FLORIDA (36-2) vs. CONNECTICUT (30-8)
Basketball
The Gators have won all 30 games they’ve played since a loss at Connecticut on Dec. 2. The teams meet again today in the Final Four. They both have changed and they both have stayed the same.
Three years ago, Connecticut won the national championship. Shabazz Napier was a freshman on that team. So too was Roscoe Smith.
Bad weather in Dallas gave the sports media world something to focus their gripes on. It really could have been anything, though.
Findlay Prep led by 14 in the third quarter, but Oak Hill of Virginia forced 15 second-half turnovers and rallied for a 64-56 win in the semifinals of the High School National Tournament at Christ the King High School in New York City on Friday.
Cinderella stayed home. Forget that Kentucky is an 8 seed and Connecticut a 7. Of those teams that have advanced to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament, all are major programs and three have won multiple national championships.
It’s easy to paint John Calipari as a con artist. He’s slick and perceived as shady, a reputation earned through great recruiting. The Kentucky coach runs an NBA farm team on a college campus.
Findlay Prep’s boys basketball team boasts two McDonald’s All-Americans. But it was another senior standout who guided the Pilots to a victory on Thursday.
Spencer Haywood, the basketball legend who lives in Las Vegas and helped change the culture of the game for future players by changing the NBA’s early entry rule in 1971, does not get enough votes to be a member of the Class of 2014. But he remains hopeful that he’ll make it to Springfield someday.
Findlay Prep’s Rashad Vaughn and Kelly Oubre combined for 25 points Wednesday to help the West team defeat the East 105-102 in the McDonald’s All-American Game.
A 30-win season is celebrated by most prep boys basketball programs. At Findlay Prep, it gets picked apart and scrutinized.
You’ve heard of that movie about backup singers called “20 Feet From Stardom?” Well, Molly Sullivan has spent the basketball season 20 feet (or thereabouts) from futility.
Illinois-Chicago defeated Stephen F. Austin 73-64 in the Women’s Basketball Invitational championship game in Chicago, capping a 26-win season under former UNLV women’s basketball coach Regina Miller.
In retrospect, some events are truly unbelievable, such as an airplane disappearing without a trace. It went against the odds, but Shabazz Napier knocking out Michigan State is not that hard to believe.
Aaron Harrison made a 3-pointer from NBA range with 2.3 seconds left Sunday to lift Kentucky and its freshmen to a 75-72 win over Michigan and a trip to the Final Four.
