Jack Scheuer’s Off The Boards – March 11, 2015 Edition

Off The Boards

By Jack Scheuer

March 11, 2105 Edition

As if there was any doubt that guards, especially point guards are the smartest players on the basketball court, you only have to look at the game’s best coaches.  Let’s start with the current coaches of the top four teams in the nation: John Calipari  (Kentucky); Tony Bennett, (Virginia), Mike Krzyzewski, (Duke) and Jay Wright, (Villanova).  All are former college guards.  You could add ex-backcourters  Mark Few, Rick Pitino,  Bo Ryan and Tom Izzo  just to name some of the many  still active excellent coaches.  The greatest coach ever, John Wooden was a guard, as were Hall of Famers Dean Smith, Bob Knight, Jim Boeheim, John Chaney, Jim Phelan and Herb Magee.  Georgetown’s John Thompson was a center, and I’m sure there are some other big guys who were good coaches, but let’s face it, the guards are the ones with the basketball brains.
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Serious hoops starts tomorrow when La Salle meets UMass and St.Joe’s battles the Bonnies in the A-10 tournament. On Friday, Temple plays Memphis in the American where a win will guarantee the Owls a NCAA bid.  A loss means they will definitely be on the bubble.
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Very unfortunate how things worked out for Jerome Allen. He’s a Big 5 Hall of Famer, and a Hall of Fame person, and I wish him nothing but the best.
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Trivia Time: Who is the all-time leading scorer in the Ivy League?  Answer at the end of the column.
This and That : Will Cummings will be greatly missed at Temple but Josh Brown looks like he can be a very solid replacement….The NCAA rules committee has got to do something about the length of games.  Cutting back on the timeouts would be a good start.  The last five minutes  of too many games take 25 minutes….The Clipper’s Deandre Jordan has made 130 of 324 free throws this season, and is closing in on the all-time career record low of 41.4 set by Ben Wallace.  Wilt Chamberlain was much better at 51.1….I wonder how many teams in the top 10 would have Josh Hart as a starter…. Nikola Williams, daughter of former Phil pitcher Mitch, is a leading scorer for highly ranked Shawnee H.S….Steve Zack is now in second place on La Salle’s all-time blocked shots list with 165.  The great Lionel Simmons  leads with 248.
Answer to Trivia Time: Who else but Bill Bradley with 2,503 points.
Palestra

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