YTD 27-20-2 + $970
Canisus vs. St. Johns -7.5 O/U 148.5
Play UNDER 148.5 for 2000
Neutral court playing at MSG
Both teams missing a key player
Dont know if this is old news but thought I would post it.
St.Johns is a 7.5 fav over Canisus tonite 8:45 EST
St. John's suspends Epperson indefinitely
Dec. 27, 2004
SportsLine.com wire reports
NEW YORK -- St. John's forward Rodney Epperson was suspended indefinitely Monday pending a review of his transfer from a junior college during the 2002-03 school year.
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The review was prompted by correspondence from the Big East Conference to its member institutions regarding recent allegations related to Barton County Community College in Kansas.
Epperson spent one year at Midland Junior College in Texas before transferring to Barton County, which was ranked among the best in junior college basketball last season.
On Dec. 14, former Barton County basketball coach Ryan Wolf was indicted on federal charges he provided false academic information about his athletes to Division I schools looking to recruit players.
The indictment also charged Wolf with getting his players grants they were not qualified to receive and campus jobs that paid them for work they did not perform.
Wolf's former players included Ricky Clemons, who went on to star for Missouri but became embroiled in scandal while with the Tigers.
Epperson is St. John's second-leading scorer this season, averaging 14.1 points per game.
The Red Storm (4-4) will be without Epperson for Tuesday night's game against Canisius in the opening round of the Dreyfus Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden.
Epperson's suspension continues a stretch of problems for the St. John's program.
Last season, one player was kicked out of school, one withdrew and four others were suspended from the team after breaking curfew to go to a strip club after a loss at Pittsburgh in January. Senior captain Andre Stanley, a graduate student, was suspended for academic reasons.
Last December, senior guard Willie Shaw was dismissed from the team after he was arrested for possession of marijuana with former Red Storm star Marcus Hatten. Later that month, Mike Jarvis became the first coach in Big East history to be fired during a season.
Norm Roberts was hired as coach in April and took over a team with only three scholarship players returning.
Sad story about Canisus player
Richard Jones' bedroom in his mother's little Charlestown, Mass., home is largely undisturbed, left the way it would've been waiting for him this week.
Every few days, Delta Grant dusts her son's basketball trophies on the window sill, runs her fingers over his prom king crown, and gently kisses his picture on the bureau. Her boy was supposed to come home with his basketball team today. Richard Jones was coming home for Christmas.
This was his game for Canisius College against Boston University on Thursday, the homecoming that the team captain's coach had promised when Mike MacDonald recruited Jones to Buffalo, N.Y. four years ago.
"He wouldn't stop talking about this game," she said softly on the phone. "He was so thrilled that everyone back home could come see him play here."
"I always thought I would be flying up here for his graduation," she told MacDonald, when he had come to pick her up at the Buffalo airport this past May 7. "I never thought I'd be coming to bring him home for his funeral."
MacDonald had recruited the 6-foot-6 star of the Charlestown High School state champions, the best player on a team that won 57 of his final 58 high school basketball games. Jones started as a homesick kid struggling with basketball and books as a freshman. He transformed himself into a two-year starter and a Digital Media Arts major on course to graduate a semester early in December.
He was one of those kids who went to college, and found a whole world opening up for him. That basketball scholarship opened up a whole world beyond the gymnasium for Jones.
"One day, we're sitting down talking about whether he was going to pursue a double major or a graduate degree in his last semester, and the next, you're sitting in the coroner's office," MacDonald said. "You never come into this job thinking about something like this. They don't prepare you for this."
MacDonald had been conducting his sanctioned off-season workouts in the Koessler Athletic Center on May 5. Jones had just been flying through the air, dunking the ball. He had been laughing with his teammates. Richard Jones had been himself. And suddenly, he was making a move across the lane and he dropped.
Across the floor, MacDonald turned to see him face first on the court. For a moment, the coach thought Jones had tripped on a stray ball and was feigning embarrassment.
"I thought he would jump up, and do a dance move," MacDonald said. "I thought he would turn it into a funny moment, because that was him."
Only, the laughing had stopped with Jones. One of his teammates, Darnell Wilson, reached to Jones' side, asking, "You OK, Rich?" Wilson turned Jones over and everyone could see he had gone into convulsions. The coach rushed over, trying to keep him from swallowing his tongue. MacDonald yelled for one of the kids, Mike Hanley, to get a trainer, but Hanley stood there for a split second, frozen, unable to compute the words.
"GET THE TRAINER!" MacDonald screamed.
Both the trainer, Andy Smith, and his assistant were downstairs, conducting a seminar for student trainers. They hustled upstairs to find MacDonald cradling Jones' head, trying to keep it from banging on the floor. He was gasping air. The gym was so silent, except for that kid fighting for breaths. The trainers tried everything to save him before the ambulance arrived, but it was his heart. It had given out. It wouldn't be long until MacDonald was making the longest walk of his life, down the flight of stairs into the Canisius locker room, where the Canisius players would gather to hear MacDonald break them the news.
The autopsy found that Jones had an enlarged heart. It was so ironic: About a week earlier, MacDonald was watching Jones work one-on-one with kids at the Special Olympics, and thinking what he always thought of Richard Jones. The kid had a big heart.
Canisius is a close-knit Jesuit school in downtown Buffalo, and word spread quickly. So did the grief. One of the baseball players, traveling with the team for a game at the University of Buffalo that afternoon, learned of Jones' death when instant messaged on his cell phone. The team climbed off the bus, and in full uniform, marched over to the chapel and conducted an impromptu service. Over 1,000 people packed the gym that Saturday night for a memorial service. MacDonald's eulogy moved the room to tears, perhaps the finest hour any college coach, anywhere, had in 2004.
Before Jones' death, MacDonald's wife, Maura, had commissioned her husband's player to draw him portraits of the couple's three boys for a Father's Day gift. He had asked for the MacDonalds' Christmas card photo to get the kids features just right. When Mike MacDonald was cleaning out Richard's dormitory room with Delta, they found a finished portrait of Patrick MacDonald, and a nearly completed drawing of Nicholas. He wanted to break down and cry right there, but tried to stay strong for the boy's mother. She gave MacDonald the pictures to bring home, and they're hanging in his kid's playroom.
MacDonald never considered calling Boston University's coach Dennis Wolff to push the game back a season, because Richard Jones still had a stall in the Canisius locker room and he was still such a part of this team.
"It will be emotional, but we want to play there," Canisius senior DeWitt Doss said.
Canisus vs. St. Johns -7.5 O/U 148.5
Play UNDER 148.5 for 2000
Neutral court playing at MSG
Both teams missing a key player
Dont know if this is old news but thought I would post it.
St.Johns is a 7.5 fav over Canisus tonite 8:45 EST
St. John's suspends Epperson indefinitely
Dec. 27, 2004
SportsLine.com wire reports
NEW YORK -- St. John's forward Rodney Epperson was suspended indefinitely Monday pending a review of his transfer from a junior college during the 2002-03 school year.
Advertisement
The review was prompted by correspondence from the Big East Conference to its member institutions regarding recent allegations related to Barton County Community College in Kansas.
Epperson spent one year at Midland Junior College in Texas before transferring to Barton County, which was ranked among the best in junior college basketball last season.
On Dec. 14, former Barton County basketball coach Ryan Wolf was indicted on federal charges he provided false academic information about his athletes to Division I schools looking to recruit players.
The indictment also charged Wolf with getting his players grants they were not qualified to receive and campus jobs that paid them for work they did not perform.
Wolf's former players included Ricky Clemons, who went on to star for Missouri but became embroiled in scandal while with the Tigers.
Epperson is St. John's second-leading scorer this season, averaging 14.1 points per game.
The Red Storm (4-4) will be without Epperson for Tuesday night's game against Canisius in the opening round of the Dreyfus Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden.
Epperson's suspension continues a stretch of problems for the St. John's program.
Last season, one player was kicked out of school, one withdrew and four others were suspended from the team after breaking curfew to go to a strip club after a loss at Pittsburgh in January. Senior captain Andre Stanley, a graduate student, was suspended for academic reasons.
Last December, senior guard Willie Shaw was dismissed from the team after he was arrested for possession of marijuana with former Red Storm star Marcus Hatten. Later that month, Mike Jarvis became the first coach in Big East history to be fired during a season.
Norm Roberts was hired as coach in April and took over a team with only three scholarship players returning.
Sad story about Canisus player
Richard Jones' bedroom in his mother's little Charlestown, Mass., home is largely undisturbed, left the way it would've been waiting for him this week.
Every few days, Delta Grant dusts her son's basketball trophies on the window sill, runs her fingers over his prom king crown, and gently kisses his picture on the bureau. Her boy was supposed to come home with his basketball team today. Richard Jones was coming home for Christmas.
This was his game for Canisius College against Boston University on Thursday, the homecoming that the team captain's coach had promised when Mike MacDonald recruited Jones to Buffalo, N.Y. four years ago.
"He wouldn't stop talking about this game," she said softly on the phone. "He was so thrilled that everyone back home could come see him play here."
"I always thought I would be flying up here for his graduation," she told MacDonald, when he had come to pick her up at the Buffalo airport this past May 7. "I never thought I'd be coming to bring him home for his funeral."
MacDonald had recruited the 6-foot-6 star of the Charlestown High School state champions, the best player on a team that won 57 of his final 58 high school basketball games. Jones started as a homesick kid struggling with basketball and books as a freshman. He transformed himself into a two-year starter and a Digital Media Arts major on course to graduate a semester early in December.
He was one of those kids who went to college, and found a whole world opening up for him. That basketball scholarship opened up a whole world beyond the gymnasium for Jones.
"One day, we're sitting down talking about whether he was going to pursue a double major or a graduate degree in his last semester, and the next, you're sitting in the coroner's office," MacDonald said. "You never come into this job thinking about something like this. They don't prepare you for this."
MacDonald had been conducting his sanctioned off-season workouts in the Koessler Athletic Center on May 5. Jones had just been flying through the air, dunking the ball. He had been laughing with his teammates. Richard Jones had been himself. And suddenly, he was making a move across the lane and he dropped.
Across the floor, MacDonald turned to see him face first on the court. For a moment, the coach thought Jones had tripped on a stray ball and was feigning embarrassment.
"I thought he would jump up, and do a dance move," MacDonald said. "I thought he would turn it into a funny moment, because that was him."
Only, the laughing had stopped with Jones. One of his teammates, Darnell Wilson, reached to Jones' side, asking, "You OK, Rich?" Wilson turned Jones over and everyone could see he had gone into convulsions. The coach rushed over, trying to keep him from swallowing his tongue. MacDonald yelled for one of the kids, Mike Hanley, to get a trainer, but Hanley stood there for a split second, frozen, unable to compute the words.
"GET THE TRAINER!" MacDonald screamed.
Both the trainer, Andy Smith, and his assistant were downstairs, conducting a seminar for student trainers. They hustled upstairs to find MacDonald cradling Jones' head, trying to keep it from banging on the floor. He was gasping air. The gym was so silent, except for that kid fighting for breaths. The trainers tried everything to save him before the ambulance arrived, but it was his heart. It had given out. It wouldn't be long until MacDonald was making the longest walk of his life, down the flight of stairs into the Canisius locker room, where the Canisius players would gather to hear MacDonald break them the news.
The autopsy found that Jones had an enlarged heart. It was so ironic: About a week earlier, MacDonald was watching Jones work one-on-one with kids at the Special Olympics, and thinking what he always thought of Richard Jones. The kid had a big heart.
Canisius is a close-knit Jesuit school in downtown Buffalo, and word spread quickly. So did the grief. One of the baseball players, traveling with the team for a game at the University of Buffalo that afternoon, learned of Jones' death when instant messaged on his cell phone. The team climbed off the bus, and in full uniform, marched over to the chapel and conducted an impromptu service. Over 1,000 people packed the gym that Saturday night for a memorial service. MacDonald's eulogy moved the room to tears, perhaps the finest hour any college coach, anywhere, had in 2004.
Before Jones' death, MacDonald's wife, Maura, had commissioned her husband's player to draw him portraits of the couple's three boys for a Father's Day gift. He had asked for the MacDonalds' Christmas card photo to get the kids features just right. When Mike MacDonald was cleaning out Richard's dormitory room with Delta, they found a finished portrait of Patrick MacDonald, and a nearly completed drawing of Nicholas. He wanted to break down and cry right there, but tried to stay strong for the boy's mother. She gave MacDonald the pictures to bring home, and they're hanging in his kid's playroom.
MacDonald never considered calling Boston University's coach Dennis Wolff to push the game back a season, because Richard Jones still had a stall in the Canisius locker room and he was still such a part of this team.
"It will be emotional, but we want to play there," Canisius senior DeWitt Doss said.