The ACC announced the conference opponents for next year’s basketball season. We’ll have a little more analysis of team’s opponents once we wrap up coverage from this season and start looking ahead to the fall, but here it is in case you missed it.

School	Home-and-Home	Home	Away
	Georgia Tech Notre Dame Syracuse Virginia Tech	Clemson Duke Florida State Maryland Pittsburgh	Miami North Carolina NC State Virginia Wake Forest
	Florida State Georgia Tech Pittsburgh Wake Forest	Duke Maryland Miami NC State Virginia	Boston College North Carolina Notre Dame Syracuse Virginia Tech
	Georgia Tech North Carolina Syracuse Wake Forest	Florida State Maryland NC State Virginia Virginia Tech	Boston College Clemson Miami Notre Dame Pittsburgh
	Clemson Maryland Miami Virginia	Georgia Tech North Carolina Notre Dame Syracuse Virginia Tech	Boston College Duke Pittsburgh NC State Wake Forest
	Boston College Clemson Duke Notre Dame	Miami North Carolina Pittsburgh Virginia Virginia Tech	Florida State Maryland NC State Syracuse Wake Forest
	Florida State Pittsburgh Virginia Virginia Tech	Georgia Tech Miami Notre Dame Syracuse Wake Forest	Boston College Clemson Duke North Carolina NC State
	Florida State NC State Syracuse Virginia Tech	Boston College Duke Notre Dame Pittsburgh Wake Forest	Clemson Georgia Tech Maryland North Carolina Virginia
	Duke NC State Notre Dame Wake Forest	Boston College Clemson Maryland Miami Pittsburgh	Florida State Georgia Tech Syracuse Virginia Virginia Tech
	Miami North Carolina Pittsburgh Wake Forest	Boston College Florida State Georgia Tech Maryland Virginia	Clemson Duke Notre Dame Syracuse Virginia Tech
	Boston College Georgia Tech North Carolina Virginia	Clemson Duke NC State Pittsburgh Virginia Tech	Florida State Maryland Miami Syracuse Wake Forest
	Clemson Maryland NC State Syracuse	Duke Florida State Virginia Virginia Tech Wake Forest	Boston College Georgia Tech Miami North Carolina Notre Dame
	Boston College Duke Miami Pittsburgh	Clemson Georgia Tech North Carolina NC State Notre Dame	Florida State Maryland Virginia Virginia Tech Wake Forest
	Florida State Maryland Notre Dame Virginia Tech	Boston College Miami North Carolina Syracuse Wake Forest	Clemson Duke Georgia Tech NC State Pittsburgh
	Boston College Maryland Miami Virginia	Clemson North Carolina NC State Syracuse Wake Forest	Duke Florida State Georgia Tech Notre Dame Pittsburgh
	Clemson Duke North Carolina NC State	Boston College Florida State Georgia Tech Notre Dame Syracuse	Maryland Miami Pittsburgh Virginia Virginia Tech

Nate Kotisso is a Big 12 writer for Rush The Court. You can follow him on Twitter @natekotisso. 

We’re taking a look back on a team-by-team basis at the 2012-13 season. Next up: TCU.

Final Record: 11-21 (2-16)

The Expectations: What a confusing offseason it must have been for fans of TCU basketball. Granted, hoops on campus may not have had much of a fan base to begin with but the changes were intriguing. In 2011-12, the Horned Frogs enjoyed their first season above the .500 mark (18-15) since winning 21 games in 2004-05. They finished fifth in a Mountain West that sent the four teams in front of them to the NCAA Tournament. They also had the MW Freshman (Kyan Anderson) and Sixth Man of the Year (Amric Fields) coming back to school. This was easily looking like Jim Christian’s best year but sensing his time there was nearing due to his poorly performing teams before, he took the Ohio job when it was vacated by John Groce. TCU was of course entering its first year as a member of the Big 12 conference which, competition-wise, would be a step up from teams in the Mountain West. Trent Johnson, who pretty much did his best Jim Christian impression, left LSU to take the TCU job. Johnson has had experience coaching and succeeding at a private schools like TCU (see Stanford) but after losing standouts Hank Thorns Jr. and J.R. Cadot to graduation, 2012-13 was all about starting from scratch.

Trent Johnson couldn’t tear himself away from the color purple. (TCU360.com)

The Actual Result: TCU won its season opener against a Cal Poly team that would steal a win at UCLA just two weeks later. After taking care of Centenary, the Horned Frogs dropped their first game of the season to Larry Brown and crosstown rival SMU. One clear problem facing the team was scoring the basketball. They lost back-to-back games to Houston and Tulsa, posting 48 and 49 points, respectively. There was also the Northwestern game where TCU lost by 24 points and only managed to put only 31 on the board. Despite this, they finished off the non-conference portion of their schedule with three straight wins to enter conference play at 9-4.

Conference play felt like one nightmare after another. In those 16 losses, TCU’s average margin of defeat was 17.9 points per game but they did have their moment in the sun. The first came against Kansas on February 6. The Jayhawks’ confidence was shaken a bit. They had been able to get by Texas and West Virginia on the road in games that were closer than they should have been, but had gotten some comeuppance after Markel Brown and Oklahoma State marched into Phog Allen Fieldhouse and left with an 85-80 win. On that Wednesday night in the Metroplex, though, Kansas started slowly and allowed TCU to control the game wire-to-wire in what I consider to be the biggest upset in the Big 12 era (dating back to 1996). It was anything but a sparkling performance for the Horned Frogs. TCU shot better as a team than KU but it made the same number of field goal attempts (18) as the Jayhawks, missed 16 free throws and lost the battle of the boards by 10. It also marked the first and likely final time the Topeka YMCA will get name-checked by Bill Self at a press conference. That will be the safest bet in the history of safe bets.

Read the rest of this entry »

When he arrived at Duke, Mason Plumlee — despite his obvious upside — was actually ranked below teammate Ryan Kelly, according to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index. Kelly was ranked #14 in the class, while Plumlee was #18. Even more fascinating to look back at are Plumlee’s Draft Express archives. Coming out of his first season at Duke, the scouting service looked for Plumlee to continue to develop as a stretch four! To be fair, he did hit 21 threes in 38 games in his prep senior season (unfortunately his shooting percentage is unavailable), but Plumlee’s transformation from a flat-shooting, athletic, potential-stretch four to one of the premier post players in college basketball is a compelling story.

Mason Plumlee underwent a compelling transformation at Duke (AP Photo).

During his freshman year Plumlee was buried behind Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas and older brother Miles Plumlee. He still contributed significant minutes to the 2010 national championship team, but he was raw in the purest sense of the word. His sophomore efficiency profile, with two glaring exceptions, actually started looking a lot like the NPOY candidate we saw this year. The two massive improvements Plumlee made since that season were in terms of volume and taking care of the basketball. But obviously, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Mason Plumlee was a very different player as a senior than he was as a sophomore.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

As puzzling as Frank Martin’s decision to leave Kansas State for longtime SEC doormat South Carolina looked last season, and however easily the abrupt departure of an energetic and charismatic sideline presence like Martin could have sent Kansas State into a major funk, the Wildcats wasted no time avoiding any such doomsday scenario by filling the vacancy with deposed Illinois coach Bruce Weber. Whatever the hire lacked in glitz and glamour – and sure, Weber was no one’s idea of a “sexy” coaching commodity – it made up for in stylistic fit. Weber preaches good, hard, physical half-court defense. Kansas State played good, hard, half-court defense under Martin. The disciplined approach at that end of the floor was an assumed feature of the coaching transition: Weber would advance Martin’s defensive ambitions with Martin’s players. Everything would fall into place, Weber would stoke massive excitement among a rabid Little Manhattan fan base in his first year and the Wildcats would keep on going on with nary a concern for their since-defected laser-eyed head coach.

Losing Rodriguez makes another Big 12-contending season a huge ask for Weber (Getty Images).

The formula wasn’t predictively ideal – Kansas State played top-25-level offense in 2012, per KenPom’s per-possession ranks, but finished 63rd in defensive efficiency – but the Wildcats did, as envisioned, win big in Weber’s first year on the job. Rodney McGruder led a better-than-expected offense, Jordan Henriquez protected the rim and the Wildcats finished the regular season with a share of the Big 12 title. The transition was complete. Weber had smoothed over a nasty divorce with a high-win season, a favorable NCAA Tournament seed and Self-era-unprecedented Big 12 hardware to boot. It was almost perfect.

Read the rest of this entry »

In order to fully gauge the strength of the Big Ten this season, you first have to establish some criteria. What makes a conference great? The teams at the top, or the teams at the bottom? Overall depth? Non-conference performance? Teams ranked in the Top 25 throughout the year, or teams that make the NCAA Tournament? Advancement in the Big Dance? Or as much as a Final Four or NCAA Title? Everybody has a different scale, so let’s consider the Big Ten on all of these.

Did Michigan do enough by reaching the championship game to enhance the conference’s perception? (USA TODAY Sports).

• The Top: Indiana and Michigan both spent time ranked No. 1 in the country, and the Hoosiers earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. At one point in the year — Week 15, as a matter of fact — the AP had No. 1 Indiana, No. 4 Michigan, No. 8 Michigan State and No. 13 Ohio State represented from the league. That is a pretty good concentration at the top. And all four stayed there, with Michigan receiving the lowest NCAA Tournament seed (No. 4) of the group, but still advanced to the national championship game.
• The Bottom: It looked like Penn State would be historically bad (keep in mind the Nittany Lions lost their best player, Tim Frazier, early in the season) before salvaging their season with a remarkable upset of Michigan and another win against Northwestern. But, as you’ll see in the following Overall Depth section, every team in the conference had some wins to hang its hat on. The conference was still 64-1 overall against teams ranked #201 or lower by TeamRankings.com and 65-11 against teams ranked #101-#200. The only conference with fewer losses (zero) against teams ranked #201 or worse was the Mountain West (38-0), which played far fewer games as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

1.  As we approach the only NBA Draft early entry deadline that actually matters — in other words, the Association’s draft deadline on Sunday, April 28 — several prominent underclassmen have yet to make their final decisions. With a couple of announcements expected later today, USA Today‘s Scott Gleeson gives a nice rundown of the pros and cons for five notable players — Louisville’s Russ Smith, Creighton’s Doug McDermott, Michigan State’s Adreian Payne, Miami’s Shane Larkin, and Baylor’s Isaiah Austin. Smith, who met with his head coach to discuss his decision on Tuesday, says that he has been losing sleep over the choice to stay or leave Louisville, and that he’s been riding the fence on the topic for the two weeks since the Cardinals won the national title. None of this group is a certain lottery pick, so the question of improvement next season versus a deeper draft is surely weighing heavily on all of their minds. 
2. There’s been quite a bit of chatter this week about shortening the length of the collegiate shot clock as a mechanism to improve the offensive ineptness that has infected the game in recent seasons — those oft-derided 39-38 games and such. Andy Katz polled a number of high-major Division I coaches and found widespread support for a 30-second shot clock, which makes sense at a certain level. Coaches with generally more talent on their rosters are always going to argue for a faster pace — when things break down, pure talent and athleticism take over (similar arguments were made when the clock was reduced from 45 seconds to its current 35 in 1993). As Mike DeCourcy correctly notes, scoring has plummeted to its current level as a result of numerous factors (Louisville coach Rick Pitino has his own ideas) but the shot clock likely isn’t one of them. In fact, when you mix inexperienced and, frankly, less talented players with improved defensive strategies as a result of advanced scouting techniques (Synergy and the like), what you’re likely to be left with is a devil’s concoction of even more sloppy play as college teams rush to get a shot at the basket. Reducing the shot clock to improve scoring sounds great in theory, but what the NCAA Rules Committee should be discussing are ways to clean up the same game that once regularly produced average team scoring in the 70s (1964-81 with no shot clock; 1987-2003 with a 45- and 35-second shot clock) rather than the 60s (2004-present).
3. As everyone knows, it’s transfer season, and a few notable names came across the wires yesterday.Marshall’s DeAndre Kane is expected to finish his degree this summer and will use the one-year graduate transfer rule to find (presumably) a higher-major program to showcase his wares for a year. Whoever gets him will receive a high-volume shooter (26.3% of all possessions) who also brings a solid assist (42.0%) and steals (2.8%) rates to bear — quite the free agent pick-up if you ask us. Alabama’s Trevor Lacey, a two-year starter at the point guard position who led the Tide in assists and was second in scoring last year, is also moving on to another as-yet-undetermined program. And then there’s this story about Purdue’s Sandi Marcius, who planned to graduate this summer and himself take advantage of the graduate transfer rule — that is, before he realized that the school wasn’t going to pay for the $7,000 he’d need to actually finish that degree. Stay tuned on this one — it’s likely to get weird.
4. Let’s all take a moment to welcome new Rutgers head coach Eddie Jordan back to college basketball. The longtime NBA coach hasn’t really been around the sport in over two decades, but at least the former Scarlet Knight (Class of 1977) actually wants to be there in the wake of the Mike Rice fiasco. He was introduced at a news conference yesterday and seemed very excited to get started on his new five-year, $6.25 million contract. He’s going to need to earn every penny of it. With massive player defections, substandard facilities, a move to the best basketball conference in America, and the stink of an amateur hour coaching fiasco still fresh on everyone’s minds, the rebuild at Rutgers will be monumental.
5. This is a neat story by Eric Prisbell at USA Today about recruiting wunderkind Alex Kline, the now-18-year old who goes by the handle @therecruitscoop on Twitter and who those of us who follow such things have known about for a few years now. As it turns out, Kline is now finishing up his freshman year at Syracuse and his life has become a whirlwind of tips, networking, writing, and homework assignments mixed in with a little bit of fun now and again. Perhaps the most compelling part of his story, though, is his founding of the Mary Kline Classic, a prep all-star event each spring that raises money for cancer research and honors the life of his mother, who passed away from a brain tumor when he was only 10 years old. Keep on keepin’ on, Alex, you’re already doing great things, but it’s obvious much, much more is coming.

Now that we are officially in the offseason, it’s time to take a look back and evaluate each team’s 2012-13 performance. Here’s a look at Colorado.

What Went Right 

Spencer Dinwiddie was key for Colorado’s offense this year.

Despite losing three starters from last year’s team, the Buffaloes had a lot of things go right for them in 2012-13. Spencer Dinwiddie improved tremendously from his freshman season by becoming the go-to scorer. Dinwiddie led the team in scoring at 15.6 points per game and sported a true shooting percentage at 59.1 percent. His two best games of the year came against NCAA Tournament teams Colorado State and Arizona at the Coors Event Center as he tallied 50 points and nine assists in the two contests. Andre Roberson was once again a double-double machine, averaging 10.9 points and 11.2 rebounds per game in another strong season. In what was viewed by some as a possible rebuilding season, the Buffaloes responded with an at-large NCAA bid and a squad that competed if not actually challenging for the Pac-12 title.

What Went Wrong

They were certainly some letdown games from the Buffaloes as they lost to league bottom-dwellers Utah on the road and Oregon State at home. Colorado had a tendency to start lackadaisically against inferior opponents and it hurt them in several games. Individually, Askia Booker disappeared in conference play. The MVP of the Charleston Classic was irrelevant in the Pac-12 and finished with a 42.2 effective field goal percentage on the year. Booker certainly didn’t let his struggles deter him from shooting the ball as he attempted 11 or more field goals in all but two conference games.

Read the rest of this entry »

What does it say about the state of a program when it makes another Sweet Sixteen — its 11th since 1998 — and the fan base is not all too thrilled? That’s not to say Michigan State fans don’t appreciate the feat (it really is remarkable) but it’s just an indication of how strong this program has grown under Tom Izzo, particularly in March. At times this year, the Spartans looked like a surefire Final Four team and a national title contender after many had discounted them early in the Big Ten race. But they had injuries, inconsistency from Keith Appling and a hell of a draw in the NCAA Tournament standing in their way. To further evaluate Michigan State’s year, let’s take a closer look:

Adreian Payne broke out this year as an all-conference caliber player. Will he return for another season? (AP Photo/Al Goldis)

The Good

Right around the time Michigan State beat rival Michigan, 75-52, in a highly-anticipated intrastate rivalry blowout, we got a glimpse of just how good the Spartans could be. Everything came together that night. Derrick Nix and Adreian Payne gave the team a traditional athletic one-two punch inside, and Nix could be the only player leaving after this season if Payne decides to ignore the NBA for one more year. Gary Harris had a team-high 17 points with a 5-of-9 three-point shooting performance that helped earn him Freshman of the Year honors. Keith Appling was steady on both ends, providing excellent man-to-man defense on Michigan’s Trey Burke and finding his way into the lane and finishing. And Branden Dawson gave the Spartans energy around the rim. That game summarized everything that was good about the Spartans’ season — the five different players who could provide the team with a spark on any given night, the defense (seventh in KenPom’s adjusted defense), the rebounding prowess, and the individual talent. There were other high-water marks — wins against other top Big Ten teams, an important non-conference win against Kansas  (the Spartans’ had the nation’s No. 3 strength of schedule), and Izzo’s 11th Sweet Sixteen berth — but that game was the microcosm.

Read the rest of this entry »

Virginia Tech was not very good this past year in the same way that Michael Jordan was kind of competitive. During ACC play, the Hokies went 4-14 in the conference and 13-19 overall. This team once lost at home to Georgia Southern, a team with a putrid 7-11 record in the Southern Conference. They were easily the worst team in the league defensively and could generously be called mediocre on offense. As a team, this season was a disaster. But for its senior captain, Erick Green, 2012-13 was a season of individual brilliance.

Erick Green Blew Up the ACC This Year, Even if the Hokies Didn’t

Basketball is a team sport, and it’s understandable that some people have a problem praising a player on a team that was, by all accounts, wildly unsuccessful. It’s a reasonable way of thinking, but it overshadows real talent and brilliance. Yes, Green didn’t transform his squad into a championship contender, but if that’s the bar, it’s set impossibly high. The truth is that Green put together one of the most sensational seasons in college basketball.

Let’s talk all-around offensive prowess first. Of players who used more than 28% of their team’s possessions, Green was ranked fifth in offensive efficiency in all of Division I basketball. The national leader was cult hero Nate Wolters of South Dakota State. The three players between Wolters and Green? Gonzaga’s Kelly Olynyk, Creighton’s Doug McDermott, and Michigan’s Trey Burke. You may have heard of them, as they were all named First Team All-Americans this season. It’s easy to scoff at the idea that Green belongs in this group’s company, but the senior compares very well to these other big-name high-volume and high-efficiency scorers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we are officially in the offseason, it’s time to take a look back and evaluate each team’s 2012-13 performance. Next on our list: Oregon.

What Went Right

Considering most Oregon fans hadn’t even heard of former Rice standout Arsalan Kazemi until less than a month before Midnight Madness, the last-minute addition of the Iranian Sensation did wonders for the Ducks’ play in 2012-13. The team clicked well with Kazemi on board as he added the final piece to an almost-complete puzzle. His hustle and ability to grab seemingly every loose ball on the court made him a quick fan favorite.

The Addition Of Arsalan Kazemi Was The Final Piece To Dana Altman’s Puzzle In 2012-13 (credit: US Presswire)

What Went Wrong

Unspecified left foot injuries. Star point guard Dominic Artis went down with one before Oregon’s January 26 game against Washington, transforming thet Ducks from a 17-2 team to one struggling to find an identity upon his return on the final day of February. When all was said and done, however, Oregon ended up advancing to the Sweet Sixteen regardless of its lower seed, a product of the development of the team during his injury. Still, it would have been interesting to see how the Ducks performed in the dance if Artis had played all year long and Oregon was given a higher seed.

MVP

For what Kazemi lacked in clutch scoring, senior forward E.J. Singler made up for it. He was pivotal down the stretch in overtime at Washington State, leading the Ducks with 25 points, and his 14-point performance to hand Arizona its first loss of the season was gritty and much-needed.

Read the rest of this entry »