Zach Edey Archives - Boardroom https://boardroom.tv/tag/zach-edey/ Sports Business News Wed, 10 Apr 2024 17:33:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 UConn Secures Second Consecutive NCAA Title https://boardroom.tv/headline-to-go/04-09-2024-uconn-purdue-ncaa-tournament-march-madness/ Tue, 09 Apr 2024 12:45:00 +0000 https://boardroom.tv/?post_type=headline-to-go&p=89401 The post UConn Secures Second Consecutive NCAA Title appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> The post UConn Secures Second Consecutive NCAA Title appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> Dak Prescott, Steve Kerr, Jason Kelce & More Invest in IMG Academy https://boardroom.tv/img-academy-patricof-investment/ Thu, 30 Nov 2023 16:11:42 +0000 https://boardroom.tv/?p=84284 Patricof Co announced an investment in IMG Academy alongside more than 50 of its clients. Private investment platform Patricof Co announced an investment this week in IMG Academy with more than 50 top clients

The post Dak Prescott, Steve Kerr, Jason Kelce & More Invest in IMG Academy appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> Patricof Co announced an investment in IMG Academy alongside more than 50 of its clients.

Private investment platform Patricof Co announced an investment this week in IMG Academy with more than 50 top clients participating in the deal, including Dak Prescott, Justin Jefferson, Steve Kerr, CC Sabathia, Michelle Wie West, and Jason Kelce.

The elite Florida prep school boasts top programs in football, baseball, basketball, tennis, soccer, golf, lacrosse, hockey, and more. Its vast list of notable alumni includes Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, Maria Sharapova, Grant Delpit, Zach Edey, Armando Bacot, Landon Donovan, and Jozy Altidore.

“This isn’t your average investment and IMG Academy isn’t your average prep school,” Prescott said. “What stood out to me, and ultimately why I wanted to invest here with Patricof Co, is the vision that IMG Academy has for its students. From an education and athletic standpoint, the resources they offer are second to none.”

Sign up for our newsletter

Get on our list for weekly sports business, industry trends, interviews, and more.

Endeavor agreed to sell IMG Academy to private equity group BPEA EQT for $1.25 billion in April, a deal completed in June.

“We could not be prouder to invest in IMG Academy,” Mark Patricof, Patricof Co founder and CEO, said. “What this institution has achieved in nearly four decades is a true academic and athletic success story. At a time when the sports education industry is facing new frontiers, IMG Academy has not only made the right decisions at the right times, but along the way has also ensured that its students, both on-campus and online, have access to best-in-class educational, life skills, and athletic resources, including teachers, coaches, facilities, and more.”

Read More:

The post Dak Prescott, Steve Kerr, Jason Kelce & More Invest in IMG Academy appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> Loading The Football Fan’s Guide to the 2022-23 College Basketball Season https://boardroom.tv/2022-23-college-basketball-football-season-guide/ Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:39:15 +0000 https://boardroom.tv/?p=55887 Did tailgating and midweek MACtion occupy too much time for you this fall? Boardroom catches you up on the 2022-23 college basketball season.

The post The Football Fan’s Guide to the 2022-23 College Basketball Season appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> Missed the first half of the season? Boardroom catches you up on the players, teams, and storylines to know in men’s and women’s college basketball.

In the time it took you to click on this story, TCU punted again and Georgia scored another touchdown.

Yes, the college football season had about as anti-climactic an ending as you could imagine, and letdown fans might be wondering where to turn. The answer is, of course, college basketball.

If you’ve been sidetracked by Saturday afternoon tailgates and midweek MACtion to this point, don’t worry. You’ve missed a lot since the Champions Classic in November but never fear. From the Big East to the Big 12, and Zach Edey to Zia Cooke, Boardroom is here to catch you up.

Sign up for our newsletter

Get on our list for weekly sports business, industry trends, interviews, and more.

The Men’s Top 25 Looks Nothing Like It’s Supposed To

If you only saw the preseason AP Poll and then tuned out until right this minute, you’d be forgiven for being positively baffled. Houston and Kansas (preseason Nos. 3 and 5) being in the top two spots is nothing outlandish, but after that, it gets crazy. Purdue started the season unranked but was actually No. 1 until this week thanks to a dominant run at the PK85 tournament and a 13-0 start. Alabama, which started at No. 20, is now ranked fourth, with UConn (unranked to start the season) at No. 6.

And those teams we thought would be awesome? Well, preseason No. 1 North Carolina lost four straight at the end of November and is now unranked. Things have gotten so bad for preseason No. 4 Kentucky that people are starting to wonder if John Calipari‘s time with the Wildcats is nearing an end. Creighton, thanks partly to an illness from star Ryan Kalkbrenner, went from top 10 to losers of six in a row before getting their big guy back and starting to right the ship. Duke and Baylor were also top 10 teams in November. Today, Duke is No. 24 and Baylor is unranked and 0-3 in the Big 12.

New Blood in Women’s Basketball

As expected, South Carolina and Stanford appear to be the two best teams. They’re a combined 32-1, and that one loss came for the Cardinal at the hands of…the Gamecocks. But take a look at the top 25 and you’ll see some unfamiliar names — or some kind of familiar names in unfamiliar spots.

Ohio State, which has not been to the Elite Eight since 1993, is 17-0 and in the driver’s seat for a 1 seed. Made even more impressive is how flat-out awesome the Big Ten has been. The Buckeyes are one of three Big Ten schools in the AP Poll top 10 (Indiana and Maryland are the other two), with Iowa, Michigan, and Illinois all in the rankings as well.

Yes, Illinois. The Illini went 7-20 last year, 1-13 in the Big Ten, and are somehow 14-3 this year, complete with a win over Iowa and a down-to-the-wire loss against the Buckeyes.

It’s not just the Big Ten that’s brought surprises. Out west, Utah is 14-1 and suddenly ranked in the top 10. And on the outskirts of the Top 25, you have two traditional men’s powerhouses proving the women can compete as well, with Kansas and Villanova.

Tournament Expansion: Possible, Not Likely

NCAA Tournament expansion is going to be a topic of discussion every year until it actually happens. Then, two or three years later, it’ll come right back. It’s the nature of the March Madness beast.

Last week, the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee released its recommendations to the Board of Governors, and it included expanding NCAA championships for sports with 200 or more teams to 25% of eligible schools. In basketball, that would mean a 90-team NCAA Tournament.

Before you throw your computer/phone/tablet in frustration, don’t. There seems to be little interest from the men’s or women’s basketball committees to expand to 90, and you shouldn’t expect any expansion at all until the men’s contract with Turner is up in 2032. After that, could you see an expansion to 72 or 76 teams? Maybe. And if you don’t like it, just remember you’re complaining about more March Madness. Not a bad problem to have.

The Wildest Men’s Coaching Carousel Ever?

Let’s get this part out of the way: One of the most prominent jobs in the game opened under one of the worst circumstances you could imagine when Texas fired head coach Chris Beard following a domestic violence arrest. That will forever be the most important and serious part of the story. But the reality is that Texas is going to need to hire someone and the list of names is intriguing, led by the Hall of Famer Calipari. If the Longhorns don’t go that route, they could take a swing at Kelvin Sampson (Houston), Jerome Tang (Kansas State), Eric Musselman (Arkansas), or Chris Holtmann (Ohio State).

The chain reaction that would set off is only the beginning. Plenty of other questions abound, including: Will Georgetown finally say it’s had enough of Patrick Ewing? Will Jim Boeheim call it a career at Syracuse? Will Kenny Payne even get a second year at Louisville? Those are all elite jobs and they all have a non-zero chance of opening (along with Kentucky, maybe the best in the nation). Buckle up.

Player of the Year Watch

Men’s Basketball Favorite: Zach Edey, Purdue
https://twitter.com/SBN_Ricky/status/1611162439370051584

The best player on one of the best teams, Edey is running away with the player of the year race in men’s basketball. Through 15 games, the 7-foot-4 behemoth is averaging 21.9 points and 13.2 rebounds per game while shooting 63% from the field. The Purdue conversation begins and ends with the big man, who has compiled an ORtg over 100 in every game he’s played this year and is far outpacing everyone else in the country on the KenPom Player of the Year list.

Other candidates: Jalen Wilson (Kansas), Marcus Sasser (Houston), Drew Timme (Gonzaga)

Women’s Basketball Favorite: Aliyah Boston (South Carolina)

You can make a great case for a handful of players, but for now, it’s still Boston. Her per-game numbers are down this year, but it’s because she is commanding so much attention from opposing defenses that it’s making everyone on her team better. Combined with Zia Cooke, South Carolina undoubtedly has the best 1-2 punch in the game. The best player on the best team will always be in the running for player of the year and Boston checks all the boxes.

Other candidates: Cameron Brink (Stanford), Caitlin Clark (Iowa), Angel Reese (LSU)

Playing Favorites

Considering how turbulent the first couple of months have been, it’s no surprise that the betting market has changed substantially. Here are the favorites to win the men’s and women’s national championships, with their odds today compared to their odds in the preseason, per FanDuel Sportsbook.

Men’s Basketball Odds

Houston: +600 (was +850)
Kansas: +750 (was +1500)
Purdue: +1200 (was +4500)
Arizona: +1300 (was +2000)
UConn: +1400 (was +8000)
Tennessee: +1400 (was +2500)
UCLA: +1400 (was +2000)

Women’s Basketball Odds

South Carolina: +125 (was +135)
Stanford: +270 (was +450)
UConn: +700 (was +1000)
LSU: +1200 (was +5000)
Ohio State: +1800 (was +5000)
Indiana: +2000 (was +4000)
Notre Dame: +2000 (was +2500)
Iowa State: +2500 (was +3000)
Utah: +3500 (was +20000)

Read More:

Sign up for our newsletter

Get on our list for weekly sports business, industry trends, interviews, and more.

The post The Football Fan’s Guide to the 2022-23 College Basketball Season appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> Loading Loading Embracing College Basketball’s Year of the Big Man https://boardroom.tv/college-basketball-big-men-zach-edey/ Wed, 07 Dec 2022 19:01:14 +0000 https://boardroom.tv/?p=52213 If this college basketball season has shown us anything so far, it’s that size matters, both on the court and in NIL. If you’re following men’s college basketball in 2022-23, you may have heard

The post Embracing College Basketball’s Year of the Big Man appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> If this college basketball season has shown us anything so far, it’s that size matters, both on the court and in NIL.

If you’re following men’s college basketball in 2022-23, you may have heard that it’s the Year of the Big.

So far, Zach Edey (7’4) is the early favorite for national player of the year. Oscar Tshiebwe (6-9) was a popular pick in the preseason, and Drew Timme (6’10) and Armando Bacot (6’10) were also logical candidates. In the Big Ten, Hunter Dickinson (7’1) and Trayce Jackson-Davis (6’9) were seen as the two best players heading into the season. Adama Sanogo (6’9) and Kyle Filipowski (7’0) look like All-Americans now as well.

Don’t expect this to be an aberration.

Sure, there have been and will continue to be great guards that win national awards, but the national conversation will mostly be framed around post players, at least in the immediate future.

The cause is two-fold. One, the NBA has devalued the traditional center so much in recent years that stud posts in college are no longer as valuable on NBA Draft boards. Two, NIL now allows those players to stay in school and perhaps earn more money than they would have as a late first-round/early second-round pick.

College basketball is better for it.

Sign up for our newsletter

Get on our list for weekly sports business, industry trends, interviews, and more.

A Different Game

Over the first few weeks of the season, I’ve kept coming back to something Creighton coach Greg McDermott said to me in the preseason. We were talking specifically about moving toward a 24-second shot clock in college, but really there are a number of things this could apply to:

“Sometimes I think we move too close to the NBA rules and I just feel the NBA has a lot of situations where you get the ball in someone’s hand with six seconds on the shot clock and they go make a play,” he said. “They have the best players in the world. I just think in the college game if that’s the case, the product may suffer.”

Even the most ardent college basketball fan can admit that the talent level in college is significantly lower than in the NBA. So if you try and be too much like the NBA, the product is going to suffer. College is a different game, and that’s OK. There’s still room here for the lumbering center who can dominate inside but wouldn’t be caught dead with the ball outside the semi-circle.

Some of them will try to extend their games in hopes of making it to the next level, and that’s just fine too. Sanogo added a 3-point shot to his repertoire this season and has actually hit them at a decent clip (7-for-16). But he looks about as natural taking that shot as I would wearing No. 99 and batting second for the Yankees. He has the best hands and footwork of any big in college basketball and will serve his team better grabbing rebounds, blocking shots, and humiliating defenders using the most basic basketball camp low-post station drill drop step you could imagine.

The game is a little more rugged this way. A little more physical. But made baskets are fun. No one in college basketball is going to shoot with the consistency of Stephen Curry, so why try it? Teams will have their sharpshooters, but not everyone has to be one.

Cashing In

Take Tshiebwe and Sanogo out of the equation for a second. They’ve both found ways to benefit from their NIL rights, but as international students, the rules for them are a little different.

The other bigs in college basketball are cashing in — a lot. Earlier this week, Jackson-Davis joined the Adidas roster, taking advantage of the perks of playing at a school affiliated with the three stripes.

Timme, who could have jumped to the NBA last year after his second-straight All-American nod, has capitalized on being the (literal) big man on Gonzaga’s campus, signing with local chain Walker’s Furniture and doing national deals with brands like Dollar Shave Club and Goli Nutrition. While brands typically don’t disclose the dollar amounts behind NIL deals, Timme opted to take the sure-thing money (definitely six, maybe seven figures) rather than fight for potentially getting an NBA contract worth around the same amount or a little more.

Though these are just estimates, On3’s NIL valuations list Bacot, Tshiebwe, Timme, Dickinson, Jackson-Davis, Filipowski, and Edey all in the top 14 of men’s college basketball’s most valuable athletes. On3 pegs Bacot as a million-dollar athlete, while everyone else is worth north of $500,000.

For now. Keep in mind it’s still December. Conference play hasn’t started yet, let alone March Madness, where players can really raise their profiles, grow their followings, and ink more deals.

The NBA can do what it wants, but in the college game, size matters.

Read More:

Sign up for our newsletter

Get on our list for weekly sports business, industry trends, interviews, and more.

The post Embracing College Basketball’s Year of the Big Man appeared first on Boardroom.

]]> Loading Loading