BASKETBALL

Betsy Harris is shuffling the deck this season.

Entering her second season as the head women's basketball coach at Florida Southern, Harris will have to replace six players from last season's team that finished sixth in the Sunshine State Conference.
She'll do so with a seven-player recruiting class, highlighted by a pair of NCAA Division I transfers from the University of North Florida.
Flo Ward and Bailey Florin will come south from Jacksonville to join the Mocs this upcoming season.
Both juniors, the duo both played limited minutes for the Ospreys over the past two seasons and should see time in the backcourt at Florida Southern.
"Bailey and Flo, they both happen to be best friends," Harris said. "They can shoot it, they can handle it. They're smart on the court and off the court. I think they're both good additions to the team."
They'll be joined by a trio of guards in East Ridge's Katie Roche, Sarasota High's Camille Giardina and Samantha Famulare, a 5-foot-9 shooter from New Jersey. Harris also signed a pair of frontcourt players in Melbourne High's Abby Booth and Austrian forward Anja Fuchs-Robetin.
Both Ward and Fuchs-Robetin were born overseas. Ward played with England's National Under-18 and Under-16 teams in the European Championships, while Fuchs-Robetin played with Austria's Under-20 European Championships team from 2011-13.
"We wanted to sign some transfers and high school kids," Harris said. "We knew if we didn't have some kind of transfers coming in we were going to struggle a little bit."

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Scotlandville standout goes from state champion to FIBA Americas tournament winner


Has everything Scotlandville High’s Ja’Vonte Smart touched in the last three months turned to gold?

It sure seems like it. Now the soon-to-be sophomore point guard has the real thing.

Smart brought home a gold medal this week after helping USA Basketball’s under-16 team win the FIBA Americas title in Argentina.

“I like playing fast, so that wasn’t a problem. The (USA) coaches liked playing fast, too,” Smart explained. “I got to know my teammates pretty quick. We got better and better the more we played together. In the finals, at first we were playing bad. But we picked it up.”

There were no victory celebrations for the 6-foot-4, 185-pound Smart when he returned home. Just more trips to the gym. Smart played for the Hornets’ summer league team in a Thursday night game.

“We’re all proud of him for what he’s accomplished,” Scotlandville coach Carlos Sample said. “He’s handled everything so well. He’s such a humble kid who’s always encouraging his teammates.

“He’s a special talent … one of those guys who come along not very often.”

Smart averaged 15.8 points, 5.8 rebounds and a 5.2 assists per game to help the Hornets to their third Class 5A state title in four seasons.

After making a 3-pointer with five seconds left that lifted Scotlandville to a 62-60 win over C.E. Byrd in the semifinals, Smart was voted the Outstanding Player after scoring 18 points when the Hornets beat Natchitoches Central 42-34 in the title game.

Frosh Game Over? Hardly. Playing for USA Basketball’s under-16 squad put Smart on a new level.

“I just played hard. I didn’t know I was going to make the team,” Smart recalled. “I kept fighting through. We had a long practice every day. I just had to keep playing hard.”

Smart spent a couple of weeks, including his 16th birthday, in training camp with the USA squad in Colorado Springs.

“When he’s out of town, I have to call him,” Smart’s mother, Melinda, said. “He’ll call his brother or Facetime his sister. His birthday was June 3, and I called him on Facetime and sang ‘Happy Birthday’. The whole time he was looking at me like ‘I’m ready to get off the phone.’ But really he doesn’t like to talk that much. That’s just J.”

Melinda Smart wasn’t worried about her son going outside the country for the first time. Along the way, she found a family connection. Her distant cousin, former McKinley and Indiana standout Keith Smart, now an assistant coach for the Miami Heat, played for a USA Basketball squad in 1987.

Using translators to navigate an area in which few people spoke fluent English was the toughest adjustment in Argentina. Smart and his teammates were impressed by the fact that they stayed in a hotel owned by San Antonio Spurs star Manu Ginobili.

The one thing that did translate was Team USA’s game. Smart started all but one game as the 16-under squad won five straight games en route to the title.

Smart play his best offensive game in a 119-76 semifinal win over host Argentina, scoring 11 points, including three 3-pointers. He had four assists in a 115-51 win over the Dominican Republic. He made just one shot in the title game, but it helped start a rally that led to a 77-60 victory over Canada.

“There are a lot of people out there who really want to be great,” Smart said. “So you can never quit working hard. That’s the biggest thing I learned from this.”

Smart leaves Monday to begin workouts with his AAU team, Elfrid Payton Elite, in Atlanta. There are camps and tournaments on Smart’s agenda.

The rave reviews about Smart’s game on the court continue to come.

“Randy Livingston was a great freshman, and so was Howard Carter,” said Live Oak coach Gary Duhe, who coached Carter at Redemptorist. “I think it’s fair to say he’s the best freshman we’ve had the last 20 years. It’s not just his talent. It’s how he handles himself on and off the court.”

Baylor, Wake Forest and UMass have already reportedly offered Smart scholarships. Kentucky, LSU, Texas, North Carolina, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Mississippi State and Oklahoma are among those already expressing interest. And the recruiting process is just getting started.

Smart has a sibling, sophomore-to-be Davyon, who looks to join the Scotlandville varsity. Melinda Smart has an agenda that has nothing to do with basketball.

“He has a 3.4 (grade point average) right now, and I’m kind of mad,” Melinda Smart said of Ja’Vonte. “It should be higher. He’s in the engineering magnet program, and he takes all honors classes.

“I’ve told him he has to pick that 3.4 up. I’ve told him you can’t be a star on the court and not be one in the classroom.”

So is the sky the limit for Ja’Vonte Smart? Likely in more ways than one.

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Great Britain basketball player Azania Stewart breaks down in tears as she talks about the future for her sport.

Stewart believes the women's game will become virtually "extinct" in the United Kingdom if GB do not finish in the top six at the European Championships in Hungary next month.

In an interview with BBC reporter Chris Mitchell, the 26-year-old Londoner says it's "do or die" as GB attempt to get the result that will secure the funding necessary to continue.

GB's 2015 EuroBasket campaign will be broadcast live on the BBC Sport website and Red Button service.

They play four group games against Russia, Latvia, Serbia and Croatia, with the winners of the tournament certain of a place at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
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North Carolina is expected to be a prime contender for the 2016 men’s basketball national championship. Some outlets have the Tar Heels ranked No. 1 in their early Top 25s.

But after the school received a Notice of Allegations from the NCAA on Friday, the question becomes this:

Will the Heels even get a postseason chance to show how good they are?

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Marcus Paige and North Carolina are expected to be national title contenders. (Getty)

Marcus Paige and North Carolina are expected to be national title contenders. (Getty)
The speed (or lack thereof) with which the wheels of NCAA justice turn could have a profound impact on North Carolina’s 2015-16 season – and, by extension, on the college basketball season as a whole. If a postseason ban is a possible penalty in the school’s sprawling academic fraud case, when could it be delivered and administered? In time for next season or not?

As with most things NCAA-related, the answer is complicated. But if North Carolina goes through a full extension of the process, the NCAA and school will be on a tight deadline to resolve this early enough in 2016 to affect the Tar Heels’ postseason.

Unless the school self-imposes its own ban first. And wouldn’t that be something in a potential championship season?

For now, though, that’s all conjecture. Here’s what you need to know about the basic NCAA infractions case timetable:

North Carolina received its Notice of Allegations on May 22. That starts the clock. Generally speaking, a Committee on Infractions hearing would occur six months from now, which would be sometime in November. Then it’s a matter of time (approximately 60-90 days) before the COI produces a ruling and applies any penalties.

That would be February 2016 at the latest – still in time to rule UNC either in or out of next year’s tournament. But there are other factors to consider as we get more specific with the timetable.

As of this writing, we still don’t know what that notice contains, but the fact that enforcement wrapped up its investigation in less than a year from its announced resumption in June 2014 is at least a little bit surprising given the scope of what the UNC-commissioned Wainstein Report detailed last fall. The report documented thousands of athletes taking bogus classes over a period of 18 years. But we don’t know yet to what extent the report has been applied to the NCAA’s inquiry.

North Carolina has 90 days per NCAA bylaws to file its response to the Notice of Allegations. That puts the due date on that document at Aug. 22, though it could file sooner or ask for an extension.

From there the ball goes back into NCAA enforcement court. It has 60 days, per the NCAA rules manual, to produce an advocacy reply – basically a response to the school’s response to the Notice of Allegations – and a summary of the agreed-upon facts in the case. If the earlier timetable still holds, those documents would be due on Oct. 22.

Then it is time to put the case on the Committee on Infractions hearing docket. There are more COI hearings now than they’re used to be, which helps speed up the process, but there still has to be some advance notice for all parties involved.

And the holidays tend to complicate the process in November and December. If Carolina stays off the hearing docket until January, that may clear the Heels’ path to play in the 2016 NCAA tourney.

After the hearing, a Committee on Infractions ruling generally is handed down within 60-90 days. Selection Sunday 2016 is March 13. So the date of that COI hearing – late 2015 vs. early 2016 – could be very important.

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There is much at stake for North Carolina coach Roy Williams. (AP)

There is much at stake for North Carolina coach Roy Williams. (AP)
The most recent major-infactions, big-program case to work through the NCAA pipeline was Syracuse basketball. The Orange went before the COI at the end of October 2014. The penalties were handed down in early March 2015. That case was similarly broad in scope.

But as we all know, no two NCAA cases are the same. And there are other factors to consider.

What about all the heavy lifting done by the Wainstein Report and previous school-initiated inquiries? Maybe there isn’t as much left for both sides to dissect in the coming months, because it’s already been dissected.

“Given the substantial amount of investigating that’s already gone on, you might be able to move up a hearing to sometime around Thanksgiving,” said Atlanta-based attorney Stu Brown, who has provided counsel in many NCAA infractions cases. “But that would be an unusually quick resolution for a case of this size.”

And what if North Carolina plays a little stall ball? This is the school that invented the Four Corners, after all. Any delay tactics – including an appeal of the COI ruling – could be used to the advantage of a program intent on playing in next year’s tournament.

Or this could simply be too big, broad and punitive for UNC not to be as painstaking as possible.

“If it’s an issue of concern for the university, this could be a case where the school legitimately takes longer to reply than usual,” Brown said.

Wrapping this whole thing up before March 13, 2016, may take a rush job. And if there is one case that probably should not be rushed in terms of thoroughness and fairness, this would be it. The NCAA already has endured heavy criticism for its initial stance several years ago that the UNC academic scandal did not fit its rule book and thus was not being investigated. Once the full scope of the scandal was known last fall, the outcry for NCAA action regarding one of the Ivory Tower programs in college sports intensified.

So there is a lot at stake. For blueblood North Carolina basketball, for Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams, for a team that may be talented enough to win the school’s first national title since 2009, for the other teams aspiring to win a title – and for the NCAA itself.

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