Over the next four weeks we’ll be taking a step back and looking at each team in the ACC to assess where each program — and the conference as a whole — stands before we totally turn our attention to the 2013-14 season later this fall. Today’s targe: Boston College.

Where They Stand Now

The bottom of the ACC was a dumpster fire last season. Think of an acclerant cocktail of mediocre coaching, inexperienced youth and genuine lack of talent to make it extra volatile. Somehow Boston College, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech all finished conference play with four wins. However, if forced to pick the team occupying the lowest point in the conference cellar, Boston College would steal the honor. It wasn’t entirely the Eagles’ fault: Steve Donahue was in his second year of coaching and saw his roster truly gutted, leaving a motley crew of freshmen, transfers and walk-ons. To make matters worse, Donahue’s best player — Patrick Heckmann — went down with mononucleosis in January. The good news is that Donahue is a very capable coach. He stole a win against the eventual ACC Champion Florida State Seminoles, and his team significantly improved over the course of the season.

Patrick Heckmann Led the Eagles During Nonconference Play Last Season (AP/A. Gallardo)

Who’s Leaving?

The Eagles lose six players, including transfers Matt Humphrey (who is transferring to West Virginia, the second transfer of his career) and Gabe Moton. While the losses won’t help the Eagles, Humphrey didn’t fit well with Donahue’s system and Moton managed less than 20 minutes of playing time for a team that should only get better. The four departing seniors combined to play just over 23 minutes a game, contributing a combined 2.6 points and 1.7 rebounds a game.

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1. ESPN: Things aren’t getting any easier in Atlanta. Georgia Tech has already lost an incoming player to injury for the coming season. Corey Heyward, a local standout who recently spent a year at Hargrave Military Academy, suffered an ACL tear in his left knee that will likely keep him out of action for the 2012-13 season. Though Heyward expects to have surgery in the coming weeks, the standard recovery period for an ACL injury can be as long as a year – it’s doubtful that Tech will take a chance and bring him back too early.
2. News & Observer: Continuing to win the prize for “best summer job,” coach Mike Krzyzewski has gone to Las Vegas to coach Team USA and prepare his ridiculously talented incarnation for the Olympic games in London. The Duke coach’s adaptable approach seems to be well-suited for a team that has lost many of the stars from the 2008 gold medalist from the Olympic Games. Whether drawn from his own philosophy or inspired by the positional revolution underway in the NBA, Coach K seems ready to put his best players on the court, regardless of position, and let the rest of the world worry about how to defend that.
3. Fayetteville Observer: In jumping to quick conclusions months before any of the teams even start practicing, Bret Strelow may win the week’s big prize. Of course, barring any big surprises, he’s probably right on the money. Strelow predicts a three-team race for the top of the ACC, with traditional powers Duke and North Carolina trying to fend off an upstart North Carolina State team that is bringing in highest-ranked freshman class in the conference. Of course, the sad part about this prediction is that it’s not particularly predicated on the strength of any of these three teams, but rather on the weakness of the rest of the conference. As it stands, many perennial contenders such as Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, and Maryland have fallen on hard times with no easy fix or game-changing recruits on the horizon. Until this changes, it seems like a lot of the hoops power in the conference will be centered almost exclusively on a very small triangle in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
4. News & Record: Let’s keep our eyes on the future and keep our eyes on the spring of 2013. Who will be on next years All-Freshman Team? Well, the News & Record has you covered. Looking at several years’ worth of high school scouting data and past All-Freshmen Teams, the Greensboro paper puts forth a few predictions with the caveat that this is a very silly exercise. On paper, picking Rodney Purvis, Rasheed Sulaimon,  and Robert Carter to have big years seems like a fairly safe prediction. I’m a little more intrigued by the presence of Maryland’s incoming big man, Charles Mitchell. By all accounts, Mitchell is a fine player, but he might only be the third best freshman center for Maryland next season, behind Shaquille Cleare (a top 50 player while Mitchell doesn’t crack the top 100) and potentially Damonte Dodd. Daring choices are to be applauded, however, and I’m anxious to see how Mitchell plays in the coming year.
5. CBS Sports: You know what our problem is? Not looking far enough ahead into the future. The 2012-13 season will surely be interesting, but only thinking about that seems a little short-sighted, no? Of course. So logically, let’s turn our eyes to the ranked recruiting class of 2013-14. A quick look at the top 10 has North Carolina on top of the whole nation, largely by virtue of already two players already committed to play when most players that age have yet to make a firm decision. Still, I suppose this is a good sign for the (admittedly distant) future of the conference.

1. Everyone feel free to let out a big sigh… Former Arizona malcontent and SMU transfer Josiah Turner has decided to follow his dream to play in the NBA by forgoing college basketball in favor of taking a shot with the D-League or spending next season in Europe to hone his game for next year’s draft. As he put it in an interview with Yahoo Sports‘ Jeff Eisenberg Tuesday, “In college, you get your degree and everything, but going pro is getting me closer to my dream and what I want to do in life.” Turner was set to become new head coach Larry Brown’s first big recruit at SMU, but for now it appears that he’s putting all of his eggs into a rather competitive basket. He admits that alcohol and marijuana contributed to his paltry stats (6.8 PPG; 2.4 APG) and disciplinary problems during his one year in Tucson, but he also says that his partying days are behind him and he’s matured from that experience. Will we ever hear from Turner again — is anyone willing to take the affirmative?
2. It’s no secret that Sporting News‘ Mike DeCourcy is, much like us, a defender of the inherent value of the game of college basketball. His latest piece brings up an interesting fact that we weren’t aware of prior to reading it — of the 144 basketball players who will participate in the London Olympics later this month, no fewer than 46 of them (32%) spent time developing at US colleges. When you consider that the qualifiers range from Nigeria (Arizona State’s Ike Diogu) to Australia (St. Mary’s Patty Mills) to Great Britain (GW’s Pops Mensah-Bonsu) to Lithuania (Maryland’s Sarunas Jasikevicius) to the good ol’ USA (Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Chris Paul, and others), you quickly realize that for many countries the American college game has become an elite training ground for the world’s top amateur talent.
3. We sadly mentioned in yesterday’s M5 the passing of Stanford’s Peter Sauer, which reportedly was caused by a condition associated with an enlarged heart. Today’s M5 brings even more bad news in that UCLA guard Kenny Heitz, a key member of John Wooden’s three-time national champions from 1967-69, passed away in Pacific Palisades at the age of 65. Heitz and Lew Alcindor were in the same class at UCLA (talk about fortuitous timing!) and their teams went a ridiculous 88-2 over their paired careers. Rather than pursuing a professional basketball career after graduation, the Academic All-American went on to Harvard Law School and became a top-drawer commercial litigation attorney in Southern California. Thoughts go out to his family, and we hope he rests in peace.
4. Another member of the UCLA family, Josh Smith, is entering his junior season as a Bruin. His weight problem was a major distraction last season, as he often struggled to run the court two or three times without getting winded, and Ben Howland’s team suffered as a result. Peter Yoon of ESPNLosAngeles caught up with the talented but enigmatic center recently and discovered that Smith appears to finally be taking seriously the gifts of skill and size that have been given to him. Smith said that last summer he simply returned home to Washington state and goofed around with his free time, but this summer he has remained in Westwood and is working with a nutritionist who has helped him already lose 15 pounds and improve his conditioning. It certainly remains to be seen whether any of this will actually stick for Smith, as we feel like we’ve heard this before (not only from him but Renardo Sidney also comes to mind) and he needs to melt a lot more than 15 bills from his frame. But… and this is a big if… if Smith is in shape and the Wear twins are at all adequate, then Ben Howland will have the best frontcourt in America.
5. It appears that the nation’s athletic directors are in a giving mood this month. Third year Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery received a revised seven-year contract that will pay him an average of between $1.6 to $1.9 million over that period, depending on whether he hits certain NCAA Tournament incentives. Keep in mind that, although McCaffery has certainly got the Hawkeye program heading in the right direction (from 11-20 his first year to 18-17 last season), he has yet to finish in the top half of the Big Ten nor done any damage nationally. This is a rather unbelievable deal for someone who has yet to even sniff the NCAAs in his time in Iowa City — but hey, we’re rooting for the guy to earn it. Good for him.

Out of the seven players who played major minutes for Washington in 2011-12, one is lost to graduation and the other two decided to depart Seattle early for the NBA Draft. A fourth player, also graduating, only averaged 2.8 MPG and picked up those minutes in garbage time. The two players that skipped town early were guards, but there are both young and experienced players waiting in the wings at the position who are ready to take over. Replacing a pair of senior forwards will be a slightly more difficult task, especially early on in the season when the Huskies will face Seton Hall, Saint Louis, Connecticut, and possibly Ohio State. Below we fill you in on their details in their order of importance to the program.

• Terrence Ross – Two years ago, Ross came out of Portland’s Jefferson High School (where he played alongside former Kentucky forward Terrence Jones) and immediately earned good playing time with the Huskies. He had a solid freshman season, averaging 8.0 PPG and 2.8 RPG while playing behind Isaiah Thomas. Then came last season, and with Thomas gone and guard Scott Suggs lost due to a foot injury, Ross’ production and responsibilities grew. He averaged 16.4 PPG in an average of 31.1 MPG, but his reason to leave school early lies within the increased production on the boards. Ross bulked up over the summer and became much more active in a small forward type role, averaging 6.4 RPG.

Terrence Ross Blossomed Into A Top Ten Pick After A Terrific Sophomore Season (credit: Yardbarker)

• Tony Wroten, Jr. – 16.0 PPG and 5.0 RPG were enough for Wroten to head to the NBA after just one season on Montlake. The freshman was a huge part of every game, and he knew how to perform the job that needed to be done night in and night out. Only seven points against Florida Atlantic? No problem, as he focused on dishing out four assists to the guys that were making shots. Only eight points against Utah? He made up for it on the other end of the court by getting two steals, which ended up being huge in just a four-point win. The point is, despite many of his freshman mistakes, Wroten was a do-everything type of player, and he will be sorely missed in 2012-13.
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Our final matchup of the first round pits the two seed, Adam Butler (Pachoops), up against seventh seeded Andrew Murawa. The winner of this one is off to the semifinals, where it will meet Connor Pelton’s team in the semifinals.  Below are the rosters, followed by some commentary from the respective owners:

Adam Butler

• Head Coach – Ralph Miller, Oregon State

• Guard – Damon Stoudamire, Arizona
• Guard – Mike Bibby, Arizona
• Guard – Michael Dickerson, Arizona
• Guard – Salim Stoudamire, Arizona

• Forward – Sean Elliott, Arizona
• Forward – Ed O’Bannon, UCLA
• Forward – Shareef Abdur-Rahim, California
• Forward – Chris Mills, Arizona

• Center – Todd MacCulloch, Washington
• Center – Bison Dele, Arizona

Adam’s Take:

My team. Well they call it Point Guard U for a reason so I went ahead and gobbled up three of the great ones and one of the best off-guards they produced. Yes, I have an all Arizona backcourt and you can go ahead and call Team PacHoops a group of homers. Do it. And that backcourt is supplemented by three more Wildcats and a dallop of other insanely talented Pac-12 players. Know that Team PacHoops houses seven Pac-10 Player of the Year Awards; six NBA lottery picks, three NCAA titles; two Wooden Awards; and a HOFer.

Look at you, you’re impressed already and I haven’t even told you that Salim Stoudamire is practically at the end of my bench, or that Chris Mills is going to struggle to get minutes; or that the worst my starting forward could be is a ninth pick in an NBA Draft; or that our coach, Ralph Miller, is one of just 73 men to win more than 600 games on a college basketball bench.

Need more? Todd MacCulloch not only was twice named First Team All-Pac, but he’s also a pinball champion. That’s right, the big Canuck has long been a pinball wizard and last October he won his first tournament (the Pinball Expo in Chicago), earning his bad self $3,000. Sean Elliott – the two time Pac Player of the Year, Wooden Award winner, and the first golden child of Arizona – roundhouse kicked debilitating kidney disease right in the jaw and said, “Nah, bro. I’ma go ahead play again.” The first major athlete to return ever from a kidney transplant.

After all, this team wasn’t built on talent alone.

But there’s plenty of it. And so I’ll toss the rock to Mike Bibby or Damon Stoudamire – whoever coach Ralph feels is going to be better suited to start – and let them deliver it (or score) to the silky smooth likes of Michael Dickerson and Elliott or the power and grace of Mills, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, and Ed O’Bannon. Holding down the lane will be big Bison Dele right along with Todd the pinball maestro. All beautifully orchestrated by coach Ralph.

Vote for Team PacHoops because you know it’s the right team to vote for and it’s going to make you feel good to choose a winner.

A pinball champ.

(Note from Connor: To see Adam fully breakdown each position on his fantasy roster, click here for the guards, here for the forwards, here for the centers, and here for the head coach.)

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It’s hot out there, and to many of us, college basketball is the last thing on our minds. But here at the SEC Microsite, we’re going to be rolling out mid-summer resets of each of the (now) 14 basketball programs in our league. We’re calling it Transition Basketball, and you can expect we’ll cover three or four teams a week until we’re done. By that time, we’ll actually start to be turning the slight corner into the fall, and from there it’s a smooth slope down to Midnight Madness in mid-October. Today’s update: Vanderbilt.

State of the Program

The reigning SEC Tournament champions appeared to be on a promising streak preceding the Big Dance. After swatting the proverbial monkey off its back and defeating Harvard in the Round of 64 following three straight first round exits, it was heartache once again for Commodore fans as the team settled well short of expectations. With a trio of NBA level talent and an experienced hoard of role players, 2011-12 was supposed to be the year on which Vandy fans had been waiting. Turnovers, a reliance on the outside shot, and difficulty rebounding marred Kevin Stallings‘ club, and now Vandy looks to be heading into a rebuilding year unfortunately situated in one of the SEC’s strongest years in recent history.

John Jenkins is gone, and so are his NBA bound teammates, Festus Ezeli and Jeffery Taylor

With familiar names such as John Jenkins, Jeffery Taylor, and Festus Ezeli all gone, who does Stallings turn to now? In fact, his top six players in terms of minutes played are gone. The Commodores will rely heavily upon talented yet vastly inexperienced and untested players. The leading returning scorer for the 2012-13 ‘Dores averaged just over three points per game last season. To say there are some question marks about next season is an understatement. As Stallings pointed out in the SEC summer teleconference a few weeks ago, “It is certainly going to be a year of transition for our basketball program. Not one guy who is playing will have ever been in the role he will be assuming for next year’s squad.”  Vanderbilt certainly underperformed last season, but can it now exceed a lowered set of expectations in 2012-13?

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John Calipari has yet to lose a home game as Kentucky’s head coach, and Tuesday’s release of the Wildcats’ non-conference home schedule suggests that he’s looking to keep it that way. Since Coach Cal became the Kentucky coach prior to the 2009-10 season, his team is 51-0 in Rupp Arena – the only team in the country not to have lost at home during that period. It’s a special distinction to have the nation’s most dominant home court, but do we need to keep praising the pristine record when his team is scheduling cupcakes specifically to uphold the winning streak? Not only has Calipari publicly clamored to avoid difficult road games against a resurgent program such as Indiana, but he’s also now starving the Big Blue Nation of any meaningful non-conference home competition. It’s no secret that the coach’s bottom line is to give his team the best chance at a #1 NCAA Tournament seed, but an undefeated home record won’t seem as special if it’s extended without much in the way of legitimate resistance. A home game or two against an elite non-conference foe wouldn’t hurt the bottom line and would also give UK fans a deserving treat, but they’ll have to wait at least another year before that happens.

Look for Kentucky to pile up easy wins next year to extend the home winning streak (AP Photo)

UK’s schedule includes snooze-fests against opponents like Lafayette, Samford, Lipscomb, and Eastern Michigan, all of which finished with sub-.500 records last season in poor conferences. These teams have no chance to give the Wildcats a contest on any floor, let alone at home (remember: Billy Gillispie now coaches at Texas Tech). The same goes for the Portland Pilots of the WCC, they of a 7-24 overall record last season. Morehead State loses three starters from an 18-15 team, so don’t expect the Eagles to put up any kind of fight, either. Long Island? The Blackbirds made the NCAA Tournament last year – but as a #16-seed after winning the NEC, a conference ranked 24th in RPI. Marshall showcases a talented player in DeAndre Kane but not much else with a team that finished 9-7 in Conference USA last season. That leaves Baylor – the squad that UK defeated handily in last year’s Elite Eight and the one team that can at least provide a watchable contest. Still, the Bears lost three forwards to the NBA Draft this year and will struggle to replace that size next season. It’ll be a surprise if Baylor is less than a double-digit underdog in Rupp Arena against the defending National Champions.

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In an effort to remind you that college basketball does in fact exist during the summer, Big 12 microsite writers Danny Spewak (@dspewak) and Jeremy Pfingsten (@jeremylp21) will roll out three summer updates per week during the next month. The goal is to compile every bit of news and information from the summer months for each team and package it into neat, easy-to-read capsules for your convenience. We begin with Danny’s update on Iowa State: 

Iowa State Cyclones

2011-12 Record: 23-11, 12-6 (3^rd place)

Fred Hoiberg is having a better summer than you. After every basketball writer in America questioned his risky strategy to recruit four Division I transfers to his Iowa State program last year, the Fab Four silenced the naysayers and reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2005. Hoiberg may lose the bulk of his starting lineup to graduation and the pros, but The Mayor has successfully changed the basketball culture in Ames in the span of just one season. So yes — he’s probably having a terrific summer by basking in his team’s 23-win season. And, more importantly, Hoiberg’s bosses rewarded him with a contract extension to give him some extra stability and millions of dollars in cash. That doesn’t mean there’s not work to do while the weather’s still warm, though. Hoiberg’s job now requires him to mix a large class of newcomers with a few returning veterans to keep Iowa State from becoming a one-year wonder.

The Mayor Is Smiling This Summer After an NCAA Tournament Appearance

Summer Orientation: It’s important to stay realistic about summer league basketball, but these statistics for Will Clyburn are too gaudy to ignore. The 6’7’’ wing, eligible next season after transferring from Utah, put up 111 points in two games in the YMCA/Capital City League this summer. He scored 63 in the first game and 48 in the next. For all you math majors, that’s a 55.5 point-per-game average over two contests. Small sample size? Certainly. And summer league? It’s not the NBA. But it’s encouraging for the Cyclones to see Clyburn excel, especially since that league features several of his Iowa State teammates. Former Cyclone Royce White even says Clyburn, a former All-Mountain West honoree at Utah, will make the team better this year than last.

Clyburn has already set a league record for points, but he’s not the only Cyclone making headlines in this league. Freshman Georges Niang actually held Clyburn to 28 points (measly, right?) when the two faced each other in the Y, and there are high hopes for this four-star stud forward from New Hampshire. Fellow froshs Sherron Dorsey-Walker and Naz Long are also earning some experience in this league before their first college seasons, and three-star forward Kerwin Okoro just joined the league in late June.

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Miss basketball yet, Big Ten fans? We know you do. And we do, too. Summer is great and all, but we’ve got to get our Big Ten hoops fix somehow. So we’re bringing you a 12-part series catching up with each conference squad, looking back and looking ahead to the season that will be here before we know it. We start today with Indiana and will wrap it up in a few weeks with Ohio State. So whether you’re reading this at the beach, on the back porch by the grill, or in your cool air conditioning, don’t forget — just because the season’s over (or hasn’t started yet) doesn’t mean we aren’t still talking about it.

Now, on to the Hoosiers …

Think Indiana fans are happy Cody Zeller chose to stick around another year? (Andy Lyons/Getty)

• Evaluating Last Year: It was already no secret that the Indiana program has been on the upswing since Tom Crean took over and rescued it from the pits of despair. The recruits were starting to come in — none bigger than Cody Zeller — and fans could start to feel the excitement returning to Assembly Hall. The NCAA Tournament drought was certain to end soon, but it was unsure if last season was going to be the year. Well, the Hoosiers erased any doubts early on by tearing through their (albeit, pretty easy) non-conference schedule before putting up a good fight in the Big Ten. The season was headlined by a dramatic upset of Kentucky, as well as an NCAA Tournament run that ended in a Sweet Sixteen rematch at the hands of those same Wildcats (who eventually went on to win it all). There’s no doubt that Indiana was headed for big things, but it was hard to foresee the Hoosiers getting back to national prominence this quickly. Certainly an overachievement.

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1. Fans of west coast basketball from the 90s were saddened on Monday with the news that former Stanford forward Peter Sauer collapsed and died on Sunday during a pickup basketball game in White Plains, New York. Sauer was a team captain who averaged 7.9 PPG for his career and played a significant role in leading the Cardinal to its second-ever Final Four in the 1997-98 season, where it lost in overtime to eventual national champion Kentucky in the semifinals. His graduating class of 1999 was one of the most successful in program history — in four seasons, it won 90 games, a Pac-10 title, attended four straight NCAA Tournaments, and was a large part of the renaissance of Stanford basketball by turning a historically woeful program into a national powerhouse. Sauer leaves behind a wife and three young daughters, a man in the prime of his life taken away far too soon. May he rest in peace.
2. In an odd coincidence, Sauer’s college coach at Stanford, Mike Montgomery, also made news on Monday. The curmudgeonly California coach signed an extension that will keep him coaching until at least the 2015-16 season. In four seasons so far at Berkeley, Montgomery has fielded scrappy and competitive teams that have been invited to three NCAA Tournaments (no easy task in the Pac-10/12), but he has not yet achieved the national success that he did at Stanford in the latter part of his career across the bay (e.g., three 30-win seasons). Still, the Cal administration clearly appreciates the work that Montgomery has already put in, and he stands to keep the Golden Bears among the better basketball programs of the Pac-12 for years to come.
3. We mentioned last week that Syracuse recently released an independent report that suggested its program and administration did not act to cover up allegations made against assistant coach Bernie Fine in 2005, but could have acted more promptly in notifying authorities of the charges made against him. The lawyer for one of Fine’s accusers (Bobby Davis) responded on Monday — it would be quite the understatement to suggest that Gloria Allred disagrees. After describing the university’s report as a “complete whitewash” of the relevant events seven years ago, she went on to say that the report’s contention that there was no cover up does not “pass the laugh test.” (hmm… where have we heard that phrase used before?) Allred went on to say that Syracuse’s investigation of the allegations against Fine in 2005 were done to protect the university rather than learn the truth — whether all of her claims here are true or not, she’s certainly rattling the cage and doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
4. July has long been known in college basketball circles as the month when coaches jet around the country to sit in hot gyms and evaluate the stars of tomorrow at the various camps. Though the names and locations have changed, the song and dance is still largely the same. Mike DeCourcy gives us a thorough primer of some of the top storylines in this year’s summer circuit, set to begin on Wednesday from Indianapolis, Philadelphia and just outside of DC. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is something that we noted in this space a couple of weeks ago — most of the top players in the Class of 2013 have held off on their commitments, which means that the summer evaluation period is likely to be more competitive as players angle to catch coaches’ eyes heading into the all-important fall signing period. DeCourcy also discusses the battle for the top player in the class, and how Jay Wright needs an impact player out on the Main Line sooner rather than later.
5. While on the subject of recruiting, ESPN.com’s Myron Medcalf writes a fascinating article about the recent arrival and impact of Canadian recruits on college basketball’s landscape. As he notes early in the piece, five Canadians have been selected in the last two NBA Drafts, and the top overall player in the Class of 2014, Andrew Wiggins, is a native Canuck as well. Then there are the current collegians, such as Texas’ Myck Kabongo, UNLV’s Khem Birch and Anthony Bennett, Marquette’s Junior Cadougan, and Gonzaga’s Kevin Pangos. Call it the Steve Nash Effect (unless you prefer Jamaal Magloire), but much of the talent pool derives from the large immigrant minority populations that have settled in the metropolises of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal in the last 30 years — the children of those immigrants came up with the NBA in Canada and are now starting to find their way to the elite levels of American basketball. As the game of basketball continues its growth as the world’s second-favorite sport, we’re going to see college basketball take on an increasingly international flavor in much the same way that the NBA has over the last 15 years.