1. CBS Sports: Florida State‘s next recruiting class is getting better and better by the day. Jarquez Smith, a 6’9″ forward with perimeter skills, will join Xavier Rathan-Mayes as the early crown jewels of the Seminoles’ next recruiting class. While Smith doesn’t quite have the reputation of Rathan-Mayes, as a rangy forward with serious defensive and shot-blocking chops, he is in many ways the prototypical Leonard Hamilton player. An excellent fit and an even better get for Florida State.
2. Daily Press: Though it isn’t as splashy as the Seminoles’ move, the Hokies have quietly been putting together a solid class of their own. On Sunday, Ben Emelogu, a scoring wing with excellent size, committed to Virginia Tech. Emelogu joins Maurice Kirby, a slender center who committed on Friday. While both players don’t quite have the prestige of highly-ranked recruits, they both figure to help a Virginia Tech team that will be trying to find a new identity after the departure of former coach Seth Greenberg.
3. Fayetteville Observer:  “Primetime With The Pack,” the appropriately titled event that marks the beginning of North Carolina State‘s basketball season, came to an abrupt close when Scott Wood‘s grandfather collapsed and had to be carried out on a stretcher. The scrimmage was cut short with a few minutes left. According to a message on Scott Wood’s Twitter account, his grandfather appears to be doing better after receiving some fluids. A strange end to an event that had an even stranger beginning with coach Mark Gottfried being somewhat inexplicably lowered from the ceiling.
4. Washington Post: The renaming of the beginning of basketball season is surely complete when the inventors of Midnight Madness abandon the name. They are calling it Maryland Madness in the place where Lefty Driesell once invented Midnight Madness. Still, despite the change in name, the event had plenty of highlights, including some new looks by a few of the big men. Shaquille Cleare and Charles Mitchell showed off the weight loss that will make the big men a little more agile. Of course, not to be undone, the giant bruiser Alex Len showed off his newfound range by draining a step-back three-pointer. If that wasn’t an incredible enough sight, the event also featured the team dancing to Gangnam Style. There is apparently a lot of that going around.
5. Raleigh News & Observer: At Chapel Hill, the evening practice kick-off went as it usually does, but the event had a different tone as most of the gathered fans reserved their loudest cheers for coach Roy Williams, who is still recovering from the surgical removal of a benign kidney tumor. Earlier Friday, Williams, along with George Karl and a few other North Carolina legends held a fundraising breakfast for cancer research, an annual tradition since Williams’ return to Chapel Hill.   The event, a more somber precursor to the antics that were to come later that evening, raised around $150,000 to fight this disease.

1. Where many midnight madness events favor glitz and glamour over basketball substance, Louisville‘s event at the Yum! Center was all business. The Cardinals are a few months removed from a Final Four berth, and enter the 2012-13 season as one of the favorites to return, so it is little surprise that the team is taking their practice time seriously. Point guard Peyton Siva said as much about Louisville’s midnight madness event: “It’s definitely all business here,” Siva said. “I wish we could Midnight Madness and play around, but Coach P is a business-first type of guy. We have our fun after practice, but once we lace it up and step on the court, it’s all business and that’s how we play.” Don’t worry though, the Cardinals did find time to dance to “Gangnam Style”, because it is still in fact the fall of 2012.
2. Pittsburgh’s Steven Adams continues to receive praise from various publications in their preseason lists and rankings. Today, it is Athlon Sports, who lists Adams at the top of its “Top Impact Freshman of 2012-13” rankings heading into this season, noting that Adams is the highest-rated recruit to ever sign with Pittsburgh, and that though he is raw, his talent should allow him to be very productive for the Panthers this season.
3. That whole “will he stay home in Syracuse or join Kentucky’s stellar 2012 recruiting class” thing?  Syracuse freshman big man DaJuan Coleman said that was never even much of a debate for him. “I wasn’t close at all,” Coleman told the Post-Standard’s Donna Ditota. “I had a feeling I was going to come here since my junior year. I just wanted to go through the recruitment and everything.” Coleman joins former high school teammate Brandon Triche at Syracuse this season, and unlike some other recent Syracuse freshman bigs, many believe that Coleman has the polish to be an effective player on both ends of the court immediately. If anything, the bulky Coleman should help shore up the major rebounding problems that plagued the Orange in 2011-12.
4. It is no secret that this basketball season in Storrs is going to be a trying one for all involved. The players have no postseason to play for, Kevin Ollie is fighting for a multi-year contract, and the administrators who need to make decisions that will impact the program going forward will be doing so under the gaze of legendary head coach emeritus Jim Calhoun, who is expected to remain a major part of the program. With all of the pressure that is being heaped on the Connecticut program, Ollie’s utilization of a sports psychologist with the whole team may be a very wise move early in his tenure. UConn is working with Dr. Joe Carr, a psychologist who worked with UMass last year en route to a strong year for the Minutemen, to work through many of the chemistry issues that plagued the Huskies in 2011-12.  Carr is no stranger to helping teams come together, as noted in the Courant’s article, and he describes the positive effects of sports psychology further: “If we can get players to develop blind trust and buy into a principle, they are going to outplay a lot of people. They are playing for something else, and that’s each other. The teams that win are usually the ones that make the most sacrifices.”
5. Prized recruit Tyler Roberson is on the radar of many Big East teams, but he chose to head to Rutgers for this year’s midnight madness.  Roberson would be an absolute recruiting coup for Mike Rice and company, as he holds offers from Big East rivals Syracuse, Villanova, and rival-to-be SMU, as well as perennial national power Kansas.  Kentucky is also involved, as Tyler Roberson is an elite high school basketball player, and that’s sort of their thing.

1. Most of the college basketball world has been preoccupied with the reloading job that John Calipari manages to pull off every year, but the work that Dave Rice has been doing to stockpile talent at UNLV has gone largely unnoticed at the national level. The latest piece to the Rebels’ burgeoning bench is Jelan Kendrick, the former McDonald’s All-American who has already made brief stops at Memphis and Ole Miss. Kendrick will spend this season at a community college in Iowa before coming to UNLV for the 2013-14 season as a redshirt junior. Kendrick has obviously had more than his share of off-court problems, but talented 6’7″ perimeter players are hard to find and if Kendrick can keep his head on straight he could be a key piece in the Rebels making a deep NCAA Tournament run in future seasons.
2. Trevor Mbakwe has managed to brush off several legal issues in his past including felony assault charges and violating a restraining order to become one of the feel-good stories of the upcoming season coming off a torn ACL. On Friday, Minnesota announced that Mbakwe added a DWI arrest over the summer to that resume. Mbakwe was arrested on July 1 at 2:30 AM with a blood alcohol level of 0.12 and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor DWI on September 10. He received a sentence of 16 hours of community service and one year of probation. Interestingly, Tubby Smith cited Mbakwe’s likely career as a professional basketball player as a reason for allowing him to remain on the team (hello, double standard). While it appears as if Mbakwe dodged a bullet here he still has to attend a hearing in Miami on September 17 for violation of his probation where he could receive a harsher penalty. We are assuming that probation is for the violation of a restraining order, but at this point there are so many charges that we aren’t sure which arrest that probation is for.
3. By now you are wondering why we haven’t talked about Midnight Madness. The reason is that we already made several posts and tweets about it over the past few days. However, there was one even that is still worth discussing — the stabbing at Syracuse. While most events went off without a hitch, for some reason the Syracuse event was reportedly filled with several fights, one of which resulted in a 25-year-old man getting stabbed. The man is reportedly in stable condition at a local hospital (and presumably has been discharged by now), but has refused to cooperate with police. Based on that we doubt that anybody will be arrested in this case, but it will certainly change the atmosphere or at least the security at events like this in the future, particularly at Syracuse.
4. In one of the more controversial recent trials involving a college basketball player, former Oklahoma State player Darrell Williams received a one-year suspended sentence and avoided any additional jail time as he had already spent that much time incarcerated. Williams, who continues to insist that he is innocent, will have register as a Level 1 sex offender (the least dangerous level) for the next 15 years. Williams’ team insisted that the case was one of racial profiling and had asked for a new trial citing a number of racial factors at play (two Caucasian women accusing an African-American in front of a largely Caucasian jury–11 Caucasians and 1 Asian-American), but was denied. For their part, the prosecution appears to be slightly more pleased although they expressed their thoughts that Williams was merely trying to put himself above the law.
5. On Friday, Steven Goria, one of the leaders of a gambling ring accused of fixing a San Diego game in February 2010, was sentenced to more than two years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of sports bribery. The sentence is the longest that any of the 10 defendants have received so far. Goria reportedly made $120,000 off of a game that he allegedly paid the Toreros’ Brandon Johnson to influence. USD, a  team that was favored by 3.5 points over Loyola Marymount, lost the game 72-69 despite holding a lead late in the game. Goria and many of the other defendants have also been implicated in a marijuana distribution ring, which to our knowledge Johnson has not been involved in. All that appears to remain in the case is the trial of four more defendants (including Johnson) who have not yet reached plea agreements — that trial is set to begin on December 3. We expect that case will generate significantly more press from the sports media as it will involve a former college basketball player.

Xavier Rathan-Mayes will be heading to Tallahassee next year, following in the footsteps of his father Tharon Mayes, a standout scorer for the Florida State Seminoles in the late 80’s. Rathan-Mayes is an ultra-skilled 6’3″ combo-guard (though, you should probably read that as “undersized shooting guard”) who is a genuine talent and a serious get (one of ESPN’s top 25 recruits) for Leonard Hamilton. Considering how much Hamilton gets out of his players, the rest of the conference should be concerned about what the sharp-shooting guard can add to Florida State’s attack.

Might Leonard Hamilton Be Looking at a Package Deal?

Of course, there is a juicy subplot to this: Rathan-Mayes plays basketball at Huntington Prep, where he has a younger teammate and friend named Andrew Wiggins. You may know Wiggins as the easy consensus top recruit of the 2014 class (and as a young man mulling reclassification to the 2013 class). Like Rathan-Mayes, Wiggins’ father also played at Florida State, and the families are close.  Of course, ESPN has the intriguing quote:

“It’s crazy,” Rathan-Mayes said in an interview last summer. “(Our fathers) playing together and they played on the 76ers together, as well. Me and Wiggins growing up together and playing on the same AAU team, now on the same high school and maybe going to college together — that’s pretty special. We lived about 15 minutes from each other (in Canada), but our dads were always together. We hung out all the time and played ball at the rec center.”

Now, surely Wiggins has lots of other considerations about how he will decide where to play his college ball, but this connection may mean that Florida State is one step closer to pulling off one of the more incredible recruitment victories of the era.

And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#25 – Where This is Our Super Bowl Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

We’ve been scouring around the web tonight to find some of the best sights and sounds submitted through various forms of social media. Much more will undoubtedly pop up in the next 24 hours, but this is what we’ve found so far…

Pittsburgh dusted off Midnight Madness for the first time in a number of years and seemed to have won the night with its outdoor court, Jamie Dixon’s impersonation of Jackie Moon, and a Bill Raftery re-enacting his iconic “SEND IT IN JEROME” call from the wayback machine. But Kentucky‘s Big Blue Madness was epic as usual, Syracuse brought in Wale to rock the house, and Mizzou fans gave us our first sorta-RTC of the nascent season. More to come over the weekend!

Pitt’s Outdoor Madness Was Certainly Unique (credit: @laurenwalheim)

Jamie Dixon’s Getup Was Ridiculous… and Awesome (credit: @andrew_salesi)

Remember This Guy? (credit: @brucepearl)

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On Wednesday, Kevin released his list of the five most important Pac-12 non-conference games of the season, and a few weeks back, I released my own rankings. This post will explain why my top five games are better than Kevin’s, but first, let’s see where his games fall on my list:

Here’s a Hint (credit: Wikipedia)

5. Florida @ Arizona (My Rank: 5)
4. California @ Wisconsin (2)
3. Stanford vs Missouri (28)
2. UCLA vs Georgetown (11)
1. USC vs Illinois (25)

And now, my top five:

5. Florida @ Arizona (December 15) – This is the one game we agree on, so there’s nothing to argue about here. This will likely be a battle of Top 15 teams when the Gators venture into the McKale Center, making it a must-see contest. It will be Florida’s second trip to the desert in the 2012 calendar year, the first being a two-game split in the NCAA Tournament last March. They’ll be looking for revenge after being upset at home last year by Sean Miller and company, 78-72 loss in overtime.

4. Oregon State vs Kansas (November 30) – Without question, this will be Oregon State’s biggest non-conference game in recent memory. And depending on how they do in the 2K Sports Classic earlier in the month, a win could mean a clean non-conference slate for the Beavers heading into Pac-12 play. In their way will be a raucous Sprint Center crowd, not to mention the combination of Elijah Johnson and Jeff Withey. This game doesn’t make Kevin’s list, instead it’s California-Wisconsin, a matchup we’ll break down in just a moment.

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Today is the official opening to the 2012-13 college basketball season as schools will be able to start officially practicing Friday night. Before then, though, we’re going to take a look at the various pre-conference tournaments that have become synonymous with the first month of college basketball. Nearly every Big 12 school is competing in one of those tournaments this season and we’ll take time each day this week to preview each bracket, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico to New York City. Monday, we took a look at Texas and Kansas. On Tuesday, Kansas State and the NIT Preseason Tip-Off were previewed.  On Wednesday, we analyzed how Iowa State and Oklahoma State will stack up in their preseason tournaments.  Today, Oklahoma and West Virginia take the stage as we break down the Old Spice Classic. 

Old Spice Classic 

Date: November 22, 23 and 25

Location: The ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida

Teams: Clemson, Davidson, Gonzaga, Marist, Oklahoma, UTEP, Vanderbilt and West Virginia

There’s a good field this year.

This may be my favorite preseason tournament this year. Sure, this isn’t the Champions Classic or the Battle 4 Atlantis but I love it because of all the symmetry among some of these schools. Thanks to conference realignment, Oklahoma and West Virginia find themselves in the same field but ESPN cleverly placed them on opposite sides of the bracket, so there’d be a small chance for a Big 12 game in November (I’d love to see that come to life). Also, the Mountaineers have a unrelated non-conference game with Gonzaga to kick off the college hoops marathon in November, which then will be a rematch of a second-round game in the 2012 NCAA Tournament, which then could also be a possible Old Spice championship game matchup. SYMMETRY!

Last year was an awful one for Clemson, considering they went from a Tournament team in 2010-11 to 16-15 overall. And they have to play Gonzaga? It’s not happening, Tigers. As for Gonzaga, they’re getting more pub this season than any other. They’ve had the pieces to make deep runs in the Tournament some years but haven’t been to the Elite Eight since the 1999 team that gave eventual champion UConn a scare.

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Throughout the preseason, the Pac-12 microsite will be rolling out these featured breakdowns of each of the 12 league schools. Today’s release are the Stanford Cardinal

Strengths: The tandem of junior Aaron Bright and sophomore Chasson Randle in the backcourt is shaping up to be one of the most dynamic duos in the Pac-12. The diminutive Bright has some characteristics reminiscent of other small guys who made names for themselves in the Seattle area, most notably the moxie to take and make big shots for his team. While he might not have the speed of a Nate Robinson or Isaiah Thomas, Bright can still get into the lane and distribute with some flashy passes. However, he doesn’t break down defenses as well as Randle, who may very well be the most significant guard to come through The Farm since Brevin Knight when it’s all said and done. Randle finished second among Pac-12 freshmen in scoring, behind only the NBA-bound Tony Wroten. The Rock Island, IL native displayed an ability to go into “put the team on my back” mode during his freshman campaign, highlighted by the 24 points he scored to lead Stanford in its 103-101 quadruple-overtime victory at Oregon State.

Chasson Randle did more than hold up his jersey during Stanford’s quadruple-overtime victory over Oregon State (credit: Rick Bowmer)

Weaknesses: Stanford is going to be physically light down low with the departures of Josh Owens and Andrew Zimmermann. While the Cardinal have to potential to be a good rebounding team again with guys like Dwight Powell and Josh Huestis still in town to crash the glass, Stanford will have to make up for a lot of toughness lost with Owens and Zimmermann gone. Although Owens was the better athlete, Zimmermann might end up being a bigger loss for head coach Johnny Dawkins. He was a guy who did all of the little things in the paint, including taking charges and talking on defense (he didn’t have a bad jump shot, either). As such, this group also needs to find a vocal leader. That might be tough, considering none of the major rotation players are seniors and haven’t been called on to be captains before.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The age of smartphone-based communication is upon us. There’s no denying it. From pre-pubescent pre-teens to middle-aged parents to retired folks, the instant communication trend has slowly seeped its way into every technological aspect of our lives. For the purposes of college basketball recruiting, this created something of a problem. The NCAA’s previous restrictions on messaging and calling frequency forced coaches to monitor their phone habits with painstaking consistency. On principle, the limitations made absolute sense – messaging fees could get out of hand pretty easily, not every player can afford smart phones, and the risk of players being overwhelmed by a deluge of calls and texts from overeager coaches was very real – but enforcement was tricky and often ineffective. A handful of coaches were slapped with secondary violations for exceeding contact limits, the most notable being Kelvin Sampson, whose profligate recruiting tactics (part of which hinged on his negligence of restricted cellphone use) touched off a precipitous decline for Indiana. The Hoosiers have very much recovered, but it may have been avoided, or at least mitigated, had the NCAA’s bylaws adjusted to the blossoming digital communications market at the time. For better or worse, the restraints on smartphone-tethered communications were officially lifted this past summer, meaning coaches could call or text recruits who have completed their sophomore year in high school.

The NCAA’s blackballing of Instagram is a decided step back after embracing technological growth this summer (Photo credit: businessinsider.com)

Not only did the rule change help coaches by unlocking a new world of streamlined contact – not to mention the stronger recruiting ties forged by more frequent communication – it allowed the NCAA to stop wasting time policing nonsensical secondary infractions and start focusing on violations that actually, you know, matter. The NCAA had finally embraced the modern age. It was a progressive move, all things considered. As is the case with most outwardly positive NCAA rule changes, there’s a caveat. Only this one isn’t prohibitive as much as it is petty. Instagram – the in-vogue photo-sharing application that turns virtually any smartphone owner into a proficient photography aesthete – has officially been outlawed from college coaches’ growing list of technological recruiting mechanisms. The NCAA outlined its position in a Q&A-style educational column earlier this week, and you might be surprised to learn the motives behind this puzzling regulation. The issue stems not from the actual sending of photographs to prospective recruits — the NCAA sent out a clarifying message Thursday detailing the nuances of its prohibitive policy — but from coaches altering or enhancing photos for a “recruiting purpose.”

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