As it stands today, the #1 West seed UConn mens’ basketball team  is sitting in Glendale, Arizona, awaiting its Sweet Sixteen matchup against Purdue on Friday night, having obliterated its sub-regional opponents by roughly 1000 points in two blowout wins.  It’s still relatively early, but the Huskies appear to be the favorite going into the rest of the Tournament, with their scoring threats at every position and their game-changing defensive presence in the middle known as Hasheem Thabeet.  Scarily, UConn isn’t even at full strength, as two players who were on the roster at the beginning of the school year are no longer playing for the Huskies – we all know about Jerome Dyson’s injury, but what about the other guy… Nate Miles? 

You remember Miles, right?  Jim Calhoun brought the troubled-but-talented 6’7 wing player in from Toledo as a freshman, but he was expelled from UConn in early October for violating a restraining order based on an accusation that he assaulted a female student.   Sixteen minutes after the restraining order was issued, mind you.  He then re-surfaced at a JuCo in Idaho, where he dropped in 19 ppg this season.  So why is this all relevant now? 

A Yahoo Sports investigation led by Dan Wetzel and Adrian Wojnarowski issued a comprehensive report today outlining the sordid tale of how Miles was ‘delivered’ to UConn by a former team manager turned agent named Josh Nochimson, and how current and former UConn coaches (including Jim Calhoun) may have pulled a Kelvin Sampson and egregiously violated the recruiting contact provisions with Miles throughout 2006 and 2007.   From the report:

The University of Connecticut violated NCAA rules in the recruitment of former guard Nate Miles, a six-month investigation by Yahoo! Sports has found.  Miles was provided with lodging, transportation, restaurant meals and representation by Josh Nochimson – a professional sports agent and former UConn student manager – between 2006 and 2008, according to multiple sources. As a representative of UConn’s athletic interests, Nochimson was prohibited by NCAA rules from having contact with Miles and from providing him with anything of value.  The UConn basketball staff was in constant contact with Nochimson during a nearly two-year period up to and after Miles’ recruitment. Five different UConn coaches traded at least 1,565 phone and text communications with Nochimson, including 16 from head coach Jim Calhoun.  UConn may have committed major recruiting violations by exceeding NCAA limits on phone calls to Miles and those closest to him, records show. The NCAA allows a single phone call per month to a prospect or his family in a player’s junior year of high school. That limit was exceeded over several months from late 2006 into 2007.

This makes the Kelvin Sampson and Rob Senderoff thing at Indiana look tame by comparison. 

UConn released a statement that doesn’t really say much, but what they should be saying (at least privately) is THANK THE F#%&ING LORD!  Consider…  the Huskies may well be on their way to their third national title in the last eleven seasons.  At worst, they appear a strong contender for another F4 appearance.  If Miles was still on this team, suddenly the entire house of cards could have come crumbling down.  Even if UConn ultimately won the 2009 championship, there would be a strong likelihood that much of their season would be later vacated, Chris Webber-style. 

Ironically, Miles' Restraining Order May Have Saved UConn's Season (Unlike C-Webb's Michigan Teams)

Not now.  Now any punishment that UConn will take over this admittedly serious set of violations will be prospective, and it should not affect this year’s Husky team (unless the NCAA digs up some other violations impacting current players).  We don’t mean to be callous, but in a tradeoff, wouldn’t most UConn fans take that deal?  You can win the 2009 title, but you’ll have to face a 1-year postseason ban and scholarship reductions at some future point.  Yeah, thought so.   So congratulations, Connecticut fans, there is a silver lining in what was otherwise not your best day. 

Final thought here: it’s nice to see that Yahoo Sports took it upon itself to do the NCAA’s work here.  A simple FOIA request – that’s all it took?  You’d think that the NCAA’s army of investigators could figure out that one by themselves.  Easy, low-hanging fruit at these public universities.  Or, maybe not. 

If what we’re hearing from sources in Lexington is true (and apparently, Jeff Goodman is hearing the same things), Anthony Grant may want to tell Alabama that he kindly appreciates their offer but he’ll need a couple more days to think about things.   As always, the coaching carousel is getting into swing (with Dave Leitao at Virginia merely the first major casualty), but this year’s avalanche stands to once again begin at the very top of college hoops royalty known as Kentucky.   Should the Cats lose their quarterfinal NIT game tonight against Notre Dame, will that be the end of the BCG Era at UK?  Many people in Lexington think so. 

It’s no secret that the loyal followers of Big Blue are not exactly pleased with the way things have gone on the basketball court under the Gillispie regime.  Head-scratching substitution patterns, players refusing to enter games and/or leaving the team only to return later, the first NCAA whiff in an eligible year in twenty seasons…  but it’s been off-court issues that have also plagued Gillispie since his arrival in the Bluegrass that have amplified what goodwill he might otherwise have been afforded. 

His first year was filled with rumors of bar scenes where an inebriated Gillispie would make a fool of himself, getting to the point where UK was alleged to have hired a driver to keep him off the roads (even if unsubstantiated, the public perception was already enabled).  This led to speculation as to why Gillispie wouldn’t sign his contract with UK – instead working under a two-page Memorandum of Understanding – and subsequent allegations that his do-nothingness belied a motivation to avoid inclusion of a “morality clause” into the document.  Then there were the mystifyingly chilly interviews with ESPN’s Jeannine Edwards during the middle of this season, where “Billy Clyde” came off as a condescending putz unable to maintain decorum (with a lady, no less) in a public setting.  Sadly for Kentucky fans, a traditional bunch, these acts of show-your-arse by Gillispie fit the already-established narrative that their coach was a tough guy to deal with. 

As we all know, there are two parts to any job – the outcomes side and the political side.  If you’re really good at outcomes and miserable at politicking, you can still skate by for a good while before the pitchforks catch up to you.  However, if you’re patently unexceptional when it comes to outcomes and still miserable at the political side, good luck finding people who will support you when the barbarians are ultimately at the gate.  And at a program like Kentucky, the barbarians are never too far from the gate.  That’s where Gillispie is right now.  Had he come in two years ago and lit a fire under the UK program to the point where the Cats were still playing in the NCAAs, much of his general surliness and extracurricular activities, whatever they are, would be brushed aside.  But there’s a pervading sense around UK that the much-maligned previous coach, Tubby Smith, could have taken a team with two all-americans to a (severely diluted) SEC title and/or the first round of the NCAAs.  Gillispie couldn’t even do that.  

So for Gillispie the equation looks like this – outcomes: mediocre + politics: miserable =  join the rest of us in the unemployment line.   

The question will now become… who?  where?  when?  One would think Billy Donovan (yes, him again), Travis Ford, Darrin Horn and even John Pelphrey would be on the short list of hopefuls.  Even John Calipari is purportedly intrigued.   It should definitely make for an interesting next couple of weeks as the shakedowns begin in earnest. 

Ryan ZumMallen of LBPostSports is our NCAA Tournament West Region correspondent.

Welcome to the Mild, Mild West, which saw a grand total of three upsets in the opening twelve games, and whose Cinderella (if that term can even be used) is a five-seed that boasts the Big Ten Tournament championship.

The upside to having a predictable regional field is, of course, that four obviously superior teams emerge from the first weekend and are sure to provide high quality competition. Three of the four teams won their conference tournaments, and the one that didn’t is a #1 seed. This was the bracket that many experts said was the most accurately seeded, and it looks like they were right.

Hottest Team
Having won their first two games by an average of 41.0 points, this has to go to UConn. The Huskies have played inspired ball and got great performances out of their great players, which is key to establishing confidence on a Tourney run. But UConn is a #1 seed, and their road is (theoretically) the easiest. Both Purdue and Missouri looked excellent in their two wins, with sound performances followed by clutch play when it mattered most. Purdue, though, would simply not have beaten Marquette if not for JaJuan Johnson (or maybe, an inadvertent toe), so if UConn is disqualified, then Mizzou is the best-looking squad right now.

Best Player
I’d be previewing a Marquette/Maryland game right now if not for Memphis’ Roburt Sallie. The reserve guard just couldn’t miss against Northridge, pouring in a career-high 35 points when the Tigers looked dead in the water. He got Memphis rolling again in the Maryland win and finished with 13. For all of the superstar athletes on that team, it’s been Roburt Sallie’s grit and sharpshooting that has kept them alive. Can he keep it up? Can Memphis survive if he doesn’t?

Best Game
The Northridge fiasco was a doozy and nearly the shocker of the year, but Purdue’s victory over Washington was the highest quality of exciting basketball in the West Region so far. Purdue showed how they were victorious in the Big Ten tournament this year, while Isaiah Thomas, Washington’s brilliant freshman point guard, simply refused to let the Huskies die. The 76-74 Boilermaker win was sealed by back-to-back rejections from superfreak-forward JaJuan Johnson, and even Washington fans could leave knowing that both teams left it on the floor.

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The East Region: A Look Back, A Look Ahead  (By Dave Zeitlin and Steve Moore)

A look back: Here are some of the bests and worsts of the first two rounds of the East Region – as well as some other haphazard notes …

Most impressive team remaining: Villanova. The Wildcats’ dismantling of UCLA was a sight to behold.

Shakiest team remaining: Pittsburgh. I sat next to a diehard Pitt fan at a sports bar Friday. I knew it was a bad sign when he turned to me disgusted midway through the second half and said, “Just root for East Tennessee State. I know you want to.”

Don’t forget about us:  In Xavier’s opening-round win over Portland State, the Musketeers shot 54 percent from the field and committed just seven turnovers. In their second-round win, they held Wisconsin to 25 percent shooting. Xavier has now won at least one game in six of the last seven NCAA Tournaments.

Don’t forget about us either: Duke is back in the Sweet 16. Oh, how we missed you.

Best performance: Pitt’s Sam Young was electric against Oklahoma State, scoring 32 points, grabbing eight rebounds and blocking three shots.

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Ever wonder which teams drive the best ratings in the NCAA Tourney?  Looks like Louisville, UNC, Duke and Michigan if you buy into the first weekend stats.   (h/t The Big Lead)

In related news, CBS Interactive is reporting that their March Madness on Demand service was up 60% over last year’s demand.  This may be partially attributable to their new hi-def feature from Silverlight, but it also probably represents that people continue to take their access to major sporting and news events increasingly from the web. 

CBSSports.com, in partnership with CBS Sports and the NCAA, today released traffic figures for NCAA March Madness on Demand (ncaa.com/mmod) for the first four days of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. In total, there were 5.6 million unique visitors to the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player, a 60% increase over 2008 figures. Additionally, there have been 6.5 million total hours of video and audio consumed thus far, a 71% increase over 2008 figures.

First Weekend Storylines. Like most of you guys, we figure we watched approximately 38 hours of basketball last weekend over the first four days of the NCAA Tournament.  Since we were in Vegas taking advantage of the sportsbooks’ multiple huge-screen tvs, we pretty much saw pieces of every game on the dance card.  Here are some of our thoughts and observations based on the sensory overload (speaking of sensory, that chick making bedroom eyes at the burger in the McDonald’s commercial is ridiculously difficult to remove from the internal hard drive).

Coach K, Your Filet o’ Sole Has Arrived.  From our point of view, at least in terms of the elite teams of each conference, there was never any question that the Big East was much stronger than that of the ACC this year.  The fact that anyone was even questioning this seemed odd.  This year, the Big East had six teams (of seven bids) with a reasonable shot to make a run at the F4 – UConn, Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville, Villanova and Marquette, and the first five of that group is still standing (the most ever by a single conference in the Sweets, btw); the ACC had three (of seven bids) – Duke, UNC and Wake Forest, but only the twin towers of Tobacco Road royalty are left dancing.   The simple fact of the matter is that the ACC’s middle – comprised of Clemson, Florida St., Maryland, BC and Virginia Tech (NIT) – were only “solid” teams that had significant weaknesses due to personnel or other issues.  Conversely, the equivalent caliber teams from the Big East (with the notable exception of WVU) were left out of the Big Dance.  This group includes Providence, Cincinnati, Georgetown and Notre Dame, and there shouldn’t be any dissent as to the fact that each of these teams would have competed for the middle of the ACC with the above group and several would have also earned bids on the basis of the occasional upset (see: Maryland and BC).  Sitting where we are now, with five Big East teams a mere two wins away from the F4, it wouldn’t shock us to see all four slots filled by a BE team.  This is still an unlikely scenario, but keep in mind that only Villanova is considered an underdog to reach the next round (Syracuse is a pick’em against Oklahoma), and all five of these teams are more than capable.

#1 Seeds. UConn looked absolutely dominant in its two games, and while not much can be discerned from a 56-pt dismantling of Chattanooga, the 92-66 beatdown of a Texas A&M team that was coming on strong must be viewed with awe.   The Huskies will get the best team in the Big Ten next – Purdue – but we have trouble believing that the Boilers will challenge Jim Calhoun’s team at this point.  Suddenly a #1/#2 matchup against Memphis in the regional finals looks very appealing.  UNC bombed Radford in its first round game before riding a partisan crowd’s energy and Ty Lawson’s toe to a breakaway win over LSU in the second round, 84-70.   The Heels should put away Gonzaga easily in the next round (we doubt Heytvelt will dominate Hansbrough this time around), but a regional final against either Oklahoma or Syracuse could present all kinds of problems for the Tar Heels.   Louisville and Pittsburgh both struggled to put opponents away in both their first and second round games.   Both of these teams sometimes have trouble scoring, and we have to wonder when a prolonged scoring drought against a good team will be enough to end their run to the title.   Pitt should have a relatively easy go of it with its next game against Xavier, but we’re looking at Louisville’s next game against Arizona and wondering what might happen if the trio of Budinger, Wise and Hill are all making shots.

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Ok. It’s not that Curry (Stephen). It’s actually his little brother Seth Curry, a freshman at Liberty, who has decided to transfer after bowing out in the CollegeInsider.com tournament to James Madison. After being lightly recruited out of high school (when will scouts and college coaches learn), Curry led all freshman in scoring at 20.2 PPG. Curry has not listed any of his potential choices and college coaches are not allowed to comment on potential transfers so at the very least Seth will keep college basketball message boards abuzz for the next couple of weeks.

Credit: ESPN.com

Obviously, Liberty’s coach Ritchie McKay is a little disappointed, but he seems to be handling it in stride (did you hear that Randy Shannon?). Here is Curry’s prepared statement:

Today I am announcing that I will not be returning to Liberty for my sophomore year. This is a difficult decision that I have reached after close consultation with my family and others close to me, and it is based on my desire to develop as an athlete to the fullest of my potential and take advantage of new opportunities that may be available to me in a higher rated conference.

My freshman year at Liberty has been an incredible experience. It has been a time of learning, growth and discovery of my potential as a person, a student and an athlete. For that I am deeply indebted to all of those who have influenced and supported me here – Coach McKay and his staff, my great teammates, my teachers, and my friends.

You have given me memories that will last a lifetime, and for that I cannot find words to express my gratitude.

Thank you,

Seth

Any guesses on where he is headed? There are a couple interesting potential legacy destinations: Davidson (replace his brother) or Virginia Tech (his father’s alma mater–helping Seth Greenberg save some face and get in the NCAA tournament, but that bridge may have been burned). Or will Seth go to another big-name program? There are plenty of other programs that could use a guy who averaged over 20 PPG as a freshman and averaged 25 PPG on 55% FG in 2 games against ACC opponents (Clemson and Virginia) this year. I would think he would want to stay relatively close to home (Charlotte area) and be in a starring role at a place where he could take over in a year so I would think that would exclude a place like UNC or Duke, but I could see him at Wake Forest or NC State (potentially saving Sidney Lowe‘s job) particularly since all of their current stars leaving by then. I don’t think a move west will be as likely, but who knows if a BCS coach promises him an offense that will showcase his skills. . .

Update: I just found a quote from McKay in a Lynchberg, VA newspaper blog that seems to suggest that Curry is ACC-bound:

“They only gave us one,“ McKay said. “He wanted to play in a more high profile league. He said it was nothing against us. I genuinely believe that. Seth and I have a great relationship and I love the kid. He enjoyed playing for us and being a part of our program. I think he was frustrated by the constant schemes to stop him and felt like if he was playing in a conference that starts with an ‘A’ and ends with a ‘C,‘ that one of those schools would have some other guys around him that he wouldn’t bear such a brunt of the scoring load. Seth is a tremendously competitive kid, not afraid of any challenge. I don’t fault him. I want what’s best for Seth. It was tough for us. Kind of a one and done deal. But that’s the risk you take when you recruit a really good player.“

Even though McKay doesn’t spell it out for us (he left a letter out), his statement narrows it down to 12 teams:

• Boston College: Replaces Tyrese Rice in a major media market, but one where there isn’t a major emphasis on college basketball so he wouldn’t have near as much pressure. He would still get to play with Joe Trapani and Rakim Sanders.
• Clemson: Would replace K.C. Rivers and be relatively close to home. Oliver Purnell‘s program is right around the level where they are relevant nationally, but by no means a powerhouse (at least after conference play starts).
• Duke: Nope. Too much talent here to run an offense around a guy who isn’t a sure-fire top 5 pick.
• FSU: Had a very good team this year and Leonard Hamilton did use a one-man show this year in Toney Douglas, but it still seems like an outside shot.
• Georgia Tech: Interesting choice, but I’m not sure if they Curry family wants Seth to have to go to a place where he would have to revive a program that has fallen on hard times since Jarrett Jack left.
• Maryland: The Terrapin fans and Gary Williams would love to land Curry who would take over Grievis Vasquez‘s role (without all the yapping).
• Miami: Living in Coral Gables with South Beach and taking over Jack McClinton‘s role sounds enticing, but this was a 2-man team last year and both of those guys (Dwayne Collins is a junior) will be gone by the time Curry is able to play there.
• NC State: This would be fairly close to home and at a big-name program albeit one that has fallen a few notches since they let Herb Sendek go. This would have to be a huge addition for a program that has fallen to the #4 program in the state (possibly lower) and could save Lowe’s job.
• UNC: See Duke.
• Virginia: No coach = No shot.
• Virginia Tech: See above. The logical choice if Greenberg hadn’t ignored Dell’s two kids (Stephen and Seth–the first time around).
• Wake Forest: I could see this as a solid location. Small school similar to Liberty and Davidson, but one with a passionate fan base. He could also have some support depending on how long the current group stays. I am assuming that Jeff Teague would be gone by then or at worst (for Seth’s FG attempts) would only be there one more year. This is a solid darkhorse.

Earlier today a report came out that Tennessee junior Wayne Chism played against Oklahoma State with a broken thumb. During the game, I noticed that Chism wasn’t as productive as he normally is, but it didn’t seem like there was anything out of the ordinary. Although his line (11 points on 4/14 FG and 6 rebounds) was a little below his typical production it just seemed like an off-day. Still, I’m sure plenty of Volunteer fans will be asking themselves whether Chism’s injury, which was sustained during practice two days before the game, cost them a chance at making a run deeper in the tournament.

May or not be Chism's actual x-ray. . .

Regardless, this would be the 2nd straight year where the Volunteers title hopes were significantly affected by an injury or illness that was not revealed until after the season was over. Although we’re pretty sure Chism was in significant pain, it pales in comparison to what Chris Lofton endured last year.

Continuing on into the second round of the Mascot Death Match…  you can continue to vote on these throughout the early part of this week, and we’ll have the Sweet Sixteen Matchups up on Thursday. 

For the 2d Round Saturday Matches, click here. 

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We’re back with the 2nd round of the Mascot Challenge. Be sure to vote for your favorite mascot so he/she can advance toward the championship game.

For the 2d Round Sunday Matches, click here.

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