Category: College Basketball

Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation will partner with six college basketball programs this season

Did your school make it on the list?

Vanessa Bryant, the late Kobe Bryant’s wife, announced that the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation will partner with six college basketball programs for the 2023-2024 season. The schools are all sponsored by Nike and include Duke, UConn, USC, LSU, Kentucky, and Oregon.

“We are grateful for the amazing support of these prestigious universities (in no particular order) towards the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation – to further the legacies of Kobe and Gigi! So excited to see their players wearing Kobe and Gigi’s NIKE shoes this upcoming season!!!,” Bryant shared on Instagram.

“The Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating positive impact for underserved athletes and boys & girls in sports. Founded through the vision and loving memory of Kobe and Gianna ”Gigi” Bryant,” according to the foundation’s website.
This means that prominent college basketball players like Paige Bueckers of UConn, Angel Reese from LSU, and USC’s Bronny James will be wearing the kicks on the court this season.

Bronny James could return to basketball ‘in the very near future’ after cardiac arrest scare

It sounds like Bronny James will probably be back on the basketball court very soon.

A very positive report came through on Friday night about USC basketball player Bronny James after he suffered a cardiac event while training in July.

The Athletic’s Shams Charania shared an update from a James family spokesperson that stated a congenital heart defect is the probable cause to Bronny James going into cardiac arrest and that he’s expected to make a full recovery.

The doctors who treated Bronny James, the son of NBA superstar LeBron James, say the heart issue can be treated and that the younger James will likely be able to return to the basketball court “in the very near future.”

After such a scary moment, this is about as positive an update as one can get.

It’s a relief to know that Bronny James is not only going to be okay, but that he’ll likely be able to return to the court to play for USC at some point this fall.

You can bet Bronny James’ return to basketball will be greatly anticipated by many after such a frightening moment in his young career.

REPORT: 2024 Battle 4 Atlantis field to include several marquee programs

The 2024 Battle 4 Atlantis field is set to be full of marquee programs.

According to CBS Sports college basketball insider Jon Rothstein, the 2024 Battle 4 Atlantis field has been set.

The field of eight will include Arizona, Gonzaga, Indiana, Louisville, Creighton, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Davidson. Neither the field nor the matchups have been officially announced, and Rothstein reports there is no official timetable for the announcement either.

It is also worth noting that this will be the field for the Battle 4 Atlantis that takes place during the 2024-2025 men’s college basketball season and not the 2023-2024 men’s college basketball season set to get underway this fall.

Instead, the 2023 Battle 4 Atlantis field will consist of North Carolina, Northern Iowa, Villanova, Texas Tech, Michigan, Memphis, Arkansas, and Stanford this upcoming November during the week of Thanksgiving.

Last season, the Tennessee Volunteers won the Battle 4 Atlantis for the first time in program history, defeating the Kansas Jayhawks 64-50, while Wisconsin finished third in the tournament.

Out of the eight programs expected to compete in next year’s tournament, none have won the Battle 4 Atlantis championship yet in its 11-year history. However, Gonzaga and Louisville have finished as runner-ups in prior trips to The Bahamas. Gonzaga was the runner-up in the 2019 tournament, losing to Michigan in the championship round, while Louisville finished as runner-up in 2012 and 2016 to Duke and Baylor, respectively.

The 2023 Battle 4 Atlantis will top off on Nov. 22, 2023, with a matchup between the Northern Iowa Panthers and the North Carolina Tar Heels.

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Bradley Beal ‘cussing’ out prospect Cooper Flagg during 1-on-1 sounds like it didn’t happen

Brian Scalabrine said that Bradley Beal was “really mad” at the 16-year-old forward.

NOTE: Bradley Beal shared a post on social media potentially calling Scalabrine’s story into question. Kelly Flagg, Cooper’s mother, said the story didn’t happen. 

Now that Victor Wembanyama is in the NBA, the best basketball prospect in the world is arguably 6-foot-8 forward Cooper Flagg.

The 16-year-old forward, who plays for Montverde Academy and has not yet committed to any plans for after high school, is widely considered one of the best defensive prospects in recent memory. As we wrote last year, Flagg has a name worth knowing if you follow hoops.

Flagg, who was named the 2022 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year, has previously trained with former NBA big man Brian Scalabrine. The big man has called Flagg a “generational” talent.

The prospect recently attended the inaugural Jayson Tatum’s Elite Camp in St. Louis. According to Scalabrine, the high schooler was matched up against three-time All-Star guard Bradley Beal.

Here is more from Scalabrine from Tuesday’s Starting Lineup show on NBA Radio (via Heavy.com):

“I heard a rumor that my boy Cooper Flagg was at Jayson Tatum’s camp and he was busting Brad Beal 1-on-1, and Brad Beal got mad at him. Started cussing him out,” Scalabrine said. “This dude is a major trash-talker. … So I guess the rumor is that Brad Beal and him were squaring off 1-on-1 and Brad Beal was taking it lightly. It’s a high school kid. Then Cooper started giving it to him. And I guess the rumor is, Cooper started talking trash and Bradley Beal got mad. Really mad.”

Of course, we have to consider the source of this rumor. Scalabrine may want to push an agenda that Flagg can compete with anyone on the planet, even an elite scorer like Beal.

WARNING: The following video contains language not suitable for work.

But watch any highlight of Flagg and you may start to believe that he is a fearless player who isn’t afraid of the biggest moments.

Flagg, who recently had his first unofficial visit to Duke, recently dominated at Nike EYBL Peach Jam in Augusta. Across seven games he averaged 25.4 points, 13.0 rebounds, 5.7 assists, 1.4 steals and 6.9 blocks.

He is likely a candidate to hear his name at No. 1 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft. Hopefully by the time he is a rookie, he and Beal have resolved their potential differences.

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Hunter Dickinson and the top-50 players who used the NCAA men’s basketball transfer portal

We have a handful of former five-star recruits in the portal.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the transfer portal in college sports.

Although roster continuity is one of the keys to success in March Madness, it’s also incredibly helpful for some programs to use the transfer portal to find ready-to-play contributors.

More than 1,600 men’s college basketball players used the transfer portal last season and some of the players who appeared on last year’s edition of this list (e.g. Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman) played impactful minutes in the NCAA men’s tournament. Several important players in the Final Four (like Miami’s Jordan Miller and Nijel Pack or UConn’s Tristen Newton) were transfers.

Below, we highlighted some of the most notable names in the transfer portal.

We used data from our good friends at Cerebro Sports — you can create a free account to evaluate player performance across all levels globally. Their C-RAM metric grades players on a scale from 0 to 10+ based on their overall performance.

This story references projected impact metrics provided by EvanMiya.com. BPR values are interpreted as the expected points per 100 possessions better than a D1 average player while on the floor.

We have also included projected impact metrics from BartTorvik.com, which you can view here and learn more about it here.

Additionally, NBA likelihood percentages are provided by Nick Kalinowski. You can learn more about the metric here.

You can see a full list of the available players if you click here and you can also check out our rankings for the women’s college basketball transfer portal as well.