Men's College Basketball Research Articles

A comparison of the physical demands generated by playing different opponents in basketball friendly matches.

This study aimed to compare the physical demands of playing opponents of different skill levels in basketball. Eighteen men's college basketball players wore accelerometers to measure the relative accumulated acceleration load (AAL), estimated equivalent distance, and frequencies of sprint, jump, and exertion events during games against professional teams (Pro), teams at the same competition level (Collegiate), and teams comprising intra-team members in practice games (Scrimmage). Internal responses were calculated using the relative rating of perceived exertion (sRPE). A repeated measures analysis of variance, Bonferroni post-hoc tests, and standardized Cohen's effect sizes were calculated to compare the physical demands and internal responses across matches played against different levels of opponents. The results showed that in the game against the Pro, AAL (arbitrary units), sprint events (cases per min), and exertion events (cases per min) were significantly (p < .05) higher than those in games against the Collegiate and Scrimmage teams. As the competitive level of the opponents increased, the relative external load of the participants also increased. Conversely, internal responses measured using sRPE were lower after games against the Pro than those against the Collegiate. Internal and external loads may vary from each other depending on contextual factors.

A comparative study of vertical jump parameters in men's college basketball and volleyball players

This study aimed to compare lower limb strength disparities between male college volleyball and basketball players in four distinct vertical jump types. We recruited 100 second-level (above the national standard) male college athletes (50 basketball and 50 volleyball players) from Capital University of Physical Education and Sports who volunteered to participate. We assessed the performance of each athlete with regards to the squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), continuous jump with straight legs (CJs), and continuous jump with bent legs (CJb). Data analysis was performed by independent samples t-tests in SPSS version 25.0. software. In the CMJ test, volleyball players had a significantly higher vertical jump displacement (VJD; p = 0.047, t = −2.018), squat displacement (SD; p = 0.005, t = −2.883), peak force (p = 0.023, t = −1.964), and peak velocity (p = 0.011, t = −1.687) than basketball players. In the SJ test, volleyball players had a significantly higher VJD (p = 0.041, t = −1.21) and SD (p = 0.008, t = −1.46) than basketball players. In the CJs test, volleyball players had a significantly higher average vertical jump displacement (AVJD; p = 0.042, t = −2.067) than basketball players. In the CJb test, volleyball players had a significantly higher AVJD (p = 0.001, t = −3.448), average squat displacement (p = 0.017, t = −2.44), and average contact time (p = 0.045, t = −2.038) than basketball players. The overall vertical jump ability of college volleyball players was better than that of college basketball players. CMJ, SJ, CJs and CJb training should be included in daily training sessions and considered in the selection of basketball and volleyball players. In addition, coaches can use fast twitch Fibers, the effect of pre-stretch and k as the main evaluation indicators to assess daily training progress.

Love in Basketball: Transforming Inappropriate Power in Men's College Basketball Coaching through a Servant-Led Response and Companionate Love

In the summer of 2003, the Baylor University’s men’s basketball program was ripped apart when student-athlete Carlton Dotson murdered his teammate and roommate, Patrick Dennehy. While the details surrounding the events are still unknown, the abhorrent tale, which weaves a tapestry of drug use, gun violence, and unstable behavior, was held as an example of the moral decay of big-money college sports. And it remains the only known case of a student-athlete killing a teammate in the history of U.S. intercollegiate athletics (Wise, 2008). The story fails to simply end with tragic violence; investigations revealed deception, lies, manipulation, and an attempted cover-up by Dave Bliss, the head men’s basketball coach at Baylor from 1999-2003, which led to his 10-year ban from the NCAA (Dewitt, 2008; Wise, 2003, 2017). Later, in his 2015 memoir and a 2017 documentary about the events of 2003, Bliss paints the picture of a redeemed man accepting personal responsibility (Bliss et al., 2015; Kondelis, 2017). Yet, in a moment where Bliss believes the cameras to be off, he continues to disparage Dennehy and, perhaps, once again the nature of leadership embedded in inappropriate power. Instances of this style of leadership, and accompanying manifestations of displays of abuse, manipulation, self-embeddedness and violence, seem to be common practice in college basketball. John Brannen, former head men’s basketball coach at the University of Cincinnati, was fired in May 2021 due to using tactics of intimidation and providing benefits prohibited by NCAA legislation to a student athlete (Jenkins, 2021). Two head coaches have resigned over the last two seasons due to using racial slurs and racially insensitive language around student athletes, and at least two more have been investigated by their universities for similar comments (“Basketball coach out,” 2021; Borzello, 2020, 2021; Hanson, 2021). These are just some of the examples of which we have public record. While on one hand these examples might merely represent extreme cases, perhaps this represents only the tip of the iceberg, with actions and behaviors so alarming that they warranted headlines. Federal, internal, NCAA, and journalistic investigations reveal that much more goes on behind closed doors and outside of the view of the public, but the strings of the thread of leadership centered in inappropriate power drive remain. Such leadership can neutrally be characterized as hierarchy-driven, rules-based, and authoritative; this is not a power that liberates or empowers, but manipulates and controls, dominates and suppresses. With leadership embedded in such inappropriate power drive regularly occurring in men’s college basketball coaching, the purpose of this paper is to more greatly understand the expression, manifestations, and consequences of such leadership, explore a possible transformation arc and inward journey toward a servant-led response and more healthy expression of power, and examine how such a response may be sustained, and what might be experienced as a result, in men’s college basketball coaching with a foundation of servant-leadership and an emotional culture of companionate love.

Muscle synergy during free throw shooting in basketball is different between scored and missed shots.

The current study investigated the differences in synergy during a free throw in basketball and compared synergies between scored and missed shots. A total of six men's college basketball players participated in this study. A wireless electromyographic system was used to measure the activity of 16 trunk, and upper and lower extremity muscles while completing the free throw. In total, three scored and missed shots each were analyzed to extract the synergies using non-negative matrix factorization. Overall, four synergies were extracted from the successfully made shots, and three synergies were extracted for the missed shot; two synergies were shared between scored and missed shots. The one synergy that contributes to the shoulder flexion was used to set the ball and activate the initial stage of the free throw. Another synergy that contributes the palmar flexion was used to release the ball and activate the final stage of the free throw. The other two synergies in scored shot contribute to lower and upper limb extension in sequence to promote the energy transfer in the middle to the final stage of the free throw. On the other hand, there was only a synergy that corresponded to the middle to the final stage of the free throw extracted from the missed shot. Since the movements of the lower and upper extremity extensions are performed even on a missed shot, we believe that working the from the lower to the upper limb “in sequence,” rather than working the lower and upper limbs “simultaneously,” may influence the success of the shot.

Keeping spectators in the stands: sport literacy framework for college basketball

Despite the potentially valuable benefits of sport literacy for spectators, there is no analytical framework for understanding the necessary components of, and the role of, sport literacy in sport spectatorship. This study aims to develop a conceptual sport literacy framework that explains the necessary elements of sport spectatorship for men's college basketball. We recruited nine college basketball experts, six self-identified fans and five novices, and conducted semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The interview data, memos, observed data from scenario play and narratives of video clips were integrated into NVivo software and the transcribed data were analysed using a series of coding techniques in grounded theory. Most participants identified specific types of knowledge necessary for becoming a literate spectator along with the factors that facilitate the development of sport literacy. The proposed conceptual framework seeks to direct researchers and practitioners in their efforts to promote spectators' sport literacy.

To Promote or Hire? How Racial Processes and Organizational Characteristics Affect Internal Promotions in NCAA Division I College Basketball Coaching

AbstractWe use data from 2008–2013 on the universe of internal promotion opportunities in the labor market of NCAA Division I men's college basketball coaching to examine how race and racial homophily affect the likelihood of internal promotion. We run probit regression analyses from the individual and organizational perspective, offering a robust test of six hypotheses. In line with the relational inequality perspective, we find that the racial match of assistants and head coaches explains discrepancies in internal promotion, with homogeneous white pairings seeing significantly increased odds compared to other racial combinations. In addition, our findings reveal that colleges and universities are more likely to promote internally as the racial composition of the staff more closely matches the race of the outgoing head coach, thereby underscoring how racial processes inform the micro-level interactions that shape organizational behavior.

The FBI's Investigation into NCAA Men's Basketball Corruption Facilitates the DOJ's Attempt to Criminalize Violations of NCAA Rules

The recent indictments of four NCAA Division I Men's Basketball (Men's College Basketball) assistant coaches in connection with the FBI's investigation into the corruption surrounding Men's College Basketball. The investigation has allegedly revealed that certain athletic advisors engaged in a scheme to defraud whereby such advisors would pay bribes to Division I coaches in exchange for the coaches' steering players to retain such advisors' services. The investigation has also led to several indictments related to an alleged conspiracy between advisors and a sportswear company to funnel money to families of top recruits in exchange for the recruits' commitments to play for schools that are sponsored by the sportswear company. Some of the defendants are facing a maximum sentence of eighty years' imprisonment as a result of the DOJ's attempt to criminalize violations of the NCAA’s amateurism rules. The activity for which the four assistant coaches were indicted should be addressed by the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions, the independent administrative body with the authority to impose sanctions on players, coaches and schools, as opposed to the DOJ because the assistant coaches' conduct does not warrant federal criminal charges. While Congress has reportedly begun to investigate “recruiting practices at some of the most successful, best-known programs in the country,” it should take action to prohibit the DOJ from prosecuting individuals for violating NCAA rules. Congress should propose legislation declaring that the NCAA is the independent administrative body with exclusive authority to impose penalties on student-athletes, coaches and/or institutions for violations of NCAA rules. The proposed legislation should result in the establishment of a committee dedicated to reforming the NCAA rules so that the focus of the NCAA rules shifts from preserving amateurism to protecting student-athletes’ fundamental rights, which will require the NCAA to sacrifice its control over student-athletes’ ability to receive compensation for the use of their names, images and likenesses.

College Basketball Coach Evaluation Based on Dynamic DHGF Evaluation Model

The use of mathematical evaluation model is more and more widely, including the comprehensive evaluation of college coaches. In this paper, we build DHGF model using the Delphi method, AHP, Gray Relation and Fuzzy Judgment to evaluate college couches quantitatively. Based on DHGF model, we analyze the influence of timeline on the scores of evaluation indexes, get Plus Function, so as to adjust experts score. So we get dynamic DHGF evaluation model. Then, we apply the model to men's college basketball matches. After that, we discuss that this model is applicable for choosing the best college coach or coaches (past or present) from among either male or female coaches in all sports fields. And we will apply the model to evaluation problems with large time span or with many affecting factors.

Alternative Approaches to Measuring MRP: Are All Men's College Basketball Players Exploited?

College men’s basketball players have alleged that the NCAA’s illegal cap on athletic scholarships leads to lower scholarships than would prevail in a free market. Recently, the NCAA increased the limit on athletic scholarships. We compare the marginal revenue product (MRP) of men’s basketball players to athletic scholarship caps. We estimate MRPs using players’ playing statistics; information on the distribution of pro salaries; and players’ future draft status. We find that players’ MRPs are greater than the athletic scholarship caps for about 60% of men’s basketball players, not just the star players.

Gender Bias in the Perception of Women as Collegiate Men's Basketball Coaches

This study investigates the potential impact of gender-role attitudes and gender-role congruity on the gaps in research regarding the perceived ability of women to coach men. An online instrument was sent via email to 236 students recruited from an introductory to sport management course at a large public institution in the Southeast. Based on previous studies, this study sought to test whether gender alone would influence the hiring recommendation, perceptions of job-fit, and the perceived capability of female applicants for coaching positions in men's college basketball. In examining the role of gender as a predictor on job applicants' capability, job-fit, and hiring recommendation for a men's basketball coaching position, findings revealed significant differences only on hiring recommendation. The primary findings revealed that despite perceptions of more than capable abilities and job-fit, women would still be offered a men's college basketball coaching job less often than men.

Irrelevant events affect voters' evaluations of government performance

Does information irrelevant to government performance affect voting behavior? If so, how does this help us understand the mechanisms underlying voters' retrospective assessments of candidates' performance in office? To precisely test for the effects of irrelevant information, we explore the electoral impact of local college football games just before an election, irrelevant events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected. We find that a win in the 10 d before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive an additional 1.61 percentage points of the vote in Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, with the effect being larger for teams with stronger fan support. In addition to conducting placebo tests based on postelection games, we demonstrate these effects by using the betting market's estimate of a team's probability of winning the game before it occurs to isolate the surprise component of game outcomes. We corroborate these aggregate-level results with a survey that we conducted during the 2009 NCAA men's college basketball tournament, where we find that surprising wins and losses affect presidential approval. An experiment embedded within the survey also indicates that personal well-being may influence voting decisions on a subconscious level. We find that making people more aware of the reasons for their current state of mind reduces the effect that irrelevant events have on their opinions. These findings underscore the subtle power of irrelevant events in shaping important real-world decisions and suggest ways in which decision making can be improved.

Personal Emotions and Political Decision Making: Implications for Voter Competence

According to what criteria do citizens make political decisions, and what do these criteria say about democratic competence? An impressive body of evidence suggests that voters competently evaluate diagnostic information such as macroeconomic trends and their personal financial circumstances to reward good performance while ridding themselves of leaders who are corrupt, incompetent, or ineffective. However, what if some voters' personal emotional reactions to events completely unrelated to public affairs influence their voting decisions? The conflation of personal emotions with political cognition challenges traditional conceptions of citizen competence and democratic accountability. We explore whether emotional reactions unrelated to incumbent performance affect voting behavior by assessing the electoral impact of local college football games, events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected. On average, a win before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive about one percentage point more of the vote, with the effect being larger for teams with stronger fan support. We corroborate these aggregate-level results with a survey conducted during the 2009 NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament, where we find that sports-induced emotional change affects approval of President Obama and assessments of the health of the country. Voters' decisions and attitudes are thus shown to depend considerably on events that affect their personal level of happiness even when those events are entirely disconnected from government activity. Our results provide new evidence on the significant limitations of the electorate's capacity to hold elected officials accountable for their actions.

Media Clips: March Madness; Do Cents Make Sense?

Every March, men's college basketball teams compete in the NCAA tournament. Sixty-five teams participate, with two teams vying for the 64th slot. The 64 teams are divided into four 16-team regions, in which they are seeded 1 through 16. The winning team in each region advances to the Final Four. Fans participate by submitting predicted outcomes for the 64 teams to pools like that run by ESPN.

"The Only Thing Left for the Whites Is a Couple of Coaching Jobs": Revisiting the Discursive Influence of Pre- and Post-Brown Media on Desegregation and Resegregation in Collegiate Sports

Former CBS sports analyst, "Jimmy the Greek" Snyder said "The only thing left for the Whites is a couple of coaching jobs" (Shapiro, 1988, pp. A1, A10). The Supreme Court's landmark <i>Brown I</i> and <i>II</i> decisions brought a sharp increase in the visibility of some of the most exceptional black college athletes the country. Subsequently, many segregated, white institutions began to recruit these black "superspades" (Harris, 1993, p. 52; and Davis, 1995, p. 627) per team and mass media sources began to compare/contrast blacks and whites via sporting events. This manuscript revisits historical and contemporary messages of the mass media regarding blacks vs. whites in college athletics and considers how mass mediated sports involve (1) discursive innovation (Hughes, 2005), (2) a revolutionary message, (3) simplistic appeals to emotions, (4) rhetorical figures generating an aura of "presence," (5) invocations to a collective identity that is conducive to a situation-distressed collective group seeking a solution to social problems as a means of escape, and (6) dramatization of polarized aggression between forces of good and bad that is indicative of impending doom or hopelessness restricting individual perspectives in favor of collective group identity (Lewis, 1988). The manuscript discusses how this particular construction of messages may have contributed to the desegregation and resegregation (Orfield, 2001) of the two most visible, NCAA Division I sports: men's college basketball and football. Moreover, the article provides evidence of the necessity for an ongoing academic investigation of sports and athletes in education.

An investigation of the relationship between television broadcasting and game attendance

This study investigated the relationship between whether a major conference NCAA Division I men's college basketball game was televised and game attendance during the 2003–2004 and 2004–2005 seasons. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine this relationship while controlling for 19 other potentially confounding variables. A significant regression model was created (F = 111.586, p < 0.001), explaining 77.6% of the variance in game attendance. The model estimated that men's basketball game attendance increased by 564 spectators when a game was broadcast on television, ceteris paribus, representing a 6.3% increase over the mean game attendance of 8892. These findings support practitioners broadcasting home men's basketball games on television, as television broadcasting was found to be significantly related to a substantial increase in game attendance in the population studied.

BEHAVIORAL MOMENTUM IN SPORTS: A PARTIAL REPLICATION WITH WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

Previous research has applied the behavioral momentum metaphor to men's college basketball. In the current investigation, the relative rate of reinforcement prior to and following adversities (e.g., turnovers, fouls) and periods of time-out were examined in a subset of women's college basketball games.

Why are some people more knowledgeable than others? A longitudinal study of knowledge acquisition.

The purpose of this study was to investigate correlates of knowledge acquisition within a real-world domain-basketball. The study employed a longitudinal design and involved two sessions, with approximately 2.5 months between sessions. Session 1 occurred near the beginning of the men's college basketball season, and Session 2 occurred after the season. There was an indirect effect of interest in basketball on new basketball knowledge, via exposure to domain-relevant information. In addition, prior basketball knowledge had a strong effect on new basketball knowledge distinct from an influence through basketball exposure. This finding suggests that prior knowledge may provide a framework into which new knowledge can be integrated. By contrast, there was no effect of fluid intelligence on new basketball knowledge. Although somewhat surprising given evidence that this aspect of intelligence may play a role in the acquisition of certain types of knowledge, this finding accords with the view that knowledge is a major determinant of various aspects of cognitive functioning, including learning.

Keeping the Game Close: "Fair Play" Among Men's College Basketball Referees

As a cross-cultural universal, sports are frequently examined by anthropologists in terms of how sporting behavior embodies and expresses the cultural logic of societal norms and expectations. In contemporary Western society, sports are often premised on cultural precepts of “fair play” expressed through gaming rules that ostensibly control factors that allow for the expression and comparison of competing skills. We examine the behavior of men’s college basketball referees as choreographers of staged fair play and suspense versus objective enforcers of rules. To this end, we test the hypothesis that when games are televised o n national television, referees in men’s Division I college basketball call a disproportionate number of fouls against teams that are ahead in the score of their respective games, resulting in more competitive games which maintain an edge of suspense for viewers. We suspect this to be true even though trailing teams typically exhibit more aggressive play to remain competitive or get back in the game. We observed the behavior of referees involved in a total of 2,441 foul call events in 67 randomly selecte d Division I college basketball games during the 2000 basketball season. Results demonstrate that college basketball referees cal l a significantly higher number of fouls against a team that is leading a game when the game is televised on national television. This pattern does not hold when games are televised regionally. We suspect that “fair play” behavior on the part of referees helps promote dramatic suspense to attract and maintain television viewers.

March Madness and the Office Pool

March brings March Madness, the annual conclusion to the U.S. men's college basketball season with two single elimination basketball tournaments showcasing the best college teams in the country. Almost as mad is the plethora of office pools across the country where the object is to pick a priori as many game winners as possible in the tournament. More generally, the object in an office pool is to maximize total pool points, where different points are awarded for different correct winning predictions. We consider the structure of single elimination tournaments, and show how to efficiently calculate the mean and the variance of the number of correctly predicted wins (or more generally the total points earned in an office pool) for a given slate of predicted winners. We apply these results to both random and Markov tournaments. We then show how to determine optimal office pool predictions that maximize the expected number of points earned in the pool. Considering various Markov probability models for predicting game winners based on regular season performance, professional sports rankings, and Las Vegas betting odds, we compare our predictions with what actually happened in past NCAA and NIT tournaments. These models perform similarly, achieving overall prediction accuracies of about 58%, but do not surpass the simple strategy of picking the seeds when the goal is to pick as many game winners as possible. For a more sophisticated point structure, however, our models do outperform the strategy of picking the seeds.

Trust in leadership and team performance: evidence from NCAA basketball.

This study empirically examined the relationship between trust, leadership, and team performance with 2 objectives. The 1st objective was to empirically examine an assumption found in several literatures--that a team's trust in its leader has a significant effect on the team's performance. The 2nd objective was to explore a more complex and dynamic relationship between trust and team performance whereby trust in leadership mediates the relationship between past team performance and future team performance. This relationship is derived by combining theories of trust with an attributional theory of leadership. Survey and archival data from a sample of men's college basketball teams provides support for both hypotheses, indicating that trust in leadership is both a product and a determinant of team performance.