When Harvard athletic director Bob Scalise was announcing Tommy Amaker's hire five springs ago, he called it a "rebirth" for the school's long-dormant basketball program. Given the university's world academic standing, it was the perfect word choice for the situation. Most programs rebuild or reload or recover, but not Harvard, which essentially was starting from scratch, never having had accomplished much of anything in the modern basketball arena. This was to be germination fueled by determination. Harvard needed to become a seedling before worrying about seeding.
May we spend a few minutes discussing a major part of American life where there has been a shocking lack of diversity?
Your odds of getting into some of the nation's most prestigious colleges are shrinking.
Picking All-Americas is relatively easy; you just select the best players, who most often come from the best teams. Choosing a coach of the year is more difficult, as one must consider candidates from multiple standpoints -- how good is their team, how much has it exceeded preseason expectations (from polls and statistical projections), and how responsible is the coach for building that team? To ignore the recruiting and talent-evaluation processes that went into assembling contenders would be silly; getting players, in college hoops, is half the battle.
Parenting's a hard job, we admit. But take heart; no matter how much you're struggling, you're probably doing better than these sorry moms and dads making headlines this year. Read through our list, and then congratulate yourself for doing a pretty good job, all things considered.
STORRS, Conn. -- Nationally ranked for the first time in program history, the Harvard Crimson fell 67-53 to UConn Thursday night. Here are three quick thoughts off the landmark night:
Mark Zuckerberg went back to Harvard on Monday on a recruiting trip, his first visit since he dropped out of the prestigious university to found social-media giant Facebook.
An Occupy Wall Street group at Harvard University staged a walk-out Wednesday afternoon of the introductory economics class of Greg Mankiw, a former Bush administration economic advisor now working with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- When Michigan's goalie Shawn Hunwick stands tall, it's more of a figurative statement. At "5-6-ish," as he concedes, the senior might be lucky to reach the top shelf of his locker stall without a lift. But nothing reached the top shelf of his net on Thursday night as Hunwick shut out North Dakota, the nation's top team, 2-0, in the Frozen Four semifinal game at the Xcel Energy Center.
Most people are familiar with the stories of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, who achieved great success as the founders of Microsoft and Facebook, respectively, after dropping out of Harvard.
It might amuse you to know that there were folks in Cambridge and greater Boston who actually watched CBS' Selection Show thinking that Harvard had a chance to receive an at-large big to the NCAA tournament.
Saturday's most intriguing NCAA game may be one that relatively few fans care about -- and even fewer will be able to see. But the playoff between upstart Harvard and postseason regular Princeton for the Ivy League title and an automatic NCAA berth, to tip off at Yale (4 p.m.) and shown via webcast only on ESPN3.com, has plot elements befitting a sometimes bitter athletic rivalry that dates to their first football game, back in '77 -- 1877, that is.
The battle in the Mountain West was the main story Saturday, but far from the only one. This was a huge moving day for a number of teams across the land. Here's a look at what it all means.
On Sunday afternoon, as Butler lost to UW-Milwaukee for the second time this season, there was a lot of Twitter banter about how the Bulldogs' at-large hopes were dead. This came on the heels of Saturday night's 140-character declarations of Gonzaga's demise after the Zags dropped their second straight road game against modest opposition.
HARTFORD, Conn. -- The postgame press conference was brief, befitting a blowout loss. Harvard coach Tommy Amaker generously praised then-unbeaten Connecticut for its size and talent, noted that his Crimson players may have been a bit intimidated early, and then quickly headed back down the wide, echoing corridor of the antiquated XL Center after UConn's 81-52 victory last week. There really wasn't much more to say.
Reprinted from the foreword by Tom Wolfe to Run to the Roar by arrangement with Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copyright © Tom Wolfe, 2010. Run to the Roar by Paul Assaiante and James Zug, Copyright © Paul Assaiante and James Zug, 2010.
updated: Thu Dec 09 2010 09:39:00
Police say five Columbia University students were arrested for selling drugs from on-campus housing.
Which graduate is more attractive in today's job market? Sorry, Ivy Leaguers. This is where state schools win out.
Dating. It's the nightmare from which you never wake up. Why do we do it? Because it's the best way to find the guy we want to marry. And why do we want to get married? So we never have to date again.
Contrary to what your mama might have told you, "just be yourself" is not always the best advice. Almost all of us have something we're insecure about, and while years of pricey therapy might eventually banish self-doubt, I've found that the best way to get over it in the short-term is to refuse to acknowledge it exists in the first place.
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Four years ago, Cornell basketball was an afterthought, a mere trivia note as the last team other than Penn or Princeton to represent the Ivy League in the NCAA tournament, in 1988. Today, the Big Red are a model of mid-major development, a decade-long fix-it-up that's peaking and becoming the most talented version in the program's modern history.
The Devil Wears Prada star is set to receive the Hasty Pudding Award
The Golden Lions of Arkansas-Pine Bluff have been eating postgame meals on buses after every game this season. On Monday night, the food tasted a lot better, according to coach George Ivory.
Last autumn I took time off to go back to school. The timing turned out to be just right: My American economic history course at the University of California at Berkeley got to the Great Depression in early October, around the time everyone became convinced we were about to have another one.
Harvard University, one of America's premiere academic institutions, is coming under fire for running an advertisement in its campus newspaper questioning the reality of the Holocaust.
Harvard has never won an Ivy League title and hasn't made the NCAA tournament since 1946 for a simple reason: a lack of talent. Asked to name the last elite high school prospect to choose the Crimson, an athletic department spokesperson had to go back to Jim Fitzsimmons, Harvard class of '74.
Look out Rhode Island, the Harry Potter star has worked her magic to get into Brown
Sixteen years ago, after I wrote a memoir about my experience as a Latino in the Ivy League, I got a call from a retired Jewish obstetrician who saw his reflection in my words.
After 124 editions, the most unsavory thing about The Game's current seat in the shadow of block-letter acronyms -- BCS! FBS! FCS! -- is not even the shadow itself. The self-inflicted lack of playoffs? The ban on scholarships? The harshest academic restrictions in the athletic universe? These realities are simply the known price of scholastic integrity, which has long numbed Harvardians and Yalies to the gradual lowercasing of the nation's oldest rivalry.
Some of the nation's top football factories wanted Jonathan Meyers. Michigan offered him a scholarship. So did Oklahoma. And UCLA. And Florida, among dozens of others. The Greenwich (Conn.) High fullback/linebacker knew the choice would be difficult. And after taking an official visit to Florida in November, where he watched the Gators hammer Florida State, Meyers figured he'd follow in his father's footsteps -- Glenn Meyers lettered at nose tackle at Florida from 1980-82 -- and head to Gainesville.
When St. Mary's coach Randy Bennett took his team on a tour of Australia three summers ago, he wanted to try out guard Todd Golden at the point. And while the Gaels fared well, Bennett watched his new front man get schooled by a 16 year old on the Australian team.
One quick headline, then the topic of the week:
We don't know what Eddie Lowery or Rodney Dangerfield or Byron Nelson thought about the game in the gathering darkness, but we do know what Tom Hearn thought. He was an insurance man and a duffer, and John Updike would have put him in his novels had he ever known him. Tom Hearn spent a day when his days were numbered assessing how golf fit into the last 66 years of his life, the freckled early ones and the speckled ones at the close.
Kirsten Teevens thought she was done with this two years ago. Her husband, Buddy, had woken up one day and decided that instead of traveling with Kirsten and their two kids to a vacation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, he'd bike there. From Hanover, N.H.
The NCAA has spent considerable time and resources the past few years attempting to convince us it's no longer the stuffy, bloated, ivory-tower bureaucracy of old. It claims to be more in touch with the issues facing its members today.
Text messaging is as much a part of recruiting as official visits.
It's March. And you know what that means. For many Americans the world will stop and the only thing that will matter to them is what their brackets look like in their college basketball office pools.
While reading through yet another brilliant article written by Pete Thamel in the New York Times, I was struck by a brief item that appeared in Pete's college basketball spotlight column on Sunday. The item contained a quote from Brown coach Craig Robinson (aka Barack Obama's brother-in-law) indicating a postseason tournament in the Ivy League may be in the offing. "It's closer than I would have ever imagined it," Robinson said.
The award for national coach of the year is perhaps the worst-defined honor in sports. Do you select only guys whose teams have exceeded expectations? After all, the writers who dole out these awards are same dolts who set those expectations in the first place. Congrats, coach, for showing everyone how dumb we really are!
I don't know why it took 28 years for the Montreal Canadiens to retire Ken Dryden's number 29. But since it did, it now occurs to me that many younger hockey fans -- and players, too -- may not appreciate just how great he was.
When Mike Dunleavy was traded from Golden State to Indiana, many believed he would quickly be shipped back to the West Coast to play for his father, Mike Sr., with the Clippers. Two weeks have passed and Dunleavy appears to be sticking with the Pacers.
A new golden era is dawning in West Coast college hoops, and the 'Bag couldn't be happier.
(FORTUNE Magazine) - Gee, counterfeit products are getting so realistic!
My girlfriend is researching graduate schools, and they range from our fine state university at $6,000 a year to a New England near-Ivy League school at $40,000. Can the $40,000-a-year school really provide an education that will offer job opportunities lucrative enough to offset its higher cost? Or should she just go with the $6,000-a-year school?
Stem cell science may be advancing, but not fast or far enough to break the standoff between President Bush and Congress over federal funding for research that destroys human embryos.
College acceptance letters are coming soon to a mailbox near you. In other words, it's about that time when parents and students begin to get nervous about the final step to the college application process: financial aid.
It's that time of year again, when parents and students are anxiously waiting to hear from colleges. Well, most won't hear until April.
A new study of Spanish flu, which killed millions of people in the aftermath of World War One, has provided fresh hope that the spread of a similarly deadly virus could be stopped if it occurred today.
Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick was sentenced to 30 days in jail after being convicted last week on charges related to a party with underage girls.
In an unprecedented sweep, "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" set an Oscar record by winning all 11 awards for which it had been nominated, including best picture of the year.
Are you hoping little Tiffany is Ivy League material? Although there's no guarantee of admission, now you can at least make sure you can afford part of the bill. Set to launch in July, TIAA-CREF's ...
Like all great business ideas, Tom Stemberg's makes you wonder why nobody had ever thought of it before. A supermarket for office supplies--why, smack my forehead! But great ideas are products of t...
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