Washington and Kentucky will be participating in the 8-team 2010 Maui Invitational.  The bracket is not setup yet, but lets all hope that the Wildcats and Huskies do meet.  It will be very interesting to see how much the Seattle press builds up this potential basketball throw-down.

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