NCAA Basketball & Free Comments • Baloncesto NCAA & Comentarios Libres

[dukefan]

NCAA Basketball & Free Comments • Baloncesto NCAA & Comentarios Libres

Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski... He's still coaching...

Fresh off his fourth national championship at Duke, Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski does not plan on taking a break anytime soon.

On July 18, Krzyzewski will head to Las Vegas for a weeklong USA Basketball training camp. Rising senior guard Nolan Smith and rising senior forward Kyle Singler will be among the 15 to 20 college players invited to work out with the 20 or more NBA players vying for spots on the U.S. men's national team, Krzyzewski said Monday in his annual summer news conference.

While the list of collegiate players participating in Las Vegas is still being put together, Krzyzewski said he expects North Carolina's Tyler Zeller, a rising junior forward, to be invited. The college players are picked by a committee, but Krzyzewski had one request.

"I just ask them to try and get older guys so they will be physically mature," Krzyzewski said.

This is the first time USA Basketball has attempted to integrate college players into the training of the national team. But for Krzyzewski, it's a positive change.

"It's part of our plan for USA Basketball to integrate all aspects of United States basketball," said Krzyzewski, who is the head coach of the U.S. national team and led it to the gold medal at the Bejing Olympics in 2008.

The college players won't scrimmage against the pros but will interact with the NBA players in a controlled setting, Krzyzewski said. They will also help prepare the pros for the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Istanbul, which is Aug. 28-Sept. 12.

The college players will arrive a day early to run through plays that Argentina, Spain and Greece use in order to give the national team a sneak peek of what it may see later in the summer. Villanova coach Jay Wright and Washington coach Lorenzo Romar will be at the training camp working with the college players.

It will be a good experience for whoever gets picked, Krzyzewski said, but that is hardly the only group benefiting from the summer training.

"I will coach this summer more than anybody in the United States, our whole staff will," Krzyzewski said. "As long as I take my breaks and stay fresh, I think that is a good thing."

Undrafted, not unwanted

When former Duke guard Jon Scheyer and center Brian Zoubek did not hear their names called in the NBA Draft last Thursday, Krzyzewski was not surprised, but he was not disappointed, either.

"In the second round, it's better not to be drafted," said Krzyzewski, who thought Zoubek had a shot at getting picked in the second round. "As soon as the draft is over, if you are good enough, you will be invited by five or six teams, and you will have a chance to choose who you will play summer league ball with."

According to Krzyzewski, both Scheyer and Zoubek have already made that choice, though he did not want to say which teams they will be playing with this summer. He also thinks the NBA is a very realistic future.

"I think both of them can be pros," Krzyzewski said. "I would be a little bit surprised if both of them are not on an NBA roster playing next season."

'Don't like to watch'

Rising sophomore guard Andre Dawkins prefers to avert his eyes whenever last season's NCAA championship game against Butler is on TV.

"I really don't like to watch it, especially the end, because I feel like that shot is going to go in," said Dawkins, referring to the last-second halfcourt heave by Butler's Gordon Hayward. "I try to stay away from it."

Dawkins, who skipped his senior year of high school to enroll early at Duke, averaged 4.4 points in about 12 minutes of action per game for the Blue Devils. He said he felt like his decision worked out.

"Not everyone is going to come in and win a national championship in their first year," he said. "For my situation, I think it worked out fine."

Dawkins spent the first part of the summer at home in Virginia lifting and playing pickup. He also spent a week working out with teammate Nolan Smith.

Dawkins said he has focused on improving his ball handling and conditioning. He said he has tried to move on from the national championship and focus on the upcoming season. But at times, that is hard to do.

"It is definitely pretty cool having people come up to you and say congratulations," Dawkins said. "It is cool to be able to say we won the national championship."

Flawed formula

Before Krzyzewski concluded his news conference, he wanted to bring up something that was bothering him: the NCAA's formula for calculating academic progress rates.

"I would say it is not a good formula," Krzyzewski said of the system that tracks the academic progress of each student-athlete on scholarship. "It is better than the one we had, but still not the best."

Krzyzewski does not understand why a school should be penalized if someone transfers or leaves early to go pro. As long as the athlete was in good academic standing before he left, there should not be a problem, Krzyzewski said.

"If a kid goes early, what control do you have over them?" Krzyzewski said. "You should go back to the semester preceding when you did have control."




from FIBA Today

[americoach]

NCAA Basketball & Free Comments • Baloncesto NCAA & Comentarios Libres

Krzyzewski makes adjustments: Coach K reinventing national team, Duke

One of the countless things that has helped Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski stay satisfied in the same place for three decades now is that his job rarely remains the same from year to year.

The constant player turnover requires that he reinvent his team almost annually, a challenging but fulfilling task that he's poised to take on in his recurring role with USA Basketball as well.

"I'm going to have to make those adjustments with our national team too because we're going to have pretty much an entirely new team for the world championships," Krzyzewski during his annual K Academy earlier this month. "We've been busy in our preparation for that."

At the 2008 Olympics, with Krzyzewski as head coach, the United States recaptured the gold medal thanks in large part to the efforts of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard.

While all those players remain atop USA Basketball's pool of 27 players under consideration for the 2012 Olympics, there's a decent chance that none of those players will be competing in the 2010 FIBA World Championship later this summer.

Bryant, who won his fifth NBA title with the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday, may undergo knee surgery and miss the world championship, scheduled for Aug. 28-Sept. 12 in Turkey. James and Wade almost surely won't take part as they sort through their NBA fate in free agency, and Anthony has said he won't be competing in the midst of his impending marriage. Howard is undecided.

Even with that group, minus Bryant, on the roster, the U.S. had to settle for third place in the 2006 world championships -- Krzyzewski's first major international event as head coach. That experience, however, set the ground work for Krzyzewski's approach to the international game, an approach that is now deeply routed and is one of the reasons the U.S. will be favored in the upcoming world championships regardless of the roster.

The players that do take part -- Kevin Durant is the biggest name confirmed at this point -- will be together for nearly a month before heading to Turkey. They will get together for a training camp in Las Vegas in mid-July, then take a break before reconvening in New York for a week of training that will include an exhibition game in Times Square. Then it's on to Spain and Greece for a trio of warm-ups before the team lands in Turkey.

Krzyzewski said the schedule, while ambitious, won't force him to miss much recruiting time and will allow him to return shortly after school starts back at Duke.

That's not to say that Krzyzewski, even before he won his fourth NCAA championship in April, feels any need to justify his role with USA Basketball to critics who contended that it was hurting his program at Duke.

"Sometimes I think a handful of people say something, and a whole bunch of other people hear it, but that doesn't make it true," Krzyzewski said. "I knew when I accepted the position with USA Basketball that it would really help Duke University and me, and if it's helping me, it's going to help Duke.

"It did. We were better. We learned a lot, and in renewing that commitment, we hope it has that same impact, which we think it will."

Krzyzewski said he's looking forward to the process of making significant adjustments to the way his Duke team will play next season. Last year, a team short on perimeter depth relied on rebounding and interior defense to complement its "big three" scorers and capture the crown.

Next season, with Liberty transfer Seth Curry and lightning-quick point guard Kyrie Irving added to the mix among others, the team will take on a different look to be sure.

That's just the way Krzyzewski likes it.

"We won't play the same game," he said. "At Duke, it never gets old for me. Having the caliber of players and young men we bring in, that doesn't get old.

"It keeps you fresh."




from FIBA Today

[country131]

NCAA Basketball & Free Comments • Baloncesto NCAA & Comentarios Libres

2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament

The 2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament involved 65 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball as a culmination of the 2007–08 basketball season. It began on March 18, 2008, and concluded as the Kansas Jayhawks defeated the Memphis Tigers 75-68 in overtime at the Alamodome  in San Antonio, Texas,  to win their fifth national championship, and third NCAA championship.

The host institution was the University of Texas at San Antonio. For the first time in tournament history since seeding began, the top seeded team from each of the four regionals made it to the final four: Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina, and UCLA. On August 20, 2009, the NCAA forced Memphis to vacate all of its wins from the 2007-08 season, as well as their trip to the Final Four and the NCAA Championship Game.

The penalty, which was due to use of an ineligible player, widely believed to be Derrick Rose, was upheld by the NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee on March 22, 2010.  Entering the tournament on March 18, the top ranked team was North Carolina in both the AP Top 25 and the ESPN/USA Today Coaches' Polls, followed by Memphis, UCLA  and Kansas.

American University, UMBC, Texas-Arlington, and Portland State all entered the tournament for the first time in their school's history. Another school, Coppin State won the MEAC Tournament to became the first 20-loss school ever to make the field. The first round of the tournament featured some unprecedented upsets, with four upsets in all four games played in Tampa.

The surprise of the tournament was tenth-seeded Davidson, who advanced to the Elite Eight before losing to eventual champion Kansas 59-57, each team's closest game of the tournament. This tournament was also notable for being the only one to date to feature two 12 vs. 13 matchups.

The total tournament attendance of 763,607 set a record for highest total tournament attendance, breaking the record set during the 1999 tournament.




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