Last spring Tyler Smith thought he was ready to go pro. Tennessee's All-SEC power forward declared for the draft after leading the Vols in scoring (17.4 points per game) and assists (3.4) as a junior. But a couple of...

Last February, as Duke was in the midst of a dismal stretch in which it dropped four of six games, associate head coach Chris Collins called guard Jon Scheyer into his office and administered some tough love. "He...

The state of Michigan basketball often can be summed up by how coach John Beilein addresses Corperryale L'Adorable Harris, the given name of All--Big Ten junior guard Manny Harris. "If Coach is liking me, he calls me...

Coach Thad Matta offers a statistic that underscores the difference in his team before and after guard-forward David Lighty broke a bone in his left foot in the seventh game last season. "With David we were Number 1...

Devin Ebanks was 13 when his mother, Yvonne Jackson, brought him from their Long Island City, N.Y., housing project to Rikers Island, the infamous New York City jail. As a veteran corrections officer there, she was...

In his early teens, Ed Davis would tag along with his father, Terry, to Virginia Union's Barco-Stevens Hall for pickup games. At times the temperature in the gym reached 110°, but that wasn't the worst of it for...

Last season, after he had benched Edgar Sosa for what seemed like the 88th time in three years, Cardinals coach Rick Pitino sat solemn-faced across from the point guard in a private meeting in his office. "Edgar,...

If Gordon Hayward plays like a guard trapped in a forward's body, it's because he is. Hayward wasn't projected to be taller than 6'2", so his father, Gordon Sr., who coached him until high school, had his son develop...

During a pickup game with Purdue teammates in late July, junior forward Robbie Hummel drove to the basket and made a layup. That would not have been noteworthy except that eight months earlier, in the Boilermakers'...

Even before he had played a minute of college basketball, Wildcats freshman point guard John Wall was seriously entertaining the question: Is he a contender for national player of the year? "That's one of my goals,"...