Rumors

Three months earlier, Utah State was among 12 Division I schools that answered an email from Gomes offering to donate an automated external defibrillator (AED). The eight-year NBA veteran had become an AED advocate in 2006, when Stanley Myers, an 18-year-old who played for the same AAU team as Gomes, died while jogging on the Morgan State University campus because of sudden cardiac arrest. When Myers died, Gomes was in his second NBA season with the Boston Celtics and beginning to form his foundation. He decided he wanted to combat sudden cardiac arrest and vowed to donate an AED to every NBA city. In 2012, after stops with the Minnesota Timberwolves and the LA Clippers, he expanded his reach to colleges, writing to all Division I schools asking if they needed an AED. Twelve schools responded, among them Utah State.

New York Times

No Iowa women’s basketball player will wear No. 22 again. That is because, on Feb. 2, the Hawkeyes will retire Caitlin Clark’s jersey during an in-arena ceremony as Iowa takes on USC at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Over her four years with the program, Clark rewrote both the Iowa and NCAA record books. Last winter, she became the all-time women’s NCAA Division I scoring leader, major college scoring leader and all-time Division I men’s and women’s scoring champion in a 17-day span. During her career, Clark also broke the record for 3-pointers in a single season, made two national championship appearances, was a four-time AP All-American and was twice named the National Player of the Year.

New York Times

The history the 39-year-old LeBron spent time reflecting on hours before the 2024-25 season tipped off was everything Bronny, 20, went through to get to this point. About a year before the Lakers selected Bronny with the No. 55 pick in the second round, he suffered a cardiac arrest in July 2023 during a summer workout while preparing for his freshman season at USC. "[It was] not too long ago that the scare happened," LeBron said. "And when he's able to grace an NBA floor, if that's tonight or whenever the case may be, it'll be another one of those moments just to know the adversity that he went through. "I've had a couple of family members that have had heart surgeries. Some of them older, some of them younger. And to know how long it kind of takes to get back to yourself, to see him be able to play in a college Division I game the same year that he had heart surgery was, like, a 'wow' moment. And I knew that at that moment that there really was going to be nothing to stop him from getting to this -- to anything that he wants to do. And he wanted to continue to play basketball."

ESPN

Near the north side of Illinois State’s basketball arena is a statue of a coach kneeling as a player stands behind him with his hand on the coach’s shoulder. The coach is Will Robinson, the first African American head basketball coach in NCAA Division I history. The player is former Illinois State star guard Doug Collins, who is also a Basketball Hall of Famer. “They paid to have a statue built in front of our arena at Illinois State,” Collins said at the Hall of Fame news conference at the Mohegan Sun on Saturday. “It was Coach Robinson kneeling down with my hand on his shoulder. And I always tell people, ‘That’s not a basketball story.’ That’s a white kid from Benton, Illinois, being with this Black man from Detroit and them coming together creating a Division I program they could leave. “It was a love story. My hand on my shoulder, to me, was saying, ‘Coach, I trust you and I believe in you.’ And I think it’s harder and harder to get those relationships these days because a coach’s voice is way down the ladder in terms of who these guys are listening to. He said, ‘Wherever your voice hits a young man’s life will determine how you will be able to help.”

Andscape

USA Basketball announced today the teams set to compete at the 2024 FIBA 3x3 U23 World Cup Sept. 11-15 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The USA men look to defend their 2023 title, while the women look to return to the podium for the second time in the event’s five-year history (silver, 2022). The men’s team features three NBA G League players and one recent college graduate while the women's team features three NCAA Division I athletes and one international professional. The 2024 USA 3x3 U23 Men’s National Team includes John Butler Jr., Alex Fudge, David Johnson and Jameer Nelson Jr.

USA Basketball

Frank Selvy, an All-America guard at Furman who scored an NCAA Division I-record 100 points in a game and later played nine NBA seasons, died Tuesday. He was 91. Selvy's family announced that he died at his home in Simpsonville.

ESPN

In 1984, after coaching Michael Jordan on the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team, Portland general manager Stu Inman called Knight for advice on the upcoming NBA draft. Knight counseled Inman to take Jordan, calling Jordan the best basketball player he had ever seen. Inman told Knight the Blazers already had Clyde Drexler and needed a center. Knight responded, "Then play Jordan at center." Knight was the first Division I men's basketball coach to win 900 games. He was the most prolific winner in Big Ten history, won three NCAA titles at Indiana, went to five Final Fours and led the United States to the 1984 Olympic gold medal. He innovated the motion offense and influenced countless coaches with his teaching of the game. One cannot think of Indiana basketball without thinking of Bob Knight.

ESPN

Fast forward 15 years, and Stoudamire is now the new head coach at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, his second Division I head coaching job after being at the helm of Pacific University from 2016 to 2021. “After playing for the Spurs, I didn’t feel it anymore. I had always said I wasn’t built to be a 12th man. I didn’t have a plan, didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Stoudamire told Legends of Basketball Magazine in September as he prepared for the upcoming NCAA season. He spent some time as a studio analyst at NBA-TV in Atlanta before returning to Houston and meeting with John Lucas. “He put confidence back in me. That’s what he does. He told me: ‘Don’t run from it. Tell your story where it is. Just own it and move on. After that, what can people say?’” “I owe him a lot. He taught me to be myself again,” Stoudamire said of Lucas. “I built myself back up.”

Legends Mag

That same study found that the chances of a Black male Division I NCAA basketball player dying from sudden cardiac arrest are one in 3,126. That’s disturbingly common—closer, by the numbers, to cracking open a double-yolked egg than dying in a shark attack. Gender, race, and division all matter, too. The risk to Black college basketball players in general is nearly four times higher than the risk to white ballers, but “the highest-risk group of athletes regardless of ethnicity were Division I male basketball athletes.

TrueHoop

Division I schools can expect to receive further NCAA rules guidance related to name, image and likeness activity as soon as next week, two sources on the subcommittee overseeing the process told The Athletic. The NIL subcommittee that issued updated guidance regarding the role of boosters and collectives in May is set to endorse its latest set of recommendations next week at a meeting of the D-I Board of Directors. The two sources, who agreed to discuss the group’s messaging before it was made public in exchange for anonymity, said that the board will meet both Tuesday and Wednesday and is expected to adopt guidance addressing which activities are permissible and impermissible when it comes to institutional involvement in NIL activity. The subcommittee’s work is just one of the topics expected to be on the agenda for the board.

The Athletic

Though his résumé is impressive now — with a fourth NBA championship and a Finals MVP trophy — Stephen Curry famously started his hoops journey as an unranked, unheralded and unrecruited high school prospect. In recent years, Curry has looked to provide a new generation of young athletes with the skills and inspiration that fueled his rise. Beginning in 2019, Curry launched the Underrated Tour as a basketball showcase event for players who might not have otherwise been scouted by college coaches. The tour’s logo has five stars grouped together with three stars highlighted. Accordingly, the tour is open to players who were ranked as three-star recruits or lower, like Curry. To date, 31 student-athletes who have played in the Underrated Tour have gone on to receive full-ride Division I scholarships to play college basketball. Now, Curry is adding another branch to his Underrated Tour — this time for golf.

Andscape

Adam Zagoria: Ex-@BryantHoops and @RutgersMBB G Peter Kiss worked out for the Cavaliers Tuesday and will have more workouts coming up soon He was the leading scorer in Division 1

Twitter

Ever since, NBA players have frequently played in the summer weekend games, competing against Division I collegiate players, overseas pros back home, rising high school stars and local players. “We were in a comfort zone with Nike for the past several years, and everything was fine,” said Dino Smiley, a longtime LA County Parks and Recreation supervisor, who has served as commissioner of the Drew League since 1985 and CEO of the Drew League Foundation since its formation in 2009. “With some of our legends and some of our main players, what made it great was they said to me, ‘Hey, man, it’s about Drew,’ ” Smiley said of the decision to switch brands. “Nike took us to another level, and Adidas should take us even further.”

Andscape

Given that Strus received just one Division I offer (Chicago State) coming out of high school in Palos Hills, Illinois, that confidence could have easily been filed under the category of “irrational.” But Strus buoyed that confidence with his relentless work ethic. To this day, former coaches and teammates wax poetic about Strus’s habits. Before one home game during Strus’s freshman year, Henshaw decided he was going to impress coaches by getting to the gym two hours early to warm up. “I walk into the gym and think I’m the first one,” Henshaw said. “I look over and Max is working out with one of our assistants, and Max has already broken a sweat. “His work ethic rubbed off on us.”

Substack