Denver signs coach Scott to a five-year contract
DENVER -- Joe Scott is coming home.
Colorado, where he takes over as Denver's new coach, feels like home for the New Jersey native. The 41-year-old Scott left the same position at Princeton, his alma mater, to return to Colorado, where he was head coach at Air Force for four seasons.
"I really feel like I am coming home," Scott said during a news conference at the school Wednesday.
Scott signed a five-year contract to coach the Pioneers, Denver athletic director Peg Bradley-Doppes said. No financial terms were disclosed.
"I looked at what demonstrated excellence here in the region, who was doing it right, how did they do it and what pieces were in place," Bradley-Doppes said. "And over and over again, Joe Scott's name came up."
It took 2½ weeks to choose Scott from 33 applicants to become the 31st coach at Denver. She said the list was reduced to 12 and the three finalists were interviewed on campus.
"It was fast and furious because we were aware that Colorado, Colorado State, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming all had openings," Bradley-Doppes said. "The timing was great because it wouldn't have worked if we had looked much longer."
Scott said he was almost surprised at being chosen.
"I never went into it thinking I'm leaving Princeton," he said. "I saw, here at Denver was this overture, here is this interest and the next thing you know it's go."
Scott had a 38-45 record in three seasons at Princeton, including an 11-17 record this past season. The Tigers were last in the Ivy League at 2-12, their worst finish in the conference.
It was a disappointing drop for a program that has won 25 Ivy titles and has won or shared 46 league crowns in the last 49 years.
"There's perception and there's reality," Scott said. "The perception is I was disappointed with the end result, but the reality is I started three freshmen and I know they are going to be very good."
Scott replaces Terry Carroll, who was fired after six seasons at Denver after taking an extended leave of absence. The Pioneers went 4-25 this season and finished last in the Sun Belt West Division at 3-15.
Before taking over at Princeton, Scott led Air Force to the NCAA Tournament in 2004, its first appearance since 1962. He recruited all the current Falcons seniors.
Air Force defeated DePaul 52-51 in the NIT quarterfinals Wednesday night to advance to the semifinals on March 27 at Madison Square Garden.
Under Scott, Air Force posted a 51-63 overall mark. The new coach said he's aware of the similarities of the two programs, including being asked to turn around a program.
"The opportunity is great to find guys from different areas that are gym rats who love to play and care about education," he said. "I want to find the same kind of people that play hard on both ends of the court at all times."
Scott said he would begin immediately to assemble a staff and start recruiting.
"There isn't a lot of time," he said. "I'd like to start hiring tomorrow."
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Men's basketball: No. 15 North Texas faces long odds against No. 2 Memphis.
Web Posted: 03/15/2007 11:05 PM CDT
Richard Oliver
Express-News
NEW ORLEANS That North Texas will be rolled by powerful Memphis this morning at New Orleans Arena is a reality as certain as jazz on nearby Bourbon Street.
Pugnacious Tigers coach John Calipari will unleash his greyhound guards early, likely running the Mean Green's hopes ragged by the first commercial break.
Yet, the first round game of the NCAA South Regional will include enough compelling undercurrents to keep the interest humming long after Calipari has called off the dogs.
North Texas (23-10) employs a fight-to-the-buzzer mentality preached by its lock-jawed coach, Johnny Jones, and demonstrated by remarkable senior forward Rich Young, an ex Marine whose military résumé includes a firefight in Iraq and a tense peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Intimidated? Hardly.
"This," Young, 26, said this week, "is just basketball."
Today, against a Memphis team eyeing a prize far north of mere respect, North Texas will have to play great basketball, and it knows it. The Tigers (30-3) are 18-point favorites.
Jones, a former standout on LSU's Final Four squad in 1981, got a reminder of the challenge in an e-mail this week from his college coach, Dale Brown. But Brown also offered up another reminder.
"The impossible is what nobody can do," the retired coach wrote, "until somebody does it."
The Mean Green enjoyed its own slice of it last weekend at the Sun Belt Conference tournament. North Texas, the No. 5 seed and coming off a third-place regular-season finish in its division, reeled off four consecutive wins, including an 83-75 upset of Arkansas State in the final.
The surge carried the university into its first NCAA tournament appearance since 1988. Today, North Texas will attempt to become only the fifth No. 15 seed to deliver a first-round upset.
"I'm not overly concerned about history," said Jones, taking part in his 11th NCAA tournament as a player or coach, "because I think it's important that we try to create our own."
Already, North Texas is enjoying its winningest season, a significant achievement in a campaign that saw it drop contests to pedestrian opponents UT- Arlington and Florida International. Throughout the schedule, however, Jones urged players to stay the course, concentrating on the end result.
It was a sermon borrowed from Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson, who brought his club to North Texas for a preseason camp. After one practice, the Mavs gathered in a circle, their hands in the air, and yelled in unison, "Finish!"
"They had gotten to a point last year, but they didn't finish things off," Jones said. "We somewhat adopted that. That was our motto. When we went into the Sun Belt tournament, we had to finish once we got there."
Today, North Texas will throw an eight-deep lineup, including the physical Young and high-scoring guard Calvin Watson, at Memphis. The Mean Green will be trying to accomplish the impossible. All the way to the finish.
roliver@express-news.net
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Gonzaga 88, San Diego 70
March 5, 2007
CBS SportsLine.com wire reports
PORTLAND, Ore. -- David Pendergraft had 22 points and Gonzaga moved closer to an automatic NCAA Tournament berth with an 88-70 victory over San Diego in the semifinals of the West Coast Conference Tournament Sunday night.
Top-seeded Gonzaga (22-10) will face the winner of the late game between second-seeded Santa Clara and St. Mary's in the final on Monday.
The Bulldogs, who finished the regular season one game ahead of Santa Clara in the WCC, had a bye until the semifinals at the University of Portland's Chiles Center. Fifth-seeded San Diego (18-13) defeated San Francisco 77-75 on Saturday to advance.
Derek Raivio, whose father was a standout at Portland, had 14 points for Gonzaga, while Micah Downs added 16 points and 10 rebounds.
Ross DeRogatis, San Diego's senior point guard, had 17 points in the loss. When he left the game in the final minutes, he hugged his coaches and was cheered by fans.
With a difficult non-conference schedule, the Zags dropped from the Top 25 this season for the first time in several years. Then came the Feb. 9 arrest of forward Josh Heytvelt, who was averaging 15 points and seven rebounds per game.
Heytvelt, charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, has been suspended indefinitely.
Shortly thereafter, Gonzaga lost to Santa Clara, ending the nation's longest home winning streak at 50 games.
The Zags had no trouble against the Toreros.
Brandon Johnson hit a pair of free throws to tie it at 19 for San Diego. That's when the Zags took over, going on a 10-0 run. Pendergraft's layup off Raivio's perfectly placed pass, and Raivio's own layup, capped the run that gave Gonzaga a 29-19 lead.
Bulldog fans who packed the Chiles Center cheered loudest in the first half for 7-foot-4 freshman Will Foster, who had played only briefly in nine games this season. Foster sparked the defense with his surprising athleticism in just five minutes of play.
Gonzaga led 40-26 at halftime.
Pendergraft hit back-to-back 3-pointers midway through the second half to give the Zags a 64-46 lead. But San Diego answered with a 7-0 run that narrowed it to 64-53. It was as close as they would come in the second half.
The Bulldogs have won seven of the last eight WCC tournaments, with the streak interrupted only by San Diego in 2003.
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Tulsa 65, East Carolina 50
March 8, 2007
CBS SportsLine.com wire reports
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Calvin Walls scored a career-high 15 points, and Rod Earls added 13 to lead Tulsa to a 65-50 victory over East Carolina on Wednesday in the final game of the Conference USA Tournament's opening round.
Walls connected on six of his nine shots in the game, while Earls missed only one of his six shots and was 3-for-4 outside the arc. The Golden Hurricane shot 49 percent in the game.
"My teammates were doing a good job of feeding me the ball," Walls said. "I just tried to get down there and be tough and finish around the basket."
Tulsa (20-10), the tournament's fifth seed, will face Tulane, the No. 4 seed, in a second round game Thursday.
"I thought we took advantage of our depth," Tulsa coach Doug Wojcik said. "We rebounded well, and our shooting percentage was good. It seemed like we had about 24 turnovers instead of 14."
Courtney Captain led East Carolina with 27 points, hitting 10 of 18 shots.
East Carolina (6-24) finished with the league's worst record and was the tournament's No. 12 seed.
Tulsa put together a 15-2 run in the first half to build a 31-15 lead over the Pirates and carried a 34-21 advantage into intermission.
Captain led East Carolina with 13 points, including three of five shots from outside the arc, the only Pirate 3-pointers in the half. The rest of the Pirates were 0-for-5 from 3-point range. East Carolina would shoot 33 percent from the field for the game.
Brett McDade and Walls had seven points apiece for Tulsa, with Walls hitting all five of his shots from the field.
The Golden Hurricane benefited from shooting 52 percent from the field in the half, compared to 33 percent for East Carolina. Tulsa also outrebounded the Pirates 22-11 in the half, but was hampered by eight turnovers.
East Carolina cut the Tulsa lead to eight points when Gabe Blair hit a jumper with 12:56 left in the game.
It was the only time in the second half the Pirates would get the deficit to single digits as Tulsa answered with eight consecutive points, including back-to-back 3-pointers from Ben Uzoh (eight points) and Earls to extend the lead back to 52-36.
Tulsa eventually would lead by as many as 17 points with five minutes left.
"We just wanted to try and weather the storm," Earls said of East Carolina's second-half rally. "Keep pushing and being aggressive."
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