the rix mix

Not enough college basketball? A Princeton-Duquesne game popped up my Yahoo page. What the heck is that? It's the College Basketball Invitational for teams left out of the NIT, which nobody pays attention to except students & alumni of the participating schools, or hard core gamblers. The SBI is so obscure Rivals Sports doesn't even list the games on the scores & schedule page.

Both of Seton Hall's basketball programs are in turmoil. Longtime women's coach Phyliss Mangina resigned. She had been a star player at Seton Hall, had mediocre coaching record, but the school was indifferent. Rutgers & Princeton are in the NCAA this year. Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer is an NCAA favorite. Her name alone kept Rutgers on the tournament bubble this year. But Princeton winning the Ivy title might have been more than Mangina could take.

Men's coach Bobby "Gonzo" Gonzalez was fired today. Here's some recent Seton Hall player activities:

• In an NIT loss, Seton Hall forward Herb Pope was ejected for hitting a Texas Tech player below the belt and Gonzalez picked up his seventh technical foul of the season.
• Gonzalez threw forward Robert Mitchell off the team on Sunday after being criticized by the player. Mitchell was arrested on Tuesday and charged with entering a house in South Orange on Monday and robbing eight people at gunpoint.
• A week before this season started, transfer guard Keon Lawrence was involved in a traffic accident on the Garden State Parkway in which he was driving in the wrong direction, seriously injuring the driver of the other vehicle.

Seton Hall is like Miami North.

Perhaps most seriously, Gonzalez didn't get along with Bob Hurley, coach of St. Peter's Prep St. Anthony's HS in Jersey City & the King of Jersey high school basketball coaches. You can't recruit well in Jersey without Hurley's blessing. He knows everyone - the best players - even the underrated ones, the best high school coaches, the best college programs.

Labels: sports