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The ugliest missed free throw you've ever seen
By Jeff Eisenberg
February 9, 2010
For those who couldn't sit through the final four minutes of the Kansas-Texas game on Monday night, it did deliver at least one memorable moment: A missed free throw for the ages.
Maybe Kansas' Brady Morningstar was a little off balance. Maybe he stumbled over an elevated floorboard. Either way his double-clutch foul shot while tripping forward into the paint was the basketball equivalent to a bad toss on a tennis serve.
"The ball was wet," Morningstar told the Lawrence Journal-World. "It slipped on the way up. I was so confused. I could have caught it and came down with it, but I'd have stepped on the line. I tried to shoot a little jump shot so I didn't cross the line."
"I looked pretty stupid there," he added. "We laughed about it in the locker room just now."
The free throw shooter was supposed to be Cole Aldrich, but the Kansas big man also picked up a technical for his fifth foul, forcing coach Bill Self to select someone else to take the foul shot. Self chose Morningstar, a 75 percent free throw shooter this season.
"My sub was smart. That'll be an ESPN top 10 for the next six months," Self said with a laugh. "He said the ball was wet, and it slipped out of his hands."
All the talk going into the game was about Texas' 62 percent free throw shooting, but at least the Longhorns have never botched one that badly, right?
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McCamey gets 27, Illinois shocks No. 11 Wisconsin
By COLIN FLY
February 9, 2010
MADISON, Wis. — Demetri McCamey scored 27 points and Mike Tisdale added 19 on 8-of-11 shooting to lead Illinois to a 63-56 upset over No. 11 Wisconsin on Tuesday night, snapping the Badgers’ 51-0 home record against unranked Big Ten opponents under coach Bo Ryan.
The Illini (17-8, 9-3) became the first team to beat Ryan three times at the Kohl Center after wins in 2005 and ’06 and ended Wisconsin’s 18-game home winning streak. More important, Illinois won its fifth straight game after a 78-73 win over then-No. 5 Michigan State on Saturday that featured fans rushing the court.
This one may have been better, because the Illini are now in prime position to challenge the Spartans for the regular-season conference crown. The schedule isn’t easy for Illinois, which plays four more ranked teams in its final six games, including two games with No. 13 Ohio State and a rematch with the Badgers in the regular-season finale.
It was a shock for Wisconsin (18-6, 8-4), which got 15 points from Jason Bohannon, including 13 in the second half, and 12 from Trevon Hughes.
The Badgers built a 22-11 lead while only Tisdale could find the basket, hitting every field goal for the Illini until just over 6 minutes to play in the first half.
That’s when McCamey took over.
McCamey, the Big Ten player of the week for his performances against Iowa and the Spartans, scored 15 of Illinois’ final 20 points of the half and the Illini hit 10 consecutive shots straddling halftime to erase the double-digit deficit.
With 5:16 left, Wisconsin’s Jordan Taylor fell to the ground, but managed a pass to Bohannon for a 3 that tied it at 53-all. But D.J. Richardson and McCamey answered with jumpers to push the lead to 57-53, and Wisconsin went cold, going scoreless for 5 minutes.
The Badgers missed nine consecutive shots down the stretch, including a layup by Taylor with just over 2 minutes to play and 3s by Keaton Nankivil, Taylor and Bohannon.
McCamey hit one free throw with 58 seconds left and Richardson hit two more 16 seconds later to seal it.
With a winter storm making life miserable in southeastern Wisconsin, there were several open seats throughout the Kohl Center and the top of the student section was sparse.
Wisconsin went up 22-11 on a four-point play by Hughes and early only the 7-foot-1 Tisdale hit six of his first seven shots.
His teammates, meanwhile, missed 10 straight shots until McCamey’s layup with just over 6 minutes left until halftime.
But the Illini hit eight straight shots to end the half, 10 in a row and 17 out of 21.
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Pac-10 considering possible expansion
By JOSH DUBOW
February 9, 2010
San Francisco, CA — Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott said Tuesday that the window for expansion by the conference is open for the next year as the conference begins negotiations for a new television deal.
Speaking on a conference call to introduce former Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg as his new deputy, Scott talked about possibly adding new teams to the conference and launching a new television network.
Scott, the former head of the Women’s Tennis Association, took over the conference last July. In his less than eight months on the job, he has seen growing interest from the membership over the possibility of adding teams for the first time since Arizona and Arizona State joined the conference in 1978.
“It is really over the next six to 12 months that we’ll start having serious analysis and serious evaluations,” Scott said.
While there has been major upheaval in conference alignments in recent years, the Pac-10 has remained stable for more than three decades. But with a new commissioner and television deals that expire following the 2011-12 academic year, the time is ripe for a fresh look at the issue.
“To me, the logic if the Pac-10 is going to think about expanding, now is our window,” Scott said. “The reason being if you’re going to consider a reconstruction of the conference, there’s a value proposition associated with that. Given that we’re about to have negotiations regarding our media rights, it makes sense that if you’re going to do it, to do it when you can monetize it and get value from it commercially.”
The Pac-10 isn’t the only major conference looking at expansion. The Big Ten said in December that it would explore the possibility of adding a 12th team in the next 12 to 18 months. The SEC, ACC and Big 12 already have 12 schools, while the Big East has 16 teams for basketball and eight for football.
Scott said there have been “no serious discussions” with any schools. He said the primary factor in the decision will be finding schools that fit into the conference culturally and academically.
“I know that’s of paramount importance to our presidents and chancellors,” Scott said. “There are other economic and athletic considerations such as increased costs that would be involved, increased travel that would be involved, splitting the pie in more ways. You look at how that is offset against potentially greater revenue, potentially greater exposure into more markets, possible recruiting opportunities, the impact on media negotiations generally. There’s a whole analysis you would go through in terms of cost benefit.”
The conference is also looking at the possibility of starting its own television network. Scott said the priority in the new television deal will be to increase exposure and revenues.
“I always knew that there’s a lot of interest in the possibility in a network,” he said. “But that’s not the only solution to achieve our overall goals.”
Scott said the conference will undergo a rigorous evaluation of whether to launch a network in the upcoming months. Weiberg, who helped launch the Big Ten network, will play a big role in that process.
Weiberg said assuring wide distribution of a network is paramount to its success. The Big Ten Network had trouble getting on cable systems in the Midwest when it launched in August 2007 and was initially only available in about 17 million homes.
Within a year, it was available in about 75 million homes.
“Clearly for a network to be successful, you want it to be distributed as broadly as possible not only in the region but hopefully to have distribution that is national in scope,” Weiberg said. “One has to think carefully about how to achieve that. It’s fundamental to the economic success of such a network.”
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