John Calipari might have left the Kentucky Wildcats to coach Arkansas this offseason, but sprouting a Razorback red versus Wildcat blue sportscoat on the sidelines is about the only change Calipari has faced with his new team. Not only did he take most of his former school’s coaching staff with him but also three previously committed Kentucky recruits and another three key players from the 2023-2024 Kentucky squad. Yet despite Kentucky’s willingness to let their head coach of 15 years go, John Calipari has taken his Kentucky 2.0 team to the Sweet Sixteen, one step further than his teams have…
Author: Alexander Martin
Alexander Martin
Graduate of the University of Texas A&M(2024) and published outdoor/sports journalist. Alexander has been in the industry for two years now and has traveled to the tops of mountains, remote villages, attended national championships- all in effort to become a prolific writer and explorer.
For the first time, two Boston Celtics players scored 40+ points in a single game, and it wasn’t Jason Tatum & Jaylen Brown…. Payton Pritchard(43 points, 10 three-pointers, 10 rebounds) and Derrick White(41 points, 9 three-pointers) go down as the first Boston Celtics’ to each have over 40 points AND separately, each have nine plus three-pointers in the same game. Their accumulative effort of 84 points helped the Celtics beat the Portland Trailblazers 128-118 in last night’s outing(Feb. 5th). Pritchard came off the bench, although he had a team leading 43 minutes, despite Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis…
The 26-5 High Point Panthers of the Big South are projected to make their first ever March Madness tournament, made official on Selection Sunday, less than two weeks away. High Point has never been nationally ranked but this week the Panthers received four votes towards the AP Top-25 poll, the most ever in school history. Needless to say Head Coach Alan Huss has the Big South regular season champions humming, they own the longest winning streak going in Division I basketball right now with 11 straight wins. Last season HPU was on the brink of March Madness play, they lost…
Recently, ESPN Analytics released a new data tracking ability that evaluates a NBA player’s performance play by play; an all encompassing Net Points rating that determines your total contribution to that game. As explained by ESPN’s Dean Oliver, “It quantifies every rebound, shot, turnover and free throw and assigns credit and blame to the players on the court. It divides credit and blame based on the difficulty of the players’ contributions to the success or failure of the team.” This gives NBA teams, fans, front office folks, etc. a new metric to judge a player’s impact for their respective team.…
Everyone and their mother is betting sports now a days and March Madness, the second most bet on event(s) in the United States, is just days away. Bookies are ready for a sports betting frenzy; 67 games over the course of three weeks, each with a different context but same weight- you either dance on, or go home. All season Auburn and Duke have been the runaway betting favorites; right now you could catch both of them around +350 per ESPN BET. March Madness Betting Favorites The proceeding favorites are as follows… Houston: +800 Florida: +850 Alabama: +1200 Tennessee: +1400…
PJ Haggerty is doing nothing new- the sixth highest scorer in all of Div. I ball was top 15 in PPG as well last year, his talent just flew under the radar playing for a small Tulsa Golden Hurricane team. Now, playing for the Memphis Tigers, PJ Haggerty’s game has been on full display and has kept the Tigers nationally ranked since Week 9. Haggerty averages 21 points per game and has scored 15+ in all but three games. Pretty good for a team with zero AP poll votes in the preseason rankings. Memphis is now ranked No. 16 with…
If the NBA playoffs started today, the Phoenix Suns would miss them entirely despite Kevin Durant and Devin Booker being the only duo in the league to average 26 points each per game. “This is an absolute mess, there’s no way around it. If I was him, I’d want out,” said ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on First Take this morning(March 3) regarding Devin Booker’s situation with the Suns. It has been messy in Phoenix as of late, the Suns have lost 11 of their last 14. Here’s what you’re going to have to do if you’re the Phoenix Suns,” Stephen A.…
For the first time all season, the AP Top-25 poll featured no new teams, keeping the same exact universities from our previous week’s poll. It’s to be expected, with only three more weeks of rankings left and the regular nearly complete, the AP committee’s perception has been finely tuned, aging like a fine wine into the dwindling days of the men’s college basketball regular season. AP Top-25 Poll Top Ten A clear top five school’s have remained in the top ten throughout the majority of this season and their consistency has been rewarded. Auburn (1), Duke (2), Houston (3), Tennessee…
In a gritty SEC battle, the Tennessee Volunteers managed to defeat the Alabama Crimson tide 79-76 thanks to Jahmai Mashack’s buzzer beater three ball, his only attempt behind the arc of the night. The Vols stifled the Crimson Tide late, going on a 7-0 run to finish the game. Bama had the chance to have the last shot attempt but Freshman Labaron Philon failed to inbound the ball in five seconds. Mashack would then run the floor, pull up from several feet behind the arc and BANG, buzzer beater, NCAA game of the year. In all the SEC shuffle, some…
The regular season has come to a close for the Sun Belt Conference but the fun isn’t over just yet. A new looking conference tournament will kick off for the Sun Belt March 4th but seeding the tournament was more precarious than usual this year. Four teams finished the regular season with a 13-5 record in conference play, something that’s never happened in the Sun Belt. The SBC committee delved deep into the rulebooks and seeded the four top teams based on their records versus each other individually, then as group, then by committee opinion. The decision was made on…
The NBA is home to an assortment of personalities but musically inclined professional athletes are few and far between. However, since the creation of the internet and social media, we have seen an increasing number of athletes use the offseason to share interesting hobbies they partake in to fill their time. NBA players are no different and especially since Covid-19, rappers, R&B singers and instrumentalists have emerged from the woodwork. Star players like Damian Lillard, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Lonzo Ball all have released multiple records since entering the NBA and many more players have followed suit. The First…
Bennett Stirtz has the unranked Drake Bulldogs in a three way race of the best NCAA basketball regular season record, between No. 1 Auburn and No. 2 Duke. The 26-3 Bulldogs have already won the Missouri Valley Conference this year, beating out Bradley with one regular season game to go. Their last game before the MVC tournament is on March 2nd versus their worst conference opponent Missouri State. No matter the outcome, the dogs will finish this season with the least amount of losses in program history. Drake’s had a good stretch of March Madness appearances over the past five…
One of last night’s(Feb. 26) Big Ten matchups ended in a frenzy after Michigan State’s Tre Holloman sent Maryland home shell-shocked after hitting a half-court buzzer beater to put the Spartans up permanently, 58-55. The final shot was Tre Holloman’s first made three of the night, he was 0-3 before that attempt. Post game the Spartan was just as shell-shocked as his opponents. “I saw the rim and the shot clock going down so I had to throw it up,” said Holloman with his voice mostly depleted from the adrenaline. “We practice those… it just went in.” No. 8 MSU…
With only 23 games left in the regular season, the playoffs could not come fast enough for the Dallas Mavericks. If the season ended today, the Mavs would squeak into the play-in tourney by two seeds. They’re currently ninth in the Western Conference and 31-28. But time is moving slow in Dallas since the Luka trade on February 1st; Mavs fans have watched their ex-superstar light it up for the Lakers while their team suffers a horrible injury bug. Last night, Feb. 25th, Luka recorded a triple double in his first game versus the Dallas Mavericks since the trade. He scored…
Augustus Marciulionis and Paulius Murauskas, two names you wouldn’t expect to be leading an American college basketball team to Saint Mary’s fourth straight March Madness. But nonetheless, the two Lithuanians are amidst career years and have helped the St. Mary’s Gaels to their first appearance in the AP Top-25 poll here in Week 17. The Gaels are 25-4 and are dominating the West Coast Conference(WCC) as of late. They only have one in-conference loss, to their biggest conference tournament threat San Francisco, and have won 15 of their last 16 games. If Saint Mary’s finishes out the season on their…