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

In the immediate aftermath of the Miami Heat’s thrilling seven-game victory over the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals, college and professional basketball fans alike directed their focus not at the player draft looming one week ahead, but at the 2014 draft – the one expected to be populated by the most talented recruiting class, featuring one of the most talented players, of the past decade. Speculation of various teams “tanking” was abundant and widespread. General managers assumed futuristic, pick-stacking, salary-shedding free agency strategies. “Wig-out for [Andrew] Wiggins” entered the lexicon. Everyone wanted to get in on the talent bounty waiting in the 2014 draft lottery. Rightfully so. By now, the biggest prospects basically roll off the tongue as a reflex: Kansas’ Wiggins, Kentucky’s Julius Randle, Duke’s Jabari Parker, Arizona’s Aaron Gordon, among others. But there’s one name you might not be quite as familiar with. That name is Dante Exum, an Australian-born 6’6″, 188-pound slasher who had scouts swooning after stealing the show at the FIBA U-19 World Championships in the Czech Republic this summer (along with a standout performance at the Nike Hoop Summit), where he averaged 18 points per game, just under four assists, and dropped 33 points against a formidable team from Spain.

Even in a loaded 2014 draft class, Exum should be a lottery pick if he declares (Getty Images).

The NBA Draft chatter intensified, and Exum’s lottery bona fides soon hardened into a national scouting consensus, leaving little doubt he would join Wiggins and Randle and the like in upper reaches of the first round next June. Earlier this summer, ESPN.com draft insider Chad Ford ranked Exum third on his list of “Top 100 Draft Prospects” for 2014. The only lingering question about Exum, who is on track to finish his high school course work in October, making him eligible to enroll in any American university at the end of the fall semester, was whether he would bring his hyperbolically mythologized land-down-under skills to the Division I ranks for a few months before entering the draft. ESPN’s Jeff Goodman answered that question on Tuesday:

“Schools have been saying I can start in early December and play this season,” Exum told ESPN. “But if college is the option, I’ll stay in Australia, do workouts with the national team and then go to college next August. Playing this season in college is not an option.”

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

Academic eligibility issues among high-level college basketball recruits are not a novel development. They are varied and wide-raging, stretching across the national prep landscape, from Dallas to New Hampshire to  and everywhere in between. Players leaving so-called “diploma mills,” schools devised to graduate high-level prospects by any means necessary to meet minimum eligibility requirements at the next level, often see their transitions to Division I interrupted once the NCAA looks into their shoddy academic credentials. Top 10 Florida signee Chris Walker is a recent high-profile example. Ben McLemore is another famous case. The accounts of academic negligence in high school coming back to bite players in college – whether by partial qualifier rulings or outright ineligibility – are too numerous to document in one post. Monday brought news of another highly-ranked recruit losing his college eligibility after not receiving academic clearance from the NCAA: Florida State recruit Xavier Rathan-Mayes, the No. 7-ranked shooting guard and No. 30-ranked player in the 2014 class, according to Rivals. Seminoles coach Leonard Hamilton broke the news Monday afternoon.

Losing Rathan-Mayes is a huge blow for FSU (Getty Images).

“Following a review by the NCAA Eligibility Center, it was determined that some of the coursework Xavier completed during his high school enrollment could not be used to satisfy NCAA Division I initial-eligibility requirements,” the school released in a statement. “The NCAA has allowed Xavier to enroll immediately at Florida State and receive athletics scholarship. However, he will not be permitted to practice or compete during the first year of enrollment.” 

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

None of the 15 victories SMU tallied last season were quite as important as the massive recruiting win it scored Saturday night. That’s when Emmanuel Mudiay, a consensus top-five player and arguably the top point guard in the 2014 class, subverted the natural college hoops recruiting food chain by announcing at halftime of the Under Armour Elite 24 game that he would spurn scholarship offers from Baylor, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma State, among others, to attend SMU. The natural reaction? Woah. Why would a player as talented and with as clear a path to the NBA Draft lottery as Mudiay, turn down not only the sport’s most proven preps-to-pros pipeline (Kentucky), but a Big 12 juggernaut (Kansas) that’s won nine-consecutive conference championships and is welcoming the most celebrated high school prospect since Kevin Durant (Andrew Wiggins) to its campus this fall? Mudiay answered that very question on the ESPNU airwaves:

With Mudiay making his verbal commitment, the arrow is pointed up for SMU (Getty Images).

“I prayed about it a lot, and this is what I felt was the best fit. My family is here, and they can see me play, and I will learn from a Hall of Fame coach in Larry Brown. He has done it in college and the pros. He knows what it takes to get there, and I think we can do some special things at SMU.”  

The allure of Larry Brown is one thing. Brown is considered one of the greatest coaches in basketball history, the only one (it should be said) to have won championships at both the college and professional levels. Brown is a tremendous coach, but if Mudiay’s decision was exclusively the product of a longing to reap the benefits of Brown’s individual tutelage, the commitment wouldn’t feel as important as it does. There were other factors involved. Mudiay is the biggest recruit SMU has ever landed, but he is not the only highly-ranked player to choose the school. In fact, just this year, the Mustangs are bringing in Keith Frazier, a McDonald’s All-American from Dallas, along with a group of well-regarded transfers, including former Illinois state guard Nic Moore, former junior college big man Yanick Moreira, former Villanova forward Marcus Kennedy, and former Illinois guard Crandall Head. Make no mistake: Mudiay is a better player and a more esteemed prospect than any of those guys. But the point is that he is the best of several; he is not the only one. Mudiay’s commitment is the rousing culmination of a recent uptick in recruiting, and if his decision prompts other top-ranked players to follow suit, that uptick could calcify into an accepted recruiting standard.

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

The sophomore breakout formula Sports Illustrated’s Luke Winn has been using over the past few seasons to highlight players expected to dramatically improve in their second years is not like any old fuzzy, subjective, qualitative preseason guessing game. It is grounded in a precise statistical methodology, designed to identify players who evince star potential in limited sample sizes and, in turn, realize that potential over more minutes by putting up big numbers in the coming season. Here’s his explanation: “To qualify, a player cannot have averaged much more than 20 minutes per game as a freshman. But while he was on the floor, he had to use a go-to-guy’s share of his team’s offensive possessions (around 24 percent or higher) with a respectable level of efficiency (an ORating of at least 100.0, or one point per possession). The underlying theory, as first proposed byBasketball Prospectus, is that go-to-guys tend to act like it from the start of their careers, even in limited playing time. “Players who are not very involved in the offense,” Ken Pomeroy wrote for BP in 2007, “tend to stay that way.” Winn’s track record is terrific; most of the players he highlights make good on their breakout promise – from Malik Waayns at Villanova in 2010-11 to Terrell Stoglin at Maryland in 2011-12 to Andre Hollins at Minnesota last season.

A breakout season from Karnowski is exactly what Gonzaga needs to win another WCC championship (US Presswire).

This year’s No. 1 breakout candidate, according to Winn, is Gonzaga center Przemek Karnowski. Last season, Karnowski averaged 5.7 points per game, posted a 102.5 offensive rating while using 27.0 percent of his team’s possessions, and logged 26.1 percent of available minutes. Karnowski’s minutes and shot opportunities are expected to increase next season – a fundamental criterion in Winn’s predictive method – largely because last season’s dominating frontcourt duo, Elias Harris and Kelly Olynyk, are now playing in the NBA. The Zags need a dominating frontcourt presence to help make up for their lost production and Karnowski, a highly-touted international recruit last season, is the perfect candidate. Picking him as college basketball’s biggest breakout candidate doesn’t just pass the tempo-free smell test; it makes intuitive sense. Karnowski is in excellent position to make the proverbial sophomore leap.

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

The first thing I think of when reading, writing or listening to anything having to do with the “First Four” is the NCAA’s frustrating semantical insistence that it be referred to as the “First Round.” Technically speaking, it is the first group of games qualified NCAA Tournament teams play, but to imply First Four teams and the other 64 all enter the Tournament needing to survive a “first round” – whether by playing games or not, which is what everyone except First Four teams do – is a confusing mischaracterization casual fans and writers alike could do without. We know what the real first round is, so let’s give it its proper nominal recognition. Sorry, First Four teams, but you can’t merely waltz into a spot in the first round of the NCAA Tournament; you need to earn your way there by winning your – gasp! – play-in game.

VCU

Until the NCAA resolves that issue, I will have trouble looking past any non-branding-related First Four storylines. Today, I’m making an exception. Numerous reports from Dayton Friday brought word that the NCAA rejected the city’s proposal to extend its First Four hosting rights beyond 2015. Dayton, as you probably already know, has hosted the event since its inception, including back when it only involved two teams and was called, whether formally or not, the one and only play-in game. Twelve years later, the NCAA appears to be exploring alternatives. Or maybe it just has commitment issues. The Dayton Business Journal got NCAA spokesperson David Worlock on the record:

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

This is going to be one of the most fascinating seasons of Bill Self’s Kansas tenure. Over his insane nine-consecutive-and-counting Big 12 title run, Self has largely resisted the compressed process of recruiting and bidding adieu to one-and-done players after a single season. Instead, he has turned gradual multi-year development into an art form, recruiting program-dedicated players willing to hack it on the practice courts and bide their time on the bench for a season or more, then enter the starting lineup as upperclassmen with plenty of experience, a solid understanding of the physicality of the college game, and great familiarity with their teammates. This cycle has worked for years, and Self would be crazy not to keep running his program and his player development process the same exact way. That old “why change something?” metaphor applies here. Slow developmental curves are Self’s trademark; John Calipari at Kentucky he is not.

The players surrounding Wiggins could be just as valuable to Kansas’ national title hopes as Wiggins himself (USA Today).

This season, for the first time in recent memory, Self is expected to play at least two true freshmen in the starting lineup (and quite possibly three), one of whom is considered the best high school prospect to enter the college game since Kevin Durant. You know his name: Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins has many titles – basketball destroyer of worlds, modern “Monstar” of college hoops (if you haven’t seen “Space Jam”, well, sorry), face-melting athletic freak, guaranteed franchise-altering NBA superstar – and he is the main reason why, in a matter of seconds, Kansas went from tenuous Big 12 front-runner to legitimate national championship contender when Wiggins, one of the best-kept commitment secrets of recent memory, announced he would play his one year of college basketball with the Jayhawks. Wiggins, it was widely said, would make Kansas great. He was the most talented player Self would ever coach, an instant star capable of lifting any team with any coach – let alone a nine-times-running conference champion with a surefire Hall of Famer patrolling the sidelines – into the national championship discussion. Kansas was going to be good, and Wiggins was the reason why.

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

The P.J. Hairston saga has all the makings of a classic amateurism bombshell. The shady third-party handler vaguely accused of providing money and/or gifts to a college athlete. A star player from one of the most esteemed college sports brands in the country. A drug charge. A loaded firearm and ammunition found outside of an obscurely rented vehicle. The evidence-based suspicion of broader corruption among program athletes. An apparent academic scandal simmering in the backdrop. The amateurism debate reaching flood stage in the public discourse. A high-profile lawsuit challenging amateurism’s very existence. The convenience of the Johnny Manziel saga. It’s all too timely and salacious and interesting, but here’s the thing: We haven’t even come close to reaching the finish line. Hairston was indefinitely suspended from UNC basketball after being ticketed for speeding on July 28, his third reported traffic citation of the summer, and all charges related to his July 5 traffic stop have been dropped. Hairston won’t be punished by the legal system, but that was never the biggest part of his summer saga, anyway.

The final outcome of the Hairston saga is still unclear (USA Today).

No, the most concerning aspect of Hairston’s malfeasance is the status of his eligibility heading into a season in which North Carolina is expected to compete for a conference championship with the junior expected to shoulder the bulk of the point-producing load and solidify UNC’s otherwise shaky defensive perimeter. He may not be able to do any of that if the NCAA finds the vehicles he drove this summer were rented out to Hairston impermissibly, or if any of his dealings with local party promoter and convicted felon Haydn ‘Fats’ Thomas are deemed in violation of the organization’s confusing (and highly controversial) amateurism rules. More than two months out from the start of the 2013-14 college hoops season, Hairston’s future with the Tar Heels hangs in the balance. His status for the upcoming season is just as mysterious as all the plot twists and legal nuance that brought us to this point.

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

There were two reactions when Maryland announced its move to the Big Ten last fall. First, indignant Big Ten fans cried foul and lamented the erosion of its historic Midwestern football tradition and groused about how the Terrapins could never, ever, ever be a good fit in their conference. They aren’t one of us. The other reaction, this one from a smaller strain of the national sports populace, was a grudging acceptance of why Maryland was making its move in the first place. In fact, university President Wallace Loh came right out and said it at the official press conference. Maryland was leaving the ACC for the Big Ten for one reason: money. Conversely, the Big Ten was adding Maryland for one reason: to expand its conference television network into a mostly untapped East Coast television market. In today’s college sports world, when monetary interest and potential broadcast rights bounties mesh so harmoniously, no force – not geographic interest, or cultural fit, or the total renouncement of traditional hoops rivalries – is going to stand in the way. Maryland to the Big Ten was, in the eyes of both parties, a perfect fit. No move in the recent realignment frenzy made more financial sense. There was no mystery.

It will take time, even with a lucrative Big Ten TV deal, for Maryland to improve its financial situation (Getty).

The move looked even more prudent after details emanated about Maryland’s massive athletic department budget shortfall. The Terrapins cut seven varsity sports in June 2012 due to rising costs, and moving to the Big Ten – where teams reportedly earned an average of $24.6 million payouts in Big Ten network revenue and NCAA Tournament earnings last year – seemed like a convenient vehicle to streamline Maryland back to financial stability. The premise was that the Terrapins were on their way to a more comfortable economic life in their new conference. The Big Ten was their financial panacea. Turns out, Maryland’s new conference could be inheriting a more dire financial proposition than most believed possible when the school announced its conference switch last fall. The university commission released a report earlier this week uncovering the breadth of the Terrapins’ current financial peril, and the optics are even more harrowing than last year’s money-driven conference hop implied. According to the report, the athletic department operated at a $21 million budget deficit in the past year, which is attributed to “past financial decisions” and the ACC’s denying Maryland roughly $15 million in conference revenue as part of an effort to collect the $52 million exit fee conference members had voted into place. The report also projects Maryland’s athletic department will continue to operate in the red until at least the 2017-18 academic year, more than three years into its Big Ten membership.

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

Covering college basketball year-round can, in the months not filled with actual college basketball, turn into a scavenger hunt for interesting topics to write about. We’ve just about hit the nadir of the offseason college hoops news cycle, and trust me, the next month or so could get even worse. Luckily, ESPN came through early this week with a totally awesome diversion – its release of the schedule, ordered in lockstep with the actual succession of games three months from now, for the 2013 24-hour Tip-Off Marathon, which begins at 7:00 PM on November 11. It’s become annual appointment viewing for college basketball dorks, myself humbly included, and the match-ups this year are just as enticing, if not more so, than anything the Mothership has lined up since the event’s christening. Now that I’ve explained the basics, and there’s nothing else to do during this offseason dry spell but anxiously await the start of games this fall, it’s as good a time as any to pick out the Marathon’s very best games, five of them – which will only have the effect of intensifying your craving for the beginning of the season. But hey, I pine for November just as much as you do. With our mutual longing for the upcoming season now recognized, let’s look ahead to one of the year’s best non-conference events. I’ll be waiting, caffeine and sugary comestibles in hand, buttocks planted to padded recliner, cathartically rejoicing after a long offseason spent, well, doing this.

The Marathon’s final match-up could be one of the best games of the season, full stop. (USA Today)

1. Duke vs. Kansas (November 12, 10:00 PM ET, ESPN)

This selection could have been predicted when ESPN released its highly-anticipated Champions Classic duo a long while ago. There are two match-ups to consider here. First, we get two of the most culturally impactful, nationally successful, blueblood-identifiable programs in the country squaring off in a potential Final Four, or even National Championship, preview. These teams are going to be good. The top-ranked freshmen they inherited this season are even better. Duke’s Jabari Parker and Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins are the main attractions — not just of this game, but of the entire college hoops season writ large; both are expected to enjoy wildly successful one-year stints in college, lead their respective teams on deep NCAA Tournament runs and land a spot in the NBA Draft lottery shortly thereafter. That process will get its formal introduction this November, in the second half of the Champion Classic’s cant-miss double-header (which coincides with the finale of the Tip-off Marathon). If you’re limiting your Marathon sampling size to just one game – first things first: I strongly urge you to reconsider – this is the game of choice, no doubt about it. It’s been a long time since college basketball has seen so much freshmen star power this enticing enter its ranks. Watching the very best of it, two generational NBA franchise-changers, going head-to-head during the first month of the season is a treat no fixture on the 2013-14 hoops calendar can possibly hope to live up to. Maybe the Final Four. Other than that? Nah.

2. Kentucky vs. Michigan State (November 12, 7:30 PM ET, ESPN)

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

You can’t blame Jon Duncan for trying his level best. He assumed the NCAA’s Vice President of Enforcement position following the dismissal of Julie Roe Lach, one of the organization’s longest-tenured investigators, for her missteps in the investigation into rogue booster Nevin Shepiro’s alleged funneling of impermissible benefits to Miami football and basketball players. In the months since Lach’s dismissal, a swath of enforcement staffers have bolted on their own volition, the NCAA’s public approval rating has fallen to unforeseen depths, and the purpose of the organization’s sheer existence – long assumed a natural part of the college sports world order – has come under intense scrutiny from all corners. This is not a good time to be an NCAA enforcement official, and Duncan is merely attempting to do what’s best for the organization that employed him on an “interim basis” given the circumstances.

Improving the way the NCAA and athletic departments interact is a well-intentioned, yet mostly impractical, endeavor (Getty).

So when Duncan’s initiative to change the way enforcement staffers approach and conduct investigations was revealed last week, it was hard to view it as anything more than a feckless attempt to repair the NCAA investigators’ battered reputations. The most notable proposal was a program that plans to send members of the organization’s enforcement wing to various college campuses across the country. The hope, according to Duncan, who spoke to the Associated Press on Saturday, is to immerse enforcement folk in the culture and every day-operation of modern athletic departments.

“One of the things I hear is that our staff sometimes lacks an understanding of what campus life is really like,” Duncan said. “So we are piloting a program where our staff will work on campus with athletic directors, compliance staff members and coaches and walk in their shoes so that we have a true understanding of what goes on.”

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