Joe Dzuback is the RTC correspondent for the Atlantic 10 Conference. You can also find his musings online at Villanova by the Numbers or on Twitter @vtbnblog.

Freshmen Who Caught Our Attention

This preseason Rookie of the Year, Fordham’s Eric Paschall, has some competition. The postseason award may still be his to lose, but if these five freshmen keep the pace they set in this out of conference through the conference schedule, Paschall may be looking over his shoulder come March. In any event, the conference’s future is in very good hands.

• Payton Aldridge (Davidson) — It appears just about everything about Davidson was underestimated in the season previews, including this 6’7″ 205 pound forward out of Leavittsburg, Ohio. Aldridge has earned two Rookie of the Week nods plus a pair of Honorable Mentions. Aldridge has earned starts in all of Davidson’s games, averages 25.5 minutes, 12.4 points and 5.9 rebounds per game for the Wildcats. Combined with senior wing Tyler Kalinoski (offensive rating 125.8) and sophomore point guard Jack Gibbs (offensive rating 132.5), Aldridge gives Coach Bob McKillop a very efficient (offensive rating 124.4) third option. Aldridge has converted 46% of his three point attempts, giving Davidson the kind of offense that stretches defenses.
  

  Eric Paschall is still the favorite, but other freshmen have really impressed as well. (AP)

• Oskar Michelsen (Davidson) — Another overlooked gem in Davidson’s entering class, Michelsen, at 6’9″ 210 pounds, has started with Aldridge and Kalinoski to give Davidson three scoring forwards. Michelsen averages 20.2 minutes in a front court rotation that includes junior Jake Belford and fellow freshman Nathan Ekwu. Michelsen’s specialty is three pointers. 75% of the freshman’s field goal attempts have been three pointers, a point he made with authority with an 18 point outburst on 6-of-7 shooting from beyond the arc in his debut against Division 3 Catholic University. He has cooled off to a 51% three point conversion rate. Michelsen has earned two conference Honorable Mentions.

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Joe Dzuback is the RTC correspondent for the Atlantic 10 Conference. You can also find his musings online at Villanova by the Numbers or on Twitter @vtbnblog.

It’s Northeast basketball. It used to be what the Big East was, but it’s still Northeast basketball. It’s a great rivalry. The fans know each other… — Jay Wright, Villanova head coach, 12/20/2014.

Forget about conferences, it’s always fun when these two coaches go to battle.

Syracuse has played basketball since 1899, but did not join a conference (the Big East) until 1979. Among the colleges and universities across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and the six New England states, stable conferences like the Ivy League (1902-present) were, before the late 1970s, the exception rather than the rule. Schools either remained stubbornly independent (Boston College, Duquesne, Holy Cross, Penn State, Providence, St. Bonaventure, and Villanova, for example) or, like Fordham — which belonged to the Metro NY Conference (1933-34, 1936-39, 1942-43, 1946-63), the NJNY7 (1977-79), the East Coast Athletic Metro Conference (1980-81), the MAAC (1982-90), and the Patriot (1991-95) before finally settling into the Atlantic 10 (1996-present) — flirted with conference affiliations like Taylor Swift dangles musicians and actors. Too many of these conferences — the Eastern Intercollegiate Conference (1933-39), the Middle Three Conference (1949-52), the Little Three Conference (1947-58) and the New Jersey-New York 7 Conference (1977-79) — modeled on Philadelphia’s Big 5 series and little more than commitments to schedule round-robin play — had little in the way of longevity. The NCAA, which began its postseason invitational tournament to crown a champion in 1939, paid little attention to the region’s conference comings and goings. The influence of Marquette’s Al McGuire and CBS Sports changed all of that. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week the Pac-12 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, which typically will include a Team, Player and Newcomer of the Week, along with our weekly Power Rankings.

Team of the Week: Washington

Nigel Williams-Goss and The Huskies Are Beginning To Make Believers Out of Pac-12 Fans (USA Today)

Given the way the past three seasons have gone in Seattle, it has been perfectly reasonable to remain skeptical of the Huskies thus far. Yeah, they won the Wooden Legacy tournament over Thanksgiving weekend, but San Jose State, Long Beach State and UTEP were not exactly a murderer’s row there. Now, three weeks later, we look back on that and instead see a tough neutral-court win over those Miners (who just gave Arizona all it wanted) a little bit more impressive. Then, two weeks ago, there was an ugly, ugly, ugly Sunday night win over San Diego State, which was easily written off as little more than a horrific shooting night by the Aztecs, followed up by a come-from-behind victory against a middling Eastern Washington team. Any of those things in a vacuum elicits more yawns; but taken as a whole, we’re starting to get somewhere. Then on Saturday evening in Last Vegas, the Huskies turned in their first masterpiece of the season in a win over Oklahoma, delivering a superb offensive first half before getting to the finish line on the strength of strong defense and timely buckets. We’ll get to some of the Huskies’ specific performances shortly, but a neutral-site win over a quality Sooners’ team gets the Huskies recognition as our first unanimous Pac-12 Team of the Week.

Player of the Week: Nigel Williams-Goss, Utah

You’re not often going to see the Huskies’ floor general put up massive numbers, but he does a little bit of everything for this team. Always calm and under control, Williams-Goss is a master at getting his players the ball in the places where they can make the most positive plays for the team on the offensive end, and sticking his nose into trouble wherever he can on the defensive end. In three games this week (including Monday night’s win over Tulane), Williams-Goss averaged 10.3 points, 8.7 assists and 5.7 boards per game, numbers that only begin to hint at the impact he has had for his team.

(Also receiving votes: Brandon Taylor, Utah)

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Throughout the season, the Other 26 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, including team, player, coach and whatever else strikes our fancy in that week’s edition.

O26 Team of the Week

St. Francis (PA). After going 7-6 down the stretch last season and winning 10-plus games for the first time since 2011, St. Francis (PA) entered this season with more optimism and higher expectations than it has had in a while. Not only were the Red Flash picked fourth in the NEC preseason poll, but they even received a first-place vote – major respect for a program that hadn’t finished in the upper half of the league for a full decade. After picking up road wins at Duquesne and Rutgers this week, however, it appears that respect was well-warranted – and maybe even insufficient.

St. Francis (PA) is our O26 Team of the Week. (Jim O’Connor-USA TODAY Sports)

In both victories, SFU got the job done with defense, rebounding and strong efforts from forwards Earl Brown and Ronnie Drinnon. On Wednesday, Rob Krimmel’s bunch held the Dukes’ usually-proficient offense to just 52 points on a season-low 0.83 PPP, crushing the home team on the offensive glass – despite entering the night as the worst offensive rebounding team in the NEC – and maintaining a comfortable lead for all 40 minutes. Brown led the Red Flash with 16 points in the triumph while Drinnon grabbed 15 rebounds, a pair of solid outings that still couldn’t match what they accomplished on Saturday. As if man-handling an A-10 team was just another day at the office, SFU then headed to Rutgers, fell behind by 16 points, came out of the locker room unfazed, and used a 27-11 second-half run to beat the Scarlet Knights, 73-68, over the weekend. Brown’s 23 points and Drinnon’s 16 boards again paced Krimmel’s team, and the win – SFU’s first over a Big Ten school other than Penn State – turned heads across college basketball. Now 6-4 and nearing the KenPom top-150, the Red Flash are starting to look more like ‘NEC favorites’ than merely ‘NEC contenders.’

Honorable Mentions: Quinnipiac (2-0: vs. Lehigh, vs. Oregon State); American (2-0: at LaSalle, vs. Mount St. Mary’s); St. Francis (PA); VCU (2-0: at Belmont, at Cincinnati), Cal Poly (2-1: at San Francisco, vs. Northeastern (N), vs. Gonzaga (N-loss)) Read the rest of this entry »

Three-game losing streaks don’t bother Rick Byrd much anymore. He’s now in his 29th season in charge of Belmont (the fourth-longest current tenure in Division I men’s basketball) and in a one-bid league like the Ohio Valley Conference (or the Atlantic Sun, previously), he knows that it’s all about the conference season. After all, his Bruins withstood a four-game losing streak at around the same time last year, but still managed to go 14-2 in conference play before being upset by Eastern Kentucky in the OVC Tournament semifinals (not to mention coming seconds away from the NIT Final Four in a loss at Clemson). Add to the fact that Byrd is fairly mild-mannered, especially by the standards of big-time college basketball coaches, and surely he took those defeats in stride. Or not.

Rick Byrd and Belmont will likely be right in the Tourney mix come March. (Getty)

“If you’re competitive, it’s never easy at all to lose,” Byrd said over the weekend. In fact, he actually picked up a rare technical (he says they’re not quite as rare as you might think) in December 11’s Wright State loss, which was the team’s second straight defeat at home. After a sluggish first half on Saturday at Fairfield, Belmont looked more like Belmont in the second half, picking the Stags — which were already 2-0 in the MAAC — apart for 44 second-half points (and 1.33 points per possession) in a 73-61 victory. The Bruins will travel to Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse next week for their final non-conference tilt. Although losing is no fun, Byrd did see some positives for his young squad in the losing streak, which played all three games without leading scorer Craig Bradshaw, who returned from an injury against Fairfield. “It does help you understand that you can still be a good basketball team in the end,” Byrd said. “We got beat by two good teams, Evansville and Wright State, Wright State without our starting wing [Taylor Barnette], too. And we played good enough to win that game. Last year, we got beat by South Dakota State by double figures, went to Denver and got beat by 28. This has been a little better performance. VCU was too much for us, but it does help to say, ‘Look, we lost to Denver last year by 28 and we won the league’. But it’s still no fun to lose.”

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Every Monday (and sometimes Tuesday), Henry Bushnell will provide a look ahead at the week to come. He’ll discuss the week’s top storylines, preview the three most prominent and compelling games, put a giant or two on upset alert, and decide which teams are in desperate need of a big week. Let’s break down Christmas week.

Is it a false phenomenon? Or is it a commonly used idiom based on fact? If you’ve ever experienced the actual calm before the storm, you know it’s the latter. Suddenly, everything becomes still. The wind dies down. Leaves merely rustle, yielding to the multifarious sounds of life. It’s all very serene; eerie even. This is the calm. But then… BAM. In an instant, the storm hits. It comes out of nowhere. Rain pours. Thunder crackles. Wind swirls. It’s a complete departure from what you experienced moments before. The calm before the storm is a real thing. That’s also why it’s such a great metaphor. Right now, we are experiencing the calm before the storm. After a decent weekend of college basketball, everything has gone still. The flurry of games has died down. A few birds chirped on Monday night (hi, Temple!); leaves will rustle, a dog or two will bark on Tuesday; Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be silent. And then on Saturday – BANG – lightning will strike. Thunder – Kentucky and Louisville – will rumble. And just as suddenly, come next Tuesday, all hell will break loose. Conference play will be upon us.

Want some thunder and lightning? Tune in when these two coaches go at it. (AP)

THREE FOR THE MONEY

Kentucky at Louisville | Saturday, 2:00 PM, ESPN2

Just as it’s pretty difficult to argue that Kentucky isn’t the best team in college basketball right now, it’s pretty difficult to argue that this isn’t the game of the season. The biggest story from here on out will be the Wildcats and their chase of perfection, and the team with the best chance to beat them from now until mid-March is the one they will face this Saturday. Louisville can nip the narrative right in the bud. Not only is this a must-watch game in terms of fan interest and magnitude, it’s also an intriguing proposition from an analytical point of view. Because it hasn’t yet been done and because this team is unlike any we’ve recently seen in college basketball, nobody really knows what the blueprint might be for beating Kentucky. But one of the potential strategies –full-court pressure — is something that Louisville is likely to employ. Rick Pitino has several pesky, quick guards at his disposal, and although speeding the game up could backfire, getting easy points from turnovers and keeping Kentucky from finding any kind of rhythm is one of the few ways to score against its defense. Louisville’s size disadvantage everywhere on the floor means that it will need to hit outside shots, something it hasn’t been able to do consistently yet this season (27.5% from three), and even that might not be enough. Still, never underestimate the power of teams playing at home in rivalry games.

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Brian Goodman filed this report right after Temple’s stunning 77-52 upset over #10 Kansas Monday evening in Philadelphia.

1. When the Jayhawks get the bad Perry Ellis, the wheels come off quickly. The junior forward that many were counting on to lead the Jayhawks has been a total no-show over the last two games, going a combined 3-of-16 from the floor. He’s been fighting off an illness, which excuses part of his play, but Kansas was expected to win last night’s game without too much trouble despite being on the road. It may not be completely fair that Ellis needs to shoulder so much of the load, but until Cliff Alexander and Jamari Traylor start producing in the paint, he’s all Kansas has there, so when nobody produces, this is what happens. During the game, there was some talk on Twitter about the need for point guard Frank Mason to become a more vocal leader. That may be true to an extent, but if an unheralded point guard already playing above expectations in his first year as a full-time starter is a primary source of your disappointment with this team, you’re looking at the wrong guy.
   

   It was party time in Philly after one of the more improbable blowouts in recent history. (AP)

2. There was more to it than Temple just getting hot (although the Owls were). The Owls came into last night’s game as the AAC’s third-worst shooting team inside the arc and the worst-shooting team outside of it, but they shot a season-best 58.3 percent from the floor in the upset win. However, that may not be the most telling thing about this game. Had Temple merely shot its pedestrian season averages from the field, they still would have prevailed, which is another indictment of Kansas’ rough offensive performance (0.80 PPP). The Jayhawks’ defense isn’t nearly as bad as it looked last night (giving up 1.18 PPP), but the margin by which they got outscored in the paint (34-18) was just staggering. Kansas went on to pack it in down the stretch, which allowed the Owls to turn the unlikely upset into a full-on party. Read the rest of this entry »

1. In a game that was decided during the first few minutes of action, Kansas fell to Temple by an astonishing score of 77-52 on Monday night. Leading scorer Perry Ellis struggled, going 1-of-1o from the field, but he didn’t get much support from his teammates either (10-of-28 from two-point range). To further illustrate how anticlimactic the outcome of this game was, Temple scored the first seven points of the game before the Jayhawks scored their first two — that five-point deficit would be the Owls’ smallest lead of the entire game, while their largest lead at one time topped out at 30 points. It was a poor performance, for sure, but there’s no reason to start flipping out yet over Kansas’ long-term outlook. Bill Self’s team has some problems, but it is still very much a threat to win another Big 12 regular season title.
2. Late last night, the Associated Press reported that Oklahoma had fired an unnamed men’s basketball support staffer for committing an NCAA violation related to an “extra benefit violation.” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione says that the school has notified the NCAA of the violation and it has already taken “corrective action we believe to be appropriate.” The Sooners were also in action Monday night, easily running past Weber State by a score of 85-51.
3. In recent games, Kansas head coach Bill Self has rewarded Kelly Oubre‘s hard work with more playing time. The Big 12 announced on Monday that it too was rewarding Oubre’s stellar recent play with his first Newcomer of the Week award after he posted career highs in points (23) and rebounds (10) versus Lafayette last week. The conference also awarded West Virginia‘s Juwan Staten his first Player of the Week award of the season after his 24-point, six-assist performance in the Mountaineers’ victory over NC State.
4. Last week, ESPN reported that Texas guard Damarcus Croaker would transfer at the end of the fall semester, and on Monday, he announced via Twitter that he will transfer to Murray State. Croaker averaged around 9.5 minutes per game in his first year-plus for the Longhorns but had only played in five of the team’s nine games this season. Joining the Racers allows for Croaker to not only be a little closer to his son, who lives in Orlando, Florida, but also attend a familiar school, one that had recruited him out of high school.
5. The field for the 2015 Diamond Head Classic was announced on Sunday and Oklahoma was selected as one of the eight participating schools. The Sooners will be a part of a competitive field with BYU, Harvard, New Mexico, Northern Iowa, Auburn and Washington State along with the host school Hawaii. It’s a solid group of teams that are typically in contention for NCAA Tournament bids if not elite programs. Other than Hawaii, Washington State and Auburn are probably the weakest links, but under the new leaderships of Ernie Kent and Bruce Pearl, respectively, both teams should be considerably better in their second seasons.

The Big East Weekend Wrap will cover news and notes from the weekend’s games.

What is basketball, or any sport for that matter, except for a continuous stream of results and changing expectations? We only know as much about a team as their body of work, and with that, we attempt to make judgments about their future performances and outcomes. With more data comes more information and hopefully, more informed opinions. The Big East got off to an incredibly hot start in its first six weeks, but the last few days of action have brought most of its teams back down to earth. Whether they recover remains to be seen.

The Good…

• Villanova posted an impressive rally. The Wildcats struggled to penetrate the Syracuse zone for the first 25 minutes of action and trailed for nearly the entire game before rallying to send it to overtime in the final 17 seconds. The offensive balance that propelled the team in past victories was gone, as three players scored over 20 and nobody else on the team scored more than six points. However ugly, Villanova found a way to win. It exemplified the team’s resiliency and also demonstrated a sense of senior leadership that was missing earlier this season. Darrun Hilliard posted 23 points, five rebounds and four steals while JayVaughn Pinkston scored 25 and added 10 rebounds of his own. With the Wildcats’ perimeter shooting nowhere to be found, both seniors found ways to score down the stretch by attacking the rim and creating for themselves. The gap between Villanova and the rest of the pack appears to be widening; the target on their back has never been bigger.

Despite some early struggles, Jay Wright’s crew eventually cracked the Orange’s zone and found a way to eek out an impressive victory. (Getty)

Other Big East teams were not so fortunate…

• Butler went 0-for-2 in resume-building games. The Bulldogs have fallen in the past week about as quickly as they rose in November. Chris Holtmann’s squad had two good chances to build on their 8-1 start: the first was at Tennessee, a game in which they broke down in the final 10 minutes as discussed here. The second was Saturday on a neutral floor against a similarly athletic team in Indiana. Here, Butler again played well in the first half before crumbling, scoring just 12 points in the final 8:38. The game was close the entire way, but the Hoosiers’ second half adjustments worked to slow Kellen Dunham and no other Bulldog was able to put together an efficient shooting performance. The defense was effective (held leading scorer James Blackmon – 19.2 PPG prior – to 5 points), yet to the surprise of many, the rebounding was not. The Hoosiers grabbed 15 offensive rebounds and only gave up 11 turnovers, preventing the run outs that kick start Butler’s offense. The offensive struggles remain: Roosevelt Jones and Alex Barlow are defensive-minded players that have not proven to be consistent scorers, and the Bulldogs are in desperate need of one to complement Dunham. The hope is that freshman Kelan Martin will eventually emerge.

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Fred Hoiberg’s activity in the transfer market continued over the weekend when former Marquette wing Deonte Burton committed to play for Iowa State next season. Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski announced Burton would be leaving the program back on December 9. The sophomore will be able to play for the Cyclones after the first semester of next year and will have one and a half years of eligibility remaining. ESPN’s Jeff Borzello is reporting that Burton will ask the NCAA for a waiver to receive this year of eligibility back due to the passing of his mother in October.

Marquette transfer Deonte Burton is headed to Iowa State (Jeff Hanisch/USA Today)

Burton is an intriguing case for Iowa State. He was recruited to Marquette by Buzz Williams who left for Virginia Tech after last season. Burton was the 52nd ranked player in the Class of 2013 according to Rivals, and was billed as an explosive slasher who need to improve on his jump shot in order to live up to his potential. During his freshman season, the 6-foot-4 wing only played 12.6 minutes per game but his averages of 6.9 points and 2.2 rebounds resulted in per 40 minutes numbers (22.1 points and 6.9 rebounds) that suggested a potential breakout sophomore season. Unfortunately, through nine games, it hasn’t materialized. Burton is playing more minutes (16.1) this season, but his scoring (6.4) and rebounding (1.4) numbers are down.

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