Jan 20th, 2010
We open our basketball notes courtesy of USC women’s basketball coach Michael Cooper, who, according to the Los Angeles Daily News, began his meeting with the media following Sunday’s 70-63 victory over UCLA by saying, “My opening statement is F— UCLA.” Except that Cooper filled in the three blanks with a U and a . . . well, you know what he said.
USC women's coach Michael Cooper got into the swing of the USC-UCLA rivalry with a verbal salute to the Bruins -- Photo by Getty Images
Cooper offered an apology for his four-letter opening remark, although it’s not quite clear why Cooper, an alumnus of Pasadena City College and the University of New Mexico, said it in the first place.
It’s getting touchy down in la-la land. During Sunday’s women’s game, USC athletic director Mike Garrett reportedly told a section of UCLA students who were standing during the game that he would have then kicked out if they didn’t sit down because they were blocking the view of paying customers. Apparently, the students had no idea who Garrett was, assuming he was a parent of a player.
The day before, USC had laid an embarrassing 67-46 loss on the UCLA men at Pauley Pavilion, and it was during halftime of that game that UCLA football coach Rick Neuheisel took a shot at new USC coach Lane Kiffin, who was Tennessee’s coach when the Bruins beat the Vols 19-15 back in September.
After acknowledging USC’s football success in recent years, Neuheisel, according to the Los Angeles Dailey News, said, “But there’s a change now. Until the new regime proves itself, we believe we have every right to claim this city.”
It sounded like something Lane Kiffin would say.
We move onward . . .
– Even the Wall Street Journal, which reports on sports only if it affects the stock market or the national budget, is getting down on Pac-10 men’s basketball. (See story here.) While noting that the Pac-10 has had 14 non-seniors turn pro the past two years – more than the SEC, ACC and Big Ten combined – the article suggests the Pac-10 could become the first of the six major conferences to have only one team get into the NCAA Tournament since the tournament field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985. We still think the Pac-10 will get at least two teams in, although the West Coast Conference looks like it might get two teams in the NCAAs, too, and not since the 1985 NCAA Tournament expansion has the WCC had as many NCAA teams as the Pac-10.
– Have you noticed there is less mention of LSU’s Trent Johnson recently? Last year, when Stanford sank to ninth place in the Pac-10 and LSU went 26-7 and won its division of the SEC by three games in Trent Johnson’s first season as the Tigers’ coach, there was a lot of attention on the divergent paths of the two programs since Johnson’s departure from Stanford following the 2007-2008 season. This season, though, second-year Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins is 8-9, including 2-3 in the Pac-10, with a team that was picked to finish last even before the series of injuries limited the Cardinal to the six scholarship players it has at the moment. Meanwhile, LSU is 9-8 overall, including 0-3 in the SEC, and has lost six of its past seven games heading into Wednesday game against Auburn. We’re going to wait a little longer to draw any conclusions.
– We are assuming some Purdue assistant coach got a tongue-lashing for neglecting to have John Hart’s name in the official scorer’s book, costing the Boilermakers a technical foul when Hart entered Tuesday’s game against Illinois. But there was no reason to suspect the redshirt freshman would play, because he had not played at all in Purdue’s previous six games and had played only a few minutes all season, all in garbage time of blowouts. Well, not only did Hart play against Illinois, but he scored 14 points, which is six more than he had totaled during his college career to that point. Seven of those points came during Purdue’s rally that turned a 28-24 deficit into a 35-34 lead, and his three-pointer put the Boilers ahead to stay.
– Kansas State games would be great TV entertainment – if only the cameras would get off those guys shooting the ball and getting rebounds and focus on that wild man in the nice suit in front of the Wildcats’ bench. K-State coach Frank Martin was the star of the Wildcats’ victory over No. 1 Texas on Monday with his stomping around, demonstrative gestures and hilariously intense facial expressions. Players were often seen trying to calm him down on the sidelines, but that’s like trying to calm Bill O’Reilly when an outspoken liberal is his guest. Martin is an interesting piece of work, and you have to love the guy for sporting a Jacob Pullen beard afterward, donning the fake whiskers in honor of the beard that his guard, Jacob Pullen, has. The K-State fan motto now is “Fear the Beard.”
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