Zach Hayes is RTC’s resident bracketologist.  He’ll be regularly out-scooping, out-thinking and out-shining Lunardi over the next three months.

02.23.09 Bracketology

 Last Four In: Kansas State, San Diego State, Maryland, UNLV
Last Four Out: Michigan, Oklahoma State, Saint Mary’s, Miami (FL)
Next Four Out: Cincinnati, Southern Cal, Virginia Tech, Providence
Also Considered: Notre Dame, Temple, Nebraska, Georgetown, UAB, Rhode Island, Illinois State, Northern Iowa, Mississippi State

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Corey Johns is the RTC correspondent for the America East Conference.

Over the past two weeks Boston U and Albany played their way out of contention for the regular season conference championship.  Albany just went in a free fall down the standings, losing five straight while Boston U needed to win out for hope but most recently lost to Stony Brook, taking them out.  It’s down to Vermont and Binghamton.  If Binghamton wins out they are the champion.  They beat Vermont twice this year and have the tie breaker.  But if they slip at all Vermont is in perfect position to take the title.

Team    Overall Record    Conference Record

• Vermont    21-7    12-3
• Binghamton    18-8    11-3
• Boston U    14-12    9-5
• Stony Brook    15-12    7-7
• New Hampshire    11-14    6-7
• UMBC    12-14    6-8
• Albany    13-13    5-8
• Maine    9-17    4-9
• Hartford    6-22    2-12

Projected Awards

First Team All-Conference

• D.J. Rivera, G, Binghamton- (20.4ppg, 6.5rpg, 1,7spg, .487 FG%)
• Darryl Proctor, F, UMBC (20.2ppg, 8.4rpg, 1.3spg, .490 FG%)
• John Holland, F, Boston U (17.9ppg, 5.5rpg, 1.9spg, .461 FG%)
• Mike Trimboli, G, Vermont (16.0ppg, 4.8apg, 3.7rpg, .467 FG%)
• Marqus Blakely, F, Vermont (15.6ppg, 8.9rpg, 2.7bpg, .598FG%)

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1:00pm. Welcome back to another day of BGTD.  There are only 2o games today, but there are five of particular interest that we’ll be tracking.  Villanova @ Syracuse and Illinois @ Ohio St. at 1pm, Wisconsin at Michigan St. @ 3pm, Wake Forest @ Duke at 7:45pm, and Arizona at Arizona St. at 10pm.  Pretty strong day.  Let’s get it started in upstate NY…

1:02pm.  Before we get going, we want to touch on this story from the LA Times yesterday that UCLA has stopped recruiting local 6’11 prep star Renardo Sidney even though by mid-last week the Bruins were still considered the front-runner.  Certainly UCLA could use a big man with guard skills such as those that Sidney has, so what gives?  Color us jaded, but all we could think of when we heard that UCLA so abruptly dropped Sidney was this story written by Gregg Doyel about a Pac-10 recruit who was charging $10k per on-campus visit a few years ago.  Did Sidney finally give UCLA his price?  Was there a package deal that Ben Howland wasn’t willing to stomach?  Not surprisingly, USC (of OJ Mayo, Daniel Hackett and Reggie Bush) is now considered the leader. Let’s see what happens later today when Sidney announces his college choice at 4pm PDT.

1:13pm.  Villanova looks fantastic thus far, with seven scores in eight possessions, including three threes from Dwayne Anderson.  If you’re still reflecting on yesterda’s wild Saturday, here’s Andy Katz’s article focusing on how quickly things can change.

1:23pm. Nova is getting whatever it wants offensively, and the Syracuse crowd still looks asleep (the players aren’t much better).  Uh-oh alert – Clemson is already down double-figures at Georgia Tech – remember the Tigers lost a road game last weekend at bottom-feeder Virginia.

1:45pm. Cuse is coming back here just before the half, now down 2, behind Devendorf, Rautins and Flynn.  Clemson is also back in the game, after getting down by as much as 15 to Ga Tech.  Illinois appears like they’ll hit their total from the Illini’s last game vs. OSU in the first half (up 26-24 with 2:30 left).

2:00pm.  Nova goes into the half with a six-pt lead, 46-40.  Neither one of these teams is playing much defense – both sides are shooting 55% from the field.  The key difference is that Villanova has been able to get to the line eight more times than the home team.   Clemson fought back to tie things up at Georgia Tech, and Xavier is ripping GW 36-20 at halftime.

2:05pm. Seth Davis just got on board the RTC train with the Duke Swoon at halftime of the Syracuse-Nova game, predicting that the Devils will be the highest ranked team to lose early next month.  Not sure if Duke will lose tonight, but there are two things in Wake’s favor…  1) Duke will play man-to-man, which helps Wake penetrate to the rim; and 2) Wake has shown this year a propensity to take ranked teams seriously, home or away.  The Deacs get into trouble when they’re playing teams they don’t respect.

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College kids today… they just don’t take their schoolwork seriously.  Especially ones that haven’t taken a class in over fifty years.

(photo credit: Roane State College)

Ken Mink, the septuagenarian who couldn’t be slowed by the ticking clock with respect to stepping on the basketball court and competing with players one-quarter his age, was declared ineligible by the National JuCo Athletics Association (NJCAA) due to a pesky Spanish class that he needed to pass.  From the FoxSports report:

Fearing he might fail the Spanish class, Mink said he enrolled in a Sociology class on another campus, hoping that a passing grade there would give him the credits he needed to retain his eligibility. But that class was apparently completed too late to apply to the semester in question.  “This is not an academic issue, it’s an administrative issue,” Mink wrote in an email to the News Sentinel on Friday. “… the NJCAA is ruling me ineligible because the NJCAA contends Roane State did not follow administrative procedures in restoring my eligibility after the NJCAA had questioned whether or not one of my courses was completed within the fall semester.  “Coach Nesbit supplied the NJCAA all the documentation proving my academic eligibility. Coach Nesbit knew I had met the requirements and restored me for play, but the NJCAA has contended the coach (or school) had not checked with the NJCAA a second time before restoring me to play.”

In what is becoming standard Mink-speak, it wasn’t his fault!  Recall that the given reason Mink was kicked off of his Lees (KY) Junior College team in 1956 was that he was falsely accused of spraying the coach’s office with shaving cream.  Fortunately for Mink’s version of this story, the aggrieved coach and his teammates are no longer alive or competent to answer questions.  Now we’re hearing from Mink that it wasn’t the fact that he failed Spanish class, it was that there was an administrative problem with his eligibility.  Somehow we’re having more and more trouble believing that Mink wasn’t involved as the evil mastermind behind the shaving cream incident a half-century ago.

What’s all this mean?  Well, Roane St. will have to forfeit a game from Feb. 7 against Hiwassee where he played and scored two points.  Given all these administrative headaches and public attention, maybe he should just shut it down and declare for the NBA Draft.

Weird incident after today’s UConn-South Florida thrashing.  Jim Calhoun was questioned by a reporter named Ken Krayeske, a local gadfly who was trying to make a point about the salary of the state of Connecticut’s highest paid official (i.e., him) during hard economic times, but it got lost in the back-and-forth which culminated in Calhoun yelling at Krayeske to “get some facts.”

What seemed to set Calhoun off was a question relating to something about a “Comcast deal,” and we’ll have to defer to our more enlightened UConn fans as to what that actually means.  A quick google search didn’t come up with anything relating to Calhoun and Comcast.  Of course, we’re not sure what Krayeske’s real beef was, as Calhoun’s salary isn’t paid from general fund dollars anyway.

Actually, our favorite part of this whole scene was the part where Krayeske made reference to himself having to ask such tough questions because “these guys won’t do it,” referring to the other reporters in the room.  There was a collective grumble reminiscent of the British House of Commons scenes we sometimes catch late at night on BBC.

We’ll update this if we learn more, but feel free to edify us in the comments.

It’s BracketBuster Saturday, and we’re back with another compelling edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite.  We don’t know how it is where you live today, but it’s rainy and chilly here at the RTC Western Compound, which means it’s a great day for huddling up on the couch, firing up the three tvs, ordering up some pie and watching hoops all day.   There are some pretty strong games on the slate today, starting with Butler v. Davidson early and finishing with BYU v. UNLV late.  Settle in and feel free to make your own observations in the comments section.

12:08pm. Oh no, Steph Curry’s mom is NOT at the Davidson game today!!!!  Who will the cameras show in the crowd?!?!!?  Oh yeah, Dell’s there.  Ok.  Whew.

12:10pm. Wonder how ESPN decides who gets to host these games?  Seems like a pretty big decision considering Butler and Davidson are so tough at home, and the loser could drop a seed line or two based on this game.  Curry doesn’t like quite as quick as normal so far – the ankle is probably a little tender.

12:17pm. Our new uber-intern sent over some interesting news today – looks like Patrick Patterson might go for Kentucky today against Tennesee (coming up at 1pm), and surprise of all surprises, the NCAA is investigating USC with respect to recruiting Daniel Hackett.   His dad is the strength and conditioning coach at USC (which is legal, btw).

12:30pm. There are a couple of other BB games that started at 11am, and the most interesting one is Northeastern at Wright St., which is on ESPN2.  NE is leading by six right now, while CAA sibling ODU is crushing Liberty and Seth Curry.

12:46pm. How many games this year have we watched Davidson only to hear some announcer talking about Steph Curry having an “off” game.  It would be nice if he’d just come out and blow up one of these nationally-televised games.   As it now stands, he’s 1-10 and 0-6 from three.

12:50pm. Interesting stat from Brad Nessler there – that if Curry continued his 30 ppg pace for another season-plus at Davidson, he could conceivably catch Pete Maravich’s all-time scoring total record.  Of course, Pistol Pete did it in three years, but that would be a phenomenal record to approach.  We’ll see if we can figure the math and get back on that.

12:52pm. Early afternoon bubble watch.  Miami is smoking BC in S. Florida at halftime (up 12) and ND is also up 12 at halftime on Providence.  These are both pretty much must-wins, although Notre Dame needs it a little more than Miami.

12:57pm. Somehow three of the top four CAA teams drew road games in the BracketBusters event.  So far, the CAA looks good.  VCU only lost by one at Nevada last night, and Northeastern is finishing off Wright St.  ODU already won, and it’ll be very interesting to see what George Mason can do at Creighton later this evening.

1:02pm. Wow, Doug Gottlieb just eviscerated Jay Williams as to why Georgetown was going to make the tournament.  He must have thought he was back on that motorcycle there.  No inside presence?  Except the best freshman big in the country, Greg Monroe.  We get his point about frontcourt depth, but we’re with Gottlieb here – we think Georgetown makes a run to get to 9-9 in the Big East.

1:06pm. We’ve got some 1pm games starting here, incl. Bruce Pearl’s orange blazer at Kentucky (speaking of bubbles), Buffalo at Vermont on the deuce, and the second half of ND-Providence on ESPN FC.  Oh, and did we mention Gus Johnson is in Lexington today.  Oh yes.

1:11pm. Thanks CBS for showing me a graphic telling me that UK is on a 5-0 run in the last 3:20…  or, to start the game.  Brilliant.

1:18pm. Ok, here’s the deal on Curry catching Maravich.  Curry had 2414 coming into today.  Maravich ended with 3667 pts.  If we assume eight more games this year (three regular season; three SoCon Tourney; two NCAA Tourney), and 35 games next year, that’s 42 games.  He’d have to average 29.84 over that stretch to pass him.  Since he’s averaging 29.0 already this season, this is eminently possible should he stick around another season.  That would be fairly cool to track next season – let’s hope he returns.

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JC at HBCUSportsBlog is the RTC correspondent for the MEAC and SWAC Conferences.

A rebirth in hoops nation is taking place. You can see it in the hearts of mid-major loyalists everywhere, championing the chance for little schools to draw and keep the attention of the college basketball conscience.

There is no better example of this than in the MEAC, whose champion will likely present the best chance for a historically black college to advance in the national tournament. So let’s call this a born day for the underdog, and check out the week that was in the MEAC.

THIS WEEK

With little less than a month to go before the MEAC basketball tournament begins, two teams are picking up where the left off in 2008. Morgan State and Coppin State have emerged as two of the favorites in the latter part of the season, with Morgan having paced the conference for much of the season, while Coppin has mounted its annual late season flurry of conference wins.

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Ray Floriani of College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the NEC and MAAC Conferences.

SOUTH ORANGE, NJ – The Northeast Conference season is in the home stretch. The top eight teams qualify for the post season. Each round is held at the home court of the higher seed. The tempo free breakdown as of Friday February 20.

Note : EM is efficiency margin or the difference between offensive and defensive points per possession. 

* The order is by standings which hold true to form in relation to efficiency margin. The lone exception in the EM pecking order is Quinnipiac who is discussed below.

** The average pace of NEC games is 68 possessions. Around mid-pack so to speak. Not NASCAR (mid seventies) and not pedestrian either. 

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David Zeitlin is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League.

A weird sequence of events happened during the Penn-Columbia game two weeks ago: Penn fans listened as the Princeton-Cornell score was announced. They learned Princeton was winning. And then they cheered. Of course, this makes perfect sense. The only way for any of the seven Ivy League also-rans to make the NCAA Tournament (or at least the play-in game) is to get through Cornell, the clear favorite to win the league. But for all of the Penn fans in the gym that night – the dozens of us – cheering for Princeton still felt dirty. That’s because for so long the Ivy League has been all about Penn and Princeton, the two storied programs that have made up one of college basketball’s best rivalries. Penn-Princeton games may not always produce the most exciting basketball (unless you love backdoor cuts and running the shot clock down to five seconds) but each contest is special because it usually determines the league champion. Over the years, the other six Ivy League teams have had as much success as Gus Johnson trying to keep his voice down in a library. Consider: Since the Ivy League’s inception in 1955, only seven times has the league championship been awarded without the Quakers or Tigers at least sharing the crown. Here’s a good YouTube video on the rivalry which highlights the 1999 game in which Penn raced out to a 29-3 lead before losing, 50-49, in a game now known at the Palestra simply as “Black Tuesday.” Six years later, however, Penn produced a miracle of its own when it erased an 18-point deficit in the final seven-and-a-half minutes to stun Princeton in overtime. I think about nine of my 10 favorite Palestra memories came from that game, and I still get chills every time I watch the highlights.

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John Stevens is a featured writer for Rush The Court.

You’ll have to excuse John Bryant if he doesn’t exactly dwell on the past, these days.  Why should he?  When you’ve got as much going on as this guy, the past is something from which you’ve become expert at taking whatever lessons you can, and then letting it fall away.

Wait, what’s that name?  John Bryant?  Right now you are likely wondering why that name sounds familiar.  You are wondering exactly where you’ve heard it before.  In a moment, I’ll tell you.

Bryant plays center for Santa Clara University.  And he doesn’t just play center — he’s one of the best big men in the nation.  He currently has 21 double-doubles (points and rebounds) on the year, a mere one behind likely player-of-the-year Blake Griffin’s 22.  Yes, that’s more than some other guys you might hear more about, like Harangody, Thabeet, Blair, and Hansbrough.  Bryant is second in the nation in rebounds per game (an unreal 13.8), not to mention tied for 14th nationally with 2.6 blocks per game, and is now the all-time leader at SCU in that category.

But that’s not where you know him from.

In the middle of finishing up his senior season, including leading the Broncos to wins in seven of their last eight games, John was good enough to find time to answer some of my questions:

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