NEW YORK -- Whether it was Villanova's Final Four trip last season or his bench demeanor, Wildcats coach Jay Wright has made a big impression on a majority of the Big East players.
Wright was the top vote-getter in FanHouse's poll of the league's players asking which coach, other than their own, they would like to play for. Wright, who received 29.7 percent of the votes, edged Syracuse's Jim Boeheim, with 24.3 percent.
Two weeks ago at the Big East's media day, FanHouse polled 37 players representing all 16 schools that attended Madison Square Garden on a variety of subjects. The players were guaranteed anonymity for their responses with only one stipulation: they could not vote for their coach, a teammate or their school in any of the categories.
While the players voted for Wright as the coach they would like to play for, Seton Hall's Bobby Gonzalez (24.3 percent) edged UConn's Jim Calhoun (21.6 percent) as the "opposing coach that screams the most."
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun was hospitalized Saturday after he collapsed following a 50-mile charity bicycle ride during which he fell and broke five ribs.
Calhoun, 67, was taken to the UConn Health Center in Farmington, where he was listed in good condition. He was to be held overnight for observation and released Sunday, said Maureen McGuire, a hospital spokeswoman.
In an effort to talk about something college basketball-related other than scandals in the summer, let's talk best current coaches. We'll attempt to order the top 25 current coaches in the nation. This is about the present and the future, not the distant past. What a guy did in the mid-90s doesn't matter near as much as the direction his program is currently headed. Past pedigree also matters, to an extent. For the perfect mix of past accomplishments with present achievement and a paved road for future success, look no further than the man atop the list.
On its face, one of the sillier declarations of testing the NBA draft waters was UConn freshman forward Ater Majok declaring for the draft. Ater Majok never played for UConn this season, as Majok's academic situation took quite a while to unravel. Not too surprising for a Sudanese native that first went to Australia before getting to the United States. The NCAA decided that Majok would not be eligible until the 2009-10 season.
Nate Miles, briefly of UConn, but this past season with the College of Southern Idaho (a junior college) has also declared for the NBA draft. Having both players go pro -- even if they do not get drafted -- is probably the best case scenario for UConn and Jim Calhoun.
You rant at a press conference that you're worth the millions as the highest-paid employee in a bankrupt state, cold to the fact that everyone around you is in a panic about losing a job or sending a kid to college. The governor says you've embarrassed yourself, and you look so foolish that you become an instant YouTube cult figure.
You're accused of dirty recruiting, breaking NCAA rules, making you the star of a week-long news cycle. You're in your late 60s, and stress and health add up so that you're too sick and dehydrated, temporarily, to coach your team.
The gods gave Jim Calhoun a glorious exit opportunity when Connecticut reached the Final Four. With his name crashing down around him, he could have left to cheers.
Instead, he announced Thursday that he plans to come back next season.
It is as the sports Almighty intended it. For every winner, there is a loser (take that and your nil-nil ties, soccer!). For every Tiger Woods, there is a Detroit Lion. For every Isiah Thomas as a player, there is an Isiah Thomas as a general manager, league owner, boss and suspected poor Parcheezi player. And for every North Carolina with its win for the program's ring, there is a Wake Forest, which now hasn't made the Final Four since Carolina coach Roy Williams entered puberty. Check out FanHouse's breakdown of the winners and losers of the NCAA tournament, other than those five-time national champion Heels.
DETROIT -- On command, when a local kid named Durrell Summers lifted off and nearly decapitated Stanley Robinson with a vicious dunk, a moving wave of green-swept humanity rose and rocked. Yes, your honor, this was a ridiculous homecourt advantage, a home-FIELD advantage of about 45,000 local crazies in a 72,500-seat football stadium, an advantage in ways freakishly unprecedented in the fiercely neutral extravaganza known as the Final Four.
Ford Field is guilty as charged.
And not a soul with a conscience should complain about it.
DETROIT -- If Jim Nantz utters even one mushy word about the innocence of the Final Four, please muzzle him. As it is, the games will be contested inside a bubble of greed, a football dome that wraps 72,000 mostly bad seats around a basketball court positioned at midfield. As it is, the NCAA has joined marketing hands with the International Management Group, a firm that represents college coaches and pro athletes and only invites conflicts of interests. As it is, the idea of "student-athletes " playing in an amateur environment is farcical.
DETROIT -- If Jim Nantz utters even one mushy word about the innocence of the Final Four, please muzzle him. As it is, the games will be contested inside a bubble of greed, a football dome that wraps 72,000 mostly bad seats around a basketball court positioned at midfield. As it is, the NCAA has joined marketing hands with the International Management Group, a firm that represents college coaches and pro athletes and only invites conflicts of interests. As it is, the idea of "student-athletes " playing in an amateur environment is farcical.
For all Jim Calhoun is, Hasheem Thabeet, Connecticut's seemingly two-story tall center, needs just one marvelously apt word to size up what the coach means to this Final Four team.
NEW YORK -- Whether it was Villanova's Final Four trip last season or his bench demeanor, Wildcats coach Jay Wright has made a big impression on a majority of the Big East players.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut basketball coach 
On its face, one of the sillier declarations of testing the NBA draft waters was 
You rant at a press conference that you're worth the millions as the highest-paid employee in a bankrupt state, cold to the fact that everyone around you is in a panic about losing a job or sending a kid to college. The governor says you've embarrassed yourself, and you look so foolish that you become an instant YouTube cult figure.
It is as the sports Almighty intended it. For every winner, there is a loser (take that and your nil-nil ties, soccer!). For every Tiger Woods, there is a Detroit Lion. For every Isiah Thomas as a player, there is an Isiah Thomas as a general manager, league owner, boss and suspected poor Parcheezi player. And for every North Carolina with its win for the program's ring, there is a Wake Forest, which now hasn't made the Final Four since Carolina coach Roy Williams entered puberty. Check out FanHouse's breakdown of the winners and losers of the NCAA tournament, other than those five-time national champion Heels.
DETROIT -- If Jim Nantz utters even one mushy word about the innocence of the 
