Random Interesting Tidbits (Dec. 18)

Now that I am done with finals for the semester, I find myself bored. A lot. What do I do when I'm bored? Usually I do random research that leads to nothing but a few interesting tidbits that I don't do anything with.

But that changes tonight. Now my random research that leads to nothing but a few interesting tidbits will be shared here. I hope this won't be the only time I do this, so check back during the break if you find yourself as bored as I will be.

Enjoy...

David vs. Goliath (Literally!)

When UC-Irvine traveled to Eugene, Ore., to play No. 13 Oregon Tuesday, most people would see the Anteaters as a huge underdog against the ranked Ducks, making the game a "David vs. Goliath" matchup.

Instead, the David vs. Goliath matchup wasn't the game. It was more literal than that.

At one point during the game, Oregon's Johnathan Loyd, who is 5-8 and 163 lbs., guarded UC-Irvine's Mamadou Ndiaye, who is 7-6 and 290 lbs., leading to this awesome picture...

Loyd and Ndiaye are separated by 22 inches and 127 lbs.

I looked up Ndiaye and found that he's a freshman from Dakar, Senegal in Africa. Through 12 games, he's averaging 8.6 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.3 blocks per game. Predictably, he's shooting only 41.2 percent from the free throw line (21-for-51).

Before coming to Irvine, Ndiaye was a four-star recruit and "a legit 7-foot-5 prospect with extraordinary length and huge hands," according to ESPN.com. However, he was only offered a scholarship from two schools (that I could find): UC-Irvine and Pepperdine.

Interestingly, he's not the first 7-6 Mamadou Ndiaye from Dakar, Senegal to play college basketball in the U.S. That title would belong to Mamadou N'Diaye, who played at Auburn from 1996-2000. He was a first round pick in the 2000 NBA draft and played 69 games in the NBA.

I guess "Mamadou Ndiaye" is the "John Smith" of Senegal.

Four-Star Recruit Chooses Ivy League

When I was watching basketball on ESPN, I saw some recruiting news scroll across the bottom of the screen. I was only half-paying attention when I saw that someone verbally committed to Princeton over schools such as Florida State and Michigan State.

That is quite odd, so I clicked rewind so I could see the guy's name. Kurt Holuba is a 6-4, 235 lbs. defensive end from Oradell, N.J., where he played for Bergen Catholic High School.

Sure enough, every recruiting website I looked at has him committed to Princeton, despite having 17 other offers, including 15 from FBS schools. Harvard and Penn also offered him from the Ivy League.

I understand that Holuba probably values his education, but why would you turn down the opportunity to play in the FBS? He had offers from top academic schools such as Vanderbilt in the SEC, Duke and Georgia Tech in the ACC, Stanford in the Pac-12 and Rutgers in the American.

He could have also gone to football powers such as Florida State, Michigan State or Wisconsin.

That said, I wish the kid the best and hope he succeeds at Princeton. He'll definitely have a career after football.

Keeping It in the Family

Earlier today, I was looking at the NCAA all-divisions basketball record book when I came across a D-III school named Redlands a few times.

I had never heard of that school before, so I looked them up. I found that the small California school's head coach is named Jim Ducey. I also noticed that one of the assistant coaches is named Bryan Ducey.

This didn't strike me as very strange because sons coaching under their father isn't that rare, especially at lower divisions. Then I noticed another assistant named Jake Ducey. THEN I noticed another assistant named, you guessed it... Ted Ducey.

THREE sons of the head coach are assistants at University of Redlands.

When glancing over Redlands records, I saw that several players had been awarded the "Ted Ducey Sportsmanship Award," the first of which got it following the 1984-85 season. This confused me because Ted Ducey, the assistant coach, graduated from Redlands in 2003, meaning he wasn't born until the early 1980s.

I did some more digging and found out that the award is named after Jim's father (Bryan's, Jake's and Ted's grandfather), Ted Ducey.

It turns out that this Ted Ducey was the first basketball coach at Claremont McKenna College in California, where he helped start a program that taught kids how to swim. Ironically, he died in a flash flood in 1974.

Today, Ted's son, Jim, continues to help with the program and spends a lot of free time in a swimming pool. In fact, he has sometimes been referred to as the "baby-whisperer" in the pool.

I don't know about you, but I find this Ducey family as extremely interesting.