‘Grandpa’ Lends Hand To Hoyas

When Georgetown coach John Thompson needs a second opinion on the Hoyas, he turns to “Grandpa.”

This geezer, however, has been alive less time than Thompson has been at Georgetown.

Cheikh “Ya-Ya” Dia is a 22-year-old junior for the Hoyas and Thompson, who is in his 24th season at Georgetown, summoned him for a late-night chat in the hotel the night before the 82-62 victory over Seton Hall in which Dia had nine points and nine rebounds.

“I respect Ya-Ya an awful lot. He’s a level-headed person,” Thompson said of the native of Senegal who graduated from St. John’s High School in Washington. “I talked to him about the team and his role on the team and what he feels about the other players. We just sat and talked.

“He’s a junior and I made him a captain with (senior) Othella Harrington because I do respect him. The kids on the team call him Grandpa… . They call him that because he’s always preaching at them and talking and he’s very philosophical in a lot of the things he says. We just talked for about an hour about some very personal things about other players and himself.”

Senior citizens

Senior stars in college basketball are going the way of bargain prices - you don’t see much of them anymore.

Last year’s NBA draft saw the names of four sophomores called and then came a high school senior. One roster that has its share of seniors this year is that of second-ranked Kentucky, with Tony Delk, Walter McCarty and Mark Pope all starting and Jared Prickett out on a medical redshirt.

“They have been allowed to develop and go into the senior years and now we have great experience,” Wildcats coach Rick Pitino said. “You’re not going to see any of our players drafted in the top 10 positions in the draft. It’s just not that type of situation.

“What we have is an awful lot of guys who have been nurtured into their senior year. It’s great that you can build it. If I had my druthers, if we could do that all the time, it would be great rather than have guys leave early on in their careers.”

Air scares

Last season, Boston College forward Danya Abrams opted for a 7-1/2-hour bus ride to Syracuse rather than fly on a small commuter plane. The junior has since overcome this aversion and has been with the Eagles whenever they have flown.

Another Big East player, Notre Dame freshman Phil Hickey, has the same problem, only it involves all flying. The center didn’t even make the trip with his teammates to Miami last week.

“I’d say it’s a little discouraging,” said Hickey, who made some flights early in the year only to have the problem worsen after a rough flight from Cincinnati to Rochester, N.Y.

Notre Dame is doing everything it can to help Hickey work through the problem, coach John MacLeod said.

“I just told him there are a lot of people in this country that have different phobias, different fears. It’s not uncommon,” MacLeod said. “It’s a phobia, but I think with therapy, this thing can be resolved. He wants to conquer this doggone thing and we think he will.”

Big province

One of college basketball’s catchiest nicknames in recent years was that of Oklahoma State’s Bryant “Big Country” Reeves. The 7-footer from the tiny town of Gans, Okla., was given the name by a teammate as a freshman and it became a national calling card as he led the Cowboys to the Final Four last season as a senior.

Todd MacCulloch is a 7-foot, 260-pound freshman for the University of Washington and the native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, even has the same crewcut hair style as Reeves, who now plays for the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies.

So what have his teammates dubbed MacCulloch? “Big Province.”

“He took his team to the Final Four,” MacCulloch said. “If people compare me to him, that’s just a compliment to me.”

Shooting pains

Coaches, media and fans are all quick to point out the problems with shooting in college basketball and the touchiest subject of all is free-throw shooting.

To add to all the theories, solutions and conjecture that abounds, may the following be introduced:

In the most recent NCAA men’s Division I statistics, there are almost three times as many players (17) shooting 50 percent or better from 3-point range as there are players (6) shooting 90 percent or better from the free-throw line.