***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2013
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Brian Otskey is an RTC contributor.

The 2K Sports Classic benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer continues with four games at regional sites tonight.  Here’s your schedule/bracket, as well as one game you might want to check out.  All times eastern.

College of Charleston @ Maryland – 7 pm on ESPNU (**)

Cremins Will Face His Old Foe Williams Tonight

You just get the feeling that this is one of those Maryland teams that Gary Williams always finds a way to overachieve with. The Terrapins, picked sixth in the ACC preseason poll, are coming off a 105-76 rout of Seattle on Monday night. Jordan Williams led the folks from College Park with 17 points and 15 rebounds on 6-10 shooting while teammate Sean Mosley led all scorers with 21 points. Maryland also received a nice lift off the bench from freshmen Terrell Stoglin (15/5 assts) and Pe’Shon Howard (8 assists/3 steals). However, the game was incredibly sloppy on both sides. Maryland committed 29 turnovers to Seattle’s 27 for an astounding total of 56 in a forty-minute game. Against College of Charleston tonight, 20+ turnovers could cause problems for the Terps. Led by former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins, who led the Yellow Jackets to the 1990 Final Four, the Cougars have some key pieces back from last year’s 22-win team which knocked off #9 (at the time) North Carolina and also won at George Mason. Charleston’s leader is senior Andrew Goudelock, a contender for Southern Conference player of the year along with Noah Dahlman of Wofford. If you’ve heard of him, it’s probably because of the big time triple (28 feet away) he hit to send the game into overtime against UNC last season. Point guard Donavan Monroe (15/6 assists vs. UNC) and low post presence Jeremy Simmons (18/13 at George Mason) are the key players for Cremins’ team. Charleston averaged 75 PPG last year so you’d think they’d like to push the pace a little. For a team that scored that many points, their turnover average wasn’t bad at all last year (11.2 per game). The turnover battle is something to pay attention to tonight, especially considering what happened in Maryland’s first game. Though he led the team in turnovers last year, the loss of Greivis Vasquez may create a little uncertainty on the part of Maryland’s ball handlers early this year. A good matchup should be the one down low between Williams and Simmons. Williams has the height and weight advantage but Simmons can certainly hold his own on the glass and in the paint. If Williams has another big game, it’s hard to see Maryland losing at home even to a somewhat talented mid-major. For Charleston to pull the upset, Goudelock, Monroe and Simmons all have to be at their best. The Cougars also can’t allow Maryland to shoot over 50% from the floor as they did on Monday night. Defense, rebounding and turnover margin will be the keys for Bobby Cremins and his team if they hope to steal a road win against a storied ACC program. As for Maryland, another solid effort from the starters along with some positive contributions off the bench should be enough to earn a win.

1. Today is the basketball version of National Signing Day, inasmuch as the sport has such a thing.  Officially it’s the first day of a week-long signing period, but there’s virtually no drama this year as most of the elite players have already made their collegiate choices (23 of the top 25 players, according to this Sporting News article).  The two biggest names still on the board are 6’8 power forward DeAndre Daniels from Bradenton, Florida, and 6’10 power forward Cody Zeller, from Washington, Indiana (brother of Tyler and Luke).  Daniels is expected to wait until the spring signing period to make his choice but Zeller has scheduled a press conference on Thursday where he will choose between UNC, Indiana and Butler.  Scout has some interesting information available as to which conferences have the strongest aggregate classes thus far, and breaks down the classes for each school within each.
2. What will a thumping at the hands of the University of Indianapolis get ya?  How about a 5:30 am film session to see in living color all of your mistakes from the night before?  That fate befell Bruce Pearl’s Vols yesterday morning a few short hours after Indy walked out of Thompson-Boling Arena with a 79-64 win.  Obvious joke: did the Tennessee players refuse to acknowledge that it was actually them on the screen when Pearl asked them questions?
3. This is an absolute must-read from a guy that literally nothing in this sport gets past — Jeff Goodman’s 68 Things to Watch in the 2010-11 Season.  Goodman is one of the few in this business who, when he says something has a good chance of happening, we actually listen.  You should too.
4. CNNSI came through with its Crystal ball selections from its three primary CBB writers: Seth Davis, Luke Winn & Andy Glockner.  Look at Sexy Seth with the Gonzaga Final Four pick!  There’s a lot of great stuff in this article, so read it, but we’re especially loving Winn’s pick for Surprise Team, Glockner’s choice for Best Player Nobody Knows About, and Davis’ Flop Team.
5. More exhibition nonsense last night:  Syracuse got its revenge on last year’s nemesis, Le Moyne, 91-48, which clearly means that this year’s Orange squad is a lock for the Final Four since the 2009-10 edition could only muster the Sweet Sixteen.  SU hit 11-16 treys, which addresses one of their key questions going into this season.  Kansas also defeated Emporia State, 90-59, and Purdue beat Midwestern State, 78-58, last night.  As for games that count, the 2kSports CvC continues tonight at the four regional sites of Austin, College Park, Pittsburgh and Champaign.  We’ll have our SYT out later today for those.

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Mountain West Conferences and an occasional contributor.

To read the entire In Their Words series, click here.

Part Eight: MARKETING

Over the summer, we’ve spent time hearing about some of the next big-name recruits on their way to college basketball: Jared Sullinger and Harrison Barnes, Anthony Davis and Michael Gilchrist. We’ve heard the big-time schools announce their high profile games on their upcoming schedules: Kentucky going to the Maui Invitational and visiting North Carolina, Michigan State hosting Texas and going to Duke. But for the vast majority of Division I programs, they’ve been flying under the radar. There are at present 73 teams that participate in basketball in the six BCS conferences, but there are 347 total programs in Division I. Of those other 274 programs, there are certainly quite a few big-name programs: last year’s national runner-up Butler comes to mind immediately, as does Gonzaga, Memphis and a handful of other schools in conferences like the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West. But, we were also interested in how the other half (or really, how the other three-quarters) lives, so we spent some time talking to coaches, athletic directors and other people around the country affiliated with some of those other schools — those non-BCS schools, those “mid-majors” — and we asked them about how they recruit, how they create a schedule, how they market their programs, and quite a few other things. Over the next eight weeks, we’ll let them tell you their story, in their own words.

To begin, let me introduce and thank this week’s cast of characters:

• Andrew Roberts, Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information, Arkansas-Pine Bluff – Roberts runs a tight ship at UAPB as the sole full-time member of the Sports Information Department.
• Eric Brown, Assistant Athletic Communications Directory, Liberty – Brown is a graduate of Liberty University and former sports editor at the student newspaper, the Liberty Champion.
• Chris Lang, Writer, Lynchburg News & Advance: Lang has been the beat writer for Liberty University since 2005 after having spent eight years as the Sports Editor at the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff, Arizona.
• Jessica Dickson, Assistant Athletic Director for External Relations, UMKC – Dickson has been in her current position, where she oversees marketing and promotions for UMKC, for just over three years.
• Larry Williams, Athletic Director, Portland: Williams has been the AD at Portland for six years now following a five year stint as the head of licensing and product marketing at his alma mater Notre Dame. Williams was a two-time All-American offensive lineman with the Irish before starting 44 games in the NFL.
• Kevin Keys, Associate Athletic Director for External Operations, Liberty – Keys is a ’77 Liberty graduate who enters his sixth year back on campus in charge of Liberty’s licensing, promotions and marketing.
• Chris Caputo, Assistant Coach, George Mason – Caputo is entering his sixth season as an assistant coach for the Patriots after spending the previous three seasons as an administrative assistant and video coordinator under head coach Jim Larranaga.
• Eric Reveno, Head Coach, Portland – Reveno heads into his fifth season at Portland having turned around a program from a team that was 18-45 in his first two seasons to a team on the rise with a 40-24 record over the last two seasons. Reveno spent his previous nine seasons as an assistant at Stanford, his alma mater where he was a Pac-10 Conference All-Academic Team selection as a senior.

So far, in regards to marketing, we’ve touched on the differences in the size of athletic budgets and the size of the media markets between some rather disparate programs classified as mid-majors. But regardless of the size of the program or the size of the market, a big key for mid-major programs is to get consistent media coverage. Coverage from their local media not only can keep the program in the minds of their fans and keep them up to date, but it can also introduce the team to new fans. Not surprisingly, schools in smaller markets generally have an easier time of getting local media coverage.

Media Coverage, Especially at the Local Level, is Important

Andrew Roberts, Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information, Arkansas-Pine Bluff : Arkansas Pine Bluff is in a unique situation, because we have a local newspaper, the Pine Bluff Commercial, that does an outstanding job of covering the UAPB athletic department top-to-bottom, all sports, they all receive excellent coverage in our local paper. And then, there is a paper in Little Rock, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and they cover football and men’s basketball extensively throughout the year. They’ll assign us a beat writer and he’ll cover us. The coverage was great.

Eric Brown, Assistant Athletic Communications Directory, Liberty: Our main media affiliates would be our local TV station here in Lynchburg, WSET. They do a good job of covering us since they’re right here in our area, and then our local newspaper Lynchburg News & Advance, they’re real good also. They’ve got a beat writer that covers us all the time.

Chris Lang, Writer, Lynchburg News & Advance: With basketball, we’re trying to cover all the Big South road games this year, where in the past we had covered mostly just home games. We don’t do a ton with the out-of-conference road games, because honestly Liberty is very unlikely to win many of those. I mean, if they go out to Florida, what’s the point of us traveling down there to watch them lose by 35 points or something. We do try to treat it like it’s a big time program, it’s the one program that’s right in our city and our backyard. We cover Virginia, Virginia Tech as well, but they are both an hour, an hour and a half away. Liberty is a growing program, it’s grown a lot in the five years I’ve been here for sure, it’s grown big-time, so we try to treat it as such.

Brown: Outside of that, there’s not a whole lot that will cover us regularly. The thing is, Charlottesville’s not too far away, but they’re gonna be focused on UVA. Roanoke is close, but they’ll be focused on Virginia Tech. So we’re kind of always competing with them, or in their shadow a little bit, because we may not get looked at as much in those areas because the focus is on Virginia and Virginia Tech. We’ll have a few other outlets cover us from time-to-time based on what we’re doing, but mostly it is the TV station and the newspaper.

In larger markets, getting consistent media coverage can be much harder, but it does happen.

Jessica Dickson, Assistant Athletic Director for External Relations, UMKC: Surprisingly enough, we are extremely lucky with the media coverage we have. Blair Kerkhoff (Kansas City Star) is who covers us the most and he really does seem to see the importance and the value of promoting UMKC, because we are the only Division I basketball program in Kansas City. He does a great job covering us. Now, where maybe Kansas or Kansas State or Missouri, the three Big 12 schools closest to us, don’t need to pitch stories to the local newspaper or to the radio stations or TV stations, that’s the difference with us, we do need to give Blair a call and say “hey we’ve got this student-athlete with this great story, can we get you in touch with the coach to talk about it”. And we work around his schedule and absolutely understand that where we thought something would run this week, it might get bumped because of something else and run the following week. But beyond the print, our media partner as far as broadcasting is Sports Radio 810, a fabulous all-sports radio station here in Kansas City. They cover us wonderfully, not only is that the home of our men’s basketball games, but our color commentator is Steven St. John, who hosts the morning show for the station and he’s a UMKC grad and covers us really well. They include us in their SportsCenter update, when they’re talking about what’s going on in the city. If we’ve got a game coming up that night, they’ll make sure to plug us. Anytime that we’ve got a game coming up where we want to get one of our coaches on the air, they’re more than happy to get them on for an interview. And then we’re extremely lucky in Kansas City to have a 24-hour local sports TV station called Metro Sports, they’re owned by Time-Warner cable and that’s been our television home since we went Division I and they’ll televise 15-17 of our men’s and women’s basketball games, and we get our coaches out to the studio on a weekly basis to do shows from their studio. So, we, for a mid-major school, get fabulous media coverage, especially when compared with some other schools.

While local media coverage is very important, getting on national television on a semi-regular basis is a goal as well for many of these programs, not only as a way to get the university’s name and brand out there, but as a way to build awareness for potential recruits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some of you may have noticed that we at RTC have been pretty busy getting lately. For those of you who have been keeping up to date on everything happening at RTC we would like to thank you. For those slackers who like to procrastinate in getting ready for the season (and you know who you are), we have put together this not-so-brief but comprehensive guide to get you ready for the season.

The RTC Top 25: Hard to pick against Duke this year, as all five of our voters were in agreement that Coach K’s Blue Devils are the team to beat.

• RTC Top 25: Preseason Edition

Tweeting the Preview: Those of you who follow us on Twitter (@rushthecourt) are familiar with this feature, but for the past two weeks we have been Tweeting our rankings counting down every single Division I team in reverse order.

• Tweeting the Preview: #20-1
• Tweeting the Preview: #44-21
• Tweeting the Preview: #68-45
• Tweeting the Preview: #92-69
• Tweeting the Preview: #116-93
• Tweeting the Preview: #140-117
• Tweeting the Preview: #164-141
• Tweeting the Preview: #188-165
• Tweeting the Preview: #212-189
• Tweeting the Preview: #236-213
• Tweeting the Preview: #260-237
• Tweeting the Preview: #284-261
• Tweeting the Preview: #308-285
• Tweeting the Preview: #332-309
• Tweeting the Preview: #345-333

Preseason Bracketology: In conjunction with our run-down of the top 345 teams in Division 1 we also bring you the first of many installments of RTC Bracketology. [Ed. Note: If the seed doesn’t correlate with rankings just remember that just because a team has a higher seed doesn’t mean that they are better just that they have a better resume.]

• Preseason Bracketology: 11.02.10

RTC Conference Primers: Our countdown of every conference in Division I basketball with a breakdown of each (top players, teams, and what to watch for).

1. Big 10
2. Big East
3. Big 12
4. ACC
5. SEC
6. Pac-10
7. Atlantic 10
8. Mountain West
9. Conference USA
10. Missouri Valley
11. Colonial
12. WCC
13. Horizon
14. WAC
15. MAAC
16. Southern
17. Big West
18. Big Sky
19. MAC
20. OVC
21. Sun Belt
22. Atlantic Sun
23. Southland
24. Ivy
25. America East
26. Summit
27. Northeast
28. Patriot
29. Big South
30. MEAC
31. SWAC

Where 2010-11 Happens: Our countdown of 30 things (via YouTube) to get us even more pumped up for the upcoming season.

• It’s easiest to view all thirty clips in one place here.  And if you’re not excited about the season after watching that, well, you probably need to stick with arguing about the BCS.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the season officially getting underway last night we are unveiling a new feature. Along with our usual After The Buzzer where we break down the night’s action we are also reaching out across the Internet to find the best team-specific analyses of the games to give you more of a local flavor of the action. We have already reached out to several sites who have agreed to participate, which you will see once we get more than four games in a night, but if you are interested in participating in this feature and getting your site linked to contact us at rushthecourt@gmail.com.

Top 25 Games

• #4 Pittsburgh 83, Rhode Island 75: Jamie Dixon and the Panthers overcame a difficult opening night challenge from a solid URI team behind 24 points from Brad Wanamaker and 22 points from Ashton Gibbs. (Panther Digest)
• #16 Illinois 79, UC-Irvine 65: The Illini were not as impressive as their fans hoped for, but they were buoyed by Brandon Paul, who added 18 points off the bench. (Hail to the Orange)
• Indianapolis 79, #20 Tennessee 65: After an ugly exhibition loss Bruce Pearl has a lot of questions to answer before the season officially begins for his team. (Rocky Top Talk)*
• #25 Texas 83, Navy 52: The Longhorns looked impressive in their debut, but Rick Barnes still has plenty of questions after the season-opener. (Burnt Orange Nation)

Other Notable Games

• Maryland 105, Seattle 76: After struggling for 15 minutes, the Terrapins won fairly easily thanks to some solid defense and a strong effort from Jordan Williams, who had 17 points and 15 rebounds. (Testudo Times)
• Indiana 78, Ferris State 65 (OT): On a night where the Volunteers were embarrassed, the Hoosiers required a 4-point play by a freshman and the officials waiving off a shot at buzzer before pulling away in overtime. (Inside the Hall)*

* Denotes exhibition games

1. Unless Iowa State wins an appeal, Royce White will not play for the Cyclones this season. Having never played a game for Minnesota after signing with them last year, White is more famous for his method of leaving teams than what he can actually do when playing for one. White and ISU were hoping that the absence of court time last season would allow him to transfer to Ames without sitting out a year, but the NCAA was having none of that.
2. An alum of San Diego State is threatening charges against unnamed current Aztec ballers who he says jumped him outside of a San Diego nightclub on Sunday morning. As the linked FanHouse report explains, though, the alleged victim has presented only some scrapes on his body as evidence, and so far there’s been no mention of witnesses actually fingering any players as responsible for those injuries. Until that happens, we’ll assume that SDSU will begin the season with their roster intact.
3. Villanova freshman JayVaughn Pinkston was reportedly involved in an incident on Sunday morning that unfortunately might not go away as easily. Pinkston was allegedly involved in an altercation that led to an assault report and police departments talking to each other about whatever happened in Upper Merion Township. The school is now investigating. Understandably, head coach Jay Wright is withholding comment pending the outcome of that inquiry, but the SI.com report from this encounter sounds a bit more troubling than the San Diego incident from the same night described in #2.
4. UCLA’s Reeves Nelson was impressive in the Bruins’ first exhibition game against Westmont on Thursday, contributing 20 points and 10 boards. The next day, the sophomore woke up with what has been diagnosed as a strained hip flexor, and he’ll miss UCLA’s final exhibition tonight against Cal State Los Angeles. Freshman Matt Carlino will also miss the game with a concussion. Nelson should be ready for their first official game against Cal State Northridge.
5. Illinois is enjoying some lofty predictions for this season [ed. note: how sweet is it now to say the words, “this season?”] but everyone knows those expectations can only be met if senior Demetri McCamey has the kind of season of which everyone thinks he’s capable, including his coaches. The Rockford Register Star explains how McCamey considers his final season a chance to “make up for the last three years.”

Year the Fourth.  Welcome to the fourth season of Rush the Court’s continuing coverage of college basketball.  If you’ve lurked around these parts before, you already know that our After the Buzzer (ATB) feature is something we try to do most every weeknight of the season and quite a few of the weekends — pretty much any night there are nationally-interesting games going on somewhere.  If you’re new to this joint, the concept behind this feature is that we want to prepare you, Mr. College Basketball Citizen of the World, to face a new day armed with the knowledge you need in order cast forth into a hostile environment of hoops poseurs, charlatans and frauds.  We’re going to be experimenting with this piece over the next couple of weeks as the fresh, shiny new season gets underway, so let us know in the comments if there’s something you find particularly interesting or sucky.

Scotty Hopson Must Lead His Team This Year (UTsports.com)

Your Watercooler Moment: D2 Shows It Can Ball With the Big Boys (or, at least the SEC). There were three games that counted tonight in the 2kSports Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, but for realz games that counted in the standings were actually not the most newsworthy part of tonight.  Rather, it was Exhibition Madness tonight, as no fewer than two SEC teams dropped games against D2 opponents and a couple of other BCS teams required a total of three overtimes to sneak past two more.  The biggest “upset” took place in Knoxville, as the University of Indianapolis (Butler, is that you?) whomped Tennessee 79-64 behind a 60% shooting second half where the visiting team nearly doubled up the Vols.  The Indy backcourt of  Adrian Moss and Darius Adams torched UT, going for 47 combined points and getting to the line an astounding thirty times.  Meanwhile, over at Auburn, Tony Barbee’s new team shot 7-20 from the line as the Tigers dropped a close one against Columbus (AL) State, 54-52, a team picked to finish twelfth in its thirteen-team D2 division.  Not to be outdone, state rival Alabama was taken to double-overtime prior to pulling out a 73-68 win against Alabama-Huntsville.  It’s been a number of years since we have actually been able to state without equivocation that the SEC was a legitimate basketball league, but despite what columnist John Clay says, if tonight is any indication we may still be a ways off.

Moving away from tonight’s SEC disaster for a moment, Indiana stormed back from a 13-point deficit with seven minutes remaining against Ferris (MI) State, converting a gigantic four-point play by freshman Victor Olapido and surviving a buzzer-beater by FSU that was waived off to win 78-65 in overtime.  It’s not as if anyone in Indiana is expecting IU to compete for a Big Ten championship this season, but Hoosier faithful are expecting improvement.  Sneaking by D2 teams — even good ones — by the hair of your chin isn’t exactly inspiring the faith.

Does It Matter? Enhhhh… probably not much.  The past few years have been lightly littered with examples of good teams dropping games in the exhibition season.  In 2009, Syracuse lost to Le Moyne — the Orange went on to become a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament; in 2007, #8 Michigan State was shocked by Grand Valley State while Ohio State lost to Findlay — that season the Spartans went to the Sweet Sixteen while the Bucks won the NIT.  There are undoubtedly other examples over the years, but we’re inclined to believe that the only real lesson learned here is that the truly elite (national-title caliber) teams do not lose these games while very good ones sometimes do.  But we’re not sure that anybody actually believes this year’s Tennessee team (and most definitely, Auburn) is a legitimate threat to go deep in March anyway.

Oh Right, Real Games.  The 2kSports CvC began today with four games at home sites around the country, keeping in mind that the four host schools this week are already slotted into the semifinals round next week in NYC.  We’re biting our tongue once again about the absurdity of these games starting four days prior to everyone else, but hey, it’s college basketball on the television and we’ll take it.  The best game of the evening was Rhode Island visiting #5 Pittsburgh and giving the Panthers pretty much all they wanted before succumbing down the stretch on FTs and a key block by Gilbert Brown.  The Pitt backcourt of Ashton Gibbs and Brad Wanamaker was outstanding, going 15-28 from the field to combine for 46/7/11 assts, but URI’s ability to bomb the threes (14-32) very nearly allowed the Rams to pull off the road upset.  We have faith that Pitt will be very good this year, but URI with its four seniors is an intriguing team to watch in the Atlantic 10.  In the other games, #16 Illinois rode reserve guard Brandon Paul’s scorching shooting from deep (6-8) to a huge first half lead and never looked back, winning 79-65, while Texas woke up in front of about 150 people in Austin to obliterate Navy 83-52 behind Jordan Hamilton’s extremely effective night (26/10).  Tell us if you’ve heard this one before — the Horns dominated the boards (+20) while throwing up a house of bricks at the foul line (19-34).  In the last game, Maryland and Seattle ran up and down and all over the court at the Comcast Center with the Terps easily prevailing 105-76 despite an alarming 29 turnovers.  Normally, we’d talk about what the next matchups in the bracket will be on Wednesday night, but that’s not useful here as they’ve already been established for months.

Tonight’s Quick Hits.

• ESPN’s New Home Court of College Hoops Ad.  Kinda diggin’ it.  Especially the last few seconds.  (anybody got a clip?)
• Jordan Hamilton. Looked like the player we were promised last year, smoothly dunking and shooting his way to a 26/10 night.  If he plays like that all season, he’s an AA.
• Jordan Williams.  While we’re talking about Jordans blowing up, Maryland’s star dropped 17/15 on Seattle and will need a lot more of those this year.
• Scotty Hopson.  The anti-Jordan with three points, three turnovers and one assist in a five-foul fiasco that didn’t actually count, yet gives us pause about believing that the talented player will ever make the leap to stardom at UT.
• Cory Joseph & Tristan Thompson.  The talented Texas freshmen showed flashes of brilliance mixed with periods of looking completely lost, but if Rick Barnes can bring them along slowly, this will be a very good duo in Austin.
• Victor Olapido.  Underhyped IU freshman saved the Hoosiers from an embarrassing exhibition loss by scoring the last eight points in regulation and providing a key block with two seconds left.  Rare to see such clutchness out of a rook.
• Talib Zanna.  Starting for injured Pitt forward Nasir Robinson, the 6’9 Zanna may have Wally Pipp’d him with 9/11 in his collegiate debut.
• Texas Fans.  Look, we know you’re a football school, but come on… the sparse attendance for tonight’s game vs. Navy was ridiculous.

Tweet of the Night.  Was it real or was it fake?  The Twitterverse went a little nutty when a tweet went across the wires earlier tonight where Duke super-recruit Austin Rivers supposedly wrote the following during the Indiana-Ferris State game:

He immediately retracted the statement, saying that his Twitter feed had been hacked by someone.  Cynics such as this one have noted that all of Rivers’ preceding and subsequent tweets came from an iPhone, suggesting that either Rivers himself actually made the offending tweet or someone picked up his phone and started playing while he was away from it.  Either way, we’re really, really, really hoping that Duke and Rivers somehow gets to play IU and “Creme” next year in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge or elsewhere (we know, extremely unlikely).

We’re back with the second consecutive year of officially losing our minds, but they say the first step toward healing is recognizing the problem.  As of 11 am EDT last Monday, there were 345 hours until tipoff of four games of actual, it-counts college basketball on Opening Night, Nov. 8.  So… beginning that morning, we started releasing our rankings of every Division I team from worst to first as tweets on the social networking platform known as Twitter (you may have heard of it).  We’ll release one team preview every single hour from now until Opening Night, and in case you’re not following us over there, we’ll put the updated list here each night for your review in aggregate.  The key to tweeting, of course, is conciseness, so we’ll try our best to relay some relevant information on each and every team in the requisite 140 characters or less, and hopefully some of you will be paying attention along the way.  Here are Monday’s entries (#20-#1).

For all previous TTP posts, click here.

(major h/t to Matt Patton for his assistance researching and writing these Tweets)

But first, you must travel.

A long and difficult road…

You shall see things wonderful to tell.

You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton-house.

And oh, so many startlements!

I cannot tell you how long this road shall be.

But fear not the obstacles in your path

For fate has vouchsafed your reward.

Though the road may wind, and yea, your hearts grow weary,

Still…ye shall follow them.

Even unto your salvation.

–The Blind Seer, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

In mere moments, our beloved countdown clock at the top right will again touch down at the all-zeroes, and the 2010-11 college basketball season will have begun. At RTC we use the clock to count down to six different points of a season — Midnight Madness, the opening night tip, Selection Sunday, the first NCAA Tournament game tip, the Final Four, and the championship game. Tonight we will reset the clock for the third of those, and even though we don’t believe in summer breaks around here, with the opening tip tonight, RTC will officially have begun its fourth season.

At the risk of imitating the boilerplate-speak that ends just about any flight on any airline, we have to say this right now — we know you don’t have to come here. College basketball blogs spring up and fade away at a shocking rate. Though none of us (at least according to the folks down in RTC Human Resources) ever actually wore a tin foil hat and/or lived in a parent’s basement, this venture started with one guy and a old laptop, then two guys, then a third, then 35. This particular head of the hoops blog hydra has become a far different organism than we ever thought it would, and we know whom we have to thank for that. We would still probably be doing this if you weren’t around, but in our view this all amounts to just about zilch if you don’t tell us what you’re thinking, if you don’t do us the honor of participating in the conversation. Over the past four seasons, our comments sections (and Twitter mentions column) has hosted coaches, current and former players, fellow bloggers, professional sportswriters, TV presenters, and, most of all, general fans of this wonderful game. That last category encompasses all the others, and is therefore the most important one. No matter your name, occupation, level of sanity (we’re kidding), or socioeconomic status, no matter if you have something negative or positive to say , we hope you’ll keep coming back, and keep telling us your thoughts. Welcome to our fourth shot at this…and thank you for being here.

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It took 345 hours but we just wrapped up our second annual Tweeting the Preview series, and unsurprisingly, Duke is the choice for everyone here at RTC to repeat as national champions.  In the interest of transparency, we’ll be publishing our Top 25 each Monday with the editors’ ballots attached so that if you’re wondering how on earth your favorite team could be ranked so low, you’ll know exactly who is responsible.  This will also be the official RTC ballot that we submit each week to the Blogpoll folks, assuming someone is running that again this year.  We’ll also try to note any trends and interesting items each week to give the poll a little more context, and that will be located below the poll and after the jump each week.  To see how we did last year, check out our 2009-10 preseason poll — some good (Butler, WVU); some not (UNC, Texas).

QnD Analysis.

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