1. After Jay Bilas’ crusade against the NCAA’s online store and its use of players names to sell memorabilia the NCAA announced yesterday that it would no longer sell merchandise affiliated with specific universities. To do so the NCAA will shut down the site temporarily while it scrubs any vestiges of its use of amateur athletes’ names for its own profit. Now the NCAA will supposedly only feature merchandise related to its championship events. We are assuming that this merchandise will be allowed to feature the logos or names of the teams competing for those championships or we suspect that those items will not sell either. Having said that we are glad to see that the NCAA is willing to adjust at least a little bit when its hypocrisy is pointed out.
2. In a somewhat cryptic tweet John Calipari both welcomed Steve Alford to Twitter and alluded to the possibility of UCLA and Kentucky playing in the near future. Although UCLA has been down recently they remain the most decorated program in college basketball history. Despite their storied histories the two schools have only met ten times with the Wildcats holding a 6-4 edge . A match-up between the two schools would certainly draw the attention of college basketball fans particularly if Alford is able to keep California recruits in state and make the Bruins a competitive team.
3. As numerous reports have documented the past few years have not been easy for Dean Smith as he is suffering from what appears to be dementia. This has been particularly troubling for those who know him as more than just a legendary college basketball coach, but also a civil rights advocate. So yesterday’s announcement that President Obama would be honoring Smith along with 15 others with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is “presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” The date of the ceremony has not been announced yet, but we imagine it will be a star-studded event particularly with two of the other inductees being Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.
4. With football just around the corner we have been anxiously waiting for the release of college basketball schedules and for the most part we have just been receiving bits and pieces of schedules from various teams that mostly revolve around a few non-conference games that are part of previously arranged events. So the Big 12’s release of this year’s conference schedule is the first real significant release we have seen. We may eventually do a post on this, but really the entire schedule comes down to two dates: January 18 and March 1. Those two dates are when Kansas and Oklahoma State play each other. Everybody in the conference office and ESPN might pretend that is not true, but realistically those are the only two games that matter. A few other teams like Kansas State and Baylor might be intriguing, but we need to see those teams prove something before we can trust them (especially Baylor).
5. We have expressed our issues with how liberally the NCAA hands out transfer waivers, but in the case of Mike Poole we have no objection to his waiver being approved. Poole, a senior guard who averaged 4.4 points and 3 rebounds per game last season, transferred from Rutgers to Iona this off-season and was granted a legislative relief waiver so he will be eligible to play immediately. Given the video evidence demonstrating Mike Rice’s abuse towards his players the NCAA did not really have any option, but to grant Poole a waiver. It will be interesting to see how a change of scenery will affect Poole who had a higher scoring average (6.5 points per game) as a sophomore. The announcement should only further strengthen the Gaels’ position as the MAAC favorite going into the season.

The NCAA has taken a pretty solid beating over the past year or two, but the compromised state of college athletics’ governing body did not stop ESPN’s Jay Bilas from helping himself to a few good hacks at the association earlier this week. Oh, and I should add that said hacks were not the kind you would see outside a bar at three in the morning; these were well-reasoned, deserved punches thrown at a group becoming increasingly defined by their hypocrisy.

These Instructions Wouldn’t Have Worked A Few Hours After Jay Bilas Tweeted Them Out, But Look What Randomly Emerges When Searching For “Nerlens Noel” On The NCAA Store’s Site!

You may be best served by simply scrolling back through Bilas’ twitter feed to Tuesday evening, but to paraphrase his discoveries, if you entered the name of a recent college sports star (say Nerlens Noel, or Denard Robinson) in the search bar at shopNCAAsports.com, the site would lead you to a very specific set of results. In the case of Noel, the result was a page full of #3 Kentucky jerseys.  For Robinson, it was a collection of #16 Michigan jerseys that appeared on the screen. Of course, fans are encouraged to buy this memorabilia from the “NCAA store” because they know which players wore these jerseys in real life, but the NCAA’s infamous stance is that they jerseys numbers are random, unattached to any particular student-athlete. In fact, as this USA Today article points out, one of the defendants in the suite of lawsuits pertaining to the NCAA’s use of college athletes’ names and likenesses said in a court filing that “products bearing college athletes’ jersey numbers do not represent actual college athletes.” Hmmmm, then is this a case of a really smart search function, or a really tone deaf NCAA? Well, the NCAA seemed to agree that it was the latter; the search capability was disabled just hours after Bilas fired his first shots.

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Deepak is a columnist for the Big Ten microsite of RTC. Follow him on Twitter for more about B1G hoops at @dee_b1g.

With approximately three months left until the college hoops season begins, Big Ten basketball fans can take two paths to fill the void of sports in their lives over the next few weeks: They could try to convince themselves that their football team is good enough to compete with the SEC until they get hammered again during bowl season; or, they could begin to entertain the idea that the conference will finally win the national title in basketball after a 14-year hiatus. Since Michigan lost to Louisville in mid-April, most of the news around the hoops world has revolved around all the incoming freshmen – Jabari Parker, Andrew Wiggins or the Kentucky All-Stars, to name a few – who chose to not take their talents to Big Ten country. Regardless of that lack of incoming star power, we at the RTC Big Ten Microsite are here to get you excited the stars who are returning and ready to take on the responsibility of leading their teams to conference glory.

Over the next few weeks, we plan to evaluate a number of key Big Ten sophomores who will have an impact on their team’s performance throughout the entire season. Today we start with Michigan shooting guard Nik Stauskas.

Nik Stauskas Won’t Disappoint Next Season

Nik Stauskas’ rise to fame in Ann Arbor was quicker than expected because he came out of the gates firing on all cylinders, shooting over 50% from beyond the arc during November and December. Michigan’s “Fresh Five” may never have cemented its nickname if only Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III had led the charge offensively; as it turned out when the Wolverines steamrolled through its non-conference competition last season, it was Stauskas who added the most early value to the offense as a member of the starting rotation. If he decides to stay on campus for at least two more seasons, he could go down as one of the best sharp-shooters in Big Ten history. Beilein’s offense is built to enhance his impressive shot-making abilities, but let’s also evaluate the other parts of his game that could determine if he will hit a sophomore slump during the 2013-14 season.

What did we learn about his game from last year?

If 44% shooting from beyond the arc isn’t enough to convince you about Stauskas’ effectiveness as a shooter, this clip where he makes 45 out of 50 shots should seal the deal. The defensive scouting report is clear: Take the three-point shot away from him — especially in the corners — and you’ll make him earn his points the hard way. But Stauskas’ offensive game expands beyond an effective jumper; for example, he is excellent off the dribble especially in going to his left. Check out these highlights that showcase his ability to dribble off screens and use his left hand to get to the basket for easy layups and dunks. He is comfortable enough finishing around the basket with this left hand and can shift direction when his defender goes even a half step too far defending him off the screens. At the outset, he may look like just a shooter, but Stauskas has already shown that he can do more than bomb from long range in Beilein’s offense, setting himself up for high expectations after a full offseason of strength and weight training.

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1. We mentioned in this space yesterday that Jahii Carson along with Marcus Smart were not only two of the best point guards in college basketball, but that they are also both rising sophomores who have already publicly stated that next season will be their last in the amateur ranks. Both players are likely to have All-America campaigns ahead of them, but Smart in particular is on everyone’s short list as a NPOY candidate, and with good reason. The latest published results of a poll of coaches from CBSSports.com staff shows that Smart is the most coveted player in all of the land, coming in with a bit more than one-third of the vote (34%). Next on the list was Creighton superstar Doug McDermott (24%), followed by wunderkind Andrew Wiggins at Kansas (15%). A number of other players received votes, including Ohio State’s Aaron Craft, Michigan’s Mitch McGary and Syracuse’s CJ Fair, but the naming of five other freshmen after Wiggins reveals just how strong this year’s incoming class is perceived to be. One notable omission from the list was Louisville’s Russ Smith (his teammate Montrezl Harrell actually received a vote instead), but as the article notes, the choices make clear that coaches value experience and sustained leadership over unproven (or sometimes unstable) commodities. While all this conjecture is great, it’s ultimately meaningless until we start the games in November.
2. And what about those games, the reason we all watch these players in the first place? Wednesday was a good day for folks like us — fans of the sport who like to have concrete games on the schedule to sink our teeth into. ESPN released its Big Monday lineup for 2013-14, and the most notable thing about the 16-game set over eight weeks is that the new slot of ACC games at 7:00 PM ET considerably resembles vintage Big East offerings. The Big 12 still carries the 9:00 PM slot (Andrew Wiggins, anyone? Kansas is involved in half of the broadcasts), but half of the ACC Big Monday games will involve teams who were still Big East entities as recently as 40 days ago. One game in particular — Notre Dame vs. Syracuse on February 3 — comes straight from the old Big East rivalry playbook. Welcome to the new ACC, indeed. Now can we get a west coast flavor at Midnight ET to sweeten the deal even further, like we used to have with the Big West and UNLV slotted there once upon a time?
3. Some other interesting scheduling news hit on Wednesday surrounding the build-up and planning for Super Bowl XLVIII in New York City, as it appears there will be a basketball extravaganza at the World’s Most Famous Arena on the Saturday before the NFL’s title bout. Madison Square Garden, in partnership with Fox Sports 1, will host a hoops triple-header to give people in town for the football game a little something to feast on beforehand. St. John’s will play an as-yet-undetermined Big East opponent in the early afternoon slot (Marquette is rumored to be that team), followed by a blockbuster Georgetown-Michigan State match-up in the late afternoon, and capped off with an NBA tilt between the Knicks and the Miami Heat in the evening. It’s an impressive lineup, for certain, and is suggestive that programmers of college basketball really need to learn to capitalize on those empty weekends starting in late January and through to mid-March… before March Madness hits in earnest and captures the attention of everyone else.
4. Is it too early to already be looking forward to games the following season? We’re talking about 2014-15 here, but hey, it’s a light news cycle. It’s always, always, always a good thing when top 10 programs meet in non-conference match-ups during the regular season, and it appears we’re going to have a good one when regional rivals Louisville and Indiana will face off in the Jimmy V Classic on December 9, 2014. Although the two rosters are likely to look considerably different than they do even this coming season, both Tom Crean and Rick Pitino are recruiting so well that you can count on this being a fantastic game. Even if it won’t tip off until some 16 months from now.
5. It must have been Pac-12 preview Wednesday around the interwebs yesterday, as both ESPN.com and SI.com featured the much-maligned basketball league with a summer update post. The WWL’s piece is more comprehensive in scope, but Andy Glockner’s writeup is the better read. They both have high hopes for Sean Miller’s Arizona Wildcats, while agreeing that the league as a whole is once again on the uptick after a period from 2010-12 that was as bad as many have ever seen. There’s a lot of good information in both pieces, though, so we suggest that you check it out lest you find yourself come November wondering why the league has three or maybe even four teams ranked in the preseason AP poll.

1. Now that we’re heading over the next few weeks into the start of fall semesters at our nation’s colleges, the intensity of recruiting pitches for the top uncommitted prospects in the Class of 2014 will begin to reach a fever pitch. Prospects coming out of the summer camps have been evaluated and ranked, scholarship offers have been approved and delivered, and on-campus visits are being scheduled and discussed. A little later today we’ll be publishing a fantastic interview with ESPN‘s Dave Telep and CBSSports.com‘s Jeff Borzello breaking down their keen observations of the rising stars in prep basketball, but that won’t stop the wheels from turning on their own. The Sporting News took time Tuesday to list the top 10 consensus uncommitted prospects in the senior class, with each player’s current list of schools and corresponding official visits noted alongside. The top prospect on that list, Jahlil Okafor, announced yesterday that he will visit Kentucky for its September 9 Alumni Game, while the third prospect, Emmanuel Mudiay, narrowed his list down to five schools (including those same Wildcats). John Calipari’s squad, along with Duke, Louisville and Kansas — three of the last four national finalists, as it turns out — appear to be in outstanding position for big-time hauls at this point. The more things change…
2. The more the NCAA looks like a clown car fire drill. Sometimes an organization simply can’t win for losing, and although nobody would agree that they’re losing in a financial sense, we’ve noted extensively in this space that the stoic institution appears to be reaching a tipping point over amateurism in the court of public opinion from which it simply cannot recover. The latest ignominy comes courtesy of ESPN‘s Jay Bilas, who tweeted that by typing player names into the NCAA’s shop search box (he started with “Nerlens Noel”), the results would show up as that player’s unnamed jersey, such as in Noel’s case, his #3 Wildcats uniform. Bilas then tried a number of other player names, both football and basketball, with similar corresponding results. As later described by Jeff Eisenberg at The Dagger, the NCAA caught wind of it and immediately shut down the search functionality, but the damage was already done. Once again the NCAA has managed to find the sweet spot of hypocrite as well as laughingstock, made especially so by virtue of the fact that they’re embroiled in a high profile case with former and current athletes over the use of their likeness. Unbelievable.
3. CBSSports.com made some waves earlier this week with its release of the results of an unscientific poll showing that Iowa State head coach Fred Hoiberg was the top choice among coaches in the business in terms of likelihood to jump to the NBA. Coach K, given his ties to all the stars on the US Olympic team, was unsurprisingly second. At third was Billy Donovan — who nearly went League once already — and Kansas’ Bill Self. Self — really? On Monday night at his induction to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, where he starred in the prep ranks before playing at Oklahoma State, Self at least entertained the notion. Predictably, a firestorm ensued on Tuesday, with everyone from KC to Liberal wondering why the nine-time defending Big 12 champion would ever consider a move to the professional ranks. Self took time to couch those comments on Tuesday, but he made sure to leave the window slightly ajar, stating that he’d made a prior mistake in telling Illinois fans that he was there “for the long haul” before staying in Champaign for a flingish three years.
4. How about some comings and goings for a hot August hump day? First, Colorado State head coach Larry Eustachy parlayed his excellent NCAA Round of 32 season into a raise and extension to his contract. His new deal now lasts through the 2017-18 season (with options through 2021) and will pay him an average base salary of nearly $1 million per year. Perhaps the most surprising thing in a world where DePaul’s Oliver Purnell clears nearly twice that for doing very little is that Eustachy’s new deal actually puts him at the very top of the heap in the hyper-competitive Mountain West Conference. The Mountain’s powerhouse programs — San Diego State, New Mexico and UNLV — all pay their top guys a salary considerably lower than Eustachy’s contract. Steve Fisher, for example, the national championship coach with a number of Sweet Sixteen runs in San Diego to his name, currently makes $800,000 per year. Maybe he should put in a call to his AD.
5. Down in the desert, much of the offseason chatter has surrounded the haul of talent that Arizona head coach Sean Miller has in Tucson. But the best player in the state might actually be playing in Tempe for Herb Sendek; at least for one more year, that is. Coming off a very strong freshman campaign in 2012-13, Sun Devils point guard Jahii Carson turned some heads this summer with his play at the Adidas Nations Camp and is poised to become an All-American in his sophomore year. He tweeted on Tuesday that he’s looking forward to that run, but it appears that his next 10 months in the desert will be, as he called it, his last “go round.” The team is about to head to China in a couple of days — it’ll certainly be interesting to track Carson’s progress next season, regardless of how well his team does supporting him.

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

The scent of change lingers thick in NCAA territory these days. Major conference athletic directors have spoken about the possible creation of a new “Division 4” that would allow a subset of larger Division I leagues to operate under a different governance structure than their small-school counterparts. The Ed O’Bannon lawsuit threatens to undercut the NCAA’s decades-old adherence to amateurism. Shady tactics and egregious errors in enforcement made during the NCAA’s high-profile investigation of the Nevin Shapiro scandal at Miami have been laid bare by various publications. Experienced enforcement staffers are leaving in droves. A new lawsuit alleging a lack of accountability for student-athlete concussions in contact sports has inspired a new strain of ethical debate. Put simply, the NCAA is beset on all sides by various philosophical and legal attacks; a breaking point feels imminent. Over the next year or so, something – whether a massive development in the O’Bannon case, a formal establishment of a new NCAA subdivision, or some other major change – is going to happen. The NCAA cannot exist in its current state. This is widely accepted and rarely denied.

Now Congress wants a say in the matter. Last Thursday, House members Charles Dent and Joyce Beatty introduced The National Collegiate Athletics Accountability Act. The act contains a number of powerful regulations, but the main points can be pared down to the following four: 1) a guarantee of four-year scholarships in contact sports (which, per the legislation’s definition, include the following: boxing, field hockey, ice hockey, football, lacrosse, soccer, martial arts, wrestling and rodeo), eliminating the potential for schools to revoke one-year, renewable grants-in-aid on the basis of injury, skill, or sheer whim (i.e., no more runoffs) – a practice more than one third of the nation’s most powerful athletic programs have yet to abolish, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education; 2) permission for schools to extend cost-of-living stipends to student-athletes; 3) requiring concussion tests for all sports, both contact and limited-contact; 4) formalizing “due process” guidelines for schools and players found to have violated NCAA rules, including an appeals process and administrative hearings. A failure to meet any of these requirements would result in a loss of Title IX funding, which provides institutions with billions of dollars annually.

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1. Coming into this season we were expecting big things out of Montrezl Harrell. The one-time Virginia Tech recruit played a pivotal role in Louisville’s run to the national championship last season and he showed signs of becoming a star with his play this summer. So when news broke that Harrell had injured his right knee in a collision at the Adidas Nations Camp we are sure that there were plenty of nervous people in Louisville, Kentucky. Fortunately, Harrell merely hyperextended his knee and did not suffer any significant structural damage. All of this should make Louisville fans sleep a little easier tonight knowing that their veteran inside presence should come into the season healthy.
2. Louisville fans were not the only ones who had a scare come out of the Adidas Nations Camp as Will Sheehey also had his own injury scare. The rising senior sprained his right ankle, which had kept him out of five games as a sophomore, but it appears that the sprain was only moderate. Although Sheehey was largely overshadowed by his Indiana teammates/top-4 picks Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller as well as seniors Christian Watford and Jordan Hulls, he still managed to average 9.5 points per game and will be expected to carry a much bigger load for a Hoosiers team that will probably spend much of the early season trying to figure out its new identity.
3. It might seem like an odd time to ask the question with the college basketball season drawing near, but CBS Sports took an informal poll of college coaches asking them which college coach they thought would be the best fit for the NBA. At first we were a little surprised to see Fred Hoiberg ahead of Mike Krzyzewski, but then we realized that these are people who actually know the game and realize the type of personalities that a NBA coach has to deal with. Now we are not going to say that Krzyzewski is not equipped to handle those personalities as he has shown that he can do for a short period of time in the Olympics, but we are not sure how that would hold up over an 82-game season. On the other hand, Hoiberg has more experience at the NBA level and based on these results we would not be surprised to see Hoiberg’s name come up when a NBA job opens up.
4. Few recruits have had to deal with the adversity that Austin Hatch has. Hatch, a Michigan commit, may not be considered one of the truly elite prospects in this year’s senior class, but his story–having been involved in two plane crashes that took the lives of much of his family. Hatch has managed to come back from that and will be finishing high school in Los Angeles (hopefully Luke Winn will cut him some slack if he finishes as a top 100 recruit). Hatch has not played competitively since the most recent accident (in June 2011) so we will be interested in seeing how he performs, but more importantly to see how he is adjusting to his new life.
5. With the off-the-court trouble that Wyoming had last season it should not be that much of a surprise that some of its players have decided to create their own club known as “624” to avoid the craziness of Laramie, Wyoming (I know I can’t believe I just wrote that either). The club is not really a club in the traditional night club sense, but is rather a symbol for a place (624 is the address of the apartment of some upperclassmen) where the players on the team can hang out without worrying that people outside of the team will create problems that will break up the team. The entire idea should not be novel although we doubt that many teams do something like this for a variety of reasons, but it seems like something that many programs would benefit from trying.

1. One of the more secretive parts of college athletics (and there are many such areas) is how schools go about looking for coaches and administrators. In the past they were largely just given through what can best be described as an old boys network. Today, these decisions are largely made through executive search agencies. Dana O’Neil was able to go inside Parker Executive Search, the most well-known firm, to see what exactly it is that they do. According to Parker, they simply collect data and help arrange for meetings despite all of the rumors that they essentially pick out who should be the choice. While this is all nice in theory it should be obvious to everybody that they can only search so deeply and occasionally miss things that others might consider fairly obvious like the accusations against new Rutgers AD Julie Hermann.
2. It will not be “The Decision II” in terms of being a media spectacle, but when Jahil Okafor and Tyus Jones announce where they are committing you can be sure it will be a big day at least in the college basketball world. Okafor, the #1 recruit in the country, and Jones, a top-5 player, are reportedly a package deal and according to Mike Irvin, Okafor’s AAU coach, Duke appears to be the leader for the pair. This is backed up by sources close to Jones saying Duke is the leader for him too. Of course, Okafor’s father denies that anybody is in the lead, but we doubt that he would come out and say that with so many schools in pursuit. The fact that Duke could land such a significant pair of recruits is not really shocking, but it has been a while since Duke landed two such highly regarded players in the same class.
3. Jeff Goodman may have left CBS for ESPN, but apparently CBS got to keep his transfer list. Although he does not include every single transfer out there Jeff Borzello put together a summary of the biggest transfers separating them into those that can play immediately, those that will have to sit out a year, and those that are in limbo as well as those that just needed a change in scenery. With all the attention paid to the top high school recruits coming in a lot of people gloss over some pretty high-impact transfers and Borzello’s list does a great job at reminding you of the most important transfers so if you are unclear on where everybody transferred (and it is almost impossible to keep track of everybody) this is a great place to start.
4. He may have not been a successful head coach (honestly, we had almost forgotten he was a college coach) so we cannot say that we are shocked that Corliss Williamson has left Central Arkansas to become an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings. Williamson is best known as the star of the Arkansas teams that made back-to-back national championship games winning the title in 1994, but he also went on to have a successful NBA career winning NBA Sixth Man of the Year in 2002. Unfortunately Williamson’s college coaching career was not as successful as he went 26-62 in 3 seasons. Still he will have his name to fall back on if and when he decides to move on from his new job in Sacramento.
5. Normally this space is reserved for fairly light material, but when a former Division I assistant coach is labeled as “Islamic jihadist” it catches our eye. Such is the case of former Northern Colorado assistant Christopher Craig who has reportedly threatened Catholics and Mormons in both Arizona and Colorado. As a result authorities in Colorado are warning churches in the state to be on the lookout for Craig. Now we do not want to get into geopolitical/social issues and a loaded term like “Islamic jihadist” will certainly make this story become a bigger point of discussion than if they had chosen any other religion. Based on the reports it appears that Craig’s threats were limited to primarily verbal, which certainly does not excuse them, but hopefully someone reaches Craig before he goes beyond a point that he cannot come back from.

The college basketball news of the day on Thursday came from Ron Wellman, Wake Forest AD and current chair of the Division I men’s basketball championship committee, when he outlined significant criteria changes for how the NCAA Tournament will be seeded in the future. The new method will be put in place immediately for the 2014 NCAA Tournament, and while the change may not be as drastic as say, a 96-team field, it should have a meaningful and productive impact on the dear old event we know and love.

Brandon Davies And BYU Rejoiced After Their Comeback Victory Over Iona In 2012’s First Four, But They Are The Only Team Since 2007 To Slip Two Seed Lines (To A #14) As A Result Of Bracketing Issues Elsewhere

Quickly, here’s the nitty-gritty: Conference foes who have only met one time during the season (conference tournaments included) can now play each other in the round of 32; if conference-mates have already played twice, their earliest possible NCAA match-up will come in the Sweet Sixteen. Finally, if teams have played three times throughout the course of the year, it won’t be until the regional finals that they are allowed to rendez-vous for a fourth time. Additionally, the top four teams from a conference must now only be separated by region if they are among the top 16 overall seeds; in the past, only the top three teams from each league were separated, period. If you want the full breakdown from the committee, you can read its press release here.

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