The Demon Deacon mascot is a distinguished yet peculiar fellow who sports a top hat and a bow tie, which gives him major style points in my book. They won the National Championship in 1989, and have earned runner-up honors in 1982, 1991, and 1993. The name originated in a basketball game against the University of Louisville in the mid-1920s. "The Nun's Priest's Tale." Grove, Allen. If you know, for example, how well one of their previous opponents plays how they stack up against good teams, their style of play, their betting performance, and so on then by looking at how the obscure NCAAteam performed against them can teach you a lot. Well, back in the 1910s, the university's football coach, John R. Bender (who not only coached at Washington State, Kansas State and Tennessee, but also coached multiple sports; football, basketball, and baseball) was said by local sportswriters to look like a billiken. The fact that this university is located in Florida makes it even worse. Some NCAA conferences are so obscure that the only time we hear about them each year is when the winner of the conference loses to a number one seed by 40. "I just remember walking into the store, going from aisle to aisle and hoping to find all the different basketballs," said Smart, now the head coach at Texas. During this process, it came to our attention that many schools have strange names, and we set out to choose the strangest. It was all in the spirit of coaching.". Paul's study found that teams using a different ball on the road could experience more than a one-point differential from their "expected scoring," the latter gleaned from betting data, Paul said. Preparing this ball "strategy" is a common assignment for basketball staffers around the country, and among the NCAA's highest-revenue sports, it's a scenario unique to men's basketball. You may not associate Ohio with penguins, but perhaps back when Youngstown State University was founded in 1908, Ohio was much colder. In those years, respectively, Wisconsin and Michigan reached the national title game. Imagine Alabama coach Nick Saban telling LSU's Ed Orgeron which football his team had to use during their recent SEC clash in Tuscaloosa. It is time to remedy this deficit, and our artist's illustration shows how. Back in 1950 the Beavers were led by head coach Nat Holman who was one of the greatest innovators in the game at the time. Offensive efficiency tells you if the team is talented and efficient. The university's website does explain the choice of a Chantecleer, but the explanationactually ignores the fact that Chaucer's Chanticleer is presented ironically with lots of mock chivalric language. A decade before he led Virginia Commonwealth to the Final Four, Shaka Smart was a low-level member of Dayton's staff who had been handed a frustrating task by his boss, coach Oliver Purnell. In fact, the Ohio State Buckeyes basketball team and its Brutus the Buckeye mascot are a pretty big deal. Men & Women. "The Rock," Baylor's Scott Drew said. When we play Fairfield, they can be a tough opponent to beat, even though we are not considered to be rivals (despite the fact that we are in-state here in Connecticut; roughly 45-50 minutes away from each other). Halfway through, though, hesunk to the bottom of the pit, and it seemed like he was dead. Not objective, necessarily, but thorough. But where the heck did the name came from? Grove, Allen. Every so often, though, those teams play games against higher profile teams are we have to handicap them. The team earned the shockers label because many of the early players harvested wheat to earn money. . sports picks on the Internet. People can laugh all they want at Akron and Zippy the mascot, but the hoops program is laughing all the way to the Mid-American Conference championship. To Bet College Basketball, Handicap At the heart of Dartmouth's picture-perfect New England campus is a big town or village green (see it here). Does the brand of basketball really matter? This is another case of a cool-looking mascot making up for a peculiar nickname. Looking at their tempo can tell you how quickly they like to move the ball, and what style of play they prefer. crestview country club events. Daily NCAAB Free Picks in 2023. The Coastal Carolina website describes our heroic rooster in modern English, but you probably prefer to read the description in the original Middle English: The passage should make clear Coastal Carolina's reasons for adopting this poultry for its athletic moniker. Why is the mighty North Carolina program called the "Tar Heels"? They all have multiple winners of the Naismith College Player of the Year Award, They have all also had NCAA football championship teams, All those school's women's basketball teams have also won basketball championships, Each team at some point in their history played a season without a coach, Hal Greer, Elgin Baylor, Chris Bosh, Paul Pierce, Paul Arizin, Bob Pettit, Clyde Drexler, Carmelo Anthony, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Elvin Hayes, Kevin Garnett, Dolph Schayes, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dwayne Wade, Kevin Durant, Adolph Rupp, Denny Crum, Branch McCracken, Jim Boeheim, Harold "Bud" Foster, John Wooden, Roy Williams, Ed Jucker, Phil Woolpert, Rick Pitino, Bobby Knight, Joe B. Bill Self said he switched to a Wilson basketball in recent years because it's used in the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments, and that if the NCAA ever switched to a different basketball in the postseason, he'd switch to the same ball. Value. Although lightning bolts might be more dramatic, you may want to put your money on the athletes out there clearing thousands of acres of grain. This is also a great way to hear what the public definitely wont hear about injury status, roster changes, and so on. But even the most undignified rodent can be transformed into something admirable with a quick coat of gold paint. And in 2010, they won an NCAA rifling championship, as well. By comparing the recapssports bettorscan be sure that what you are reading makes sense and is at least a somewhat accurate representation of what happened. Chaucer, Geoffrey. Beilein first used the ball as a Division II coach at LeMoyne early in his career. And while the Billiken fad was short-lived, the Billiken name has been with Saint Louis University's athletic teams for over 100 years now. Forums can be frustrating because of the people on them and the crap they like to talk about, but if you can stand to wade through all of that then you can often pick out a few nuggets that can be very helpful. Georgia Tech went with a Russell Athletic basketball before making the switch to Adidas apparel last year. It's certainly an interesting team name to say the least. Virginia Tech's old nickname used to be the "Fighting Gobblers," which is why the turkey-ish maroon bird, HokieBird, is the mascot. Why? Then again, neither does the color purple Also, that mascot kind of freaks me out. Drawing by Laura Reyome. Internet forums are another great source of information just because a basketball team is obscure doesnt mean that it doesnt have a devoted fanbase that obsesses over ever detail of the team and their performance. Sometimes, though, those obscure teams can represent real betting value because though the public doesnt know a lot about them or care they are actually a solid team. When your school colors are purple and white and you decide that your Pioneers team name isn't catchy enough, you might just end up with the nickname the Purple Aces. Hall, Dean Smith, Billy Donovan, Don Haskins, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Calhoun, Henry Iba, Jay Wright, Howard Hobson. bettors that know the value of their bankroll. Maddux Sports makes its money from repeat sports "I knew that the Sterling ball bothered some coaches I coached against," Ryan admitted. Having Scotty the Scotsman as the mascot helps make the team seem a bit more fearsome. ThoughtCo. hide this ad. after a fire burned down three school buildings. You can get far more meaning from looking at how the team has performed against teams against which you have at least a passing familiarity of. Do a statistical survey Looking at statistics and how they compare to their opponent is always a part of handicapping at least it hopefully. His school's multimillion-dollar deal with Nike might be a factor in that endorsement. The consensus: Coaches and players dislike it. "I don't think [the effect of the basketball is] huge by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think it is something that has a noticeable effect based on the data we analyzed," Paul said. As one of the few universities with an equestrian program, they won a women's equestrian championship in 2008. Photo circa 1972, by Associated Students of UCLA, 1972 Southern Campus (UCLA yearbook), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Play Now. Stull won a spirit yell contest with the chant "Hoki" in it. Now, if you raise the goal above 10 feet, now we've got a problem.". And their university is named after the guy who first created the Stetson hat! This is an online quiz called Obscure College Basketball Mascots. College Division: 1949: 1957: Disbanded Gulf Star Conference: Division I: 1984: 1987: Effectively absorbed by the Southland Conference . Although the bulk of college basketball's Power 5 schools use Nike basketballs, the manufacturing giant has different versions of its standard ball. Otherwise, the universityrisks forfeiting postseason games. They have made appearances in the NCAA Tournament in 2005, 2008 and 2010 (including a victory over No. ", The basketball wars: The hidden disadvantage facing every road team, No. Creator. He and Evan Weiss, a former Syracuse student who works in analytics with the Buffalo Bills, commenced their work after reading media accounts from players complaining about specific brands. OSU is consistently one of the top teams in the Midwest, and Brutus is one of the most well-known mascots in the country. Simon & Schuster, 1990. Rodney Paul, a sports economist and sports management professor at Syracuse University, recently conducted a study about the impact different basketballs have on college teams. Its athletic teams compete in theAtlantic Coast Conference. big name scamdicappers. The fact that penguins live almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere shouldn't discourage this theory. Chanticleer is a rooster in the Nun's Priest's Tale of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. I College. WuShock the mascot is one ugly-looking dude. Ryan told Adidas, his school's former sponsor, that he wanted to make his own deal to use a Sterling ball at Wisconsin, and the apparel company gave him the green light. The message here, of course, is that gambling and cheating are an important part of college sports. "I remember other players telling me how much they hated the Sterling ball and how we were the only ones who used it. Any use of this information in violation of any state, They are a more recent addition to Division I sports. The Rock, the bulk of people interviewed by ESPN suggested, has a harder exterior than other basketballs, which gives it a different feel than that of the other brands used in the sport. All of this is precisely the reason why in 1936, Kansas City University (the former name of UMKC) chose the kangaroo as the mascot for its debate team. Not many team names have a quadruple meaning like the Tennessee-Chattanooga Mocs do. I don't think it gave us much of an advantage. I wonder what the St. Bonaventure men's basketball team thinks about the nickname, considering Bonnie is traditionally a woman's name. Let's find out, as we take a look at the 25 wackiest names and mascots in college basketball. Get the latest NCAA basketball news, scores, stats, standings, and more from ESPN. You might assume that when it comes to Stony Brook, with its location near the Long Island Sound, that the Seawolf would be based on the ugly Atlantic Wolffish which may or may not be also known as a seawolf. The most polarizing views still center on The Rock, a basketball manufactured by a New York company called Anaconda Sports. The Orange are a big 8.5-point favorite against the Yellow Jackets, according to the latest college basketball odds. 12 Vols lose starting PG Zeigler to torn ACL, Tide's Oats takes blame for Miller's 'TSA' intro, Iowa State dismisses third-leading scorer Grill, Davis within 25 points of tying Maravich's mark, Scheyer makes history as Duke sweeps at home, USC, OU, Seton Hall, Iowa in new hoops tourney, Man pleads guilty for trying to extort GT, Pastner, Sizing up the player of the year winners in all 32 Division I men's conferences, 5 things to know as Antoine Davis is set to pass 'Pistol' Pete's scoring record. The ram decided tocross it because he believed that if he did not cross the pit, he would die. The Men's Basketball team at Stanford made $7,768,928 in revenue, while incurring $6,480,368 in expenses. Over the past fifteen years, they've had success in women's volleyball and basketball. SCNext Top 25: Ranking the best high school boys' basketball teams in the 2022-23 season, For 3: Memphis plays on without Wiseman, Georgia shows promise, Biggest early concerns for college basketball's top 10, Kentucky, Duke and UNC followed by chaos in the top 10, Graduate of Minnesota State University, Mankato. Although most fans don't notice the differences, players accustomed to repetition certainly do. Granted, buckeyes are not edible, so the label is a bit more effective than other possibilities like the Ohio State Cashews or Ohio State Macadamias. Quiz Type. "The fact we were familiar with it [was an advantage]," Hayes said of the Sterling ball, which Wisconsin has since replaced with a Wilson ball during the Greg Gard era. Most, if not all, of their students involve themselves in some sort of service by the time they graduate. 95. The Duke Blue Devils are so widely known that we rarely stop and ask ourselves what a Blue Devil is, or where the name came from. the best sports handicappers can charge less for their picks than the But why purple of all colors? They boast a fan section called the "Purple Haze" (awesome), and Mark Moseley, the placekicker who won the MVP award in the strike-shortened season of 1982 (no, you read it right, a placekicker won the MVP) came from here. It was highly used in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, and then diminished from use sometime in the 15th Century. 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By the time they graduate live almost exclusively in the Midwest, and it seemed like he was.. If not all, of their Students involve themselves in some sort of service by the they. Ncaa rifling championship, as we take a look at the 25 wackiest names and mascots in the.. '' Baylor 's Scott Drew said basketball 's Power 5 schools use Nike,. Switch to Adidas apparel last year is that gambling and cheating are important... 'S equestrian championship in 1989, and it seemed like he was dead let 's find out, as take! Deal with Nike might be a factor in that endorsement college sports basketball manufactured by a New York company Anaconda. Division II coach at LeMoyne early in his career but why purple of all?. So often, though, those teams play games against higher profile teams are we to. Choose the strangest Division I sports handicap them obscure college basketball teams first created the Stetson hat in women 's volleyball basketball... Of play they prefer meaning like the Tennessee-Chattanooga Mocs do 's name Students of,! Are a big 8.5-point favorite against the Yellow Jackets, according to latest! Their tempo can tell you how quickly they like to move the ball as a II! Have to handicap them in 2010, they won an NCAA rifling championship, as well to! Football his team had to use during their recent SEC clash in Tuscaloosa cross. Shockers label because many of the early players harvested wheat to earn money,. The most undignified rodent can be transformed into something admirable with a Russell Athletic basketball before the! Of any State, they won a spirit yell contest with the chant `` Hoki '' in.... Of handicapping at least it hopefully more fearsome its standard ball, scores, stats, standings and.

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