2025-26 NCAA B-Ball Thread

[Cobra Mgr]

Tonight is opening night. Close to 200 games.

[Déjà Bru]

We are entering the realm of freak show here.

From The Athletic:

Florida’s 7-foot-9 Olivier Rioux becomes tallest college basketball player ever

By Alex Valdes



Florida’s 7-foot-9 freshman Olivier Rioux became the tallest college basketball player of all time by entering the Gators’ 104-64 victory over North Florida on Thursday.

Rioux, a native of Montreal, entered with 2:09 remaining in the game. He thus surpassed 7-7 players Kenny George of UNC Asheville and Mike Lanier of Hardin-Simmons/UCLA.

“It felt great,” Rioux said after the game. “The support from everybody was amazing, even on the bench and even in the fans. Everybody supported me, and I’m very grateful.”

Fellow Gator Micah Handlogten, a member of last season’s NCAA championship team, was excited for Rioux to finally see the court.

“When he was checking into the game, I stopped him and I was like, play with confidence, you’ve worked your butt off for two years now to get to this spot. Now’s your moment, this is your time to shine,” he said. “To see him out there running up and down the court with a little smile on his face, it was really good to see.”

With his team leading by 24 at halftime, Florida coach Todd Golden told his players he wanted to get some of the younger ones in, among them Rioux. It wasn’t just the halftime score that served as incentive to get him in the game.

“There were people yelling at me at halftime about playing him,” Golden said jokingly after the game. “I said listen, it will happen, the time will come. I can be stubborn. I don’t listen to direction very well, so when they’re yelling at me to do it, well, maybe I’ll wait a little longer.”

As the Gators lead kept expanding, Golden knew that time had come.

“Obviously, the game was in our control, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get him out there and get his first college experience,” Golden said. “I think he was pretty excited. It was pretty neat for him to finally see the floor. I would have liked him to get a touch.

“He’s put in a lot of great work, and to his credit, he’s kept a great attitude without getting a lot of reward in terms of playing time and opportunity. He went into this year knowing that our ability to get the front court to come back was going to limit his opportunities.”

Getting the tallest college player on the court was the second big moment for the Gators. Earlier, the team unfurled the NCAA championship banner they earned by beating Houston 65-63 in the national championship game April 7.

Rioux was already a record-setter before Thursday, being officially named the world’s tallest teenager by Guinness World Records. On his bio page, he says, “We’re still not 100 percent sure why I’m so tall — after investigation, doctors could only explain it with the genetics that my family has. My father is 6’8, my mom is 6’2 and my older brother is 6’9. So we’re a pretty tall family!”

Over the summer, Rioux tried out for the Florida football team with the idea that his height and reach could help him block field goal attempts. His 11-inch vertical jump wasn’t enough to get him on the team.

Rioux has built up a strong pedigree with hoops, though. He was a star at IMG Academy in Florida and helped the Canadian national team win bronze medals in U-18 and U-18 tournaments. He caught the attention of many when he was already 6-10 at age 12.

Think about that bolded part.

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

We are entering the realm of freak show here.

From The Athletic:



Think about that bolded part.

This is his family 4 yrs & 4 inches ago.



Next to them, he looks like an ordinary tall kid w/an ordinary family. Then you read again that his mom is 6'2". So @ 5'11" I would be standing at about her mouth or chin's height.

[Déjà Bru]

From The Athletic:

NCAA bans 6 ex-college basketball players from 3 schools for betting violations

By Ralph D. Russo



The NCAA on Friday declared six former Division I men’s basketball players permanently ineligible after investigations found they tried to fix games and provided information to gamblers about how they would manipulate performances and outcomes.

Three former players from New Orleans (Cedquavious Hunter, Dyquavian Short and Jamond Vincent), two from Mississippi Valley State (Donovan Sanders and Alvin Stredic) and one from Arizona State (BJ Freeman) were banned as a result of the investigations. The NCAA said the investigations are not directly connected and only implicated the players involved, not the schools or any employees. All six players are no longer enrolled at their previous schools.

Text messages between Vincent and three third parties indicated he told the recipients to bet on a Dec. 28, 2024, game between New Orleans and McNeese because he and his teammates planned to “throw the game,” the NCAA’s report said. Vincent, Hunter and Short “manipulated their performances” in seven games last December and January, the NCAA said.

“Vincent acknowledged the conversations about throwing the game but denied following through with the plan, and Short and Hunter denied knowledge of and involvement in the plan,” the NCAA said.

Sanders and Stredic, the former Mississippi Valley State players, were found to have provided information to bettors for the purpose of betting on games. Another player on the team told NCAA investigators that he overheard Sanders on the phone with an unknown third party talking about “throwing” a game played against Tulsa on Dec. 21, 2024.

“The enforcement staff demonstrated that Sanders knowingly provided information to a third party for the purposes of sports betting for two games and Stredic did the same for one game,” the NCAA said.

The two players failed to cooperate with NCAA investigators by providing “false or misleading information” and did not provide requested records, the NCAA said.

Freeman, who had a year of eligibility left, was found to have provided information to a player at Fresno State, who was using the information to bet on Freeman through daily fantasy games. Freeman also misled and lied to investigators, the NCAA said. The Fresno State player, Mykell Robinson, was previously declared eligible in September.

The NCAA announced in September it was investigating the activities of 13 players from six schools: Arizona State, Temple, Mississippi Valley State, North Carolina A&T, New Orleans and Eastern Michigan.

Late last month, the NCAA declared three former Eastern Michigan players — Jalin Billingsley, Da’Sean Nelson and Jalen Terry — permanently ineligible for refusing to cooperate with the NCAA’s investigation into potential violations. All three had already exhausted their NCAA eligibility.

The NCAA said the Mississippi Valley State inquiry came after “public reporting in February 2025 about an NBA gambling ring that was potentially tied to college basketball.”

“The NCAA asked an integrity monitoring service to review Mississippi Valley games for suspicious activity,” it said. That triggered the NCAA to contact the school.

The NCAA has not acknowledged any relation between the activities involving its investigation and two recent federal indictments involving illegal gambling and former and current NBA players.

People briefed on the NCAA’s investigation have told The Athletic that federal investigators have neither contacted nor shared any information with the association.

“The NCAA has no further comment at this time beyond the news release and public decision,” a spokeswoman told The Athletic.

Last month, more than 30 people — including Portland Trail Blazers coach and former NBA star Chauncey Billups — were arrested for involvement in an expansive, mafia-backed scheme uncovered by the Department of Justice and FBI involving rigged, illegal poker games and bettors using insider information to make fraudulent wagers on the NBA.

NBA player Terry Rozier is accused of removing himself from games as a way to ensure bets related to his own performance — so-called prop bets based on individual player statistics — would cash for bettors he was in cahoots with.

Former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter, who was indicted in a separate case, has been banned by the NBA and pleaded guilty to one federal charge of wire fraud conspiracy for his role in the scheme. He is awaiting sentencing.

The NCAA has pushed for a ban on prop bets at the college level. Experts say those types of wagers are especially susceptible to manipulation.

A person briefed on the investigation told The Athletic that federal investigators are also looking into similar activities involving college basketball players, but noted that law enforcement officials at a news conference last month in New York stated there was no connection between the indictments and NCAA basketball. They also referred to the case as an ongoing and open investigation.

In September, the NCAA banned three men’s basketball players for participating in gambling, including betting on their own games and “manipulating” performances to alter outcomes. Two players were from Fresno State, including Robinson, and the other from San Jose State, though they had all been together at Fresno State.

Meanwhile, college sports leaders are grappling with how best to adapt to the new era of pervasive, legalized gambling on sporting events. Nearly 40 states permit wagering on sporting events, and the online gambling industry has exploded. The NCAA and conferences work closely with watchdog companies that monitor legal sportsbooks for unusual and potentially illegal activity.

The NCAA was on the verge of lifting its ban on legal sports betting by athletes, coaches and others who work for athletic departments. The governing bodies of each of the NCAA’s three divisions approved a recommendation to allow athletes and others to legally bet on professional sports while maintaining a ban on college sports. The new rule was expected to go into effect on Nov. 1, but soon after the federal indictments hit the NBA, there was public pushback from some NCAA members.

In a letter to NCAA president Charlie Baker, obtained by The Athletic, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey urged the NCAA Division I Board of Directors to rescind the rule change.

You want a diary entry? I'll give you a diary entry. Human beings are naturally stupid. It takes education, training, time, and effort to rise above that status and most of us never get there.

But the Supreme Court, they are very highly educated, aren't they? In their "wisdom" (but with two dissensions; I know who they were but I am not going to identify them here), they threw out the federal ban on sports betting in 2018. So, of course, nobody has been smart enough to stop the betting bandwagon since. Too much goddamned money involved and not enough morals or balls.

So what's especially stupid here? Did you get the part about NCAA was just about to lift its ban on sports betting, as long as its people did not bet on college sports? Easy enough to police, right? As long as FanDuels and such cooperate . . . Oh, wait, there's a scandal in the NBA. Better hold off for now until things calm down.

I am not spending another goddamned dime on sports.

[monkeyman576]

Six players deemed permanantly ineligible for gaming related offences.

It's no conicidence that gambling scandals across all sports have increased as sports emrace gambling apps like draftkings.

So while I do find the players involved in these cases personally responsible and should be punished, I think the leagues are equally responsible because they are putting money ahead of the integrity of the sport and this is a natural unfortunate consequence.

[Cobra Mgr]

UNC beat Kansas 87-74. Hopefully Kansas has a good season so Heel fans won't have to hear a bunch of blabbering about tier 1 wins. I will say the 2 hyped freshmen, Caleb Wilson & Darryn Peterson match the hype. They have a quality about them that makes them look like future NBA all-stars.

Interesting that #1 Purdue had a tough time vs Oakland (MI). They won 87-77 in Purdue. They were tied at the half & the lead was as little as 3 w/8 minutes to go. A late 23-12 run finally gave the Boilermakers some space. By comparison, Oakland lost their season opener to Michigan 121-78.

And speaking of games that never should have been played...UConn beat Umass-Lowell 110-47. The score was 64-17 at halftime.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Cobra Mgr

And speaking of games that never should have been played...UConn beat Umass-Lowell 110-47. The score was 64-17 at halftime.

Not only is it boring; it is embarrassing. Not just to the school on the losing end, but to NCAA in general.

Because of the money; the inequity of it. Large schools have the money to attract the best talent while smaller schools must make do with average athletes.

All of which takes away from the charm of the sport, to play and to watch. Scholarships were bad enough but now with NIL, it's even worse.

Say Umass-Lowell were to come up with, through sheer serendipity, a first-class basketball player. He wants to enhance his NIL income. What better way to do that than to transfer to an elite school like UConn?

You know what the problem is with Pan-Sportsism? Garnering genuine interest in games in which stuff like this and the topic of my previous post are going on.

It suddenly occurred to me as I was typing this that, if I cannot seriously root for a team like the L.A. Angels for the sake of Mike Trout, I am down to a choice between rooting locally again — pride of place — or losing interest in sports altogether.

Heh, then I am down to my stupid OT thread about stupid people. Joy.

[Cobra Mgr]

I see UCLA is playing Arizona tonight & think "why are they playing a conference game so early?"

[Cobra Mgr]

Something absurd from women's college basketball last night.........

#15 dook was playing W.Virginia in some kind of tournament. @ the end of the half, a dook player blocked a shot & mouthed off about it into a Mountaineer's face. She didn't like it & shoved her. Which led to 2 dookies more shoving the WVa player. Refs correctly ejected the 2 protagonists & assessed flagrants on the 2 devil players.

What I don't agree w/was the refs ejecting 5 WVa players for leaving the bench. I saw only one get close enough to the squabble to be in reach of anyone. And it was 00:00 on the clock. You are allowed to be on the court when the half is over. They never touched anyone. Can't even tell that they yelled at anyone. They were never part of the incident. This was overkill by the refs &/or the rule book.

The rules calls for ejections of players for merely being on the court when the half ends, but not eject 2 players who were given flagrants for "contacting" opponents in the ruckus??????

Overkill.

What made it worse was now W.Va had only 5 players left and only one was a starter. They were going to have to play the entire 2nd half from behind w/no bench.

But guess what? WVa won!

[Cobra Mgr]

UNC 71, dook 68

This

Game.

Always.

Delivers.

[Cobra Mgr]

Caleb Wilson out indefinitely w/fractured bone in hand.

I've got so many 4 letter words buzzing in my head right now.

[Cobra Mgr]

March Madness is here.

About 15 mid major conferences start their tourneys this week. You always want to pay attention for cinderellas in the multi-bid conferences. Cause if a bubble team gets on a hot streak & wins their tourney, it knocks out a spot for another bubble squad.

Also, if your school is on the bubble, you might want to pay attention to the Atlantic 10 & the Mid-American results. Both are likely one bid leagues. But the A-10's St Louis & the Mid-AM's Miami (OH) are strong candidates to get in even if they don't win the tourney. So that means if they don't win it, another bubble (at large) berth disappears.