#TOP hot Lithuanian men competition | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zeroviraluniverse-blog · 7 years

Text

NCAA tournament fast and unprecedented fall of the Pac-12

Visit Now - http://zeroviral.com/ncaa-tournament-fast-and-unprecedented-fall-of-the-pac-12/

NCAA tournament fast and unprecedented fall of the Pac-12

On Thursday night, the Pac-12’s subpar season came to an end.

Buffalo did not just beat Arizona — a trendy pick for a Final Four run — in Boise, Idaho.

The Bulls made the Wildcats cower. In the final minutes of an 89-68 loss, an Arizona squad down double digits to a 13-seed put up garbage shots and played phantom defense, an apathetic conclusion to its season.

The tournament has tipped off. Your picks are locked in. It’s time to find out how your bracket is holding up. Check your brackets

The Wildcats also made history. Since the Big 12 was created in 1996-97, no league among the six major conferences (Power 5 and the Big East) had failed to send a team to the second round until Thursday when the Pac-12 became the first, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.

Per U.S. Department of Education data, Arizona spends $3.1 million per year on men’s basketball. Buffalo spends $500,000. Sean Miller’s compensation is $4 million per year and Buffalo coach Nate Oats makes $600,000 annually.

Those advantages did not help the Wildcats in the opening round.

Arizona will share its misery with the rest of the Pac-12, a conference that underperformed and offered little evidence it even belonged in the field.

Arizona State beat Xavier and Kansas before it struggled in league play this season. The selection committee still gave the Sun Devils a bid. What did they do to show their appreciation? In the First Four, they scored 56 points against a Syracuse squad many believe had not earned an at-large berth, either.

A turbulent UCLA squad fumbled a late lead and lost to St. Bonaventure in a First Four matchup, too.

Andy Enfield’s USC team, which finished second in the Pac-12 standings, cracked the “snubbed” lists on Selection Sunday. The Pac-12’s performance and historic exit from the tournament justified, however, the selection committee’s decision to exclude an average team from an average league.

It didn’t start this way.

Both Arizona (third) and USC (10th) earned lofty slots in the Associated Press preseason poll. UCLA started at No. 21. Oregon received two votes after adding five-star talent Troy Brown Jr.

Arizona made a quick exit from this season’s NCAA tournament. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Arizona, UCLA, USC, Stanford and Arizona State all had incoming recruiting classes ranked within the top 35, per ESPN.com.

Deandre Ayton, who helped Arizona regain a spot in the national rankings after the team lost three consecutive games in the Battle 4 Atlantis over Thanksgiving weekend, is potentially the No. 1 pick in this summer’s NBA draft. And UCLA had turned to Aaron Holiday to replace Lonzo Ball, while USC returned every key player from a season ago. Arizona State’s hot start enlarged the school’s bandwagon, too.

By the end of night Thursday, however, they were all disappointed.

That’s a statement that extends beyond basketball.

The FBI bribery investigation that rocked college basketball has centered on a pair of prominent Pac-12 programs. Former USC assistant Tony Bland was arrested in September and De’Anthony Melton never played in 2017-18 due to his alleged ties to Bland and the probe.

Former Arizona assistant Book Richardson was also arrested in the FBI investigation. Later, ESPN reported Miller had participated in a pay-for-play scheme for the services of Ayton. Miller and Ayton denied the report and the school stuck behind the program.

• Tournament bracket | PDF | GIF • Tournament Challenge: Check brackets • 538: Win probabilities & predictions • 2018-19 projections for tourney teams • College Basketball PickCenter • College Basketball Scoreboard • College Basketball Nation blog • NCAA tournament schedule • Full NCAA tournament coverage <!– • What you need to know for Thursday • BPI tournament projections • BPI: Projections | Best bracket tips • Scouting the entire tournament field • FiveThirtyEight: Win probabilities • NCAA tournament bracket cheat sheet • ESPN expert picks for the Final Four • Best bets for first-round games • Bilas picks every game of the tourney • Who are the tourney’s best players? • NCAA tournament bold predictions • Who is this year’s Kemba Walker? • Spreads for every first-round game • Selection Sunday winners and losers –>

The league will enter Friday’s games without a dog in the fight. The ominous shadow of the FBI investigation and possible fallout will intensify now that the three-bid league is no longer participating in the NCAA tournament.

The Pac-12 is now just left with questions.

Will Steve Alford enter the offseason on the hot seat? What about Enfield?

How quickly will Bobby Hurley put this turbulent season behind him?

And what’s the future of Arizona basketball?

The latter is the most complicated question in the conference.

A Miller-led program with Final Four aspirations just lost to an underrated Buffalo team. The Wildcats have no commitments. They’re losing every starter.

What about the rest of the Pac-12 and those teams that didn’t make the NCAA tournament?

At least three Pac-12 squads will fail to make the top 100 of KenPom.com’s final rankings after this mess of a season.

In December, LaVar Ball pulled LiAngelo Ball — suspended due to his involvement in a theft during an overseas trip to China — from UCLA’s program. He then placed him and younger brother LaMelo Ball in a Lithuanian pro league, terminating their amateur status and ensuring LaMelo would not fulfill his commitment to UCLA.

Critics complained about the limited competition the brothers would face in one of Europe’s lesser leagues and suggested the Pac-12 would have helped both develop and thrive.

After Arizona’s loss to Buffalo on Thursday, though, the Ball brothers do have this going for them: At least they’re still playing.

#Fall #fast #NCAA #Pac12 #Tournament #unprecedented #Sports #Sports News

0 notes

haya-haya-iamthatiam · 7 years

Text

Rachel Anne Maddow was born in Castro Valley, California. Her father, Robert B. "Bob" Maddow, is a former United States Air Force captain who resigned his commission the year before her birth and then worked as a lawyer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Her mother, Elaine (née Gosse), was a school program administrator.[10][11][12] She has one older brother named David. Her paternal grandfather was from a family of Eastern European Jews (the original family surname being "Medwedof") who self-identified as Polish and Russian at the time of their arrival in the United States; however, by today's borders, they would be considered Lithuanian and Ukrainian. Her paternal grandmother was of Dutch (Protestant) descent; her Canadian mother, originally from Newfoundland and Labrador, has English and Irish ancestry.[13] Maddow has stated that her family is "very, very Catholic" and she grew up in a community that her mother has described as "very conservative".[14][15][16] Maddow was a competitive athlete and participated in high school volleyball, basketball, and swimming.[17] Referencing John Hughes films, she has described herself as being "a cross between the jock and the antisocial girl" in high school.[16] A graduate of Castro Valley High School,[18] she attended Stanford University. While a freshman, she was outed by the college newspaper when an interview with her was published before she could tell her parents.[14] Maddow earned a degree in public policy at Stanford in 1994.[19] At graduation, she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship.[20] She was also the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. This made her the first openly gay or lesbian American to win an international Rhodes Scholarship.[21] In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in politics at the University of Oxford.[22] Her thesis is titled HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons, and her supervisor was Lucia Zedner.

Honors and awards

Emmy Award in the Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis category for The Rachel Maddow Show episode "Good Morning Landlocked Central Asia!"

Maddow was named in Out magazine's "Out 100" list of the "gay men and women who moved culture" in 2008.[58]

Maddow was voted "Lesbian/Bi Woman of the Year (American)" in AfterEllen's 2008 Visibility Awards.[59]

Maddow won a Gracie Award in 2009, presented by the American Women in Radio and Television.[60]

In 2009, Maddow was nominated for GLAAD's 20th Annual Media Awards for a segment of her MSNBC show, "Rick Warren, Change To Believe In?", in the Outstanding TV Journalism Segment category.[61]

On March 28, 2009, Maddow received a Proclamation of Honor from the California State Senate, presented in San Francisco by California State Senator Mark Leno.[62]

In April 2009, she was listed at number four in Out magazine's Annual Power 50 List.[63]

Maddow placed sixth in the "2009 AfterEllen.com Hot 100" list (May 11, 2009)[64] and third in its "2009 Hot 100: Out Women" version.[65]

Maddow was included on a list of openly gay media professionals in The Advocate's "Forty under 40" issue of June/July 2009.[66]

In 1994, Maddow was an Honorable Mention in the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Prize in Ethics.[67]

In June 2009, Maddow's MSNBC show was the only cable news show nominated for a Television Critics Association award in the Outstanding Achievement in News and Information category.[68]

In March 2010, Maddow won at the 21st Annual GLAAD Media Awards in the category of Outstanding TV Journalism- Newsmagazine for her segment, "Uganda Be Kidding Me".[69]

Maddow was the 2010 commencement speaker and was given an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in May 2010.[70]

In July 2010, Maddow was presented with a Maggie Award for her ongoing reporting of healthcare reform, the murder of Dr. George Tiller, and the anti-abortion movement.[71]

In August 2010, Maddow won the Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award, which was presented by the Interfaith Alliance.[44] Past honorees included Larry King, Tom Brokaw, and the late Peter Jennings.[44]

In February 2012, Maddow was presented the John Steinbeck Award by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.[72]

Outstanding Host at the 2012 Gracie Allen Awards[73]

In December 2012, the audio book version of Maddow's Drift was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

Bibliography

Maddow, Rachel (2012). Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. Crown. ISBN 978-0-307-46098-1.