By Andy Johnston                   For the AJC

Some folks say it’s parity. Others are beginning to worry that this is a down season for the ACC.

The ACC continues to be the top-rated conference in the Sagarin and Pomeroy rankings, but only Duke and Georgia Tech are ranked in the AP Top 25, and the Blue Devils might have knocked the Yellow Jackets out of next week’s poll with their 86-67 victory on Thursday night.

Every team has at least four losses, and Duke, which is considered the ACC’s best team, was crushed by Big East-power Georgetown on Sunday. One thing is for certain: The conference doesn’t have a dominant force like last season’s North Carolina team that won the national championship.

“It’s where we are now. It’s where this conference is at,” North Carolina State coach Sidney Lowe said. “Any given night, you don’t know who is going to win. One team can knock off a nationally ranked team and then play another team that’s not ranked and lose to them. One thing you do know is that this league has a lot of talented players. If those talented players decide they’re going to be better and they’re going to get after it, they’re going to win.”

The fall of North Carolina (13-9, 2-5 ACC) has corresponded with the rise of both Maryland (15-6, 5-2) and Virginia (14-6, 5-2), which are tied for second behind Duke (18-4, 6-2). The parity is evidenced by the fact that 22 of ACC’s 46 games have been decided by eight points or less, including 13 by fewer than four points.

The balance might lead to only six ACC teams making the NCAA tournament, but all 12 entered this week in the top 110 of the RPI.

“It’s become a night-in and night-out grinder,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said. “It’s a challenge of every team to be at their best.”

Out of his shell

Freshman Jordan Williams is providing Maryland with an inside boost.

He posted his third double-double of the season in Maryland’s loss at Clemson on Sunday. The 6-foot-10 Williams then added 14 points in a win at Florida State on Thursday, reaching double-figures for the seventh time. His 13 rebounds Sunday were a career-high.

“[He provides] what we didn’t have last year, [which] is an inside presence,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said. “This year, when we’re playing well, we can throw the ball into Jordan and expect something good to happen.”

Possible return

Clemson guard Demontez Stitt has missed the past two games with a sprained foot, but coach Oliver Purnell hopes to have him back for Saturday’s game at Virginia Tech. Stitt had started 52 consecutive games before the injury.

On the ball

Malcolm Delaney, who scored 21 points in Virginia Tech’s 74-70 victory over North Carolina on Thursday, leads the ACC in scoring (19.8) and 20-point games (11).

N.C. State’s Julius Mays has made 20 consecutive free throws and is shooting 89.5 percent from the line (51-for-57).

Trevor Booker needs 19 rebounds to become the second player in Clemson history with 1,500 points and 1,000 rebounds. With 1,584 career points, he would join Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody and Texas’ Damion James as the only active players with 1,500 points and 1,000 rebounds.

Kyle Singler, playing with an injured right wrist, had career highs with 30 points and eight 3-pointers in Duke’s victory over Georgia Tech.

Must-see TV

Don’t sleep in, or you might miss Wake Forest’s game at Virginia, which begins at noon Saturday (WATL). On Wednesday, Duke plays at North Carolina at 9 p.m. (ESPN) in the first game of the season in that heated rivalry. They’ll also meet at Duke on March 6.

There was a sense of relief in the way Georgia post Angel Robinson exhaled, following her team’s 49-46 overtime victory over No. 19 LSU on Thursday, snapping a three-game losing streak.

With the offense scoring a season-low 42 points in regulation, it could easily have gone the other way. It’s only the second time in coach Andy Landers‘ 987 games at Georgia that his team has won a game in which it scored fewer than 50 points.

As has happened so often this season for the Lady Bulldogs, defense carried the day.

After allowing 60 or more points in seven of the previous eight games, No. 14 Georgia (19-4, 6-4 SEC) emphatically reversed that trend. And after five of the previous six opponents shot better than 41 percent, the Tigers shot 27.3 percent — the third-lowest field-goal percentage for a Lady Bulldogs opponent this season.

Robinson said the defensive performance is a sign that the team is headed in the right direction.

“It’s taking one step; we’re not completely back where we want it,” Robinson said. “I’m glad we took one step. On Sunday [against South Carolina], we need to take another step.”

Ardossi honored

On Monday, Georgia Tech forward Brigitte Ardossi was named the ACC Player of the Week for her performance the previous week, when she averaged 22 points and 12 rebounds in home wins over Miami and Virginia Tech. She’s the first Yellow Jacket to earn this distinction since Chioma Nnamaka in February 2008.

Ardossi entered the season as a relatively unheralded player in the conference but has been Georgia Tech’s most consistent post presence and is playing her way into consideration for All-ACC honors.

In ACC play for the Yellow Jackets (18-5, 4-3 ACC), Ardossi entered Friday second in the league in scoring (18.9 points) and tied for first in rebounds per game (8.9). She also was eighth in free-throw percentage, leading the team at 83.6 percent.

Panthers’ struggles

Georgia State took two more losses this week, along with more blizzard conditions on a road trip through Virginia, making for another challenging trip back to Atlanta.

A 53-39 loss at Virginia Commonwealth and a 61-53 loss to Northeastern at home leaves the Panthers at 12-9 and 3-7 in Colonial Athletic Association play this season. That’s four losses in five games and seven out of nine since a win over UNC Wilmington on Jan. 3 moved the Panthers’ record to 10-2.

The bright point in the loss to Northeastern was Danyiell McKeller, who had career-highs in points (27) and steals (6). The senior is fourth in the CAA in scoring with a 19.3-point average and fourth in steals with 2.5 per game.

Graham Hays does an exceptional job of capturing “who” Jim is and what his relationship is with his players.  As you read this one thing jumps off the page… the article is being written about him and all he talks about is his players, the university and how fortunate he is to be part of their existence.  Humility.  This isn’t just because Jim had a brush with death, it is who he has been since I met him in 1983.

There is no question that if Jim had stayed at Marquette they would be the “UConn” of the Big East as well.  Jim has the plan and the process and Dayton is his vehicle.  Enjoy this.

Jabir making most of second chance

Five seasons after dealing with cardiac issues, coach has Dayton on brink of NCAAs

By Graham Hays ESPN.com

HANOVER, N.H. — Kendel Ross embodies just about everything Jim Jabir believed Dayton women’s basketball could be when the school gave the veteran coach a second chance seven years ago. But for any of those plans to come to fruition, Jabir first needed to receive a second chance at something far more substantial than a profession.

Tim G. Zechar/Icon SMI Jim Jabir hasn't taken a team to the NCAA tournament since 1995 (Marquette), but his Flyers are 17-5 overall and 5-2 in the A-10.

Dayton’s coach admits he’s harder on Ross, now a senior, than just about any player on a Flyers team that remains in control of its postseason fate despite a loss last weekend at Atlantic 10 leader Xavier. Coming out of Canada four seasons ago, Ross was, in Jabir’s words, “the first kid we shouldn’t have got that we got.” He expects excellence out of her, and her mistakes pain him more.

For lack of a more accessible comparison, she is Dayton’s Shane Battier. She does everything that shows up in the box score and half a dozen things that don’t. For better and occasionally worse when stubborn will meets stubborn will, she has a motor and a competitive streak that will not shut off. Tell her you need 15 rebounds in a game and the result is predictable.

“She’s gonna get you 15,” Jabir said. “It’s like clockwork; she’s going to do what you ask her to do. Or she’ll die trying. So it’s this great intensity, it’s this intangible — this will is tremendous. I mean, she’s got this will — and sometimes it works against her, but for the most part it’s been beneficial to us. And I tell her this all the time, too, I love her and I hate her. I mean, she’s so stubborn, you know what I mean? I literally love her and I hate her. There are days I want to kill her and days I can’t get enough of her.”

Mostly though — and this is the most important part — there are just days.

Live a little and die a little. That’s the life of a coach, for whom a job comes down to 30 or more annual public assessments stretching from late fall through spring. It’s an agonizingly brief opportunity to show what all the unseen hours practicing, recruiting and teaching were about. It’s also a painfully prolonged grind through which to experience emotions rising and falling with every executed offensive set and every turnover, let alone every win and every loss.

Wednesday’s game against Charlotte was No. 650 in Jabir’s career, ample opportunity for a lot of winning and a lot of losing. For a long time, there was more of the former than the latter in Jabir’s case. After a successful stint at Siena, he led Marquette to back-to-back 20-win seasons and a pair of NCAA tournament appearances. But when the Big East came calling, he took the job at Providence, a rebuilding project that might as well have been Pompei by basketball standards.

And he lost — a lot. The Friars won more than 11 games just twice in his six seasons. A career coaching record that had stood 37 games over .500 when he left Marquette was three games below the break-even mark when he and Providence parted ways after the 2001-02 season.

Enter Dayton, which eschewed up-and-coming for down-and-out when it hired him.

“I work really, really hard at this, and I love my job and I love Dayton,” Jabir said. “I love that they gave me a chance. I was kind of a down-and-out coach. I left Marquette when it was great and stupidly left like a top-15 recruiting class, top-12 recruiting class, went to Providence, worked my butt off for six years and couldn’t get it turned around. And then I’m kind of like, ‘OK, I’m a used car salesman.’

“I mean, I lost for six years at Providence, so I go to Colorado for a year [as an assistant coach] and then [former and current Dayton athletic directors] Ted Kissell and Tim Wabler gave me a chance. They recycled me; they gave me a chance, so I’ll be forever in debt to them for that. I knew what I was capable of; I just needed a place to prove it and they gave me an opportunity.”

The Flyers were in better shape than Providence was when Jabir took that job, but they weren’t an Atlantic 10 juggernaut by any stretch. They had just one winning season in the decade preceding his arrival. His first team went 3-25. And before Jabir could coach a game his second season, he found himself asking assistant Greg Williams for a ride to the hospital after suffering chest pains. He was diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia (a genetic condition, not specifically related to job stress) and had to have a defibrillator implanted to shock his heart back to a normal rhythm when necessary. He also had to take a leave of absence from the bench and face the prospect of losing something far more meaningful than a game or a job.

“I really thought, without getting too dramatic, I thought I was going to die,” Jabir said. “It’s a really, very lonely experience to go through. I was in the hospital for about three or four weeks, and in that process, it really kind of felt like I was going to lose everything I really, really loved.”

First and foremost, that meant his family at home. But it also meant his basketball family.

“All I could think about was losing my family and then feeling like I wasn’t going to get to do this thing,” Jabir said of turning around Dayton. “Because I knew what we could be. And I felt remorseful that I wasn’t going to get a chance to finish what we started.”

He did get the chance, returning to the bench after a month away and helping lead the team to a nine-win improvement and a 12-16 record. But despite a 17-12 record in the 2005-06 season, Jabir said it wasn’t until the last three years that he felt his players embraced and took ownership of the culture he wanted. That coincided with the arrival of Ross for the 2006-07 season and a talented freshman class last season that quickly learned to follow her lead.

“I feel like he demands excellence,” Ross said. “Not just in how you do stuff but it’s all about hard work. I think that is kind of like the heart of our program.”

Ross is a talented writer who pens a blog on the team’s Web site, but this was not a case of well-placed irony. From the outside, there aren’t any signs of Jabir’s brush with mortality. He’s as animated as any other coach, particularly when he and Ross knock heads. But even a guy who once viewed himself as a pick-and-roll Willie Lohman and who owns a stubborn streak every bit as wide as his Canadian import’s had to take stock of his affairs.

“It’s weird — like I have a defibrillator and a pacemaker, so I’ve been shocked a couple of times,” Jabir said. “And I’m very, very, very fortunate because I’ve not been shocked as often as other people. I think about, like I’ll be driving too fast down a highway and I’m thinking, ‘I could get shocked like right now.’ So that’s always in my head. And because of that, I think, I try to really enjoy right now. And I have to practice, to tell you the truth.

“When I was in the hospital, I was making a lot of promises, praying a lot and saying, ‘Hey, you get me out of this and I’ll change.’ And then you get back to — not the grind, but you get back to working too much and pushing and trying to be what you want to be, and sometimes I forget those promises. You get caught up in what you’re doing. But I’m really grateful that I do what I do, and I think we have a chance to be special.”

Jabir hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 1995, but with Ross and leading scorer and sophomore forward Justine Raterman leading the way for a team that plays as many as 12 people in its rotation during the normal run of play, that should change. Players talked about the intensity that translates into practice this season, just as their coach noted that for the first time, anything less than an NCAA tournament would feel like a disappointment. But that drive is all-consuming only within the gym walls.

“It’s harder for me to be the hard-ass during practice,” Jabir said. “Because I love my team — I love being around them. I love laughing. We have a good time, and I really enjoy every minute with them. I’ve got a lot of keepers. It’s harder for me to be the hard-ass … but I think they demand it and for us to be what we can be, I have to be. But I love the time I spend with the kids off the court. I think it’s probably more the reason I coach. I just love being around them. I love seeing them grow up. I love helping them when I can. They’re a lot of fun.”

You live a little and you die a little. And you’re thankful to have the chance.

Here are the links to the Arizona Men’s Basketball Newsletters:  November through February.

NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER

DECEMBER NEWSLETTER

JANUARY NEWSLETTER

FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER

A lot of good stuff… articles, sets, BOB’s.

Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.

~ Ross Perot

The Cavalier Daily shares thoughts on Monica Wright.

Coach Starkey at LSU shares a really good article from the Washington Post on Coach Tony Bennett.  If you are not following Coach Starkey on Twitter, do it… always good stuff.

I’ve only been to a couple Virginia Men’s games and a practice, but judging from what I’ve seen… all of this is 100% true.

Coach Bennett & Family

Even going back to listening to him at his press conference, the guy is who he is… genuine, nice, incredibly sincere, while demanding what he believes in – what he is teaching.  He speaks of the process of being successful and it is not limited to the court.  His process is about being a good person, a successful person with how you conduct yourself, how you approach practice, approach school, approach your personal life.  All of it correlates to being a winner and plays a roll in winning.

“The process” is working… a 75-60 win at North Carolina is a gigantic win.  The game isn’t on ESPN360.com, but should be.  If you can, find it and watch it.  The defense is spectacular… I want to know what “The Roar” is…  The All-Time record in the UNC – Virginia series?… 124-48 UNC, 63-5 UNC in Chapel Hill… opps, 63-6 now.  1-0 during the Tony Bennett era.

Story from The Women’s Basketball News Server

Until I spoke to Joe Logan a couple of weeks back I never knew.  Everyone is swamped this time of year. We think we are busy and trying to get ready for the next game.  Alisha Mosley’s next game was fighting for her life.  Amazingly, she won! At first she wasn’t supposed to… but she won!  Alisha Mosley’s story is nothing short of amazing.  Read it.  Check in with Joe, Abby or Gizz.  Keep them in your prayers.

Loyola Women's Basketball

The simple fact that this team is still in the thick of things in the MAAC and right around .500 is amazing.  Forget about the fact that this staff is down a member… less “man-hours” for scouting reports, film work, player workouts, practice, player relations.  (Not to mention recruiting)   Think about the emotional drain on the players themselves, Joe and his staff.  Good news or bad, everyday there is a full range of emotions for players and coaches to work through.  This group of players and coaches is to be applauded for how they have persevered and worked their way through this, found a way to keep the ship floating.

Keep fighting Mos… can’t wait to see you back in the gym.

News to Lead By. Need Some New Ideas?

To stir up some innovative thinking as we enter 2010, take a look at the following articles and posts:

I have not yet been through all of them, but wanted to share.  As I work through them and adapt some of the concepts for basketball coaches/players I will add to this post.

• “The advantage goes to those who can outimagine and outcreate their competitors,” writes Bill Breen in a 2007 Fast Company article, The Business of Design. Breen interviewed Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Martin’s book, Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking, came out in 2008.
• More recently on FastCompany.com: The Most Creative People in Business: Top 25 and Eight Ways to Kill an Idea. Don’t Do It! By Cliff Kuang.
• The Decline of Western Innovation on Newsweek.com by Daniel McGinn.
• Can design change the world? An interview on CNN.com with Warren Berger, author of “Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life and Maybe Even the World.”
• How Do Innovators Think? In a question-and-answer session with Harvard Business Review contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how “Innovators’ DNA” works.
• The Innovator’s Vulnerability. Self-confidence, ambition and a thick skin are the obvious characteristics of would-be innovators. Also necessary? A sense of vulnerability, by Saul Kaplan on BusinessWeek.com
• Redesigning Leadership, a Harvard Business column on leadership and design by John Maeda and Becky Bermont of the Rhode Island School of Design.
• Resonance: a short film about getting to the right idea. Continuum strategists how to guide the development of experiences and products that matter to people and keep them coming back for more.

Thank you ladies.  Keep Sportsmanship alive… do what is RIGHT, not what is EASY.