Tubby Smith dodging sophomore slump

After a respectable 20-14 inaugural season at Minnesota last academic year, former Kentucky coach Tubby Smith’s Golden Gophers are off to an impressive 16-3 start and look to be on their way to the NCAA tournament.

Smith, along with second-year Michigan coach John Beilein and Iowa second-year man Todd Lickliter, follows a trend of vast improvement among Big Ten coaches in their second seasons.

In their collective first seasons, those Big Ten coaches compiled a record of 110-105; in their second seasons, they went a combined 149-76.

With all three current second-year coaches safely above .500, the numbers will likely increase at season’s end, and at least one conference coach believes Tom Crean will also continue the trend next season.

“He’s got guys who appear to be buying into what he’s doing,” Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. “And from his days at Marquette, it works.”

Still looking for sparks
Trying anything to break the streak, Crean has switched up his lineup of late to give some players a little more time on the court and some players a little bit less.

Freshman walk-on Broderick Lewis has recently seen some of those extra on-court minutes. Lewis, who didn’t play at all in eight of the first 14 games, has had his minutes gradually increase in the past three, up to a season high of 16 against Penn State.

Conversely, freshman fan-favorite Matt Roth has started to lose some time on the court. Roth went from playing over 30 minutes against Iowa and Michigan to less than 10 the past two games.

Also losing time has been freshman Malik Story, who played a season-low three minutes against the Nittany Lions.

“I think today proved it. We have got to continue to look at any point in time for somebody that can give us a spark,” Crean said after the Illinois game, “for somebody that can give us momentum.”

AD will hold office hours
Weeks before officially taking over as athletics director, Fred Glass began brainstorming how he could be successful. One of the first things he said he thought of was to be more accessible to the student body. Taking a page out of any professor’s playbook, he will hold office hours.

“Having office hours was my idea because one of the things I wanted to do was create a sense of accessibility and give students true accessibility,” Glass said. “Thinking back to my days on campus, faculty had office hours.”

Glass took his idea to various student-run organizations. His original plan was to hold them literally at his office at Assembly Hall, but Glass said his student advisors collectively told him it would be better to be closer to central campus.

Glass plans to meet again with the same group of students Friday to set a specific time and place for his office hours, but said the plan will be flexible and subject to change as it goes along.

“I want to do what the kids want to do,” he said.