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The Daily Digest for Thursday, April 5, 2007 |
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April 04, 2007 |
≡ Heading for Home ≡
 Huggins: Going home |
L.A. Stories:
>> Clipper Ship: Steve Hartman has been having fun on the “Loose Cannons” show on KLAC AM 570 with the renewal letters sent by the Clippers to floor-seat holders. One fan called in to read one of the letters, which detailed that floor (courtside) seats will be increasing in face value from $1,200 to $1,500 for next season, a 25% increase. Season-ticket holders will be able to purchase these tickets for less, but a $12,000 deposit on each seat was due today. The Clippers letter noted that the seats had become valuable enough that there was a waiting list for them, but that season-seat holders who sent in their deposits in a timely way would get a 2% discount on Clippers merchandise.” Comment: at least they’re less than the Lakers charge.
>> Spark Me: Our correspondent The Kook sent us a link to conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel who isn’t a big fan of the WNBA:
If a tree falls in a forest, but no-one was there to hear it, did it actually make a sound?
If a substandard, pretend basketball league holds a draft but no-one noticed, did it really happen?
Yup, yesterday, that Weird Nuisance Brought on America, that Waste of National Broadcast Airtime, held a draft. Several people with women's chromosomes (allegedly), brush cuts, lots of muscles, and at least 6'7" in height were chosen to handle a striped circus ball at sideshows in empty stadiums across America.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
For the record, Schlussel’s figures aren’t quite right. Our research showed that last season’s average WNBA game had announced attendance of 7,456 while the WNBA team arenas average 17,591 in capacity. That would be 42.4%, less than half full. The average WNBA crowd has decreased in each season from 2002 through 2006 with the league’s highest average attendance – 10,864 per game – achieved in its second season, in 1998.
The L.A. Sparks averaged 8,311 at the 20,000-seat Staples Center in 2006, down 20% in two years from the 2004 average of 10,428, but are under new ownership in 2007.
>> What’s Bruin: UCLA assistant basketball coach Kerry Keating, 35, has agreed to be the new head coach at Santa Clara University according to stories on multiple Internet sports news sites. He will succeed Dick Davey, who retired after 15 years as the SCU head coach. His last team finished 21-10 and second to Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference last season.
>> Alumni report: Several well-known local players are among the top scorers in the NBA Development League as the season nears its end. Former UCLA guard Dijon Thompson is third in the league in scoring for the Albuquerque Thunderbirds, averaging 20.0 points per game and also stands fourth in the league in rebounding. Former USC star Desmon Farmer of the Tulsa 66ers is ninth in scoring at 18.3 points a game and former Cal star Joe Shipp – older brother of UCLA’s Josh and Arizona State’s Jerren – is 18th at 16.2, also at Albuquerque.
>> Horse sense: Liquidity, second in the Sham Stakes at Santa Anita to the now-injured Ravel, is the 5-2 favorite for the Santa Anita Derby this Saturday. King of the Roxy, considered to be a sprinter, was second choice at 3-1 with Sam P third choice at 4-1. The race is 1 1/8 miles and a key milestone on the way to the Kentucky Derby.
Panorama:
>> Baseball: Get out the party horns, Matsu-Mania is on! Daisuke Matsuzaka made his Major League debut on Thursday, pitching seven innings, striking out ten and giving up six hits, one walk and one run to the Kansas City Royals in Kansas City. The Red Sox won the game, 4-1, with the Royals’ only run coming on a sixth-inning home run by David DeJesus. Comment: hold the happiness, it’s just the Royals.
>> College basketball: Florida’s four junior stars – Horford, Noah, Green and Brewer – all declared for the NBA Draft this afternoon, leaving coach Billy Donovan to begin assembling a new squad from returnees like junior point guard Walter Hodge and a load of talented freshmen who will enroll in the fall.
>> College basketball coaching carousel: Bob Huggins, a West Virginia grad, agreed to return to his alma mater as head basketball coach, leaving Kansas State after one season where he had a 23-12 record and a brilliant recruiting class ready to come in. Huggins had five years remaining on his Kansas State contract at an average of about $1 million per season. He played at West Virginia from 1975-77.
≡ At the Half ≡
 Can anyone help this man? |
Tonight’s menu:
>> The undefeated Angels (3-0) host 1-2 Oakland tonight at Angel Stadium, with Joe Saunders pitching for Los Angeles and Chad Gaudin for the A’s. That makes the Angels the favorite on the money line with $140 needed to try and win $100 on the Halos while a $105 wager on the A’s could win the same $100. The over-under is 9.5 runs.
>> On the ice, the 26-40-14 Kings are finishing up their season with a home-and-away with 29-45-5 Phoenix. Tonight, the teams play in the Arizona desert, with the Coyotes a woeful 16-20-2 at home while the Kings are an equally sorrowful 11-24-4 on the road. Phoenix holds a 6-3 edge over Los Angeles in their last nine meetings and both teams have five-game losing streaks. On the money line, Phoenix is favored with a $135 wager required to try to win $100 while taking the Kings requires only $120 to try and win that $100.
L.A. Stories:
Laker lines: It may be that Kobe Bryant is too good. In the team’s back-to-back losses to the Nuggets and Clippers, Bryant has taken 38% of the Lakers’ shots from the field and since he’s shot only 41% (27-65) in those two games, the Lakers have lost twice. It may be remembered that in the Kobe-Shaq days, the common refrain was that a third scorer was needed for the Lakers to get to championship caliber. That role was filled by shooting guard Glen Rice on the 1998-99 team, Derek Fisher in the 2000 season and Fisher and Robert Horry in the 2000-01 season, but who will – or can – step up now to help Bryant (31.1 points per game) and Lamar Odom (16.1 ppg)? The next highest scorers are Luke Walton at 11.5 and Smush Parker at 11.2, with the latter contributing only ten points in the last two games combined.
What’s Bruin: UCLA assistant basketball coach and ace recruiter Kerry Keating may become the new head coach at Long Beach State, but signals are mixed. Whoever replaces Larry Reynolds in Long Beach will inherit a team that went 24-8 last season and won the Big West Conference, but will have to rebuild as its top seven scorers were seniors, including Honorable Mention All-American guard Aaron Nixon.
American panorama:
>> College basketball: The carousel continues: Billy Donovan will stay at Florida and will negotiate a new contract with Athletic Director Jeremy Foley after a vacation next week in the Dominican Republic. Even with all four of his junior stars – Al Horford, Joakim Noah, Taurean Green and Corey Brewer – expected to declare for early entry into the NBA Draft today, Florida has a solid class coming in and Donovan should have the Gators ready for contention in the SEC next season. And that 0% Florida income tax doesn’t hurt, either.
>> Coaching carousel, add 1: After luring Dana Altman from Creighton only to have him change his mind and return to Omaha, Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles hired Parker Executive Search out of Atlanta to help find a new basketball coach. The Northwest Arkansas Morning News reported that Parker Search was the firm that helped Minnesota find Tubby Smith and is now helping Kentucky with finding a replacement for Smith. The search firm will receive a $90,000 fee plus out-of-pocket expenses from the Razorback Foundation for its efforts, with Gregg Marshall of Winthrop and former Stanford (and Golden State) coach Mike Montgomery being whispered as possibilities. Mike Montgomery, who’s only coached in California and Montana . . . at Arkansas?
>> Coaching carousel, add 2: The student newspaper at the University of Oregon, the Daily Emerald came out in support of basketball coach Ernie Kent, whose team won the Pac-10 Tournament and made it to the Midwest Region final before losing to eventual champion Florida. Why would Oregon want to chase him away?
≡ Morning Post ≡
 Bzdelik: money talks |
L.A. Stories:
>> Although it’s a little hard to believe after the Lakers’ 90-82 loss to the Clippers in a “road” game at Staples Center last night to fall with a half-game of seventh in the Western Conference (currently held by Denver), ESPN analyst Greg Anthony opined that the Lakers have a better chance of surprising its first-round opponent (San Antonio or Phoenix) than the Nuggets do.
“I would say the Lakers from this standpoint,” he noted on ESPN.com. “[T]hey have more of an identity. Phil Jackson’s been back there for a few years now, the core of the team has been together and they forced a seventh game in last year’s playoffs. And the bottom line is you have Kobe Bryant. As good as Allen Iverson is, he’s not Kobe, who could end up averaging 45 for a series.” More from Anthony on the Lakers and the team to watch in the West:
“This is one of the worst defensive jobs that I’ve seen a Phil Jackson team display. Sometimes a team thinks it’s playing hard, and doesn’t realize that it can be playing harder. But when the playoffs come, you know they’re going to be playing better defensively because they’ll have a chance to prepare.”
“San Antonio’s the team I would be most leery of in the Western Conference. Dallas and Phoenix haven’t won a championship. This team has. That means a lot. Francisco Elson and Fabricio Oberto have played well the past month, with great intangibles, not so much in things that show in the stats.”
American panorama:
>> College basketball: The coaching carousel keeps turning with Jeff Bzdelik leaving the Air Force Academy and taking the head job at nearby Colorado in an illustration of why such moves happen: money. The 54-year-old Bzdelik left Air Force after two seasons with a 50-16 record, but just one year after signing a five-year contract extension following the end of last season, when the Falcons went to the NCAA Tournament. But he was being paid about $425,000 at Air Force ($331,000 base salary) and Colorado paid Ricardo Patton about $750,000 last season and is undoubtedly paying Bzdelik more . . . John Beilein’s move from West Virginia to Michigan will up his pay to about $1 million per season. Beilein left with five years to run on his contract with the Mountaineers and Michigan will pay West Virgina a $2.5 million buyout, has to pay off Tommy Amaker’s contract and also pay Beilein and a set of new assistant coaches. What happens to West Virginia? The most common names bandied about are Eastern Kentucky coach Jeff Neubauer, 36, who coached he Colonels to the Ohio Valley Conference tournament championship and lost to North Carolina in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and West Virginia alumnus Bob Huggins, now at Kansas State. The thinking in the local media is that if West Virginia names current Kansas State provost Duane Nellis as its new university president (he is one of the finalists), Nellis might be able to lure Huggins.
>> NBA/pro basketball: John Schuhmann’s “NBA Rookie Rankings” on NBA.com as we close in on the end of the regular season show former University of Washington star and now Portland Trailblazers guard Brandon Roy as best so far with averages of 16.3 points per game, 4.4 rebounds and four assists. He’s followed by forward Rudy Gay of Memphis (10.9 ppg), No. 1 overall pick Andrea Bargnani of Toronto (11.5 ppg), forward LaMarcus Aldridge of Portland (9.0 ppg) and forward Jorge Garbajosa of Toronto (8.5 ppg).
~ Rich Perelman
>> Have an opinion? You can send it using the “Comment” button below!
>> Don’t forget to register for our drawing for free sports memorabilia! Just click on the “Register & Win” tab at left; enter today!
uisance Brought on America, that Waste of National Broadcast Airtime, held a draft. Several people with women's chromosomes (allegedly), brush cuts, lots of muscles, and at least 6'7" in height were chosen to handle a striped circus ball at sideshows in empty stadiums across America.
What is the sound of one hand clapping? For the record, Schlussel’s figures aren’t quite right. Our research showed that last season’s average WNBA game had announced attendance of 7,456 while the WNBA team arenas average 17,591 in capacity. That would be 42.4%, less than half full. The average WNBA crowd has decreased in each season from 2002 through 2006 with the league’s highest average attendance – 10,864 per game – achieved in its second season, in 1998.
The L.A. Sparks averaged 8,311 at the 20,000-seat Staples Center in 2006, down 20% in two years from the 2004 average of 10,428, but are under new ownership in 2007.
>> What’s Bruin: UCLA assistant basketball coach Kerry Keating, 35, has agreed to be the new head coach at Santa Clara University according to stories on multiple Internet sports news sites. He will succeed Dick Davey, who retired after 15 years as the SCU head coach. His last team finished 21-10 and second to Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference last season.
>> Alumni report: Several well-known local players are among the top scorers in the NBA Development League as the season nears its end. Former UCLA guard Dijon Thompson is third in the league in scoring for the Albuquerque Thunderbirds, averaging 20.0 points per game and also stands fourth in the league in rebounding. Former USC star Desmon Farmer of the Tulsa 66ers is ninth in scoring at 18.3 points a game and former Cal star Joe Shipp – older brother of UCLA’s Josh and Arizona State’s Jerren – is 18th at 16.2, also at Albuquerque.
>> Horse sense: Liquidity, second in the Sham Stakes at Santa Anita to the now-injured Ravel, is the 5-2 favorite for the Santa Anita Derby this Saturday. King of the Roxy, considered to be a sprinter, was second choice at 3-1 with Sam P third choice at 4-1. The race is 1 1/8 miles and a key milestone on the way to the Kentucky Derby.
Panorama:
>> Baseball: Get out the party horns, Matsu-Mania is on! Daisuke Matsuzaka made his Major League debut on Thursday, pitching seven innings, striking out ten and giving up six hits, one walk and one run to the Kansas City Royals in Kansas City. The Red Sox won the game, 4-1, with the Royals’ only run coming on a sixth-inning home run by David DeJesus. Comment: hold the happiness, it’s just the Royals.
>> College basketball: Florida’s four junior stars – Horford, Noah, Green and Brewer – all declared for the NBA Draft this afternoon, leaving coach Billy Donovan to begin assembling a new squad from returnees like junior point guard Walter Hodge and a load of talented freshmen who will enroll in the fall.
>> College basketball, coaching carousel: Bob Huggins, a West Virginia grad, agreed to return to his alma mater as head basketball coach, leaving Kansas State after one season where he had a 23-12 record and a brilliant recruiting class ready to come in. Huggins had five years remaining on his Kansas State contract at an average of about $1 million per season. He played at West Virginia from 1975-77.
≡ At the Half ≡
Tonight’s menu:
>> The undefeated Angels (3-0) host 1-2 Oakland tonight at Angel Stadium, with Joe Saunders pitching for Los Angeles and Chad Gaudin for the A’s. That makes the Angels the favorite on the money line with $140 needed to try and win $100 on the Halos while a $105 wager on the A’s could win the same $100. The over-under is 9.5 runs.
>> On the ice, the 26-40-14 Kings are finishing up their season with a home-and-away with 29-45-5 Phoenix. Tonight, the teams play in the Arizona desert, with the Coyotes a woeful 16-20-2 at home while the Kings are an equally sorrowful 11-24-4 on the road. Phoenix holds a 6-3 edge over Los Angeles in their last nine meetings and both teams have five-game losing streaks. On the money line, Phoenix is favored with a $135 wager required to try to win $100 while taking the Kings requires only $120 to try and win that $100.
L.A. Stories:
Laker lines: It may be that Kobe Bryant is too good. In the team’s back-to-back losses to the Nuggets and Clippers, Bryant has taken 38% of the Lakers’ shots from the field and since he’s shot only 41% (27-65) in those two games, the Lakers have lost twice. It may be remembered that in the Kobe-Shaq days, the common refrain was that a third scorer was needed for the Lakers to get to championship caliber. That role was filled by shooting guard Glen Rice on the 1998-99 team, Derek Fisher in the 2000 season and Fisher and Robert Horry in the 2000-01 season, but who will – or can – step up now to help Bryant (31.1 points per game) and Lamar Odom (16.1 ppg)? The next highest scorers are Luke Walton at 11.5 and Smush Parker at 11.2, with the latter contributing only ten points in the last two games combined.
What’s Bruin: UCLA assistant basketball coach and ace recruiter Kerry Keating may become the new head coach at Long Beach State, but signals are mixed. Whoever replaces Larry Reynolds in Long Beach will inherit a team that went 24-8 last season and won the Big West Conference, but will have to rebuild as its top seven scorers were seniors, including Honorable Mention All-American guard Aaron Nixon.
American panorama:
>> College basketball: The carousel continues: Billy Donovan will stay at Florida and will negotiate a new contract with Athletic Director Jeremy Foley after a vacation next week in the Dominican Republic. Even with all four of his junior stars – Al Horford, Joakim Noah, Taurean Green and Corey Brewer – expected to declare for early entry into the NBA Draft today, Florida has a solid class coming in and Donovan should have the Gators ready for contention in the SEC next season. And that 0% Florida income tax doesn’t hurt, either.
>> Coaching carousel, add 1: After luring Dana Altman from Creighton only to have him change his mind and return to Omaha, Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles hired Parker Executive Search out of Atlanta to help find a new basketball coach. The Northwest Arkansas Morning News reported that Parker Search was the firm that helped Minnesota find Tubby Smith and is now helping Kentucky with finding a replacement for Smith. The search firm will receive a $90,000 fee plus out-of-pocket expenses from the Razorback Foundation for its efforts, with Gregg Marshall of Winthrop and former Stanford (and Golden State) coach Mike Montgomery being whispered as possibilities. Mike Montgomery, who’s only coached in California and Montana . . . at Arkansas?
>> Coaching carousel, add 2: The student newspaper at the University of Oregon, the Daily Emerald came out in support of basketball coach Ernie Kent, whose team won the Pac-10 Tournament and made it to the Midwest Region final before losing to eventual champion Florida. Why would Oregon want to chase him away?
≡ Morning Post ≡
L.A. Stories:
>> Although it’s a little hard to believe after the Lakers’ 90-82 loss to the Clippers in a “road” game at Staples Center last night to fall with a half-game of seventh in the Western Conference (currently held by Denver), ESPN analyst Greg Anthony opined that the Lakers have a better chance of surprising its first-round opponent (San Antonio or Phoenix) than the Nuggets do.
“I would say the Lakers from this standpoint,” he noted on ESPN.com. “[T]hey have more of an identity. Phil Jackson’s been back there for a few years now, the core of the team has been together and they forced a seventh game in last year’s playoffs. And the bottom line is you have Kobe Bryant. As good as Allen Iverson is, he’s not Kobe, who could end up averaging 45 for a series.” More from Anthony on the Lakers and the team to watch in the West:
“This is one of the worst defensive jobs that I’ve seen a Phil Jackson team display. Sometimes a team thinks it’s playing hard, and doesn’t realize that it can be playing harder. But when the playoffs come, you know they’re going to be playing better defensively because they’ll have a chance to prepare.”
“San Antonio’s the team I would be most leery of in the Western Conference. Dallas and Phoenix haven’t won a championship. This team has. That means a lot. Francisco Elson and Fabricio Oberto have played well the past month, with great intangibles, not so much in things that show in the stats.”
American panorama:
>> College basketball: The coaching carousel keeps turning with Jeff Bzdelik leaving the Air Force Academy and taking the head job at nearby Colorado in an illustration of why such moves happen: money. The 54-year-old Bzdelik left Air Force after two seasons with a 50-16 record, but just one year after signing a five-year contract extension following the end of last season, when the Falcons went to the NCAA Tournament. But he was being paid about $425,000 at Air Force ($331,000 base salary) and Colorado paid Ricardo Patton about $750,000 last season and is undoubtedly paying Bzdelik more . . . John Beilein’s move from West Virginia to Michigan will up his pay to about $1 million per season. Beilein left with five years to run on his contract with the Mountaineers and Michigan will pay West Virgina a $2.5 million buyout, has to pay off Tommy Amaker’s contract and also pay Beilein and a set of new assistant coaches. What happens to West Virginia? The most common names bandied about are Eastern Kentucky coach Jeff Neubauer, 36, who coached he Colonels to the Ohio Valley Conference tournament championship and lost to North Carolina in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and West Virginia alumnus Bob Huggins, now at Kansas State. The thinking in the local media is that if West Virginia names current Kansas State provost Duane Nellis as its new university president (he is one of the finalists), Nellis might be able to lure Huggins.
>> NBA/pro basketball: John Schuhmann’s “NBA Rookie Rankings” on NBA.com as we close in on the end of the regular season show former University of Washington star and now Portland Trailblazers guard Brandon Roy as best so far with averages of 16.3 points per game, 4.4 rebounds and four assists. He’s followed by forward Rudy Gay of Memphis (10.9 ppg), No. 1 overall pick Andrea Bargnani of Toronto (11.5 ppg), forward LaMarcus Aldridge of Portland (9.0 ppg) and forward Jorge Garbajosa of Toronto (8.5 ppg).
~ Rich Perelman
>> Have an opinion? You can send it using the “Comment” button below!
>> Don’t forget to register for our drawing for free sports memorabilia! Just click on the “Register & Win” tab at left; enter today!
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