Download or read book Vicarious Thrills written by Paul Bates and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging book chronicles the Carbondale Terriers’ 1993–94 season, a season in which the team progressed all the way to the state high school basketball championship game before ending the season with a one-point loss. Although arranged chronologically, the book is much more than a team diary. Paul E. Bates, whose son was one of the team’s starting guards, brings his sensitivity and expertise as an educational psychologist to bear on team sports in general and on how they define and are defined by the players and coaches that make up the teams and by the communities in which they thrive. Bates frames the team’s experience by sharing his own personal love of basketball, beginning with his childhood years in Decatur, Illinois, when Stephen Decatur High School was a perennial Illinois high school powerhouse. Through his exploration of the sport and his involvement and interest in it, Bates creates a book that serves both as a rousing tale of youthful achievement and as a history of high school basketball in the state of Illinois. Throughout his account, Bates repeatedly emphasizes his belief that extraordinary accomplishment is no accident but rather the result of years of preparation, dedication, and hard work. Most of the key performers on the 1993–94 Terriers, for example, had played together on a grade school all-star team that was undefeated. Then, in junior high, this group went on to win numerous championships, and in high school their remarkable success continued, even though their accomplishments were humbled by season-ending losses. But Vicarious Thrills leads the reader through a very personal account of both the ups and downs of championship basketball. Triumph does not occur without defeat, and it is through defeat that the team members, as well as their families and other supporters, learn many important lessons. As significant as the individual and team accomplishments are in making up this story, the 1993–94 basketball season is more importantly a beginning rather than the defining moment in the lives of these young men. As an inspiration and motivation to young people, and as a spark to memories of childhood aspirations for older readers, this book is a pleasure to read for individuals of all ages.

Download or read book My Losing Season written by Pat Conroy and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2003-08-26 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir about family, love, loss, basketball—and life itself—by the beloved author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini During one unforgettable season as a Citadel cadet, Pat Conroy becomes part of a basketball team that is ultimately destined to fail. And yet for a military kid who grew up on the move, the Bulldogs provide a sanctuary from the cold, abrasive father who dominates his life—and a crucible for becoming his own man. With all the drama and incandescence of his bestselling fiction, Conroy re-creates his pivotal senior year as captain of the Citadel Bulldogs. He chronicles the highs and lows of that fateful 1966–67 season, his tough disciplinarian coach, the joys of winning, and the hard-won lessons of losing. Most of all, he recounts how a group of boys came together as a team, playing a sport that would become a metaphor for a man whose spirit could never be defeated. Praise for My Losing Season “A superb accomplishment, maybe the finest book Pat Conroy has written.”—The Washington Post Book World “A wonderfully rich memoir that you don’t have to be a sports fan to love.”—Houston Chronicle “A memoir with all the Conroy trademarks . . . Here’s ample proof that losers always tell the best stories.”—Newsweek “In My Losing Season, Conroy opens his arms wide to embrace his difficult past and almost everyone in it.”—New York Daily News “Haunting, bittersweet and as compelling as his bestselling fiction.”—Boston Herald

Download or read book A Season Inside written by John Feinstein and published by Villard. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feinstein takes readers inside the locker rooms, the grueling practices, the late-night strategy sessions. They get a close-up look at recruiting, referees, injuries, winning, losing, and the private lives of the game's biggest stars.

Download or read book Jump Ball written by Mel Glenn and published by Dutton Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of a high school basketball team's season through a series of poems reflecting the feelings of students, their families, teachers, and coaches.

Download or read book Canyon Dreams written by Michael Powell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for the Netflix film Rez Ball—produced by Lebron James The moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team, its members struggling with the everyday challenges of high school, adolescence, and family, and the great and unique obstacles facing Native Americans living on reservations. Deep in the heart of northern Arizona, in a small and isolated patch of the vast 17.5-million-acre Navajo reservation, sits Chinle High School. Here, basketball is passion, passed from grandparent to parent to child. Rez Ball is a sport for winters where dark and cold descend fast and there is little else to do but roam mesa tops, work, and wonder what the future holds. The town has 4,500 residents and the high school arena seats 7,000. Fans drive thirty, fifty, even eighty miles to see the fast-paced and highly competitive matchups that are more than just games to players and fans. Celebrated Times journalist Michael Powell brings us a narrative of triumph and hardship, a moving story about a basketball team on a Navajo reservation that shows how important sports can be to youths in struggling communities, and the transcendent magic and painful realities that confront Native Americans living on reservations. This book details his season-long immersion in the team, town, and culture, in which there were exhilarating wins, crushing losses, and conversations on long bus rides across the desert about dreams of leaving home and the fear of the same.

Download or read book Greatest Basketball Season Ever 2016 written by Scott Casterson and published by Conceptual Kings. This book was released on 2016-05-04 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest NBA team ever 2016 is the Golden State Warriors, led by Stephen Curry. He led the team to their best regular season record ever in the history of NBA. Read more about how he did it along with the team who helped him along the way.

Download or read book The Road to Madness written by J. Samuel Walker and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The NCAA men's basketball tournament is one of the iconic events in American sports. In this fast-paced, in-depth account, J. Samuel Walker and Randy Roberts identify the 1973–74 season as pivotal in the making of this now legendary postseason tournament. In an era when only one team per conference could compete, the dramatic defeat of coach John Wooden's UCLA Bruins by the North Carolina State Wolfpack ended a decade of the Bruins' dominance, fueled unprecedented national attention, and prompted the NCAA to expand the tournament field to a wider range of teams. Walker and Roberts provide a richly detailed chronicle of the games that made the season so memorable and uncover the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that set the stage for the celebrated spectacle that now fixes the nation's attention every March.

Download or read book The Back Roads to March written by John Feinstein and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestselling author John Feinstein returns to his first love--college basketball--with a fascinating and compelling journey through a landscape of unsung, unpublicized and often unknown heroes of Division-1 college hoops. John Feinstein pulls back the curtain on college basketball's lesser-known Cinderella stories--the smaller programs who no one expects to win, who have no chance of attracting the most coveted high school recruits. To tell this story, Feinstein follows a handful of players, coaches, and schools who dream, not of winning the NCAA tournament, but of making it past their first or second round games. Every once in a while, one of these coaches or players is plucked from obscurity to lead a major team or to play professionally, cementing their status in these fiercely passionate fan bases as a legend. These are the gifted players who aren't handled with kid gloves--they're hardworking, gritty teammates who practice and party with everyone else. With his trademark humor and invaluable connections, John Feinstein reveals the big time programs you've never heard of, the bracket busters you didn't expect to cheer for, and the coaches who inspire them to take their teams to the next level.

Download or read book Echoes on the Hardwood written by Michael Coffey and published by Taylor Trade Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book written about the tradition of Irish hoops in over 15 years, ranks among the most comprehensive efforts on the subject ever undertaken.

Download or read book UCLA Basketball Encyclopedia written by Spencer Stueve and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete history of a century of UCLA Basketball! Over the course of one hundred years, UCLA has proven to be arguably the top college basketball program of all time, but the rise to the top was filled with many bumps in the road. In UCLA Basketball Encyclopedia, Spencer Stueve writes in detail about each season in the team’s epic history. While Coach John Wooden built a program that won more championships than any other in America, not all of UCLA’s basketball history is about winning titles. Prior to Coach Wooden’s arrival, UCLA was one of the worst programs in America, and since his departure, UCLA has been on a never-ending search for the man to bring them back to the top. Stueve leaves no stone unturned in this comprehensive volume, describing the many highs and lows the team has encountered along the way. Readers will learn about the life of Lewis Alcindor (who changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the dark days of Bill Walton and how he came back to life, and many other legendary players whose accomplishments have often been overshadowed, players like Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard. With a comprehensive all-time roster to accompany the text, this book is the perfect gift for any Bruins basketball fan!

Download or read book College Basketball Prospectus 2008 2009 written by Ken Pomeroy and published by Plume. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the winning tradition of the New York Timesbestselling Baseball Prospectus, the ultimate guide to college basketball. From the brand that brought sports fans the New York Timesbestselling Baseball Prospectuscomes an all-new, one-of-akind, authoritative guide to college basketball. Utilizing the same unique prediction model, College Basketball Prospectus 2008-2009applies objective knowledge, original hardhitting statistical analysis, and provocative writing to one of America’s most popular sports. Divided into three sections, the prospectus includes essays on various aspects of the college game and the past season, previews of all thirty-one Division-I conferences, and a statistical abstract with the same cutting-edge mathematical analysis that has yielded a winning record of accurate predictions for the Baseballand Pro Football Prospectusseries. For the 60 million Americans who are diehard college basketball fans, College Basketball Prospectus 2008-2009is a slam dunk.

Download or read book The Book of Basketball written by Bill Simmons and published by ESPN. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

Download or read book Undefeated written by Jim Noles and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A provocative, arresting, put-you-there account of a forgotten 1940s Army basketball team that we now realize shouldn’t be forgotten” (Lars Anderson, New York Times–bestselling author). In 1943, the West Point basketball team, the Cadets, had only managed a 5-10 record, and for the 1944 season, coach Ed Kelleher’s hopes of reversing Army’s fortunes rested on his five starters. They consisted of three seniors—team captain “Big Ed” Christl, John “Three Star” Hennessey, and class president Bobby Faas—and two juniors, Dale Hall and Doug Kenna. As the new season opened in January of 1944, Kelleher’s strategy paid handsome dividends. By the end of January, West Point was 6–0; by the end of February, the team boasted a 13-0 record. Of course, during those weeks, it only took a glance at the newspaper headlines to be reminded that there were far bigger contests than intercollegiate basketball afoot in the winter of 1944. The world was at war. The US Army needed its finest on the front line more than on the court, and the three seniors were soon destined for other battles . . . In the years that followed, the Army’s basketball team would never again have a chance to play in the NCAA tournament, and in the modern era, few remember West Point’s perfect 1944 season. Although West Point’s home basketball court is named the Edward C. Christl Arena, and the National Invitational Tournament’s trophy is named after his coach, Edward A. Kelleher, too few people fully appreciate why. But after reading Undefeated, they will. “Hoosiers meets Band of Brothers.” —Col. Scott Maytan

Download or read book Thinking Basketball written by Ben Taylor and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-29 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are top scorers really the most valuable players? Are games decided in the final few minutes? Does the team with the best player usually win?Thinking Basketball challenges a number of common beliefs about the game by taking a deep dive into the patterns and history of the NBA. Explore how certain myths arose while using our own cognition as a window into the game's popular narratives. New basketball concepts are introduced, such as power plays, portability and why the best player shouldn't always shoot. Discover how the box score can be misleading, why "closers" are overrated and how the outcome of a game fundamentally alters our memory. Behavioral economics, traffic paradoxes and other metaphors highlight this thought-provoking insight into the NBA and our own thinking. A must-read for any basketball fan -- you'll never view the sport, and maybe the world, the same again.

Download or read book Coaching Basketball For Dummies written by The National Alliance For Youth Sports and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So you’re thinking about volunteering to coach youth basketball? Great! You’re in for a fun, rewarding experience. Whether you’re new to the sport and looking for some guidance or you’re a seasoned coach hunting for some fresh tips, Coaching Basketball For Dummies will help you command the court with confidence. Each friendly chapter is packed with expert advice on teaching the basics of basketball—from dribbling and shooting to rebounding and defending—and guiding your kids to a fun-filled, stress-free season. You get a crash course in the rules and regulations of the game, as well as clear explanations of what all those lines, circles, and half-circle markings mean on the court. You’ll assign team positions, run great practices, and work with both beginning and intermediate players of different age groups. You’ll also see how to ramp up your players’ skills and lead your team effectively during a game. This book will also help you discover how to: Develop your coaching philosophy Understand your league’s rules Conduct a preseason parents’ meeting—crucial for opening the lines of communication Teach offensive and defensive strategies Keep your kids healthy and injury-free Encourage good sportsmanship Make critical half-time adjustments during a game Help struggling players Address discipline problems and handle difficult parents Coach an All-Star or Travel team Complete with numerous offensive and defensive drills and tips for helping your kids relax before a game, Coaching Basketball For Dummies is the fun and easy way to get the score on this worthwhile endeavor!

Download or read book Eagle Blue written by Michael D'Orso and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-13 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eagle Blue follows the Fort Yukon Eagles, winners of six regional championships in a row, through the course of an entire 28-game season, from their first day of practice in late November to the Alaska State Championship Tournament in March. With insight, frankness, and compassion, Michael D'Orso climbs into the lives of these fourteen boys, their families, and their coach, shadowing them through an Arctic winter of fifty-below-zero temperatures and near-round-the-clock darkness as the Eagles criss-cross Alaska in pursuit of their-and their village's-dream.

Download or read book Bigger Than Basketball written by Larry Hansgen and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dayton Flyers were 2020 outright A-10 Champs, were heading to Brooklyn as the number one seed in the A-10 Championship, and were projected to be a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament. But in less than a week it was all gone-the Flyers' post-season dreams a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic that soon held the entire world in its grip. In Bigger Than Basketball, Larry Hansgen, long-time radio play-by-play voice of the Flyers, tells the story of a group of young men and their coaches who survived adversity, overcame obstacles and tragedies, and ended up having the greatest season in Dayton Flyer history. Larry takes you through an unprecedented moment of history and sheds light on a unique and resilient team. The 2019-2020 Dayton Flyers ended up standing as a beacon of coming together and sacrificing for the greater good, at a time when the Dayton, Ohio community, and the nation at large, was reeling from loss.