Including exhibitions, and not counting potential preseason tournament matchups (for example, UCLA-Indiana or Arizona-San Diego State), the Pac-12 schools will play a total of 142 non-conference games this season. We rank them all below in order of most-watchable. All times are pacific.

You Can Find a Large Number of These Games on the New P12 Networks This Season

142. UNC Pembroke @ Stanford, November 4, TBA
141. San Francisco State @ California, November 6, 7:30 PM
140. Western Washington @ Washington, October 24, 7:00 PM
139. Lewis-Clark @ Oregon State, November 4, 7:30 PM
138. Concordia @ Oregon, October 29, 7:00 PM
137. Saint Martins @ Washington State, November 6, TBA
136. Southwestern Oklahoma State @ Oregon, November 5, 7:00 PM
135. Chico State @ Arizona, November 6, 5:30 PM
134. Simon Fraser @ Utah, November 2, TBA
133. Cal State San Marcos @ UCLA, December 4, 7:30 PM
132. Humboldt State @ Arizona, October 31, 6:30 PM
131. College of Idaho @ Utah, December 28, 6:30 PM, Pac-12 Networks
130. Prairie View A&M @ UCLA, December 15, 6:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
129. Willamette @ Utah, November 9, 6:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
128. Coppin State @ USC, November 9, 8:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
127. Prairie View A&M @ California, December 22, TBA, Pac-12 Networks
126. Texas-Pan American @ Oregon State, December 31, 2:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
125. Idaho State @ Oregon, December 8, 3:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
124. Towson @ Oregon State, December 29, 5:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
123. Arkansas-Pine Bluff @ Oregon, December 1, 7:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
122. Hartford @ Colorado, December 29, 11:00 AM, Pac-12 Networks
121. Texas-San Antonio @ Oregon, November 29, 7:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
120. Arkansas-Pine Bluff @ Washington State, November 24, 2:30 PM/6:30 PM, Pac-12 Networks
119. Texas Southern @ Colorado, November 27, 6:30 PM, Pac-12 Networks
118. Charleston Southern @ Arizona, November 11, 3:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
117. Coppin State @ Arizona State, December 29, 11:00 AM, Pac-12 Networks
116. Utah @ Texas State, November 30, TBA
115. Dartmouth @ Arizona State, December 15, 12:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
114. Wright State @ Utah, November 24, 2:30 PM/6:30 PM, Pac-12 Networks
113. Hartford @ Arizona State, December 5, 5:30 PM, Pac-12 Networks
112. Idaho State @ Utah, November 21, 6:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks
111. Arkansas-Pine Bluff @ Arizona State, November 28, 5:00 PM, Pac-12 Networks

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If there’s a unique place to play a basketball game, Michigan State will probably find a way to play there eventually. The Spartans opened the 2011-12 season by playing North Carolina on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the inaugural Carrier Classic. Now, Tom Izzo’s squad will be opening up the 2012-13 season somewhere even stranger — in an airplane hangar at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. MSU will take on Connecticut in the inaugural Armed Forces Classic, the first regular season college basketball game to ever be played in Europe.

Last Year’s Inaugural Carrier Classic Set the Stage for Michigan State’s Entry Into This Year’s Armed Forces Classic

Games in strange settings are a clear trend in college basketball, with the Carrier Classic moving into its second year, Pittsburgh playing its Midnight Madness scrimmage on a street corner and now the Spartans and Huskies flying all the way to Europe to tip off the season. Michigan State has been a pioneer in the movement, as evidenced by the Spartans’ openers last season and next. Athletic director Mark Hollis has been a visionary in helping his team gain exposure on the national stage by scheduling games that draw in a national television audience. The media-savvy Hollis and his athletic department have grown the Spartans’ national presence across all sports, but basketball in particular. With most teams choosing to play cupcakes during the first few weeks of the season, last year Michigan State immediately threw itself into the national spotlight against a loaded North Carolina team in the Carrier Classic, both due to the magnitude of the match-up and the uniqueness of the event. It was big for the sport as a whole too, as college basketball stole the spotlight, if only for a day, in the heart of the football season.

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1. Yesterday North Carolina announced that Roy Williams had undergone successful surgery at UNC Hospitals to remove a tumor from his right kidney, the likes of which was discovered last month during a routine physical of the 62-year old head coach. Although Williams’ prognosis is good and he is expected to be back on his feet and ready for the start of practice in just over three weeks, there is the possibility that he may need to undergo a second surgery to remove a different tumor on his left kidney. Although the news release didn’t mention the dreaded “c” word related to Williams’ health, it’s safe to assume that there is at least some cause for concern on that front. The NYT reported Wednesday that the severity of the removed tumor is currently unknown and his test results should be back within a week. Meanwhile, we’re all crossing our fingers for a coach who, as The Dagger reminded us, has spent the better part of his years at UNC pushing philanthropic causes related to fighting cancer. Good luck in this battle, coach.
2. Former Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun is no stranger to health issues including cancer (a three-time survivor), so hopefully he won’t have to spend any of his golden years fighting that particular disease again. Now fully settled into retirement his new role as UConn basketball advisor/fund-raiser, he’ll certainly have more free time, and as the Hartford Courant reports, the financial resources by which to truly enjoy himself. Calhoun’s decision to make no decision on his retirement until after the payroll run on September 7 ensured that he would receive a lump sum payment of $1.3 million for speaking engagements and appearances this year, while his negotiation of another lump sum payment in January to $1.15 million and his biweekly salary going through next March means that the three-time national champion will receive in the neighborhood of $2.75 million for not coaching the Huskies this season. He also has an option to receive another lump sum $1 million retirement payment next spring, which would put his golden parachute year into elite territory, for sure.
3. Kevin Ollie is the new top guy at UConn, and his first regular season game will make history in more ways than one — not only does his hiring represent a new era in Connecticut basketball, but he will stalk the sidelines for the very first time as a Husky some 4,000 miles away as part of the first college basketball game ever played in Europe. The Armed Forces Classic will feature Michigan State and Connecticut lacing them up at midnight local time in an airplane hangar at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. It will also serve as a nice homecoming game for German-born Huskies Niels Giffey, Enosch Wolf, and Leon Tolksdorf, none of whom probably never imagined they’d get a chance to play NCAA hoops on their home soil. One interesting caveat with this news release is that there are plans to move this event around in the future, potentially opening up the entire world to the beauty of early November college basketball.
4. The nation’s top player in the Class of 2014, and some say the top player in the world’s prep ranks, Andrew Wiggins of Huntington (WV) Prep, is considering a reclassification (Nerlens Noel-style) into the Class of 2013 instead. According to his high school coach, Wiggins already has taken and passed most of the NCAA’s requisite core classes, meaning that he theoretically has the option if he and his parents feel that’s the best course of action for his development, and ultimately, NBA riches. Huntington is only two hours east of Lexington, and John Calipari has already made waves recruiting Wiggins, so you have to wonder if the Kentucky head coach has his eye set on making the Class of 2013 (including a reclassified Wiggins) his own personal Dream Team. UK is already on the list of every player in the top five of Rivals’ most recent rankings — Calipari might just redefine what college basketball recruiting is all about if he pulls this off.
5. So… about that Harvard basketball bandwagon? Yeah, many Crimson students aren’t really feeling it much anymore. According to Bill Pennington’s Quad post at the New York Times, the campus euphoria that surrounded the team’s Ivy League championship and long-overdue appearance in the NCAA Tournament last season has largely dissipated in light of the recent academic scandal involving co-captains Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry. Even though the class in question where the cheating is alleged to have occurred (Government 1310: Introduction to Congress) involved over 125 students with varying interests and affiliations, the focus has largely been on the presumed guilt of Tommy Amaker’s players and what it says about the interplay between college athletics and academics as a whole. It’s an interesting read and well worth your time.

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

The chances that former Duke forward Lance Thomas did not commit some kind of NCAA violation when he purchased $98,700 worth of jewelry on a December road trip to New York City during his senior season are, shall we say, doubtful. Thomas, a starting role player on the Blue Devils’ eventual National Championship-winning team in 2009-10, walked into world-renowned jeweler Rafaello & Co., dropped a $30,000 down payment on a host of diamonds and other trinkets, then promised to pay the remaining $67,800 within the next 15 days. His spending spree – the specifics of which were released last week when word leaked of the firm’s lawsuit against Thomas – raised many eyebrows. It is not every day that student-athletes – from the most well-off to those struggling to stay afloat on hefty financial aid packages/scholarships – walk into celebrity-hotspot jewelers and splash nearly $100,000 on buckets of iced-out swag; not without drawing the analytical glare of NCAA staffers, not without an explanation as to how or where the money came from, nor whether any third parties were involved in the transaction. Given the bare facts, it was hard not to come away thinking Rafaello & Co would entrust someone like Thomas with such for any other reason than an assumed stipulation of future NBA riches and the subsequent jewelry spending they prefigure. Thomas never made good on his promise, and so Rafaello & Co., after waiting more than two years for him to repay the loan, demanded he break even on his credit. On Tuesday, the Raleigh News and Observer reported that the two parties had reached a settlement on the matter.

If neither Thomas nor Rafaello & Co. come clean with specifics, the NCAA may be impotent in pursuing the case (Photo credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images).

Now that Thomas’ outstanding debt has been settled, there are legitimate concerns that NCAA investigators will have no grounds on which to pursue information regarding the former Duke player’s involvement in this transaction. The NCAA cannot compel members outside its jurisdiction to cooperate, meaning neither Thomas nor Rafaello & Co. can be forced to speak with the organization about his purchase. There’s one caveat. A conversation between ESPN.com’s Andy Katz and Indianapolis attorney Stu Brown, a legal specialist focusing on NCAA cases, shed some light on the NCAA’s procedural wherewithal.  The terms of the settlement – which may or may not ever become public – may permit Thomas or Rafaello & Co. to speak with NCAA investigators, but if the legal ramifications mandate either or both to keep quiet on the specifics of their transaction, the NCAA will likely have no substantial recourse to find clarity in what on its face appears to be a blatant violation of amateurism. From Katz’s story:

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1. Is former Duke forward Lance Thomas destined to become the next Corey Maggette, or worse? For those of you not familiar with the one-and-done freak of an athlete who came off the bench for the 1998-99 national runner-up Blue Devils, Maggette admitted under oath in 2000 as part of a federal grand jury proceeding that he took cash payments in high school from an agent named Myron Piggie, (theoretically) putting his amateur eligibility at considerable risk. The NCAA chose to not vacate Duke’s 37 wins from that season nor did it ask the program to remove its banner — ever since then, Duke haters have pointed to this decision as Exhibit A of the NCAA’s selective enforcement process. Well. Get ready for part two. With the news Tuesday that Thomas had come to a settlement agreement with the New York City jeweler who floated him a $67,800 loan nearly three years ago, the NCAA will need a Deep Throat (or at least a James Carter, IV) if it has any inclination of properly investigating this case. The strong likelihood is that nobody — not Thomas, not the jeweler, not anyone who had a red hand in this transaction — will say anything to to governing body… which begs the question: Will the NCAA make a prima facie case against Thomas to rule him retroactively ineligible (see: Rose, Derrick); or, will they suffer the howling of the masses for what will appear to be Duke getting away with special treatment a second time around (see: Maggette, Corey). Gonna be interesting.
2. Senior forward Julius Randle is the top player in the Class of 2013, depending on whom you consult with, and he’s gotten a lot of attention this week for taking an official visit to Kentucky (where he was photographed with Drake) and giving a review of each of his in-home visits with Eric Bossi at Rivals.com. The tea leaves with respect to Randle are all over the place at this point, as he still plans on doing another round of in-home visits with a number of other schools and plans on waiting until spring to make his final decision. Clearly this kid likes the attention. Still, with John Calipari, Mike Krzyzewski, Bill Self, and Roy Williams all vying for Randle’s services, this is already one of the most power-packed recruitments we’ve seen in some time. And it promises to only get better.
3. While on the subject of recruiting elite players, SI.com‘s Luke Winn reported yesterday that surprise Rice transfer Arsalan Kazemi plans on requesting a waiver from the NCAA so that he has an opportunity to play right away in the 2012-13 season. He didn’t give Winn additional detail on the basis of that waiver request, but it is notable that Oregon is the only school on his current list that hasn’t started classes for the fall term yet (September 24). He plans on making a final decision by the end of this week, and not coincidentally, Dana Altman’s program in addition to everybody’s possible destination, Kentucky, appear to be his “early leaders.”
4. The Ed O’Bannon class action lawsuit against the NCAA for the use of his and other student-athletes’ likenesses continues to churn on in a federal courtroom in San Francisco, and a series of recently unsealed emails and depositions from the organization clearly reveals that school administrators and NCAA senior management have had serious and frank discussions about the legality of their strategies. One of the more interesting memoranda showed that a senior policy advisor at the NCAA suggested to incoming president Mark Emmert in 2010 that the organization ditch the term “student-athlete,” which if you recall from last fall’s The Atlantic piece from Taylor Branch, was an invention by former NCAA head honcho Walter Byers in the 1950s to explain away the notion that scholarships, room, and board were payment in kind. The article from ESPN.com cited above is worth the read, as there are a number of interesting quotes and anecdotes buried within it relating to how the NCAA does business.
5. We didn’t have space for this one yesterday but it’s something we wanted to make sure we got up on the M5 this week anyway. Marquette is back in action with what’s becoming an annual tradition around those parts — a karaoke-inspired mash-up of clips from various Golden Eagles singing (or whatever you want to call it) pop tunes that will be used as timeout fodder during next season’s MU home games. If you can bear listening to the whole thing, you’re one step ahead of us…

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

The preseason hype meter for the 2012-13 North Carolina State Wolfpack has been held in check by the lingering suspicion that incoming guard Rodney Purvis, the No. 5 ranked shooting guard in the country and the No. 1 overall player in the state of North Carolina, would be ruled ineligible to play next season. Those concerns no longer exist, according to Adam Zagoria of SNY. TV, who reported Monday that Purvis has received the official green light from the NCAA clearinghouse. Purvis was allowed to participate in practices and began attending classes, but did not take part in the team’s foreign exhibition trip to Spain last month, which raised the prospect he might miss the season as a partial qualifier. Purvis’ extended clearance process involved a meticulous review of his academic coursework at Upper Room Christian Academy in Raleigh. His track record now approved, the NCAA delivered Mark Gottfried and NC State its best news of the offseason.

The Wolfpack now have one of the nation’s best freshman to boost their chances of winning the ACC (Photo credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

With Purvis in tow, NC State may very well have the talent and depth to compete for its first ACC crown since Jim Valvano bossed the Wolfpack sidelines more than two decades ago. C.J. Leslie returns to headline a vaunted frontcourt featuring bruising senior Richard Howell and highly-touted freshman T.J. Warren. The backcourt, fronted by sure-handed point guard Lorenzo Brown, three-point marksman Scott Wood, freshmen Tyler Lewis and Purvis, should be among the best in the ACC, if not the country. It’s hard to find too many flaws with this NC State team: If everything breaks right – if the new blood can fit in alongside a talented returning rotation; if Leslie can harness his first-round potential from game-to-game; if Gottfried can unify the talented crop of incoming talent with the mainstays from last year’s Sweet Sixteen team – the Wolfpack won’t just be shooting for a conference title. They’ll set their sights on something far greater. Reaching the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, as NC State did last season after hitting its stride just in time to put the finishing touches on a bubble-worthy resume with a deep run in the ACC Tournament, should be the baseline expectation. When they finally sorted out their rotation and and learned to maximize their strengths and mask their weaknesses on both ends of the floor, the Wolfpack proved they could challenge the best teams in the country. After its conference tournament run was halted by a healthy North Carolina (as in, before Kendall Marshall’s wrist injury), NC State dominated six-seed San Diego State and edged three-seed Georgetown before falling to eventual national runner-up Kansas.

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1. The NCAA eligibility train rolls on, and NC State’s Mark Gottfried was Monday’s recipient of the excellent news that superstar freshman Rodney Purvis is eligible to suit up in a Wolfpack uniform next season. The issue in Purvis’ case revolved around the legitimacy of his high school — Upper Room Christian Academy, in Raleigh, whose first-ever class to graduate included Purvis — but during an 80-minute deliberation on Monday, an NCAA core course subcommittee saw enough evidence that the big guard is adequately prepared for the rigors of a college education and made the right decision to let him play. We’ll have more on this later today, but the early buzz is that this makes NC State the favorite to win the ACC for the first time in… how long?
2. Speaking of getting a college education, UNC chancellor Holden Thorp announced on Monday that this academic year would be his last at the university in that position. Even though the academic scandal that has rocked the university in recent months most likely started prior to his tenure as chancellor of the school in 2008, the most recent black eye involving fundraising director Matt Kupec and Tyler Hansbrough’s mother, Tami, taking personal trips on the university dime, happened on his watch. One member of the Board of Governors said that Thorp, as “captain of the ship” at UNC, had become “the face of damage control” and lauded him for sacrificing himself for the good of the school. It doesn’t take an insider to see the writing on the wall that more changes are likely to come in Chapel Hill as additional details about the academic scandal are revealed by the upcoming Martin Report, due to release next month.
3. Everybody is well aware of the near-mutiny that occurred in Lubbock earlier this month at Texas Tech (side note: Billy Gillispie has been ordered by his doctors to avoid stress for the next 30 days), but what is going on on the other side of the state at Rice? Ben Braun’s team lost four transfers over the summer and followed that up by losing two more players in just the past week — notably, Omar Oraby (USC), and most importantly, Owls star Arsalan Kazemi. The 6’7″ senior who averaged 12/10 last season en route to all-CUSA honors, was roommates with Oraby and no doubt must have missed their nightly games on the PlayStation. Jeff Goodman reported Monday that Kazemi is looking at six schools including Texas, Oregon, Cincinnati, Florida, Ohio State and Kentucky. He will have to sit out the mandated transfer year per NCAA rules, but the talented Iranian would provide a very nice one-year punch to any of those schools in 2013-14.
4. Louisville may have found its replacement for preseason All-American Peyton Siva in 2013-14 and perhaps beyond, as 5’11” waterbug Chris Jones committed to the Cardinals out of the junior college ranks on Monday. The rising sophomore, originally from Memphis, averaged 18/5/4 APG in leading his Northwest Florida State team to a 26-1 record and an appearance in the NJCAA Division I championship game last year. According to Jones, Rick Pitino does not want the reins of his offense in a freshman point guard’s hands, so if things work out properly he’ll have upperclassman leadership at that position for the next three seasons.
5. Speaking of Pitino and in light of Jim Calhoun’s recent retirement, CBSSports.com‘s Matt Norlander took a look at the 11 current college basketball coaches with at least one national title and handicapped each one’s probable date of retirement. Be sure to take a look at his entire list, but he’s got more than half of those guys — six, to be exact — retiring within the next four years. The exercise here is one that depends on so many different and volatile factors (health, family, motivation, recruiting, etc.), but it says here that Pitino won’t hang up the whistle until he gets that elusive and self-validating second championship, while Krzyzewski is only likely to do so after he wins his fifth. Time will tell.

1. Sports Illustrated: In minor news that is of little interest to anyone, Notre Dame will be joining the ACC as a full member in all sports but football, where it will remain an independent but still schedule five ACC teams each year. This is strong news for the conference on the basketball side of things as Notre Dame has been ready to contend in most recent years. Though it’s likely to be a year or two before the Fighting Irish fully join the conference, once they are here, they will be here to stay. The ACC also approved a new exit fee for schools looking to leave the conference and the price tag is a little north of $50 million. In other words, get comfortable, Florida State.
2. Raleigh News & Observer: Somehow, the story is still about Notre Dame, even when it’s about North Carolina. In the wake of the internal audit that revealed inappropriately paid for personal trips by UNC’s chief fundraiser Matt Kupec, Tami Hansbrough has joined Kupec in resigning her position. The story is pretty simple: The two were romantically involved and used the university’s money to pay for trips to watch former Tar Heel and Tami’s son Tyler Hansbrough play a couple of NBA games, but mostly to pay for trips to watch Tami’s other son, Ben Hansbrough, play for Notre Dame. It’s unclear whether this news is better or worse now that the Fighting Irish are headed to the ACC, though it remains, undeniably, really stupid.
3. Daily Press: When the ACC was taking submissions for conference tournament sites for the years 2016-21, they get at least one unusual candidate: Consol Energy Arena, located in Pittsburgh, a bit farther north than the tournament is customarily held. The ACC Tournament has never been held farther north than Landover, Maryland, but the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins is going to take a shot at getting it. With the conference’s center of gravity now gradually shifting north after the recent realignment additions, the possibility makes a good deal of sense, particularly to those not as enamored of the charms of Greensboro, North Carolina.
4. CBS Sports: Sam Cassell, Jr., has been ruled ineligible to play college basketball this season, a disappointing conclusion for a Maryland team that had hoped to benefit from the services of the son of one of the ACC’s finest. Meanwhile, Sam Cassell, Sr., energetically ripped into the NCAA for, in his mind, unfairly punishing his son. Although the elder Cassell’s biases are obvious, he does have an interesting point regarding who the NCAA has the power to punish:

They do whatever they want. It doesn’t even do any good to fight it. The NCAA just wants kids to fail. It’s not these kids’ fault. The NCAA can’t penalize Notre Dame Prep, so they are squashing the kids’ dreams.

5. ESPN: Mark Gottfried’s recruiting continues to impress as the NC State Wolfpack secured the services of one of the best point guards in the entire 2013 class. Anthony “Cat” Barber signed on to wear red in Raleigh, and the Wolfpack just got a little scarier. Hopefully that will help ease the agony of the still-unresolved situation with Rodney Purvis.

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

At its humblest origins, the Big East was founded in 1979 behind the fundamental purpose of consolidating the East Coast’s best basketball programs into one competitive league. It began with seven members – Providence, St. Johns, Georgetown, Syracuse, Seton Hall, Connecticut and Boston College – and within the next three years added Villanova (1980) and Pittsburgh (1982). While some of that founding core remains, conference realignment has caused massive changes to the league’s membership. Most of the league hopping – almost all of which can be attributed to football-motivated decisions – has taken place in the 21^st century. The latest move saw Notre Dame, who housed its basketball and Olympic sports in the Big East but kept its football independence, declare its intentions to join the ACC. There is no timetable yet for the Irish’s move, but for an athletic program as proud and as financially-supported as Notre Dame, there’s little chance school administrators will linger around in Big East territory for any extended context, even if leaving requires a hefty exit fee. As currently constructed, the Big East will feature a 15-team hoops league in 2012-13. Two years from now, when all the realignment pieces are settled into their new homes, the league will field a decidedly different blend of disparate programs. The hectic realignment frenzy of recent years forced me to research the Big East’s jumbled future membership, an exercise that left me nostalgic about the endless hoops drama the league has produced and discouraged for a bleak future.

A reckless compilation of new programs, the Big East was assembled so that Aresco could present an appealing package to prospective media rights negotiatiors (Photo credit: John P Filo/AP Photo).

Starting in 2013, this is the mixed bag of hoops castoffs the Big East will proudly own: Cincinnati, UConn, Villanova, Georgetown, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Rutgers, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette, South Florida, Temple, Houston, SMU, UCF, and Memphis. That’s assuming Louisville or UConn or Villanova or any other programs that could fill a potential future opening in the ACC (if Notre Dame joins as a full member, or if commissioner John Swofford looks to add a 16^th basketball-only member) don’t jump ship before then. It’s hardly the grizzled band of geographically-fitting programs we once knew, the one with the hostile rivalries and legendary coaches and highly-appealing hard-nosed brand of hoops. But it’s merely life in the new Big East, the latest example of the detrimental and usually unintended byproducts of conference realignment. A league brought together for basketball purposes was largely undone by the allure of football money. Lest I digress on the evils of conference realignment (a column for another day), the reality – that the Big East, from a basketball standpoint, is now a shell of its former self – warrants a reassessment of the league’s power structure and its future standing among other power conferences. SI.Com’s college hoops’ analytical extraordinaire, Luke Winn – in response to new Big East commissioner Mike Aresco’s comment that, despite realignment-related losses, “We’re still the strongest top-to-bottom basketball conference in the country” – quantified the Big East’s realignment efficiency rate and found the reconfigured league to be the “weakest top-to-bottom major conference, not the strongest.”

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1. In the wake of last week’s announcement by Notre Dame that it was leaving the Big East to join the ACC in all sports except football, new Big East commissioner Mike Aresco said on Friday that his league is not dead, and as a matter of fact, is still “the strongest basketball conference in the country.” We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here and assume that when he made reference to conference strength he was talking about the upcoming season only — before he loses the likes of Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame from his lineup of stalwart programs. At the end of the day, much will be written about the relative strength of the two leagues once all the realignment moves have propagated, but from our view a top eight of UNC, Duke, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Maryland, Florida State and NC State looks equal to or better than Connecticut, Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette, Memphis, Georgetown, Villanova and Temple. Of course, the bottom half of the Big East is where the ACC really increases its lead — UCF, SMU, Rutgers, DePaul and the rest have no business competing with programs like Virginia, Miami, Clemson and Wake Forest.
2. Right on cue, Luke Winn last week analyzed a similar comment made by Aresco (“We’re still the strongest top-to-bottom basketball conference in the country.”) in his own inimitable way. Winn used KenPom efficiency data to compare leagues based on their current configuration and their new configurations, and with the caveat that past performance does not accurately predict future success, the Big East as a whole falls from the second-best basketball conference over the last 10 seasons to sixth. As he notes, “realignment has made the Big East the weakest top-to-bottom major conference, not the strongest.” He also shows a chart exhibiting that only four of the top 11 leagues have improved themselves on the hardwood through conference realignment — the WCC, ACC, Atlantic 10, and SEC. Each of these leagues has added at least one solid basketball school to its mix.
3. Sam Cassell caused a commotion upon his entry to the ACC two decades ago with his brashness, outspoken demeanor, and his talent on the court. Late last week some of those same characteristics came to bear as the now-Washington Wizards assistant spoke to Jeff Goodman about the NCAA’s rejection of his son’s appeal to play as a freshman next season at Maryland. Comparing the organization to “neighborhood bullies” and accusing the governing body of wanting “kids to fail,” Cassell is clearly unhappy with the NCAA’s decision to invalidate courses his son took at Notre Dame Prep as a high school junior even though other players such as Pittsburgh’s Khem Birch and Marquette’s Todd Mayo took the exact same courses and were eligible to play last season. Cassell, Jr., has not made a decision on what his next step will be, but
4. The other player hurt by the NCAA’s decision to invalidate those Notre Dame Prep courses may not have a famous father to speak on his behalf, but Myles Davis will sit out next year at Xavier — paying his own way — and he’ll have some additional company doing it. Jalen Reynolds, another member of Chris Mack’s incoming recruiting class, was deemed ineligible by the NCAA on Friday for a similar issue, and he too will have to sit out the entire 2012-13 season while paying his own tuition at XU. With these two losses and the recent expulsion of Dez Wells, Xavier is now down to only eight scholarship players — none of whom were significant contributors on last year’s Sweet Sixteen team. The Musketeers’ first season in a revamped Atlantic 10 boasting new instant impact programs Butler and VCU will certainly be interesting with such a young and inexperienced squad — Mack will need to find a way to work miracles on the banks of the Ohio River if he plans on keeping Xavier’s NCAA Tournament streak of seven straight seasons alive.
5. College basketball is legitimately just around the corner, and what better way to get your juices flowing than to read an interview with Gus Johnson. Johnson, of course, is spending his time nowadays as the lead college football announcer on Fox while also doing some Big Ten Network work on the side. This Q&A with Johnson isn’t necessarily ground-breaking in its breadth, but there were two college basketball takeaways that came out of it. First, and perhaps unsurprisingly since Johnson is a Detroit guy and given his obvious enthusiasm during games, he said he has long admired Dick Vitale as a sportscaster. Next, out of all the great games he’s covered over the years, his favorite? The 1996 NCAA Tournament Princeton upset over the defending national champions, UCLA. Give us more Gus, anytime.