Two down and 13 more to go in our preseason team previews as today we take a look at DePaul. The Blue Demons enter their third season with head coach Oliver Purnell at the helm and while they will likely be more competitive this season, they still don’t have the look of an NCAA Tournament contender. One of the youngest and most inexperienced teams in the conference last season, DePaul returns almost their entire rotation from last season and Purnell has worked hard to add depth and talent to the roster. There just doesn’t appear to be enough pieces in place for the Blue Demons to compete in the rugged Big East.

2011-12 Record: 12-18, 3-15
2011-12 Postseason: None

DePaul Has Shown Signs Of Improvement Under Purnell, There Just May Not Be Enough Talent To Return Them To The NCAA Tournament

Schedule

After a 2011 non-conference schedule that didn’t scare anyone, the 2012 non-conference slate should be slightly more impressive, even if it does feature many of the same patsies as last season. Road games against a talented Wichita State team, Auburn, and Arizona State should provide early litmus tests and a home date against Wisconsin-Milwaukee could have upset potential if Purnell doesn’t have his team ready to play. The conference schedule holds zero surprises, although the beginning of the schedule looks far more inviting than the end of it.

Who’s In

DePaul was once considered a lock to be the next destination for Illinois transfer Crandall Head but now it looks like the promising guard and brother of former Illini great Luther Head is looking elsewhere, leaving the Blue Demons with four not-so-ballyhooed incoming freshmen and one player returning from injury, most of whom may have trouble securing spots in an already-crowded rotation.

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There may not be a more valuable player to his team in the Big 12 than Myck Kabongo. He’s not Texas’ leading returning scorer — that’s Sheldon McClellan — nor did he play flawlessly a year ago as a freshman. Regardless, he played a major role in helping the Longhorns sneak into the NCAA Tournament with his improved point guard play and defense during the final month of last season, and the Longhorns will likely live and die with their stud NBA prospect in 2012-13.

That is, if he’s even on the team. A school spokesman told the Associated Press yesterday that the NCAA has questioned Kabongo about his relationship with agent Rich Paul, who represents LeBron James (as well as former Texas players Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph). The investigation centers around two aspects: 1) Paul’s communication with NBA teams before Kabongo decided not to enter the 2012 NBA Draft; and 2) his role in Kabongo’s all-inclusive trip to Cleveland a year ago. These are not the most serious allegations we’ve ever seen. There are no wire transfers involved, no big bags of money or sketchy suitcases transferred from an agent to a player, no criminal action. This isn’t a Reggie Bush situation, a Fab Five situation or any of the other blatant cheating scandals in the grand history of college sports.

Texas Cannot Afford to Lose Myck Kabongo

That hardly matters, though. If true, Kabongo’s relationship with this agent would compromise his amateur status, and he’d become ineligible to play for Texas. Kabongo would land on his feet and surely jump to the NBA at some point, but his loss would devastate Rick Barnes’ team and set the program back. After relying almost exclusively on J’Covan Brown for offense in 2011-12 and overcoming a lack of depth in the frontcourt, Barnes finally assembled a team with major forces in the paint and several scoring options. This team was built for Kabongo, who won’t need to be a primary scorer. He’s the facilitator of this offense, the guy who can break down defenses and open scoring opportunities for, say, McClellan, or super freshman Cameron Ridley. Without Kabongo, however, this team will have serious issues competing near the top of the Big 12. On a team consisting of almost all freshmen and sophomores, his mere presence keeps the Longhorns running. If he’s ineligible, Barnes might be looking at another difficult season on the NCAA Tournament bubble. That’d be a real shame for a coach who combined such terrific freshman and sophomore classes on this roster.

Returning for another season, we’ve got our weekly Burning Question. Once a week, we’ll try to ask the big question around the conference and get answers from all of our correspondents. We’ve got a big crew this year, so hopefully we’ll get plenty of opinions. To kick things off, we’ll get right to the elephant in the room and address just how awful the Pac-12 was last season. Here’s our question:

Last year was arguably the worst basketball season in the history of the Pac-whatever. However, all signs point to an improved conference this year. How much better will the conference be and what needs to happen for the Pac-12 to prove it to the rest of the country?

Cal & Colorado Were Left Carrying the Pac-12 Flag Last Season

Adam Butler: I really cannot contextualize exactly how rock bottom last season was. To have your conference champion – by definition the best team – not be selected to dance is outright embarrassing. It was so bad that I will not propagate the statistical or anecdotal proof.

And neither will the teams. Or at least some of them. This cast of Pac-twelvers has some players and I’m legitimately excited to see it go down. That said, the question posed here is a matter of demonstrating that they’re good and I don’t know if there are too many opportunities for this conference to do that. A list of the group’s 141 non-conference games shows a less than competitive set and I’m ok with that. Fly under the radar this year because last year these guys flew right the heck off it. No need to roll the ball out and get smacked around night in and night out through November and December. Then, once out of the non-conference slate, it’s not going to matter much. It’s a dog fight and it is twelve teams who don’t give a lick about who’s thought of as a good or bad team. These squads want to demolish their opponent no matter whether Gottlieb or Bilas or Vitale or Goodman, or even you, think they’re nationally relevant. Winning the games you’re supposed to win becomes the ultimate proof. Can Arizona not drop a dance clincher again to Arizona State? Washington to Oregon State? Can UCLA focus on Ben-ball and not raves, missing flights and intra-team fighting? Will Stanford escape Salt Lake with a win?

So, I guess my short answer is, just don’t suck again.

Kevin Danna: There’s no way the Pac-12 won’t be better than last year. How much better largely depends on how well the incoming freshmen at the perceived “top dogs” of the conference integrate themselves into their new digs. UCLA has had a lot of star recruits come through Pauley the last few years, and many of them haven’t lived up to expectations. Arizona was ranked in the preseason last year largely because of their freshmen, but things didn’t play out as expected. While both sets of freshman classes should be considerably better this year, they still need to prove it on the court.

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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!

#27 – Where Snaer Gun in Cameron 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.

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

For most college basketball fans, the professional brand of the game they love has never resonated in the same endearing way. For reasons ethical and not, the general perception of NBA hoops is not a good one. It is, with few exceptions, terrible. Whether it’s the isolation-heavy offense, lack of defensive organization and discipline, or the fuzzy conception-based judgment that the game just isn’t played the right way in the professional ranks, there are few more infuriating three-letter sequences for college hoops fans than NBA. I’ve never quite understood the origins or the staying power of this criticism, nor do I subscribe to the same viewpoint. Every year, the NBA offers us a nearly six-month slate of the best basketball in the world, played by the best athletes in the world – most of which come from the programs college fans invest their time, money and passion enjoying. It’s not the same as the college game; the differences are as obvious as they are numerous. But if you enjoy basketball played at the highest level, robbing yourself of the sport’s greatest compilation of talent, spectacle and athletic brilliance seems silly. Whatever your opinions on the NBA the organization, it’s awfully difficult to come up with a sound argument justifying your lack of attention to the league’s on-court product. These guys are really, really good. That alone should pique your hoops-watching impulses enough to flip-on at least a few games each year.

With Wallace speaking out against the NBA’s competitive integrity, college fans’ complaints gain a layer of credibility (Photo credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images).

Perhaps the most frequent gripe with NBA basketball brings us to the realm of intangibles, the vague qualities that enhance (or devalue) the tenor of the game’s flow of play. The NBA’s lack of passion or fire or intensity, or whatever descriptor suits your position, is raised with alarming consistency in just about any anti-NBA diatribe. The typical argument proceeds as follows: College players lose their competitive drive when they reach the NBA and receive their first paychecks. Financial incentives, so the narrative goes, rob college players of the passion and unbridled joy that made them so fascinating to watch at their respective programs. If you share this mindset (as this is a college basketball blog, there are no doubt at least a few readers who most definitely do), you are not alone. One NBA contemporary is on your side. Rasheed Wallace – former North Carolina Tar Heel, first-round pick, four-time All Star, all-time NBA bad boy first-teamer, and most recently, New York Knicks frontcourt relief option – opened up with Brian Lewis of the New York Post Wednesday to reveal the reasons behind his unlikely age-38 comeback.

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1. Arizona State’s media day was on Tuesday, and as always, the ASU sports information department does a great job of getting their information out there. As ASU’s director of media relations Doug Tammaro put it, he’s got over 5,000 words on the Sun Devil basketball team, with tons of quotes from head coach Herb Sendek and players Jahii Carson and Evan Gordon. Given the fact that the team is coming off back-to-back subpar seasons (22-40 in the last two years), the Sun Devils have a lot to prove, but just reading through the enthusiasm that Sendek has about this collection of players and the confidence that Carson has in himself and his teammates, it isn’t that hard to envision this team overachieving its way into an upper-division conference finish. A lot would have to break right for that to happen, and the team needs to break through the Murphy’s Law culture that has seemingly taken hold in Tempe, but this ASU team should be an interesting watch all year long.
2. Elsewhere in Tempe, Doug Haller of The Arizona Republic published an interview with ASU sophomore forward Jonathan Gilling on Sunday, and it too paints a picture of a Sun Devil squad ready to surprise people. Gilling, who came out of nowhere to start 18 games for the team and score in double figures eight times in conference play (quite an accomplishment as no better than a third option on a low-scoring team), looks around the roster and sees far more threats to give the opposition problems. Beginning with Carson and Gordon, but also extending to rapidly improving big man Jordan Bachynski and another incoming transfer in Bo Barnes, Gilling sees a completely different team. And, once again, we’ve got testimony from inside the program that Sendek’s promises for a more uptempo approach, including significantly more man-to-man defense, are not just lip service.
3. Up in Pullman, Washington State is ready to plow ahead without the services of recently dismissed point guard Reggie Moore. Moore was head coach Ken Bone’s first recruit to WSU, but there is no use looking back now for him; he needs to begin to plan for the season without an obvious true point. At first glance it appears that it will be a point-guard-by-committee approach, with sophomore combo guard DaVonte Lacy, Kansas transfer Royce Woolridge, senior wing Mychal Ladd and sophomore Dexter Kernich-Drew all potentially chipping in to help get the Cougars into their offense. And, while we’re on Wazzu for a second, be honest, how many of you knew that former Oregon wing Brett Kingma landed in Pullman? Clearly, some of you did, but somehow this completely escaped my attention. It’s a good get for Bone, even if his freshman year in Eugene was a little bumpy and even if he’ll lose a year of eligibility by transferring within the conference.
4. UCLA’s media day was yesterday, but it was significantly less revealing, if only because the biggest question about the Bruins’ season – if and when Shabazz Muhammad and Kyle Anderson will be declared eligible – remains presently unanswerable. So much so that UCLA had their vice chancellor of legal affairs, Kevin S. Reed, monitoring the press conference so that schools officials could remind the media whenever necessary that they wouldn’t be answering any questions about the NCAA review of Muhammad and Anderson’s eligibility. On a brighter note, however, it was announced that Pauley Pavilion is not only really, really close to being a completed project, but it is also a project that came in $44 million under budget. So, you know, the next time you’ve got a project that is gonna run you some nine-digit dollar amount, I believe UCLA’s got a contractor they can recommend.
5. We’re back to the gridiron tonight with a less-than-stellar Thursday night affair between Arizona State and Colorado, and that means it is time for Connor and I to renew our prognosticating battle. I made up another game on Connor last week when USC bounced back from a rough start to pull away from Utah in the second half. Last week’s results leave Connor at 35-13 for the year, while I’m two games back at 33-15. Below are this week’s picks, with our predicted scores for our game of the week (Stanford at Notre Dame) in bold.
   

   Game	Connor’s Pick	Drew’s Pick
   Arizona State at Colorado	Arizona State	Arizona State
   Utah at UCLA	UCLA	UCLA
   California at Washington State	Washington State	California
   Oregon State at Brigham Young	Brigham Young	Oregon State
   USC at Washington	USC	USC
   Stanford at Notre Dame	Notre Dame 38-31	Notre Dame 19-13

Yesterday, we opened up our Big East season preview with a look at the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.  Today, we shoot up the Garden State to break down their in-state rivals, Seton Hall.  Coming off of a bit of a surprising season led by two big-time seniors, head coach Kevin Willard is tasked with attempting to repeat that success by piecing together a group largely comprised of unproven talent and various transfer players.

2011-12 Record: 21-13, 8-10

2011-12 Postseason: 1-1 (NIT)

How will Kevin Willard’s Pirates fare after the departure of Jordan Theodore and Herb Pope?

Schedule

The Pirates face a solid non-conference slate.  After opening with the Kangaroos of UMKC and Norfolk State at home, Seton Hall travels to Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut for the Basketball Hall of Fame Tip-Off, where they will then face Washington and either Ohio State or Rhode Island. Later in the fall, the Pirates travel to Baton Rouge to take on middling SEC program LSU, and hit the road one more time to face a struggling Wake Forest program. Neither of these teams is a powerhouse at this point, but beating either could prove to be a nice recognizable win for Seton Hall.  The Pirates close out the non-conference season with a rematch against Stony Brook, which they edged out 63-61 in the first round of last season’s NIT.

Seton Hall opens Big East play with a trip to the midwest to take on DePaul and Notre Dame. Seton Hall has home-and-homes with Louisville and Marquette, who look to be at the top of the conference again this season, as well as Providence and Rutgers, who should be a bit more manageable for the Pirates. They also host USF, Cincinnati, UConn, Syracuse, and Villanova at the Prudential Center. It will be interesting to see how the New Jersey fan base embraces Seton Hall this season, as “The Rock” may feel fairly dormant this winter with the NHL lockout bringing uncertainty to the Devils’ season and the Nets relocating to Brooklyn. Seton Hall may be the arena’s only home team for the time being.

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1. The Darrell Williams saga may not be over yet. A jury convicted the former Oklahoma State player of rape and sexual battery this summer, but he’ll have a hearing this Friday to determine whether he deserves a retrial. His defense team claims it has new evidence, and it filed a motion for a retrial back in August. Williams, who received testimony from head coach Travis Ford and was convicted in front of several of his teammates, maintained his innocence by claiming he may have been falsely identified by the victims at an OSU party. There’s no word on what the defense team’s new evidence is, but on Friday, we’ll find out if it’s enough for a new trial.
2. Yesterday, we told you about Iowa State‘s new-look offense after the losses of Royce White and Scott Christopherson. Head coach Fred Hoiberg said his team would still jack up threes with the best of them, but there’s also the possibility this team could be faster and more uptempo than a year ago. As the article points out, it’ll be easier to run with a true point guard in Korie Lucious now on the roster. Utah transfer Will Clyburn is also feeling the pressure of living up to White: “Royce was a great player; he did a lot of different things on the court, so it’s not just one player that’s going to replace him,” he told the Des Moines Register.
3. Missouri officially left the Big 12 more than three months ago, but the Tigers are still making news on the Big 12 front. Kansas coach Bill Self further expanded this week on why his team won’t schedule the Tigers, as if this subject hasn’t been beaten to death by media and writers (like ourselves, of course) already. Self said he might expect to see MU in the NCAA Tournament, since the “selection committee has a strange sense of humor.” That would presume, of course, that the Tigers make it past the first game of competition, but wouldn’t that be fun?
   
4. Self also found out this week he’ll receive an award this April. It’s called the Legends of Coaching award, and it’s intended to honor coaches who exemplify the characteristics and qualities of former UCLA great John Wooden. This isn’t the first or last award Self will win, but it’s got to feel nice to somehow be associated with the Wizard of Westwood. He’ll also find himself associated with an impressive list of past winners, including Coach K, Tom Izzo, Pat Summit, Jim Calhoun and Jim Boeheim.
5. Oklahoma has made history. The Sooners will become the only known team in Division I basketball to stream their practices live this fall. It may not be the most enthralling television to watch Lon Kruger instruct (or chew out) his team during a run-of-the-mill October practice, but it’s a heck of a lot better than not watching basketball at all. We went ahead and bookmarked that website, and we suggest you do the same, provided you’re a fan of Big 12 hoops or Oklahoma hoops specifically. It may be an interesting insight into how major college basketball programs run their practices.

1. Michigan State players rarely receive unanimous votes to be team captain, but that’s what Derrick Nix received this fall from his teammates, this coming even after a marijuana arrest last spring. Nix, the Spartans’ lone senior, was named one of two team captains along with redshirt sophomore Russell Byrd. Nix was a solid contributor for MSU last season, averaging 8.1 points and 3.8 rebounds per game in the shadow of star forward Draymond Green. Now, Nix will be called upon to step up in a young frontcourt. According to the Detroit Free Press, Tom Izzo was debating whether to allow Nix’s name on the ballot due to the arrest, saying, “It’s either going to be a huge, huge success story or egg on my face. I think it’s going to be a huge success story.” Nix won’t serve a suspension this year stemming from that arrest.
2. As team practices are about to get start, Wisconsin has already lost star Mike Bruesewitz for the first four to six weeks of the year. Bruesewitz was injured during a team workout when he ran into the sharp part of the basket and was cut between the knee and the ankle. The Wisconsin State Journal reported that the cut was at least 12 inches long and that Bruesewitz’s bone was showing. This isn’t a common injury for athletes, so it’s tough to judge when Bruesewitz will be fully back, but he will be missing most of preseason practice and possibly the first couple weeks of the season. That’s not a huge blow for the Badgers, but it could take some time before Bruesewitz returns to form.
3. Preseason rankings are meaningless, especially in a sport with such a big postseason, but they’re a fun way to pass the time in the offseason and they give a rough look of who could contend for a National Championship. Not only that, but they also show which leagues are the best. Fresh off a year in which the Big Ten was arguably the nation’s best conference, things look to be pointing in that direction again, as ESPN.com ranked four Big Ten teams in the top 10 of its preseason rankings — Indiana at No. 1 — and six teams in the top 25.  As the season goes along, the rankings will change. However, it’s clear heading into the season, that the Big Ten is once again the conference to beat.
4. The Jabari Parker sweepstakes is heating up, as Parker narrowed his list to five schools — Michigan State, Duke, BYU, Florida and Stanford. Parker will reportedly take a visit to MSU next weekend — the weekend of October 20. Parker, of Chicago’s Simeon Career Academy — the same high school as Derrick Rose — is the No. 1 player in the country and has been dubbed by Sports Illustrated as the best high school player since Lebron James. While that might be a bit premature, Parker is undoubtedly a special talent and could singlehandedly vault the Spartans into the National Championship discussion once he arrives on campus. MSU has yet to secure a commitment for the class of 2013.
5. Two decades after the “Fab Five,” Michigan has yet another vaunted recruiting class coming in for 2012. The Wolverines’ class ranks ninth in the Scout.com rankings and includes three four-star recruits, including center Mitch McGary, who is ranked No. 10 in the country at his position and held offers from Duke, Florida, Kentucky and North Carolina, among others. McGary is joined by four-star forwards Nick Stauskas and Glenn Robinson, three-star guard Caris LeVert and unranked point guard Spike Albrecht. However, according to M-Live, this group isn’t seeking the same attention the last “Fab Five” did. In fact, the article gave them a new nickname: The Modest Five. Regardless of what they’re called, this group has the potential to make Michigan a top 10 team this season, and it gives Michigan arguably its most talented team since the original “Fab Five.”