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February 22, 2012

Howard Herman: Coach K, the rock star?

I admit it, I was wrong.

The Duke men's basketball team really shouldn't be compared to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. But it's fair to say that Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is the Chairman of the Boards (if you read boards as the floor in gymnasiums across the nation).

Don't even call him the Chairman. He's more like the President of College Basketball.

I swear that about 50 fans who were held back from the Duke bus by portable fencing, didn't care about the Plumlee brothers or Austin Rivers. They were cheering for and calling out to Coach K.

I'll tell you this, Krzyzewski works the so-called rope line as well as President Obama or President Bush ever did. The venerable Duke head coach took time on his way from Conte Forum to the bus to shake a number of hands and pat a couple of kids on their heads and mussed up their hair.

It even looks like Krzyzewski has his own security guys who walk with him out to the bus.

Krzyzewski is nothing if not effusive in his praise for many of his victims. After the Blue Devils whipped Boston College 75-50, Coach K had much to say in support of the job Steve Donahue is doing at BC. He said that Donahue and the other new coaches in the ACC have made his job that much tougher.

"We have really good coaches in our league. That's the thing about this new wave of coaches, none of these teams are going to give up. All of them are building. We had to do that, and I know we never gave up," Krzyzewski said. "It's been a good league, a lot better than people anticipated because of how good all these coaches are and the good jobs they've done. Most teams with almost 20 losses would have packed it in a long time ago. They're far away from doing that because they're building something really nice here."

The Blue Devils are ranked fifth in this week's Associated Press Top 25, and that has Krzyzewski happy. The veteran coach said he's as pleased with this team as he has been with a lot of Duke squads.

"Our kids have earned everything they've gotten. Our non-conference schedule was brutal. They found ways to win. I do believe my team has the will to win. They're a good group," he said. "We're just not some type of juggernaut. I don't know if there's one thing we do great. We can shoot, and when we're shooting well we can shoot with anybody."

There was a capacity crowd in Conte Forum Sunday night, the BC students were really raucous, and ESPNU was in the house. That's all fine with Coach K. He isn't particularly fond about playing that 6 p.m. Sunday game. Make that not fond at all.

"I would put in an amendment never to play on Sunday night. I'm OK if we're never scheduled on a Sunday night. I know people think you get exposure and that. I think there's a natural tendency on Sunday night for people to let down. There was a good crowd [Sunday night], which helped and we respect [BC]."

I will say this for Krzyzewski's program -- it's always impressive when a college basketball coach opens his locker room to the media.

The only two I know of are Duke's and Siena's. UMass doesn't do it, BC doesn't do it, UConn doesn't do it. That puts the Blue Devils at the top of the list in my book.

--Howard Herman, Berkshire Eagle Staff

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 11:59 PM | | Comments (0)

February 15, 2012

Howard Herman: On colleges

College basketball's version of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will be making an appearance in Boston this Sunday.
Duke will be playing Boston College in a 6 p.m. tip at Conte Forum. The Blue Devils of coach Mike Krzyzewski aren't the powerhouse they have been in recent seasons. But with the possible exception of coach John Calipari's Kentucky Wildcats, I'm not sure that there's a bigger program in the nation.
You either love Duke or you hate them. I'm sure that despite having Doc Rivers' son Austin on the team, most hoop fans in New England come down on the hate-Duke side.

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For sheer college sports fun, there may not be a better event than the Beanpot.
Two night, four games, four college hockey teams that are all just a T ride (maybe with a transfer) away from each other. On Monday, Boston College beat Boston U 3-2 on an overtime goal with 6 seconds remaining.
There is only one other city that has something similar and that's Philadelphia, with Big 5 basketball.
Pennsylvania, Villanova, Temple, LaSalle and Saint Joseph's have all been playing each other for more than 50 years. I can guarantee you that Villanova fans want to beat Temple as much as they want to beat Georgetown or Syracuse.
Once, the Big 5 teams used to play the vast majority of their home games at Penn's Palestra -- the coolest basketball gym ever. Now, everyone has their own home court, so that takes something away from the Big 5.
That's why having the Beanpot games all at the Garden makes the event that much more special.
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The Patriot League is going to start giving athletic scholarships for football again, boosting the arms race in the sport.
That is good news for Tom Gilmore and the coaching staff at Holy Cross in Worcester, as the Crusaders will once again be able to compete with the bigger teams in Division I-FCS play.
It is even better news for the other FCS schools in New England, because it could give them a better landing place.
The Colonial Athletic Association is down to New Hampshire and Maine as far as regional football schools. Rhode Island has moved down to the Northeast League and UMass, as you know, is moving up to the Mid-American Conference.
If the Patriot League is good with giving scholarships, maybe Maine, New Hampshire and Rhody can move into the Patriot League instead of stepping down to the level of UAlbany -- a D-I school that doesn't give athletic grants for football.
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Kentucky basketball coach Calipari is nothing if not a funny guy.
Last week was the former UMass coach's 53rd birthday, but in an Associated Press story, Calipari said he is younger than that.
"Two years got vacated, so I'm 51," he said.
Those two years that got vacated were the 1996 season at UMass and the 2008 season at Memphis. Both teams had Final Four runs vacated by the NCAA because of rules violations.

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 7:31 PM | | Comments (0)

February 9, 2012

Howard Herman: A look at my inbox

I get a lot of emails during the course of a week.

Some are from parents either praising or panning my work, while others come from coaches and athletic directors with schedule changes - and still others come from media relations departments at colleges with results of games.

Sometimes, the emails take me back a bit. Take this one I got from Deckers Outdoor Corporation. For those of you, and I think that's most of us, Deckers makes UGG boots.

The release said: "UGG Australia proudly congratulates Tom Brady on leading the New England Patriots to Super Bowl XLVI.

" ' Working with Tom has been a wonderful experience for the company and the UGG brand. For us, he is the embodiment of what UGG for Men represents,' -- Connie X. Rishwain, President of UGG Australia."

UGG Australia actual gave every Patriot and Giants player a pair of UGG Stoneman boots, or so the release said. I think those boots cost about $300 a pair.

Then, there's a release from the PR staff at ESPN concerning this week's basketball broadcasts. If you've been paying attention, this is Rivalry Week on the "Worldwide Leader," with games like St. John's-Georgetown, Duke-North Carolina, Wisconsin-Minnesota, and Mississippi-Mississippi State.

What ESPN wanted us to know, along with the schedule, is that analyst Fran Fraschilla is going to be one busy guy. From Wednesday, Feb. 8 to Sunday, Feb. 12, he'll be doing four games in four locations. Fraschilla's schedule had Kansas at Baylor on Wednesday, Colorado at Arizona on Thursday, Kansas State at Texas on Saturday, and St. John's-Georgetown on Sunday.

I'll tell you one thing -- I'd love to have his frequent flier miles and Marriott points.

--Howard Herman, Berkshire Eagle Staff

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 1:10 AM | | Comments (0)

February 4, 2012

Howard Herman: The NBC guys' opinions at the end of the NFL season

In preparing for my role in this weekend's Super Bowl special section, I get the opportunity to interact with the national network producers and broadcasters. It's usually done via conference call, but I'll get the chance to speak with the guys from Fox, CBS and NBC.
This year it's NBC broadcasting Sunday's Patriots-Giants Super Bowl game. When you spend more than an hour on the phone, you don't get to write everything you hear into a story. That's why in this post, I'm giving you some transcriptions of questions and answers among NBC broadcast personnel.

Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison, part of NBC's Football Night in America crew, were asked about the Boston-New York rivalry.

Tony Dungy: I grew up in Detroit and watched the Knicks and the Celtics, the Yankees and the Red Sox and you just had this rivalry for as long as I could remember. You've had great players, great coaches, great managers. It is polarizing, but there have been some tremendous athletes and coaches in both of these cities.
Rodney Harrison: From an historical standpoint, I don't really know the history between New York and Boston. I knew that once I came to this team in New England, they basically told me the first week I was there if you're going to hate anybody, hate the New York Jets -- hate any New York team. That first week of being there, you fell into that whole mindset that anything in New York you hate.

Dungy and Harrison were also asked about that gawd-awful Pro Bowl game that was played on Jan. 29 in Hawaii. It was bad even by Pro Bowl standards.

Harrison: I watched the Pro Bowl and I was very disappointed in the players. You understand from a player's standpoint, you figure out that I made it through the season and maybe they don't want to get injured. If you don't want to play -- I played in a couple of Pro Bowls -- if you don't want to play and if you don't want to give 100 percent, you should sit on the sidelines and allow someone else to get that opportunity. I was actually embarrassed by some of the players. When I played in the Pro Bowl, we played hard.
Dungy: I've coached in it several times as an assistant and as a head coach, and I can remember the first one I coached in 1984, we had Kenny Easley and Howie Long and there were no free passes in that game. The defense came to play. The offensive guys knew it. It was like a regular game. I coached again in 1999 and Randy Moss, I think it was his second Pro Bowl and he wanted to show the world he was the best player in football. You just had that competitiveness. I didn't see that the other night.

Al Michaels has done six Super Bowls for ABC and now two for NBC. He was asked about what many fans see as a key matchup, the one between Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the Giants' Eli Manning.

Michaels: The matchup is tremendous. If you're going to put a couple of guys' names up in lights on the marquee, obviously, it's going to be Eli and Tom Brady. It's the first time in history that two guys that have won Super Bowl MVPs are going to face off against each other, that's never been done in the past. Brady is one of the greatest of all time. No matter what happens on Sunday, if you're having a conversation about the greatest quarterbacks of all time, Tom is very much in that conversation. Eli, on the other hand, is emerging now and becoming a major star -- always playing in the shadow of his brother. Now, with the opportunity in the house his brother built, to have one more Lombardi Trophy than his brother has. Eli has also captured the fancy of everybody around the country.

Bob Costas said that, when he hosted his first Super Bowl in 1986, he thought a two-hour pregame show was long. Now, he's hosting the show that starts at noon. He was asked about the importance of the Super Bowl.

Costas: I'm certainly not the first one to say it, but the Super Bowl has long since become an undeclared national holiday. Although most Americans watch football on a fairly regular basis, much moreso than any other sport, there are people who watch the Super Bowl who don't pay all that much attention to the league during the course of the year. You've got all of the avid fans, then you have all the casual fans and it's all built in with a lot of parties. At the center of it is a great game.

Thought you might find this all interesting.

-- Howard Herman, Berkshire Eagle Staff

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 3:54 PM | | Comments (0)

February 1, 2012

Howard Herman: Chance at the 'Big Dance' for Minutemen?

Other than how my cold is doing, the one question I have been asked over and over the last few days is "Will UMass make the NCAA basketball tournament?"
To that, I say I'm not sure. If Selection Sunday was the same day as Super Bowl Sunday, I'd say no. But that doesn't mean I think this is not a worthy team.
As of early in the week, the Minutemen of Derek Kellogg would need to keep on winning and advance to at least the Atlantic 10 Conference semifinals in order to be considered for an at-large berth in the tournament. Of course, if the Minutemen win the A-10 title, they'd get an automatic bid.
Barring a cataclysmic collapse, UMass has guaranteed itself a slot in the NIT. It is a nice consolation prize considering that Kellogg hasn't gotten the team that close since he arrived.
There is one thing I do know -- the buzz is returning to UMass basketball. There was a near-capacity crowd at the Mullins Center on Saturday as the Minutemen beat Saint Louis 72-59.
"It actually brought back some memories for me, to have 8,500 people in the gym," Kellogg said. "Hats goes off to the crowd, I thought that was fantastic, and to the students for supporting the guys.
"I think they deserve it. I think they're playing a fun brand of basketball. We're competing at a high level."
It was actually 8,399, but who is going to quibble about 102 people?
"I thought the crowd, and the student section, being the way it was, really gave our team a boost," said Kellogg. "They were excited coming when they came into the locker room and seeing those people out there."
What made Saturday's game so important for Kellogg and the Minutemen isn't that there was a large crowd. That's nice, but the real important factor is that UMass won the game.
"It was big because I think that was kind of the next step for the program," said Kellogg. "If you recall, the Rider game, the place was packed for the first half. We were down, everybody left, and we ended up coming back and winning by 10 after being down by 21.
"Since I've been here, we've given away some opportunities with a good crowd. This was the first time as a program that we've taken advantage in a long time."
The proof will be in the pudding if the Minutemen draw well for their next home game on Feb. 8 against St. Bonaventure.

--Howard Herman, Berkshire Eagle Staff

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 12:27 PM | | Comments (0)