1. Atlanta Journal-Constitution: In January, when Georgia Tech ended up as the landing place for former Kentucky player Stacey Poole, it was a nice get for the beleaguered Yellow Jackets, but not a game-changer. However, taking on Stacey has paid dividends in the form of a younger brother, Solomon Poole. Stacey’s little brother is a five-star point guard for the Class of 2013 and he is headed to join his older brother in Atlanta. Solomon admits that his brother’s presence was a major factor in his decision to attend Georgia Tech, and I doubt if Brian Gregory could be much happier with this turn of events.
2. Duke Basketball Report: Though conference schedules have yet to be officially released, tidbits about the schedule have been making their ways into various reports. The good folks at DBR have taken it upon themselves to round up the reports (which are focused on Virginia, Virginia Tech, Boston College, and North Carolina). You can also see the match-ups for Florida State on the school’s athletic department website. Though it’s probably a little early to make assessments about the difficulty of a given schedule, it looks like the Tar Heels may have a rough season ahead.
3. Durham Herald-Sun: Speaking of rough seasons for North Carolina, the troubles of  2010 and 2011 are still haunting the team, albeit in a fairly minor way. North Carolina’s streak of six years of APR Public Recognition Awards for the men’s basketball team has ended and it’s all UCLA’s fault or something like that. The APR is a simple measure of the academic status of a given collegiate athletic program. Though North Carolina has typically fared pretty well by this measure, transfers count against the school’s retention rate, and the defections of David Wear, Travis Wear, and Larry Drew to UCLA, in addition to the dismissal of Will Graves means that UNC has one really ugly looking APR season on it’s record. While complete APR scores are slated for a Wednesday release,  it bears mentioning that Duke paced the ACC with the most awards, including one for the men’s basketball team.
4. Kansas City Star: Missouri will continue it’s reign as a landing spot for ACC coaches who enjoyed success and then moved on. Former Miami and current Missouri head coach Frank Haith has hired Dave Leitao as an assistant. Leitao, before a stint leading the Maine Red Claws of the NBDL, was of course the head coach at Virginia and the ACC Coach of the Year in 2007.  It’s a good hire for Missouri and a nice move for a guy who is good enough to be a college head coach just about anywhere.
5. Washington Post: The situation of recently appointed Virginia Tech coach James Jones is as interesting as it is difficult . Former head coach Seth Greenberg left behind a legacy of confusion and accusations that seemed to undermine the program at every turn, nearly undoing all the building that Greenberg had accomplished during his tenure. This profile takes some time getting to know the ACC’s newest head coach and exploring the major task he faces in rebuilding a  basketball program that took some major blows in Greenberg’s wake.

Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski is unquestionably one of the great leaders in sports history, perhaps only matched in modern college sports by former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. ‘Coach K’ and ‘Joe Pa’ taped an ESPN special together last June about ethics and integrity, entitled “Difference Makers: Life Lessons with Paterno and Krzyzewski,” ironically just a few months before the Penn State child molestation scandal broke and resulted in the football coach’s abrupt firing. Paterno then passed away from cancer in January, a mere two months after his dismissal. Krzyzewski appeared Friday night on Piers Morgan’s CNN talk show and discussed in one segment how he felt about the handling of Paterno by his employer. The Duke coach recognized that it was a difficult situation all around, but also said that he was very displeased with how Penn State responded. He thinks that the university should have shown more respect to its head coach of 45 years by discussing a mutual solution rather than throwing him out as the scapegoat. “I thought it was a real mistake by Penn State’s leadership,” he said, intimating that he wished Paterno had gone out on different terms, perhaps stepping down himself. Unlike everyone else in the media who gave an opinion on this issue, Coach K is acutely qualified as one of Paterno’s coaching contemporaries and as someone with just as much power at his university, so his comments speak loudly about how the Penn State crisis was handled.

Coach K (right) wishes that Joe Paterno (left) could have gone out on better terms (AP Photo)

Krzyzewski and Paterno only became close during the last year of Paterno’s life, so his defense of the former Penn State coach isn’t necessarily as simple as one man sticking up for a friend. Coach K has clearly thought long and hard about how he would have handled the situation had an (alleged) criminal emerged on his staff. He discussed the proper solution should something like this have occurred at Duke:

“You should deal with it like any team should deal with it. In other words, I’m on the Duke team. If that happened in my area, then I would look to work with my athletic director and my president to have a solution. And if that solution meant that I would step down, I would do it in a way that would be part of the solution, not like you’re just thrown out.”

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1. They may never be the team they were in the late 80s and early 90s, but UNLV is making a big push at becoming a legitimate national power as they continue to add pieces to what was already a strong team. Over the weekend, they added Savon Goodman, who was one of the top remaining players in the class of 2012. With the exception of a very small group of schools a player of Goodman’s caliber (a Parade All-American) would be almost assured playing time right away, but UNLV is so deep this coming season that Goodman might redshirt if Connecticut transfer Roscoe Smith is granted a waiver and allowed to compete for the school without having to sit out a year. Regardless of the outcome, the Rebels are piling up a very impressive roster for the next few years.
2. Friday’s move by Boston University from the America East to the Patriot League will not generate the national interest that some other moves have generated, but this single move could have a bigger impact on the conference that lost a school than any of those other moves. The departure leave the America East with only eight schools and takes away its biggest school and the one located in the biggest city so even though the Terriers were by no means a basketball power even in a weak conference it is a big blow for the conference that will most likely have to turn to a much lower profile programs to fill the void.
3. Last year we had one game on a naval carrier that was almost universally lauded as being special. Next season we will have three games (and possibly more) as Florida and Georgetown have agreed to play on November 9 on an as yet unnamed naval ship in Jacksonville, Florida. The game, which will also serve as a homecoming for Patric Young, should be entertaining, but you have probably already heard rumblings from some media members about this trend already starting to jump the shark. However, given the lack of an actual opening event for college basketball anything that generates interest from the casual fan for any part of the season outside of the NCAA Tournament when most people care more about their bracket than the actual game seems like a good thing.
4. It might not rate on the same scale as losing the biggest school in your conference, but Vermont made some news on Friday too when it agreed to release America East Rookie of the Year Four McGlynn, who appears to be headed to Towson. McGlynn asked for a release from Vermont earlier this month citing family reasons and for a reason that is unclear to us is expected to have to sit out the typical one-year waiting period. The exact family reason has not been released, but apparently it does not meet the other standard reasons (illness, father getting fired, etc). The arrival of McGlynn, who averaged 12 points per game last season, should undoubtedly help a Towson team that went 1-31 last season as there really is not anywhere to go except up from that.
5. Despite having a fairly unimpressive season last year, Sean Miller was able to get a contract extension likely on the strength of his recent recruiting efforts landing one of the top incoming classes in the country for this coming season. Following up an Elite 8 appearance in 2011 (on the back of Derrick Williams), Arizona was only able to make it to the NIT, but apparently it was good enough to get Miller an additional year on his contract that will keep him at the school through the 2016-17 season. Miller is scheduled to make $2.2 million plus incentives next season with a gradual increase to $2.7 million plus incentives in the last year of the contract. In addition, Miller’s contract also includes a $500,000 buyout that was not present at the original time of his signing as the program was dealing with NCAA violations originating before his time with the school.

It’s been a fun week of Arizona State basketball coverage here on the Pac-12 Microsite, so we’ve decided to close it out with opinions from an insider. Cory Williams from House of Sparky agreed to kindly join us for a Q&A on the state of the ASU program. If you’re reading this, you no doubt already know the great work that they do over there covering the Sun Devils, but consider this a friendly reminder.

RTC: Sun Devil fans seem to be in one of two camps right now with regards to the basketball program: the optimists and the pessimists. Optimists see the addition of Jahii Carson and the rest of the newcomers as a new beginning for the program. Pessimists see the rampant roster turnover as a sign of something rotten at the core of the program. Is one of those viewpoints more likely to be right than the other?

A Lot of Hopes Will Be Placed on Jahii Carson Next Season

HOS: I will be honest – there haven’t been too many optimists in the ASU basketball camp in the past few years. There have simply been too many defections from this program while the results on the court continue to suffer. These past several seasons, the Pac-12 has been a shadow of its former self. UCLA and Arizona were both struggling to live up to high expectations, presenting a rare opportunity for the Sun Devils: Win some games and build serious momentum in both recruiting and prestige. Instead of an experience-laden roster, however, ASU seems to have complete roster turnover every season. Instead of learning from our mistakes, a new crop of kids have to relearn them again one season later. Instead of developing boys into adults, we have a tendency to give up on them a little too quickly. Jahii Carson might be the start of a new day for the Sun Devils, but we cannot ignore that he will only do as much as the rest of the roster allows. If the talent cannot measure up, Carson will struggle to lead this team to any significant improvement.

The 2012 NBA Draft is scheduled for Thursday, June 28, in New York City. As we have done for the last several years, RTC’s team of writers (including Andrew Murawa, Kevin Doyle, Evan Jacoby, Matt Patton, and Danny Spewak) will provide comprehensive breakdowns of each of the 35 collegians most likely to hear his name called by David Stern in the first round on draft night. We’ll work backwards, starting with players who are projected near the end of the first round before getting into the lottery as June progresses.

Note: Click here for all published 2012 NBA Draft profiles.

Player Name: Marquis Teague

School: Kentucky

Height/Weight: 6’2” / 180 lbs.

NBA Position: Point Guard

Projected Draft Range: Mid- to Late First Round

Marquis Teague excels at getting to the rim with his elite speed (AP Photo/J. Crisp)

Overview: Marquis Teague struggled with his decision-making for some of his freshman season, but he came on strong during the latter stage of the year to lead Kentucky to a National Championship as the team’s steady point guard. His greatest attribute is his blazing speed with the ball and an overall impressive set of physical tools for a point guard. The Wildcats really had no backup at the point, so Teague led UK in minutes played (32.6 MPG) while admirably handling the many responsibilities given to him on a team with several stars. Though turnovers were his biggest issue (2.7 TO per game), he also averaged 4.8 APG and made obvious improvements throughout the season in terms of his decisions. He had five or more turnovers in five of his first 25 games, but not once in any of his final (and more important) 15. Teague was really the Wildcats’ fifth offensive option on the floor, though he still contributed a solid 10.0 PPG through an array of drives and jumpers. He thrives in the open floor and also does well in isolation situations, which he displayed in the National Title game against Kansas by getting to the basket for several layups in the half court. His shot is a work in progress, proven by his shooting percentages — 41.2% from the field, 32.5% from three, and 71.4% from the line. He wasn’t a game-changing defender as a rookie and only averaged 0.9 steals, but his physical traits suggest he should become a solid perimeter defender. Though very raw in many aspects, Teague appears to be in a dead heat with Kendall Marshall and Tony Wroten as the second point guard to come off the board on draft night.

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One of the things we want to do as part of this summer-long series is to take a look at where each program is at this point in its history, what realistic expectations fans should have of their program, and what it would take for the program to take the next step on the ladder of college basketball’s hierarchy.

Arizona State Has Had Limited Success In It’s Basketball History, But The Past Two Years Were Among The Worst Seasons In The Program’s History

For Arizona State, the last two seasons have really been a low point for the program. While ASU has not historically been a paragon of NCAA basketball success, they’ve at least been a middle-of-the-road team in their conferences on a regular basis, dating all the way back to the Border Conference in the 1950s. But the last two seasons have been the worst pair of consecutive seasons since a 1970 record of 4-22 dragged down the seasons around it. Yet, at the same time, only twice in the school’s history has its basketball program won 20 games or more in three consecutive seasons, a feat Herb Sendek’s teams completed just two seasons ago (the other streak occurred between 1960 and 1963). In fact, only one other time in its history has the team posted even back-to-back 20-win seasons (1979-80 and 80-81, behind guys like Byron Scott, Lafayette “Fat” Lever, Kurt Nimphius and Alton Lister). In short, the Sendek era has represented (just about) the best of times and the worst of times in Sun Devil basketball.

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It appears that the ramifications from last December’s bench-clearing brawl are extending several years into the Cincinnati–Xavier rivalry’s future. The longtime city rivalry previously known as the “Crosstown Shootout” is returning next season, but with several new stipulations. Thursday it was announced that the game has been renamed the “Skyline Chili Crosstown Classic,” and that it will continue only temporarily for two more seasons. The U.S. Bank Arena in downtown Cincinnati will host the games rather than the on-campus arenas of either Cincinnati or Xavier. Everything about the matchup from the venue to the official logo is changing as both schools seek to erase the memories of last season’s vicious scuffle that left eight total players suspended. Is this rivalry just too intense for its universities to handle? It appears that way as the schools don’t seem to trust their players and fans to keep things under control going forward. While it’s great that the game will continue, the message sent by the schools is that they fear the worst when these teams will tip off next season. Given the recent diminishing spirit of cross-conference rivalries in the sport, it’s unfortunate that one of the most vibrant and longstanding showdowns is getting watered down after one incident.

Last year’s Cincinnati-Xavier brawl was ugly, so now everyone loses next season (AP Photo)

Last season’s brawl between the two teams on December 10 was the low point of the college hoops season, as Xavier center Kenny Frease was left bloody after a Yancy Gates (UC center) punch resulting from an on-court scuffle involving several other players at the very end of a Xavier blowout victory. But the schools didn’t feel so strongly about the negative impact then as the longest suspension coming out of the brawl was a six-game ban for Gates’ vicious punch. The Cincinnati star forward was back before the Bearcats played another meaningful game and everything returned to normal. Both the Musketeers and Bearcats had terrific late-season runs that resulted in Sweet Sixteen appearances during the NCAA Tournament. It’s almost as if the brawl eventually led to newfound camaraderie within each squad (especially Cincinnati) and that the teams had learned the lessons of their massive mistake.

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1. On Thursday, multiple outlets reported that ACC All-Freshman forward Dorian Finney-Smith would leave Virginia Tech for Florida. Finney-Smith averaged 6.3 points and 7 rebounds for the Hokie, but left after Seth Greenberg was fired. Finney-Smith will be eligible to play for the Gators beginning in 2013-14.
2. As Missouri winds down its countdown to joining the SEC, a story broke this week surrounding Levi Coolley’s involvement with the team. Coolley “who had previously flown on the team plane and received complimentary tickets from players was arrested by the FBI at the Tigers’ hotel in Omaha, Neb.” as the Tigers were about the Norfolk State in the NCAA Tournament. Following the arrest, Missouri launched an internal investigation and “found Coolley had no improper influence on players and did not give players gifts in exchange for the complimentary tickets.”
3. Former Kentucky star Terrence Jones passed on turning pro a season ago citing a desire to win a national title. However, in a Monday story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Wildcats coach John Calipari  said Jones “had a second motive: to refine both his game and attitude, improving his NBA draft position in the process.” Based on how Jones capped his sophomore season, he looks to have to secured his spot in the lottery, possibly as high as seventh.
4. As more non-conference games get finalized, Tennessee and Xavier announced the start of a home-and-home  series that will begin in Knoxville in December. For the Musketeers, this game represents their second against an SEC foe this upcoming season. They will face Vanderbilt in a return contest following last year’s overtime contest played in Nashville.
5. With the NBA Draft less than two weeks away, there exists the real possibility that the SEC could have players selected 1-2-3 with Anthony Davis as the presumed top pick followed by Michael Kidd-Gilchrist or Bradley Beal going to Charlotte and Washington in some order. No league has even boasted the top two picks since 1999 when Elton Brand (Duke) and Steve Francis (Maryland) out of the ACC topped the draft. The ACC was also the last league to have the top three picks of any one draft. In 1986, Brad Daugherty (UNC) went No. 1 to Cleveland; Boston selected Maryland’s Len Bias followed by NC State’s Chris Washburn going to Golden State.

1. It may be the slowest of slow times in the college basketball year, but there’s always at least something going on. This week, Utah was fairly busy, adding to its staff and adding its second commitment for the 2013 class. First, on the recruiting front, head coach Larry Krystkowiak got good news when Salt Lake City’s own Parker Van Dyke, a combo guard who averaged 25 points per game as a junior on his way to the Utah Class 4A Most Valuable Player award (as named by The Salt Lake City Tribune), committed to the program on Monday, joining point guard Julian Jacobs in the 2013 class. However, there is something of some bad news mixed in with this signing, as Van Dyke expects to serve an LDS mission following his high school graduation, meaning he won’t actually put on a Ute uniform until 2015. Chalk it up to doing business in the state of Utah.
2. The other change in the Utah program is with the addition of a couple new staff members. First, former Ute player Phil Cullen is returning to campus to become the new director of player development and camps for Krystkowiak. Cullen played for the Utes between 1998 and 2002 and was most recently an assistant coach at Grand Canyon University. The other hire is Charles Stephenson, who will be the program’s first-ever strength and conditioning coach. In the past, the basketball program shared strength and conditioning coach Greg Argust with the football team, but now Stephenson’s responsibility will be entirely with the men’s basketball program.
3. Oregon State also scored a commitment this week as 7’1” center Cheikh N’Diaye out of Carlsbad, California, announced his attention to attend the Corvallis campus. He’s now the second 2013 recruit to commit to the Beavers, joining point guard L.J. Westbrook, who committed last summer. The big man is a work in progress offensively, but is a monster blocking shots on the defensive end. A native of Senegal, N’Diaye is no relation to Washington center Aziz N’Diaye.
4. Washington State sophomore forward Patrick Simon announced his decision to transfer out of the program last week. It was a disappointing stay with the Cougs for the sharpshooter, playing just over 400 total minutes in his career and tallying only 152 points. He got off to a rousing start, scoring 27 points in 39 minutes over his first three games (including 5-of-10 shooting from deep), but by the end of the season as his jumper left him, he was getting spot minutes at best. Simon will be better off sliding down the ladder a bit, perhaps winding up at a Big Sky school, or even dropping down to Division II and becoming eligible next year.
5. Then there’s Oregon, who learned this week that top-100 recruit Chris Obekpa, who the Ducks had been in hot pursuit of, had chosen St. John’s over them. As a result, barring last minute developments, Oregon will have two open scholarships for next season. Also of some note to Oregon fans, former Duck Matt Humphrey, who transferred out of the program in the Ernie Kent-to-Dana Altman transition and played with Boston College last year, is on the move again, on his way to finish up his college career in West Virginia.

After a week’s worth of breaking down the Sun Devils, it is time to give a way-too-early preview as to their chances in 2012-13. With six newcomers, some of whom are expected to play very big roles, five returnees who could see a change in their roles, and the possibility of an increased tempo, there are plenty of questions whose answers will remain unknown until we get a chance to see this team in action. But, that never stopped anybody from making wild, relatively unfounded predictions based on limited information. So away we go.

ASU’s Leading Scorer – Evan Gordon. Jahii Carson could lead the team in scoring if he wanted to, but the Sun Devils would likely be better off if he doesn’t. Carson’s primary role should be distributing the ball to his teammates and when necessary hitting the jumper or driving the lane to score. But wings like Gordon and senior Carrick Felix could be the beneficiaries of Carson’s playmaking ability. Not only can Gordon score in transition, but he can hit the three or drive to the hoop and create in the lane. This will likely be a team with balanced scoring (four players on this team could score in double figures), but we’ll give the nod to Gordon as the likely go-to scorer in the halfcourt.

With A New Cast Of Characters, The Sun Devils Hope To Get Wells Fargo Arena Rocking Again

ASU’s MVP – Jahii Carson. Assuming he lives up to expectations, the Sun Devils should be much better with his presence. Last year, in the absence of a steady point guard, ASU turned the ball over at an egregious rate. Carson should not only help the team cut down on turnovers, but he should also be capable of getting the ball to ASU’s best offensive options at the times and places where they can be most effective. And, if all else breaks down, he has the ability to create an opportunity for himself at the end of the shot clock, erasing bad end-of-clock looks that were a staple of ASU’s 10-21 year last season.

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