Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

The word entered the college basketball lexicon long enough ago for it to be a household term nowadays, but there is still something very fresh about the “havoc” being created down in Richmond. Shaka Smart coined the term years ago to describe the manic brand of hoops his VCU teams employ, and Thursday night proved the catchy maxim apt once again, as St. Joseph’s couldn’t stand up to the “wide and general destruction” (the definition of havoc, per Merriam-Webster) caused by the Rams.

VCU’s Fan Base Is Only Getting Larger…

If havoc doesn’t do it for you, we can just go with relentless. VCU found a way to come back from four down with 15 seconds to play, tying it with seven ticks left, and then forcing Carl Jones (21 points, five assists) to cough it up on the final St. Joe’s possession. There was no doubt that momentum was on the Rams side entering the extra period, and overtime was a five-minute display of everything Shaka Smart prides himself and his players on. St. Joseph’s had more turnovers than field goals in OT and looked completely out of gas, to the point where Phil Martelli’s bunch simply stood and watched as VCU, up eight with a minute to go, dribbled out the entire shot clock. Standard game theory would have suggested an early foul in an effort to extend the game, but too many hands on knees dictated action here — the Hawks simply couldn’t stand any more of the havoc.

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. Youth and inexperience weren’t supposed to matter to John Calipari, to Kentucky. After all, there was still a lot of talent in Lexington, and it felt quite natural when nobody doubted the defending national champions in the preseason. But the two and a half months since have created a college basketball specimen that has been as rare in recent years as a senior superstar – the Kentucky skeptic. Their arrival is understandable, as Kentucky has already dropped five games here in 2012-13, the talented youngsters having yet to find the cohesiveness of UK’s past Calipari teams. There’s still plenty of time to get there, and all four of the key freshmen (Archie Goodwin, Nerlens Noel, Alex Poythress, and Willie Cauley-Stein) will surely need to display growth for the wins to roll in, but the player who serves as the finest barometer for UK success is not a newcomer. Kyle Wiltjer has been about as consistent as his team this season (i.e., not very), and his off nights have frequently coincided with Kentucky failures. But when Wiltjer has it going like he did Tuesday night against Tennessee, the Cats looked a lot closer to being a complete team.

Kentucky Fans Agree That The “Three Goggles” Are A Good Look For Kyle Wiltjer

Wiltjer finished with a team-high 17 points in the 85-75 victory over the Vols, also chipping in with five rebounds and a pair of blocks. Quite a dramatic shift for both sophomore and team from a game ago, when Texas A&M walked into Rupp Arena and knocked off the Cats, holding Wiltjer scoreless in the process. Wiltjer struggling in a UK loss is not a new storyline this year; he is averaging just 5.6 PPG in losses, about half of his season average. He has also only scored seven or fewer points in six of the Cats’ 16 games this season, but four of the five UK losses have also happened to occur on those nights. One final measure of the value of Wiltjer’s involvement: He has gone for 19 and 17 points, respectively, in Kentucky’s sole two victories over top-100 teams (two top-100 wins, yikes!).

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Bennet Hayes is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report from Saturday’s game in Atlanta between Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech.

One of the beauties of the college basketball winter is that the NCAA Tournament picture is constantly changing; teams that felt like January locks can find themselves sweating the bubble in March, and clubs trying to forget their non-conference campaigns can do so with a torrid couple of pre-Tournament months. This year, more than ever, might find a slew of teams in the latter category; fewer teams have built Tournament-ready resumes at this juncture than in past years.  Pair that with year two of an expanded field of 68 teams and it is no stretch to imagine this year’s bubble as the weakest in NCAA Tournament history. While many will lament the relative quality of the last few teams in the field, this dynamic should create a wide open final two months, and many teams currently left for dead could find their way back into the mix by March. Two of those teams resting below ground (at least for the moment), Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech, faced off Saturday afternoon in an ACC battle for that first step towards March relevancy.

Erick Green Continued His Brilliant Senior Season Saturday Afternoon

The Hokies, led by the relentless Erick Green, found a way to pull out a game they really had no business winning, escaping from McCamish Pavilion with Coach James Johnson’s first ACC victory, in overtime nonetheless. Having dropped five of their last six games entering this one, the Hokies win will hardly register on the national consciousness, but make no mistake—this one was big.  “Winning in the ACC is hard,” Coach Johnson noted after the game, adding that his group “deserved a reward for all their hard work.” Hard work alone will not earn you respect in this conference, but getting road wins is a good start. Give a shorthanded Virginia Tech team credit for putting their last month behind them and finding a way to get out of Atlanta with ACC win number one.

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

No team endured a more difficult first month of the season than the Saint Louis Billikens. November was a struggle on the court, as they listlessly stumbled to a 3-3 beginning. Not the opening that the preseason Atlantic 10 favorites had hoped for, but all that mattered little on December 2 when news came that former coach Rick Majerus had passed away. The controversial Majerus’ legacy is still being sorted out, but what cannot be denied is the SLU basketball revival he oversaw. More importantly, as he had done at each of his previous coaching stops, the charismatic Majerus profoundly impacted many of his players’ lives along the way. His passing left this Saint Louis basketball season at a crossroads; a disappointing year could easily head into complete freefall, or a core that Majerus brought to SLU could use their old coach’s passing as inspiration for a turnaround. Nine wins and zero losses later, it appears quite clear which direction the Billikens have chosen.

Saint Louis Is Happy To Have Kwamain Mitchell Back

Majerus’ death will be a motivator for St. Louis right up until the moment their season ends, but there are practical reasons for the turnaround as well. For starters, none of the three early season losses look especially bad anymore, now that Santa Clara has surprisingly continued its winning ways (12-5 on the year) with the Broncos even giving Duke a scare at Cameron Indoor Stadium at the end of 2012. The December schedule also relented somewhat for the Billikens, as their next six games came in the friendly confines of Chaifetz Arena, and only one pitted St. Louis against a top-200 team (Valparaiso). Six straight wins had to help their confidence before the Billikens’ next real test, and SLU responded against a solid New Mexico team, delivering a resounding 60-46 New Years’ Eve victory. Also making things easier against the Lobos was the return of senior guard Kwamain Mitchell, who had made his season debut just three days earlier. Mitchell may not have been his sharpest self against New Mexico (or even tonight against UMass), but SLU head man Jim Crews has to feel better with his star player back on the floor.

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

Aaaaand exhale. For those taking in the action from the first night of conference play in the Mountain West this evening, there was hardly a moment to catch a breath. The eight teams in action (Colorado State was the lone conference member to sit out tonight) gave audiences across the Mountain West, from Fresno to Laramie, competitive, inspired basketball in a mesmerizing first act for the MW – a conference that has the potential to produce one of the most competitive and entertaining conference seasons we have seen in quite some time. Highlight reels were spun (you are not from this world Jamaal Franklin), early claims of conference supremacy submitted (yet another statement W from the Lobos at the Pit) and the shot heard ‘round the Mountain West was fired on a wild Wednesday night you should not soon forget.

There Were Zeroes On The Clock After Jeff Elorriaga Delivered the Dagger That Ended Wyoming’s Perfect Season

The Mountain West may have shifted more than a few pairs of eyes out West this evening, and be forewarned college basketball fans – those peepers may not be turning away anytime soon. In this age of the mega-conference, the nine-team Mountain West feels like a vestige of a bygone era, a league filled with teams that know each other a little too well, a full home-and-home schedule for all league members, and a slew of cozy, but treacherous home courts. Only the Ivy and Patriot leagues have fewer members among automatic-bid conferences, and the limited size of the MW is a big reason for the competitive balance we are witnessing this season. The conference is currently fourth in Ken Pomeroy’s conference rankings, but the league boasts a whopping six top-50 squads. Yes, six of the nine conference members currently rest in Pomeroy’s top-50, and while that number surely will change as the nine teams brutalize their own over the course of the next two months, the MW currently has more top-50 clubs than both the 15-team Big East (second in Pomeroy’s rankings) and the 12-team ACC (third). Only the Big Ten, the undisputed top conference in America this season, has more top-50 teams than the Mountain West, with eight.

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

Any Big Ten road win accrued this season holds value, as the conference is an especially treacherous version of its normally solid self here in 2012-13. So kudos Ohio State; you went into West Lafayette tonight and gave the home team only a few sniffs of the upset they sought, and in the process earned your first Big Ten road victory of the year. Purdue may be young and a year or two away from Big Ten relevancy, but good teams will exit Mackey Arena losers this winter; this game was far from an automatic W. Praise the workmanlike effort tonight from Thad Matta’s bunch, but do not mistake it for a cure-all to the recent ails of the Buckeyes. For Ohio State to live up to both preseason expectations and the standard set by Buckeye squads of years past, the performances in the statement games must improve – beginning on Saturday, when arch-rival and undefeated #2 Michigan arrives in Columbus. But does this Ohio State team have it in them?

Deshaun Thomas Is Averaging 20 PPG, But Are Other Buckeyes Ready To Help Shoulder The Load?

Like it or not Buckeyes, the recent success of your program has created a standard of significant height, one that can really only be matched by a handful of programs across the country. That recent excellence, combined with the returns of starters Aaron Craft, Deshaun Thomas, and Lenzelle Smith prompted pollsters to rank Ohio State fourth this preseason, and few blinked an eye. The Buckeyes have done nothing that ranks as truly cringe-worthy thus far, but they also can’t lay claim to a victory over a team likely to make the NCAA Tournament field (unless you are bullish on Washington winning some games in the Pac-12). Ohio State has also whiffed on their three big-time chances for statement Ws (at Duke, Kansas, at Illinois). The polarizing nature of the schedule is partially to blame here, as Craft and company have had no opportunities to prove their worth against solid Tournament teams (giving Illinois the benefit of the doubt here as “elite,” partially because that game was in Champaign). Still, we are comfortably into the New Year and Ohio State, a team some still consider to be among the nation’s best, has absolutely nothing of major substance on that resume.

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

It’s January 5 and there is an ACC team boasting a 13-1 record, a deep, talented roster, and a likely top five pick in next June’s draft (should he elect to leave early). No, we aren’t talking about Mason Plumlee and Duke’s sizzling start. Nor are we discussing their Tobacco Road compatriots UNC and NC State – two teams that, despite uneven beginnings, have still found their share of national attention. Instead, we shift our eyes further north, to College Park, Maryland, where at the beginning of 2013 Mark Turgeon has the Terps buzzing along – and ever so quietly.

Alex Len Has Been The Man At The Center Of Maryland’s 13-Game Win Streak

Maryland kept things rolling today with a 94-71 victory over Virginia Tech, posting its 13^th consecutive victory in the process. College basketball fans likely haven’t heard a whole lot about the Maryland surge, as their opening loss to then-#3 Kentucky seemed to have removed the little buzz that surrounded the program in the preseason. But whether it’s being discussed nationally or not, make no mistake about it – behind Duke, Maryland is as likely an ACC runner-up as any team. The 13-game winning streak has not come at the expense of any sort of murderer’s row, but it includes a solid 20-point thrashing of Northwestern at Welsh-Ryan arena (I know, Trey Burke and company might tell you this is no great feat). But still, Maryland has been efficient in ripping through the fluff of their schedule, defeating opponents by an average of 19 points per game during the streak. Let’s also not forget they only fell to Kentucky in that opener by three, and I’m not so sure Kentucky would be a favorite if the two teams played again tomorrow on a neutral court.

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

March may still be well in the distance and conference play just beginning, but the Arizona Wildcats have already crafted a season’s worth of last-minute escapes. Early December saw Mark Lyons take over a game that was tied with seven minutes to play at Clemson. The Xavier transfer would provide more heroics a week later, as his runner with seven seconds left shocked Florida and erased a six-point, final-minute deficit. Then, in a back-and-forth Christmas Day affair, Nick Johnson delivered Wildcat fans a final Christmas gift when he blocked Chase Tapley’s layup attempt with only ticks remaining, giving Arizona the Diamond Head Classic title in yet another wild final minute.

But none of this drama compared to the scene at the McHale Center on Thursday night. Not only did Arizona need to erase a nine-point deficit in the final two minutes to ultimately win this one, but they also needed to find a bit of good fortune when referees went to the monitor to review Sabatino Chen’s apparent buzzer-beating winner. True to form, the Wildcats ended up on the right side of the bang-bang call, and then (in equally appropriate fashion), Lyons and company displayed the killer instinct that has become a trademark of this unbeaten run.

Mark Lyons Has Brought a Swagger To The Cats, And The Wins Have Followed

As is usually the case with teams using “imaginative” methods of winning, skeptics will point out that relying on late heroics is not a recipe for sustainability. On the other side of the ledger, Wildcat fans will rightly point out that their team is 13-0 and one of just four unbeaten teams left in the country, so they have to be doing something right. The question then becomes, how good is this Arizona team? The answer, also per usual, falls somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Ultimately however, this is a talented, veteran Wildcat team, and the dramatic nature of their first 13 games should not be held against them.

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that evening’s games.

Cincinnati’s dreams of an unbeaten season, wild as they may have been, came to an end Thursday night in the Queen City. New Mexico wound up a point better in a predictably grinding contest, as Tony Snell’s fadeaway jumper with 2:28 to play would close out the scoring. No coach will be happy after a loss, but should Mick Cronin feel any extra pain tonight when realizing that his team’s dream of perfection disappeared? Should John Beilein, Mike Krzyzewski, Sean Miller and Larry Shyatt (coaches of the four remaining unbeatens) be paying any sort of attention to the pursuit of being the “Last Unbeaten Team?” If the March success of past title-holders is used as proof, it’s hard to really say how much weight the distinction deserves to hold.

Mick Cronin Shouldn’t Lose Too Much Sleep Over Cincinnati’s First Loss

It happens every year. The eyes of the college basketball world will begin to gain sharp focus in January or February, or perhaps if we are lucky, March. One team will lay claim to the title of “Last Unbeaten,” and for better or worse, we as college basketball fans seem to really care. Talking heads will banter about how long the run can last, where the significant hurdles lie on the schedule, and even if a perfect season is a real possibility. And this buzz doesn’t discriminate; whether you are Duke (the last unbeaten four times since Indiana’s perfect season in 1976), or Murray State (last year’s final unbeaten), the attention will follow. So we clearly do care, and look, it probably should be that way. The notion of a perfect season is a tantalizingly romantic one, having last been accomplished nearly four decades ago, when Bob Knight led an unblemished Indiana squad to a title. No matter how unlikely the perfect season may be, it’s undeniably fun to wonder if this year could be the next one. So dream away college basketball fans, but the question still remains – does this distinction really mean anything?

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Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

Texas defeated a ranked North Carolina team in convincing fashion on Wednesday night, but the good vibes from the win quickly took a backseat to the news that sophomore guard Myck Kabongo had been suspended for the season by the NCAA. Fair or unfair (feel free to lean towards very unfair), it appears that the young Longhorns will be moving forward without their best player and leader. As Texas took their lumps in these first two months, most remaining optimism surrounding this year’s team hung on the presumed return of Kabongo. His comeback will no longer happen, but Texas fans should hold off on writing the year off. It would have been difficult to believe in this notion on November 19, the day that Division-II Chaminade authoritatively beat the Horns, but an improving batch of youngsters and a historically weak Big-12 might enable Texas, even without Kabongo, to make the NCAA tournament and salvage a season that once seemed lost.

Can Texas Overcome The Now Permanent Absence Of Myck Kabongo?

First and foremost, it’s clear that this Texas team is getting better. They have taken care of business since the Chaminade loss and beaten the teams they are supposed to beat, with respectable losses to USC (in OT), Georgetown, and UCLA sprinkled in there. A late letdown in the UCLA loss prevented the Horns from netting their first win of consequence, but outplaying the Bruins had to be an encouraging sign for Rick Barnes. Throw in tonight’s wire-to-wire victory over the Heels and you have two solid performances against preseason top-25 teams, a definite step in the right direction. The defense has been stingy with a capital S; Texas is best in the country in effective FG% against — a remarkable statistic considering the youth on the roster. Rick Barnes deserves some real credit for the work on that end of the floor, but the offense is still very much a work in progress. Freshman Javan Felix may not have completely erased the longing for Kabongo, but has gained confidence with every outing. The Horns rely on three sophomores for the bulk of the offensive punch, and while McClellan, Lewis and Holmes all had their moments in the win tonight, they must become more consistent for Texas to find any real offensive competence.

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