We are rounding out our ACC Must-Follow List for the year with Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest in this post. If there are any other Twitter accounts that you think should be included, send us a tweet @rtcACC or leave a message in the comments section below.

For the rest of our Must-Follow List, check out the rest of our posts for this year. Note that these will release throughout the day on Thursday.

Virginia

Tony Bennett doesn’t have a Twitter account, but there are some good parodies (Getty Images)

• @UVAMensHoops – Official Twitter account of Virginia’s men’s basketball team
• @JeffWhiteUVa – Jeff White, Director of News Content for official Virginia team site
• @WhiteysWorld365 – Whitelaw Reid, Staff Writer, Virginia Magazine (Official Alumni Magazine)

Players

• Justice Bartley – @justicebartley2
• Trevon Gross, Jr. – @Sir_Trey
• Kyle Guy – @kylejguy5
• De’Andre Hunter – @Dr_Dre14
• Ty Jerome – @tyjerome_
• Jeff Jones – @Jeff_r_Jones
• Austin Nichols – @a_nichols33
• London Perrantes – @London_Tyus
• Jarred Reuter – @JarredReuter22
• Jack Salt – @JackSalt33
• Marial Shayok – @supermarial03
• Darius Thompson – @dthomp15
• Isaiah Wilkins – @IsaiahWilkins21

Bloggers and Beat Writers

• @TheUVAFool – Streaking the Lawn, independent site covering Virginia athletics
• @cavalierinsider – Cavalier Insider, coverage of Virginia athletics from The Daily Progress
• @ARamspacher – Andrew Ramspacher, Virginia athletics beat writer for The Daily Progress
• @JerryRatcliffe – Jerry Ratcliffe, columnist on Virginia athletics and the ACC for The Daily Progress
• @DoughtySports – Douglas Doughty, Virginia athletics beat writer for The Roanoke Times
• @RTD_MikeBarber – Mike Barber, Virginia and Virginia Tech beat writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch
• @normwood – Norm Wood, Virginia and Virginia Tech beat writer for The Daily Press
• @DavidTeelatDP – David Teel, reports on the ACC for The Daily Press
• @Cavs_Corner – Cavs Corner, Virginia focused site on the Rivals network
• @DamonDillman – Damon Dillman, Sports Director at CBS19 Charlottesville

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We are continuing our ACC Must-Follow List for the year with Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, and North Carolina in this post. If there are any other Twitter accounts that you think should be included, send us a tweet @rtcACC or leave a message in the comments section below.

For the rest of our ACC Must-Follow List, check out the rest of our posts for this year. Note that these will release throughout the day on Thursday.

Georgia Tech

He might not believe in golf, but he does believe in Twitter (RamblinWreck.com)

• @GTMBB: Official team account
• @GTJoshPastner: Josh Pastner, Head Coach
• @CoachTHardy: Tavares Hardy, Assistant
• @CoachDLaB: Darryl Labarrie, Assistant
• @CoachReveno: Eric Reveno, Assistant
• @SwartzJulian: Julian Swartz, Director of Operations
• @MarioWest5: Mario West, Director of Player Personnel
• @TylerBenson_TB: Tyler Benson, Director. of Video
• @Iron_Jackets: Dan Taylor, Player Development Coach
• @Cantkier: Ellie Cantkier, Administrative Coordinator

Players

• Justin Moore – @saymoore0
• Tadric Jackson – @TadricJ1
• Jodan Price – @JodanPrice05
• Norman Harris – @_NotTheNorm
• Josh Okogie – @CallMe_NonStop
• Quinton Stephens – @Ice_Stephens22
• Christian Matthew – @LiveLoveCMatt
• Sylvester Ogbonda – @iaresylvester
• Abdoulaye Gueye – @abdoula57379092

Bloggers and Beat Writers

• @ksugiuraajc: Ken Sugiura, covers Georgia Tech athletics for Atlanta Journal Constitution
• @jacketsonline: Rivals site for Georgia Tech
• @Kelly_Quinlan: Kelly Quinlan, writer for jacketsonline
• @FTRSBlog: SBNation site for Georgia Tech
• @BuzzTalkRadio: Radio show covering Georgia Tech
• @JeffSchultzAJC: Jeff Schultz, writer for Atlanta Journal Constitution
• @MarkBradleyAJC: Mark Bradley, writer for Atlanta Journal Constitution
• @ZachKleinWSB: Zach Klein, sports director for WSBtv Atlanta

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With the 2016 Election now mercifully behind us, we are on the verge of the new college basketball season. We will be unveiling our team-specific Twitter follows over the next few days, but be sure to add these ACC writers and personalities to keep up to date on the latest stories in the conference. And of course follow us on our microsite feed @rtcACC. If you have any suggestions for additions or corrections (several prominent writers no longer cover the conference), feel free to tweet at us or leave a comment below.

General ACC Follows

Our ACC Twitter follows will keep you informed and entertained (Credit: ESPN Video)

• @accmbb The official Twitter account for ACC Men’s Basketball.
• @ACCSports covers both ACC basketball and football; also located on accsports.com.
• @theACCDN: Features clips from the conference’s Digital Network
• @accbballnews: Chatham Journal’s ACC Basketball News
• @_andrewcarter: Andrew Carter, writer for The News & Observer/Charlotte Observer (see more in our interview with him earlier this year).
• @rickbozich: Rick Bozich, WDRB Sports journalist in Louisville.
• @ericcrawford: Eric Crawford, WDRB Sports journalist in Louisville.
• @lebrownlow: Lauren Brownlow, Durham-based writer/radio personality.
• @scacchoops: Jon Pence, creater of SCACCHoops.com.
• @jwgiglio: Joe Giglio, writer for The News & Observer.
• @stevewisemanNC: Stephen Wiseman, writer for the Durham Herald-Sun and AP voter.
• @stephenschramm: Stephen Schramm, writer for the Fayetteville Observer and AP voter.
• @aaronbeardap: Aaron Beard, AP writer in North Carolina.
• @DavidTeelatDP: David Teel, ACC writer for The Daily Press.
• @joeovies: Joe Ovies, radio personality for 99.9 FM The Fan in Raleigh.
• @LukeDeCock: Luke DeCock, writer for The News & Observer.
• @ArmstrongABC11: Mark Armstrong, ABC11 sports anchor in North Carolina.
• @AGoldFan: Adam Gold, radio personality for 99.9 FM The Fan in Raleigh.

Rush the Court ACC Microsite Team

• @rtcACC: Our conference microsite with discussion of major stories in the conference
• @bradjenk: Brad Jenkins
• @mpatton0: Matt Patton
• @MAuerbach24: Matthew Auerbach
• @TheMickMcDonald: Mick McDonald
• @CharlieMaikis: Charlie Maikis
• @pengriffey_jr: Brandon Jefferson

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1. The big news from last week was the announcement that Duke freshman Harry Giles, predicted by many to be the #1 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, would be out for six weeks following an arthroscopy on his left knee last Monday. This is the third intervention Giles has had on his knees since 2013 (two on the left and one on the right). According to Mike Krzyzewski his is “just a cleanup”, but we doubt that most NBA teams will view it as such and it will likely drop Giles from being the presumptive #1 pick next year. In addition, we doubt that he will be playing heavy minutes at least initially. With all of the talent Duke has on its roster this year, having Giles sit out some of the start of the season might not be a bad thing as it will allow some of the other players on the team to develop more than they might have if Giles had been there the entire time.
2. We would never accuse the NCAA of playing political games, but they certainly sent a pretty strong statement when they awarded 1st and 2nd round games for the 2017 NCAA Tournament to Greenville, South Carolina after taking them away from Greensboro, North Carolina. As you know, South Carolina had faced a NCAA ban similar to what North Carolina is experiencing with its HB2 law. In South Carolina’s case its ban was the result of its use of the Confederate flag. With the state finally taking it down, the NCAA gave it some NCAA Tournament games. Your move, North Carolina.
3. If you thought we were going soft on the NCAA, this next story will make you change your mind. As Gary Parrish noted the NCAA recently ruled that Oakland freshman Isaiah Brock was ineligible as a result of his high school transcript. Brock is not the only freshman who will run into this problem. The only difference is that Brock’s transcript was from 2011 before he served 4 years in the US Army in Kuwait and Afghanistan then went on to maintain a 3.0 GPA in summer school classes at Oakland. On some level we can understand the NCAA standing firm on its policy with high school transcripts and Brock will be able to appeal their decision (an appeal he will almost certainly win), but as Parrish points out we don’t understand why the NCAA would put itself in these type of PR situations, which they seem to do quite frequently.
4. With the way college basketball is set up these days we have a hard time figuring out when the season officially starts (other than when the games actually start), but whatever that start is we are getting very close. As such it’s worth taking a look at where college basketball is as a game at this point and there is probably no better place to start than Luke Winn’s column looking at several key aspects including 3-point shooting volume and the effect of the 30-second shot clock. It is impossible to be completely exhaustive when analyzing these type of things, but Winn does a good job capturing some of the more pertinent factors.
5. And finally the most technical post we will ever link to in the Morning 5. By now you are familiar with how we view computer rankings (useful, but need constant monitoring and tweaking to make them better prognostic tools). The most popular of these computer rankings are those from Ken Pomeroy. Pomeroy has never posted his proprietary algorithm, but last week he published a post outlining some of the changes he made for the upcoming season, which is probably as close as you will get to seeing behind the KenPom curtain.

1. The NCAA gets a lot of criticism for a lot of things (often warranted), but their decision to pull seven championship events out of North Carolina during the 2016-17 championship season in response to the HB2 law seems to be widely applauded in the mainstream media. While some have been critical of the NCAA for making this decision against the state of North Carolina, the NCAA did come out with a clear list of reasons for their decision. It is also worth nothing that North Carolina is not the only state to have faced a ban by the NCAA for non-NCAA-related issues (the state of South Carolina was briefly banned from hosting championship events because of its use of the Confederate flag). For their part, coaches and administrators from several schools in the state including Duke and North Carolina have come out in support of the NCAA’s decision.
2. With the NCAA joining the NBA, which decided to move the 2017 All-Star Game in response on to HB2, the ACC also decided to move its neutral-site championship events from North Carolina for the 2016-17 season as well. Although it would be easy to take a shot at the ACC for making a move only after the NBA and NCAA did it is worth noting how significant the move is since the ACC is headquartered and was founded in North Carolina. The move isn’t that significant for basketball this year as the ACC Tournament is going to be held in Brooklyn, but among other things it does force the ACC to move its football title game (scheduled for the first weekend in December) out of Charlotte to a site that has not been announced yet.
3. We figured that after George Washington did not do anything in July following allegations of verbal abuse against Mike Lonergan by some of his former players (refuted by other former players) we had heard the end of that issue for the foreseeable future. It turns out we were wrong as reports surfaced on Friday night that Lonergan had been fired by the school. Given the details surrounding Lonergan’s reported abuse and his disdain for athletic director Patrick Nero it should be no surprise that Lonergan will be challenging his dismissal. We still are not sure what led the school to dismiss Lonergan on a Friday night in September, but it certain puts the as yet unnamed interim coach in a very difficult spot.
4. Although Miami lost quite a few players to graduation this past season, we expected Miami to have a solid team this season thanks to what might be the best recruiting class the program has ever had. Unfortunately for the Hurricanes, Dewan Huell, one of the most prominent pieces in that class, was arrested on misdemeanor battery charges last week. According to police reports, Huell, a 6’11” McDonald’s All-American, attacked a man who he found in a closet with his ex-girlfriend after Huell went to her apartment uninvited. Assuming this is Huell’s first such incident we doubt that he will get more than a slap on the wrist with what has been released.
5. Davidson is best known for Steph Curry playing college basketball there (and that is unlikely to change any time soon), but it has also become a well-known program internationally thanks to Bob McKillop and his recruitment of foreign players. As Seth Davis point out, the fact that Davidson will have players from seven different countries on its roster this season is the result of years of dedication by McKillop. It is a rather interesting strategy and one that is more likely to pay dividends for McKillop than if he were to hope to have the next Curry fall into his lap.

1. The biggest story in college basketball in the past week was Deandre Ayton‘s commitment to play at Arizona in 2017. Ayton, a 7′ center who is widely regarded as the top recruit in this year’s class, chose Arizona over Kansas and Kentucky in a move that surprised many recruiting insiders who expected him to go to Kansas. While Sean Miller has had a surprisingly good record at getting a top recruits to commit to play at Arizona recently (and getting them there is another matter) this is certainly his biggest pick-up yet. The big question now is whether Ayton, who is originally from the Bahamas, but moved around recently before apparently deciding to finish high school in Arizona, will be eligible (and want to play) in college in 2017 as there are questions as to whether he will be able to meet eligibility requirements.
2. We have to hand it to Ben Howland as he continues to bring top talent into Starksville as he picked up a commitment from Nick Weatherspoon, a five-star point guard out of Mississippi, to play at Mississippi State in 2017. Weatherspoon picked Mississippi State over schools such as North Carolina, Louisville, and Ohio State. While landing an in-state recruit who has a brother already in the program might not seem like that big of a feat to some, it is a sign that Howland is making some progress with the program even if their record does not reflect it yet after just one season there.
3. While Ben Howland’s first season at Mississippi State was underwhelming, he certainly has more room for error at this point than Richard Pitino has at Minnesota after going 8-23 last season including 2-16 in the Big Ten along with some well-publicized off-court issues for several of his players last year. That makes Isaiah Washington‘s commitment to play at Minnesota in 2017 even more important. Washington, a four-star point guard out of New York, who likely won’t have the immediate impact of some more highly touted prospects in the class, but could be a solid four-year player for the Gophers.
4. One of the key points of contention surrounding the idea of amateurism in college athletics is the limitations on freedom of movement in transferring. In many cases when a student-athlete transfers, he/she has to sit out an academic year before being eligible to play. Now a lawyer is going to court representing two former student-athletes who say this restriction limited their ability to play college sports and consequently their college education. While many of the coaches in Jeff Goodman’s article seem willing to accept an easier out for student-athletes in special cases (like when the coach leaves the program), other coaches (not surprisingly ones who didn’t have their names mentioned in the article) take a less optimistic view with one even saying it would turn college basketball into “the wild, wild West”. We can understand the desire of coaches to keep the status quo particularly with their large salaries, but we tend to favor any change that would benefit student-athletes.
5. Speaking of doing what is best for student-athletes, Goodman also had an interesting article on what coaches thought of the graduate transfer exemption (a rule we have mocked many times here) and what they do to prevent athletes from taking advantage of it. As in the other piece, the coaches most critical of it didn’t have the courage to put their names behind it, but several unnamed coaches admitted to essentially preventing a student-athlete from graduating early by slowing down that individual’s academic progress in order to eliminate the option of the graduate transfer. As Goodman says many of these transfers are for athletic purposes when they are supposed to be for academic purposes, but when you look at things from the bigger picture we would rather have 100 student-athletes transfer for non-academic reasons than prevent 1 student-athlete from transferring for academic reasons since this should be more about the student-athletes and their growth than supporting coaches to maintain the same job they have when it would be filled by someone just as qualified if they are fired (basically a zero-sum game unlike that of the student-athlete).

1. Yesterday, North Carolina released the latest statement in its seemingly never-ending battle with the NCAA regarding allegations of academic fraud at the university. At this point, the school has basically admitted that there was academic fraud committed although they are still fighting the charges of failure to monitor, but now they are challenging the NCAA’s authority to punish it for academic fraud saying it should be done at the discretion of the school’s accrediting agency and not the NCAA. As much as we have criticized North Carolina for the massive academic fraud at the school, we have to agree with them (and we have pointed out as much in previous posts in this space–much like we had an issue with the NCAA doling out a punishment to Penn State for its handling of the Jerry Sandusky case). We will have to see how the NCAA responds to UNC’s statement, but as we have been saying for a while with this case: we don’t see it ending any time soon and based on how the NCAA has treated UNC compared to other schools who self-imposed it seems like UNC may have chosen the right course of action.
2. One of the biggest criticisms of UNC’s decision to fight the NCAA on this has been the shadow it cast on them in recruiting circles with Brandon Ingram even saying that the threat of NCAA sanctions was a big reason he did not go to UNC. That cloud makes Coby White‘s commitment to play at UNC even more significant. The commitment of White, a top-5 point guard in the class of 2018, gives the Tar Heels three top-30 recruits in the class of 2018. While it is still very early in the recruiting cycle for a class that is two full academic years away from matriculating to college, it is a great start for the Tar Heels.
3. Meanwhile, at Missouri, which can probably be best described as a dumpster fire of an athletic department, the NCAA added a year of probation to Missouri’s self-imposed punishment (full statement here) after finding that the school had provided players and their families with $11,402 in impermissible benefits between 2011 and 2014. While most of the violations occurred while Frank Haith was there some also occurred under Kim Anderson, but the NCAA decided that neither coach was responsible for the lapses at their program. For his part, Haith (or more specifically his lawyer) issued a statement (included in this article) essentially reminding everybody that Haith was not found to be responsible for any violations and that the school/institution was solely responsible for the failures while he was leading the program. We wonder if Haith’s lawyer charged him the full rate for his services or if he gave Haith a discount since it could have been able to recycle seems like he has been getting a lot of use of out of these types of letters for Haith he could have just reused the letter for Haith’s role in the scandal at Miami just a few years earlier.
4. The strange saga of Nick Marshall at Memphis appears to have come to an end. The 6’11” sophomore forward left the program under circumstances that can best be described as unusual (according to Gary Parrish he reportedly left under false pretenses in this series of tweets: 1, 2, 3, and 4). Marshall, who averaged 3 points and 2.6 rebounds in 8.6 minutes per game last season, but was expected to play a much bigger role this season, has committed to play at Motlow State Community College. If Marshall can get his act together, he has the talent to play at the high-major level again as he was a borderline top-50 recruit coming out of high school.
5. In one of the more interesting moves we have seen, Brenda Tracy, who says she was raped in 1998 by four men including two Oregon State football players, and her son are putting forth a petition to the NCAA asking them to ban sexually violent athletes. The actual petition, written by her son, does not specify exactly what qualifies someone as a “violent athlete”. As much as we would like to see more strict penalties for people who commit crimes (especially sexual assault and other violent crimes) it seems like the NCAA would run into a a long line of lawsuits if it tried to enforce a strict ban on individuals especially if the legal system had deemed that person to be fit to not be incarcerated.

1. We post stories of college basketball players dying way too often on this site. The latest one is Tyrek Coger, a recent transfer to Oklahoma State, who died on Thursday while participating in an outdoor team workout. Coger, a 6’8″ forward who had transferred from Cape Fear Community College, had gained some notoriety back in high school for challenging John Wall to a pick-up game, which became a popular YouTube video. Coger had struggled for a while to show his potential, but he appeared to be realizing some of it recently. Details regarding Coger’s death will not be released, but it appears to be related to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a not infrequent cause of death in men’s college basketball players which we discussed in a post in 2011. Currently, there is no recommendation to proceed with more aggressive screening in athletes, but we do wonder how many times this will need to happen before schools decide that they need to screen even if the financial numbers don’t work on a bigger scale.
2. On Thursday ESPN formally announced its plans for the ACC Network, but to us the more interesting news was that the ACC would be expanding its conference schedule from 18 to 20 games beginning with the 2019-20 season. The obvious motive behind this is to help fill their network with original content and for some of the lower-tier ACC programs it will also bring in extra revenue by increasing the chances that they will get one of the marquee programs to visit even with an unbalanced schedule. The real question will be how schools will compensate for this on non-conference schedule. We suspect that most programs will react by scheduling even fewer tough non-conference opponents, which is unfortunate, but the reality of the business of college basketball.
3. When videos of Mike Rice verbally and physically abusing his basketball players at Rutgers came out three years ago the media widely condemned his actions. Now with reports coming out of George Washington that Mike Lonergan may have been verbally abusing his players we have been interested to see a much more muted response. The obvious differences are the lack of video/audio evidence and the absence of physical abuse, but we also suspect that some of this is the expectation that players at a certain level will have to deal with some verbal abuse (this is also true in some workplaces). To be fair to Lonergan, several of his former players have come out to defend him against the reports from anonymous former players. We still haven’t heard anything about how the George Washington administration is dealing with this and we doubt that anything significant will happen although we do suspect that Lonergan’s relationship with athletic director Patrick Nero will probably be more strained.
4. Many media members noted that the NCAA’s announcement that it would require future championship host cities to submit an outline of how they will prevent discrimination came out just a day after the NBA decided to change the site of its 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte due to North Carolina’s controversial HB2 law, but it seems pretty clear that the NCAA has been working on this for some time. The questionnaire (PDF here) requires the host cities to provide the NCAA with assurances that both participants and spectators will not be discriminated against. We have never delved into politics on this site, but it will be interesting to see how strict the NCAA is in its interpretation of discrimination and if/how it could influence legislation since getting to host a NCAA championship can mean millions in dollars in revenue for some cities.
5. If you are still waiting on the NCAA to drop the proverbial hammer on North Carolina for its academic fraud we might be getting one step closer (ok, we can’t say that with a straight face). UNC has announced that will submit its response to the NCAA regarding its amended Notice of Allegations on August 1 with the response being made public the following day. We won’t go into the details of the academic fraud because at this point we almost as sick of it as UNC fans are, but we will point out that this is unlikely to be anywhere close to the end and as Andrew Carter notes in the article it is unlikely that the case will end this year.

1. Conference media days are usually full of mundane questions and people trying to make big stories out of mostly irrelevant issues, but the Big 12 appears to be an exception to that this year as it announced that it has decided to explore expanding. That announcement has led to plenty of speculation as to what schools would be the best fit. With the conference expected to add either two or four schools in a bid to not only become bigger/expand its geographic footprint, but also possibly move towards having its own television network (see below), the most commonly mentioned options appear to be Boise State, Brigham Young, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Colorado State, Connecticut, Houston, Memphis, South Florida, and Tulane with BYU, Cincinnati, and Connecticut being the favorites to most observers.
2. One of those schools that did itself no favors with the timing of release of bad news is South Florida, which is being investigated by the NCAA for academic fraud. Very few details about the case have come out yet, but it already appears to have led assistant coach Oliver Antigua, brother of head coach Orlando Antigua, to resign within hours of the story breaking. Plenty of people online have been making jokes about how the program should be better if they are cheating, but the reality is that they should be better just based on the location of where they are. Tampa is by no means a high school basketball hotbed, but there are plenty of talented players in the area including many talented two-sports players who focus on football. Much like Central Florida, the program really should be better than what it is. We will have to wait and see what they are accused of and how hard the NCAA will come down on it before seeing what kind of obstacles they will have to overcome.
3. If you thought you didn’t get enough ACC basketball (ok, you already get enough Duke and North Carolina), you are in luck as the ACC Network is now expected to launch in 2019 as part of a report that also indicates that the league is extending its grant of rights through the 2035-36 season. The latter is interesting as it means the conference keeps all media revenue generated by the school even if it tries to leave the conference until that period. We aren’t sure how well that would hold up in court, but it would make poaching schools away more difficult if it could be enforced.
4. In probably the most predictable recruiting announcement ever, Michael Porter Jr has committed to play at Washington. For those of you who don’t follow recruiting, Porter, who was mentioned in last week’s Morning 5, seemed like he was guaranteed to play at Washington since he is the godson of Lorenzo Romar and the school has recently hired his father to be an assistant coach. These type of package deals are nothing new (we wrote about them back in 2008 and they were going on well before that), but they continue to leave a sour taste in some people’s mouths. We are not what exactly the NCAA can to prevent them since there are certainly family members of top recruits who would be reasonable coaching hires (like if Doc Rivers had been out of coaching when Austin was being recruited), but it seems like it will continue to be a contentious point going forward.
5. Unfortunately, we have to cover legal issues around college basketball players way too much and this week’s case is Xavier senior guard Myles Davis (10.8 points, 4.1 assists, and 3.6 rebounds per game last year), who had a protective order placed against him after his ex-girlfriend accused him of threatening her, breaking her cellphone, punching holes in a wall, and trying to break her windows. For the next three years, Davis, who denies the allegations, is barred from coming within 500 feet of the woman except on-campus where he has to stay at least ten feet away at all times. The school has not handed down any punishment for Davis yet although we doubt it will be anything substantial unless he has a history of these type of incidents.

1. Larry Brown‘s decision to resign last week as head coach at Southern Methodist University should not come as surprise to those who know his history. According to reports Brown was seeking a five-year extension, but the school was only willing to offer a three-year, $10 million expansion leading Brown to resign just at the start of the start of the very important July reporting period. Fortunately for SMU they already have a coach-in-waiting in Tim Jankovich, who left a job as head coach at Illinois State in 2012 to be a coach-in-waiting at SMU and he is expected to receive a contract that is at least five years in length. Normally when someone Brown’s age (75) resigns we would expect that it would be the last we see of him, but Brown has always been different. If this is the last we see of Brown, his legacy will be a very interesting one as he is undoubtedly one of the best basketball coaches ever, but he was also one who could never stay in one place very long and also managed to be the coach at three schools who were hit with significant NCAA sanction.
2. July might seem like a weird time for Luke Winn to come out with new Power Rankings, but as he notes we are at the point where we can reasonably expect that every significant recruit/player has committed to play somewhere or decided to transfer out of their current program. While this version of the Power Rankings is lighter on GIFs/clips and numbers than in-season versions (totally understandable since there isn’t as much new data to look at as there is in-season), it does serve as a good concise recap of where the top teams stand coming into next season. If you’re looking for those really interesting stats, we would point you to the three-point shooting of Kentucky‘s incoming guards and Purdue‘s efficiency numbers with Caleb Swanigan on- and off-court.
3. If you happened to miss the coverage of Peach Jam, the big winners from the weekend appear to be Michael Porter Jr and Trae Young and not just because their team took home the title. According to most analysts the pair were two of the most dominant players in the entire tournament and probably did as much to boost their stock as anyone at Peach Jam. While DeAndre Ayton doesn’t seem to be in danger of losing his spot as the top recruit in the class, Porter made a strong case to be in the discussion. Of course, that probably doesn’t matter since everybody already has him penciled in going to Washington since his father was hired as an assistant coach there (ok, that’s probably more Sharpie than pencil). Young’s situation is more interesting as he is considering multiple schools with Kentucky reportedly making him one of their top targets.
4. Jeremiah Tilmon didn’t participate in Peach Jam as he is still recovering from a dislocated shoulder, but he still managed to make news with his decision to commit to Illinois. Tilmon, a 6’10” center who is top-30 recruit in the class of 2017, is originally from Illinois even though he plays for a school in Indiana now so we guess this counts as an in-state recruit. In any event, he is the highest-rated recruit to commit to Illinois since John Groce took over in 2012. The big question now for Illinois is whether he will stay committed to the school if they struggle this year and particularly if Groce appears to be in danger of losing his job, which he could be if they have another subpar season.
5. Outside of the obvious differences in coaching philosophies in terms of offensive and defensive sets, substitution patterns are probably the most important part of in-game coaching. Ken Pomeroy’s analysis of which coaches are most/least likely to let a player continue playing during the first half when that player already has two fouls offers an interesting look at that. While we don’t necessarily see a particular patterns (so-called “good” and “bad” coaches fall all over the spectrum) there are some pretty stark differences. The one thing that we would like to see applied to this analysis is the season-to-season variation in a coach’s tendencies, which could reflect a lack of an adequate substitute, and how this is related to percentage of minutes played by starters.