We have a weekend full of links for you today as I was sort of busy over the weekend. On Saturday there was the RTC Live from Storrs, CT on Senior Night/Day, which was followed by RTC Aftermath that recapped the event. On Sunday, I was busy running Boom Goes the Dynamite and making some new friends from Duke (see the comment section).

• Nolan Richardson made a rare return to Arkansas (suing the university for racial discrimination doesn’t win you many fans in the administration). He was there as part of a celebration of the 1994 championship team. Fortunately for all involved, he received a warm welcome from the crowd. Even though I am not an Arkansas fan I miss Richardson’s “40 minutes of hell”
• 850 The Buzz has a nice set of interviews with some of the athletic directors in North Carolina talking about how the economic downturn is affecting them.
• Kyle Whelliston does another excellent job analyzing the mid-majors this week.
• John Gasaway takes a look at the luckiest and unluckiest teams in college basketball.
• Jeff Goodman takes a deeper look at Butler freshman Gordon Hayward and calls him the best-kept secret in college basketball.
• John Perotto examines how LSU has been able to have so much success this year.
• Gary Parrish tells us how the expectations at Kentucky may have Billy Gillispie on the hot seat. We’ll have more on this later today.
• Bobby Knight may have some company pretty soon and we are not talking about Coach K or Jim Calhoun. Instead, we are talking about Philadelphia University‘s Herb Magee who passed Kentucky icon Adolph Rupp for 4th on the NCAA career win list on Friday night.

This week’s poll was tough because so many top 25 teams lost and it’s kind of hard to compare the relative strength/weakness of each loss. I also wasn’t sure what to do with Marquette. I dropped them quite a bit because of the loss of Dominic James, but I came away impressed after watching their loss at Louisville particularly with Jerel McNeal having an awful day.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Connecticut	2
2	Pittsburgh	1
3	North Carolina	1
4	Oklahoma	2
5	Louisville	1
6	Memphis	1
7	Michigan St.	2
8	Duke	1
9	Kansas	7
10	Wake Forest
11	Villanova	3
12	Louisiana St.	5
13	Purdue	6
14	Gonzaga	1
15	UCLA	6
16	Missouri	2
17	Marquette	6
18	Washington
19	Xavier	1
20	Clemson	7
21	Arizona St.	9
22	Illinois
23	Butler
24	Syracuse
25	Texas
Last week’s ballot

A lot of people have been talking about Duke‘s magical ability to get away with traveling. First we had, Elliott Williams who basically went from Durham to Chapel Hill without dribbling the ball and then we had Jon Scheyer try the same thing (scroll down) although to be fair he wasn’t as blatant as Williams.

The Blue Devils have also been known to use their elbows at times. This season there was Kyle Singler‘s elbow to Tyler Hansbrough‘s face. And of course nobody can forget the infamous Gerald Henderson elbow to Tyler Hansbrough’s face (notice a pattern) that led to the tour de force “This is why Duke sucks”.

Yesterday, Virginia Tech‘s Terrell Bell decided to take matters into his own hands and leveled Singler with an elbow that was much more malicious than the prior Duke elbows. At least the Duke guys tried to make it seem like it was during the “flow of the game”. Take a look at it below and let us know what you think. Just remember that there was no foul called on it.

Update: I am issuing this disclaimer because of the inability of some people to get past the title of this post and actually read what I said in the post. I am not condoning Bell’s actions. As I have said repeatedly in the comment section, I think it was a cheap shot. In fact, I called it malicious in the text of the original post, but apparently Duke fans don’t want to come to grasp with that and continued to focus on the title of this post. Like I said in the comment section if I was rewriting this post I would have titled it something like “Wait…So Duke doesn’t get all the calls?”, but I believe it would be dishonest at this point to change the title of the article as it is not factual incorrect just in questionable taste. Having said that, I still think the Duke fans need to get over themselves and cut out the moral superiority junk. Singler was not injured on the play. If he had even suffered a minor concussion or something that kept him out of the game much less suffered a career-ending injury the title of this post would have been something like “America’s Most Wanted: Terrell Bell”. And once again, getting elbowed is not the equivalent of contracting cancer or AIDS no matter what they are teaching you in Durham. If it was, Henderson and Singler would already be on trial. Durham does have a DA, right?

Well it’s finally here. The month of March is upon us. Here at RTC, we’ll be coming up with a ridiculous number of posts (I’m not sure how we will be able to do it with our other “lives”) so be sure to check back throughout the month as we will have posts for conference recaps, our unique bubble watch, frequent bracket updates by our resident bracketologist Zach, our favorite NCAA tournament memories, and the most comprehensive NCAA tournament preview anywhere. Ever.

11:00 AM: Just to set the table for today (and before I run out to grab some lunch before the games start), we’ll be following all three of the major games today, which will all be on CBS. At noon, Dominic James-less #10 Marquette will travel to #6 Louisville. Then at 2 PM, #8 Missouri will travel to Lawrence to take on the defending national champs, #15 Kansas. (CBS will also be airing the Tennessee-Florida game at 2. We will be very unhappy if we end up with that game instead.) The last time these teams met, Missouri shocked the Jayhawks with a Zaire Taylor 10-footer to hand Kansas its only loss in their last 13 games. A win here for Kansas would essentially seal the Big 12 regular season title for Kansas since they own the tie-breaker over Oklahoma (thanks to Blake Griffin‘s absence). Finally at 4 PM, #9 Michigan State will go to #20 Illinois. Like the preceding game, a win here would essentially clinch the Big 10 regular season title for the Spartans. In addition, we will be following the aforementioned UT-UF game (hopefully online instead of on our TVs) as well as a handful of bubble match-ups (Providence at Rutgers, Cincinnati at Syracuse, Michigan at Wisconsin, and West Virginia at South Florida).

11:50 AM: If any of you are wondering if I might decide to ditch this and go outside to enjoy the beautiful March weather, here’s your answer. On a side note, I just saw myself on ESPN for the second time this season (thanks to the miracle of HD).

11:55 AM: Wow. I just saw the Blake Griffin play from yesterday where we went over the scorer’s table. Pretty impressive after his concussion against Texas.

Noon: CBS just announced they will be have an interview with Jamie Dixon at halftime. So the Pittsburgh fans might want to tune in for that if a top 10 match-up in their own conference wasn’t enough.

12:05 PM: Rick Pitino is wearing his Colonel Sanders suit for the white out. As the CBS guys mentioned, last year he had to switch at halftime. Let’s see if it is more effective this year.

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I’m assuming that most of you got a chance to see this game unlike the last RTC Live when Providence knocked off #1 Pittsburgh. As a result this RTC Aftermath will not be quite as extensive as our first edition, but what we lack in length we will make up for in quality.

This was my first trip to Storrs, Connecticut and I have to say that I was surprised at how small the town is. I’m not sure if I missed the town center coming off of I-84, but it’s easily the smallest town for any state school that I have visited. The campus itself is pretty nice even if it lacks the uniqueness of some other campuses I have visited on this year’s RTC Live tour. Gampel Pavilion is a relatively nondescript building much like the other places we have visited this year with the except of UNC with the Dean Smith Center. Interestingly, the Huskies split their home games between Gampel and the XL Center in Hartford. While the XL Center seats more fans (16,294 compared to 10,167 in Gampel), the students seemed almost unanimous in agreement that they prefer the atmosphere when the games are held at Gampel. The one complaint they did have about Gampel was the lack of student seating. From what we were told (and my eyes seemed to confirm it), students are confined to a small section behind one basket and in the upper level behind another basket. Most of the students would have preferred to have been situated along the sidelines to make the atmosphere more imposing for visiting teams similar to Cameron Indoor at Duke as much as the students hated to say it. I’m not sure how the boosters seated along the sidelines would react to the proposition, but it is an interesting idea.

Pre-Game: For the second game in a row, we were there for a team’s Senior Night. Or was it Senior Day this time since the opening tip was at 2 PM? While the Huskies did not have as many seniors as Providence did, the scene was no less emotional as the fans were particularly excited for two players: A.J. Price, who has battled personal problems (he was the other guy in the Marcus Williams computer theft case) as well as medical problems (radiosurgery for an arteriovenous malformation and ACL surgery), and Jeff Adrien, the team’s physical inside presence and fan favorite for his interaction with the student section before and after games. As an added bonus, Jim Calhoun was honored for winning his 800th game (on Wednesday at Marquette). The student section was given cardboard Calhoun faces (think PTI’s Role Play) and they unveiled a banner celebrating the fact his 800th win although there were some technical difficulties when they tried to unveil the banner.

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