1. The State: There’s nothing I hate more than entirely dismissing something on the basis of minor issues instead of its inherent merit. A South Carolina state senator named Marlon Kimpson proposed giving athletes in revenue sports a piece of the pie. Now, the way Title IX is currently written, that would be a violation of federal law, but that’s not to say Kimpson’s plan isn’t worthy of discussion. Alas, that’s essentially all Ron Morris used here in brushing off the proposal (well, that and South Carolina’s athletic department profit margin, which doesn’t mean anything unless you see how it was calculated). I’m for full cost of attendance scholarships in all sports and for requiring schools to provide the same number of scholarships to women as men. But there’s no denying that basketball and football players are undercompensated for their work — especially at the top schools. I would go a step further than Kimpson, though. I would allow schools to give any athlete a certain yearly salary up to a certain limit (say, $50,000) in addition to their scholarship (and only students with scholarships could be compensated). Student-athletes deserve a piece of the pie. End of story.
2. NBC Sports: Great article by Rob Dauster on Duke‘s defensive woes. Jahlil Okafor is really uncomfortable away from the basket, which makes the Duke defense vulnerable on ball screens. Furthermore, defending high-major players isn’t something he (or anyone) can learn immediately. I expect Duke to either start experimenting with a lot more zone (especially if teams have really dynamic guards) or switching everything like they did against Wisconsin. Zone won’t ever be a permanent fix for this squad, but it would allow Okafor to stay in his comfort zone near the basket. More on Duke’s struggles later today.
3. Sporting News: Mike DeCourcy wrote a nice piece on Jamie Dixon hitting 300 wins at Pittsburgh. And while it’s true Dixon has had a lot of success with the Panthers, that doesn’t make recent criticisms about his program unfair (think of a less extreme case of Seth Greenberg). I still think Dixon is the man for the job. He recruits to a school that doesn’t have a long history of being a powerhouse, and has had some really good teams over the years (and nearly always takes the Panthers to the Big Dance). But that doesn’t mean he’s an obvious Hall of Famer either. And it also doesn’t mean that his win total isn’t propped up by a ton of marginal (at best) non-conference schedules.
4. Syracuse Post-Standard (and here): Here are a couple of interesting articles on Syracuse, both headlined with questions. The answer to the first question (Should we worry about Syracuse?) is a resounding yes. This team is 4-0 but has eked out a bunch of close games against middling ACC teams. That’s not a recipe for success in the latter half of conference play when the contenders start showing up. The other article points out that Chris McCullough may not return until next season because of his injury, which would mean good things for Syracuse’s depth then (though would potentially bring up scholarship questions) but could be problematic this year.
5. Miami Herald: Cool anecdote here from Jim Larranaga on using butterflies to get his team excited and play together. The more you read about this guy, the more likable he becomes (he probably also has the best sense of humor of any ACC coach). Borrowing from a Native American legend that says butterflies stay in groups en route to a shared destination, Larranaga gave the team butterflies of their own, which they released together. It sounds like something he’s been doing for a long time (at least since he was at George Mason), but this is my first time hearing about it.

EXTRA: In a weird nugget, the PNC Center clock operator tried to help NC State‘s comeback last weekend, as time stopped for 15 seconds with a little over a minute to play in the Wolfpack’s eventual loss to North Carolina. Imagine how big a controversy this would have become had the Wolfpack ended up getting that late tip-in and winning the game in overtime.

1. Notre Dame has been one of the more pleasant surprises of the season, but they took their first big hit earlier this week when they announced that Zach Auguste will be out indefinitely while dealing with an academic matter (reportedly not a suspension). While Jerian Grant is the headliner for the Irish, Auguste comes close in terms of his impact as the 6’10” junior has been averaging 14.3 points and 6.4 rebounds per game this season. Without Auguste, the Irish are very short up front (relatively speaking of course) with 6’5″ Pat Connaughton. While they were able to sneak out of Georgia Tech with a win without Auguste on Wednesday night things will get significantly tougher for them in the coming weeks in the ACC. If Auguste is unable to return, this would be the second straight season the Irish were undone by academic issues as Jerian Grant had to temporarily leave the school last year as the result of an “academic misstep”.
2. James Madison dismissed junior guard Andre Nation from its basketball team on Wednesday saying “he no longer fits within our program and the vision we have for the future”. We are not sure what made Matt Brady finally come to that decision, but it had been a rough season for Nation as he was suspended for the first five games of the season following an arrest for disorderly conduct and misdemeanor assault (which as JMU Sports Blog pointed out at the time was not exactly something new) and saw his scoring drop from 15.4 points per game last season to 9 points per game this season. Nation will remain on scholarship through the spring semester, but we would not be surprised to see him turn up at another mid-major school very shortly given his proven ability to score at that level.
3. If you wanted a reminder of the difference between the haves and have-nots of the college basketball world, we would direct you to Adam Himmlesbach’s look at Kentucky‘s trip to the Bahamas this year. The eight-night trip that included games against a French pro club and the Dominican and Puerto Rican national teams at the Atlantic Resort in the Bahamas cost $792,845.68. While some of this was offset by 57 boosters who agreed to pay $6,000 to fly along, but that only generated a little over $347,000 when combined with the nearly $18,000 from their share of ticket revenues the overall cost to the school was $431,836.10, which is nearly three times as much as North Carolina (certainly not paupers) spent for a trip the year before. While some of the costs were from the flying out opposing teams and providing them with hotel rooms and meal money, the Wildcats certainly treated themselves well from John Calipari’s $1,550-per-night suite to the $150 per diem for meals the players and staff members received (compare that with the $124 per diem NBA players received in 2013). We aren’t aware of the costs of trips for other schools, but outside of Duke’s ridiculous 2011 trip to China and Dubai that included a chartered Boeing 767 with an estimated charter price of over $1 million we have a hard time seeing anybody approaching a trip that might exceed the overall budget of the basketball program of their first opponent in the NCAA Tournament.
4. Speaking of big sums of money, Kentucky might be spending it, but Kent State will be collecting it after an appeals court ruled in their favor saying that Geno Ford will have to follow the terms of his contract requiring him to pay the school $1.2 million for leaving them for Bradley in March 2011. That figure is the result of Ford’s 2008 contract that required him to pay back his salary multipled by the years remaining if he left before his contract expired. So when Ford left the school a year after renegotiating a five-year deal that was worth $300,000 per year he opened himself up to the clause. Before you feel too bad for Ford, he is making $700,000 per year at Bradley even though he is just 42-74 at the school and we are pretty sure he can find an accountant who will find a way to let him write off the $1.2 million over a couple of years.
5. One of the most confusing things about college basketball recruiting over the years is why cities like Chicago and New York City don’t have better college basketball teams. Regardless of how you feel about which city produces the best talent it is clear that these cities underachieve on the college level. New York has one decent program in St. John’s, but Chicago can’t even claim that much. Adam Doster of Grantland has a good piece on why a city that is so loaded with basketball talent cannot produce a single respectable college basketball program. While much of it is attributable to the administrations at the schools and how much they are willing to invest in the program, some of it also falls on the coaches in and around the city who have not been able to make local talent and high school/AAU coaches buy in. If a young coach (like Chris Collins) really wanted to make a mark, there are certainly worse places to set up shop than the Chicago area.

The first two weeks of Big 12 play have given us no shortage of storylines: Kansas’ maturation; Marcus Foster’s benching; Oklahoma State possibly being better without Marcus Smart and Markel Brown; West Virginia’s reinvention; Oklahoma’s quantum leap on defense; and Texas’ early rut are getting most of the attention nationally. But there’s one plot line that, for whatever reason, wasn’t getting as much publicity over the first two week’s of January. Iowa State‘s offense, typically a paragon of innovation and efficiency, was struggling entering last night’s game against Baylor. While the Cyclones had found ways to win close games against Oklahoma State and West Virginia, they were doing so with uncharacteristically disappointing offensive production. In its previous three games against South Carolina, Oklahoma State and West Virginia, Iowa State scored 0.82, 0.94 and 1.03 points per possession, respectively. To put that in perspective, the last time Fred Hoiberg’s group failed to score at least 1.04 points per trip in three straight games was in 2011, when he inherited a team with few viable pieces and finished in last place. As last night’s game got underway in Waco, it looked like the hole would only get deeper.

The Cyclones may have come up short on Wednesday, but the vaunted Iowa State offense could be back in gear at just the right time after a three-game slump. (AP/Tony Gutierrez)

Baylor started the game on a 22-5 run, as four different Bears connected on three-pointers and the Cyclones couldn’t get anything going. They finally started to dig out, though, closing the gap on the shoulders of their three transfers – Jameel McKay, Bryce Dejean–Jones and Abdel Nader – before another Baylor run provided some separation entering halftime. That separation would hold until midway through the second half, when Baylor’s Kenny Chery had to leave the game with a shoulder injury.

Chery’s exit gave Iowa State the opening it needed, as Georges Niang finally got going and sharpshooter Naz Long went on a tear while the Bears cooled off. The Cyclones clawed all the way back to take the lead on two separate occasions before Chery returned to the game and hit a game-winning jumper that allowed Baylor to escape with the win, but there’s a silver lining for Iowa State.

The Cyclones’ offense seems to finally be off the schneid, and the fact that they were able to dig out of that slump, even in a losing effort, should give them some confidence moving forward. In a loaded Big 12, they will certainly need that confidence and rediscovered efficiency when they take on Kansas at Hilton Coliseum on Saturday night. The frenzied competitiveness of the league this season means that it would be silly to describe one game in mid-January as having the biggest implications on the race for the league title, but with College Gameday in town and tickets starting at a small fortune, it’s definitely going to be among the most anticipated games of the weekend.

With point guard Traevon Jackson out for as many as six weeks with a broken foot, sophomore Bronson Koenig will be thrust into the starting lineup to lead Wisconsin for most of the remainder of the regular season. Koenig made his first career start in the Badgers’ surprising loss to Rutgers on Sunday, entering the lineup as another guard as center Frank Kaminsky sat with concussion-like symptoms. Koenig has been the acting point guard for Bo Ryan’s team 22 percent of the time this season, with Jackson picking up the rest of the minutes. He is undoubtedly the Badgers’ point guard of the future, and ESPN’s Jeff Goodman, among others, thinks that the pressure-packed experience he’ll gain at the helm will ultimately help the team in March. With 14 Big Ten games standing between Wisconsin and Selection Sunday, Koenig will have plenty of opportunities to adapt to his more demanding role as the floor general.

Bronson Koenig will make the second start of his career Thursday night against Nebraska. (Reuters)

The La Crosse, Wisconsin, native will get his first run as the starter tonight in a home game against Nebraska, a team that he has only faced once before. In that meeting, the Cornhuskers topped the Badgers by nine, holding Jackson to eight points and four assists and forcing him into four turnovers. While the Badgers will miss Jackson’s proven play-making ability, Koenig is generally safer with the ball in his hands – and that will be a positive against a team that has forced a miscue on 21.9 percent of their opponents’ possessions this year. On the flip side, Nebraska ranks 225th in the nation in offensive turnover rate, handing the ball over to the opponent on 20.4 percent of their possessions. That weakness will be mitigated somewhat by the Badgers loss of Jackson, who is tied for second on the team in steal percentage (2.5%).

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Minnesota is in a bind. After a strong 11-2 showing in the non-conference schedule — with losses to only Louisville and St. John’s – the Gophers are now 0-5 in conference play after losing to Iowa on Tuesday night. In case you missed it, Minnesota came back from a 17-point deficit in the second half only to lose when DeAndre Mathieu’s game-tying layup came a tenth of a second too late. Now more than a quarter of the way through conference play, Minnesota is one of only two Big Ten teams (Penn State is the other) without a conference win; even lowly Rutgers already has two. To be fair, the rough start can partially be explained by an unfortunate schedule where three of the Gophers’ first four Big Ten games came on the road. This week’s home game against Iowa, however, marked the beginning of a seven-game series that includes five home games. Their hope was to start making up some of that lost ground during the friendly part of their schedule. That will get tougher now, as Minnesota’s offense has proved inefficient and fixing its scoring woes will need to be addressed immediately to find any hope left.

Minnesota needs the elite version of Andre Hollins to show up — and soon — if they want to turn their season around. (AP)

In Tuesday night’s game, Minnesota’s offense was a tale of two halves. In the first session, the Gophers were unable to find any rhythm and only managed to shoot 30 percent from the field. In the second half, however, they surged back by shooting over 62 percent from the field and putting together a 29-9 run that just fell short. But does a successful 20 minutes mean that the offense has started to click? The second-half outpouring was driven by two players – Nate Mason and Carlos Morris (37 points combined) — both of whom caught fire rather than the offense running any great sets. A major reason for the team’s offensive struggles has been inconsistency from their veteran leaders. Andre Hollins is not having an all-Big Ten senior season. He chipped in only seven points against Iowa and was a non-factor for the majority of the game. Mathieu has also been unreliable, witnessed by the fact that he went scoreless against Michigan State and only managed four points against Maryland. This duo’s scoring average has dropped by a combined 3.5 PPG from last season, and this decline in production and inconsistency from their veterans has severely and negatively impacted Minnesota’s offense. Richard Pitino, to his credit, is trying just about anything to fix the problem. He removed Morris from the starting lineup against Iowa and he responded by leading all scorers (20 points) in his first game as the sixth man. But time has run out for experimentation — if this offense can’t click during the next three weeks that are mostly at home, the Gophers will be permanently stuck in the Big Ten cellar. That’s something no one saw coming as recently as two short weeks ago.

I like progressive things. Between looking for outside-the-box ideas or solutions, to not being stuck in the fictional ideal of tradition, even all the way to Flo the Progressive lady, looking to fix things — even if they aren’t currently broken — is the right way to go about living life. Still, it irks me that people are currently looking to make some major overhauls to college hoops because, well, the college football playoff was a huge success. Honestly, the two sports are completely different beasts. For one, and most importantly, college football is an incredibly more profitable sport. Even when dumb, non-progressive folks were saying that the playoff would ruin the sport, most sane people realized that it would not only increase viewership but also make the schools more loot — which is the end game for all universities. Basically, the college football world added one more game to its bowl system, rebranded it into a playoff, and poof, college football is even more popular.

Ohio State Capped Off a Great College Football Playoff (USA Today Images)

Now, because it is easy to call for such things moments after another had such major success, smart people in the college basketball community want some reform. We aren’t talking paying the players reform, because that would be all too altruistic and right, but reducing the number of Division I teams type of reform. The person calling for it is ESPN commentator Jay Bilas, who is as smart, respected and progressive as they come. While I agree with some of his theoretical ideas, selfishly and hypothetically I disagree. Bilas wants fewer Division I teams for various educated reasons (I won’t go into them because his article is behind a paywall and I’m less knocking his idea as I am more supporting my own). So it is not as if he is wrong. He and I just have differing opinions on the matter. I — just as good looking as Bilas, but far less educated, respected and known — think college basketball is fine with the number of teams that are currently playing Division I hoops. I do think, though, that if we really wanted to get a bit more progressive with the sport, make more areas care and make it feel more local despite it being a national sport.

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Cincinnati basketball has grown so predictable that even trying to analyze this team has become comical; it’s almost easier to just copy and paste the same analysis from the year before. This season exhibits all the hallmarks of another stereotypical year with Mick Cronin’s Bearcats. It starts with questions about how the Bearcats are going to score points and he responds by brushing the inquiries aside as if they will seem silly once the games begin. When the season actually arrives, Cincinnati wins a bunch of games thanks to its elite defense, rebounding and above-average athleticism, but those persistent questions about offense prove legitimate as the team inevitably struggles to score. This season is no different.

Troy Caupain Has Been Cincinnati’s Best Three-Point Shooter But That’s Not Necessarily A Good Thing

The Bearcats are currently 11-4 and have already beaten the preseason conference favorite, SMU, at home. Its defense is again among the 20 most efficient in the country; its athletes again look like they could win a bodybuilding competition; and the team again boasts one of the 20 best offensive rebounding percentages in the country. Unfortunately, though, the team again struggles to put the ball in the hole, as the Bearcats have scored in the 40s and 50s more times this season (eight) than they have scored in the 70s (four). Cincinnati fans know how this will play out. The team will sneak into the NCAA Tournament if it doesn’t win the American’s automatic bid and then, faced with a better-than-advertised mid-major that can put points on the board, the Bearcats will flame out early and have to start thinking about next year.

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1. Charlotte Observer and Sporting News: So, what should we make of Duke‘s back-to-back losses to NC State and Miami? Mike Krzyzewski thinks Duke has a confidence problem. Tom Gatto thinks it may be more serious than that. Both may be right. Duke is in a tough spot. If it is confidence, the upcoming schedule isn’t exactly a cake walk (four of the next five are on the road, including games at Louisville, Notre Dame, and Virginia). That means Coach K needs to find a way to inspire his team or risk a really bad stretch that could derail a season. But this Duke team is still really, really good. It’s not a finished product, but the pieces are all there.
2. Riddick and Reynolds: Hopefully the future leadership of the NC State Technician reads James Curle’s thoughtful piece on doing the satirical “Daily Tar Hell” edition for next year. This is the second straight year NC State’s student newspaper opted to avoid the parody, which is too bad. Ravi Chittilla’s response is a reasonable one. National newspapers aren’t doing great these days, much less college ones. But I’m sure there are some passionate NC State alumni who would help finance the venture through crowdfunding.
3. Indianapolis Star: Bad news out of South Bend as Zach Auguste is suspended indefinitely for academic issues. Notre Dame plays everything close to the vest so don’t expect many details leaking out. It’s a good sign he’s still enrolled (the school has a very strict honor code), but that may mean it’s something that is being appealed or something related to the NCAA instead of the school. While the Fighting Irish managed to beat Georgia Tech, Auguste was a very high usage player that will be impossible to replace.
4. Syracuse Post-Standard: Rakeem Christmas put on a show in order to beat Wake Forest in overtime. This isn’t the first time his development has showed up in the Morning Five (and it probably won’t be the last), but Christmas is earning himself some money the way he’s playing this year. While his field goal percentage isn’t quite as gaudy, Christmas’s scoring and rebounding numbers look a lot like Jahlil Okafor’s. Syracuse isn’t great this season, but as long as they can steal a win against a good team, they’ve done well enough in close games to be on the bubble.
5. Orlando Sun Sentinel: Miami‘s been up and down this season (having mercurial star players will do that), but the Hurricanes are young. As Jim Larranaga said, “We’re still on the ground floor.” Larranaga has cobbled together one of the better teams in the ACC, recruiting transfers and international players especially. This team is only going to get better next year. That’s what should worry ACC opponents (especially those normally residing in Durham). Even if Larranaga plans on retiring in four or five years, he’s made Miami into a much better job than it was when he took it. Success should mean decent fan support (Miami is and always will be a pro sport town), and that will only help.

Texas entered the season as a widely-acknowledged potential challenger to Kansas’ streak of 10 straight conference championships. The Longhorns returned most of its talent from an NCAA Round of 32 team, including sophomore rising star Isaiah Taylor and senior Jonathan Holmes, both of whom were expected to integrate with elite recruit Myles Turner to make the jump to national contention. Although Taylor was sidelined with a wrist injury early in the season, Rick Barnes’ team appeared to be living up to those expectations. Texas used its stifling defense (still ranked 23rd nationally) to handle most of its opponents with ease, their lone losses coming at home to Stanford in overtime and on the road at Kentucky where the Longhorns played the Wildcats even for much of the game. Flash forward to conference play and Texas now sits 1-2 in the Big 12 with a non-competitive road loss to Oklahoma State and a 21-point blowout defeat to Oklahoma at home. What’s the matter with Texas?

Texas is now 1-2 in Big 12 play. Is it time for concern? (Eric Gay/Associated Press)

1. The schedule is getting tougher. According to Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, Texas played the 181st-best (worst?) non-conference schedule of 351 teams in college basketball. With three games in conference play added, the Longhorns’ strength of schedule rises to become the 74th-toughest. This is what you’d expect to happen when the Big 12 appears to be one of the toughest conferences of the last 15 years. The Big 12 lists six teams other than Texas among Pomeroy’s top 50, which may not be good news for the struggling Longhorns. Texas is now 2-4 against top 50 teams with early wins over Iowa and Connecticut followed by losses to Kentucky, Stanford, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma. Read the rest of this entry »

Tulsa fans streamed into the Reynolds Center last night to watch their Golden Hurricane thrash UConn by eight points in a highly-anticipated AAC match-up. I have been coming to games in this building for several years now, and I have never seen a pregame buzz like this one. As the home team took control of the game from the very start, it was clear that this was a completely different team than the one that stunk up the joint against Oklahoma in December. Another noticeable thing was that a lot of the fans wore the old-school, gold-and-red Hurricane sweatshirts. The buzz, the old team colors, Tulsa’s play on the court — it was very reminiscent of the days when Tulsa was making runs to the Sweet Sixteen (1994; 1995) and Elite Eight (2000). It makes you wonder if this year’s team, now 11-5 overall and 4-0 in its inaugural season of AAC play, has found some of its old mojo.

Despite the terrible tee, the Golden Hurricane faithful were out in full force. (Cory Young/ Tulsa World)

Fresno, California, in the late 1990s was the (almost) perfect place and time for a kid like myself to be a college basketball fan. Jerry Tarkanian — then employed by Fresno State — and his nasty towel were paramount in my world, and the wild and woolly Western Athletic Conference was still in its heyday. With three legendary coaches and plenty of future NBA talent in the league, it was one of the original homes of Cinderella. At least it was for me. Tulsa — at the time coached by Bill Self, and Tubby Smith during the mid-1990s — was always near the top of those crazy, 16-team standings, and they were the team that you just hated to see come to town. As I sat on press row on Tuesday night reflecting about those teams, I couldn’t help but think that the success of those glory years under Smith and Self were the reason many of those people were back on this night. They hadn’t experienced the same buzz in that building for a long time, either. Read the rest of this entry »