We may have just seen Stephen Curry‘s last meaningful college basketball game. That may shock those of you who don’t follow college basketball religiously, but when the rest of the nation joins us in our college basketball obsession on next Sunday at 6 PM don’t expect to see Davidson among the teams selected on the CBS Selection Show. Sure we may get a cut-in to see Bob McKillop and the Wildcats sitting in a conference room with forlorn looks on their faces, but they just lost their shot at making another miraculous run when they lost to the College of Charleston for a second time this season ending their run in the Southern Conference tournament.

Mr. March Will Have to Settle For MSG, Not Detroit

Now you may hear some pundits (read: Joe Lunardi and Andy Katz) say that Davidson deserves a bid given their tough non-conference schedule and their run last, which should be irrelevant). I’m sure that the CBS executives are secretly hoping that Davidson gets a bid as Curry would be ratings gold to the casual college basketball fan. While I won’t argue with the fact that Davidson played an incredibly tough non-conference schedule for a Southern Conference team, the reality is that they lost almost all of those games. Their only win (on the road over West Virginia) looks great on paper, but a closer looks reveals that the Mountaineers did not have Alex Ruoff that day and his replacement Joe Mazzulla only played 6 minutes (both due to shoulder injuries). Outside of that game, Davidson doesn’t have a win against a team in the top 50 in the RPI (1-4 overall) with losses against Oklahoma, Purdue, Duke, and Butler. While the Wildcats played Oklahoma close in Norman, they lost, which at the end of the day is what matters.

As it stands today, the Wildcats were only 68th in the RPI prior to their loss tonight. They now have 3 “bad losses” (to teams outside the RPI top 100) after losing to the College of Charleston twice and the Citadel. I’m not sure how the committee will treat the Citadel loss because Curry was injured, but it probably won’t matter. When you add in the fact that their strength of schedule is only 173rd nationally you have a team that’s new goal should be making a trip to Madison Square Garden. Maybe Curry should keep his head up high. He may be auditioning for his future employer.

We are finally here. Today is the last day of the college basketball regular season. What’s that? St. Mary’s didn’t get the memo? Ok, after today 99.99999% of the programs will be done with the regular season. After we attempted to write the college basketball version of War and Peace for yesterday’s Boom Goes the Dynamite, we get a little break as there aren’t quite as many high quality games today, but the ones that we do have look like they will be pretty entertaining. Here are the games that we will be following today:

• Noon: #20 Purdue at #8 Michigan State on CBS
• 2 PM: Virginia Tech at #24 FSU on Raycom, ESPN Full Court, and ESPN360.com
• 2:05 PM: Illinois State vs. Northern Iowa on CBS
• 3 PM: Old Dominion vs. Virginia Commonwealth on Comcast, ESPN Full Court, and ESPN360.com
• 4 PM: #7 Duke at #2 UNC on CBS
• 5 PM: Northwestern at Ohio State on The Big Ten Network
• 6 PM: #19 Clemson at #10 Wake Forest on FSN
• 6 PM: College of Charleston vs. Davidson on SportsSouth and ESPN360.com

There are a couple of big story lines here. Outside of the obvious ones happening in Chapel Hill (Tyler Hansbrough‘s last game in the Dean Dome, UNC’s quest for a #1 seed, Duke’s last gasp effort for a #1 seed, and all the injuries including the under-reported–not by RTC–injury to Ty Lawson), we’ll be looking in on East Lansing where the Spartans will be looking to solify a #2 seed (forget all the talk about them getting a #1–not happening), Saint Louis where the Missouri Valley will award a ticket to the NCAA tournament, and Chattanooga where Stephen Curry and his Davidson teammates will be battling for their NCAA tournament lives as they will not get in if they don’t win their conference tournament.

There are also some great games out in Las Vegas for the West Coast Conference tournament with Gonzaga vs. Santa Clara, which will be featured as our RTC Live event, that will be followed by Saint Mary’s vs. Portland (aka “The Return of Patty Mills“). Unfortunately, that’s past my bedtime on the East Coast (tips at 9:30 and 11:30 PM ET respectively) although if you’re really nice you might be able to talk rtmsf into staying up late for you since he’s on the West Coast.

11:30 AM: It looks like we only have 2 games (Purdue-Michigan State and Alabama–Tennessee) worthy watching in the noon time slot. Unfortunately, they’re both on CBS so most of the nation will only be able to follow one on television. Luckily, I’m getting the better of the two games (Purdue-Michigan State), but I will be following the game in Knoxville on GameCast as well. If any of you are in Tennessee or Alabama, feel free to send in your thoughts in the comment section so the rest of us will know what’s going on in the game beyond the box score.

While we’re waiting, I wanted to pass along a photo I found on Deadspin this morning featuring Erin Andrews, who found something in Freedom Hall a little disturbing (probably Rick Pitino‘s yelling).

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Ryan Kish liveblogged the ODU-Hofstra game today, although the Richmond Arena is having technical issues with their wifi access, so we’re not sure if we’ll get another chance to liveblog tomorrow. If things are working ok, we’ll havee the VCU-ODU game for you at 3pm EST.

Quarterfinals

• VCU 61 Georgia State 52.  VCU got a little sloppy in this one but Eric Maynor did what he had to do to get the Rams the victory. ODU will be a difficult match up for them.
• Old Dominion 52, Hofstra 51.  Gerald Lee had an MVP performance dropping 30, but Hofstra almost stole the show with the excellent play by Charles Jenkins. Watching Jenkins and Lee trade baskets at the end made this one fun to watch.
• George Mason 61, James Madison 53.  Patriots again used a balance attack and excellent defense down the stretch to get this victory. JMU was a worthy opponent but the Patriots just seem like they wanted it more.
• Towson 58, Northeastern 54.  Towson again pulls off the upset. The #11 seeded Tigers won only five conference games all season but have used great defense to make it this far in the tournament. Northeastern just was not on their game and may have taken the Tigers for granted.  Tigers are confident and playing like they have nothing to lose because, well, they don’t.

Semifinals (Sunday)

• VCU vs. Old Dominion – 3pm
• George Mason vs. Towson – 5:30pm

RTC asked its legion of correspondents, charlatans, sycophants, toadies and other hangers-on to send us their very favorite March Madness memory,  something that had a visceral effect on who they are as a person and college basketball fan today.  Not surprisingly, many of the submissions were excellent and if you’re not fired up reading them, then you need to head back over to PerezHilton for the rest of this month.  We’ve chosen the sixteen best, and we’ll be counting them down over the next two weeks as we approach the 2009 NCAA Tournament.

Mercy Mercy Me (submitted by Ryan Pravato of College Fast Break)

UDM Star Rashad Phillips

Detroit Mercy was quite possibly the first ‘dog in the fight’ I ever had in the NCAA tournament.  Thanks to my dad’s efforts of introducing me to Titan basketball in ’98, I became enamored with Rashad Phillips’ flashiness and grit and thoroughly impressed with Perry Watson’s calm nature on the sidelines. Growing up an hour from Detroit gave me great leeway at jumping on any Michigan-based team’s bandwagon at any time.   It didn’t hurt that at that point in my life (age 9) I was gung-ho about underdogs anyway. I also had an uncanny knack for memorizing player’s names and heights, so much so that I was told countless times to ‘calm down’ and ‘zip it’ by my dad days prior to the game because of my constant regurgitation of the info I had read in the newspaper about the Detroit players. Apparently during the game I kept quiet enough, since I do remember that my dad allowed me to stay up late and watch the entire thing with him.

A ‘little’ school like Detroit actually knocking off a powerhouse… that completely hooked me on the sport. It didn’t seem true at the time, it seemed more like something I would have conjured up in my mind the night after the brackets were announced (is that not the best night ever?). All I know is that I owe my dad something really really nice one of these Father’s Days.

RTC Aftermath will come to you each night where our correspondents are at the conference tournament games as a part of RTC Live.  Patrick Marshall is in St. Louis all weekend covering the MVC Tournament for RTC.

RTC Live Aftermath—Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, March 7, 2009

Today’s Missouri Valley Conference tournament game between Creighton and Illinois State was covered by Rush the Court. Illinois State dominated Creighton from the start and won 73-49 to advance to the finals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.

Tournament officials decided to do something a little different than what was done in Thursday or Friday’s games for the starting lineups as they dimmed the lights and spotlighted the players.

Illinois State came out on fire and did not let up. They shot 55% from the field and 68% from the three point line (13/19) while Creighton shot only 27% from the field and 18% from the three point line. The Creighton huddle was befuddled by what Illinois State was doing.

In all reality though, the biggest issue was the shooting and making scoring plays. Illinois State had 16 assists on 28 baskets so they were getting great ball movement which gave them open shots. Creighton actually won battle of rebounds 39-35 (including 20 offensive rebounds) and made more free throws than Illinois State. Steals and turnovers were also basically even.

Creighton’s dance team tried to get the Jays going, but was unsuccessful.

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We punched four RSVPs to the Dance in the last 24 hrs, so we thought it’d be worthwhile to show these guys a little love before they get crowded out by all the bigger leagues next week.

These Four Teams Got Their Dance Tickets

#1 – Cornell (21-9, 11-3 Ivy). Your back-to-back Ivy League champion dominated Penn 83-59 last night to clinch the Ivy again.  The Big Red fans were so excited that they RTC’d and “demolished” a computer that ran the scoring system.  Believe it or not, the o/u for that game was 142 – maybe the students knew that.  Cornell lost to Stanford by 24 in last year’s first round.

Projected Seed: #14

Something to Remember: Cornell is the nation’s fifth best three-point shooting team (41%).  You’d better close out on their shooters.

#2 – Radford (21-11, 15-3 Big South).  VMI was the team with the better storyline, but Radford was the top seed in the Big South Tourney as the regular season champion.  They played VMI’s game today and beat them at it 108-94 behind Artsiom Parakhouski’s ridiculous 26/18 today. Radford has one  prevoius NCAA appearance, a 1998 thrashing at the hands of Duke.

Projected Seed: #15

STR: Get after it on the glass – Radford is the nation’s sixth best rebounding team in total boards (37.3 rpg) and twelfth best in rebound pct (55.8%).

#3 – East Tennessee St. (23-10, 14-6 A-Sun). ETSU is old hat at this, winning today against Jacksonville 85-68 to earn a bid to its seventh NCAA Tourney.  Mike Smith had 22/12 to help pick up for teammate and star guard Courtney Pigram, who was 3-12 for 9 pts today.  ETSU has a strong NCAA history, having three 3-pt losses and a 7-pt win over higher seeds in their last four appearances.

Projected Seed: #14

STR: With three legitimate scorers (Smith, Pigram, Kevin Tiggs) plus their NCAA history of being a thorn in the side of higher seeds, nobody will want to see ETSU in their bracket next Sunday.

#4 – Morehead St. (19-15, 12-6). Best game of the day, as MSU rode its workhorse Kenneth Faried and his 15/10/3 blks to a double-OT victory over Austin Peay, 67-65.  The Eagles put all five starters in double figures, but it was a reserve named Steve Peterson who knocked down the 12-foot baseline jumper to give Morehead St. its first NCAA bid in 25 years.

Projected Seed: #15

STR: MSU is susceptible to pressure teams because they turn the ball over a lot – ranking #276 in the nation in turnover pct. at 15.1 per game.

We’re all familiar with the Coors Light commercials where they take famous soundbytes from a press conference and parody them with random guys asking questions or making asinine statements to fit the coach’s famous quotes. Well we noticed that TheUConnBlog.com had a post featuring what appears to be a group of UConn students who tried their hand at making an amateur Coors Light commercial with the infamous Jim Calhoun press conference. We agree with the aforementioned blog that it’s not the best video, but it is a solid effort although I hope they aren’t majoring in TV Productions.

Hopefully, Calhoun will be willing to poke some fun at himself (uncertain) and take some money (definitely) from Coors Light so the professionals take a crack at this.

Some interesting RTC stories from the last couple of nights.  RTC stories – as in actual “rushing the court” stories, as opposed to the normal tripe that we throw on here every day.

First, let’s re-visit the amazing Penn St. comeback win over Illinois Thursday night (let’s also forget about today’s result in Iowa City).  We mentioned in our ATB that night that PSU’s RTC was “quick.  No hesitation.  Straight to the middle of the floor.  Immediate bedlam.”  It was an awesome scene, as shown below.

But apparently admidst all the chaos, Penn St. star Talor Battle, he of the game-winning floater, got taken out, as in knocked to the floor, by the throng of people rushing onto the court.  Someone snapped a photo immediately prior to the student immersion of the court into a maelstrom of sweaty whiteness, and they captured this guy grabbing Battle as the bedlam began.

Very soon thereafter, Battle was knocked on his back, and the author of this PSU hoops blog, Crispin and Cream, starting taking some heat for representng the closest visual evidence of assault/battery while Battle was still standing.  Andy Katz even mentioned the scene on his blog on Friday. So last night, he responded with a Zapruder-esque recount of his steps throughout the RTC process, including detailed exculpatory evidence as to how he could not have possibly been the reason that Battle fell down.   Read on:

I’m asking you all to watch the ESPN evidence for yourself in super slow motion if you can and make your own analysis. Don’t watch Battle or me, watch everyone else. As soon as our scene occurs, while Battle’s falling, you’ll see another black guy in a black jacket to Battle’s right rising up. He was getting up from his fall, but he wasn’t the one who started it all. The real culprit has yet to make his appearance.

OJ?  Hey, we couldn’t tell a damn thing from that video, but there’s one quote that keeps ringing in our heads here.  Methinks thou doth protest too much.  Or the Shaggy song, whichever.

There was actually one other RTC-related story, and this one comes from the Ivy League of all places!  An RTC when Cornell clinched its second consecutive NCAA bid last night led to a computer getting smashed and a scoring error that resulted in the final score getting changed well after the fact.  Take it easy out there, RTCers!

We’re back for the final weekend of regular season Boom Goes the Dynamite for this college basketball season. The highlights of the weekend are obviously the two top 10 match-ups (in Pittsburgh on Saturday and in Chapel Hill on Sunday). We would love to provide you with another RTC Live from those site, but apparently we’re not big enough for them yet. (The onus is on you to spread the word.)

In any event, we’re going to make lemonade out of those lemons so we’ll be providing coverage from our bi-coastal offices covering all the action. Today is loaded with 15 of the top 25 playing with the other 10 playing on Sunday. We will be trying out best to provide you with wall-to-wall coverage of the top teams in action as well as RTC Live from several different locations:

• Colonial Athletic Association at 2:30 PM EST for Hofstra–Loyola Marymount with Ryan Kish courtside
• Missouri Valley Conference at 5 PM EST for Creighton–Illinois State with Patrick Marshall
• West Coast Conference at 9 PM EST for Santa Clara–San Diego with Mike Vernetti courtside

In addition to our on-site correspondents we will be focusing in on a few key games for the majority of the day while also channel surfing over to the other games when the situation merits it. Here are the primary games that we will be covering today:

• #1 UConn at #4 Pittsburgh at Noon on CBS
• Michigan at Minnesota at Noon on ESPN and ESPN360.com
• #25 Syracuse at #15 Marquette at 2 PM on ESPN360.com
• #12 Missouri at Texas A&M at 2 PM on ESPN2 and ESPN360.com
• California at #21 Arizona State at 2 PM on CBS
• Oklahoma State at #5 Oklahoma at 3:30 PM on ABC
• Texas at #9 Kansas at 4 PM on CBS
• Washington State at #13 Washington at 5:30 PM on CBS
• Wright State at #22 Butler at 7 PM on ESPNU
• #6 Louisville at West Virginia at 9 PM on ESPN and ESPN360.com

As you can tell it’s a pretty ambitious schedule so we are asking you, our loyal legion of RTC followers, to help alert all of us if something interesting is happening. You can contribute by leaving a message in the comment section so we all can follow it.

One piece of RTC breaking news, UNC point guard Ty Lawson injured his left big toe yesterday in practice.

11:30 PM: ESPN GameDay is live from Morgantown, WV and they’re doing their own version of Make Your Case. I feel a little bit like Bill Simmons after ESPN stole his Mount Rushmore, but they aren’t paying me a million dollars a year.

11:45 PM: A couple pieces of NCAA tournament news to wrap-up before we focus on our TV for the next 12 hours: Cornell became the first team to officially get into the tournament last night by winning the Ivy League title and 3 others will join them when the Atlantic Sun, Big South, and Ohio Valley have their championship games today.

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We just received a report from our sources in Chapel Hill that Ty Lawson had to leave practice early yesterday on crutches after injuring his left big toe. Initial x-rays did not reveal a fracture and UNC still has not announced the diagnosis or extent of Lawson’s injury, but if he isn’t able to play against Duke on Sunday the Tar Heels could be in trouble.  If it is anything more serious that hampers the mobility of the Tar Heels lightning quick point guard for a longer period of time (e.g. turf toe) it would be a devastating blow for the Tar Heels’ chances of winning the national title. We’ll keep you updated on this story as it unfolds.

Update: Now we’re hearing that the plan is for Lawson to practice today and play tomorrow unless something changes, but a final decision will probably be made after today’s practice.