Shootout notebook: Coaches and Twitter, and some repeat visitors

Santa Clara coach Herb Sendek is a member of an elite club that includes Victoria Beckham and nine other people.

They are among the only 11 people that KFC follows on Twitter. The others:

Geri Halliwell, Melanie Brown, Melanie C, Emma Bunton, Green Bay Packers player Herb Waters, musician Herb Alpert, MMA referee Herb Dean, Deseret News reporter Herb Scribner and Los Angeles politician Herb Wesson.

Beckham and the other women used to be the Spice Girls. All the guys are named Herb. Put them all together and you get KFC's secret recipe — 11 herbs and spices.

The number of people who follow KFC is much greater — 1.25 million. If KFC was a college basketball coach, it would trail only Louisville's John Calipari, who has 1.76 million followers.

At least that's according to our very informal analysis, for which checked the Twitter accounts of a dozen or two big-name coaches.

We didn't find any other college coaches with even 1 million followers. In fact, we only found three with more than 100,000 — Bill Self of Kansas (239,000), Tom Crean of Indiana (154,000) and Billy Donovan of Florida (108,000).

A few others with enviable numbers: Syracuse's Jim Boeheim (85,500), Villanova's Jay Wright (73,100) and Virginia Tech's Buzz Williams (70,700).

Some who'd you would expect to have huge followings, like Roy Williams or Coach K, don't appear to have accounts.

At the Shootout, the winner of the Twitter war is Central Michigan's Keno Davis,  in a landslide. He's got 22,200 followers. The KFC bump wasn't enough to make Sendek a contender, although with 8,819 followers he's second among Shootout coaches.

Here's the rest of the numbers for the men's coaches, in order:

Joe Callero, Cal Poly, 4,482; Rod Barnes, Bakersfield, 3,738; Earl Grant, College of Charleston, 2,723; and Jason Hooten, Sam Houston State, 1,331. We didn't find accounts for UAA's Rusty Osborne and Idaho's Don Verlin.

For the women's teams, Linda Cimino of Binghamton (1,998) has a slim lead over Matilda Mossman of Tulsa (1,980). We didn't find an account for Fred Batchelor of Maryland Eastern Shore.

UAA's Ryan McCarthy, meanwhile, has 671, and we believe he deserves more.

Sure, he tweets his share of inspirational messages, like many coaches. But some come from his own experiences and are therefore more powerful, like this recent post: "For those of you trying to make it: I was told no 5 times: CWU, SNU, CBU, West. St., & was the third choice at UAA. Keep up the grind!"

Sometimes he's funny, like when the Seawolves were in Durham, North Carolina, earlier this month for an exhibition game against Duke: "Truth: I dunked in Cameron indoor."

But the best reason to follow McCarthy is the chance he'll keep posting fake-news press conferences, where he's the reporter and his young son Donovan is the coach. A sample from Sunday:

McCarthy: Coach, how did your team play today?

Donovan: Really good. … The score was good, the refs called the right calls.

Truth: Donovan crushed it.

Same guys, new teams

Here's something that hasn't happened often during the Shootout's 40-year run: Two teams each have a player who appeared in a previous Shootout for a different team.

Central Michigan's Shawn Roundtree played in the 2014 Shootout with Missouri State, and Marcus Harris of Sam Houston State played for San Diego at the 2015 Shootout.

"I remember stepping off the plane and thinking it's cold," Roundtree said. "That first time definitely got me prepared for this time. I knew what to expect."

Roundtree and Harris met in a first-round game Wednesday, with Roundtree and the Chippewas claiming a 71-60 victory.

Roundtree, who scored a game-high 20 points Wednesday, made his first Shootout appearance during the tournament's first year at the Alaska Airlines Center. He said his previous experience made him feel at home this time around.

"When I came in for the shoot-around yesterday, I got a familiar feeling. As a basketball players, that's good that you have a familiar feeling with a gym. I kinda makes you feel comfortable."

Division I vs. Division II

The UAA women won the battle on the court in Thursday's championship game, but Division I Tulsa had the Division II Seawolves outnumbered in terms of personnel.

The Golden Hurricane has a travel team of 26 — 13 players and 13 coaches and staff members. The crew needed just about every chair available on its bench.

Other than head coach Matilda Mossman and her 13 players, the group included an associate head coach, two assistant coaches, a graduate assistant, a director of operations, a director of player development, a video coordinator, an athletic trainer, a strength and conditioning coach, a director of media relations, a radio broadcaster and a student team manager.

They travel to all games, said Stephanie Hall, director of media relations. And it's not that big of a travel party, she noted, at least by Division I standards. "Some teams have a lot more," she said.