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

Just last week, Louisville and Michigan were playing one of the most entertaining NCAA Tournament championship games in years. Luke Hancock was scorching threes, Kevin Ware was blissfully crutching his way around a confetti-drenched Georgia Dome, and Spike Albrecht was tweeting at Kate Upton. College basketball was just wrapping up another fantastic season. And now, just a week after the final game of the year, some of the nation’s top players have an utterly crucial decision to make: Stay in school or declare for the NBA Draft?

Players deserve more time to conduct research and solicit outside opinions on this pivotal decision (AP Photo).

Decisions like this – decisions that could have lasting implications on a player’s earning power and academic and professional futures – are not trivial matters to be pushed aside. Other than maybe choosing a college, deciding when to leave college and pursue one’s athletic dreams at the professional level is probably the biggest decision any of these kids have ever made. It requires calculated reasoning and a thorough investigation of the potential costs and benefits. This isn’t the case for everyone; some guys have it easy. For Shabazz Muhammad, leaving UCLA after one season will go down as one of the least surprising one-and-done jumps of all-time. Others face competing interests, unwavering loyalties and strong ties to teammates and coaches. Some just love being in college, particularly at “basketball schools” where the hardwood practitioners are afforded demi-god levels of celebrity. What’s so bad about unrivaled popularity and social stature, anyway?

The real process is a lot more complicated than that. Financial hardship often forces players to leave school earlier than they otherwise would have. A hot shooting streak during the NCAA Tournament sends them flying up draft boards, rapidly and prominently enough that not entering the draft could leave a prospect regretting a major missed opportunity after the fact.

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1. The Mike Rice fiasco at Rutgers will take a long time to play out, but the school appears to be taking the first step of moving into a new era with the expected hiring of Eddie Jordan as its new coach some time this week. Jordan, who was an honorable mention All-American at Rutgers and led the school to the 1976 Final Four, is probably best known for being the head coach of the Washington Wizards from 2003 to 2008 getting the team to the playoffs four straight years. Jordan is currently serving as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers, which means he should be free to take on the duties of being the head coach at Rutgers in the not too distant future. His biggest task will be repairing the basketball program’s image after video of Rice’s abuse surfaced. If he is able to gain the confidence of recruits again this could be a huge hire as the New Jersey area produces more than enough talent to make Rutgers a nationally competitive team under the right circumstances.
2. It took longer than it probably should have, but on Friday Jim Crews had interim label removed from his job title at St. Louis as he officially was introduced as the head coach. Crews inherited a talented St. Louis team that was placed in a precarious position after Rick Majerus stepped down as coach before dying of issues related to worsening heart failure. What Crews did in getting his players to focus and buy into him as a coach was nothing short of remarkable. After winning the Atlantic 10 regular season and Tournament titles the Bilikens advanced to the third round of the NCAA Tournament before losing to a underseeded Oregon team. Although the loss of Majerus is undeniably huge, the St. Louis program should be in good hands with Crews, who won the Sporting News National Coach of the Year award this season and already has 25 years of head coaching experience  at the Division I level.
3. We have seen quite a few sons of coaches transfer schools from their father’s are fired, but Steve Alford’s move to UCLA has brought about two recruiting moves. First was the quasi-transfer of his son, a high school recruit who had signed with New Mexico to UCLA. Now Cullen Neal, the son of Craig Neal who was hired to take over at New Mexico after Alford left, has gotten out of his signed letter of intent at St. Mary’s and will play for his father. Although some might argue that letting players out of signed letters of intent is a questionable strategy given the power schools have over athletes in most situations the recent rulings by the NCAA would appear to indicate that the players would be given waivers to transfer immediately. We are not sure how much of an impact either Alford or Neal (the sons) will have at their new schools, but it will be an interesting to see how well they play for their fathers.
4. With the way the NCAA Tournament ended–all three Final Four games featuring controversial calls–Deadspin’s article on college referees and the way they deal with blown calls is well-timed. As is often stated nobody knows the name of an official unless they get something wrong (or they make a spectacle of themselves on television…and get something wrong). We have usually stood by officials when they make mistakes because we think in most cases there is no bias involved and the fact remains that if we had one hundred thousand people analyzing every single decision we made for two hours we would probably get a lot of criticism too. Having said that one of the interesting secondary topics discussed in the article is the travel and volume of games some officials do each season as they function as independent contractors and can be paid quite well for their work. Fatigue from travel and officiating games is certainly something that the NCAA and conferences can do by simply hiring officials and paying them set amounts based on the number of games they are contracted to do with provisions prohibiting freelancing that can compromise their ability to officiate games that they are paid to work.
5. Now that Rick Pitino is on his way to the Hall of Fame and has won national titles with two different schools some people in Kentucky are asking the (not-so) obvious question: If this were the Baseball Hall of Fame and you had to choose a “cap” to go in under, would Pitino go in under Kentucky or Louisville? The case for both schools is certainly compelling, but given his impact on Kentucky we would go with a Wildcat cap at least as of now. However as Mark Story notes the more likely choice would be Louisville given Pitino’s current allegiances and the fact that Kentucky fans would probably still hate him even if he were to enter the Hall of Fame after having left Louisville.

And so it goes, and so it goes. The 2012-13 college basketball season came to a resounding end on Monday night with Louisville cutting down the nets and taking home the hardware. As such, the RTC Podcast is back for a review of last weekend’s Final Four and a last look at the season that was. Our host, Shane Connolly, walks us through some of the highs and lows of the sport’s ultimate weekend before stepping back and reflecting on some of the most memorable images and notable moments of the 2012-13 season. We plan on revisiting the podcast every month or so during the offseason, so keep an ear out for those starting in May. Thanks to everyone who has continued to listen to the RTC Podcast and we hope everyone has a safe and happy summer!

• 0:00-9:53 – Cards on Top
• 9:53-13:48 – Beilein’s Blunders
• 13:48-17:09 – Pitino Reaches Legendary Status
• 17:09-19:34 – Leadership Came Through For Louisville
• 19:34-21:39 – Refs at the Final Four – Was the Outrage Warranted?
• 21:39-23:51 – Crowd Reactions to the Louisville Final Four Deficit
• 23:51-28:02 – Evaluating the Crowd/Arena Experience
• 28:02-30:24 – Final Four Memories
• 30:24-37:09 – NCAA Tournament Wrap-Up
• 37:09-46:59 – Enjoying 2012-13’s Parity and Other Full Season Reflections

You could see this coming from a mile away. Texas sophomore guard Myck Kabongo announced his intention to enter this June’s NBA Draft, foregoing his final two years of eligibility in Austin. When he arrived on campus in 2011, Kabongo was a five-star prospect according to recruiting services like Scout, ESPN and Rivals. He made an immediate impact, averaging 9.6 points, 3.0 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game in 34 starts for a Texas team that slid into the NCAA Tournament as a #11 seed.

He’s gone. (TexasSports.com)

His second season didn’t start off the way he would have liked. The NCAA investigated Kabongo for receiving an impermissible payment related to an offseason workout hosted by Rich Paul, an agent to former Longhorns Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph. Kabongo was ruled ineligible for the first 23 games of the regular season but made the most of what little playing time he had, averaging 14.6 points, 5.0 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 2.0 steals per game, all career highs. So why would he even consider a return for a junior campaign? Sheldon McClellan, the team’s second-leading scorer at 13.5 points per game, has already decided to transfer. Javan Felix, who filled in for Kabongo as a starter this season, will get plenty of competition from two incoming freshman players in Kendal Yancy-Harris and Isaiah Taylor at the point guard slot. But Texas has other issues, most notably the lack of shotmakers on the team except for Julien Lewis. On the inside, Cameron Ridley has shown very little offensively and his overall impact on games has been disappointing for a player with his size.

The winner in all of this is obviously Kabongo because he’ll get drafted and become a multi-millionaire. The loser is Texas, which is facing another season where the NCAA Tournament looks unlikely unless some surprises step up unexpectedly from Rick Barnes’ roster.

Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish each week throughout the season. In this piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…. a final game that was so good, so full of quality and runs and drama, that you literally sat in your seat and wondered if it could sustain itself for 40 minutes. The answer was yes, and anyone who wasn’t on the edge of their seat for most of Monday night doesn’t have a pulse. That game was everything we could have hoped for – after an NCAA Tournament that included both upsets and duds to go alongside some raggedy play, this was a title game deserving of the name. What a way to end the year.

I LOVED…. being vindicated in my disgust for Doug Gottlieb. Just take a few quick seconds in case you missed him making a fool of himself on national television (ahem, I mean bigger fool than usual).

I LOVED…. Russdiculousness. You have to give it to Russ Smith – he carried his Louisville team all the way to the Final Four, all the way to the title game with a torrid stretch of scoring, and once he got there he flat-out refused to become a different player. With a lead down the stretch, Russ fouled on the perimeter, dribbled into traffic, took a three-pointer with a new shot clock and 2:30 left, threw crazy passes into the stands and generally tried to give the championship trophy away. But hey, he wouldn’t be Russ if he weren’t a little nutty, and the Cardinals wouldn’t be holding that trophy if he wasn’t on their side.

Russdiculous Lived Up to His Name

I LOVED…. a shootout. It didn’t get any better than that first-half step-off from 22 feet by Spike Albrecht and Luke Hancock. Spike’s might have been more unexpected, but Hancock’s was pure guts in the face of a double-digit deficit with the season on the line. It made for some incredible runs in the first 20 minutes, and it got even better when Albrecht made a cybermove on Kate Upton.

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

The awesomeness of the national title game almost makes you wish the season had another five months of games to offer us. It doesn’t, of course, which means it’s about time we start glaring into the blank expanse of another long offseason. But before we move ahead, before we start counting down the months, weeks and days until tip-off 2013 (Midnight Madness!), let us go back and review the stories that defined the 2012-13 season. I’m talking about the headlines with the most resounding impact – not always the rosiest or most enjoyable developments. That means good and bad, but hopefully more good. If you kept a pulse on the game this year, the following tropes will strike a familiar note, positive or otherwise; if not, then where exactly have you been since November? In the interest of not dragging out this preamble, let’s turn to the matter at hand and count off 10 of the 2012-13 season’s biggest storylines.

(* in no particular order)

Kentucky. The domination and instant stardom of Kentucky circa 2012 had the poll voters convinced: the Wildcats had perpetually solved the one-and-done riddle, and everything that happened during that Anthony Davis-led title season would become something like a yearly occurrence for John Calipari’s team. Calipari would recruit the best players, mold them into a national champion-caliber outfit, and repeat the whole process again the next year. Clockwork. So Kentucky entered the reason ranked No. 3 in the AP Poll. This seemed like a reasonably fair assessment at the time; another loaded recruiting class, the residual winning momentum of the previous season, a once-recruiter turned excellent head coach who seemed to have this recruit, develop and draft thing figured out was evidence enough that the Wildcats would turn in another deep-Tournament run with the same freshmen-lead constitution that had brought the BBN so many good memories during the first few years of Calipari’s tenure. Kentucky needed to get to the Tournament first, and as the season wore on and the flaws of UK’s roster construction – almost zero experience to speak of, the absence of a true leader, the realization that not all highly-recruited freshmen are Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist – became evidently obvious, reality sunk in: Kentucky wasn’t going to make it.

One year after winning a national title, Kentucky missed out on the NCAA Tournament (Getty Images).

A season-ending ACL injury to star center Nerlens Noel in February doomed the Wildcats’ chances, but the speculation hung right up until Selection Sunday, and when the Wildcats were passed over by the likes of Middle Tennessee, La Salle and Saint Mary’s, the only question remaining (a minor one, to be sure) was how motivated John Calipari’s team would be in a prospective NIT matchup at eight-seed Robert Morris. Yes, Kentucky, college hoops royalty at its purest, was being asked to finish its season on the road in Moon Township, PA., Calipari’s home town. And yes, Kentucky fell to the Colonials, prompting a rare NIT court storm from a packed Charles L. Sewall Center, a fitting end to a season that never lived up to the one preceding it. The backdrop to UK’s sudden plunge was that Calipari, seemingly undeterred by the chaos of the regular season, was assembling a recruiting class for the ages, built on six five-star commitments and still waiting word on the player many consider to be the best high school product since LeBron James, Andrew Wiggins. The BBN will be back in 2013, rest assured, but their dramatic fall from grace this year is not lost.

The Big Ten Was Awesome. We began the season with the highest of expectations about the Big Ten. Five of its teams (Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin) began the season in the top 25, Indiana was a unanimous pick for preseason No. 1 and the top-to-bottom depth, just as much as the upper-tier quality, were huge selling points for a league many billed to not only outclass every other major conference this season, but also go down as one of the most dominant versions of any league in recent memory. The Big Ten didn’t disappoint us. Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Wisconsin waged intense wars in blaring campus gyms on a weekly basis, shocking upsets were sprung (Penn State over Michigan, Northwestern over Minnesota, Wisconsin at Indiana, etc.) and the league grew to corner the market on the most exciting brand of high-powered, tense, must-watch hoops in the country. It was good from start to finish, all the way up to the NCAA Tournament, where four teams survived the first weekend to land a spot in each of the four regional sites.

In the end, only one made it to the Final Four – ironically, of the four Big Ten teams left standing, Michigan was probably the biggest surprise of them all; they were widely pegged to lost their round-of-32 bout with VCU – and after fending off a nightmarish Syracuse 2-3 zone no one else had managed to decode during Tournament play, the Wolverines lost a close but thrilling national championship game. The lasting memory from the 2012 Big Ten, beyond all the consistent regular season drama and Victor Oladipo’s star turn and Trey Burke’s brilliance and Wisconsin’s remarkable year-to-year consistency, will be Spike Albrecht – for the sheer fact that Albrecht, on the last and most important date of the season, not only scored an unfathomable 17 points in 16 minutes while NPOY-sweeping Burke, hit with two early fouls, was fixed to the bench. It was awesome because Albrecht followed up his once-in-a-lifetime night by milking every last drip of his newfound celebrity: Spike tweeted at international modeling icon Kate Upton after learning of Upton’s attendance at the national championship game. Like I said, Big Ten: Awesome. There’s no confusion here.

Officiating Controversies. There is no escaping one lamentable truism about the 2012-13 season: the referees were not very good. Overall, on a composite game-by-game measure, the quality and consistency of officiating was rather low. Even if that’s just an arbitrary and fuzzy subjective measure, I can take it one step further. Just off the top of my head, I can point out three calls that directly affected the outcomes of important game. The first happened in Colorado’s January 3 road game at Arizona. The Buffaloes took the No. 3 Wildcats to the wire, and on the final possession, with the game knotted at 83, Colorado reserve guard Sabatino Chen banked in a wild three at the buzzer. GIFS and close-ups slowly made the rounds on Twitter, and most every angle confirmed what the real-time game tape appeared to say: Chen’s shot was good. The zebras thought otherwise – the shot was discounted. We later learned that standard definition replay monitors (the Pac 12 doesn’t use HD screens as a cost-saving measure) may have impaired the referees’ ability to clearly determine whether Chen’s shot went off before the buzzer. Like, Really? Incident No. 2: Kansas’ road win at Iowa State, wherein guard Elijah Johnson’s drive into Cyclones forward Georges Niang, resulting in an objectively false block call, actually merited an independent review from the Big 12 conference. Or, even better, we can talk about the national championship game, where Trey Burke’s perfectly clean block on Peyton Siva with just over five minutes remaining put the game seemingly out of reach for the Wolverines.

I’ve never felt comfortable pinning the outcomes of games entirely on the backs of officials; teams decide the games, referees impartially monitor the proceedings and anything that gets in the way is but another challenge in a game full of them. Everything evens out in the end, on balance. But then you get calls like Burke’s block and Niang’s blocking foul and the countless gaffes I failed to mention above, and it gets to a point where the competence and on-sight decision making of the most important third-party in sports is called into serious question. The Ed Rush Pac-12 officiating scandal only added more stink to the skeptical aura surrounding the entire profession. Officials are going to make mistakes. Judgments will be misguided. The human element of the game is not infallible. True. True. True. When the neutrality of those officials becomes a topic of debate, and we can’t wholeheartedly confide in those officials to respect the integrity of the game, the problem transcends mere block-charge minutiae or ticky-tack holding calls. The whole premise of a level playing field in college athletics is thrown into sharp scrutiny.

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As the season winds down and Big 12 teams continue to find themselves eliminated from the post-season, we’re taking a look back on a team-by-team basis at the 2012-13 season. Next up: the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

Final Record: 11-20 (3-15)

The Expectations: Normally, the only time a college basketball team makes news in August is if it secures a top commitment from a recruit. What was being reported by CBS Sports last summer was far from normal. Head coach Billy Gillispie was in a heap of trouble, violating NCAA rules by exceeding the allowable amount of practice time (four hours/day; 20 hours/week) to as many as eight hours in a day. One player, later identified as Kader Tapsoba, was so worn down by the practices that he developed multiple stress fractures. And yet Gillispie still made him practice. It wasn’t just excessive practice that led to Gillispie’s downfall, though. He promised ex-Indiana player Tom Coverdale a job as an assistant but later changed his mind. Secretaries, trainers, graduate assistants and others also left in the early stages of Gillispie’s tenure. It was already well-documented that Texas Tech was going to have a vastly different roster compared to the year before with 15 players transferring out of Lubbock in the 18 months that he had been head coach there. Associate head coach Chris Walker was later tabbed as the interim coach for the 2012-13 season, but Texas Tech basketball was starting over. The only thing you could expect from this team was to play hard, game in and game out.

Interim head coach Chris Walker was left to pick up the pieces in Lubbock (TexasTech.com)

The Actual Result: The Red Raiders pressed their way to a 4-0 start to the season, albeit against inferior opponents Prairie View A&M, Nebraska-Omaha, Jackson State and Grambling State. Then came some tougher opponents in Arizona, Alabama and Arizona State, all of which soundly beat Tech in Lubbock. (Aside: everyone is no doubt jealous at how Tech was able to get all of their non-conference games at home.) Conference play began and that went just as well as you would have expected. The Red Raiders lost 15 games in the Big 12 including nine in a row at one stretch. Their best home win came against Iowa State in which both teams combined to score 107 points. Jordan Tolbert, perhaps the best player on last year’s team, told ESPN.com he’d transfer if Gillispie wasn’t fired. Tolbert returned but the 11.5 PPG scorer from last season struggled to find his offensive game, probably because Tolbert’s father and biggest motivator, James Tolbert, passed away in October. That and the fact that the freshman starting point guard, Josh Gray, was going through a baptism-by-fire against the likes of Marcus Smart, Pierre Jackson and Angel Rodriguez. It shouldn’t go unmentioned that Jaye Crockett had been a former starter for the Red Raiders and still made an impact. Chris Walker made the decision to bring him off the bench this season, and Crockett quickly became one of the better sixth men in America (11.9 PPG, 6.5 RPG).

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1. Steve Alford issued a statement yesterday apologizing for the way he handled the Pierre Pierce situation at Iowa. Alford constantly defended Pierce at Iowa after he was accused of sexual assault even after Pierce pled guilty. When Alford took over at UCLA last week, the topic came up once again when Dan Bernstein published a column entitled “Alford already lying at UCLA”. It was the right move for Alford to apologize, but it didn’t make sense that he waited nine years to do so.
2. The Pac-12 has launched an independent review of the officiating that occurred at the Pac-12 Tournament this year. Even with Ed Rush’s resignation, the conference must determine whether the officials were influenced by external factors during the games in Las Vegas. Additionally, the review will focus on how to improve the officiating overall — a recurring hot topic among league fans. This is a step in the right direction for the Pac-12 given the inconsistent and often very poor officiating that occurred this season.
3. Standout freshman Jahii Carson will return for another year at Arizona State. Carson was not going to be a lottery pick in this year’s draft and still needs to improve his jumper and scoring ability against bigger guards. With Carson’s return to Tempe, the pressure now will be put on Herb Sendek to produce results with his team. While Sendek has been in Tempe, he has only made the NCAA Tournament once in seven years, and that simply won’t cut it. The Sun Devils will lose Carrick Felix, but they return Jordan Bachynski and Carson and will need to make a run at the postseason.
4. Tad Boyle said yesterday at his season-ending press conference that Andre Roberson is getting “misinformation” that may be preventing him from deciding on whether he will declare for the NBA Draft. Many projections have Roberson going in the second round and some have him possibly not even getting drafted at all. Boyle noted that this is a very different situation than that of Alec Burks two years ago, where it was almost certain that he would get picked in the lottery. There’s a lot more risk for Roberson as a result. If Roberson does decide to leave school, Colorado will be prepared to move on. The Buffaloes will return four starters, have a deeper bench, and bring in three talented recruits. If Roberson decides to stay, there will be a spot for him in the lineup and the Buffaloes could potentially be a Top 15 team with the 6’7″ forward around for another season.
5. Kevin Parrom’s career at Arizona has officially ended. Parrom tweeted recently that he won’t apply for a waiver request that would grant him a fifth year of eligibility. There was a slim chance of this happening as Arizona was expected to appeal and include the adversity Parrom faced as a main reason for the player to receive another year. Parrom was shot and lost his mother and grandmother as well within a short period of time in 2011. In Parrom’s final season, he averaged 8.3 points and 4.9 rebounds per game — although he is unlikely to make a roster in the NBA, he certainly has the ability to play overseas somewhere.

1. The coaching carousel has been as busy as ever this offseason, and ESPN‘s Jason King takes a deeper look into the resulting coaching changes. Texas Tech made headlines recently when it hired former Minnesota head coach Tubby Smith to replace interim head coach Chris Walker. I had advocated for keeping Walker on past this season, but when you have a chance to hire a coach like Smith, you have to do it. The ex-Gophers coach won a national title at Kentucky in 1998, and he instantly gives the Red Raiders one of the five best coaching staffs in the Big 12.
2. Here is another way-too-early 2013-14 preseason Top 25, this time from Seth Davis at Sports Illustrated. Not surprisingly, only Kansas makes the list right now. The Jayhawks come in at #13 on Davis’ ballot and here is a big reason for it: “I put them here because of the names on the front of the jersey, not the ones on the back.” The Jayhawks have the roster of a Top 25 team, no question, but Davis is right that his ranking has more to do with Bill Self’s reputation of taking teams with obvious issues and turning them into #1 seeds. You will also notice that there are no other Big 12 teams on the list. If (when) the Jayhawks win their 10th consecutive Big 12 championship next season, they could send thank you cards to the other nine schools in the conference. I’m not saying that next year’s Kansas team couldn’t win a more competitive Big 12, but they won’t have to wonder if they could because the conference on paper appears down.
3. Another Kansas State player has decided to transfer. Sophomore forward Adrian Diaz follows freshman guard Michael Orris on the way out of Manhattan after both players saw spot minutes last season. While neither player’s career started the way they probably imagined, there seems to be plenty of opportunities next season for Kansas State. The team’s best player, Rodney McGruder, is gone, as are Martavious Irving and Jordan Henriquez-Roberts. But as Joel Wagler points out, the losses of Diaz and Orris won’t have much of an effect on next year’s team.
4. It’s always nice to hear an NBA scout mirror what you’ve been saying about a player for the last few months, because it doesn’t happen very often (if ever). “McLemore is a better version of Ray Allen,” an anonymous NBA scout told the Lawrence Journal-World‘s Gary Bedore, obviously speaking of Kansas freshman guard Ben McLemore. “He will play shooting guard the way it is supposed to be played.” McLemore can definitely be timid at times, which isn’t a great characteristic in a league filled with assassins like Lebron and Kobe. But I would bet it’s easier to change a quiet demeanor than to give someone McLemore’s outstanding athleticism and shooting ability.
5. Because news is slow this time of year and most news in Big 12 country has already turned to spring football anyway, I leave you with this: Baylor women’s star Brittney Griner should head to the WNBA and skip any publicity stunts associated with joining an NBA team. We don’t need to waste any time discussing the obvious reasons, like how Griner couldn’t survive in the men’s college game much less an NBA practice. But getting embarrassed by someone like Bernard James on the first day of a Mavericks training camp would only hurt Griner’s and the WNBA’s overall image, not help it. And if the WNBA has any hope of surviving and becoming profitable in the long term, having its best prospect ever looking silly against fringe NBA players in a glorified scrimmage is not the best plan.

1. One of the downsides of taking a high-profile job is that some of your most questionable moments are brought out in public and Steve Alford learned that the hard way as his move to UCLA has prompted journalists to bring up the Pierre Pierce incident where Pierce was accused of sexual assault and Alford declared Pierce’s innocence (Pierce subsequently pleaded guilty to lesser charges and was eventually thrown off the team when he was involved in another similar incident). Yesterday, Alford finally relented and issued an apology (likely brought on by a wealthy booster or the school’s administration) in which Alford admits a mistake in judgement when declaring Pierce’s innocence and used the Iowa administration along with its lawyers as his own personal scapegoat for his ridiculous comments in 2002 (at least somebody learned something from the Mike Rice incident).
2. When Andre Dawkins stepped away from the Duke basketball team last season for personal reasons we were not sure if he would ever play for the team again, but it appears that he will be playing for the Blue Devils next season. While Dawkins has generated more publicity for his off-court issues (none of them his fault–coming to Duke early, his sister’s) he certainly has the ability (8.4 points per game during the 2011-12 season) to contribute to the team. The only problem is that the Blue Devils have more plenty of perimeter talent, but very little inside with the departure of Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly.
3. When we heard that Rick Pitino had promised his team that he would get a tattoo we assumed that he would back out of it, but he is sticking by it at least publicly. The latest news on the Pitino tattoo is that he is that it “will be a cardinal and it will say 2013 champions.” Honestly we wouldn’t expect anything less from Pitino. We just hope that there is some amusing photo of it in the Louisville preseason media guide. Actually we hope that he saves its unveiling for next season’s Louisville-Kentucky game as he shows it to taunt the Kentucky fans.
4. On Wednesday we pointed out that even though almost everybody had Russ Smith leaving Louisville there was one person — Smith himself — who had not come out with his intent to leave. Now it appears that Russ (or at least the people around him) appears to be having a change of heart as Rick Pitino said yesterday that Smith is 50-50 on the decision. On one hand we are not sure how much Smith can improve his NBA Draft stock with one more season since he will not get any taller and we really doubt that he will improve his decision-making markedly, but he is still a likely second round pick which means he would probably spend next year in the D-League or somewhere in Europe if he leaves the Cardinals program.
5. So, this Andy Enfield guy had a pretty good couple of weeks, right? On top of the pretty good couple of years, on top of the pretty good couple of decades… you get the picture. The new USC head coach stopped by the Tonight Show to see Jay Leno on Wednesday night, and well, it’s not hard to see how this guy has been mostly successful at everything he’s touched.