We don’t often wander into the territory of women’s college basketball. In the past, it’s taken some landmark occurrence — say, a coach reaching one of those round-number milestone games, or some ridiculous play, or an awesome fight may have gotten a mention in the Morning 5. This isn’t really because of any animosity or lack of respect toward the women’s game. It’s simply not what we cover. You could say the same thing for the men’s game in Division II or III. It’s not what our editors and correspondents all have in common. Only the most extremely newsworthy circumstances would result in a mention around here.

Unfortunately, something extremely newsworthy happened yesterday.

Summitt's Greatest Coaching Lesson Is Yet To Come

By now, you’ve heard the news that Tennessee coaching legend Pat Summitt has been diagnosed with a disease called early-onset dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. There’s a good chance you’ve read at least one or two of the glowing articles about Summitt, all unquestionably well-founded in their praise and their rememberances of her career. Other than to mention that surreal number of career wins and preposterous-looking record — that’d be 1,071-199 and counting (on which more in a moment), an 84.3% win rate — we will not cover that well-documented ground here. We’re not going to use this woman being diagnosed with a cruel disease as a reason to start talking about women’s college basketball or what she’s meant to that game like we’ve been secretly following it all along as some sort of afterthought. We all know she’s a legend, a title she’s earned regardless of her gender or that of the athletes she coaches. Everyone’s aware of how she belongs in the discussion, if not carved into the theoretical rock, of possible candidates for a basketball coaches’ Mount Rushmore, if one were ever to be constructed. She needs our approval about as much as she needs a flat tire or an IRS audit.

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The new APR rule is a fact. 930 Or Bust is happening. So let’s talk about it.

On the ESPN blog last week, Diamond Leung, a gentleman we’re happy to file under Official Friend Of RTC, posted an article in which he listed the 12 teams that would not have been eligible to compete if the new APR standard had been applied to the 2011 NCAA Tournament. #1-seed Ohio State? Watching from home. Kawhi Leonard and San Diego State? Sorry, they’d have been studying for finals and not playing basketball. Leung also noted how eventual champion Connecticut would not be invited to the 2012 edition to defend its title since, according to the latest numbers, over the 2006-07 to 2009-10 academic periods the Huskies managed an APR of just 893. They could go undefeated throughout the entire 2011-12 season and it wouldn’t matter. In that scenario they’d win as many NCAA Tournament games as Centenary.

Bill Carmody and Northwestern (18-13) May Have Been Dancing Last Year, Had the New APR Rule Been In Play

Mr. Leung’s article got us thinking: if there would have been 12 fewer teams in the Dance last March, who would have replaced them? Among the unlucky 12, seven were automatic qualifiers through conference tournament titles and five were at-large entries. A quick examination of who would have replaced the disqualified teams shows how putting a binary, all-or-nothing, you’re-in-or-you’re out emphasis on a specific number would have affected the Tournament; as you’ll see, the reverberations go deeper than just the aforementioned 12 teams.

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1. On July 23, Preston Anderson, a former BYU student and current basketball player for Hartnell College in Salinas, California, jumped on his motorcycle at five o’clock in the morning and drove away from his apartment, his roommates assuming he was headed off to a morning workout. Until three days ago, Anderson’s whereabouts have remained a total mystery. He left his cell phone behind and has contacted none of his family or friends. A credit card transaction at a hotel in Corozal, Belize from August 4 — about which his family learned on Tuesday — is the only way any of them know he’s still alive. Hotel staff confirmed that the guest/cardholder was a 6’9” American, same as Anderson. Preston’s father Corey assumes his son is en route to South America, given the current travel vector. We don’t cover a lot of community college basketball around here, but this has sort of a Chris McCandless vibe about it, only more tropical. We hope it ends better, with more of a Ewan McGregor/Charley Boorman-esque resolution.
2. In the title to his article yesterday, Sporting News‘ Mike DeCourcy describes the changes the NCAA wants to make to college athletics as “a mixed bag of genius and idiocy.” Contained within is a fine summary of the new provisions the NCAA wants to implement, not to mention a tasty little UCLA dig. Have to say, here…we’ve been fans of the idea of tougher punishments for a long time; currently, the risks of cheating just don’t sufficiently outweigh the possible benefits, and while no set of rules can eradicate all the rascals, cranking up punishments could at long last have presumptive rule-breakers wondering if it’s really worth it. [Ed. Note: 3 of 5 days of M5 goodness for MD this week! Don’t think any writer has ever had that many in a M-F cycle. And MD and Luke Winn continue to battle for the all-time lead.]
3. Can you believe that Facebook and Twitter now comprise 50% of recruiting interactions between recruiters and prospects? It is without question the best way for coaches to make contact with players nowadays, especially since the latter group seems reluctant to even pick up or open a ringing cell phone. Before you write that off to an alleged aloofness among high school recruits, first consider (as Pete Thamel of the New York Times did in his article from Tuesday) the case of Nerlens Noel, a top prospect who attends a prep school in New Hampshire. He has one hour of free time a day. You think he’s going to spend it all on his phone talking to coaches giving him their sales pitches? He says of Facebook: “It’s a great way to contact me.” He’s not alone.
4. We hope that Chris Webber, Ray Jackson, and Juwan Howard are somewhere laying low and playing it cool right now, since the fates are evidently cracking down on the once-Fab Five. And by the fates, we mean the cops. Jalen Rose is halfway through a 20-day stretch in the pokey after pleading guilty to DUI, and now Jimmy King has been arrested and housed in the same facility (actually, we assume he’s out on bail by now) for failure to pay over $17,000 in child support. As if that wasn’t bad enough, King was arrested on his 38th birthday at a church after authorities saw his name on a basketball camp the church was holding. Whew.
5. SI.com’s Luke Winn is back with another crop of sophomores likely up for big seasons as predicted by his Breakout Sophomore Formula. In addition to his usual clever and well-evidenced insights, two things in particular that we like about this offering from Winn are 1) the formula is designed to avoid insulting your intelligence by making obvious picks like, say, Jared Sullinger or Jeremy Lamb, and 2) Winn takes the time to examine how last year’s prognostications did. In doing so here, he also got in one of the great phrases we’ve seen in any sports article in some time: “libidinous malcontents.” You should already want to do so, but if that doesn’t make you want to click on the above link and check the article out for yourself, nothing will.

ESPN released their GameDay lineup for the 2011-12 college basketball season earlier today. As Dana O’Neil points out, the list includes five new stops out of eight games. It starts on January 14 and will (for the most part) resume the previous format, meaning an hour broadcast on ESPNU at 10 AM ET followed by a second hour on ESPN at 11 AM ET, then the 8 PM ET show before the feature game tips off at 9. The January 14 visit to Tallahassee is for a 2 PM North Carolina at Florida State game, so obviously there’s no nighttime show for that one.

Prepare Yourselves, GameDay Sites, For the Great Bilas Cometh Soon

Here’s the list in full:

• January 14, Tallahassee FL — North Carolina at Florida State
• January 21, Pittsburgh PA — Louisville at Pittsburgh
• January 28, Tucson AZ — Washington at Arizona
• February 4, Columbia MO — Kansas at Missouri
• February 11, Nashville TN — Kentucky at Vanderbilt
• February 18, Ann Arbor MI — Ohio State at Michigan
• February 25, Storrs, CT — Syracuse at Connecticut
• March 3, Durham NC or Lawrence KS — UNC at Duke (7 PM) or Texas at Kansas (9 PM)

A solid list, we think. We respect GameDay’s desire to visit new places. There’s pretty good distribution, as well; you’d get a good scattering of pins on a map of those games. A couple of questions, though:

Why is the last game a “flex” game? If UNC-Duke is listed as an option, there can’t be much of a chance that they’d not go with that game. They’ve had UNC-Duke as the GameDay choice in every even-numbered year they’ve done this. We would have loved to have seen this as a double-header, even if they didn’t designate Texas-Kansas as the feature game. Hey, better yet, go with two (*gasp!*) GameDay crews and have face-offs between the fans at Phog and those at Cameron, i.e. who’s crazier/louder, best signs, and so on.

No surprise here, but there’s not a single mid-major among those squads (either home or away), meaning that in its eight-year existence, Rece Davis and company will have only been to two mid-major spots — Gonzaga in 2006 and 2009, and Southern Illinois in 2008 — and featured just three mid-major teams (SIU played Creighton). Certainly Butler, with its two consecutive appearances in the title game, deserves a visit from Erin and the fellas (except for a certain former Indiana coach, most likely), right? Then again, as cozy as Hinkle Fieldhouse is, we don’t know if it could contain the magnetic field of smoothness that would theoretically be generated by having the hairstyles of Davis, Jay Bilas, and Brad Stevens within 15 feet of each other. Better safe than sorry.

1. Andre Drummond announced his “final five” list of considered colleges yesterday, putting to rest the question about his intentions to either go to college in the next couple of weeks or attend prep school for another year (our summary from yesterday). He will do the latter, which means while one round of speculation has ended, another has begun. Drummond has graduated from high school, so another year of prep school would put him a year out from his graduating class, meaning he could make himself eligible for the 2012 NBA Draft. If he decides ever to attend college, his five-school shortlist has a decidedly Big East flavor, save one. In ESPNU’s updated recruiting rankings for 2012, he now occupies the #2 spot, behind only Shabazz Muhammad.
2. Any fan of college basketball should read Jeff Goodman’s examination of the big bad class of 2002 and how things are going for them now, but if you are a supposed big-shot high school baller and you are reading this, you definitely need to stop what you’re doing right now and check it out. Shows what can happen to you if you start believing all the hype. We’re glad that so many of them have found ways to be happy whether playing basketball or not, but it also sounds like there are a couple of fellows from that class still blaming everyone else except themselves for their lack of NBA success.
3. Former Tennessee assistant Tony Jones has claimed that the school’s legal counsel instructed him and the rest of the UT staff, including head coach Bruce Pearl, not to be totally open with NCAA officials during the agency’s probe into the program last summer. It should be noted that this, in and of itself, isn’t as sinister as it sounds; clients are almost always told by their attorneys only to answer the questions asked of them and not to, er, volunteer any extra information. That’s how Jones describes the directive from UT’s counsel. In the linked article, he gives an example of a question he was asked during the investigation, along with his response, so we’ll let you decide if he did what he was told or if there’s anything wrong with his answer.
4. NCAA prez Mark Emmert is a fan of restricting the post-season opportunities of teams that don’t perform up to par academically. He advocates a raising of the minimum team Academic Progress Rate score from 925 to 930, as well as possibly keeping teams caught under it out of the NCAA Tournament. It sounds interesting, but we’re wondering how such a provision would weigh on the minds of high school prospects when it came time to narrow down their school lists. Some schools, as we all know, are harder than others.
5. It was a good news/bad news day for Wake Forest. The bad news came in the form of the arrest of sophomore forward Melvin Tabb (1.6 PPG, 2.0 RPG last season) on a trio of charges including felony breaking and entering from an incident that happened on the Wake campus back in June. Between suspensions and injuries, Tabb played in just 14 of the Deacs’ games last season, but he’ll play in none this year; head coach Jeff Bzdelik has booted Tabb from the team. What struck us as good news for Wake, though, was the hire of former WFU stud Randolph Childress as an assistant to the AD. That can only mean the little jewel below will be replayed and acted out during practices numerous times, and you couldn’t really blame them. It’s just too funny not to show on the occasion of Childress’ return to Wake, so here you go (sorry, Jeff McInnis fans):

1. So many teams are either on or about to go on international trips, so the question that logically follows is…how much do they really help? Our stance has always been that any benefit is more a result of the broadening of minds and the improved camaraderie that international travel usually entails, and the ten days of extra practice time don’t hurt either. Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy took a look at how much these trips help in terms of the effect on a squad’s record from one season to the next. We think the result might surprise you.
2. Speaking of international trips, incoming Duke freshman Quinn Cook will be making the trip to China with his teammates this weekend, but he won’t be playing in any of the games. Cook played his senior year of high school with strained ligaments in his right knee, and Mike Krzyzewski doesn’t think Cook has had enough time to get himself fully fit for the games in China. He’s expected to be ready for preseason practices, but this delay puts Cook behind in the battle for minutes within that loaded platoon of  Blue Devil guards.
3. Wasn’t it just a couple years ago that people were talking about how Rick Pitino looked like he had aged several years in just a few months, that rumors swirled about his health and, of course, how long it would therefore be before he left his post as Head Cardinal? The new five-year extension he just signed at Louisville ought to quell any remaining speculation on such matters. That white suit will continue to make its appearance during so-called white-out games through the 2017 season, so get used to it if you’re not already. Pitino detractors will be quick to point out that just because he signs doesn’t mean he’ll stay. We’d respond that if you think that’s exclusive to Rick Pitino, you’re nuts.
4. Mr. Basketball in the state of Illinois for 2009-10. McDonald’s All-American. Promising Illini freshman. Former Illinois guard Jereme Richmond probably longs for the days when such terms were used to describe him, and it was only about a year ago. Now, after a freshman season filled with disappointing play, a couple of suspensions, and a bad decision to leave school for the NBA Draft (unsuccessfully) after his single campaign, Richmond currently sits in a Lake County, Illinois jail on a weapons charge, among several others, after threatening a 17-year old girl. The Chicago Tribune has the full details.
5. An official for the town described last year’s regional in Newark as “a catalytic event.” That appears an apt description, since the three East region games there produced $6.3 million for the local economy, and that doesn’t include transportation costs, ticket sales, or parking. That amount wasn’t all due to the RTC correspondent’s food and (mostly) beverage bill, but was rather comprised by $1.5 million in hotel room costs and the remaining $4.8 million covering restaurant bills and merchandise. Not a big surprise, when you think back to it. If you want to provide a jolt to your local economy, you’d want four fanbases that travel well and spend even better, right? Last year’s Newark regional: Ohio State, Kentucky, Marquette, and North Carolina.

As the saying goes, Americans love a winner, but they also love a loser. The fellows who played for Caltech men’s basketball team from 1996 to 2007 are anything but “losers” — they have or will have degrees from Caltech, folks — but they did lose a lot of basketball games. In that interval, the Beavers went completely unvictorious, dropping 207 straight games against their Division III opponents before beating Bard College in January 2007. Just this past February, Caltech ended a 26-year/310-game conference winless streak, knocking off Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference foes Occidental College. They even made a movie about the Beavers’ 2005-06 season and their quest to end those streaks; the 2007 documentary film Quantum Hoops isn’t available on Netflix, but it’s readily accessible through Amazon.

The Caltech Story, In Whatever Form, May Be Heading To More And Bigger Screens (Image: Gary Friedman/LA Times)

It looks like Disney and Ben Stiller are hoping you’ll still love these so-called losers enough to part with a little of your hard-earned. [Ed. Note: again, it feels odd to type “losers,” since there are probably dudes on that team who invented one or more of the electronic gadgets I’m reading or listening to music through at this very moment, and any of them could hack and destroy our site in eight seconds with an old Timex Sinclair and a dial-up land line.] If they get their way, you’ll be seeing a fictionalized comedy re-make of Quantum Hoops in theatres soon. Stiller’s production company is evidently preparing the new version, though no details have been released regarding casting or a director. Stiller would have to shave his head to play head coach (at the time) Roy Dow; if they’re going to fictionalize this thing, though, that’s probably a detail they’ll overlook.

By the way, the student body RTC’d after the win in February that broke the conference losing streak, obviously one of the most justified RTCs ever. So, why wait for a fictionalized account of the 2006 team when you can see the real thing from last year’s squad right now?…

1. It looks like you’ll have to go the rest of your life without any new rhymes from Tennessee senior forward Renaldo Woolridge, or at least until he decides to make his (inevitable) comeback. Going by Swiperboy as far as his rap, er, career is concerned, Woolridge has decided to pull the plug on his mic because he doesn’t get why other, lesser-talented rappers have achieved record deals while he remains unsigned, a common lament among countless rappers, garage bands, prog rockers, et al. We’ve been asking questions about the rules on this for a long time, by the way, without a satisfactory reply. Woolridge (1.4 PPG, 1.6 RPG, 0.5 APG last season) will be one of only two UT seniors in the upcoming season.
2. “I look into the hills, whence comes my help,” was a scripture Adolph Rupp once quoted regarding his in-state recruits who eventually became wearers of the Kentucky blue. One former Wildcat who knows something about coming from the hills is Richie Farmer, a sharpshooting high school legend from the middle of nowhere in the 1980s who ended up not just donning the UK uniform, but found himself in the spring of 1992 playing in what most people still feel is the greatest college basketball game ever played.  RTC alum Josh Weill takes an enjoyable look back and also has the latest on this man whose name will always be associated with bluegrass basketball legend more than the bumpy political career that followed his time in Lexington.
3. Andre Drummond. The top recruit in the 2012 high school class. Or is it 2011? Is he staying or going? Or staying in high school but going elsewhere? Drummond says he could enroll in college this year, but has considered staying in prep school another year. His coach says probably not. What’s going on, here? Is Drummond planning to go to prep school for another year and then enter the NBA Draft by the age limit rule? Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy examines the Drummond question and explains why that plan would certainly not be in the best interests of the young man.
4. Considering the last two seasons, we almost don’t want to say anything out loud or write it anywhere on this site, lest something bad happen and we lose all of our Purdue readers, not to mention the chance to watch the young man play again…but Robbie Hummel is good to go. In case you missed his tweet on Friday, Hummel claims that he “passed all his tests.” If you’re not following him, that link takes you to his account, so now you’re out of excuses. How he comes back will be one of the most intriguing storylines of the early part of the 2011-12 season.
5. LSU’s Matt Derenbecker would have been a sophomore for the Tigers this year, but, as he explained to NOLA.com, he will be withdrawing from LSU immediately to “address some personal matters.” Derenbecker played in all 32 of the Tigers’ games last season and averaged a pretty healthy 22.6 minutes per contest, putting up 6.5 PPG and 2.1 RPG. He was a two-time high school POY in Louisiana, and despite some growing pains as a freshman, we (and probably many LSU fans) were looking forward to seeing how his game progressed. Whatever he’s going through, we hope he comes out fine on the other end and is back playing basketball somewhere soon.

1. John Pelphrey’s doing fine, thanks, and he appreciates your asking. The firing from Arkansas still stings a little, but he’s back at Florida as an assistant under Billy Donovan, a position he’s held before to considerable acclaim. While he seems happy to be back in a familiar place doing a job he loves, being a head coach again at a “network conference” school is something he won’t (and shouldn’t) allow to fall off his radar. We like following the career arcs of coaches in situations similar to the one Pelphrey’s in right now, to see how and where they bounce back.
2. Last week, SI.com’s Luke Winn stepped up with yet another tour de force, this time an in-depth examination of the “commitment behaviors” of players listed as top-100 recruits in the recruiting rankings. Winn and his staff put some serious time into this investigation, so we don’t want to give away all of his findings, but his data revealed — and this is just one interesting factoid among many in the article — that kids who transferred high schools were almost twice as likely to eventually back out of a college commitment. Fascinating stuff here in the midst of these days of extreme college basketball “fickleness,” as Winn describes it.
3. It’s only a matter of time until those rudimentary free markets and the walls at, say, People’s Basketball Collective #17 are awash with Duke merchandise and photos of the inestimable Mike Krzyzewski, if they aren’t already. We hope they’ve packed their guidebooks and downloaded those vocal translator apps, because the Blue Devils are off to China next weekend with a little side jaunt to Dubai thrown in there, too. Not only will the 13-day trip help Coach K see how his five new incoming frosh fit in with his returning charges, but, as Krzyzewski says, it also helps forward their “initiative to become a global entity.” Wait, you mean…they weren’t one?
4. Last month, Notre Dame incoming freshman Eric Katenda was in Washington DC playing a pick-up game. He went up for a rebound, came down, and an opposing player went for the ball, but hit Katenda in the left eye…severing his optic nerve. While there’s plenty of research out there aimed at regenerating optic nerve tissue after it’s been cut, medical science isn’t far enough along right now to help Katenda regain his vision in that eye, so his college basketball career is already in question and he hasn’t even fully enrolled yet. We hate hearing things like this and we can’t imagine the disappointment Eric is feeling, but we were happy to read that Notre Dame still plans to honor the young man’s scholarship, whatever happens.
5. Herb Magee has amassed 922 wins in his coaching career, ALL at Philadelphia University, and as of 48 hours ago he assumed his rightful place in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. We’re sure you’ve already heard of Coach Magee and his coaching excellence, and how he’s known as The Shot Doctor. But that’s not just because he’s good at helping others with their form from distance. In his day, Magee could — actually, he still can — make it rain. He scored 2,235 points in his career (that’s 24.0 PPG) and was known as Baby Jesus, a nickname you don’t earn in Philly unless you deserve it. If he’d have had the three-point line, his numbers would have been even more impressive. The Philadelphia Inquirer did a great piece on Magee and his shooting prowess a day ahead of his HOF induction, and we recommend it highly. We love how Magee’s friends rib him about how his #4 jersey that hangs in the gym’s rafters isn’t so much his jersey number as it is his career assist total. Outstanding.

Earlier today, John Calipari was reported to have made the following comment on a Memphis radio show:

Police each other, give it to league commissioners and schools to deal with. If it goes beyond that, there’s a board there that’s ready to deal with it. (…) You’ve got coaches being fired over phone calls and text messages. Some. Other guys can make phone calls and it’s not that big a deal.

Now, we admit we didn’t hear the interview, let alone the segment that produced the above quote. We heard it first in the audio that’s embedded in the original story at CBS’ college basketball blog. We can’t tell you what the interviewer asked Calipari that prompted that answer. The audio also has the rest of Calipari’s response (there’s a little bit more after the quoted section), which is more on how he’d change how college basketball is policed. Taken by itself, the quote above could easily be construed as a little jab at Mike Krzyzewski, given the alleged minor violation Coach K may have committed during the July recruiting period wherein he supposedly communicated with a recruit and shouldn’t have. That’s a typical reaction, since that incident is fresh in the collective hoophead mind.

Even If It Was a Jab, What's More Important Is...Was What He Said True?

If you listen to the rest of the audio, however, in the full context it sounds like Calipari is referring to a larger problem in the profession — wouldn’t it be a safe assumption that if the world knows about Krzyzewski’s possible mistake that John Calipari knows other coaches who have done the same thing but haven’t been fired for it? — as opposed to intentionally getting in a dig against one guy. At worst, if it’s a dig, it’s an unintentional one. We’re not saying Calipari or any coach is above such a thing, but frankly it just doesn’t sound like he’s trying to zing one person when you listen to the available audio.

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