Josh Thompson made Midnight Madness a real family affair.
The senior forward for Wagner College drew plenty of national attention
at last season’s opening practice when he dunked over his mother to win
a contest among his teammates.
It isn’t just the major powers who entertain their fans to open the
season. Quite of few of the nearly 350 Division I programs have some
sort of showy scrimmage and almost every one includes a dunking contest.
Wagner, which is expected to challenge for the Northeast Conference title this season, is no different.
To go that extra little bit that makes every dunking contest different,
Thompson jumped over his mother and father on Friday night at Wagner’s
”Madness before Midnight.”
”He didn’t know anything about it,” Thompson said of including the
other parent in his family flyover. ”He had his camera and I told him to
put it down. He said ‘Why can’t I take pictures?’ and I told he was
going to be with my mother and he gave me that smile and said ‘All
right.’ “
Asked why he didn’t tell them about being involved in the dunk,
Thompson said, ”They would have turned right around and headed home.”
Thomspon stood his parents, Josh and Diane, back to back at an angle in
the key. He took a couple of dribbles, then took off, clearing both
before he dunked, just grazing his father with his right leg.
”My dad was excited like a player. He was an athlete himself,” the
younger Thompson said. ”My mom had her eyes closed and she must have
asked my five times, ‘Did you do it? ‘Did you make it?’ I told her I
made it.”
Thompson, however, did not repeat as dunk champion at the Staten
Island, N.Y. school. Freshman guard Dwaun Anderson, a transfer from
Michigan State, didn’t have any family members in the lane. He just
soared.
”First of all, Dwaun is an incredible athlete and he is so exciting to
watch once he takes off on a dunk,” Thompson said. ”He did some kind of
360-degree windmill dunk and put the ball between his legs. Just say it
was some crazy dunk.”
Connecticut’s annual ”First Night” was the opening event in the career
of coach Kevin Ollie and he was welcomed with a video from Hall of Famer
Jim Calhoun, who retired as coach of the Huskies last month. Ollie’s
first season will be one with no Big East or NCAA tournament because of
academic reasons.
It wouldn’t have been ”Late Night with Roy” at North Carolina without
Roy Williams — and the Hall of Fame coach looked thrilled to be back
after his recent cancer scare. In his first public appearance on the
Smith Center sideline since the scare, Williams received three distinct,
extended standing ovations from the crowd. Williams watched his team’s
20-minute informal intrasquad scrimmage from the scorer’s table and then
came the usual fare of dance moves by players and a few assistant
coaches.
North Carolina State officials stopped the public scrimmage when the
grandfather of senior Scott Wood fell ill at courtside and was carried
away on a stretcher. Team spokesman Dwayne Harrison said Wood’s
grandfather was taken to a hospital for evaluation, but he was alert and
conscious. The scrimmage was part of the ”Primetime with the Pack”
event that included second-year coach Mark Gottfried entering by riding a
zip line down to the court from the second level of the PNC Arena.
Kentucky’s Big Blue Madness featured a group of Wildcat legends raising
the school’s eighth national championship banner to the Rupp Arena
rafters. A capacity crowd was introduced to the much-heralded freshmen
class that includes big men Nerlens Noel and Willie Cauley-Stein,
forward Alex Poythress and guard Archie Goodwin. Transfers Julius Mays
and Ryan Harrow also debuted.
Kansas had a little scare in ”Late Night in the Phog” when the lights
suddenly faded during the women’s team scrimmage. According to the
campus fire marshal, someone at the scorer’s table hit the wrong switch
instead of a buzzer. Then, amid the fog and drone of plastic
noisemakers, Kansas unveiled new Big 12 championship and Final Four
banners which makes 55 and 14, respectively. The Jayhawks bring in seven
freshmen and two redshirts in trying to follow last season’s run to the
national championship game.
Baylor’s
Deuce Bello earned perfect 10s from all four judges in the dunk contest
after jumping over 7-foot-1 freshman Isaiah Austin in the opening
round. Bello, a 6-4 sophomore, did a back flip when he was introduced
with his teammates at the start of the event.
Syracuse
coach Jim Boeheim entered the court for ”Orange Madness” in a U.S. army
vehicle and was joined by soldiers from Fort Drum military base.
Boeheim showed the crowd his gold medal from this past summer at the
London Olympics, where he served as an assistant coach for the U.S.
team, and thanked the soldiers for their service before the scrimmage
began. The final event of the night was a dunk contest that women’s team
freshman Brittney Sykes. The 5-foot-9 Sykes was last to go and the
McDonald’s All-America attempted to dunk multiple times, but she
struggled to get to the rim and fell short on each attempt.
At ncaa.com.
