Results tagged “collegebasketball”

Former Knicks coach and current head coach of Big East powerhouse Louisville Rick Pitino is mired in an extortion scandal where it has come out that he had an affair inside a Kentucky restaurant and then paid for the woman to have an abortion. Karen Cunagin Sypher was indicted back in April of attempting to extort Pitino for $10 million. She had since responded to the charges with her own claims that the coach had raped her inside a restaurant and at a second location in 2003. Now the Louisville Courier-Journal obtained police interviews where Pitino admits to having sex with her at the restaurant after its employees had left; an assistant coach on-hand also told police that he heard "only the sounds of two people that seemed to be enjoying themselves during a sexual encounter." The Long Island native Pitino, a married father of five and Catholic who has a priest travel around with his team, then admitted to paying $3,000 for Sypher to have an abortion because she did not have health insurance, an anecdote unlikely to be brought up by the president in his current town hall meetings. Sypher pleaded not guilty to the extortion charges and prepares to go for trial. Sources say Pitino has no plans to take a leave of absence from Louisville.

Isiah Thomas isn't just leaving the Knicks to coach basketball at Florida International University—he's coaching at FIU for free. The AP reports, "Thomas said his salary the first year from the Golden Panthers will be donated back to the school's athletic department... FIU athletic director Pete Garcia said that when Thomas learned about layoffs and budget cuts, he told the university president that the school should keep his salary." Of course, the Knicks still owe him $12 million for the rest of his contract. Thomas told reporters, "I like rolling up my sleeves. I like taking some from the bottom and building it to the top. There's a lot of risk in that and there is also a lot of reward in that. But that's how I grew up." Remember when Isiah said he would bring a championship to the Knicks? Good luck, FIU.

You may have missed it, but the UConn women’s basketball team just completed what may be the greatest season ever. Not only did they go undefeated, but they destroyed their opponents winning every game by 10 points or more. It’s really nothing new for UConn. The 2009 championship is the sixth they have won in the last 15 seasons and it was their third perfect season.

John Calipari just left Memphis for Kentucky and will receive over $4 million a year to coach basketball there. Jim Calhoun is the highest-paid employee of the state of Connecticut, something you better not ask him about. Roy Williams, the coach at North Carolina, makes around $1.5 million a year. The NCAA itself earns over $500 million a year from its TV contract with CBS. Everyone is making a killing from March Madness except for the people who make it all possible, the players. Why don’t they get a cut of all the profits they generate?

You've got your bracket filled out for the NCAA Tournament and you wanna cheer on the team you picked to win it all. But where does one go to root with like-minded fans? A new map from Mapfaced solves your problem! They have a list of 33 schools and the corresponding bars that will welcome your Carolina Blue, chant "Hoya Saxa!" with you, or enjoy your off-key singing of "On, Wisconsin!" Mapfaced even has the schools listed by tournament region for ease of use.

• Too bad Knicks games aren't this exciting or well-played. The busiest -- and best -- day of the Big East schedule got started with Georgetown's record-setting win over Villanova, which is now squarely back on the NCAA Tournament bubble. The Hoyas won without any points from Roy Hibbert. Those tournament-record 17 3-pointers -- on 28 attempts -- helped more than cancel it out in a 83-62 win.
• The Hoyas will get the Moutaineers of West Virginia, which rode Joe Alexander's 34 points -- two of which came on a sick dunk over Stanely Robinson -- in its win over Connecticut. That game was the first in which won by the team in the darker jersey -- the lower seed. If Bob Huggins' team wasn't in good shape for the NCAA Tournament, it is now. The Huskies, however, lost a chance to help their seeding.
• The first night game had perhaps the most local flavor. Louisville has its share of New York players, and coach Rick Pitino was born in the city and went to St. Dominic's High School in Oyster Bay. Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon loves to recruit around New York and loves to bring his Panthers to New York. Maybe St. John's should get relegated, because the Panthers, including Brooklyn product Levance Fields perform better at the Garden than does the Red Storm. With Thursday's overtime win, they're now 4-0 there this season, with wins over Duke, St. John's and Cincinnati on Wednesday coming earlier.