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Welcome to The Sports Bank’s second annual college basketball season preview series. Last year we looked at 99 teams in 99 days. This year, we are being slightly more aggressive and expanding to 111 teams in 111 days. We will rank the 74 power conference teams and top 37 mid-majors in reverse power ranking order. We’ll break down rosters, non-conference schedules, and pick a player to watch for each team. [...]

Georgetown University is known for producing diplomats. But yesterday its basketball team was involved in a diplomatic incident, when a game in China ended in a brawl. The Hoyas faced the Bayi Rockets as part of a “goodwill tour” of China. Tensions ran high from the start, and officials clearly favored the Rockets. Late in the game, Georgetown’s Jason Clark took exception to a hard foul by Bayi’s Hu Ke, and the bench-clearing brawl ensued. [...]

Northwestern college basketball unveiled its new design for the playing court at Welsh-Ryan Arena to be incorporated for the upcoming 2011-12 school year. The interior of the three-point arcs are purple with the exception of the lanes which are the traditional wood color. The brand new Big Ten Conference logo is located just below the top of the key inside the free throw semicircle…

Welcome to The Sports Bank’s second annual college basketball season preview series.* Last year we looked at 99 teams in 99 days.* This year, we are being slightly more aggressive and expanding to 111 teams in 111 days.* We will rank the 74 power conference teams and top 37 mid-majors in reverse power ranking order.* We’ll break down rosters, non-conference schedules, and pick a player…

For the first since the NBA Draft was reduced from seven rounds to two round in 1988, one college basketball program, the Kentucky Wildcats, has seen at least four players get selected in back-to-back drafts. Last year five Cats got picked (John Wall Washington Wizards, DeMarcus Cousins Sacramento Kings, Patrick Patterson Houston Rockets,* Eric Bledsoe [...]

The Patriot-News of Harrisburg was the first to report Penn State Nittany Lions Coach Ed DeChellis is leaving Happy Valley for the vacant college basketball coaching position at the Naval Academy. A media conference is scheduled shortly from now Monday evening. It will be DeChellis’ first* public comment on the matter. It’s quite surprising, since DeChellis just led his alma mater…

Just learned that Robert Traylor, aka The Tractor, is dead.

He was found in his apartment in Puerto Rico (he was a player for Vaqueros de Bayamon). The presumed cause is heart attack—he’s long had problems with his ticker. Traylor was just 34. Heartbreaking.

We tend to remember mediocre professional athletes by the highest moments of…

On Friday, Wisconsin Badgers starting point guard Jordan Taylor was named a finalist for the new Eddie Sutton Tustenugee Award, given to the player who best shows tenacity and unselfishness on the court.

Taylor joins California’s Jorge Gutierrez, Butler‘s Matt Howard, Duke’s Kyle Singler and Arizona’s Derrick Williams…

All good things must come to an end, but most people would have liked to send this year’s NCAA tournament out in better style. In a tournament where not a single 1 or 2 seed made the Final Four, this seemed to set the stage for a Cinderella.

Virginia Commonwealth, a team that many argued shouldn’t have even made the tournament, made the Final Four [...]

I love Princeton 6, Kentucky 2.

I love Bucknell 10, UConn 3.

I love the first few minutes of the opening round of the NCAA Tournament, when teams with seemingly no chance believe they have a chance. It’s the most magical part of the magic. That singular moment, when you slip a backdoor layup past a guy you’ve seen…