More Hoops Games, Bowl Teams on the Way

A longer college basketball season and making more teams eligible for football bowl games are expected to be approved when the NCAA Board of Directors meets today in Indianapolis.
Counting games for basketball could be played as early as the second Friday in November under the proposal forwarded from the NCAA Management Council. That would be a week earlier than currently allowed.
Also up for consideration is a plan to allow basketball teams to either play a 29-game schedule, one more than the current limit for a regular season, or a 27-game limit but include an exempt tournament in which a team could play as many as four games but have it count as only one game against the lower limit. Schools would have the option of which limit they use for scheduling.
The proposed new rules also would allow teams to play in a so-called exempt tournament - the Preseason NIT and Maui Classic are the best known - each season, rather than being limited to twice in four years. Teams couldn't play in the same exempt tournament a second time in that four-year span, however.
The new rule also would consider foreign tours as separate entities from exempt tournaments, so that once every four years a school could schedule a foreign trip between seasons and also play in an exempt event that season.
With the expected approval by the NCAA panel, the changes would become effective this summer. In each case, the alterations would effect Oregon's scheduling for the 2006-07 season, UO coach Ernie Kent said.
The Ducks are currently scheduled for a foreign trip in August, and if allowed would attempt to play in an exempt tournament again this season, as they did last year. Kent said Oregon was also likely to take advantage of an earlier beginning date for counting games.
Also up for approval is an alteration that would no longer require teams to count their conference tournament as one game against the limit. That is being pushed because not all leagues include every team in their tournament.
The NCAA Board of Directors will also consider a change that will allow football teams with a .500 record to play in bowl games. Currently, teams that don't have a winning record can play in a bowl only if it's to fulfill a conference's contract with the bowl.
There are currently 28 approved bowl games, which means 56 of the 117 Division 1-A teams played in bowls after the 2005 season.
There certainly will be at least one more postseason game after the '06 season, with the national championship game one of the four that needs official approval. The championship game will be in addition to the four current games in the Bowl Championship Series.
Also very likely to be played for the first time is the New Mexico Bowl, slated for Albuquerque. It was given a $2 million line of credit by ESPN, and financing is usually the determining factor on a bowl being approved. The New Mexico Bowl will match teams from the Western Athletic Conference and the Mountain West Conference.
The NCAA panel also will review applications from the International Bowl, to be played in Toronto, and the Birmingham Bowl, to be played in Alabama's largest city.

Curtis' Isaiah Thomas likely to choose UW

Guard Isaiah Thomas of Curtis High School, regarded as the top junior boys basketball player in the state, has called a news conference for Thursday to announce his choice of college amid reports that he will become a Washington Husky.
Thomas' coach at Curtis, Lindsay Bemis, told The Seattle Times on Tuesday night that although Thomas hasn't told him where he will go to school, "I'd be shocked if it wasn't Washington."
Thomas did not return phone calls Tuesday night, but two recruiting Web sites, Realdawg.com and Dawgman.com, quoted Thomas as saying he would become a Husky.
"Washington is a great place, and it's better because it's close to home and my family can always watch me now," he told Dawgman.com. "It's somewhere I want to be."
Thomas, listed at 5 feet 9, has been compared to former Washington star Nate Robinson in both style and production. He was named The Times 4A Player of the Year last season after averaging 31.6 points. He set a 4A state-tournament record with 51 points in a semifinal loss to Franklin.
Thomas, who can't sign a letter of intent until November, would be the first member of UW's 2007 recruiting class.
The news came the same day the Huskies learned that Blake Young, a guard from Daytona Beach Community College, would sign elsewhere. Young's coach at Daytona Beach, Brad Underwood, told the Wichita Eagle that Young will sign with Kansas State today. Young visited UW's campus last weekend.

Capel is hired as Oklahoma coach

Jeff Capel was hired as Oklahoma's basketball coach Tuesday, resigning at Virginia Commonwealth to replace Kelvin Sampson and take over a program under NCAA investigation.
VCU confirmed Capel's move in a statement from president Eugene Trani and athletic director Richard Sander. The Sooners scheduled an afternoon news conference on campus to introduce Capel.
"We are both sad and happy with Jeff's announcement that he is going to Oklahoma," Sander said. "He did a great job here, and we know he will do a great job there."
The 31-year-old Capel is a former Duke player who was 79-41 in four seasons as coach at VCU. He signed a two-year contract extension last month to keep him at the Richmond school through 2012.
Instead, he will replace Sampson, hired as Indiana's coach March 29. Sampson was 279-109 in 12 seasons at Oklahoma.
The Sooners are awaiting a decision from the NCAA in a case involving more than 550 improper recruiting phone calls by Sampson and his staff. The accusations against Oklahoma include "lack of institutional control," one of the NCAA's most serious findings.
Oklahoma has argued for a lesser "failure in monitoring" finding and instituted self-imposed sanctions including probation and recruiting cutbacks. A hearing is scheduled April 21 in Utah.
Capel, whose father is an assistant coach for the Charlotte Bobcats, led VCU to the Colonial Athletic Association title and an NCAA tournament berth in 2004 and then to the NIT in 2005 -- the school's first consecutive postseason berths since 1985. His Rams finished this season 19-10 and did not make the postseason after losing to Hofstra in the conference tournament quarterfinals.
The signature of his VCU teams was defense. This season, the Rams allowed 62.4 points a game. On offense, they averaged only 12.5 turnovers and made nearly eight 3-pointers a game.
Sampson inherits an Oklahoma team that loses three of its top four scorers and top three rebounders in seniors Taj Gray, Terrell Everett and Kevin Bookout, but features a strong recruiting class that includes McDonald's All-American guard Scottie Reynolds from Herndon, Va.
Capel started 28 games as a freshman guard alongside Grant Hill on Duke's 1994 team that made it to the NCAA championship game but lost to Arkansas. He graduated in 1997, then played in the CBA and in France before beginning his coaching career as an assistant to his father, Jeff Capel Jr., at Old Dominion.
He moved to VCU as an assistant in 2001 and became the head coach the following year. At 27, he was the youngest head coach in Division I at the time.