Over the course of the next month until the NBA Draft on June 24, RTC will be rolling out comprehensive profiles of the 30-35 collegians we feel have the best chance to hear their names called by David Stern in the first round that night.  There won’t be any particular order to the list, but you can scroll back through all the finished profiles by clicking here.

Player Name: Daniel Orton

School: Kentucky

Height/Weight: 6’10/255

NBA Position: Power Forward/Center

Projected Draft Range: Late First Round

Overview: If you needed any further proof that the NBA Draft selects players on potential and not on actual past performance, look no further than Daniel Orton.  That’s not to say that Orton didn’t produce for Kentucky in his one season there.  He certainly did everything that was expected of him, and did it well.  But we’re talking about a player who averaged 3.4 points, 3.3 rebounds, and just 13.1 minutes a game.  That said, Orton was excellent in his role as a backup to DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson as needed, excelling on defense, specifically shot-blocking, and showing enough raw offensive skills to have the scouts salivating. He only hit double-figures twice all season, but that’s just because of the limited minutes.  With talent like this, if he’d have gotten the time (or stayed in school longer) his numbers would have probably been about triple what they were.

An intense, imposing physical specimen, Orton will carve out a living hitting the glass and blocking shots.

Will Translate to the NBA: Orton’s body was NBA-ready by the time he played his first college game.  He frequently uses that size to overpower defenders on his way to the basket and finish with confidence.  Though it could stand a little more arch, his jumper is fairly solid at this early stage.  He is physically imposing but actually has very nice touch on his shot after a post move and certainly as he gets right up to the rim.  On the defensive side, he’s way ahead of the curve in terms of shot-blocking ability, and that skill is evident whether he’s guarding his man straight up or if he’s  leaving his man and helping from the weak side.

Needs Work: Orton played so little compared to a lot of prospects, teams just don’t have that much to go on.  He had surgery on his left knee during his last year of high school, and while he never appeared to be favoring it, there were times when simple post moves or getting up the floor on a break seemed a little harder than one would think.  Because he’s going to make his living down low, he’s going to be getting to the free throw line a lot, and raising his percentage up from the 52% he shot at Ketnucky (to be fair, that was also his field goal percentage) is required.  Finally, it was a single incident, but the in-game sideline spat with coach John Calipari in the SEC Tournament was highly publicized, and Orton didn’t help his image by actually leaving the bench and going back to the locker room, even if he was under orders.  He’ll need to convince teams that his head’s in the right place and he won’t make a habit of openly questioning authority.

Comparison Players: Orton’s use of his physique to do things like create space for shots, set screens, and out-muscle opponents for rebounds reminds us of Leon Powe of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  If a Kentucky example is needed, his physique brings to mind the Rockets’ Chuck Hayes; like Hayes, Orton’s greatest value to an NBA team will come on defense.  Hayes is a little quicker, but Orton actually has a higher offensive ceiling.

Best Case Scenario: The key to Daniel Orton’s success will be patience.  He has the body and all the tools to carve out a very nice decade-long NBA career, if not longer.  But because he’s being drafted largely on potential, the team that drafts him will need to see some of that potential become realized in practice and in limited game time before they’ll really unleash him.  That’s not the easiest thing for young players to accept.  If he can show off his defensive abilities enough through hard work in practice, he’ll get more minutes in games, and then the offensive chances will come.  If he’s satisfied with that, after a few seasons his game could be refined enough to where he’ll find a niche on a team that needs a tough-nosed, hard-rebounding, “glue-guy” type of player that the fans love, the type of player that embodies the hard work coaches would like to see out of their whole roster.

2013 Projection: The process described above will still be happening after three seasons.  We wouldn’t be surprised to see him start to get increased minutes late in his third season and thereafter.  Up to that point, we’d expect Orton to have made an early living as a rebounding and shot-blocking specialist while the full range of his offensive game continues to grow.

Best NBA Fit: Orton will be taken almost right in the middle of the draft, and while Oklahoma City (21st and 26th pick) needs front line help in a major way — and it’s a pick that would land Orton back in his home state — the best fit for him as far as teams in that range is the Boston Celtics (19th pick).  Despite their post-season success, Boston was one of the worst rebounding teams in the league (29th of 30) and averaged a -1.5 rebounding margin.  If Kendrick Perkins‘ knee remains suspect and the retirement rumors about Rasheed Wallace are true, the Celtics would be left without a true center, and the third man on the depth chart at PF would be the unimpressive Shelden Williams.  Plus, you could do a lot worse than to have Kevin Garnett as a teammate and mentor.

Over the course of the next month until the NBA Draft on June 24, RTC will be rolling out comprehensive profiles of the 30-35 collegians we feel have the best chance to hear their names called by David Stern in the first round that night.  There won’t be any particular order to the list, but you can scroll back through all the finished profiles by clicking here.

Player Name: Eric Bledsoe

School: Kentucky

Height/Weight: 6’1/190

NBA Position: Point Guard/Shooting Guard

Projected Draft Range: Late First Round

Overview: Even with high school phenoms like John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, and Daniel Orton headed to Lexington back in the fall of 2009, Eric Bledsoe was immediately liked by Kentucky fans.  He was going to give their beloved team something they hadn’t had in a while — a designated shooter.  Though Bledsoe was primarily a point guard in high school with reliable handle, he was also known as more than just a serviceable shooter from distance, a combination Wildcat fans craved at the time, especially considering the poor marksmanship and turnover-prone nature of Wildcat backcourts that preceded the Wall/Bledsoe duo.  As if that wasn’t enough, even though Wall didn’t commit until later, Bledsoe won over many card-carrying Big Blue Nation members by expressing his desire to return Kentucky to hoops prominence, proclaiming on his signing day that he and his fellow recruits were coming to Lexington to “get shit right.”  Playing out of position for almost every minute of his only college season, he gave the Wildcats what they expected — a good shooter who also provided a second point guard option, as well as a better-than-expected penetrator and creator.  He shot 38% from beyond the arc, but his streaky nature meant defenses had to stay close to him, which enabled him to utilize his blistering first step to rocket past defenders.

If he can motivate himself to improve on the defensive end, his value will increase during his early years in the league.

Will Translate to the NBA: Bledsoe’s a rock.  He has tremendous upper body strength and he’s great at using it to blaze a path to the hoop, absorb contact, and still score.  He’s quick in every direction, including straight up off the floor, and doesn’t lose much of that pace even when he has the ball.  He’s shown that he can play both point guard and shooting guard at the elite college level, so the team that drafts him will feel like they’re getting a skill set that spans the job descriptions of two different positions.  He definitely possesses a shooter’s mentality, and shows no fear in firing away even if he misses his first few attempts.

Needs Work: Bledsoe is streaky from long range, and on off-nights he would occasionally sulk, resulting in less production, more turnovers, and extended bench minutes.  Though he started the season as a capable defender, this is an aspect of his game that actually got worse as the year progressed.  His quickness should translate quite easily to the defensive side, so the fact that he went backwards in this area points to the fact that it’s a matter of motivation, and that won’t do in the NBA.  Despite his upper body strength, he’s still just 6’1, and that underscores the need for him to get his head right as far as defense is concerned and become a good close-up defender.  Finally, even though he’s got great springs, he doesn’t get a lot of elevation off the ground on his jumper, and he could use that at his height.

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Over the course of the next month until the NBA Draft on June 24, RTC will be rolling out comprehensive profiles of the 30-35 collegians we feel have the best chance to hear their names called by David Stern in the first round that night.  There won’t be any particular order to the list, but you can scroll back through all the finished profiles by clicking here.

Player Name: DeMarcus Cousins

School: Kentucky

Height/Weight: 6’11/290

NBA Position: Power Forward

Projected Draft Range: Early to Mid Lottery

Overview: DeMarcus Cousins showed up at Kentucky as part of the Calipari Revolution of 2009 as the man who was supposed to do for the Wildcat frontcourt what John Wall was projected to do for the back.  High expectations, indeed, but the man they call “Boogie” actually lived up to them.  At various points in the year Cousins was statistically the most efficient player in the country, and was a tenth of a rebound away from averaging a double-double (15.1 PPG and 9.9 RPG) for his only season in Wildcat blue.  In the early part of Kentucky’s SEC campaign, Cousins put up 11 double-doubles in one 13-game sample, including a string of seven in a row, totalling an impressive 20 on the year.  He may have developed a reputation as a “hothead” or “wildcard” — two terms long in vogue to describe him — but Cousins seemed to enjoy such descriptions and used that characterization to his advantage, especially when using his imposing frame to gobble up rebounds or punish rims with put-backs.  Throughout the season, he showed he possessed the skill to finish on the inside with authority as well as the ability to drill a jumper out to about 15 feet.  He may have only been in Lexington for one year, but his hard work, production, openness with the fans, and personality have endeared him to Wildcat supporters to the point where he’ll be an icon in Lexington for decades to come.  His tip-in at the buzzer against Mississippi State that put the SEC Tournament Final into overtime (which Kentucky eventually won) may represent the pinnacle of one terrific year in the Bluegrass — one that earned him SEC Freshman of the Year honors.

Beats by Boogie: The stratosphere's the limit, given the right fit.

Will Translate to the NBA: Cousins’ knack for vacuuming the ball off the glass is his greatest NBA-ready skill right now.  It’ll especially serve him well on the offensive end, as he’s superb at snagging garbage buckets off missed shots by his teammates.  Even though he only averaged an assist per game at UK, he’s a better passer than many people will remember, especially on the interior.  And let’s face it, he wasn’t exactly asked to distribute the ball a lot (Kentucky had another guy doing that).  The intensity and emotion that he brings to the court need no adjustment, and the right setting in terms of teammates and coaching staff could help him better focus that drive into improving the areas in which he needs to gain some ground.  He won’t jump out of the gym, but he’s happy going body-to-body with the other team’s biggest player on defense and has surprisingly good timing in terms of shot-blocking, and led his Wildcat squad in that category (1.8 BPG).  Finally, though Cousins is known primarily for his finishing ability close to the rim, he often showed a turn-around jumper and a fade-away of impressive accuracy, both of which he’ll need.

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It’s being reported everywhere, now, that Tom Izzo is turning down the head coaching job offered by the Cleveland Cavaliers and staying in East Lansing as coach of the Spartans.  Chris Broussard stated on ESPN moments ago that , in addition to Izzo’s love of coaching at Michigan State, Izzo is not taking the position in Cleveland largely because he “couldn’t get assurance from LeBron James that LeBron would be back in Cleveland,” but noted that this is due to lack of contact between the two, not because LeBron left Izzo with doubts after a conversation.  By all accounts, such a conversation never happened.

A Spartan for life -- his words.

Spartan fans had reason to be nervous just before the reports began to surface that Izzo was staying;  his future still uncertain, he called a team meeting before confirming he was going to remain as the Michigan State coach, a sequence of events that one could have taken to mean that he was about to accept the job with the Cavs.  This now can only mean that he simply wanted to first alert his players to the good news as any responsible coach would do, and not have them receive it via television or tweet.

That’s why it’s good for college basketball that this man sticks in East Lansing.  Anyone who remembers how he struggled to keep his composure when asked in a post-game interview about the welfare of Kalin Lucas after Lucas tore his Achilles’ tendon knows how much he cares about his players off the court as much as on it (that’s just one example).  His players love him, he’s polite, affable, even self-effacing, as evidenced by the fact that he apologized for taking so long to come to a decision about this job offer.  Clevelanders certainly can’t be too mad at him, since he included in his statements an entreaty that LeBron hang around as a Cavalier.

More on this later this evening from our man out west, but ESPN and several other outlets are now reporting that Texas (and evidently Texas A&M, as well) has officially turned down the Pac-10 and will stay in the Big 12, a conference whose headquarters just outside of Dallas had vultures circling over it as recently as yesterday.

Now that Texas is staying, it seems like conference realignment has been a lot of flirting and -- as far as college hoops fans are concerned -- minimal action of any importance.

If the current reports are true, with Nebraska headed to the Big Ten, Colorado moving to the Pac-10, and Boise State bolting to the Mountain West, the biggest college basketball-relevant change of conference might be — who would have guessed? — Utah, expected to join the Pac-10 at any moment.  Indeed, across all sports, it might just be the case that all of this conference realignment talk and the predicted death of leagues might end up just being like a bachelorette party that got a little out of hand:  some quick decisions that led to a couple of broken relationships, and some very serious flirting by the others that almost led somewhere dangerous.  But, in the end, everyone wound up back home where they belong.

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Mountain West conferences and an occasional contributor.

Following yesterday’s whirlwind of activity surrounding the Big Ten, Pac-10 and Big 12, today was a relatively mild day. All that happened, was, you know, the first actual confirmed move of a school from a conference to another, as Colorado and the Pac-10 announced their agreement to have the Buffaloes begin play in the Pac-10 conference beginning in the 2012 academic calendar. While rumors continue to fly that five additional Big 12 teams will be invited to join the Pac-10 (at least that’s still the name of the conference right now) and that Nebraska and the Big Ten will formally announce their union tomorrow, the Colorado move is still the only move that is signed, sealed, delivered and announced.

Seen here in their heyday, the Bigtwelveosaur and Bigeastosaurus were blown into extinction by the conference realignment asteroid of 2010.

Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott also mentioned on Thursday that his conference will not necessarily add any more teams after Colorado, a comment that is seen as little more than a smokescreen before further announcements come.

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USC received the official response from the NCAA regarding penalties to the men’s basketball team.  Jeff Goodman from FoxSports.com posted a good succinct rundown of USC’s self-imposed penalties plus what the NCAA added today.  The penalties as described below are paraphrased from his article, but you should check out his article by clicking the link above.

Was it worth it?

Here is how USC stuck it to itself in the middle of last season:

• They ditched one scholarship from last year and this upcoming season,
• They reduced by one the number of coaches who could hit the road recruiting,
• Took 20 days off their allowed recruiting time this year,
• Vacated (a concept we hate) any wins in which O.J. Mayo played,
• Gave back just over $200,000 they earned by being in the 2008 NCAA Tournament,
• Let three kids out of their LOIs for the next season, and
• Took a year off from both the Pac-10 and NCAA Tournaments.

More on that last one in a bit.  Here’s what the NCAA tacked on as far as basketball penalties today:

• Four years of probation. It starts today, and it ends in exactly 1,461 days on June 9, 2014.  In other words, the NCAA  acknowledges you were bad.  It added some penalties.  But if you screw up any time in the next four years, they’re really going to be ticked.
• Vacate all those post-season wins from the 2007-2008 season. USC won their first game in the Pac-10 tourney that year over Arizona State, then lost to UCLA.  Then, as a 6-seed, they lost to #11 Kansas State in the NCAA Tournament first round.  Total penalty there?  One win. Crippling.
• Hold the Mayo.  USC must “disassociate” itself from O.J. Mayo and the guy who provided illegal benefits to Mayo, Rodney Guillory.  USC can’t take any donated money from him, can’t have him helping with recruiting, can’t have him do anything on behalf of the school.  That was probably happening anyway.  We can’t imagine that USC would have him out trumpeting the virtues of USC basketball.
• If you’re not part of the team, get out. “Non-university personnel” can’t fly on charters, donate money, help with camps, go to practices, or hang out in the locker room during/after games.

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In less than 48 hours, our televisions will be taken over by the biggest sporting event the world has to offer.  Your TweetDeck (or whatever Twitter application you use) will be lousy with friends, celebrities, and sportswriters tweeting about it.  Your Facebook friends will be centering their status updates about it.  And, for the next five weeks, when you walk into your favorite sports bars, as you peer at the flat-screens you’ll notice an increased presence of a game to which you might not be accustomed.

It’s World Cup time.

Like the Olympics and the Fields Medal, this is an every-four-year event.  It pits nation against nation in the sport that still stirs up the most passion among its fans on a worldwide scale.  Imagine if we only got one NCAA Tournament every four years.  Well, this is the one summer in four that soccer (the word we’ll use for this article, though we’re aware that most of the world calls it football) lovers get to enjoy their chance to crown a champion.  If you follow RTC on Twitter (if you don’t, shame on you, and go click our logo at right), you’ve probably been impressed by our occasional tweet about other sports or even current events.  It’s not exactly a long limb we’d be going out on for us to assume that if you’re a college basketball fan, you’ve probably got an interest in other sports, too — though international soccer might not be one of them.

Want to talk to her? Know your World Cup. Yeah, we thought that'd keep you reading.

Worry not, our fellow college hoopheads.  We’ve got you covered.  We want you to be able to hang in those conversations at those sports pubs.  We want you to be able to approach that lovely blonde bespectacled German girl wearing her Deutschland jersey in the supermarket (this actually happened to us a week ago).  We want you to impress your friends with your world vision and increased overall sports knowledge.  You think those kids in the stands at Duke or Xavier or Utah State are both well-prepared and berserk?  Wait until you hear the crowd at a World Cup soccer match.  We want you to enjoy that vital aspect of it all, as well.  We’re by no means experts on the subject, but to those ends, we give you — trumpet flourish — Rush The Court’s College Basketball Fan’s Guide to Watching the World Cup.

If this England squad is like Kentucky, then Wayne Rooney is their John Wall.

THE TEAMS

First, let’s list some of the participating  teams and define those squads in terms familiar to college hoop fans.  As you’ll see, by the way, national soccer teams have some of the best nicknames you’ll ever hear.  The best?  Cameroon.  The Indomitable Lions.  I mean, COME ON…

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We’ve been wondering how RTC could pay tribute to John Wooden besides the photo we posted on the day he died along with one of our favorite quotes of his, a maxim we felt summed up the heart of the man…if a single quote can accomplish such a thing.  We’re a few guys in our late 20s and 30s, which means Mr. Wooden was done coaching by the time we were small children — and not even born, in one case.  None of us ever had the chance to meet him later on in life.  There’s no matching the tributes that have come from his players, friends, and professional writers who knew him.  Therefore, while we’re certainly in awe of who he was and what he meant to the game, and that he’s considered a hero even by people we consider heroes, for us to pontificate on his life would be more of an insult than a tribute.  The best that guys like us can do is to assist in his immortality by continuing to tell future generations of fans what he stood for, and to continue as fans of the sport knowing that a lot of what’s good about our game, even to this day, is because of him.  Considering all the tributes and anecdotes over the past few days, we also offer our respects by dedicating our day-starting feature to him this morning.  The regular Morning Five will return tomorrow, but for today, here’s the Wooden Five — a collection of five of our favorite links/stories about Coach Wooden.

1. Integrity, anyone?  In 1947, while at Indiana State, Coach Wooden refused to take his team to the NAIA tournament for which they had qualified.  When you read why, you’ll see what people have been talking about when they refer to him as a man of “timeless principles.”

2. Former player Bill Sweek (UCLA ’69) told The Sporting News about a time when he bucked his coach, immediately regretted it (and had to face a little fire from the man), and how Wooden’s forgiveness helped turn it into a teaching moment for the good of the entire team.

3. We’ve always loved that story — both versions of it —  about Bill Walton’s challenge of Coach Wooden’s team tonsorial policies.  One part of the story that’s not often mentioned is that after Walton rushed to comply, he made it back to the end of practice that very same day.

4. Can you imagine Wooden coaching anywhere else but UCLA (and Indiana State)?  It’s spooky to think about how a snowstorm and 30 minutes of Minnesota reticence changed so many lives.  Even though he preferred the position with the Gophers, he had already given UCLA his word.  We think it worked out.

5. No notes.  No nonsense.  No further introduction needed:

(Not that we condone such behavior.)

Within the last hour, the AP released a report citing a source who claims that Michigan State’s legendary Tom Izzo has been in talks with the fine folks from the Cleveland Cavaliers — namely, owner Dan Gilbert, who’s a Michigan State alumnus — about the terms of a possible contract to coach the Cavs, if Izzo should feel so inclined.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Monday that such talks centered around a five year deal worth $6 million a year.  Even the John Calipari-to-the-NBA rumors didn’t get this far.

If he's talking, Cavalier fans are smiling. (G. Shamus/Getty)

If this is true, Cavalier fans should take heart.  It’s doubtful that Izzo would even be involved in such a discussion if he wasn’t positive that LeBron James was returning to Cleveland.  Even if Izzo doesn’t sign on the dotted line, Cavs supporters are probably breathing a little easier (by the way, the LeBron-O-Meter on that above link is great), not to mention that the New York Post‘s Peter Vecsey is reporting that he has an insider with knowledge of a three-year contract being finalized for LeBron.