As mentioned in today’s Morning Five, the ACC Office reported the combined score of Duke and North Carolina‘s last 75 games to be 5,858-5,857 with Duke holding the slim lead. This is false. Apparently the office missed a game somewhere because the actual statistic is Duke leading 5,867-5,834. To be clear, the stat is still insane. North Carolina still holds the overall lead at 38-37.

UNC Holds a Slight Edge Against Duke Over the Past 75 Games (Getty Images/P. Williams)

Taking the statistic back to it’s logical conclusion (the beginning of the calendar year of 1980), the two rivals have played 78 games. North Carolina won 40; Duke won 38. The cumulative score is still owned by the Blue Devils with a five-point advantage.

In the end the reported statistic was wrong, but the rivalry has been incredibly competitive over the last three decades. Oh, and the two teams only finished out of the AP Top 25 eleven years combined (five years for North Carolina and six years for Duke). Of those years Duke finished in the top five according to AP voters 12 times, and North Carolina finished in the top five 14 times. That’s pretty unbelievable.

1. Last week at this time, California sat at #30 in the RPI, one of the factors that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee uses to determine at-large participants. However, after losing at home to Arizona on Saturday, its RPI fell to #48, giving us an excellent example of just how tenuous of a claim Pac-12 schools have toward an NCAA Tournament at-large bid. The win did bump Arizona up to #62 from #85, while Washington, the conference leader, still sits at #72. For perspective, an RPI in the 30s will very likely get you in, while pushing up into the 40s will leave you wondering on Selection Sunday eve. In short, odds are getting stronger that the only team that will be truly comfortable when they tune into CBS on Selection Sunday is the winner of the conference tournament.
2. We gave our Pac-12 Player of the Week award to Joshua Smith for his big weekend in Washington, but the Pac-12 handed out the hardware to Arizona senior guard Kyle Fogg, a worthy recipient based on his well-rounded weekend leading the Wildcats to a road sweep of the Bay Area schools. It is Fogg’s first ever POTW honor, and the 83^rd all-time selection for an Arizona player.
3. Yesterday we mentioned the injuries that Cal’s Allen Crabbe and Harper Kamp suffered in their game against Arizona State on Saturday, but today Mike Montgomery confirmed that the injuries aren’t anything to worry about and that both players will practice and play this weekend when the Golden Bears head to the Los Angeles schools. Meanwhile, Arizona State junior guard Trent Lockett will likely return to action this week for the Sun Devils after missing six games with a badly sprained right ankle. The team’s leading scorer took over the point guard duties for Herb Sendek following the team’s dismissal of Keala King, but may be able to return to more of a wing role now that junior guard Chris Colvin has had some success running the point. Nevertheless, ASU has gone 1-5 in Lockett’s absence.
4. The Pac-12 is probably no different than other leagues around the country in that fans from one end of the conference to the other think the officiating, um, isn’t very good. Oregon fans are the latest to take up the call for better officiating, following their loss to Colorado Saturday night on a controversial last-second foul call. Conference commissioner Larry Scott made it a priority to work on improving the work of Pac-12 football officials last year, and here’s hoping a similar initiative is in the works for the basketball side of things. However, there is a significant barrier in the way: Basketball officials aren’t tied to or affiliated with any one conference, but rather work a variety of games with teams from different conferences involved. But, to this point, Scott has worked wonders in his time with the conference, so hope remains that he can work on improving the state of officiating in Pac-12 basketball.
5. And lastly, speaking of the commissioner, he was awarded with a contract extension to 2016 yesterday, unanimously approved by all 12 university presidents. In his first two years as the Commish, he has expanded the conference to 12 schools (and twice almost bumped it up to 16), scored a huge new television deal with ESPN and Fox that begins next year and will include a Pac-12 television network, and just generally done a great job marketing and promoting the conference not only around the West, but nationally and even internationally. Now, USC fans may not be all that enamored of Scott, but the rest of the conference seems to be mighty pleased with the way things are being done under the new commissioner.

1. Now this is just cruel: Oklahoma State guard Keiton Page has a nasty shiner after taking a knee to the face from Baylor’s Quincy Miller. Funny story and no big deal — except for the fact that OSU has already a) lost three scholarship players to injury and transfer for the season and b) played against Baylor with Philip Jurick and Cezar Guerrero out. Jurick is sitting out with a foot injury, while Guerrero is indefinitely suspended. Travis Ford absolutely, positively cannot lose Page for any period of time, or else he may find himself running the point next week. The good news is that Page doesn’t sound like he’s injured at all. Hopefully for OSU, it stays that way.
2. Missouri survived a nailbiter at Oklahoma on Monday night, an impressive feat considering the whirlwind weekend the Tigers experienced. Part of that may have to do with Frank Haith‘s decision to keep his team in a hotel after their game against Kansas on Saturday. As a basketball fan, it’s nice to know the Tigers were safe and comfortable in the friendly confines of a quiet hotel room. No trouble, no distractions. On the other hand, you’ve got to feel for them a little bit as a group of college students. Nights like those don’t come very often. Then again, neither do seasons like this, so Missouri’s players better savor every minute of it.
3. You could call Kansas‘ weekend a whirlwind, too, after the Jayhawks blew a late lead at Mizzou Arena to lose the Border War Vol. I. But Bill Self’s not about to panic: “We’ve been here before,” Self said. The Jayhawks have shared or won the last seven Big 12 titles, so one road loss hardly makes or breaks their season. Now, it’s time for them to move on. “We’ve got to bounce back Wednesday,” point guard Tyshawn Taylor said. Somehow, we think KU will find a way to recover.
4. Besides KU and MU, Baylor is the other team in the Big 12 race at this point. After that undefeated start, the Bears have actually fallen off the radar a little bit. Kansas asserted its dominance with a win in Lawrence, but BU has a chance to make a statement at home this Wednesday night. Scott Drew is saying all the right things: “Until someone beats them, definitely it is their league or has been their league,” he said. We’ll find out this week who’s league it is. Can Baylor hang with Kansas on Wednesday and Missouri on Saturday?
5. Talk about having some guts. During the Kiss Cam at a Kansas State game this weekend, a guy proposed on camera to his girlfriend. This happens all the time at games, but this is particularly noteworthy because it happened on the Kiss Cam. With only a few seconds to make a move, this guy actually made it happen. Kudos. And she said yes. That’s more than this guy can say.

1. Alabama head coach Anthony Grant suspended junior forward Tony Mitchell indefinitely on Monday due to “conduct detrimental to the team.” Grant said that the decision came after “an accumulation” of incidents. On Saturday, Mitchell came off the bench for the first time this season but still played 31 minutes in a double-overtime win over Ole Miss. The Crimson Tide face rival Auburn on Tuesday and Tiger head coach Tony Barbee said the suspension “doesn’t mean a thing.”
2. More than a few column inches have been dedicated to Kentucky’s SEC schedule, starting with the lack of a Thursday-Saturday scenario and finishing with the Wildcats’ first nine league games featuring only one RPI top 50 opponent (home vs Alabama). Starting with tonight’s top-10 showdown with Florida, Kentucky will face six top-50 foes and #51 (Ole Miss) in its last seven games. “I’m going to talk to them today about making sure we are humble,” head coach John Calipari said in his weekly teleconference. “Let’s understand why we’ve been winning and let’s understand where we have to take this.”
3. The best SEC freshman not residing in Lexington, Florida’s Bradley Beal, has proved repeatedly to be the real deal and he again showed why in the Gators second half rally against Vanderbilt on Saturday. He scored five straight points and 14 of his 16 in the last 12 minutes of the game. In addition to his scoring, Beal ranks as the top rebounding guard in the conference and he credits Billy Donovan for making him work on his dedication to rebounding, “It’s always in my mind, because I always get on myself because I’m like, ‘Dang, I need to rebound or coach is going to get on me,’” Beal said. “Coach has always been hectic on me about going to rebound, going to rebound. I’ve just been trying to take that into my mentality and try my best to rebound.”
4. In his weekly teleconference, Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury offered up some positive news on freshman DeVille Smith who had missed the Bulldogs’ last four games and was hospitalized for headaches, dizziness and memory loss for the second time this season. Stansbury said Smith returned to school on Monday, but was not ready to project when Smith might return to the team.  “Right now I’m not even concerned about the basketball part of it,” he said. “That’s not even a concern, when he’ll play. I have no idea when that’ll happen. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
5. By virtue of a loss at LSU, CBSSports.com special contributor Jerry Palm placed Arkansas as one of his “Weekend Losers” as the Razorbacks fell to 0-6 on the road. Arkansas has only one more road game against a top-100 opponent, its season finale at Mississippi State, but they can get off the schneid on Wednesday in Athens against Georiga.

1. ESPN: First, I wanted to start off with one of the more insane statistics I’ve heard in a while. According to the ACC office, the cumulative score of the last 75 Duke–North Carolina games is 5,858 to 5,857 in favor of the Blue Devils. One point separates them. The series is just as tight over that same stretch with the Tar Heels holding onto a slim 38-37 lead. Basically, this rivalry is insanely competitive and played at a very high level (the last time one of the two schools wasn’t on the top seed line at the Big Dance was in 2003).
2. Washington Post: Alex Len is coming around to ACC play after strong games against Miami and North Carolina. He struggled early in conference play, largely because of poor defense and lackluster conditioning. But Mark Turgeon’s strategy to try to make Len more confident (along with his workouts) has definitely paid off. Maryland may not be a very good ACC team this year, but it’s impossible to argue that the Terrapins aren’t competitive.
3. ACC Sports Journal: No one questions Tony Bennett‘s coaching. But partially due to his style of play, partially due to local recruiting rivals (Georgetown, Maryland, and Virginia Tech) and partially due to the program’s relative lack of prestige, there’s a very legitimate question about whether Bennett will be able to recruit and keep top area talent. It doesn’t help that four of his “Six Shooters” (Bennett’s first class) departed early. That said, if Bennett can bring talent to his system, the Cavaliers should be able to become a perennial ACC contender.
4. Oxford Public Ledger: I thought this article best captured the Blue Devils’ struggles against Miami. That game also reactivated my Reggie Johnson man-crush. Seriously, why did the basketball gods have to hurt his knees and keep him from getting in better shape? Back to the article, what’s especially interesting is Duke’s performance on the road versus at Cameron Indoor. Basically, the Blue Devils are playing significantly better on the road (they didn’t play Florida State and Virginia, two of the best defensive teams in the country on the road, but still). Duke needs a leader to step up and motivate this team to fight through every possession. It was abundantly clear that Duke was the better team on both ends of the floor in the second half against Miami, but it ran out of gas down the stretch.
5. Raleigh Telegram: Lefty Driesell is back in the news. This time it’s to dispute an account (which has since been corrected) in Sam Walker’s ACC Basketball. The book described a scene after Dean Smith convinced one of Driesell’s recruits to attend North Carolina instead of Davidson. Walker wrote that Smith offered his hand and Driesell spit in it. Driesell is emphatic that he did not spit. The other interesting anecdote from the book DG Martin brings up is about the South Carolina – Maryland blowout, which was called off because of a bench-clearing brawl with five minutes left to play. Interesting stuff.

EXTRA: Drew Cannon of Basketball Prospectus developed a fool-proof system for filling out the NCAA Tournament bubble with RPI and KenPom rankings: Add them together. It’s so simple it’s beautiful. It’s also quite accurate, never missing more than three teams.

1. Adam Zagoria came out with his Big East All-Rookie Team for this year and while some may say it seems a bit early to be locking in what are traditionally postseason honors, how can one not want to talk about the “Diaper Dandies” of this league?  Depth of talent has long been a trademark of the Big East and it is difficult to recall a season in which so many newcomers have played such integral roles on their teams.  This is due in some part to the fact that the conference underwent a youth movement coming into the year with many teams restocking with big freshman classes.  Handicapping the Big East coming into the year proved particularly difficult given the youth factor presented by many teams in the league.  This is also why it is not surprising that some of the more experienced teams, particularly teams with multiple key junior and senior leaders such as Syracuse, Georgetown and Marquette, are finding higher ground in the standings while the youngest teams such as St. John’s, Rutgers and Providence have displayed predictable inconsistency.  However, as illustrated by Zagoria’s list, squads up and down the conference have fantastic building blocks for the future getting valuable experience on the court this year.
2. Big East weekly honors time again and it is difficult to find a more deserving Player of the Week than Pittsburgh’s Tray Woodall.  The fact that Woodall went off last week to the tune of 26.5 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game would be enough to merit consideration, but the numbers are vastly overwhelmed by Woodall’s overall contribution to winning basketball. The Panthers have won four straight games since his return and have thereby pulled their season out of the dumpster.  In the spirit of the Big East’s depth of youth, it is fitting that the conference named Co-Rookies of the Week for the first time since 2005-06 in Louisville’s Chane Behanan and Notre Dame’s Pat Connaughton.  Both players hit for 23 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in single games last week. Honor Roll recipients were: Notre Dame’s Eric Atkins who had 18 points, five assists and four rebounds in a big win over Marquette; West Virginia’s Darryl Bryant who averaged 23.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 4.5 assists including a 32-point torching of Providence in an overtime victory; Providence’s Gerard Coleman who averaged 22.5 points and six rebounds for the week including a career-high 30 in the loss to West Virginia; St. John’s D’Angelo Harrison who filled it up with two-game averages of 26.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.0 assists; and Georgetown big man Henry Sims who averaged 13.0 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.0 assists in a 2-0 week for the Hoyas.
3. The latest installment of the Top 25 came out yesterday and there was not much movement at the top as numbers one through six remained unchanged, including Big East leader No. 2 Syracuse (23-1).  Georgetown (18-4) hopped up two spots to No. 12 after earning two victories last week.  Marquette (20-5) went 1-1 last week but slid three notches to No. 18, while Louisville (19-5), winners of five in a row on the heels of last night’s drubbing of Connecticut, suddenly find themselves surging as well as back in the rankings at No. 24. That rounds out the Big East’s representation in the poll, but perhaps not for long as Notre Dame stands next in line at 26^th with the 83 votes they received.
4. While Notre Dame is certainly savoring every minute of their shorthanded success this season, steps were taken yesterday to try to lock in some experienced depth for next year as the Irish applied for rare sixth years of eligibility for injured players Tim Abromaitis and Scott Martin. As the Chicago Tribune’s Brian Hamilton points out, when evaluating for a sixth year the NCAA normally focuses on players who have missed two full years due to injury.  That is not the case for either Abromaitis, who was suspended for four games and played in two games this year before tearing his ACL, or Martin, who sat out a year due to transfer (from Purdue) in addition to missing this season with a torn ACL of his own. However there are mitigating factors in both cases that Notre Dame hopes will tip the scales in its favor. As Hamilton also points out, should the Irish secure both players for next year it will take them over the NCAA’s 13-scholarship limit, so other roster changes in the form of players paying their own way or leaving would need to be made to ensure compliance.
5. You have to love how coaches are always coaching, motivating, and working the psyches of their players and perhaps always paranoid, invariably looking at chicken salad but seeing chicken you-know-what instead.  Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim (a.k.a Jimmy Brackets) provided some tournament analysis saying there is too much parity to define any clear cut deep-run favorites.  As for his own team, the 23-1 squad that is ranked second in the country, the one that is arguably the deepest team in the country, and the one that has a #1 seed in its sights, Boeheim says he is concerned about three-point shooting based on the Orange’s recent poor performances beyond the arc.  Hey, in true head coaching form, Boeheim has to find something to pick on, right?  The fact of the matter is if there is any team built both for the long haul of the regular season and the do-or-die tournament format, it is Syracuse.  They have experience at every position and can exploit matchup issues with their surplus of depth.  Furthermore, the Orange are a team that can impose their will defensively with a zone that coaches who play against it every year have trouble preparing for, much less those who might be faced with a day to figure it out during tournament play.

1. Alabama star forward Tony Mitchell was suspended indefinitely on Monday by head coach Anthony Grant, who did not elaborate on specific causes other than to say that it wasn’t the result of a specific action but a series of transgressions. The junior wing who averages 13/7 on the season picked a tough time to fail to come through for his team, as the Crimson Tide travels to Auburn tonight and LSU on Saturday. Sitting firmly on the early February bubble, Alabama cannot afford to lose either game against two lower-tier SEC teams without one of its two best players in the lineup.
2. From a player forced to sit to a coach choosing to do so, College of Charleston head man Bobby Cremins opened up Monday about his recent leave of absence from the team. Citing doctor’s orders, the 64-year old coach said that he was running himself into the ground: “I got physically exhausted, fatigued and lacked the necessary energy to coach our team. My doctor advised me to take an immediate medical leave of absence, which I did.” Coaches are competitive and stressed-out people in general, so it probably didn’t help matters that Cremins’ team got off to a 9-1 start this season before dropping eight of their next 11 games. Reading between the lines a bit in Cremins’ statement to the media, he didn’t sound like someone ready to stop coaching — let’s hope he gets his energy back in time to lead CofC to a run in the Southern Conference Tournament next month.
3. If you were like most of America, you didn’t know Duke had lost another home game until sometime yesterday given that Miami’s overtime victory over the Blue Devils finished as most people were either en route or settling into their Super Bowl parties. One man who knew it all too well and no doubt carried it with him into a sleepless night on Sunday was Mike Krzyzewski. Already having assailed his team in the postgame interview for a perceived lack of effort, the venerable coach on Monday took to the airwaves on 99.9 FM The Fan in Raleigh to further chastise his team for not “playing hard” during parts of the loss to Miami. As we all know, Duke’s ridiculous success has always been predicated on its tough man-to-man defense; and its defensive success has derived from equal parts talent and effort. This year’s defense, however, is one of the worst the Blue Devils have fielded since Chris Collins and Jeff Capel were hoisting shots at the rim rather than dry erasers at the white board. Coach K cannot change the talent part of his defensive problem overnight, but he can change the effort issue. We’d expect his players to come at North Carolina like a pack of starving jackals in Chapel Hill tomorrow night.
4. We’re really not sure what to make of this, but if your goal is to figure out who has the best chance of finding the sunny side of the bubble on Selection Sunday, maybe this simple equation from Drew Cannon at Basketball Prospectus is really all you need. Could it really be that easy — perhaps so. Considering that the RPI is the metric favored by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, it makes sense that teams rated highly in that manner have a bit of a leg up. When you then add Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency-based metrics to the RPI, you’re essentially favoring teams that play the game of basketball (from a possession-by-possession standpoint) a little better than those who do not. Voila, the combination seems to result in a hybrid model that is a fairly accurate predictor of the field.
5. Seth Davis was back in action Monday with a new Hoop Thoughts column, and although we disagree with him that the Kansas-Missouri rivalry will take very long to see back on the regular season schedule (five years, tops), we completely concur with his sentiment that the entire rabbit hole of conference realignment is a very, very bad thing for college athletics. And yet this is the tip of the iceberg, we’re afraid. The Pac-12 on Monday just rewarded its commissioner, Larry Scott, with an extension of his contract through 2016. How is this relevant, you ask? Recall that it was Scott’s maneuvering two summers ago in trying to lure several Big 12 schools to the Pac-10 that set into motion much of the ensuing hysteria and deal-making among schools and conferences looking out only for themselves. Without Scott’s overtures, would Missouri and Texas A&M be going to the SEC? Would Pittsburgh and Syracuse be ACC-bound? It appears that there’s no honor among the barbarians at the gate, though — say it with us now — Scott’s contract extension was approved… unanimously.

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. Night Line will run on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s slate of games.

Monday night saw Louisville completely dominate Connecticut in the second half during an 80-59 victory, and while the major focus was on the Huskies’ sorry effort, the Cardinals deserve credit for another impressive win after a horrible start to conference play. Monday’s victory was the team’s fifth straight, all of which have come by nine or more points. Louisville was clearly overrated when they were ranked in the top 10 during an undefeated start in December, but Rick Pitino’s team is starting to come around and establish themselves as one of the more talented teams in this year’s muddled Big East. Plenty of difficult matchups remain on the schedule, but the talks of the ‘Ville being on the NCAA Tournament bubble are long gone, and this team is looking to peak at the most important time of the season.

Chane Behanan is Improving with Each Game for Surging Louisville (AP Photo/K. Srakocic)

Back on December 23, Louisville had finished its non-conference schedule without a loss and was then ranked #4 in the AP Poll, but quickly crashed down to Earth once the competition ramped up. The team lost five of its next seven games, including home defeats to Notre Dame and Georgetown, and it was unclear if the Cardinals were even a top 10 team in their conference, much less the entire country. But collective intensity and defensive effort was never an issue during that midseason slump, and the Cards are now gaining confidence offensively that could make them a sneaky dangerous team down the stretch.

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It was a year ago today that Michigan basketball fans knew they had something special in Tim Hardaway Jr. The Wolverines were on the ropes at Penn State, trailing by 10 with 8:15 to go in the second half, and staring a crippling NCAA Tournament-hopes loss right in the face. Then Hardaway erupted, scoring all 13 of his points in the second half, hitting several big three-pointers down the stretch, and establishing himself as a player who was not afraid of the moment — a true freshman who had as much natural talent and potential as anyone else on the team, and a bright future once he improved his consistency.

Tim Hardaway Jr has had significant ups and downs so far this year

Fast forward 365 days and you see the same talented player with the same knack for scoring the basketball, but this season of Big Ten play has been rollercoaster for Hardaway Jr. He started off the 2011-12 season by announcing himself in a big way at the Maui Invitational, scoring 21 points in a win against Memphis, 19 in a loss to Duke, and 20 in a victory over UCLA. He was also a topic of conversation in all three of those games by ESPN’s broadcasting crew, and his performance seemed to validate that he was about to embark on a highly successful sophomore season and possibly become an early-entry candidate for the NBA Draft. Then, in Michigan’s next game at Virginia, Hardaway was held to five points, and the perplexing disappearance of his shot became a theme for Michigan fans to follow throughout the course of the season thus far.

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