The SEC microsite will preview each of the league teams over the next few weeks, starting today with the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

Mississippi State Bulldogs

Strengths. Continuity. Okay, continuity may not be Rick Ray’s best friend considering that his Bulldogs have gone just 24-41 since he took over the program two years ago. But players grow through experience, and Ray has a quintet of upperclassmen who have seen plenty of action together during his tenure. Trivante Bloodman, Craig Sword, Fred Thomas, Roquez Johnson and Gavin Ware know their roles and what to expect from one another. That kind of consistency is a step in the right direction for a program that has struggled with injuries and dismissals the last two years (although Sword’s recent back injury clouds that idea a bit).

Weaknesses. When you don’t expect to win the sheer talent battle on a game-to-game basis, you simply can’t give away free points. The Bulldogs did just that by shooting 66.3 percent from the free throw line as a team last season, good for 288th in the country. Part of the problem was that their lead guards, Sword (62.0%) and Thomas (62.5%) weren’t effective despite getting to the line at a high rate. When paired with a lack of three-point shooting, this resulted in a sub-standard 0.96 points per possession. The injury bug also extended its stay in Starkville by knocking out JuCo forward Johnny Zuppardo for the season. That leaves the Bulldogs entirely dependent on two freshmen (Oliver Black and Demetrius Houston) for frontcourt depth.

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Here we go… headfirst into another season heralded by our 2014-15 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight rather than 30 days from now. Over the next month you’ll get one reason per day until we reach the new season on November 14. We’ve captured what we believe were the 30 most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head in astonishment. For all of this year’s released posts, click here. 

#23 – Where From the Rafters Happens.

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 preseasons.

This will be the first Ohio State basketball team without Aaron Craft on the roster since 2010, despite the fact that it seems like he was the Buckeyes’ point guard since the turn of the century. He and Lenzelle Smith Jr. started on teams that reached the Final Four and Elite Eight in consecutive seasons and manned the backcourt in Columbus for the last three years. Combine this with the loss of leading scorer LaQuinton Ross and the Buckeyes have numerous question marks heading into this year’s campaign. Freshmen like D’angelo Russell and JaSean Tate will certainly help offensively and returnee Marc Loving showed signs last year that he could become a double-figure scorer at some point in his Buckeyes’ career. But this team will only go as far as its senior class — Shannon Scott, Amir Williams, Sam Thompson, Trey McDonald and Anthony Lee — will take them. After a disappointing 25-10 mark as a result of a questionable offense (10th in the B1Gin offensive efficiency), the seniors need to prove that they can continue to defend at an elite level without the services of the best on-ball defender in the country, and that they can actually find better ways to put some points on the board.

Shannon Scott will take over the primary ball-handling duties for Ohio State this season.
(Andy Manis, AP)

At this point it’s probably safe to say that Williams will never be a dominant force on the offensive end. He is, however, useful as a rim-protector, finishing fourth  in the league last season in blocks. McDonald made strides last season as a backup big man, showing that even though he too lacks offensive polish, he can contribute on the defensive end and on the glass. Both players foul far too often (a combined 11.1 fouls per 40 minutes),  but if the pair can stay on the court long enough to combine for about 15 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks per game, then they’ll have done their job as a tandem. Thompson saw his numbers drop across the board last season, and much like with Williams, it’s tempting to just assume that he is who he is at this point in his career. Even if he does nothing to improve his offensive numbers, Thompson can improve his team if he becomes a lockdown perimeter defender (which he has the athleticism to do) and if he increases his rebounding output. At 6’7″, only two conference players at the same size or taller (Will Sheehey and Joey King) had a lower defensive rebounding rate than Thompson last season. He did shoot 40.4 percent from deep as a sophomore, but he slipped back down to 35.5 percent last year. If he can knock down about 38 percent of his attempts from three and add to his rebounding totals, he should be on the floor for Thad Matta at crunch time.

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The SEC rolled out the red carpet for the media on Wednesday as part of #SECTipoff15 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The league’s basketball campaign may have kicked off in the heart of ACC country, but geographic proximity to the nation’s top college basketball conference did not detract from placing SEC basketball at the center of attention here. Rush the Court was there, well, when we weren’t searching for more of those delicious chicken biscuits from the breakfast spread. Here are the three key takeaways from a fun and interesting day of talking college basketball and hitting the buffet line.

The SEC Network studios and the Ballantyne Hotel in Charlotte played host for SEC media days.

1)    Platoon system – The word of the day was platoon. Of course, Kentucky coach John Calipari set the tone by talking about how and why he would implement two separate five-man squads to achieve better team chemistry among the 10 or 11 players he plans on putting on the court this season. On advice from other coaches, Calipari admitted that “most of them think I’m crazy,” but he further explained that he is considering the switch to allow players to become comfortable playing with the same group.

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1. Let the dissection of the Pac-12 media poll begin. The league will have its media day from the San Francisco headquarters today, and the schools will be represented by each head coach and a few select players. The Pac-12 Networks and website will have live coverage, and here’s a schedule of when to expect each coach to take the stage and address the media in attendance. Who’s ready for commissioner Larry Scott’s rose-colored declaration about how the league is stronger than it’s ever been and another non-story update on the failed DirecTV negotiations? If there is such thing as suspense on this day, it will come from the predicted order of finish behind the likely favorite, second-ranked Arizona. In fact, the folks in Tucson are already wondering whether the Wildcats can run the table in conference play.
2. Speaking of Wildcats and running the table, USA Today’s Scott Gleeson highlighted the group from Kentucky and skimmed through its schedule to pinpoint the toughest tests that stand in the way of a perfect season for the preseason No. 1. Among the contests circled was the December 20 matchup with UCLA in the CBS Sports Classic. Quality opponent and neutral court – the game will be played in Chicago – is a good start to the makings for an upset. And, as Gleeson pointed out, the timing of the game should give both programs a fair barometer and good sample size to mesh. That will be particularly important for the Bruins, who add Isaac Hamilton and Kevon Looney to the mix but are short on experience and in search of a defensive identity.
3. The intrasquad showcases continued Wednesday as Stanford put on a Cardinal and White scrimmage. Head coach Johnny Dawkins has work to do in reloading the program’s first NCAA Tournament qualifier of his six-year tenure. It appears he has already found the breakout star of Year 7, as Rosco Allen turned heads with a winning performance in the dunk contest and 11 points and six rebounds in the 20-minute scrimmage. A team that finished in the top five in the Pac-12 in three-point shooting, the Cardinal have another dead-eye shooter to watch as Dorian Pickens edged out Chasson Randle in the contest. Randle, a first-team all-conference pick last season, led all scorers with 18 points on 5-of-9 shooting.
4. In Salt Lake City, Utah hosted its “Night With the Runnin’ Utes.” After a lackluster intrasquad scrimmage last Friday, head coach Larry Krystkowiak said his team is “making progress” and has the ability to go two-deep at each position. Utah played 16-minute halves that include a halftime shakeup in the rosters. It was a good night to be on Jordan Loveridge’s team as the junior scored a combined 27 points in split duty for each squad. The forward finished 8-of-11 from the field, including 4-of-5 from beyond the arc, and converted all seven of his free throws. The sidebar of the night belonged to 7-foot freshman Jakob Poetl, who returned after missing a week of practice because of a concussion suffered while playing dodgeball during a team dinner at Krystkowiak’s house. The Austrian collected 12 points, five rebounds and two blocks.
5. At Colorado, sophomore guard Jaron Hopkins is making it a point to be more aggressive. Head coach Tad Boyle, who is looking to fill the void left behind by standout Spencer Dinwiddie, said the notable difference is in Hopkins’ decision-making. Hopkins received a crash course in his first year as the Buffaloes adjusted after Dinwiddie’s season-ending injury, so the transition should be more accelerated and less foreign this time around.

1. Yesterday afternoon, a report surfaced alleging that Texas would start paying its student-athletes an amount in the area of $10,000 per year on top of the typical scholarship. Initially, the report set Twitter abuzz, as it would be the biggest domino to fall in the wake of the O’Bannon ruling, but it later turned out that Texas Athletic Director Steve Patterson was merely speaking hypothetically in response to a question about what might happen if the NCAA were to lose all of its appeals from the landmark. Despite the initial misinterpretation, it was interesting to get a glimpse from an administrator at a big athletics school into what the future may hold as the NCAA model is continuously challenged.
2. Travis Ford has faced a lot of scrutiny over the past year (most of it deserved), but it hasn’t stopped him from making hay on the recruiting trail. Oklahoma State‘s latest commit came in Tuesday from 2016 guard Tre Evans. One interesting angle to Evans’ recruitment is that although his father, Terry, was a 1,300-point scorer for rival Oklahoma and later a staffer for Kelvin Sampson, the Sooners never came calling for Tre. A chip understandably developed on Tre’s shoulder, so even though he’s only a junior, he sounds very eager to get to Stillwater.
3. In the current age of freshmen hype, we’ve seen how easy it can be for good upperclassmen to get lost in the shuffle. Last season, Kansas forward Perry Ellis flew under the radar compared to the Jayhawks’ one-and-done guys, and as of now, he’s one of college basketball’s most underrated players. That status is likely to change during the preview season as regional and national outlets take a closer look at what will make the Jayhawks go this year (especially as Cliff Alexander and Kelly Oubre take time to get settled) but for the time being, Ellis is about as underrated as a player for an annual contender can be. While Ellis is reliable around the rim, he was also a factor in Kansas’ disappointing defensive performance this season, so he’s definitely someone to keep an eye on.
4. Over 20 years after his tough 1992 Cincinnati team crashed the Final Four, Bob Huggins is still fighting a reputation as a perceived villain, according to Fox Sports’ Reid Forgrave. A given fan’s impression of the coaching vet probably depends on how long they’ve been following his career and whether they view teams as an extension of their coach. Huggins’ best teams — whether they’ve been at Dayton, Cincinnati or West Virginia — have always had an edge to them and thrived during a time when many coaches had a defensive philosophy based in some part on the idea that refs can only call so much contact. However, it’s also true that Huggins has always cared deeply for his players and never minces words when it comes to his teams’ performance in a given game or season. Huggins isn’t without flaws, but in today’s college basketball landscape, there are definitely more sketchy characters.
5. Iowa State forward Georgios Tsalmpouris suffered a mild ankle sprain in practice, but should be ready to go for the start of the season. At 7’1″, Tsalmpouris is the tallest player to suit up for the Cyclones since 2004, but at 220 pounds, he has some bulking up to do before he becomes a key cog in Iowa State’s rotation. There isn’t much reason to worry about Tsalmpouris’ injury, but someone as raw as him needs all the development he can get.

1. Expectations for Illinois are reasonably high despite the fact that starting point guard Tracy Abrams was lost for the season with a torn ACL. One reason for such optimism has to be the fact that the team should shoot the ball much better with the additions of transfers Aaron Crosby and Ahmad Starks. The two newcomers have both shot over 36 percent from behind the arc in their careers, and the Illini offense should benefit the ability to spread the floor and burn teams from deep. It should also take the onus off of Rayvonte Rice, whose offensive numbers dropped significantly once conference play started last season.
2. Wisconsin has been picked to finish high both nationally and in the Big Ten largely because of the experience it has coming back to Madison. Several other schools in the league also have a good deal of returning talent, though, and Minnesota is one such team. The Gophers will feature four seniors who should get heavy minutes, including all-Big Ten candidates Deandre Mathieu and Andre Hollins. The senior class has taken their roles as leaders to heart, as they’ve been in constant communication with one another as the opening of the season grows closer. There have been many instances where teams that made a deep NIT run (Minnesota won the tournament last season) came back to progress to the NCAA Tournament the following year. Richard Pitino’s squad may well be the next such example of a team, much like Iowa a year ago, to use its NIT experience as a springboard to a better season.
3. In looking at Indiana’s roster, guard play and perimeter strength look to be its strengths. Yogi Ferrell is back at point guard and freshmen James Blackmon Jr. and Robert Johnson are top 100 wings who should contribute right away. The Hoosiers didn’t exactly feature Noah Vonleh in the post last season and he still ended up getting drafted by Charlotte in the lottery. Now junior Hanner Mosquera-Perea will more than likely step into a starting role on the blocks despite an uneven first two years in Bloomington. Both Mosquera-Perea and Tom Crean realize that now is the time for the Colombia native to show the tools that made him one of the top big men in the Class of 2012.
4. Maryland guard Melo Trimble has quickly become the talk of the highly-touted freshman class that Mark Turgeon has assembled in College Park for his first B1G campaign. Trimble is getting rave reviews for his defensive abilities, and much of that is due to his work with Director of Basketball Performance coach, Kyle Tarp. Trimble has lost 18 pounds since arriving on campus, leading Turgeon to comment that “he’s further along defensively than I expected.” With Seth Allen gone to Virginia Tech, Trimble will have a much greater initial responsibility than he would have had if Allen had stuck around. The combination of Maryland’s experience and youth make this year’s team an intriguing Big Ten sleeper.
5. Headliners like Jahill Okafor, Cliff Alexander and Stanley Johnson making CollegeBasketballTalk’s list of top 20 impact freshmen should come as no surprise, but the Big Ten was also well-represented with Indiana’s James Blackmon Jr, Maryland’s Melo Trimble, and Northwestern’s Vic Law all making the cut. A questionable omission would have to be Ohio State guard D’angelo Russell, who may very well lead his team in scoring this season. The three who were honored should all play big minutes from the start though, with Law having a chance to step right into the slot once held by the departed Drew Crawford.

1. Raleigh News & Observer: At a widely-viewed press conference yesterday in Chapel Hill, independent investigator Kenneth Wainstein publicly revealed his findings concerning the academic fraud that we now know began as far back as 1993 at North Carolina. His detailed 131-page report confirms much of what the Raleigh newspaper has already been uncovering since 2011. In this piece, Luke DeCock captures the significance of yesterday’s revelations in Chapel Hill, including the fact that the school’s administration finally admitted what was suspected all along – UNC academic advisors steered athletes to phony classes in order to keep them eligible to compete in football and basketball.
2. CBSSports: Officially, head coach Roy Williams was not implicated in any of the wrongdoing. But according to CBSSports.com‘s Gary Parrish, that doesn’t mean Williams is innocent in the matter. Basically, Parrish makes a reasonable case that if Williams wanted to know the truth about the phony coursework, he easily could have. After all, the basketball program’s academic advisor at the time, Wayne Walden, was brought to Chapel Hill by Williams when he left Kansas in 2003. It seems reasonable to assume that the two had a close relationship, and that they would be comfortable talking with each other about the administrative intersections of athletics and academics. In Wainstein’s report, Walden admits that he knew that the classes in question were fake and that he sometimes steered players to them. So if Williams didn’t know what was going on, why did his basketball players stop taking those classes over the next several years?
3. CNN: One of the new revelations that came out in the report is that the fraudulent classes started all the way back in 1993. Of course the head coach at UNC at that time was Dean Smith. In this article, CNN investigative reporters Sara Ganim and Devon Sayers point out that 54 basketball players enrolled in those phony classes during Smith’s tenure, which ended after the 1997 Final Four. This now necessarily raises questions about those last four years of the legendary Smith’s career, someone who has always maintained a spotless reputation in terms of the academic integrity of his program. Many observers have noted that Smith’s philosophy behind recruiting also seemed to change around that time, perhaps in response to the rise of archrival Duke’s back-to-back National Champions in the early 90s. Smith brought in the talented but brash 1993 class of Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace and Jeff McInnis, which is not to say that these were bad kids, but they certainly didn’t act like what we traditionally thought of as quiet, humble and gentlemanly Dean Smith/”Carolina Way” players. There’s also the fact that upon his retirement four years later, Smith said that he did not enjoy coaching anymore. Remember that this was coming from one of the great competitors of all-time in the sport, someone who was about to begin the 1997-98 season with a completely loaded team. Is it too much of a reach to tie those two things — his suspected change in recruiting philosophy and abrupt retirement several years later — to what we now know about the academic fraud going on at North Carolina? Perhaps the bigger question is whether any reporter will be bold enough to take on that legacy and try to get to the truth, while fighting the “how dare they” backlash that would certainly ensue given Smith’s current poor health.
4. Raleigh News & Observer: Another surprise from the report was that the academic fraud extended to other teams in the UNC athletic department. Most of us have focused on the football players and men’s basketball program, but they weren’t the only Tar Heel athletes taking advantage of the fake classes. In another reaction article from the N&O, Jane Stancill describes how a current faculty member has admitted steering members of the women’s basketball team to the phony classes as well. It appears that there was a network within the academic advising community at UNC that spread the word about a way to help keep their athletes eligible and in the lineup.
5. WRALSportsFan: Former UNC academic adviser Mary Willingham was interviewed for her reaction on the report’s findings, which mostly vindicate much of what she originally asserted. Known now as “Whistleblower” Willingham, she makes the larger point that the real problem is that colleges are failing to educate their athletes. While that may be true, I think it’s time to face the root cause of what is going on across the country at the big-time programs. The model we want to put forward as fans of college sports is so outdated that it’s ridiculous. We want to see the best athletes play on the field or on the court for our favorite schools, but we don’t want to know how they are able to get admitted to the school or what classes they take or what grades they get, so long as they perform. We only want to know those facts about the OTHER school. Then there’s the colleges themselves, which cling to the notion that their athletes should be able to perform in the classroom just like the rest of the student body. Being an elite athlete today is a full-time job when you add up all the time requirements, and do we really expect them — many of whom the school made an exception to admit in the first place — to carry full course loads and stay on course to graduate? It’s time for a new model that fits modern realities. We are not going to give up high-level college sports so let’s rid ourselves of the farce that is the “student-athlete.” They’re already treated differently so why not change the class requirements to give credit hours (six?) each semester for full-time participation in a sport? Maybe if they only had to take two classes per semester, we could actually expect them to take some meaningful classes and perform their own work. The alternative is to cut time spent on their sport and that would mean fewer practices, less travel, no late night games for TV, and so on, but we know that’s not going to happen. But something needs to give in order to reduce the overwhelming incentives to cut ethical corners. If it happened at North Carolina, it doesn’t mean it is happening at all the other schools, but it does mean that it can.

In a perfect world, Houston would be contending for the AAC title in new coach Kelvin Sampson‘s first season. Danuel House would be throwing down vicious dunks, TaShawn Thomas would be owning the glass, and L.J. Rose would be feeding shooters like Jherrod Stiggers and Torian Graham for open triples. Alas, the college basketball world is rarely perfect, especially during a coaching change. CBSSports.com reported earlier today that junior L.J. Rose, the team’s starting point guard and arguably its best player, has broken his foot and will be out until at least Christmas. That information completes the trifecta of bad news that will have Houston struggling to stay relevant this season instead of competing for a league title. Say what you want about the coaching deficiencies of previous head coach James Dickey — and there were plenty — but it would be difficult to criticize his recruiting abilities. House, Thomas and yes Rose (by way of Baylor) were all highly coveted recruits who ended up at Houston. Last year’s team wasn’t very good, but it didn’t lack for talent either, and it’s not a coincidence that Sampson chose to make his triumphant return to the head coaching ranks with the Cougars. Sampson was probably drooling over the thought of inheriting a veteran and talented roster.

Sampson’s Rebuild Took a Hit With the Loss of LJ Rose to Injury

That dream started to fall apart when the team’s two best players and leading returning scorers, Thomas and House, both announced their intentions to transfer. Both players were all-league talents who would have been among the best at their positions in the AAC. If Houston was going to make a surprise run at the conference title, it would have been in large part because Thomas and House were doing a lot of the heavy lifting on both ends of the floor. Once it was clear they weren’t coming back to campus, expectations for Houston dropped precipitously. Those two transfers were definitely not a part of Sampson’s master plan. Sure, he kept things positive at the team’s media day and I’m sure if someone asked him about the offseason exodus he would say all the right things about coaching the guys who “want to be here.” But any lingering doubt that Sampson wouldn’t be happier with Thomas and House still in the fold should be erased after reading how hard Houston fought to keep their two stars from transferring.

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