Ryan Carter: Breakfast Buffet: Creighton hits its first skid

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Breakfast Buffet: Creighton hits its first skid

1. Creighton has been so consistent all season, so it was surprising to see the Bluejays drop their second straight game Tuesday night. They scored one point in the final 5:25 of the second half and lost 65-57 to Evansville, falling behind Wichita State in the Missouri Valley standings and making Saturday's matchup with the Shockers all the more important. "We're still in a position where we can control our own destiny," Creighton coach Greg McDermott told the Omaha World-Herald. "But that has to be the farthest thing from our minds right now. We have to get ourselves right."

2. JayVaughn Pinkston's heroics that led Villanova's rally from a 19-point second-half deficit at Providence on Tuesday night were overshadowed an injury suffered by the Wildcats best player. Junior guard Maalik Wayns injured his left knee with 11:49 to go in the second half and will undergo an MRI on Wednesday to determine the extent of the damage.

3. Ira Schoffel's terrific profile of Leonard Hamilton examines how it shaped the Florida State coach growing up in a hardscrabble town known as "the Gas House" because of the number of people from there executed on death row. "Leonard pretty much started it," said Willie Hamilton, one of his three younger brothers. "He was the first one in the family to earn a degree. When we were coming up, your choices were to either get drafted or go work in the cotton mills. He didn't want that. He wanted something better."

4. It's no accident Kobe Bryant is the player Austin Rivers looks up to most because they approach the game in a similar way. The Duke freshman told the Raleigh News Observer that he has learned from watching Bryant how to take criticism, real or perceived, and use it as motivation to become a better player.� "He plays (ticked) off," Rivers said. "He finds things to motivate him, and he doesn't change."

5. Jim Calhoun will not be on the UConn bench Saturday when the Huskies face Syracuse, but he told ESPN.com's Andy Katz that lingering back pain will not end his coaching career. "It's something I've got to get through," Calhoun said. "I don't think it changes my mind one way or another about next year or the next two years. I just want to get the pain gone from down my leg so I can walk right. Getting onto planes and coaching -- I can't do that right now."

Markel Brown is quickly becoming a SportsCenter fixture. The high-flying guard delivered another memorable dunk in Oklahoma State's 69-67 victory over Iowa State, finishing a two-on-one fast break with an alley-oop slam. This time, however, he managed not to get ejected for trash talking afterward like he did after a vicious dunk of the year candidate against Missouri a couple weeks ago.

"Nah. No way. It's impossible." ? Kentucky's Doron Lamb on whether the Wildcats can be beaten when they shoot the ball as well as they did in Tuesday night's 78-58 demolition of Florida. Kentucky shot 52.8 percent from the floor and made 9 of 15 threes.� (Cats Illustrated)