Expectations run high at Minnesota under sixth-year head coach Tubby Smith. For the first time in Smith’s tenure, the Gophers have a team capable of competing at the upper reaches of Big Ten competition. Point guard Julian Welch returns to pilot a balanced offensive attack. Austin Hollins provides an energetic presence on both ends of the floor. Unrelated Andre Hollins, fresh off a breakout performance in the Big Ten Tournament, is ready for bigger and better things in 2012-13. Future NBA forward Rodney Williams offers an explosive brand of athleticism mostly unseen throughout the Big Ten. This is a very good team. Believe it. But if there’s one development that demonstrably thrusted Minnesota onto the national radar this offseason, one personnel boost that gives the Gophers just enough to get over the hump, it’s Trevor Mbakwe, whom the NCAA announced over the summer has earned a sixth year of eligibility and will play out his final season in Minneapolis this winter. For Gophers fans, what matters is how the senior forward will perform this season, and how his return will help their chances of reaching the NCAA Tournament. But Mbawke’s history is long and complex, a quarrelsome tale of transfer and injury and violations.

After another criminal misstep, Mbawke skated the outer boundaries of Smith’s disciplinary tolerance (Photo credit: Chris Chambers/Getty Images).

I raise this issue because it relates to Mbakwe’s status for the upcoming season. More importantly, his troubled past is a huge reason why, after pleading guilty in September to a DWI committed in July, Mbakwe almost saw a promising sixth season – and an even more promising one for the Gopher program more broadly – end before it began. Smith very nearly booted Mbakwe from the team after learning of his summer transgression, which was just the latest in a repeated history of brushes with the law. Following his 2009 transfer to Minnesota from Miami Dade (FL) Community College, his second such switch after leaving Marquette in 2008, Mbakwe sat out the 2009-10 season due to legal complications surrounding an assault case while simultaneously fending off an allegation that he violated a restraining order by contacting an ex-girlfriend on Facebook. Court officials settled on a no-contest plea in the assault case, but Mbakwe pled guilty to the harassment charge and was sentenced to one year of probation in February. The DWI settlement violated that probation, which means Mbakwe faces another hearing in Miami on Wednesday. Whatever the outcome of his next legal stopping point, Mbakwe’s actions have tested the limits of Smith’s tolerance for his behaviors.

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

The age of smartphone-based communication is upon us. There’s no denying it. From pre-pubescent pre-teens to middle-aged parents to retired folks, the instant communication trend has slowly seeped its way into every technological aspect of our lives. For the purposes of college basketball recruiting, this created something of a problem. The NCAA’s previous restrictions on messaging and calling frequency forced coaches to monitor their phone habits with painstaking consistency. On principle, the limitations made absolute sense – messaging fees could get out of hand pretty easily, not every player can afford smart phones, and the risk of players being overwhelmed by a deluge of calls and texts from overeager coaches was very real – but enforcement was tricky and often ineffective. A handful of coaches were slapped with secondary violations for exceeding contact limits, the most notable being Kelvin Sampson, whose profligate recruiting tactics (part of which hinged on his negligence of restricted cellphone use) touched off a precipitous decline for Indiana. The Hoosiers have very much recovered, but it may have been avoided, or at least mitigated, had the NCAA’s bylaws adjusted to the blossoming digital communications market at the time. For better or worse, the restraints on smartphone-tethered communications were officially lifted this past summer, meaning coaches could call or text recruits who have completed their sophomore year in high school.

The NCAA’s blackballing of Instagram is a decided step back after embracing technological growth this summer (Photo credit: businessinsider.com)

Not only did the rule change help coaches by unlocking a new world of streamlined contact – not to mention the stronger recruiting ties forged by more frequent communication – it allowed the NCAA to stop wasting time policing nonsensical secondary infractions and start focusing on violations that actually, you know, matter. The NCAA had finally embraced the modern age. It was a progressive move, all things considered. As is the case with most outwardly positive NCAA rule changes, there’s a caveat. Only this one isn’t prohibitive as much as it is petty. Instagram – the in-vogue photo-sharing application that turns virtually any smartphone owner into a proficient photography aesthete – has officially been outlawed from college coaches’ growing list of technological recruiting mechanisms. The NCAA outlined its position in a Q&A-style educational column earlier this week, and you might be surprised to learn the motives behind this puzzling regulation. The issue stems not from the actual sending of photographs to prospective recruits — the NCAA sent out a clarifying message Thursday detailing the nuances of its prohibitive policy — but from coaches altering or enhancing photos for a “recruiting purpose.”

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

For most college basketball fans, the professional brand of the game they love has never resonated in the same endearing way. For reasons ethical and not, the general perception of NBA hoops is not a good one. It is, with few exceptions, terrible. Whether it’s the isolation-heavy offense, lack of defensive organization and discipline, or the fuzzy conception-based judgment that the game just isn’t played the right way in the professional ranks, there are few more infuriating three-letter sequences for college hoops fans than NBA. I’ve never quite understood the origins or the staying power of this criticism, nor do I subscribe to the same viewpoint. Every year, the NBA offers us a nearly six-month slate of the best basketball in the world, played by the best athletes in the world – most of which come from the programs college fans invest their time, money and passion enjoying. It’s not the same as the college game; the differences are as obvious as they are numerous. But if you enjoy basketball played at the highest level, robbing yourself of the sport’s greatest compilation of talent, spectacle and athletic brilliance seems silly. Whatever your opinions on the NBA the organization, it’s awfully difficult to come up with a sound argument justifying your lack of attention to the league’s on-court product. These guys are really, really good. That alone should pique your hoops-watching impulses enough to flip-on at least a few games each year.

With Wallace speaking out against the NBA’s competitive integrity, college fans’ complaints gain a layer of credibility (Photo credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images).

Perhaps the most frequent gripe with NBA basketball brings us to the realm of intangibles, the vague qualities that enhance (or devalue) the tenor of the game’s flow of play. The NBA’s lack of passion or fire or intensity, or whatever descriptor suits your position, is raised with alarming consistency in just about any anti-NBA diatribe. The typical argument proceeds as follows: College players lose their competitive drive when they reach the NBA and receive their first paychecks. Financial incentives, so the narrative goes, rob college players of the passion and unbridled joy that made them so fascinating to watch at their respective programs. If you share this mindset (as this is a college basketball blog, there are no doubt at least a few readers who most definitely do), you are not alone. One NBA contemporary is on your side. Rasheed Wallace – former North Carolina Tar Heel, first-round pick, four-time All Star, all-time NBA bad boy first-teamer, and most recently, New York Knicks frontcourt relief option – opened up with Brian Lewis of the New York Post Wednesday to reveal the reasons behind his unlikely age-38 comeback.

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

Conference realignment has not been kind to college basketball. There are exceptions to this statement: The Atlantic 10, who over the past year added VCU and Butler, very much won out. But on the whole, hoops leagues have watched flagship programs jump ship to chase lucrative media rights contracts and better positioning in the increasingly football-oriented college athletics landscape. The winds of change prompted high-profile departures from the Big East (West Virginia, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse), pillaged the CAA (Old Dominion, Georgia State, VCU) and swiped thriving outfits from other leagues. While the reasons sometimes differed – with a few exceptions, football and TV money reigned supreme; the variant motives were more a matter of degree than type – the overall result was mostly unilateral. Hoops conferences were weakened, either by losing teams to football-savvy and/or more monied leagues, taking on substandard replacements or having natural rivalries eroded. The good news is we’re witnessing a temporary conference-hopping lull after a summer teeming with realignment buzz. The college hoops offseason is a long and frustrating stretch that challenges the outer limits of creative resolve. Filling that gap with realignment news, particularly when that news includes negative consequences for the sport’s competitive balance, is not fun. We should probably enjoy this peace while it lasts, because conference loyalty is hardly the same enduring relationship it used to be. These are massive changes with lasting impacts. College hoops may never be the same.

It will fall on programs like New Mexico State to carry the WAC’s flagship going forward (Eric Jamison/AP).

Through all the program-hopping and controversial departure dates and spiteful conference tournament bans (I’m looking at you, CAA), there is no league that learned the perils of realignment in a more devastating way than the Western Athletic Conference. Over the past two decades, the once-thriving mid-major outfit has suffered a slow and agonizing decline, with a whopping 24 schools leaving for greener pastures. The extended bout of membership attrition prompted the WAC to steep to new levels of realignment hopelessness. That’s no disrespect to Cal State Bakersfield and Utah Valley, which the league announced Tuesday will gain full membership by July 1 of next year and begin competition in 2013, but is this the best the WAC can do? When your membership has been whittled down to four and league administrators have relegated football to the BCS ranks (a tell-tale sign of league futility), the answer is, almost invariably, yes.

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

For a player with transcendent basketball talent and potential, a No. 1 recruiting ranking, Sports Illustrated coverboy hype, and the enormous expectations of living up to the unfair if burdensome labeling as “The Best High School Basketball Player Since LeBron James,” Jabari Parker’s immediate basketball future isn’t as simple as what meets the eye. In a vacuum, you’d think a player like Parker would go on to a high-major powerhouse, with practically no limits on his range of destinations. He would enjoy a high-profile one-year existence on the college scene, send his draft stock through the roof as he dominates the competition, accumulate numerous accolades and generate widespread debate over the fairness of the NBA’s one-and-done age stipulations and, hopefully, have some fun along the way before joining the professional ranks. But Parker, as you may have heard (and if you haven’t, I heartily recommend visiting the timeless SI vault for Jeff Benedict’s brilliant feature), is not like most No. 1 recruits. For one, Parker – cover story notwithstanding – has deftly insulated himself from the growing high school and grass roots hoops media spotlight, instead funneling pertinent information through his parents and, on occasion, Twitter. Up until this weekend, when Parker cut his lengthy list of suitors down to five schools (Duke, Michigan State, Stanford, BYU and Florida), the Chicago Simeon (IL) product kept his preferences under wraps – Even after narrowing down his list, we still don’t have a great feel for where Parker will eventually end up. Perhaps most puzzling, particularly in light of the Harrison twins recent commitment to Kentucky after a heated six-year courtship with Mark Turgeon at Maryland, is Parker’s elimination of the Wildcats from his list. It’s not often you see a recruit reject John Calipari, nor is it normal for any prospect – no matter his ranking – to turn down Kansas and North Carolina; these days, if you’ve already rebuffed Coach Cal, dropping the Jayhawks and Tar Heels is borderline irrational.

The age adjustment, which presents a roundabout way in which Parker could enter the NBA without playing in college, could affect Parker’s college hoops timeline (Photo credit: Charles Rex/AP Photo)

By conventional blue-chip recruiting standards, Parker’s recruitment is unusual. This much is clear. But it’s his personal background that could alter his college basketball timeframe. Thanks to a newly-imposed age requirement for religious missions in the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints, Parker, a practicing Mormon, is rethinking how he schedules his two-year sojourn. Sonny Parker, Jabari’s father and media conduit, told ESPN Chicago’s Scott Powers Monday that Jabari has not decided on when, or if, he will serve his mission, but that the new rule – which lowered the threshold for mission service age to 18 for males and 19 for females – could influence the way his son handles his religious and basketball priorities. The rule change eliminates the divided eligibility timeline whereby Mormon players play one season with their respective programs, leave for two years on religious duty, then finish out their eligibility at a later date. But for Parker, the downshift may not matter. According to Powers, Parker is exploring new ways to fulfill religious obligations without embarking on a conventional two-year mission. This is the same path taken by former BYU guard Jimmer Fredette and quarterback Steve Young, who Parker spoke with to gain a greater perspective on handling service requirements. In the most extreme case, Parker could serve his mission after high school, circumvent college basketball altogether and enter the NBA Draft upon returning. The latter seems remotely improbable. Spending two years away from high-level competition at arguably the most important time of Parker’s basketball career could jeopardize his NBA future. However he chooses to handle his religious obligations, the final stretch (he expects to commit in November) of the Jabari Parker recruiting saga will be fascinating to watch.

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

The growing cause for a dismantling of the NCAA’s ruling structure is reaching a breaking point. The Ed O’Bannon lawsuit, filed in 2009 in the hope of ending the NCAA’s practice of securing lucrative media rights and video game contracts without compensating student-athletes, is gaining steam in advance of the seminal legal showdown expected to go on trial in early 2014. The government is making headway, too, as just last week California signed into law a Student-Athlete Bill of Rights for the Golden State’s four Pac-12 schools. These are legitimate challenges that threaten to destabilize the NCAA’s authoritative grip on collegiate athletics, along with the ideological underpinnings that justify its amateurism model. As the clamors for change grow louder and the NCAA is increasingly shoved under the national spotlight and parsed for its standards of handling academic and impermissible benefits scandals at different institutions, the argument will continue to hit home with strong-willed onlookers – like O’Bannon and his class action lawsuit. For the NCAA, it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Until a reasonable resolution is reached, and its administrative wherewithal is reconciled with the slew of legal and ideological challenges it currently faces, the NCAA will have to weather a steady dose of overwhelming public disapproval and fear the distinct possibility of new sources arising to debunk its legitimacy. That’s a mouthful of high-brow legal nuance, but there is no easy way to frame the legitimate threats posed by NCAA’s growing opposition.

Even after leaving the program, Lin’s collaborative deal could strike fear into NCAA enforcement (Photo credit: Michael Dwyer/AP Photo).

The legal and value-based screeds against NCAA policy we’ve seen to this point have risen outside the organization’s ruling constructs. The actors that constitute college athletics (institutions, student-athletes) have not presented a challenge to the amateurism-based restrictions from which its authority is derived. Other than scandals and rule breaks which occur under the noses of various programs’ officials, the challenges have come from the outside – from ex-players like O’Bannon or ruling bodies like California’s state government. It would take an exceptionally defiant program to completely do away with NCAA protocol and remove the legislative shackles limiting their student-athletes’ financial potential. But if such a program existed, the one rogue institution with the will to formally challenge the NCAA and embrace whatever punitive consequences came its way, it probably wouldn’t be Harvard. After all, we’re talking about the universal gold standard of academic integrity, the embodiment of the student-athlete paradigm the NCAA so thoroughly promotes and enforces. Known for its halls of scholarly achievement and its unofficial status as the ultimate sovereign of higher education, Harvard is not the type of program you’d expect to strike up and co-opt a lucrative advertising deal with one of its former athletes. Yet that far-fetched muse could become reality.

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

One of the more ballyhooed recruitments came to a close Thursday night in rather predictable fashion. For the Harrison twins – two sublimely-talented backcourt dynamos ranked No. 1 at their respective positions in the 2013 class who packaged their decision and thereby created arguably the most enticing recruiting deal in college hoops history – there was never really any doubt. Because when John Calipari throws his hat in the ring, few players resist his pursuit. Calipari’s track record speaks for itself: Tyreke Evans, Derrick Rose, Brandon Knight, Marquis Teague. Those are just point guards, all of them first-round products of Calipari’s systematic year-long seminar in NBA preparation. The Harrisons, I’d wager, fancy themselves NBA players. By that standard alone, Kentucky was the right pick. It was the only pick.

The long-awaited conclusion to the Harrison’s recruitment brought great news to Kentucky fans (Photo credit: David J. Philip/Associated Press).

Maryland fans will grumble at this missed opportunity. Landing the Harrisons would have turbo-buttoned Mark Turgeon’s rebuilding effort into a full-on College Park Renaissance, a streamlined path to the halcyon days of perennial ACC and national contention. But the fact Turgeon was able to stay in the race so long, that Calipari, the nation’s resident blue-chip pick-pocketer was nearly robbed of one of his top targets, is a huge victory in and of itself. All in all, this is a minor road bump in an otherwise steady rebuilding process for the Terrapins. Sealing the deal on the Harrisons would have accelerated that process considerably, but the programmatic avenues this high-profile recruitment revealed – Under Armour’s (and UM alum CEO Kevin Plank’s) growing presence on the grassroots scene, the nationally-propagated impressions left by Aaron Harrison, Sr., of Turgeon and the coaching staff, Turgeon’s meticulous approach and resolute drive to stave off other powerful programs, to go 12 rounds with the unassailable recruiting heavyweight – could steer the once-averse eyes of other elite recruits towards this emerging ACC contender. Not all is lost, Terps fans.

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

Even in this high-profile one-and-done era, where most top-tier prospects make their ultimate decisions not in the pursuit of the best four-year student athlete experience possible but to maximize NBA draft stock, the increasing preparedness of elite recruits to make immediate impacts has raised the stakes as coaches search for talents to elevate their teams and change their programs’ trajectories. There was no better example of this phenomenon than in 2011-12, when John Calipari took an insanely-talented 2011 recruiting class – led by otherworldly front court maestro Anthony Davis, hyper-intense perimeter dynamo Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and quick-learning point guard Marquis Teague – molded its star power around a host of savvy role players (and first-round pick Terrence Jones), crafted a coherent and disciplined unit, and surged to a 38-2 record and his first national championship. These weren’t your average freshmen; Calipari’s coup may go down as the most talented recruiting class since Michigan’s Fab Five outfit. But across the nation, each class’s blue chip prospects are increasingly entering the college game with a greater potential for immediate contribution, often in major and lasting ways. Kentucky’s title season – which officially debunked the age-old myth that one-and-done players didn’t have the intangibles to withstand pressure-packed NCAA Tournament games – paired three top-10 players with a coach well-versed in the sort of ego-grooming and steadfast discipline required to overcome any freshmen transitional issues. The match of immense talent and coaching acumen was practically seamless. Not every elite recruiting haul reaches that level of success that quickly. Freshmen talent, however large or promising the selection, does not equal championships, at least not right away.

If the Harrisons choose Maryland, it could propel Maryland’s rise to ACC and national contention (Photo credit: coast2coasthoops.com).

That’s the motivation fueling the enormous hype surrounding the recruitment of Andrew and Aaron Harrison, two top-five players in the class of 2013 who have been open about their intentions to attend the same program and thus form, in recruiting parlance, perhaps the best “package deal” in college hoops recruiting history. Left in the running for the twins, who plan to announce their decision tonight at 5 PM ET, are Kentucky and Maryland, with SMU coming in at a distant (I repeat: distant) third. For the reasons I mentioned above, and a host of other enticing qualities, Calipari’s involvement is hardly shocking. Maryland’s courtship hinges on a spate of various connections: namely, Aaron Harrison, Sr.’s, Baltimore childhood and relationships with program staffers along with the twins’ longstanding association with Under Armour and the corporate bridge it constructs between their UA-backed AAU team and the Terrapins. Though Calipari has rarely missed out on a recruit(s) he set his sights on, the Harrisons and their sheltering father have shielded their preferences internally. Neither program would be a surprise. Whoever the victor, the on-court benefits are fairly straightforward: two transcendent backcourt pieces brimming with potential and promise. For Kentucky, wrapping up Harrison-squared would be business as usual, par for the course in Calipari’s recruiting history. But for Maryland, the potential long-term implications of landing two NBA-bound basketball destroyers-of-worlds, at least from a reputation standpoint, are positively transformative.

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

Scores of columns, blog posts and features have focused on the imminent decline of Big East basketball. The central themes – conference realignment, fooball-motivated injustices, the evils of media rights contracts destroying competitive purity – are for the most part identical. It’s basically the same ideas recreated and refined across different platforms and outlets. And we’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg. Starting in 2013-14, when Syracuse and Pittsburgh (and possibly Notre Dame) head off to the ACC, the defeatist Big East literature will resurface in greater frequency. Like many fellow college basketball scribes, I believe the Big East will lose some of its competitive intrigue once conference realignment commitments fall into place. But I do not abide by the notion that conference realignment is a unilateral force destroying college basketball, or that all realignment-related decisions by definition neglect the happenings on the hardwood and/or affect negative change to the sport’s league structure. Case in point: the Atlantic 10. Thanks to the addition of two emerging programs by way of realignment (Butler and VCU), the A-10, despite also losing Temple and Charlotte, has positioned itself to stake its claim as one of the top three or four basketball leagues in the country.

Adding Butler to the fray gives the A-10 another perennial Tournament contender (Photo credit: David J. Phillip/AP Photo).

The positive outlook in A-10 country is not lost on college hoops TV rights negotiators. They proved as much on Tuesday, when broadcast giants ESPN, CBS and NBC committed to the league long-term by securing eight year partnerships, which, according to the conference’s official release, will “give the league unprecedented reach, distribution and marketing, allowing the Atlantic 10 to better serve its fans in its extensive media footprint and to leverage the promotional platforms and marketing assets of these three major media companies.” With the league’s undeniably positive trajectory, this move was an eventuality, a no-brainer proposition for media companies seeking to leverage an untapped source of national viewings gold. There’s little doubt the A-10 has reached power conference-level status, even if it’s not regarded as such. Bolstered by the otherwise gloomy optics of conference realignment, the league is primed to cement its footprint among the sport’s elite. It has a potent mix of thriving programs capable of challenging and stealing NCAA Tournament bids from high-majors; now the broadcast and financial baselines are locked in. The A-10 is, in short, booming. But does it have the staying power to upstage the withering Big East?

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

In today’s college hoops landscape, where impermissible benefits scandals are widespread and recruiting at elite programs is synonymous with agents, boosters and other money-wielding nefarious third parties, first impressions are the only ones that matter. The smallest hint of violation or prohibited activity spawns a massive rush to judgment, and a public consensus is reached before the alleged ever has a chance to prove their innocence. There’s a confirmation bias at work here, one borne of the outwardly seedy atmosphere hovering over the sport of late. Players are deemed outlaws, whether fairly or otherwise, before administrative procedures run their course. It’s not at all fair, or just, but until the NCAA or some other higher power steps in to clean up recruiting tactics and minimize the influence of illicit financial intermediaries – or at least imposes stricter policies that work towards those ends – suspicion and rapidly-conceived conclusions will remain the norm. It’s gotten to the point where procedural due process has lost credibility: The culture surrounding college basketball, not the actual terms of violation (or lack thereof), or the players themselves, has produced a general skepticism and mistrust about the behind-the-scenes work that keeps elite programs afloat.

The assumption of guilt exists with Noel and his recruitment, an opinion fueled by college hoops’ overhanging stigma of scandal and violations (Photo credit: US Presswire).

This nearsighted logic is applied without restraint to the recruitment of one-and-done high school players. Kentucky’s John Calipari, clean recruiting track record aside, has assumed an air of suspicion in regards to his prospect-hunting tactics. Whether it’s the annual success he’s established and sustained on the recruiting trail – it’s almost a surprise when Calipari doesn’t reel in the top class in the country – or the overwhelming hatred of the NBA age limit, the one-and-done system and the way Calipari has maneuvered it to perfection, or a simple jealous aversion to the regional and national dominance of Kentucky during his tenure, Calipari’s recruiting exploits (and the fruits thereof) are received with trepidation. It’s not just fans. The perception exists among an overwhelming majority of college coaches, too. Calipari’s latest recruiting gem, 2012 big man Nerlens Noel, provided some perspective over the weekend on the pervasive angst opposing coaches harbor against the Kentucky coach’s top prospects. Sports Illustrated got some insight from Noel, along with a handful of other elite recruits (such as 2013 forward Julius Randle and Kansas commit Brannen Greene), about the oft-discussed topic of negative recruiting, whereby coaches bad-mouth competing programs in an attempt to dissuade their target from attending those programs. It’s foul, indecent and a clear low-blow. But it’s out there. And coaches, particularly desperate ones, use the gambit to strengthen their case while blasting their competitors. But for Noel, the ruse backfired. When one anonymous coach implied Noel’s recruiting process was financially-intertwined, the Tilton (NH) product was downright insulted.

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