1. With his Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Playoffs (for now), Eddie Jordan appears to have reached a deal to become the next head coach at Rutgers, which is nice except the deal will not be finalized until the school’s governing body meets next week. Jordan has apparently agreed to a five-year deal worth a little over $1 million per year, but we have no idea on the bonus structure of the deal is as coaches can greatly increase their income through carefully crafted bonus structures. As for the issue of needing the Board of Governors to sign off on a basketball coach, normally we would say it is a massive waste of time, but given the public relations hit the school took as the result of its last coach they probably should be extra cautious with this hire.
2. Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. may not be walking through that door, but fortunately for John Beilein both Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III will be as they announced that they would be returning to Michigan in a joint press conference yesterday. The decision by those two to return is not quite as shocking as Marcus Smart’s decision was, but they are both lottery level picks so very few people will have offered them criticism for having left. Instead they will return to make Michigan a preseason top 10 team and a national title contender again next season.
3. Not to be outdone by its in-state rival Michigan State also received good news yesterday when Gary Harris announced that he will be returning for his sophomore season. Harris, the Big Ten Freshman of the Year, was also predicted to be a lottery pick and probably had less to prove  than either McGary or Robinson, but his return should make the Spartans the #2 team in the country going into next season and sets up a very intriguing early season match-up against Kentucky in the Champions Classic. At this point the only question remaining for the Spartans is whether Adreian Payne will also return. If he does the question of who should be the preseason #1 may get a little more interesting.
4. The decision by C.J. Wilcox to return to Washington for his senior year may not have as big of an impact on the national scene as the moves in the state of Michigan will, but it could play a big role in determining who wins the Pac-12 next season. Unlike the three other players mentioned so far who announced that they would be returning Wilcox was by no means a guaranteed first round pick so it makes sense for him to return, but as we have seen that is by no means a guarantee that a player will come back.
5. The grand jury hearing the case of former Kentucky star Richie Farmer (a former Mr. Basketball in the state and a member of “The Unforgettables”) will hear from former employees who worked with Farmer in his role as Kentucky’s Agriculture Commissioner. Farmer faces more than 40 counts of ethics violations while in his former role, but has not been called before the grand jury to testify. With the basketball-crazed culture and the cult-like hero status that Farmer once engendered within the state this is a trial that we expect to be hearing more about in the coming months.

There’s so much to look back on from this season’s Big Ten, and who doesn’t like receiving an award? So we decided to hand out a few more. Forget Class Clown. Our superlatives are a real honor:

Where does this moment stand against the best of the year?

• Best game: Indiana at Michigan — We’ll get to the climax of this contest in a minute, but this was a heavyweight battle. After Indiana dealt then-No. 1 Michigan just its second loss of the season in Bloomington a few weeks earlier, the Hoosiers came to Ann Arbor with a Big Ten title on the line. If the Hoosiers won, they’d claim the conference championship outright. If the Wolverines won, Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State all had the chance to join the Hoosiers on the championship podium. Michigan led by three at halftime before the Hoosiers outscored the Wolverines by four in the second half. And that final play… well, you’ll just have to keep reading.
• Best play: Ben Brust’s half-court three to force overtime and eventually beat Michigan — If Victor Oladipo had been able to finish this dunk in the aforementioned game against Michigan at Assembly Hall, it’d be my choice. But since that shot ends up on the score sheet as just another missed field goal attempt, we’ll go with a shot that actually went in. It looked like Michigan was going to escape Madison after Tim Hardaway, Jr. hit a huge three-pointer with three seconds to go, giving Michigan a 60-57 lead. But Wisconsin took a timeout, and Mike Bruesewitz hit Brust in stride. Brust took one dribble across the half-court line and drew nothing but net. The Badgers went on to win in overtime, with Brust also hitting the game-winner with 43 seconds left in OT.

• 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. Here’s a look at Stanford.

What Went Right

After three years of showing signs of a mouthwatering combination of skill and athleticism, Dwight Powell exploded in his junior campaign. At 6’10” and a now well-built 235 pounds, Powell displayed the type of versatile game that will have him playing in the NBA following the completion of his college career. He’s always had the hops and size to throw down massive dunks, but he’s now got the ball-handling, basketball IQ and, perhaps most importantly, confidence to complete those types of plays with defenders in the area. Throw in an excellent feel for rebounding the ball, a developing jumper that is slowly approaching the three-point line, improved post moves and a variety of ways to finish in the paint and Powell has established himself as one of the best and most exciting players in the Pac-12.

Dwight Powell Had A Breakout Season In His Junior Campaign (AP)

Before we leave this topic, we’ve got to spend a second on Andy Brown. After three ACL tears in his left knee, it was just assumed that the chances of the 6’7” forward every being a meaningful on-court contributor at the Division I level had passed. Instead, Brown made for one of the nicest stories in this or any other season. He played in all but one Cardinal game this season, averaged 23 minutes a night, and wasvery effective, displaying a toughness (as if you didn’t already know that a guy who had rehabbed from three torn ACLs was tough) and a feel for the game that can’t be taught. Already 22, he’s got at least one year of college eligibility ahead of him and here’s hoping it is another healthy and productive season.

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Penn State may be the most interesting case study of all teams in the Big Ten this year. Just based purely on numbers and record, they were by and large the worst team in the conference. They nearly went winless in conference play, and after Tim Frazier went down with a season-ending injury early in the year, it was unclear how this team would function at all. While it was indeed a really steep and slow learning curve, a couple really talented players emerged and kept the Nittany Lions’ season interesting. For that reason, there are few teams in the conference with as much intrigue surrounding them heading into next year. Let’s take a look back at Penn State’s season:

What happens to Penn State when Tim Frazier returns next season? (Photo credit: theschoolphilly.com)

• The good: In some ways, we’re really grasping at straws here. We’re talking about what looked like it would be the first team to go 0-18 in the Big Ten before it pulled off an incredible upset against Michigan on February 27, and then put away Northwestern on March 7 to finish with two wins in their last five games. That Michigan win, all things considered, could have been the biggest upset of the college basketball season (apologies to TCU). But on a larger scale, the emergence of Jermaine Marshall and D.J. Newbill gave fans a great deal to be excited about next year. Believe it or not, they will represent the conference’s top two returning scorers after the departures of the likes of Cody Zeller, Victor Oladipo, Trey Burke and Deshaun Thomas. Granted, their production came largely because there was little to no supporting cast around them, but scorers are scorers and Penn State will have a few of them next year. It also bears mentioning that the Nittany Lions put together a nice four-game winning streak through much of December. It was against some pretty bad teams, sure, but it’s still something.

• Read the rest of this entry »

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

Every year brings its share of puzzling NBA Draft decisions, and most of the frustration is typically captured by one underlying theme: he left too early. This year’s draft enigma was confusing for an entirely different reason. It was confusing because Marcus Smart, a consensus top-five pick in next month’s draft, elected to return to Oklahoma State for his sophomore season. The commentary on Smart’s decision has been a disconcerting mix of perplexity, misunderstood motives and an unexpected dose of condescending admonishment, with almost no reactive excitement – the best freshman in college basketball, and one of the best players overall, is returning next season, and no one has anything positive to say about it?! Isn’t this the exact development we spend countless words and digital ink groaning about each and every summer?!

No decision has generated more Buzz than Smart’s choice to play another year at Oklahoma State (AP Photo).

The early draft decision headlines have served as collective petri dish dissection of Smart’s purportedly misguided decision. But guess what? Other players are making very important decisions about their professional futures, too, and not all of them are as procedural and predictable and academic as Smart’s relative draft-media monopoly might lead you to believe. I’ll offer you two recent decisions (or non-decisions) that, while nothing close to Smart-level Big 12 rippling waves, will change the ways their respective teams are evaluated entering next season.

First up is James Michael McAdoo, who announced Tuesday he plans to return to North Carolina for his junior season. It’s difficult to fathom now, but McAdoo was once considered among the very best players in the country last summer. He was supposed to help bridge the gap between the Kendall Marshall-Tyler Zeller super team and a new and customarily talented re-tooled Tar Heels group. You probably didn’t hear much about McAdoo last season, for reasons good and not, but as UNC picked up steam in February and into March, and the true latent potential of Marcus Paige and P.J. Hairston began to turn a mediocre transition season into a legitimately scary Third Round proposition, North Carolina offered an entertaining preview of the high-win outfit it can and should rightfully become next season. McAdoo was a major collaborator in coach Williams’ midseason small-ball transformation – wherein UNC eschewed a traditional two-big lineup in favor of using McAdoo at the five and Hairston as a “power forward” – and UNC can rekindle that dynamic next season with a highly touted recruiting class, more experience and a better collective comprehension of the system. The upshot for McAdoo is more wins, a bigger national spotlight and another chance to round out his game for NBA scouts. Good deal.

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1. As we mentioned yesterday Marcus Smart announced that he would return to Oklahoma State and now he will have some company as Le’Bryan Nash and Markel Brown also announced that they will be returning to Stillwater. We has won’t get into the debate about whether or not Smart should have left because every writer has either chimed in for it, against it, or (our personal favorite) railed against those who were for it or against it. Although they did not rise from a stage in a ridiculous ceremony held in Miami three summers ago it should be cause for celebration as the Cowboys are now legitimate Big 12 contenders. We still would not bet against Bill Self, but the Big 12 race just got a lot more interesting.
2. The mood in Ann Arbor was not quite as festive, but the decision by Tim Hardaway Jr. to leave Michigan a year early was expected by many. We are not completely sold on Hardaway Jr. ever becoming a NBA starter, but he certainly has the requisite physical skills and a good enough outside shot that he will get some looks from NBA teams. One of the more interesting things about his game is how little it has progressed (at least in terms of his statistics) over his three years at Michigan. We don’t normally advocate players leaving school early unless they think they are guaranteed a NBA roster spot (read: are assured of being a first round pick), but Hardaway Jr. has not shown as much progression from one season to the next as you would hope and this year’s class is weak (and his family should be financially secure) so we think it is a reasonable decision.
3. If Hardaway Jr or any other Michigan players need any advice they can always turn to team captain Josh Bartelstein, the son of NBA agent Mark Bartelstein who has a fairly impressive list of clients, Based on the advice that Josh offered for the article it sounds like he would be a pretty good place for these players to start. We are sure that plenty of other schools have alumni that offer advice to players about whether or not they should or should not go, but probably very few are able to do so through current players. It will be interesting to see if the Michigan players decide to sign with Josh’s father.
4. Florida Gulf Coast has had one of the more unique coaching searches for a mid-major given the sudden popularity of “Dunk City”, which the city is still calling itself in press releases. Yesterday the school announced that Kansas assistant coach Joe Dooley would be the school’s head coach. Dooley may not be the huge name that some people thought the school could get, but realistically an assistant at one of the top programs in the country who also has head coaching experience (with a winning record) is a solid get for a school that most people did not know existed two months ago. Dooley has a reputation as a great recruiter although you can argue that being at Kansas helps a lot in doing that, but he should have some advantages (location and a style of play that appeals to recruits if he chooses to keep it) that could help him be successful in his new job.
5. Yesterday Cincinnati announced that it would be extending Mick Cronin‘s contract, which should not be a surprise, but we have to say we are somewhat surprised by the length of the extension: one year with the possibility of three more years. Cronin, who already has four years left on his contact, can have the extension go from one year to three years if the Bearcats in either of the next two years. Cronin certainly is deserving of an extension given his team’s performance, but we have to wonder why the school would give him such a short extension with the understanding it is planning on keeping him for at least five more years. We just don’t see the point in adding on one year at this point.

After years of regularly losing underclassmen to the NBA Draft, it looked like this was the year that the Pac-12 was going to by and large dodge that particular bullet. Yeah, Shabazz Muhammad is gone after just one season, but we all knew that even before he announced that he’d be attending a Pac-12 school. And Player of the Year Allen Crabbe will leave a season of eligibility on the table as he enters the NBA Draft, but he has paid his dues and earned his spot after three stellar seasons in Berkeley. But everywhere else, it seemed that the decision around the conference had come down on the side of returning to school. Jahii Carson, Kyle Anderson, C.J. Wilcox, Andre Roberson, and more – all returning. Even Oregon State’s Eric Moreland, who had made something of a splash earlier this season by announcing that he would test the waters, decided that it would be in his best interests to return to Corvallis.

Grant Jerrett Bucked The Trend, Opting To Leave Early For The Next Level (Christian Petersen, Getty Images North America)

But then on Wednesday night, news came down of a surprise early-entrant, someone who really hadn’t even been on the radar to leave early: Arizona’s freshman forward Grant Jerrett, he of 5.2 points and 3.6 rebounds in fewer than 20 minutes per game. Early expectations are that Jerrett is a serious candidate to be left undrafted, and even a best-case scenario probably has him picked in the second round where he would be without a guaranteed contract. Yes, he is a 6’10”, 235-pound skilled big man who shot better than 40% from three in his lone season in Tucson, but he has yet to prove his ability to compete with the big boys in the paint at the collegiate level, much less the NBA. He’s definitely still got a future playing basketball, likely for a lot of years, but odds are that he’ll be spending the next few years playing in the D-League rather than in McKale Center — a perfectly fine decision if he has decided that college is not for him, but could be a disappointment if he has designs on slipping right into an NBA rotation. Still, expect to see Jerrett pop up in the future when you flip on NBA games down the road. In a league that has proven time and time again to have roster spots available for specialists, a 6’10” player who can knock down threes at a productive rate will almost certainly find a home somewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the 2012-13 college basketball season has come to a close, we’re doing a review of each Big Ten team’s season, as well as looking ahead to next year. Today’s team: the Northwestern Wildcats.

Bill Carmody Couldn’t Find Enough Answers This Season (Credit: ChicagoNow)

The Good

It was tough to find much good in Evanston this year, mainly because just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. This was supposed to be Northwestern’s most talented team ever, but a slew of injuries meant the Wildcats essentially had to play with mostly guards and freshmen all season. The result was a 4-14 Big Ten record. You can’t find much good from that, but there were a few silver linings to the injuries, particularly the development of this year’s freshmen. Those freshmen — center Alex Olah and forward Kale Abrahamson, in particular — were thrown into the mix right away and didn’t have time to adjust with a veteran supporting cast. That led to a rocky start, but the extra experience helped them develop, and their collective improvement showed down the stretch. Olah still needs to work on his defense and he’s limited athletically, but he showed much better instincts in the post and developed as a good passer. Abrahamson was overmatched by his opponents for much of the year, but he too showed an ability to drive to the hoop late in the year to complement solid three-point shooting. Both players have a ways to go, but they have built a solid foundation that will bode well for the future.

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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: California.

What Went Right

In 2011-12, the Golden Bears got 27.8 points per game out of Allen Crabbe and Justin Cobbs on a team that featured a pair of veterans who also chipped in with the scoring load. This season everyone knew that the veteran backcourt was going to have to take another step forward, and they did so, upping their combined average to 33.5 PPG despite increased attention from opposing defenses. All the extra attention may have hurt their efficiency somewhat, but credit Cobbs and Crabbe for filling the void.

Justin Cobbs and Allen Crabbe Were The Sole Consistent Performers For The Golden Bears

What Went Wrong

Nobody else stepped up as a consistent third scoring threat to ease the pressure on the backcourt. Richard Solomon again exhibited flashes of brilliance, but never really put it together consistently; Missouri transfer Ricky Kreklow struggled with foot injuries all season long; and freshman Tyrone Wallace showed the athleticism and feel for the game necessary to become a very good player, but a jumper that needs a lot of work. And no matter how much head coach Mike Montgomery and his two veteran guards tried to get other players involved (regularly in the middle of the year, Cobbs and Crabbe would go through an entire first half with limited field goal attempts), the production just wasn’t coming. Read the rest of this entry »