New Hoopville Interview - NJIT Coach Casciano
NJIT has made the jump from Division II to Division I basketball. Adam interviews coach Jim Casciano about the ups and downs of the Highlanders’ first season playing with the big boys. Says Adam, “Coach Casciano seems to have the right attitude going into this venture. It’s all about patience and learning, and he’s been doing a nice job of keeping his kids’ heads up despite all the losing.” Read the Hoopville interview.
New Hoopville Interview: UMass Coach Travis Ford
Adam interviews newly appointed UMass head basketball coach Travis Ford. Check out this latest “Conversation with Adam” on Hoopville.com.
Interview: Adam Goes ‘Fox-Hunting’ at Marist
Check out Adam’s recent Hoopville interview with Matt Brady, new men’s basketball coach of the Marist College Red Foxes. Hoopville. Your hometown for college hoops.
Adam as Literati?
Well, not quite, but the scribe of Coaching Ira has begun reviewing basketball-related books and interviewing their authors. In the first installment of the Hoopville.com Public Library, Adam covers Asphalt Gods, An Oral History of the Rucker Tournament, by New York Times sports editor Vincent Mallozzi. If you know of a basketball book that Adam should review, contact him and provide as many details as possible.
Leaving Scottsdale
So it’s the end of the trip and my wife Michelle and I are disembarking from our plane in Newark. We were welcomed back to the area by 34 degrees, snow, slush and freezing rain — the very snow, slush and freezing rain that delayed our flight by 45 minutes. Why we didn’t take that as a sign and head back to Scottsdale, I’ll never know, but cranial tests are being conducted as we speak.
I turned to my lovely female and said, “Honey, just this morning we were shielding our eyes from the sun during brunch on the patio. Then we walked amidst the palm trees and the co-eds at Arizona State with their year-round tans and flip-flops.” At that moment I was wrestling my North Face jacket out of my suitcase like it was a floatation device so necessary for my survival. “And now we return to the Winter that Wouldn’t End.”
If you sense a Northeast weather resentment in this piece, you can at least consider yourself warned.
Not only is Andrew Flynn the designer of this site and the founder and managing editor of Hoopville.com, he is also a good friend. The latter was enough to shoot 2500 miles to see him exchange vows with the charming and wonderful Marcia Bosio. The Desert Botanical Garden is a pretty remarkable place even without a wedding and I urge you to stop by next time you’re in the Phoenix area.
I searched desperately for indigenous creatures of the area, as well as a dictionary so that I could spell indigenous, but came up nil on both counts. I was later informed, by a rather unreliable source, that the scorpions, rattlesnakes and buzzards were actually displaced to clear out land for the flora and fauna. Forced retirment, you might say. I can just picture a scorpion and a buzzard sitting down for a game of canasta while waiting for their 4 o’clock feedings.
The wedding was a heck of a time — the ceremony under sunset at the gardens, the party indoors after dark. We swung to the hep sounds of The Swingtips. The highlight of the night (or lowlight as the case may be) was me attempting to slide across the dance floor, then realzing abruptly that the dance floor was too dry for sliding. I still have scuff marks on my thighs.
The following morning I brought my presentation (and my limp) with me to Beth El Congregation in Phoenix. First, the congregants and I brunched, because you can’t present on an empty stomach. Bagels, lox, tuna — I was almost homesick. I then presented the warm and friendly Beth Ellers with a presenation on Jews in Sports Culture, which mutated into a talk about kosher slaughterhouses in Iowa that could have gone on for hours. How we got off course, I still don’t know, but it just so happens that sports and slaughterhouses are two of my areas of expertise. (Read the book on Postville, Iowa or The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and you too can be a butchery aficiando!)
Fortunately, Beth El executive director David Brook transitioned us smoothly to a book signing. Regardless, I greatly enjoy talks like this, where the congregants feel comfortable enough to dive right into the conversation. And dive they did!
Special thanks once again to David Brook for his kind invitation.
My next talk/book event will take place on May 4th at Congregation B’nai Israel in Rumson, NJ. I am greatly looking forward to this event as it honors the past five seasons of Rumson USY/Kadima basketball teams. USY basketball is the very program that inspired Coaching Ira, so I’ll be talking to my target audience. Former Duke champion and NBA guard Bobby Hurley, Jr will also be on hand. I can’t wait to tell him that I used to harass his dad (St. Anthony’s High School coach Bobby Hurley, Sr.) by asking him tons of innane questions while I was a reporter at WGHT-AM.
I hear Bobby Jr.’s already asking to be seated at the other side of the dais.
It’s Basketball Season Again!
Adam is mouthing off again . . . about college basketball! Adam is back, this time as a hoity-toity regional editor and columnist for Hoopville.com. “The ‘Ville,” a one-stop shop for all things college basketball, is new and improved, packed with a full roster of new writers and teeming with thorough anaylsis and commentary for all 31 Division I conferences. More women’s hoops coverage, too! Hoopville — your hometown for college hoops.