1. It is a bit surprising to see a list of college basketball’s Top 30 freshman and not see any of the players from Memphis‘ fabulous recruiting class make the list. In fact, only three players from the AAC made the list at all; Louisville’s Terry Rozier (#24), SMU’s Keith Frazier (#26) and Cincinnati’s Jermaine Lawrence (#27) are the conference’s only representatives. Judging the country’s best 30 freshmen before the season starts is clearly an exercise done for entertainment and debate purposes, so I will humor them and argue that it’s hard to believe that Austin Nichols, Kuran Iverson, or Nick King couldn’t make this list, especially given their importance to the Tigers’ frontcourt this season. Josh Pastner lost a lot of production out of his frontcourt and the trio of freshmen are going to be his best bets to replace some or all of that production. Rozier may be more talented and college-ready, but he will have to scratch and claw for minutes in a loaded backcourt. Nichols and Iverson are good candidates to begin the season in the starting lineup and they will have ample opportunities to prove themselves on the court, which is why I believe one or both of those players belong on any list of top freshmen.
2. At this point, we shouldn’t be surprised when Louisville coach Rick Pitino shows up on a television program that has nothing to do with basketball and says something that makes headlines anyway. But it was still a bit baffling to watch Pitino call the government “totally dysfunctional” while chopping it up about politics with a couple of hosts from CNBC. It’s not that Pitino shouldn’t be allowed to talk about politics in a televised forum as he is a smart guy with plenty of smart things to say about the government. It was just a bit amusing to watch the CNBC hosts do their best to tie basketball into the political questions they were asking and it was even more amusing to watch Pitino effortlessly weave his experience as a basketball coach with what he thinks should be done in Washington, D.C. There is nothing wrong with trying to garner a little publicity by going outside of the usual channels, it was just odd to watch a man who is gearing up to repeat as National Champions explain to CNBC hosts why term limits for congressmen are important.
3. If you were looking for reasons why the offseason scandal at Rutgers is going to affect the program less than some might think, look no further than juniors Myles Mack and Kadeem Jack. Without trying to compare the actual scandals, one of the primary reasons that Penn State football was able to rebound so quickly was because the majority of the players banded together and decided to stay with the Nittany Lions. A similar situation has unfolded in Piscataway as players were granted a free release after the school fired coach Mike Rice for verbal and physical abuse and some players understandably left for greener pastures. But players like Mack, Jack, Jerome Seagears, and Wally Judge all stuck around to, “finish what I started”, as Jack put it. Not only does the return of these four players mean that new coach Eddie Jordan won’t need to start entirely from scratch, it actually means he has a pretty good nucleus of talent to work with as the team enters a new conference. The Scarlet Knights are still probably not an NCAA Tournament team, which makes the decision of those four players to stay all the more noble. In a sport where leadership is important both on and off the court, Jordan now has a number of mature young men to point to as examples of what leadership looks like.
4. Everyone already knows about the dynamite backcourt trio of Shabazz Napier, Ryan Boatright, and Omar Calhoun. They also probably know about multi-talented forward DeAndre Daniels and the expectations on his shoulders. But if the Huskies are going to return to the NCAA Tournament this season, it will be because some of the team’s newcomers stepped up and made impactful contributions. Kevin Ollie‘s first real recruiting class didn’t garner any national attention or win any accolades, but Amida Brimah, Kentan Facey (assuming he is eligible), and Terrence Samuel will all be expected to play a role on the team this season and their development and early success will be crucial to determining exactly how good this UConn team can be. Brimah and Facey will probably get the most chances to make an early impression because of the team’s stark lack of depth in the frontcourt, but the newcomer most ready to contribute however is George Washington transfer Lasan Kromah. The athletic 6’6″ wing was a double-digit scorer in his career in D.C. and he has all the tools to be a shutdown defender who can guard multiple positions. Ollie has a tough task ahead of him as he tries to find playing time for all of his talented backcourt and wing players without sacrificing too much size, but the added depth and talent are part of the reason why so many expect the Huskies to be back in the NCAA Tournament this season.
5. Count me among those who aren’t fans of college basketball’s new emphasis on hand-checking. It’s not surprising as every sport is continuously making small tweaks to the rule book that benefit offense in part to make the sport more watchable and exciting, but increased foul calls don’t make college basketball more exciting, they make it more boring. Even the Big 12’s coordinator of officials admitted that players will no longer be able to “guard full-court, man-to-man, in-your-face like we’ve allowed”. Maybe a few years down the road as players get used to the rule and how officials call it, the game will be more exciting and explosive, but I would expect this type of rule to take some time to get adjusted to, which means we will be seeing a lot more ticky-tack fouls called and we will be seeing teams shoot a lot more free throws. Colorado State coach Larry Eustachy astutely pointed out that fans aren’t paying to watch their favorite players foul out of a game and he even brought up Louisville, citing their intense pressure defense as something that will longer be as effective with this new rule. Hooray for the dawn of this new era of offensive basketball…I guess.

1. Yesterday, the NCAA released its long-awaited report on its investigation into the alleged violations committed at Miami. While those involving the football program were the primary focus of the national media, in many ways the ones involving the basketball program were more interesting and we don’t just say that because we are a basketball site. The men’s basketball program was hit with a reduction in three scholarships (total) over the next three years, but otherwise escaped harm. If you want to hear our take on reducing scholarships, check out Mike DeCourcy’s column on why the idea is idiotic. In addition, the NCAA also issued assistant coach Jorge Fernandez a two-year show-cause, which basically amounts to a four-year ban since he has been untouchable while in limbo. Of course, the biggest news for us is that Frank Haith was only given a five-game suspension for his role in this. Normally we would use quotation marks to modify the only, but in this case he got very lucky. Gary Parrish did an excellent job describing how ridiculously light Haith’s punishment is in comparison to the three-year show-cause penalty that Bruce Pearl got for lying about hosting a cookout (it is a little more complex than that, but not to the degree that the NCAA made it out to be) and, as Andy Glockner pointed out repeatedly yesterday on Twitter, Todd Bozeman got an eight-year show-cause for doing essentially the same thing Haith did (to the point where we wonder if Glockner’s new job is being Bozeman’s PR guy). At this point, we think all the parties involved will be glad to just put the entire thing behind them.
2. Haith was not the only coach making the wrong kind of headlines yesterday as Maryland assistant Dalonte Hill announced that he will be taking a “leave of absence” after being arrested over the weekend for what is at least his third DUI in the past five years. Hill, who is best known for essentially being an assistant who is essentially a package deal to bring in recruits, has been receiving a seemingly exorbitant $300,000-a-year salary at Maryland, but that is actually a significant drop from the $423,000-a-year he was making at Kansas State for helping bring Michael Beasley to Manhattan. Both Mark Turgeon and Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson expressed their support for Hill and we would expect that he will be back on the sidelines (or recruiting trail) in the near-future. One more interesting twist on this is that Hill’s pipeline has largely come from the famed D.C. Assault AAU program that came into the national spotlight this August when its founder Curtis Malone was indicted on federal drug charges so we are not sure how that dynamic will affect Hill’s ability to recruit down the road.
3. Villanova fans got an explanation for the mysterious photo that junior forward JayVaughn Pinkston temporarily posted on Instagram of himself on crutches back in August. It turns out that Pinkston had developed a MRSA infection of his right leg that required incision and drainage and eventually what has been described as “emergency surgery” as well as what is likely a prolonged course of antibiotics. By now, you have probably become familiar with MRSA infections due to the news media hyping it up over the past few years or perhaps the recent spate of infections on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. If you are not, essentially it an increasingly common bacteria that does not respond to older antibiotics that were previously used to treat the organism, but can generally be treated fairly easily with antibiotics (even oral forms). With competent medical care, superficial MRSA abscesses like what Pinkston appears to have had respond well to treatment and as expected (although maybe not as Pinkston and his family, coaches, and teammates feared) it appears that he will be ready to play when the season starts.
4. Yesterday, we mentioned how West Virginia was waiting on the NCAA to rule on the eligibility of freshman forward Elijah Macon. Well, it appears that Macon might have other issues affecting his eligibility to play after he was arrested for disorderly conduct during a court hearing involving his sister. According to reports, Macon became upset during the hearing and after leaving the hearing hit something loudly enough for it to be heard in the courtroom. He was asked to leave the building which he did, but continued yelling and was then arrested. We have no idea what triggered Macon’s reaction, but we doubt that Bob Huggins will take too kindly to it.
5. It is really early to start w thinking about Player of the Year awards, but yesterday The Bob Cousy Award committee released its preseason watch list. All of the big names that you would expect–Aaron Craft, Jahii Carson, and Marcus Smart–are on there as well as a handful of the more heralded incoming freshmen–Andrew Harrison, Kasey Hill, and Tyler Ennis. Interestingly, two schools–Harvard and Memphis–have a pair of point guards on the watch list, which seems unusual, but we don’t make a habit of memorizing these lists. We don’t see any particularly glaring omissions although we are sure fans of some schools will be able to muster up sufficient outrage over some perceived slight.

1. It will have a bigger effect on the college football landscape than the college basketball landscape, but we will be interested to see what kind of punishment (if any) the NCAA hands down to Miami later today. It has been over two years since Yahoo! released what was considered a bombshell report at the time detailing how convicted Ponzi scheme artist Nevin Shapiro reportedly provided Miami athletes (more football than basketball) with impermissible benefits. The most notable reported violation from the basketball side of things was $10,000 that he reportedly provided to steer DeQuan Jones to the school (Jones had to sit 10 games as a result) while the football program has self-imposed numerous penalties including bowl bans the past two seasons. Over the past two years the story has largely been eclipsed by bigger college program controversies (most notably Penn State) and numerous missteps by the NCAA’s investigators. Given the self-imposed penalties and the NCAA’s poor handling of the investigation we would be surprised if the NCAA hands down any more substantial penalties.
2. Dunk City was already going to have a tough time living up to the exceedingly high expectations as the result of last season’s Sweet 16 run even considering they are doing so with a new head coach. Now that task will be even tougher as they will start the season without Eric McKnight, their starting center from last season, after he was suspended for the first six games of this season for violating an undisclosed team/school policy. McKnight averaged 6.5 points and 4.4 rebounds per game last season while splitting time, but was expected to have a bigger role this year. This length of the suspension is particularly unfortunate for McKnight as in addition to missing the opener against Nebraska he will also miss a game at North Carolina State, which would have served as a homecoming game for him.
3. We are always amazed when we hear about big-time recruits still waiting on word regarding their eligibility with the season approaching. Obviously there are times when there need to be investigations into amateur status (see the Shabazz Muhammad fiasco last season), but most cases revolve around academic eligibility. The latest example of this is happening at West Virginia where they are awaiting word on the NCAA’s decision on the eligibility of Elijah Macon. Macon, a 6’8″ forward who was a top-100 recruit, spent last year at a prep school, but still might only be a partial qualifier. If he is deemed to be a partial qualifier, he would not be able to practice until next semester and would not be able to play until the 2014-15 season. It should be noted that Macon is still dealing with a wrist injury and would not be able to play now anyways so the NCAA’ s ruling might not even affect the Mountaineers plans for this season.
4. It is not often that we get to see tweaks being made to a computer rating system so we are interested to see how the latest changes in Ken Pomeroy’s ranking algorithm will affect some of the more questionable rankings we have seen in his system. According to Pomeroy, the changes will essentially give greater weight to big upsets and less weight to expected blowouts. The few examples that he offers in his post (big jumps for mid-majors that eventually made deep NCAA Tournament runs and a drop for his beloved Wisconsin team) might provide some clue. If you are interested in seeing how this affected his analysis on a larger scale (and have a lot of free time on your hands), his entire database has been updated to reflect his new formula.
5. Speaking of having a lot of time on your hands, Syracuse.com put together a game-by-game database of every Syracuse game since 1900. We are assuming this was the task of some poor intern who had the unenviable task of cataloging 2,709 Syracuse basketball games. This is not the first massive database that we have seen, but it might be the first that is so easily searchable. The one catch with the database is that it lacks box scores, which is understandable for many of the early games, but should not be that hard to do for games in the past 40 years (perhaps the next group of interns can take care of that). Still it is worth checking out if you have some time to kill today.

1. As you may have noticed from ESPNU’s coverage, Friday night was the closest thing we have this year to Midnight Madness as the new practice rules have led to a dilution of the event as teams have spread out their first official practice dates. The big spectacles were widely covered by ESPN and its array of analysts, but the biggest event of the weekend may have happened behind the scenes at Kansas two weeks after “Late Night in the Phog” as the Jayhawks hosted Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones on their official visit. The pair, who have repeatedly expressed their desire to play together, are the top package deal this season (or almost any season that we can remember). Although they may have missed the typical March Madness theatrics that many recruits have become accustomed too they were able to see the current group of Jayhawks play in an open scrimmage with a full house at Allen Fieldhouse. For their part, both Okafor and Jones appear to have enjoyed their visits, but they are visiting Duke this coming weekend, which as of now is their last scheduled visit, so there is a chance that we could be hearing their choice fairly soon.
2. The Okafor-Jones combo might be getting all the hype, but the potential for a Cliff Alexander–JaQuan Lyle combo deal is not far behind. That pair made a visit to Memphis over the weekend and while they both reportedly enjoyed their visit the more interesting point is that Alexander’s mother sounded less than certain that the pair would be committing together. Alexander is the key piece here and has also visited Kansas and DePaul with a visit planned for Illinois next weekend. He is still considering visiting Michigan State, but is set to announce his decision on November 16 on ESPNU.
3. The details of coaching contracts are usually too boring to be worth mentioning, but those in Shaka Smart‘s contract caught our attention. The base salary of $450,000, supplemental income rising from $850,000 to $950,000 then $1 million, and duration of 10 years are not particularly noteworthy. What is interesting is that he will get an extra $5,000 for each win over a member of the AAC (think Shaka wants to move to the AAC?) and $2,000 for beating Old Dominion. He also receives $4,000 for each player that graduates by the summer that that player’s eligibility is up and $2,000 if it happens within one year of that player’s eligibility expiring. As for other schools that are looking at luring Shaka away from VCU, if he leaves before April 30 of next year his buyout is $650,000 and drops by $100,000 every year after that. Oh, and it will also cost the school that lures Shaka away a home-and-home or an additional $250,000.
4. With his preliminary hearing for allegedly stealing from a friend’s apartment less than a month away, Savon Goodman decided to leave the UNLV program on Friday. Goodman has been charged with conspiracy to commit burglary, burglary, and grand larceny after being accused of stealing $500, a pair of shoes, and 26 video games from a friend’s apartment in May. In August, Dave Rice announced that Goodman would not play this season and his future with the program was uncertain, but did not rule out the possibility of Goodman’s return (and we have seen players return to play from far worse than what Goodman is accused of doing). We are not sure what eventually made Goodman decide to leave the program ahead of his preliminary hearing on November 12 as the Rebels as a team in need of inside players so it would seem that the door would have been open for him to return after this season if he behaved in a way that Rice and the program felt was appropriate.
5. It looks like former Auburn guard Varez Ward could avoid facing charges of point-shaving by entering into a pre-trial diversion program. Ward is the second Division I player to face such charges, but unlike San Diego’s Brandon Johnson his involvement in the game he is accused of shaving points in seems to be minimal as he appeared to his injure his leg after playing only 19 seconds (against Arkansas on January 25, 2012). However, the reason for the apparent deal is that he has no history of felony convictions or drug addictions (Ward has previously pleaded not guilty). Ward still needs his deal to be approved by the U.S. Probation Office and a federal judge before it can be official.

1. Louisville‘s hopes of repeating as national champions took a hit yesterday when they announced that Chane Behanan was suspended indefinitely for what has been described as a “violation of university and team rules”. There is a tendency to view these type of preseason suspensions with a cynical eye since we have all seen how these indefinite suspensions tend to be miraculously lifted just in time for a big game, but the way in which Rick Pitino and school have been discussing the suspension it appears that it will not necessarily be a short one although we would be surprised if Behanan did not come back to the team assuming that this is not a legal matter. According to Pitino the reason for the suspension was “multiple things” and guaranteed that Behanan would not play in November and might return in December (just in time for Kentucky on December 28).
2. Yesterday, Trae Golden joined the ever-growing list of players granted a family hardship waiver as the NCAA approved of his transfer waiver to play for Georgia Tech this season. Golden, who averaged 12.1 points and 3.9 assists per game last season as a junior, transferred from Tennessee to be closer to his ailing father. Of course, there are other reports of why Golden may have left Tennessee (Google Search is your friend). While the decision to grant Golden a transfer waiver was hardly unexpected it does make them a potential NCAA Tournament team and could put them in the top half of the ACC.
3. Like Golden, Joey King also had his hardship waiver approved (for an undisclosed family illness) by the NCAA allowing the Drake transfer to be eligible to play for Minnesota immediately. King averaged 6.9 points and 2.9 rebounds per game while being named to the Missouri Valley Conference all-freshman team and should join what will be a rebuilding/reloading process for Richard Pitino who is taking over after coaching at Florida International last season. With the lack of depth the Gophers have on the interior we suspect that King would get plenty of playing time on a team that will be relying on its background for much of its scoring next season.
4. It remains an annual tradition that we do not quite understand, but yesterday Jeff Goodman and Andy Katz released the “secret scrimmage list” that features games running from October 19 through November 3. Almost all of the match-ups are regional with a few exceptions (Baylor-Memphis in Ruston, LA, jumps out) so in most cases they are an issue of convenience rather than of truly testing each team although there are a handful of games that we would be interested in attending. We have always considered these games to be mere curiosities outside of an occasional injury, but the public became more aware of these games after Donte Hill lost his final year of eligibility due to playing eight minutes in one of these exhibitions as a sophomore. Hopefully teams get through the games this year without anybody getting injured or costing anybody their eligibility.
5. Finally, college basketball sites went crazy when a column from Bleacher Report indicated that adidas was set to pay Andrew Wiggins $140-$180 million over 10 years and that Nike was set to match, which we discussed in Wednesday’s Morning Five. That was nice, but it appears that the original report was false according to an adidas spokesman who pointed out just how fraudulent the letter cited in the original report was. Many will be quick to point out the credibility of the site originally reporting the story, but we would note that many well-respected sports journalism establishments have also had fairly big misses in recent years. Perhaps the biggest take-home point of this entire story is that the hype surrounding Wiggins is so great that people actually believed such a ridiculous number.

While Jayhawk fans celebrated Kelly Oubre’s commitment to Kansas on Tuesday, the announcement left Kentucky and its fans in a situation they are not accustomed to — one in which they are left wondering which recruits are still available. It also comes as the third consecutive major commitment — Andrew Wiggins and Emmanuel Mudiay were the other two — that Kentucky has missed out on, which is a highly unusual development in the Calipari era. Now this is not to say that the Big Blue Nation should go into panic mode and their first glimpses of Julius Randle and the Harrison twins next week will certainly help to alleviate any pending anxiety. Still, for the first time since John Calipari rolled into Lexington in 2009, Kentucky is now in danger of not having the top recruiting class in the country.

Calipari is All Smiles About This Year’s Group. What About Next Year? (AP)

Of course, Kentucky will be getting its share of incoming stars, but it probably will not be the type of ridiculous haul that Wildcat fans have enjoyed over the past four seasons. Calipari already has received commitments from 7’1″ Karl Towns, Jr., a top-10 recruit according to nearly every major recruiting service, and Tyler Ulis, a strong point guard prospect despite his 5’9″, 150-pound frame. The Wildcats are still in the running for eight more five-star recruits in the class of 2014 — big men Jahlil Okafor, Myles Turner and Trey Lyles, and perimeter prospects Tyus Jones, Stanley Johnson, Justise Winslow, Devin Booker and James Blackmon, Jr. — but a closer look suggests that their prospects of landing each are less promising than they might first appear.

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1. Jahlil Okafor is not quite ready to cut his list, but according to his father there are four schools–Baylor, Duke, Kansas, and Kentucky–that have emerged as the favorites. Normally the list of the top senior in the country is notable by itself, but this year it takes on increased importance as Okafor and Tyus Jones, another top-5 senior, have repeatedly stated their plan to play together in college. Four other schools–Arizona, Illinois, Michigan State, and Ohio State–remain on the list of eight schools that Okafor previously said he was considering, but the favorites for now appear to be Baylor, which the pair has already visited, and Duke and Kansas, which they plan on visiting later this month. That obviously leaves Kentucky, which is not on Jones’ list, and although we have not heard of any scheduled visit they are Kentucky so we wouldn’t count them out with any recruit.
2. Cliff Alexander is not much behind Okafor in the rankings and is also reportedly involved in his own package deal with JaQuan Lyle. Yesterday he also released an updated list of his finalists narrowing it down to five schools: Illinois, DePaul, Michigan State, Kansas, and Memphis. Alexander is a Chicago native so we wouldn’t completely rule out DePaul and Illinois for Alexander, but if he and Lyle are actually a package deal then Kansas would be the favorite as they are the only school in both Alexander’s final five and Lyle’s final four choices. When comparing this pair’s list with that of Okafor/Jones the one common thread is Kansas so there is a chance that Bill Self could either have an unbelievably loaded class next year or a very hard choice to make when it comes to these pairs.
3. Yesterday, CBS released its TV schedule for the coming season for games that will be broadcast on CBS and CBS Sports Network. As you would expect the marquee games are on CBS while CBS Sports Network manages to get a handful of interesting games that are not quite as interesting on a national level. The two biggest games are clearly Louisville at Kentucky on December 28 and Oklahoma State at Kansas on January 18 that are at or above the level of anything that ESPN GameDay will cover. After that it is a slight drop-off, but there are plenty of other intriguing games–Arizona at Michigan (December 14), Michigan at Indiana (February 2), Michigan State at Wisconsin (February 9), and Kentucky at Florida (March 8)–that we will have marked on our calendar.
4. It seems like the North Carolina athletic department and the NCAA are not the only group to not be overly concerned with the fraudulent courses offered in their African and Afro-American Studies department. According to a report from the school, only one of 46 students who are at risk of not graduating because they took a fraudulent course has enrolled in a make-up course. If the number 46 sounds small compared to the size of scandal, it is because of the 384 students who enrolled in the 39 fraudulent classes between 1997 and 2009, 304 are alumni and their transcripts are supposedly “sealed” while another 34 are not affected because they do not need to the credit to graduate, did not get credit for the course, or transferred to another school. For its part, UNC has agreed to offer the make-up course for free to any of the 46 students who are at risk of not graduating because of the fraudulent courses.
5. Josh Pastner might have issues winning on the court, but he continues to show his strength on the recruiting trail and in particular in the state of Tennessee. His latest pick-up is K.J. Lawson, the #21 junior in the country, who committed to Memphis yesterday. The Tigers are still in the hunt for other top prospects including Cliff Alexander (see point #2 above), but perhaps the biggest part of this commitment is K.J.’s younger brother (Dedric) is the #4 ranked sophomore in the country. Tennessee is not traditionally known as a major college basketball hotbed, but if Pastner can continue to lock down his home state it should eventually pay dividends.

1. With Louisville set to begin their title defense in about a month, they got some more good news when it was announced that Kevin Ware, who suffered a horrific compound fracture in the team’s Elite 8 game versus Duke, had been cleared to practice with the team. Although we do not know what this means in terms of when Ware will actually start suiting up again for the Cardinals it does suggest that he is ahead of the timetable–a return to playing in games in 2014–that Rick Pitino had previously set for him. We have all seen the clips of Ware’s rehab including ones of him dunking, but it remains to be seen whether Ware will have his explosiveness back and if he will be able to play at full intensity or if the injury will continue to be in the back of his mind.
2. Ware’s injury and his progress might make more headlines due to the high-profile way he sustained it, but the right ankle of Gary Harris is probably more significant to this season’s national title picture. According to Jeff Goodman, Harris is “about 75 percent” and expected to return to practice this week. The Spartans return four of their five starters from last season and should be aiming for nothing less than a national championship, but it is Harris who is their most dynamic player and if they are to win a title he will need to be healthy, which is not a given as he already spent much of last season nursing a right shoulder injury.
3. If Larry Kryskowiak gets fired from his job at Utah and is unable to find a job in basketball again, it appears that he could have a career in law enforcement to fall back on. The third year Utah coach, who caught a bicycle thief about a week ago, helped catch a suspect who is believed to have stolen several thousand dollars worth of equipment from the Utah athletic department. According to reports, the basketball team’s video offices were among several offices in the athletic department that were targeted by the individual. When the campus police distributed a description of the suspect, Krystkowiak told his team to be on the lookout for the individual and when a former player took a photo of a suspicious individual other eyewitnesses confirmed it was the suspect. When a track coach notified Krystokowiak that he had seen the suspect on campus, Krystowiak and several of his assistants began to chase the suspect around campus before finally cornering him in a locker room and waiting for the cops to arrest him.
4. It turns out that there are actually some people at North Carolina who are legitimately bothered by all of the ridiculous stuff going on at the school. Jack Halperin, a tutor at UNC for 23 years, resigned his post in an open letter to Roy Williams that was published in Friday’s Daily Tar Heel citing Williams’ decision to allow PJ Hairston to remain on the team. While we do feel that the way that Williams has handled the Hairston leaves something to be desired, the decision is far from the most embarassing thing that the school has been involved in (see the investigation into the school’s African and Afro-American Studies program). Still we guess that everybody reaches their breaking point and Hairston just happened to be Halperin’s.
5. This year was already going to be a challenging one for Tom Crean, but now that the third of his three four-star freshmen–Stanford Robinson–is injured it might be time to adjust the expectations for Hoosier fans. Robinson, a guard out of Findlay College Prep, is out indefinitely after injuring his right knee during Hoosier Hysteria on Friday night. The type and extent of Robinson’s injury has not been disclosed at this point, but he is the third Hoosier freshman to sustain an injury with Troy Williams (right hand) and Luke Fischer (left shoulder) being the other two. Even Noah Vonleh, the Hoosiers’ top recruit, is getting over an ankle injury. While none of the injuries appear to be that significant on their own the string of injuries will only make it more difficult for the young team to get used to playing together and could lead to more early-season struggles for the Hoosiers.

1. UNLV may have lost Anthony Bennett to the NBA Draft and Mike Moser to Oregon, but that has not stopped Dave Rice, who got a commitment from Goodluck Okonoboh yesterday. Okonoboh, who is the #21 overall prospect in ESPN’s rankings, is a 6’9″ center with good defensive skills, but with a raw offensive game. We are not privy to the details of his recruitment, but are a little surprised that he chose UNLV over more established programs like Duke, Florida, Indiana, and Ohio State, which were his other finalists. If Okonoboh follows through on his commitment (see below), he would join Dwayne Morgan, a top-10 power forward, to give the Rebels an imposing frontline.
2. One of the many reasons that we do not get too worked up about recruitment is the inevitable early commitment/decommitment. The latest example of this is Trevon Bluiett, who backed out of his one-month-old commitment to UCLA yesterday. Blueitt’s official reason for backing out of his commitment was the distance from his home state of Indiana to UCLA, but we would not be surprised if UCLA’s surplus of wings may have played a more significant role. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Bluiett’s decision is that the Bruins has already hired Ed Schilling, Bluiett’s former high school coach, as an assistant coach. Package deals like this are not unusual in college basketball, but it is unusual to see one part of the package fall apart like this.
3. As we mentioned last month when he had his DUI charge reduced to a driving without a license charge, it did not take long for Connecticut to let Tyler Olander back on the team as Kevin Ollie announced yesterday that Olander, a 6’10” senior who has been arrested twice since March, was back on the team following his September arrest. We won’t pretend to know how to run a basketball team/program, but we are a bit surprised with how quickly Kevin Ollie let Olander back as he cited Olander’s “responsibility and maturity” as well as time management skills and academic work. We understand that Connecticut is in need of an inside presence, but we have a hard time believing that doing so for less than a month after his (second) arrest really demonstrates that.
4. When the NCAA made its controversial decision to not allow coaches to attend practices for schools that do not participate in scholastic associations we assumed it was a backhanded attempt at questioning the legitimacy of the academic credibility of those institutions. If the case of Illinois State freshman MiKyle McIntosh is any indication, they may have targeted the wrong school. McIntosh, a 6’7″ forward from Canada, was ruled academically ineligible after the NCAA determined that some of his high school coursework could not be used. Of course, this is not an infrequent occurrence, but it is notable that McIntosh spent part of his time at Christian Faith Center Academy in North Carolina, the same school that Florida State non-qualifier Xavier Rathan-Mayes attended for part of his career. We do not have access to the details of what courses these two took that the NCAA deemed unworthy of meeting its requirements as both players appear to have bounced around high schools, but much like Prime Prep in Texas when multiple players who graduated from the same high school are ruled academically ineligible you start to wonder what is going on there.
5. Ken Pomeroy writes some of the best publicly available analytic work available, but sometimes it takes someone else to put it into a format that makes others recognize its value. One example of this is the work of Dan Hanner who looked at two Pomeroy metrics–possessions per game and average possession length–to determine which teams had the biggest differences between perception and reality in terms of their tempo. The basis behind this is that a team that plays suffocating defense that leads to their opponent using up a large percentage of the shot clock will tend to have fewer possessions per game as their opponent will be consuming significant portions of the overall game time with their offensive possessions. We won’t get into the specifics of the analysis (you can check out the link for that), but it is interesting that teams that play faster on offense than standard metric suggest tend to be much better than teams that play slower on offense than standard metrics suggest.

Over the years we have heard plenty of radio guests hang up when they disagreed with the host’s comments or line of questioning. Having listened to The Dan LeBatard radio show for years I have heard this happen on several occasions, but what happened to Rick Pitino today on Toucher & Rich, a Boston-based radio show, might be the most embarrassing piece of sports radio “journalism” that I can remember.

We Suspect That Rick Was Not Entertained

Here is their “interview” with Pitino:

Fred Toucher: We are joined by Rick Pitino, former coach of the Celtics, current coach of the Louisville Cardinals, who won the national championship. Rick Pitino, hello!

Pitino: Morning, guys.

Toucher: You stink. You ruined the Celtics.

(Hosts hang up and laugh uproariously for several minutes with a few comments in between)

After the laughter died down, the hosts did make some salient points questioning what qualified Pitino to write several leadership books and whether anybody should be taking advice from a basketball coach on how to run a business (this applies to all coaches who do so not just Pitino).

You can listen to the full segment below:

Unfortunately, Pitino was no longer on the line (as the hosts hung up on him) so he couldn’t answer any additional questions. While I understand how much Boston dislikes Pitino (lived in Boston from 2001 through 2012), I have no idea what good this type of radio segement does other than to make Pitino look like a sympathetic figure.