sutomcat
2024 Iggy Award (ACC Tournament Record)
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Welcome to National Tug-Of-War Tournament Day!
Split into two teams, and the last one standing wins! July 21 is National Tug of War Tournament Day, and there’s only one way to celebrate: play tug of war!
Historians think some version of tug of war has been played for many centuries, all the way back to both ancient Egypt and ancient China. Today, formal organizations play by set rules, with eight people to a team and a muddy “moat” between them. The goal is to pull the rope at least four meters or cause the opponents to fall down (and hopefully get very muddy!).
SU News
http://nypost.com/2016/07/20/the-jim-boeheim-call-to-sell-carmelo-anthony-on-olympics/ (nypost.com; Berman)
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said he knew Carmelo Anthony was wavering about playing in the 2016 Olympics given all the defections and health and safety concerns in Rio.
So Boeheim placed a call to the player who helped him win the 2003 national championship to try to convince him Team USA needed him. Boeheim gave him all the reasons that the Olympic experience would give him momentum going into next season.
It turned into a golden call. Anthony is here at training camp as the undisputed emotional leader of the U.S. Olympic team, while Boeheim is back as assistant coach to Mike Krzyzewski.
“I called him to see what his thought process was,’’ Boeheim said Wednesday at UNLV. “He was squarely on the fence. I told him how he’d be good for our team. We knew LeBron [and others] weren’t going to come. It would be great for our team to have you. … I said it would be good for you in my opinion, you’ll get a great experience playing basketball again.”
Knicks management appeared indifferent on Anthony’s Olympic plans. His left-knee surgery was 17 months ago, but there was a groundswell of thought he should protect his knee as he just turned 32.
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Syracuse Made Correct Decision To Join ACC - Today's U (todaysu.com; Holcomb)
There was something ideologically wrong with Syracuse leaving the Big East three years ago.
Syracuse was a charter member to the proud basketball conference, and the Orange built fierce rivalries with several of the other Big East schools. Georgetown and Syracuse was one of the best college basketball rivalries in the country, and the Orange’s matchups with Connecticut, Villanova, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Pittsburgh were exciting too.
Unfortunately, it ended. In an attempt to make more money, Syracuse fled for greener pastures in the ACC. It wasn’t a very popular decision at the time.
“Where would you want to go for a tournament for five days?” Boeheim sarcastically asked back in Sept. of 2011 according to Yahoo Sports. “Let’s see: Greensboro, North Carolina, or New York City? Jeez. Let me think about that one and get back to you.”
“I can’t picture the Big East without Syracuse,” Louisville Cardinals basketball coach Rick Pitino said in Oct. of 2011. “I can picture the Big East without Pittsburgh. It’s tough for me to understand (Syracuse) since the alumni base is this area and Long Island.”
Obviously, both coaches have come around quite a bit over the last five years. Pitino and the Cardinals joined the ACC one year after Syracuse did.
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TBT's Super 16 loaded with former college, NBA players (ESPN; Goodman)
Here's a look at each Super 16 matchups.
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Northeast
No. 1 City of Gods vs. No. 5 Team FOE, Thursday (4 p.m. on ESPN3)
City of Gods features more former NBA players on the roster than just about anyone else in the event, with DerMarr Johnson and Michael Sweetney joining James White and Pops Mensah-Bonsu. They made it to the semifinals a year ago and added the high-flying White. There's also former Drexel point guard Phil Goss, ex-Georgetown guard Chris Wright and former Maryland big man James Gist. Johnson, the sixth overall pick in the 2000 draft, has averaged 28 points and eight boards in their two wins.
There's a heavy Kansas connection with FOE, beginning at the top with boosterThomas Robinson, general manager Markieff Morris and coach Marcus Morris. There's also a pair of former Jayhawks in the backcourt with Tyshawn Taylor and Elijah Johnson. Ex-Villanova guard Maalik Wayns has been stellar thus far, as has former St. John's power forward Sean Evans.
No. 2 Boeheim's Army vs. No. 3 The Untouchables, Thursday (7 p.m. on ESPN2)
Boeheim's Army is littered with former Syracuse players from the past 15 years, starting with Hakim Warrick, Darryl Watkins and Terrence Roberts. It continues with Eric Devendorf and Rick Jackson and culminates with guys like Brandon Triche, C.J. Fair and Baye Moussa Keita.
It will be like an old Big East battle with the Syracuse-laden group going up against The Untouchables, a team filled with former Pittsburgh Panthers. There's Gilbert Brown, Gary McGhee, Levance Fields, Brad Wanamaker and Antonio Graves along with former UMass guard Ricky Harris and ex-Oklahoma wing Cameron Clark. Thus far, Wanamaker has been the team's top scorer at 20 points per game.
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Conference Realignment: What If The Big East Had Stayed Together And Expanded? (smokingmusket.com; BP)
The Big 12 Conference is again talking about expansion, and this time, it’s for real. Here’s a fun hypothetical situation: What if the Big East had kept the major football schools and created an actual Power 5 football conference?
The Big 12 Conference is again talking about expansion, and this time, it's for real. WVU was smack-dab in the middle of the last conference realignment, something that Big 12 expansion would induce for the Group of 5 conference.
Here's a fun hypothetical situation: What if the Big East had kept the major football schools and created an actual Power 5 football conference? Well, a couple things would have needed to happen.
Firstly, Notre Dame would have HAD to join. I still blame Notre Dame for killing the original Big East and will never ever be convinced that their insistence to be independent in football was the major blow that eventually felled the Big East.
Secondly, the Big East would have needed to find three more schools to play football to make 12 teams and have a conference championship. One would have been in the form of Connecticut, which had an FBS team starting in 2005. Also in 2005, the Big East added three football schools, albeit to replace the three that left. Let's assume Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College stayed and Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida were added. That equals 13 teams.
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Once seen as rickety, the ACC is walking tall (myajc.com; Bradley)
There was a time when the ACC appeared a rickety enterprise. It had become Little Brother — at least in football, the sport that matters most in terms of TV and money — in its region to the almighty SEC, and in a time of rampant realignment we wondered if the famous basketball league might soon go the way of other basketball leagues in this football-mad world.
Today the ACC is a place you’d want to be — and stay. It has won three of the past eight NCAA basketball titles and sent a record six teams to the Sweet 16 this March. It has claimed as many of the past three football national championships as the SEC.
If ACC football across the board isn’t quite a match for the SEC’s product, the ACC’s version has surely gotten better and — with new coaches at Miami, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Syracuse — could get better still. Considering all sports and academics as well, the ACC absolutely belongs in the upper crust of the upper crust.
The ACC’s Football Kickoff starts Thursday in Charlotte. Commissioner John Swofford will use the forum to announce plans for an ACC Network, which will begin airing in 2019 and will fall under ESPN’s voluminous umbrella. In the exalted realm of power conferences, you need your own network. Being pragmatic, you’d prefer to be partnered with the Worldwide Leader. (The SEC is. The Big Ten Network is a Fox entity. The Pac-12 Network is unaffiliated.) It’s not as if ACC teams have never played on ESPN — ask Dickie V. about his Dukies — but a branded ACC Network is yet another sign of conference health.
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What's in a name? Naming rights pull in big money, exposure (gainesville.com; Brockway)
When Florida first approached Exactech about putting its name on the arena portion of the O’Connell Center, the Gainesville-based company’s CEO, David Petty, was intrigued.
“We thought, wow, that was pretty interesting and we probably can’t afford it,” Petty said.
Yet after more than year of negotiations, Exactech reached a 10-year, $5.9 million naming rights agreement with Florida that will begin when the newly renovated O’Dome re-opens in mid-December.
Exactech, an orthopaedic implants device company, joined the growing list of corporations eager to put their names on college sports arenas for increased local, regional and national exposure. The trend began in 1980, when an air conditioning company, Carrier, spent $2.75 for naming rights toward the $25.63 million Carrier Dome in Syracuse. The irony? The Carrier Dome is not air-conditioned.
Naming rights deals on stadiums and arenas serve different purposes for different companies, according to sports business and legal expert Darren Heitner.
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Other
Syracuse-based Dinosaur Bar-B-Que closes Chicago location (PS; Cazentre)
The Dinosaur Bar-B-Que restaurant in Chicago is closing after a little more than one year in business.
A Dinosaur marketing director told the Chicago Tribune the restaurant in that city's Lincoln Park neighborhood would close after the end of service tonight.
The Chicago Eater, a web site covering the city's dining and food scene, first reported the closing today and printed this statement attributed to Dinosaur founder John Stage and CEO Rene de la Garrigue:
"We want to thank everyone who has joined us at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Chicago over the past year. While we will be closing our outpost in Chicago this July, our team remains fully committed to serving our bar-b-que to all our loyal fans at our other nine locations throughout the Northeast."
According to the Chicago Eater, a hostess answering the phone at the location said staff were told the closing "was a matter of not making enough money."
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