Rob Dauster of Ballin is a Habit is the RTC correspondent for the Big East Conference. 

The Big East lost three of their four marquee games this week as Notre Dame lost to Ohio State and West Virginia and Villanova were swept in the Jimmy V Classic (Marquette did pick up a win at home against Wisconsin). Even teams like UConn (four point win over Buffalo) and Syracuse (came back from down 16 against Cornell) barely avoided being upset. Right now, the only team that is playing well and has played well through out the season is Pitt.

If the first quarter of the season taught us anything, it isn’t that the Big East is weaker than expected as much as the rest of the country is not as far behind as it seemed. Look at those three losses listed above. Notre Dame, a team that is not quite as good as they were expected to be, lost to a better-than-expected Ohio State team in Luke Harangody’s first game back from pneumonia (yea, he had 25 and 16, but you have to factor in the adjustment other players – i.e. Kyle McAlarney, who was 3-11 for 6 points – have to make when he comes back). West Virginia, playing without Joe Mazzulla and Alex Ruoff, lost to Davidson. Villanova lost to a very good Texas team.

While the teams may be a little different than expected, the numbers still break down basically the same way. Four teams look like Final Four contenders, three teams are all but locks to make the tourney, and another four have put themselves in excellent position to earn an at-large bid.

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Ray Floriani of College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the NEC and the MAAC Conferences.  He attended the Jimmy V Classic in Manhattan last night. 

NEW YORK CITY –  A few notes from last night at the Jimmy V at the Garden. Stephen Curry is unselfish. Ok, he took 27 (44%) of his team’s 61 shots. He did hand out 10 assists and looked for his teammates as much as possible. Curry is a rare talent and when a basket is needed, Bob McKillop wants the ball in his hands. Down the stretch he thrilled the 14,000-plus crowd to one those vintage performances that will be discussed for some time. Curry hit four big shots in the final five minutes. One brought his Davidson team within one, two tied it and finally a big trey that gave the Wildcats the lead for good. Curry ended the night with a game high 27 points but was most gratified with his team’s 68-65 victory. At 9 of 27 from the floor he missed his share of shots. But he won over a new legion of fans and the admiration of media members covering his game live the first time.

photo credit: Sipkin/NY Daily News

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Don’t Give Up, Don’t Ever Give Up. We’re old enough to have watched the Jimmy V speech live in 1993, and it remains one of our two or three favorite speeches we’ve ever heard.  As someone whose own family has been impacted by the scourge that is cancer, we’re very supportive of this annual Classic and the Jimmy V Foundation, which has raised over $80M to fight cancer in the fifteen years since its inception.  We have no doubt that these dollars are helping, as many forms of cancer are becoming much more manageable and treatable; but there is still much left to do, and we can only hope that someday in the next generation we’ll all be watching the Jimmy V speech together and wonder in muted awe how such a disease could have taken so many lives.  So oblige us… give the speech one more viewing this year, and think about ways you can help, whether it’s time, money, karma or prayer.

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Josh & Mike of Big Ten Geeks are the RTC correspondents for the Big 10 Conference.

Looking Back

The ACC won its 10th consecutive Big 10/ACC Challenge last wmichigan st, kevin coble, northwestern, indiana, acc/big challengeeek by a 6-5 margin.  That’s actually a pretty decent result for the Big 10, as the ACC figures to be an elite conference this season.  Also, take into consideration that the ACC played 6 home games (compared to the Big Ten’s 4, or 5 if you consider Detroit to be a home venue for Michigan State), the ACC’s worst team last season, N.C. State, didn’t participate, and three of the Big Ten’s losses were by 5 points or less (to be fair, 3 of the ACC’s wins were by 5 points or less).

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News & Notes. It’s a light night here at RTC, so we’ll throw in some overdue links.

• TBL wonders why the media continues its enamoration with Tyler Hansbrough (and his alter-deity Tim Tebow).
• Here’s Vegas Watch’s ACC preview.
• Oklahoma St. starting center Ibrahimi Thomas has been dismissed from the team.
• Iowa freshman guard and leading scorer Anthony Tucker was suspended indefinitely.
• Dan Hanner’s 10 things to do as a college hoops fan.  We’re sitting at seven.
• Memphis’ Tyreke Evans celebrates his RTC honorable mention as FrOY through the first quarter of the season.

Tyreke Evans Celebrating RTC Honorable Mention

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Ryan Kish of George Mason Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Colonial Athletic Conference (CAA).

Power rankings:

1. Virginia Commonwealth (5-3)
2. George Mason (6-2)
3. Hofstra (6-1)
4. Northeastern (4-4)
5. Old Dominion (3-3)
6. Georgia State (3-5)
7. Towson (4-4)
8. James Madison (4-4)
9. Drexel (2-2)
10. UNC-W (3-6)
11. William & Mary (3-6)
12. Delaware (2-6)

Teams doing well

Hofstra: So far the Pride have been the surprise of the CAA posting a league-best 6-1 record.  After losing a lot of scoring from last year’s team this team was difficult to project.  They haven’t really beaten anybody worthwhile on the out of conference slate but they had a pretty decisive victory over Towson on Saturday to start off 1-0 in the conference.

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Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.

Current Records and my standings (Last Week):

1. Oklahoma (8-0) (1)
2. Baylor (7-1) (2)
3. Texas (6-1) (4)
4. Kansas (7-1) (5)
5. Missouri (7-1)  (7)
6. Texas Tech (7-1) (8)
7. Texas A&M (6-1) (9)
8. Nebraska (6-1) (3)
9. Kansas St. (5-3) (6)
10. Iowa St. (6-1) (11)
11. Oklahoma St. (5-3) (10)
12. Colorado (3-3) (12)

A light week for the Big 12 as most teams only played once and it was their game in the Big 12/Pac 10 Hardwood Series where the Big 12 dominated.

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Believe it or not, we’re already one-quarter of the way through the regular season.  Most teams have played seven or eight of their allotted 28 regular season games, and as we head into the next two weeks of semester finals, things will quiet down a bit.  Thus, now is a good time to stop, take a look back at the first month of the season, and reflect as to some of the things we think we’ve learned through the “getting to know us” portion of the schedule.  Here’s your 2008-09 First Quarter Report.  (all stats and records through Sun. Dec. 7th)

Top Storyline. Nothing could be finer than to be from Carolina.  Right now, the top storyline is whether anyone can stop the North Carolina Tarheels before April 6th in Detroit.  There’s no need to go over all the impressive stats in this space again (check here instead), but suffice it to say that UNC has looked absolutely dominant through its eight games, and the reigning NPOY has only played in half of them.  It’s an absolute lock that UNC will hit ACC play undefeated and it’s very difficult to envision a scenario where the Heels drop more than a couple in league play by March Madness.  The storyline from here on out will be if any other team(s) develop to the point where they can realistically challenge UNC.

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Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series.  Look, we really do like the idea of this series – two quality conferences providing juicy matchups such as UCLA-Texas, Arizona-Texas A&M, and Wazzu-Baylor (among others).  But the promoters of the Hardwood Series need to figure a way to get this thing on national tv and make it a mandatory event over the course of two or three nights.  Ideally, ESPN’s family of networks would pick it up during the same week as the ACC/Big 10 Challenge, and we’d get fantastic matchups from 7pm EST until past midnight every weekday.  As it stands now, most of the games aren’t televised nationally, and there seems to be very little coverage of the games as an “event” of any kind.  Furthermore, three of the games occur outside the most recent Thurs-Sun window (Stanford already defeated Colorado two weeks ago and has an upcoming tilt with Texas Tech, and KU’s game with Arizona is in another two weeks), which also sucked because it got completely lost amidst all the weekend football coverage.  So whoever is in charge of this “event,” take our advice and actually take the proper steps to turn this thing into something that Big 12 and Pac-10 fans will look forward to on an annual basis (similar to ACC and Big 10… uh, well, ACC fans).  Diatribe over.  Now, even if we count Stanford’s win, the Big 12 has already clinched at least a push in the Hardwood Series this year with a 6-4 record and two games remaining.  Nine of the twelve games were this weekend.  Let’s take a quick look at some of the highlights (the first three games were already covered in Thursday night’s ATB).

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Allen R of Houston Basketball Junkies is the RTC correspondent for Conference USA.

There is no polite way to spin it: this was a bad week for Conference USA basketball.

From the outset of the season I have said that this league as a whole needs to win some significant non-conference games.

Not only did the conference not win any games of significance, there were several embarrassing losses this week.

1.)    A New Tiger Comes Aboard: It was a generally ‘ho-hum’ week in Memphis as the Tigers beat Marist 100-61 and then entered into an 11 day layoff for final exams. But this past Thursday the NCAA cleared Tiger freshman F Matt Simpkins to practice and play with the team. Previously Simpkins had academic issues that kept him off the court. Coming out of the Patterson School in North Carolina, Simpkins was a 4-star prospect and expected to make immediate contributions.

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