college basketball

For years Tara VanDerveer has bemoaned the lack of respect for the Pac-10 (now the Pac-12) in women's basketball. She's on the stump again.

National TV announcers "are always looking for something to drag the whole conference and us down," the Stanford coach complained this week.

SPOKANE, Wash. - In the TV room of the Holland, Ontario, home of Bill and Patty Pangos, they began to hear the evidence that their only son planned to take basketball seriously.

"He'd be down in the basement on the tile floor and literally handle the ball for an hour, two hours in the wintertime," Bill Pangos said.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Right about the time the crowd was mouthing "O'er the ramparts we watched," before Wednesday's Duke-North Carolina game, 700 miles away Boston College's Jordan Daniels was sinking the free throw that changed what the game would mean entirely.

Kentucky and Utah were playing for the NCAA men's basketball title in the Alamodome on March 30, 1998. This was Tubby Smith's first season at Kentucky and the culmination of what had been nine years of good work for Rick Majerus at Utah.

DURHAM, N.C. - For a team struggling with consistency, Duke certainly didn't have a problem with inconsistency Monday. To a man, coach and players alike, the Blue Devils were remarkably consistent when it came to identifying their biggest problem.

RALEIGH, N.C. - At a time when the Atlantic Coast Conference buzz meter is relatively low in the two major sports, the league has announced a scheduling policy that will take another deep cut into its basketball popularity.

PROVO, Utah - There have been other outstanding Brigham Young University women's basketball teams in Jeff Judkins' 11-year tenure, but none has been as deep, experienced and talented as this current one, according to the man who recently became the winningest women's basketball coach in school history.

How does a team go from being one of the top defensive teams in Division I to one of the worst in a year?

It's a question being asked at Pitt these days as defensive deficiencies continue to contribute to the team's longest losing streak in 18 seasons.

Jay Bilas' parents schooled him to embrace opportunity, so, when officials at Duke nominated him to sit on the NCAA's long-range planning committee as an undergraduate in the early 1980s, Bilas said yes.

After Jeff Capel was introduced as Virginia Commonwealth's new basketball coach at a press conference in the spring of 2002, university President Eugene Trani got up to make a few remarks about the 27-year-old.