A weekly round-up of Atlantic 10 men’s basketball.
Xavier, Holloway garnering pre-season accolades
CINCINNATI – Xavier University men’s basketball has garnered multiple preseason accolades this week. Senior guard Tu Holloway was named preseason First Team All-American in the 2011-12 Athlon Sports College Basketball magazine and Third Team Preseason All-America by Blue Ribbon.
Blue Ribbon also selected the Musketeers 14th in its Preseason Top 25.
Holloway, a 2010-11 Associated Press Third Team All-American and the 2011 Atlantic 10 Conference Player of the Year, joins, Wisconsin senior Jordan Taylor, Ohio State sophomore Jared Sullinger, Kentucky sophomore Terrence Jones and North Carolina sophomore Harrison Barnes on the Athlon first team. Holloway, Taylor and Sullinger are the only three members of the AP’s first three teams for the 2010-11 season that will be returning in the 2011-12 season.
Q & A with A-10 commissioner Bernadette McGlade
How will the current conference realignment issues impact the Atlantic 10, especially since most moves are football driven and the Atlantic 10 is a basketball-driven league?
The current realignment activity, driven by BCS football, between the ACC, the Big 12, SEC, the Big East and other conferences are not directly impacting the Atlantic 10 Conference (at this moment). However, Temple has FBS football (and Massachusetts is elevating its football to the FBS level), thus at some point they could be affected, which impacts the A-10. Additonally, if or when, new realignment decisions are forced, or chosen, the A-10 could be “realigning” as well.
Atlantic 10 moving tourney to Brooklyn in 2013
The Atlantic 10 will move its basketball tournament to Brooklyn, beginning in 2013. The conference will host its championship in the new Barclays Center, which will also be home to the NBA’s Nets.
The Atlantic 10 has long searched for a steady tournament destination without much success. Since the first one in 1977, it has been held in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Morgantown, W. Va., East Rutherford, N.J., and Dayton, Ohio, among other sites.
Rick Majerus no longer concerned with his health
Rick Majerus admits this past year was the most difficult of his life.
“Nothing can be as bad,” he said.
Majerus lost his mother, Alyce, this past August. He took the brunt of a collision from two players on the sideline this past season — which ultimately resulted in an infection in his leg. Majerus also recently had a stent inserted — which meant he was unable to coach on the team’s recent trip to Canada.
The 63-year-old has had his share of health issues in the past.
UD names office suite after former standout Carmen Riazzi
Dayton, Ohio – The player who was the sparkplug of some of the best men’s basketball teams in University of Dayton history, Carmen Riazzi, has come through in the clutch once more for his alma mater. Thanks to the generosity of the Riazzi family, the men’s basketball offices in the Cronin Athletics Center will be known as the “Carmen J. Riazzi Basketball Suite.”
Quebec Kebs sign former Flyer Mickey Perry
Quebec City – Slan Sports Management and The Quebec KEBS are pleased to announce the signing of former Flyer Phillip ‘Mickey’ Perry to the KEBS roster for the 2011-2012 season.
Perry, a 6’3” guard, transferred to the University of Dayton starting in 2007 from Wisconsin. He finished his college carrer with UD and graduated in 2010. He was an influential member of the 2009-10 FLyers that won the 2010 National Invitation Tournament. Perry also helped the Flyers to the second round of the NCAA tournament in 2009.
Pecora to host Coaches vs. Cancer benefit
Bronx, N.Y. – Fordham University head men’s basketball coach Tom Pecora will serve as host of the 2011 Coaches vs. Cancer Dinner Benefit to be held on Monday, September 26th at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan.
GW’s Lonergan featured in the Game Changer
When his day as a Catholic University student and basketball player came to an end, Mike Lonergan got on the red line at Brookland-CUA and rode the Metro to Foggy Bottom.
With tickets in hand from his coach, Jack Bruen, Lonergan walked the few blocks to the Charles E. Smith Center, where he climbed up to the back of the stands. From his seat he watched high school classmate Chester Wood running up and down the court; Colonials head coach Gerry Gimelstob getting animated on the sideline; and legendary Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach, BA’40, Med ’41, cheering his old team in his favorite seat.
SBU begins season with Brown and White Night
ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. –The St. Bonaventure University athletics department will host Brown & White Night, a celebration that marks the official start of basketball season, Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Reilly Center.
The midnight madness-style event will feature a skills contest with members of the men’s and women’s basketball teams, coach and player introductions and performances by the hip-hop and cheerleading teams. No tickets or advance registration are required and the event is open to the public.
A-10 being proactive amid conference shifts
The Atlantic 10 is keeping a watchful eye on the football-driven conference shake-ups, knowing the fallout may be felt in the league that has been home to the University of Dayton for 16 years.
But while all the focus nationally has been on the high-powered Bowl Championship Series conferences, the basketball-oriented A-10 apparently is exploring ways to perhaps fortify itself with additional members, too.
Highly regarded New Hampshire guard to visit UD
New Hampton School senior Olivier Hanlan didn’t just have to rely on what University of Dayton basketball coach Archie Miller had to say about how important point guards are in his passing-game offense. The highly regarded prospect from New Hampshire saw videotape of the Flyers’ foreign tour to confirm it.
Flyers targeting another Northland forward
Columbus Northland forward Devon Scott met with University of Dayton assistant basketball coach Kevin Kuwik during a break at school Monday, but the 6-foot-8, 210-pound senior didn’t need much interaction during the visit to know what the Flyers had to offer.
Northland teammate Jalen Robinson, another 6-8 forward, already has committed to UD and is recruiting Scott nearly every day.
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Xavier to roll out Royals uniforms
XU hoops players will roll out special uniforms for Musketeer Madness Oct. 22 at Cintas Center. The Nike HyperElite Uniforms are based on Cincinnati Royals unis, which is to say they’ll feature vertical names and numbers higher on the chest on the jerseys’ fronts.
Former Owls suit up for Team Philly
Earlier this week, Mark Tyndale said he had a free ticket through his connection with Phoenix Suns forward Hakim Warrick to Sunday’s Battle For I-95 at the Palestra.
Early in the second quarter of Sunday’s exhibition, Tyndale found himself with his knees bent and arms spread wide as he tried to contain NBA All-Star LeBron James. The former Temple standout received a text message earlier that day from Warrick asking him to join Team Philly.
As conference mayhem enters a lull between cataclysms, it might not take too long before the mayhem even touches schools that don’t play football, such as St. Louis University.
Right now, SLU and schools like it can do little more than sit back and see where the dust settles. When that’s done, the ramifications for the world of college basketball will become clearer.
Temple
Filling the massive shoes of John Chaney, Fran Dunphy is burnishing his own Philly legend. Owls just missed S16, could win league this yr.
This weekend the news broke that Pitt and Syracuse were leaving the Big East for the ACC. This raised concerns that other Big East football schools might flee, and now it looks like that may happen, as the rump of the Big 12 and the Big East are talking about merging (or more accurately the Big East getting subsumed into the Big 12).
High hopes for Brooklyn tourney
NEW YORK (AP) — Rhode Island coach Jim Baron remembers sneaking into college basketball games at Madison Square Garden as a kid growing up in Brooklyn.
Baron’s Rams and their Atlantic 10 brethren will now star in what they hope will be the latest installment of big-time hoops in New York City. The conference formally announced Wednesday that its men’s basketball tournament would move to the Barclays Center, the new Brooklyn home of the NBA’s Nets.
While I was happy to see the Minutemen become A-10 Conference champions in 2007, the fact that they shared the honor with Xavier gives some hint of just how competitive the conference has been over the years. My home team bias pushed aside, I’ve come up with a list of players from various schools in the Atlantic 10 Conference who represent the best in all-around basketball performance for their respective eras. They may be outranked in raw statistics, and their records may have been surpassed, but each player’s presence on the court was an example of college basketball at its best.
Plenty of good reasons to be a fan of UMass this year
As it turns out, no team can pull off an about-face in one critical game after as dismal a season as the Minutemen had last year. That’s what UMass students and fellow alumni like me found out the hard way, watching with jaws on the floor as UMass basketball imploded in the first round of the A-10 Tourney last year. Oh, they exceeded our expectations all right, just not in a good way. If you were trying to turn this year’s freshmen into new fans of UMass basketball, you might just want to take a black marker and redact that last game.
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