Q & A With Hamady N’Diaye; Madness Stirs Controversy
Entering tonight’s MidKnight Madness event at Rutgers,
Entering tonight’s MidKnight Madness event at Rutgers,
Lance Stephenson isn’t making the trip to Kansas for “Late Night in the Phog” tonight, but it looks like he’ll be very busy in the Big Apple this weekend.
The 6-foot-5 Stephenson will begin by playing Saturday afternoon at 4:30 in the semifinals of the is8 against New Heights in Queens. Durand Scott and the Gauchos meet the Playaz Seniors in the first semifinal at 3.
If Stephenson and Juice win, they would play in Sunday’s is8 championship game at 11 a.m.
On top of that, Lance is one of the headliners — along with Tobias Harris, St. John’s commit Omari Lawrence and Maryland commit James Padgett — on Saturday night (7:30) for the 2nd Annual Jim Couch Games at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx. The New York-Metro game will be preceded by freshmen and a girls games. (See below for the rosters.)
In other Lance news, Lincoln will take on Xavier Henry and Putnam City (Ok.) on Dec. 11 on one of the ESPN channels.
In case you missed it, the surviving members of The Dead reunited Monday for the first time in four years and performed with The Allman Brothers Band before 15,000 fans in a Barack Obama benefit at Penn State called “Change Rocks.”
Original Grateful Dead members Bobby Weir (pictured), Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart played a 15-song set that included “U.S. Blues,” “Franklin’s Tower,” “Playin’ in the Band,” “Dark Star,” “St. Stephen,” and “Touch of Grey.” See setlists below, courtesy dead.net and allmanbrothersband.com.
Rutgers is trying to schedule home-and-homes with defending national champion Kansas as well as North Carolina State that would replace the current home-and-homes with North Carolina and Florida.
Rutgers head coach Fred Hill told Jerry Carino of the Courier News that he was working on getting those games started next year.
“We’re in negotiations with Kansas to start a home-and-home series as the UNC series and Florida series are going to end,” Hill said. “And we have already been in negotiations with N.C. State to start a series next year. We also didn’t know if we’d be playing in the Big East-SEC Challenge. We’re not going to play in it this year so that means we’re going to get into it next year.”
In other local news, The Record reports that Seton Hall recruit Michael Glover is considering appealing the decision in his lawsuit or re-filing in another jurisdiction. The lawsuit was dismissed Tuesday.
Josh Childress and Brandon Jennings are both
Derrick Favors, the No. 1 center in the Class of 2009 out of South Atlanta High, is down to five schools and could make a decision this fall.
The 6-foot-9, 220-pound Favors will choose from among Georgia, Georgia Tech, Memphis, N.C. State and Florida State. Favors will visit N.C. State this weekend and could trip to Memphis the weekend of Oct. 24. He is on record saying he may wait to commit until during the season, but his coach wants him to choose a school by the early signing period next month.
“It just depends on how comfortable he feels after he takes these visits,” South Atlanta coach Michael Reddick said Wednesday by phone. “I would prefer he would get it done by the signing date in November. That’s what’s preferable.
“It would take a way a little more of the distraction and speculation. He would have that over with.”
Bobby Knight returning to coaching? Here’s an AP story suggesting he’s leaving the door open….
INDIANAPOLIS — Bob Knight, the winningest coach in Division I history, left the door ajar to a return to coaching college basketball during a wide-ranging television interview broadcast Wednesday night.
“I got nothing else to do. It would just depend on the circumstances,” the former Army, Indiana and Texas Tech coach told host Mickey Maurer on “Mickey’s Corner” on Indianapolis public TV station WFYI.
Knight, well-known for his crusty demeanor, peppered his answers with language that brought on several bleeps, but overall was laid-back during the hourlong interview taped Sept. 10, eight years to the day the Hall of Fame coach was fired from Indiana, which he led to three national championships in his 29 years there.
