Around this time of year we like to yield the soapbox to representatives of bubble teams and give them the opportunity to explain to the hooping nation why their team should be granted admission into the NCAA Tournament. We encourage them to be as irrational and nonpartisan as they want. As always, feel free to tell us how you think they did in the comments section. If you’d like to make the case for your school, send us an e-mail at JStevRTC@gmail.com and we’ll hear your preliminary arguments.

Joe Stapleton of The Michigan Daily now makes the case for the Michigan Wolverines.

So, this is an interesting place we Wolverines find ourselves. In January, Michigan lost to Minnesota at home — badly — after dropping two ugly road losses in a row against Indiana and Northwestern. It appeared the team was dead in the water. It seemed this season would go how the majority of Wolverine nation thought it would from the beginning, given the team’s youth and inexperience: not very well. The idea that they would win their next game — Michigan State in East Lansing — was laughable.

Then they did it. They downed the Spartans and absolutely took off. After beating Michigan State at the Breslin Center, the Wolverines won eight of their last 11 games (their only losses being at Ohio State, at Illinois and Wisconsin at home) to enter the Big Ten Tournament as one of the hottest teams in the field.

Do Beilein's Boys Deserve a Spot?

And as it stands now, the Big Ten Tournament appears to offer them a golden chance to make the NCAA Tournament field of 68. After poring over projections from Crashing the Dance, Bracketology 101, Joe Lunardi and all the rest, it appears there is a consensus: if Michigan would have lost its first-round game to Illinois, it still would have been 50-50 (bordering on unlikely) that the Wolverines made the Tournament. If they beat the Illini, they’re in. They beat the Illini.

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Games #212-213: The state of Michiganis well-represented here in Indianapolis, which, as we’ve said, may be the most basketball-crazy town we’ve invaded. It’s just silly here. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Today starts off with no less than Ohio State up against Michigan, and you know how those institutions feel about each other. If you think this is only a football rivalry, try telling that to the maize and blue and the scarlet and gray amoeba-like crowds that have taken their positions outside of Conseco Fieldhouse like angry Libyans swarming around Qaddafi’s house. A tad more civilized, this gathering. But Buckeyes vs Wolverines has an intensity all its own, no matter the playing surface. Ohio State is probably still the overall #1 seed in the upcoming, but they’ll have to knock off UM for the third time this season, and that’s never easy. After that, Penn State is playing for sheer Tournament survival while Michigan State attempts to improve upon a week that just may have put them into the Dance. Let us not worry about that, now, though. It’s Big Ten semifinal day, and every player on each of these teams has cast a keen eye on that gigantic trophy sitting over there beside Jim Jackson as they run in and out of the locker room. Michigan vs Ohio State. Penn State vs Michigan State. A basketball-crazy city. Let’s go.

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It’s back. Around this time of year we like to yield the soapbox to representatives of bubble teams and give them the opportunity to explain to the hooping nation why their team should be granted admission into the NCAA Tournament. We encourage them to be as irrational and nonpartisan as they want. As always, feel free to tell us how you think they did in the comments section. If you’d like to make the case for your school, send us an e-mail at JStevRTC@gmail.com and we’ll hear your preliminary arguments.

Billy Jansen, a Missouri State alumnus, now makes the case for the Bears.

You all remember the headlines in 2006, but for Missouri State fans, that same nightmare plays out every season when ESPN and the national sports talk scene start talking about “the bubble.” Out of the 10 teams with the highest RPIs ever to be left out of the NCAA Tournament, Missouri State has three of them. The most painful was the No. 21 RPI left out in 2006.

But the 2011 Missouri State Bears have something that the 2006 team didn’t: a Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship. Going 15-3 in the MVC regular season, they also won a Missouri State-record seven league road games, a tough task when you have the target on your back from being #1 in the league. MSU has won an incredible 10 road games this season. They lost by four at Tennessee, but they had a short bench because of illness, which explains their falter just two nights later at Tulsa.

We'd Like To See the Bears Get In Just To Continue the Celebration of Cuonzo Martin's Butt-Kicking of Lymphoma

This team also has excellent senior leadership, but to go along with that they have the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, junior Kyle Weems. They also have the MVC Coach of the Year in Cuonzo Martin. The former Purdue assistant has one of the most inspiring stories in all of college basketball, from growing up in rough East St. Louis, Illinois, to winning his fight against lymphoma. “You’ve got to dream past what you’ve got right now,” he said in his Coach of the Year press conference.

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It’s back. Around this time of year we like to yield the soapbox to representatives of bubble teams and give them the opportunity to explain to the hooping nation why their team should be granted admission into the NCAA Tournament. We encourage them to be as irrational and nonpartisan as they want. As always, feel free to tell us how you think they did  in the comments section. If you’d like to make the case for your school, send us an e-mail at JStevRTC@gmail.com and we’ll hear your preliminary arguments.

Taking up the argument for USC is Joey Kaufman (twitter feed) of the USC blog Conquest Chronicles. Joey, the floor is yours.

I find the question of whether USC is deserving of an NCAA tournament at-large bid to be self-evident. Of course, our Trojans do!

After all, they don’t always get a chance to play past the regular season. Last year, self-imposed sanctions prevented ‘SC from participating in the Pac-10 tournament and possibly earning an at-large bid. Not that a team composed of players such as Mike Gerrity and Dwight Lewis (no offense) would have earned one anyway, but still. They never even had a chance (holding back tears). And heck, our football team has been barred from postseason participation for two years.

The Increased Effort On the Defensive End Is the Causative Factor of USC's Late-Season Improvement

So, obviously, we’re deserving of a bid to the Big Dance, because well, we don’t always get a chance to play into March. Sometimes the basketball program isn’t eligible, and other times, it just isn’t good enough (see: Henry Bibby-coached teams).

But this current USC hoops team is playing surprisingly well late in the season. A year ago, the Trojans, plagued by similar depth issues, dropped the final five games of the season, finishing just 16-14 overall after once appearing in contention for the conference title. Presently, Kevin O’Neill’s group has won six out of its last seven games, including yesterday’s 14-point victory over California in the quarterfinals of the Pac-10 tournament.

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Games #203-204: We’ve managed to leave Broad Ripple and get back down to Conseco Fieldhouse where the real action is.

As if the battles on the Conseco hardwood weren’t compelling enough, it will also be fun to see and hear the war in the stands today, as Purdue, Michigan, and Illinois see their first action of the Big Ten Tournament; each of those teams was well-represented yesterday even though their squads didn’t even have a game. The Wolverines and Illini face off in the first one (between 2:00-2:30 PM ET), and then we’re keen to see if Tom Izzo echoes Draymond Green’s strategy for Purdue that the former proposed yesterday after his fine game against Iowa: “E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson are going to do what they do. That’s going to happen. What you have to do against Purdue is keep their other players from rising up and putting up 14 and ten on you.” Will it work? Stop by and join us for it, beginning 30 minutes after the UM vs U of I game. Or better yet, join us for both games from Indianapolis.

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Games #183-184. The Big Ten Tournament gets underway in Indy and RTC Live will be there courtside for all of the best action.

RTC rolls into Indianapolis for the Big Ten Tournament and the bracket wastes no time in diving into the realm of bubble ramifications. 9-seed Minnesota needs to win a couple of games at the very least, and they’ll kick this event off against 8th-seeded Northwestern, with the winner getting the privilege of facing #1 Ohio State tomorrow at noon. Half an hour after the 8 vs 9 game concludes, we’ll have #7 Michigan State vs #10 Iowa as the Spartans try to pad that win total enough to impress the Selection Committee. Will that Tom Izzo post-season magic suddenly appear? Marquette likely played its way into the field of 68 last night by beating West Virginia, and that makes every single game vital; MSU and Minnesota can’t expect to drop first-round games and still bet let into the Dance, a fact of which we’re sure they’re well aware. It all starts at 2:30 PM ET. Two games, one RTC Live window! That’s a good deal at any time of year, so we hope to see you there.

David Ely is an RTC Contributor.

Introduction

Congrats are in order for the following teams that locked up automatic NCAA berths this week: St. Peter’s (MAAC), Old Dominion (CAA), Wofford (SoCon), Gonzaga (WCC), Indiana State (MVC), Belmont (Atlantic Sun) and UNC-Asheville (Big South). It’s always fun watching these teams celebrate their conference championships because the excitement just feels more honest than, say, when an Ohio State or a Pittsburgh wins its conference tournament. Championship Week is great for television purposes because there are so many great games to watch, but there usually is less urgency among the teams from the major conferences. For them, conference tournaments are about posturing for seeds and surviving the weekend injury-free. Roy Williams once called the ACC Tournament a big cocktail party, and it’s not surprising that his two title teams both bowed out in the semifinals.  

What We Learned 

Davies Will Obviously Be Missed, But Charles Abouo's Emergence Has Mitigated the Sting

If you’re a big time recruit and have BYU in your top five, you might want to reconsider your stance on the Cougars. Seriously, why would a player with options want to go to BYU now that its draconian honor code system is in the national spotlight. By now, everyone knows Brandon Davies (BYU’s third leading scorer and leading rebounder) was suspended from the BYU basketball team for allegedly having premarital sex with his girlfriend. Davies’ suspension is a crushing blow for the Cougars, who have gone from a sexy popular national title pick to a team some think won’t make it out of the first weekend.

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Despite the dodgy manner with which he left North Carolina, Larry Drew II had at least one thing going for him when he bolted Chapel Hill: he set himself up for a new beginning. He could have merely chosen his next school and concentrated on being a solid contributor and a good student. He may still eventually turn out to be more successful in life than the players he left behind, many of whom weren’t terribly sad to see the back of him.

No, Larry. Just...No.

Because we all know that one of the most insulting and impressive things you can possibly do to inspire fear in your detractors (eyes in full roll) is to blister them with a freestyle rap, Drew II decided to unleash his rhyming hounds on his former program on the occasion of his 21st birthday.

We’ve seen this atrocity mentioned in a lot places today, but our favorite was the article (talk about blistering, wow…but still a bull’s eye) by Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News. He has more examples of Drew’s, er, skill in his write-up. Our favorite, though, was this little gem: “They tried to tell me just to play my role, but who’s going to stick to a script that’s got typos?” Sure. We wonder if Drew is aware that he’s criticizing a “script” that’s worked pretty well for Roy Williams in the past, and one that’s well-written enough to have worked swimmingly this year…since Drew left.

No doubt you’ve heard that living well is the best revenge. Drew can still do that. But it won’t be as a result of a rap career.

1. He’ll coach in the Big 12 Tournament, but after that, you can run down the curtain on the Pat Knight era at Texas Tech. The school released Knight on Monday after a three-year run that resulted in no NCAA Tournament trips and an overall 50-60 record. Now, we know in terms of basketball tradition, Texas Tech is not Indiana, but following Bobby Knight at any coaching job is certainly an unenviable position, and we’re intrigued to see how Pat does as the top dog someplace where his father’s influence never reached, a place where he can stake his own claim and not be known simply as the default-hire son of the legend who preceded him. The linked article also explains how Knight the Younger knew this was coming.
2. Knight is unfortunately not the only coach to endure the fall of the axe (or at least the prod in the back) on Monday. Pat Kennedy resigned at Towson after seven seasons; Kirk Earlywine was dismissed from Eastern Washington; and Kennesaw State released Tom Ingle, citing academic shortcomings of Ingle’s players rather than the 8-20 record posted by the Owls this season (Ingle was 248-215 overall). That’s the only negative about March: coaches lose jobs, and the coaching carousel begins.
3. On a much lighter note, for any coach who finds him/herself without employment over the next few weeks, for renewal of purpose, we submit this story from Jeff Goodman about Greg Lansing. He’s headed to the Tournament as the honcho at Indiana State, tournament champions from the Missouri Valley Conference. Just a few years ago, he was fired from his  assistant position by Steve Alford when the two were at Iowa. There’s also an interesting tidbit in there about the positive omen Lansing received on Saturday, the day before his squad beat Missouri State for the MVC tournament title.
4. Texas is taking some punches from hoops fans everywhere, these days. Not surprising, when you consider that they dropped three of their last five games this season, and upon remembering that Hindenberg of a stretch run last year. A burnt child shuns fire, after all. But if you think the late-season missteps this year indicate a return of last season’s problems, senior Gary Johnson says it’s a mistake, but invites you keep on thinking that if you wish. Others within the Texas basketball family evidently join him in that sentiment, and contend that UT is still a national title contender.
5. Big game in the Ivy League tonight, as Princeton travels to Penn for the last game of the Ancient Eight’s regular season. If Penn wins, Harvard clinches the Ivy title and goes to their first NCAA Tournament in 65 years. If Princeton wins, the Tigers would sit tied atop the league table with Harvard and force a one game playoff (which would be played at Yale) on Saturday. If that’s not cool enough for you, tonight’s Princeton-Penn game is at The Palestra — the home of the Quakers, and one of the most regal, venerable buildings in our sport (P.S.: we can’t wait to get there!).

1. One of the great stories of this season has been the return of St. John’s to the center of the national hoops stage, there’s no doubt about it. They said goodbye to ten players during their Senior Night festivities on Saturday, and this article from the New York Post uses exclusive testimonials from each of those ten departing fellows to illustrate why, as writer Lenn Robbins puts it, “there might never have been a more emotional, more meaningful Senior Night in St. John’s basketball history.”
2. The day that Washington State’s Klay Thompson was charged with possession of marijuana, his father (and former Laker) Mychal Thompson was scheduled to substitute for Max Kellerman on a Los Angeles sports radio show. Not only did Thompson keep his hosting commitment, he openly addressed and answered questions about the topic of his son’s mistake with straightforward, honest talk. An interesting summary, this, from T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times.
3. Jim Les played for Bradley in college, and was hired as the Braves’ head coach in 2002. He had BU in the Sweet 16 as recently as 2006. He’s posted a 154-140 mark at the school. During one three year stretch, his teams won at least 21 games a season. It wasn’t enough. The school relieved Les of his coaching duties on Sunday, two days after the Braves lost in their second game of the MVC Tournament to Wichita State.
4. Hey, Notre Dame backers — how proud of your team are you? Few pre-season prognosticators predicted a year like this for you, and zero predicted that you’d be in the running for a 1-seed in the Tournament. The Chicago Tribune gives the Irish their props and discusses what they have to do to lock up a #1.
5. Where do you stand on the Brandon Davies/BYU drama? Well, we now know where Tim Tebow (a name we never thought would appear on this site) and Amare Stoudemire stand: they’re behind Davies and want him to play. Stoudemire leaves NO doubt where he stands (wow, Amare!) but we especially loved the end of Tebow’s comments: “I don’t know. I don’t even know the situation, but I just always think about giving people a second chance. Maybe he deserves one, but I don’t know the situation.” Gotcha. Thanks, man.