1. Remember the Anthony Davis for sale flap a month ago?  Predictably, the threats of lawsuits by the Davis family and Kentucky have died down, but the speculation has not.  On a radio program Tuesday, college basketball writer Gregg Doyel said that he believes that the Chicago Sun-Times “deep throat” source for the allegation that Davis was bought for $200k came from Illinois head coach Bruce Weber.  Here’s the key quote, at the 19:42 mark: “If anybody is behind this, Weber is behind this, because he doesn’t lose very well. And, he unfortunately loses recruits left and right.  Nobody loses more recruits than Bruce Weber. That ought to be on his coat of arms — Bruce Weber: Losing recruits like a son of a gun.”  Wow.
2. It became official yesterday when UConn announced it, but Ater Majok is heading to Australia to begin a professional career, effective immediately.  We discussed the likelihood of this earlier in the week, openly wondering if his departure has anything to do with the expected response on Thursday or Friday from the university over eight NCAA allegations.  For now, we’ll just have to speculate and read between the lines, but hopefully in the next few days we’ll have more with which to address his departure.
3. Gary Parrish writes about the BYU move to the WCC (in basketball), and how the little league that could on the Pacific coast may have done more to elevate its profile than any other conference in Realignment Summer.  Yahoo’s Jason King and ourselves can’t disagree — as our correspondent Mike Vernetti wrote yesterday, WCC Commish Jamie Zaninovich may have pulled off the biggest coup we’ve seen in this game in quite some time.  Meanwhile, the WAC wonders what to do with itself after BYU effectively threw the venerable conference to the wolves.
4. Mizzou took a huge hit yesterday when it was reported that top fifteen incoming recruit Tony Mitchell will not be eligible to play for at least the fall semester, although it’s currently unclear what he needs to do to become eligible for the spring.  So far Missouri hasn’t yet confirmed the information, but according to several sources, Mitchell has missed the deadline to enroll at Missouri this semester.  Jeff Goodman reported yesterday that Mizzou is hopeful that Mitchell will attend a juco for the fall semester in an effort to become eligible.
5. Tennessee’s SwiperBoy (aka junior forward Renaldo Woolridge) is back with another UT-related rap song, just in time for the “FootVols” kickoff this coming weekend against UT-Martin in Neyland Stadium.  Not that they’d be listening anyway, but SEC fans from Columbia to Fayetteville probably envision their own personal hell as an endless loop of this song, which uses “Rocky Top” as its sample in the background.  There’s nothing too abrasive in the lyrics (if you can’t bear the audio version, here’s a transcript), but SwiperBoy manages to take a shot at the departed Lane Kiffin (“we drivin in a new Lane… 4get the last 1”) — with his third football-related song in the last two years, at least we can say he knows where the bread is buttered in Knoxville.  Here’s the video:

On the rare occasion our TV isn’t tuned to something sports-related, it’s probably on the Travel Channel, and not just because we’re looking for glimpses of that remote-droppingly cute Samantha Brown. If there’s one thing we love about as much as college basketball, it’s travel — and we love when those things come together (best BBQ at the Big 12 Tournament in KC last year? Oklahoma Joe’s, and it’s not close). Imagine our happiness when we saw that Jim Boeheim will appear on Man v. Food tonight, downing hot dogs at Heid’s of Liverpool with show host Adam Richman (can you imagine the lifetime Zantac consumption between those two guys?):

Now, Richman’s a graduate of both Emory and Yale, but we questioned his competence when he referred to the smiling, hot-dog carrying Coach Boeheim as “a handsome devil.”  Hey, we’re just kidding, coach!  To be honest, we were so impressed with your appearance in this one clip, we have to say — we smell a spin-off! It might only be one episode long, but they could call it…Man v. Zone. OK, fine, we’ll show ourselves out.

A few weeks ago, the four major college basketball programs in the great state of Indiana announced that they would be starting an annual event called the Crossroads Classic, pitting each school against one of its other state rivals (Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame and Butler) in an annual basketball orgy of Hoosierness.  We here at RTC loved this idea, and immediately started thinking of other states in the union who could put on a similarly extravagant annual show of hoops.  We were about 99.7% finished with our research when Matt Snyder of Fanhouse published this piece listing the top twenty states that could hold similar in-state classics, causing us to scramble to check the integrity of our passwords (“RTC” doesn’t cut it?) and servers throughout the network.

Indiana's New Crossroads Classic Inspired Us

Seriously, though, Snyder did a great job with the idea; he just beat us to the punch with it.  So we went back to the drawing board and thought about ways to use our research in a constructive way that didn’t rip off the Fanhouse post.  What we came up with is what we’re calling the 2010 RTC Big Four State Tournament.  Here’s how it works.

1. Similar to the Fanhouse post, we picked the top four programs in each of the 33 states (including DC) with at least that many D1 universities.
2. We then chose the top sixteen states based on the current status and power of those four programs within each state.
3. Next, we chose a starting lineup “dream team” of players from those programs in each state, thinking about how to best integrate them by position (three guards & two bigs; or vice versa).
4. We also chose two subs — one guard and one big man — as well as a head coach.
5. We limited each school to two starters and one bench player for a maximum of three per team (sorry, Duke).  We also made sure to include at least one player from each of the four chosen programs (hi, Seattle).
6. Finally, we seeded the sixteen teams into our bracket and analyzed the matchups.  We encourage you to use the polls below to do likewise.

Which state do you think has the strongest cadre of players from among its Big Four programs?  Here’s our bracket:

We’ll analyze the left side of our bracket today, and the right side tomorrow.  Make sure to put your choices in the appropriate poll box.

#1 Indiana vs. #16 Utah

The most lopsided first round battle pits top seeded Indiana against a Utah squad filled with mid-major flavor. For Utah to avoid embarrassing themselves, they’ll need a heroic effort from elite scorer and potential first team All-American Jimmer Fredette. Much like BYU was vulnerable on the rare occasion when Fredette didn’t deliver, this Utah team void of talent from top-shelf Division I programs will need their do-everything point guard to put on his Superman cape. We suspect Fredette will keep Utah competitive for most of the first half. Tai Wesley is crafty enough to lure Matt Howard into foul trouble and, given the season Weber State just concluded, their representatives are far from slouches. In a near carbon copy of BYU’s second round contest with Kansas State, though, it would be a surprise if Fredette didn’t wear down under the intense man-to-man defense of Shelvin Mack and the common double team. Because of our conditions for picking these teams, sure, but an Indiana team loaded enough to bring a talent like JaJuan Johnson off the bench isn’t going to lose to a primarily one-man squad. The Hoosier State representatives pull away and win by 20+.

RTC Choice: Indiana 84, Utah 62.

#4 Texas vs. #13 New York

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1. Obviously, the big news of yesterday was BYU’s decision to join the WCC in basketball (and all other sports except football).  It makes sense on a number of levels (religious school, kill the WAC, etc.), but we have to admit that you typically don’t see a school ‘trade down’ in relative strength like this.  But the lure of football independence was just too much for the Cougars to resist, and although we’ll miss BYU in the Mountain West, we’re excited to see if the addition of the LDS school will help bring the WCC to the top of the mid-major heap in hoops.  Our Mountain West and WCC correspondents examined both sides of the move, while Jeff Goodman caught up with the person currently residing in the WCC most impacted by BYU’s entry, Gonzaga’s Mark Few.
2. Former Duke all-american point guard Bobby Hurley is doing his best to contribute to the collective schadenfreude that the nation feels when members of Coach K’s first two championship teams lose their shirts.  Not long ago we learned that two starters on the 1991 and 1992 title teams, Christian Laettner and Brian Davis, were facing massive debt problems as a result of their failed company, Blue Devil Ventures.  This week Hurley’s horse farm, named Devil Eleven Farm and located in Ocala, Florida, was foreclosed upon after he stopped making payments on the 140-acre property in the spring of 2009.  Clearly both of these situations likely have something to do with the nationwide recession that began in late 2007, but we know some Kentucky and UNC fans somewhere out there who are very much enjoying this news.
3. Ex-Michigan State star and 1979 national champion Jay Vincent was arraigned yesterday on charges of defrauding investors of $2 million in an internet scam that convinced people to pay him to become home inspectors, where he pleaded not guilty.  Court records, however, show that a plea bargain may already be in the works.  He has until the end of the month to change his plea.
4. High School Hoop profiles one of the most well-known but not really behind-the-scenes players in the collegiate game: Worldwide Wes.  There’s not a lot of new information here, but it’s interesting to hear some of the top recruits in the class of 2011 talk about the influence (or lack thereof) of WWW on their recruitments.
5. St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin was a strong recruiter during his time at UCLA in the late 90s and early 2000s, as he put ten players into the NBA Draft during his seven years in Westwood.  So it should come as no surprise that he’s hit the ground running by earning a commitment from his first big name at SJU.  Maurice Harkless, a 6’7 forward from Queens who originally committed to UConn but later re-opened his commitment, could be a transformative recruit for Lavin’s new program.  If city kids start considering the Johnnies as a viable destination along with the standard regional powers such as UConn, Syracuse, Villanova and a few others, suddenly New York City might have its own college team again.