Quick links for your daily check in on the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament (WBI Too!)
The Updated Bracket: BRACKET
Dayton Feature: DAYTON FLYERS: BREAKING GROUND
Kentucky Feature: KENTUCKY WILDCATS
St. John’s Feature: ST. JOHN’S ‘FAMILY AFFAIR’
Tournament Results at a Glance: TOURNAMENT GLANCE SCHEDULE
WBI Results: WBI BRACKET WBI LIVE STATS
Quick links for your daily check in on the Men’s Tournament
The Updated Bracket: BRACKET
Ranking the field of 16: RANKING THE SWEET 16
Tournament Results at a Glance: TOURNAMENT GLANCE
NIT & CBI Results: NIT & CBI
Many teams and programs have gone to collecting cell phone, PDA’s, SideKick’s, etc… on the road the night before games and keeping them until after the game is over for the trip home. Social Networking, and instant connection to your players has become a major distraction. Whether it is Facebook photo’s, comments. Twitter or texting with friends… all of it is a distraction, but there is a bigger picture here.
The interpersonal skills of a team are so vital to being successful. The cell phone, PDA, texting world is robbing our team’s of the learned skill of simply being able to talk to your teammate. As simple as that may seem, if players don’t hang out and talk, they don’t get to know each other as well. Knowing each other builds trust, care and concern for each other. If they don’t know each other as well, they don’t communicate as well. We all know if they don’t trust & communicate as well, we don’t play together as well. Care and concern means… “I got your back.” That is priceless on a team, any team, any sport.
I’ll take it one step further… with all of this, the communication, the getting to know each other, the trust. There’s a greater lesson than basketball in all of this. If all those things are missing, or under developed, from a young person’s life – they won’t fully develop the “people skills” needed later in life to be successful after basketball is over.
I’m not just some UFO* coach that is clueless to this. I am guilty… I text, email, IM, blog, twitter, surf the web on my iPhone WAY too much. We can’t just give the reason, oh I have to it’s recruiting or networking. Everything has a “reason,” don’t allow “reasons” to become “excuses.”
I applaud and respect the decision of the Georgia Tech PLAYERS to take this approach themselves. Note the approach of coach Paul Hewitt, “suggestion.”
Today’s student-athlete’s, the millennials, rarely can have anything forced on them. (The millennials… That’s a topic for another post…) But Hewitt has their minds in the right place and helping them make a mature decision for the betterment of the team. Teaching them some selfLESSness and making them choose it themselves.
Outstanding!
It paid off in a first round upset of Oklahoma State. Let’s hope it continues.
from Associated Press
Georgia Tech players plan to give up their cell phones once again — this time before the NCAA tournament.
The Yellow Jackets have already reaped the benefits of muting distractions this postseason.
Georgia Tech players relinquished their phones before last week’s Atlantic Coast Conference tournament and then made a run to the championship game.
But some of the players were skeptical when they first heard coach Paul Hewitt’s suggestion. However, success has made believers out of them.
Players on teams headed to the NCAA women’s tournament are graduating at a higher rate than those in the men’s field, a study released Tuesday showed.
An annual report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida also found that the graduation gap between white and black players is smaller among women than men.
There were 19 women’s teams that had a 100 percent graduation rate compared to six men’s teams. And 51 women’s teams graduated at least 70 percent of their players compared to 29 men’s teams.
Richard Lapchick, director of the institute, said overall graduation rates for men and women have continued to increase at a similar pace, so the disparity is not that alarming.
“For me, it’s not as worrying as the gap between black and white,” Lapchick said. “The gap between black and white, for me, is a continuation of a historical pattern that dates back to segregation when everybody was not afforded the same opportunities. In this case, women have turned the tables on past inequality and are getting recognized.”
NCAA spokesman Chuck Wynne said the collegiate sports governing body was “extremely proud” of the increasing graduation rates for women but did not address specifics about the gender or racial gaps.
“From baseline to baseline, our game continues to get better even as our student-athletes continue to excel academically,” Wynne said in a statement. “It’s a tribute to our student-athletes and coaches who work so hard to make it happen.”
Looking at just the women’s tournament, the report found that 50 teams graduated at least 70 percent of their white players, but only 40 teams graduated that same percentage of African American players. That makes for a 14 percent gap; the men had a 48 percent disparity in the same category.
Lapchick said the pull of the NBA and international men’s basketball leagues have put the emphasis on playing professionally and have taken the focus away from education.
“There’s that belief that so many men have had since they were boys that they would play in the NBA, Europe or somewhere else professionally,” he said. “There is a culture in men’s sports that focuses on playing professionally. The women’s game has historically had more emphasis on education” because going pro was less of an option.
Jarrod Chin, director of violence prevention and diversity at Northeastern University’s Sport in Society, said the gender gap is a social issue that goes beyond athletics.
“The educational gender gap has been increasing not only in sports, but overall,” Chin said. “We tend to think of women as more book smart, so we value education more with them. Men, unfortunately, we value athleticism more. So we don’t place as much emphasis on education.”
The report measures six-year graduation rates for the freshman classes that entered college from the 1999-2000 through the 2002-03 school years. The report relies on information provided by the NCAA and not federal graduation rates, which don’t account for transfer students.
Unlike the NCAA Women’s Tournament, the WNIT has more trouble with TV coverage. Therefore, local channels are likely to broadcast the games.
View the first round schedule.
Try watching the WNIT online with a satellite tv program on your computer. Using free websites are ok, but they are slow, sluggish and not exactly worth the time.
For March Madness you can get discounts, there’s a $20/off the normal price of $49.99 offered now. You can not only watch the WNIT but also, NIT, NCAA Men’s and Women’s NCAA Tournament Online
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