Bobby Lutz emerges as a leading candidate for College of Charleston job

   Bobby Lutz, associate head basketball coach at N.C. State and a former coach of the Charlotte 49ers, has emerged as a leading candidate to become the College of Charleston's next coach, the Observer has learned.

   Lutz has been in discussions with the College of Charleston about its vacancy the past several days and formally interviewed for the position a second time on Friday, a source close to the process confirmed. The school fired Doug Wojcik on Aug. 5 after two investigations discovered allegations of verbal and physical abuse against the former head coach.

   Two  other candidates for the position removed their names from consideration on Wednesday.

    Lutz, 56, is set to begin his fourth season on coach Mark Gottfried’s staff at N.C. State and his third year as associate head coach. The Wolfpack advanced to its third straight NCAA tournament and ended the season with a 22-14 record. 

   Sources said the College of Charleston has also spoke to Clemson assistant Earl Grant about the position. The school expects to make a decision by the middle of next week, sources said.

   At N.C. State, Lutz is in charge of the advanced scouting and defensive game-planning. Gottfried also has given Lutz a lot of responsibility with the team’s preparation.

   The College of Charleston competes in the Colonial Athletic Association.

   - Jim Utter

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/26/3735596/sources-lutz-leading-candidate.html#storylink=cpy

Davidson's De'Mon Brooks named SoCon Player of the Year

Davidson senior forward De’Mon Brooks is the SoCon men’s basketball player of the year for the second time in his career.

Brooks leads Davidson with 18.4 points per game and seven rebounds per game. He won the award in 2012 and he becomes in the first player in the history of the award to win it multiple times without winning it in consecutive seasons.

Brooks is third in the conference in scoring and sixth in rebounding. Davidson (19-11) went 15-1 in conference play and earned the No. 1 seed in this week’s conference tournament.

This is the third consecutive year a Davidson player has won the award. Forward Jake Cohen won it last season.

--Jonathan Jones

Boeheim jokes about food in the Carolinas, confirms ACC allegiance

Winston-Salem In his first trip to the Carolinas as a coach of an ACC team, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim just couldn’t help himself.

In 2011, Boeheim made a quip about the conference tournament being held in Greensboro, and last year the coach side-swiped Clemson with a comment about Denny’s restaurants in the town.

Wednesday after the Orange’s 67-57win at Wake Forest, Boeheim made another food comment, and this time he (perhaps jokingly) forgot what North Carolina city he was in.

“It’s amazing, I came here, I had the best Italian dinner last night and I thought during the game that was all I was going to get in Greensboro… Winston-Salem… wherever we are, Winston-Salem,” Boeheim said. “Best Italian dinner I’ve had in a long time and who would have thought it? Winston-Salem. I should name the restaurant but then I’d be in trouble. Simon’s the owner. It’s a little place. I didn’t even get the name of it.

“I tell it like it is. We have good restaurants, and I’ve had good food everywhere I’ve been in the south. I just make a joke and everyone thinks I mean it. You can’t make jokes anymore. At Clemson I had the best meal I’ve ever had on the road and last night was a New York City Italian dinner, it was that good. But really, we don’t go places for the food.”

Boeheim then launched into an unprompted defense of his allegiance to the ACC. Syracuse left the Big East and joined the ACC in 2013, and since then Boeheim has taken a handful of perceived slights at the league.

“I said from the beginning this is a great league, we’re happy to be in it,” he said. “The only thing, the only thing, that we miss would be the tournament being in New York City because that’s where all of our people are and it’s a great venue. But that’s one event. And we’ve lost there in the first round on more than one occasion. So that’s the only thing. This league is a tremendous league. It’s going to only get better and better with time. It’s a tremendous basketball league.”

Asked if he enjoyed coming to the Carolinas, the 38th-year coach gave a thoughtful response.

“You know, I mean, every game we’ve played since I’ve been coaching, before we were in the league and in the league, they’re all tough. It’s all tough basketball. Great crowds,” Boeheim said. “And I’ve played at N.C. State, and I’ve played Duke in Raleigh (as a player in 1966) and we’ve played in the south all my coaching career. There are great venues here and tough places, but it’s about the players and Lou Carnesecca told me those fans, they’re not scoring any points. Of course he had Chris Mullen and Walter Berry then so he wasn’t worried about anybody. Great venues, I think there’s a good side to it. Good teams, they get excited about it and ready to go and the crowd will get a good player going. And if you have bad players it doesn’t matter whether you have a good crowd or not. You got bad players you’re not going to win anyway.”

So far the Carolinas have been good to Boeheim. Of the 12,523 in attendance last night, at least 2,000 were dressed in orange.

“I was shocked,” he said. “In Florida we had about 4,000 but they all live down there, they’re all from Syracuse. I don’t know where these people honestly came from.”

 

--Jonathan Jones