This won’t be news to the guys over at Cuse Country, Orange 44, or Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician, but it was news to me: Etan Thomas, former Syracuse Orangemen and two-time Big East defensive player of the year is a blogger for the Huffington Post, the best political blog out there, at least according to the 2006 Webby awards.

Etan writes on a handful of political topics — why terrorists hate us (not because of our freedom, but because of our foreign policy), the death policy (which he is vehemently against), and Giuliani’s exploitation of 9/11.

Color me impressed. This warrants the very first web cartoon for Big East Hoops:

Best of luck to Etan, who had open heart surgery earlier this year and is trying to come back from it to play NBA ball.

Categories: Commentary, Nostalgia, donald, Syracuse
No Comments »

This one from the old news department. I hadn’t been aware of the story until now, so forgive me if you’ve seen this already.

In March of last year, the New York Times did a feature on former Georgetown jump-out-of-the-gym guard, Victor Page. Most of you remember Page as the prolific scorer with bad teeth who was the heir apparent to Iverson. Like Iverson, he had a big nose for trouble. Unlike Iverson, the lefty went undrafted when he left college after his sophomore year.

After a 4-year stint in the CBA with Sioux City and another stint in Europe, he found himself back on the streets of D.C. in 2003…

…where he was shot. Three bullets. One in his leg. One in his chest. And one in his right eye.

As of the article’s publishing, Page seems to have started to turn things around, despite having been shot again in the leg in the summer of 2005. He’s giving motivational speeches through the Urban League, presumably stressing the importance of staying out of trouble. Sadly, had he been given this advice 11 years ago when he was the Big East Tournament’s MVP, things might have turned out differently for Page.

Categories: Nostalgia, Mister D, NewsWatch, Georgetown
No Comments »

So it’s been in the news for a while, but ever slow on the uptake, we here at Big East Hoops hadn’t seen it until just recently.

It turns out that former ‘Cuse sharp-shooter Jason Cipolla has been dating Soprano’s star Lorraine Bracco for over, like, 5 years now. Cipolla was a behind-the-scenes driver for the show; Bracco was on screen, playing the mob-boss’s psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Psychoanalyze this, though: Bracco is 52 compared to Cipolla’s 31.

Cradle robber or Sugar Momma? (not that the two are mutually exclusive)

We congratulate Jason. Though he couldn’t make the NBA, he chose the next best thing…the AARP.

Kidding, of course. Best to both. Love the show.

Categories: Nostalgia, Mister D, NewsWatch, BlogWatch, Syracuse
No Comments »

Call me a hater, but I love watching Duke lose. The whole hatred stems from my youth, when those punkasses Alaa Abdelnaby, Bobby Hurley, and Christian Laettner beat my beloved UConn Huskies not once but twice. The first time was during the 1989-1990 season when Laettner hit that ridiculous double-pump jumper in overtime to end UConn’s dream season and to send Duke into the Final Four. The very next year, Duke sent them out again, this time in the second round (remember the Rod Sellers incident?). Of course, UConn got its sweet, sweet revenge in both 1999 and 2004.

So it brought me much joy last night to watch the last few minutes of the Virginia-Duke contest, which was a great game. Singletary hits this ridiculous fading one-hander and Virginia’s fans storm the court (they had lost 9 straight to Duke). What makes it even sweeter is that Dave Leitao, longtime UConn assistant coach, is in his second year at Virginia and he got the victory. It’ll be impressive if he lifts Virginia, which hasn’t done much in a while, to the top of the ACC.

That said, Duke is again overrated this year. I’m impressed with the job that Coach K has done, given that the team has such little talent. It always amazes me how Duke can land 10 McDonalds All-Americans, and have so many of them suck. Paulus is too slow for college ball, Scheyer needs to lift some serious weights, and all this talk about Josh McRoberts being ambidextrous and “equally gifted” with both hands is bullshit. He’s just confused and “equally bad” with both hands. Like I said, congrats to Coach K for getting them to number 10 in the polls, but I think they’ll be out of the NCAAs this year by the second round.

In Big East news, Georgetown looked amazing in the second half shooting 72% from the field against St. Johns and rolled to their fifth victory. Looks like the Hoyas are starting to hit their stride.

Categories: Commentary, Nostalgia, Big Willie Style, donald
2 Comments »

See, the problem with the internet is that it can lead you to believe that people have dropped off the face of the earth, just because you don’t know how to spell their name. I had wanted to put a picture of our favorite 7′4′’ Romanian UMiami grad, or even find out what happened to the guy, but I just wasn’t getting anything searching for “Constantine Popa”. So it happened by chance last night that I typed his name “Constantin Popa” and found tons of results, including this rather relevant one: “Former UM Star is still making an impact; Father of five thrives as Cypress Bay girls’ basketball coach, special ed teacher.”

Yup, that’s right. After bouncing around the US playing in the USBL and moving over to Europe to play in a few leagues over there, Popa’s back in Florida. Now, don’t get me wrong — I think Popa’s a great guy for doing this, and we (as a society) need more people to go into teaching. That said, I’m laughing my ass off imagining him counseling a high school girl who just broke up with her boyfriend. The article gets even more hilarious:

“At UM, he became friendly with several standouts, including Dwayne Johnson (”The Rock”), Warren Sapp and Ray Lewis.”

Popa hanging out with The Rock? Popa chilling with Warren Sapp? Popa going to the club with Ray Lewis and stabbing people? Folks, we’re talking about this guy:

This just made my weekend…

Categories: Nostalgia, donald
5 Comments »