Here we go… headfirst into another season heralded by our 2013-14 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. For the next three weeks, you’ll get two hits of excitement each weekday. We’ve captured what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head in astonishment. To see the entire released series so far, click here.

#28 – Where Rush the Wheelchair Happens.

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13 preseasons.

Here we go… headfirst into another season heralded by our 2013-14 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. For the next three weeks, you’ll get two hits of excitement each weekday. We’ve captured what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head in astonishment. To see the entire released series so far, click here.

#29 – Where That’s Just Showing Off Happens.

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13 preseasons.

Here we go… headfirst into another season heralded by our 2013-14 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. For the next three weeks, you’ll get two hits of excitement each weekday. We’ve captured what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head in astonishment. To see the entire released series so far, click here.

#30 – Where Maui Madness Happens.

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13 preseasons.

1. Somewhat surprisingly, news that Louisville forward Chane Behanan is suspended indefinitely was met with a lot of shoulder-shrugs from analysts who have heard this song and dance from coach Rick Pitino before. It’s true that Pitino has developed an “all talk” reputation when it comes to suspending players, but as yesterday’s column from the Courier-Journal‘s Tim Sullivan points out, this suspension may be different. The column notes that Behanan hasn’t just been suspended from the basketball team, he has also been evicted from his residence hall, a move that’s so rare that school spokesman Kenny Klein couldn’t recall it happening before. The article also hints that the decision may not have been Pitino and Athletic Director Tom Jurich’s decision and makes the good point that “[coaches] wouldn’t normally kick a player out of the athletic dorm if your goal was to get him back in time for a specific game. You would do so to be consistent with how U of L handles similar cases.” So while it’s entirely possible that Behanan will still return some time around Christmas, assuming Pitino is going to bring him back the first chance he gets may be underestimating how serious the offense and subsequent suspension are.
2. Although this year’s version of Memphis Madness didn’t have the same kind of star power that last year’s version did, the atmosphere helped the Tigers land two commitments over the weekend. Top-30 JuCo forwards Trahson Burrell and Chris Hawkins both pledged to the Tigers, and they will add valuable depth and experience to a team that will be young again next season. Burrell initially committed to Rhode Island all the way back in 2010 (not a typo), but after bouncing around several prep schools, the New York native ended up at Lee College in Texas where his athleticism caught the eye of the Memphis coaching staff. Hawkins is a more peculiar commitment because while the 6’5″, 250-pounder has talent and size, he doesn’t seem like a great fit for Memphis’ fast-paced style of play. Still, head coach Josh Pastner and his staff rarely hand out offers to guys who can’t help the team in a big way, so it will be interesting to watch Hawkins fit in once he gets to school.
3. One of the main reasons folks are so bullish about Connecticut‘s return to the NCAA Tournament this season is because of the breakout year that Huskies’ forward DeAndre Daniels had last season. Daniels came to UConn as a five-star recruit, but he failed to live up to the hype during a trying freshman campaign in which he hardly saw the floor and seemed totally unsure of himself when he was there. As a sophomore, then-first-year coach Kevin Ollie needed to lean on him heavily due to a lack of depth and Daniels responded to the challenge by averaging 12.1 PPG and 5.5 RPG on the season (including 21.3 PPG, 9.0 RPG, and 3.3 BPG in the final four games of the season). Now everyone is well aware of just how much ability Daniels has but it is his consistency that needs improvement if the Huskies are going to be a threat in their new conference. Everyone knows about how talented the team’s backcourt is, but it is the mercurial Daniels who may be the team’s most important player. UConn is very thin and inexperienced in the frontcourt and although he hardly qualifies as a traditional big man despite his size and length, his rebounding and rim protection will be crucial components of the Huskies’ defense.
4. Since we are on the topic of teams without much of a frontcourt, the only AAC team with realistic NCAA Tournament expectations and less frontcourt depth than UConn may be Cincinnati, which makes the development of center David Nyarsuk all the more important. Tragedy struck the Sudanese big man during the offseason when he was informed his father had passed away, but he is coping with the help and support of his teammates and coaching staff, while UC fans are hoping that Nyarsuk’s determination to honor his late father translates on the court. Nyarsuk  dealt with knee injuries and the acclimation to Division I basketball last season as he averaged 2.6 points and 2.5 rebounds in 11.3 minutes per game. But the Bearcats have lost nearly every legitimate post player from their roster and Nyarsuk will need to make a much larger impact in an increased role if Cincinnati is to have any hope of holding its own up front. The team has the leadership and ability to make a run at the NCAA Tournament, but it’s Nyarsuk’s development that will help determine how real that shot is.
5. We have been saying it all offseason but let’s get it out there one more time — never doubt SMU coach Larry Brown. The elder statesman among AAC coaches still knows how to recruit and he also knows just how to leverage his connections to do it. Two weeks ago, David Robinson stopped by the Mustangs’ practice in Dallas, and on Friday, it was Allen Iverson‘s turn to show his face. You would have to be the most naive person in the world to think that Iverson’s visit at the same time that recruits William Lee,  D.J. Hogg and Chris Giles were visiting was a coincidence, and if you still needed convincing about his purpose for being on campus, the former NBA superstar also attended Prime Prep’s Midnight Madness, where SMU commitment Emmanuel Mudiay just so happens to go to school. No recruit is going to choose a school just because some famous former NBA players shows up at practice, but in a world where half the battle is generating buzz, few folks can create more of a buzz with a visit to practice (practice?) than “The Answer.”

There is a reason Bill Self tries to get recruits to visit for the annual Late Night in the Phog each October. The event has led to a number of commitments over the years, most recently when Kelly Oubre, the #12 overall recruit in the class of 2014 according the Rivals.com, committed to the Jayhawks a few days after taking in Late Night festivities this year. But when the schedule didn’t match up with those of a pair of top recruits this year, Self decided to have a Late Night Part II. He opened the doors to Allen Fieldhouse Saturday morning for a scrimmage lasting about an hour, and an estimated 10,000 fans showed up. Here are a few observations from the informal (and raw) scrimmage:

Bill Self Teaching at Kansas’ Open Practice Saturday Morning

• The fact that over 5,000 fans were turned away at the door before Late Night in the Phog earlier this month was surely one of the reasons for the open scrimmage, but more importantly were the visits from two of the best recruits in the class of 2014: Jahlil Okafor (C, #1 overall on Rivals) and Tyus Jones (PG, #5). Jones walked in with the team and Jones walked in 15 minutes later to a standing ovation. Everything points to the duo as a package deal to one lucky school next year, and both players have visited or plan to visit four of the same schools: Baylor, Duke, Kentucky, and Kansas. Best guess? Kansas or Duke.
• The starting five looks to be set, with Naadir Tharpe, Wayne Selden, Andrew Wiggins, Perry Ellis and Tarik Black starting the first scrimmage for the blue team. The only real discussion seemed to be between Black, a senior transfer from Memphis, and Joel Embiid, a true freshman from Cameroon. It was no surprise that Black got the nod from Self this early in the season, especially after watching him play. He looked like a 21-year-old with three seasons of college ball under his belt and was strong around the rim, but…
• Joel Embiid will be starting before the season ends. He has played only a few seasons of organized basketball in his life, but he has all the tools to be a great player for years to come: solid footwork, a soft touch, the ability to finish with either hand, and a legitimate 7-foot body. When things start to click, whether it happens in November or January, he will be one of the best big men in the country. There is a reason Rick Pitino said Embiid could be the No. 2 overall draft pick behind Andrew Wiggins in next summer’s NBA Draft. He is currently a mid-to-late lottery projection in most mock drafts.

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Adam Butler of Pachoops.com (@pachoopsab) joins us as a guest columnist for the second straight year. He took in the Pac-12 Media Day on Thursday.

Pac-12 Coaches Got Their Media Day On Yesterday (credit: P12)

Washington State

Despite being picked to finish last, Ken Bone did not seem too concerned. He was, however, concerned about his team’s inability to close games last year and he wore a portion of that blame; letting us all know that his team’s lack of composure down the stretch lay partially on his shoulders. Though some of it could be tossed up to luck, for which we consult KenPom. The Cougars were the 345 luckiest team in the country last year. For context, that means there were only two other teams that were less lucky. And to contextualize quantified luck, it’s to say that their actual success (or lack thereof) was below their predicted success and therefore: unlucky. They lost the close ones and the thought is that this trend would normalize and the Cougars wouldn’t, say, finish last. With that and mind, and the return of DaVonte Lacy and Royce Woolridge, Bone thinks he might have something a little better than the cellar cooking.

Oregon State

Craig Robinson jumped right in to things by telling us about how much more frontcourt depth he’s going to have. He did mention the other guy on stage with him, Roberto Nelson (18/3/2), then dove right into the return of Angust Brandt and Daniel Gomis, a player who’s been on campus for three years with nary a game played. CRob was re-introducing us to more than 13 additional feet of frontcourt to be added to Eric Moreland (more later), Devon Collier, and Olaf Schaftenaar. Big Beavers. So on to Moreland. According to Robinson, he’s irreplaceable; which makes it really difficult when he’s suspended for the season’s first 14 games. So how do you replace the irreplaceable? Well you put a positive twist on it, elevate the roles of a few peripheral guys and say, “What I think is going to happen is we’re going to have more tools in our toolkit to use once Eric does come back.” I liked that and I also liked that, when asked about impact newcomers to the Pac-12, Robinson didn’t bother (much) on Aaron Gordon or Jabari Bird. He told us about his new guys: Cheikh N’diaye, Malcolm Duvivier, and Hallice Cooke. Good for you, coach.

Utah

His first year in Utah was “survival.” He’d brought in something like 12-if-not-more newcomers and he just needed to survive. That year the Utes were in the conversation for worst High Major team of all time. Like I said, Larry Krystkowiak called it survival. And then there was last year and now we find ourselves here. Drake might call it starting from the bottom but I won’t soon put the Utes at the top (which is what I assume Drake implies through his lyrics and that he’s not a middling Pac-12 team). “I think that playing hard is a talent,” Larry K said. And it was that level of talent he’s had to rely on. But now he’s starting to see an influx. His culture hasn’t changed but there may be “a few more stars behind their name.” Insinuating that K thinks he just might have a slightly more talented squad and some higher expectations for where his team could go. And if nothing else, he claims to have a deep squad. Something he’ll use to exploit their distinct altitude advantage. That high up he wants to run people out of the gym with their depth and altitude aptitude. And if nothing else, he can rely on all-freshman performer Jordan Loveridge for survival. A young man K has asked to be a leader, “[Coach Krystkowiak] challenged me to lead more verbally.” We know the Utes are high up, but are they up for the challenge?

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Welcome back to the third season of the RTC Podcast. From now until the second week in April, from Midnight Madness to March Madness, from the upstart American Athletic Conference to the venerable Atlantic Coast Conference, podcast host Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) will guide the RTC editors, microsite correspondents and even some special guests through more college basketball discussion than anyone could possibly listen to in a single sitting. We hope you’ll try, though.

This preseason edition of the podcast is meant to get things started, to tease the season out from a view still several weeks away from opening night. Over the course of the next three weeks, we will drop a preseason RTC Podblast for each of the seven major basketball conferences before turning back to the national picture in early November with a second preseason edition. After that, we’ll be back to the normal weekly schedule of a full podcast in the first half of the week with a shorter podblast reviewing that week’s action at the end.

Sporting News/Big Ten Network’s Mike DeCourcy Joined Us This Week

Now, about those guests… This week we’re thrilled to introduce a new segment to the podcast called Rush the Takes. In each of these weekly segments, we’ll invite a prominent college basketball analyst or personality to join the discussion for a bite-sized morsel of a chat about what’s happening in the game. This week we’re happy to announced that venerable Sporting News columnist and Big Ten Network analyst Mike DeCourcy (@tsnmike) took some time out of his busy schedule to join us. You’ll definitely want to hear his specific observations on the freshmen class at Kansas, beyond Andrew Wiggins — it’s well worth your time.

As usual, the rundown is below if you’d like to skip around to the most interesting parts. Make sure to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after we record. Feel free to contact us through Twitter or email — we’re listening.

1. As we mentioned yesterday, Wednesday was the day that four major basketball conferences, all of their own independent accord, decided, “hey, let’s dominate the news cycle for our basketball product by competing for attention with three other competitors, even though we could have easily chosen any of a number of other days during the month of October! Brilliant!” Sometimes the ruling parties of this sport really make you wonder. Alas, the ACC, AAC, Big East and SEC all held their media events yesterday, providing us with a steady stream of quotes, notes, predictions and controversy throughout the day. You’ll get better coverage of the details of each of those leagues at each of our microsites (excepting the SEC, which relaunches next week), but for now, here are some of the things we learned. ACC: Jim Boeheim says the only thing Syracuse fans will miss is the Big East Tournament; AAC: Commissioner Mike Aresco says no-way, no-how to paying players. Big East: Are the biggest celebrities in this league Bill Raftery and Gus Johnson?  SEC: Kentucky’s best player is James Young? The SEC will continue with its two-day event in Birmingham today, and the Pac-12 will hold its one-day media event in San Francisco as well. The Big 12 and Big Ten will follow with theirs over the next couple of weeks.
2. The best quote of the day, however, didn’t come from one of the roughly 50 coaches assembled yesterday at the various conference media days. It came from USC’s Andy Enfield, who exhorted his team during a recent practice by telling the Trojans, “We play up-tempo basketball here. If you want to play slow, go to UCLA.” Perhaps not since the days of Shaq and Kobe trashing each other through Jerry Buss has the City of Angels heard such a fine display of braggadoccio. Given that it’s coming from a brash young coach who quite literally was making a CPA’s salary somewhere on the gulf coast of Florida one year ago, even better. The two schools have never liked one another, but sometimes the crosstown rivalry got lost in the football vs. basketball focus of each. It would be nice to see the rivalry heat up with two cocky new coaches in town ready to trade barbs back and forth for the better part of the next decade. The Pac-12 microsite has a fantastic piece coming later today on this topic, and we highly encourage you to check it out in a few hours. Meanwhile, do you think the west coast media will bring up this quote to Steve Alford and his counterparts later today?
3. Jumping back to the media days, all four leagues released their preseason choices to win the conference races and the standard other superlatives we typically expect this time of year. In the ACC, Duke was picked first with Syracuse’s CJ Fair chosen as the top player; over in the AAC, it was Louisville and Russ Smith. In the new-but-not-improved Big East, Marquette was the choice, with Creighton’s Doug McDermott as the player of the year. In the SEC, Kentucky and Julius Randle were the selections. From our perspective given what we know about these sorts of things, the media will be lucky if even half of these choices come in by March — there’s just too much variability and unpredictability at the conference level to make sterling predictions like these. The closest might be McDermott in the Big East, so long as he’s healthy all season, and Louisville to win the AAC. Beyond that? It’s hard to say anything is a lock.
4. There was a period in the mid-1990s when Georgetown basketball, so feared and despised by so many in the 1980s, became the coolest thing around, in a retro sort of way. Sporting some of the best college basketball uniforms ever produced and an electrifying backcourt led by the unguardable Allen Iverson and his sidekick, Victor Page, the Hoyas became everything they hadn’t been during the previous era: fun, fast and perimeter-oriented. Bubba Chuck, of course, went on to an MVP award and great riches in the NBA, but Page, the Big East Tournament MVP in 1996 and Big East scoring champion in 1997, was never able to get there. As a result, Page has spent much of the last two decades in and out of correctional institutions for a series of petty and serious crimes, the most recent of which, a brutally violent assault against a Maryland woman, was described by Nathan Fenno in the Washington Times as the product of “one wasted opportunity after another.” Page has been charged with 33 crimes in the last 42 months (guilty of six, including the assault, for which he was sentences to 10 years in prison), but the clear lesson here is that young players with all the talent in the world still need to have realistic backup plans. Education, work, whatever. Because if there’s nothing else to live for, that allows the darkness to creep in.
5. After that one, let’s finish today off with a good story. In an era of coaches working themselves to the bone with all the different CEO aspects of running a Division I college basketball program, the New York Times‘ Zach Schnobrun writes about the youngest D-I coach in the country, Wagner’s 29-year old Bashir Mason. Mason, it turns out, is finishing up a Master’s in elementary education at the school and the second-year head coach must complete 220 hours of classroom instruction to earn the degree. As a result, he spends five mornings and one afternoon a week at a local elementary school, working through reading comprehension and other practical exercises with kids who are too young to recognize that their teacher is a bit of a local celebrity. It’s a story about persistence and follow-through, and it’s one that Mason deserves to have heard. Here’s hoping that his team listens to him as intently as his six-year old students do — they’ll assuredly learn a thing or two about discipline and hard work.

1. Maybe we should just start calling this post the Wiggins Five, given how often Andrew Wiggins is finding his way into it without having played a single minute of college basketball. But yesterday’s news regarding the precocious Kansas freshman was more than just standard hyperbole and filler, as Bleacher Report‘s Jared Zwerling (yes, this is a first for this site; we’re just as astonished as you are) reported that the shoe giant adidas is already estimating a deal of $140-$180 million over 10 years to sign Wiggins to pitch its brand next spring (and that Nike is set to match it). By way of a comparison, Nike signed LeBron James to a then-ridiculous $93 million deal a decade ago, and that was without the benefit of ubiquitous social media tracking his every dunk, quip and Hummer purchase. Nor did James have a year of nationally-televised college basketball games to help build his overall branding — can you imagine how high the number could get if Wiggins dominates the season and leads Kansas to a national title next April — is a quarter-bill out of the question?
2. A different class of 2013 prep star may not be looking at a nine-figure endorsement deal like Wiggins in several months, but he’s poised to make more money than the Kansas freshman (and every other freshman) for the duration of the 2013-14 season. Aquille Carr, a top 100 recruit at the point guard position, is reportedly taking David Stern’s “sage” and controversial advice about getting a better education in the NBA Development League than at one of America’s colleges by entering his name into next month’s NBADL Draft. The 5’7″ prospect from Baltimore originally committed to Seton Hall but decided to go pro before ever making it to campus, briefly entertaining the idea of playing in China before settling on his decision to come back home and settle into a year of long bus rides between Frisco, Texas and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. While we don’t know Carr’s specific issues with respect to skipping out on a subsidized education at Seton Hall, his dream of getting picked up in next year’s NBA Draft as a waterbug distributor is probably a significant long shot. For the next six months, though, he should take solace in all the pocket change that his pay scale of $13,000 to $25,500 (2013 numbers) will give him over the chumps playing for free in college.
3. For some strange reason, four of the seven power basketball conferences have decided to have their annual media day on the same day, that is, today. The ACC (Charlotte), AAC (Memphis), Big East (New York) and SEC (Birmingham) will all introduce their coaches, players and teams at overblown events Wednesday, with the SEC taking an extraordinary two days (Wednesday and Thursday) to sell the world on its mediocre basketball product. The Pac-12 will have its annual event in San Francisco on Thursday, while the Big 12 and Big Ten had enough sense to space theirs out into later weeks. As ESPN.com‘s Dana O’Neil writes, this week’s events in Charlotte, Memphis and NYC should make for some world-class awkwardness as coaches try to size each other up and figure out who is staying and leaving. #awkwardconferencemeetups, anyone?
4. Officiating is always going to be a point of contention among coaches, fans and media in large part because there are so many different leagues and organizations supporting the 838 Division I referees calling games across America. Inconsistency (along with its cousin, general incompetence) is the most common complaint, as people have trouble understanding how a touch foul in the ACC can be called while a mugging in the Big Ten is ignored. The NCAA has made some strides in trying to normalize the rules and criteria for calling fouls, for example, but it often seems as if the referees spend the non-conference season making calls the new way only to revert back to the old way by conference play. This year is no different. Preseason points of emphasis on hand-checking and the incomprehensible block/charge rule are the talk of coaches around the country, but as ESPN.com‘s Jeff Goodman writes, there remains a great deal of apprehension over the effect of the changes. One thing we suppose that most people can agree upon, though, is that it surely can’t get much worse?
5. Let’s end things with some fun today. NBCSports‘ College Basketball Talk released its list of the top 20 dunkers in the game yesterday, and although you can nitpick around the edges of  any ranking like this, you’ll have a whole lot more enjoyment by just sitting back and watching the clips. It really must be the Year of the Freshman, as CBT selects two rookies among its top three (it’s not difficult figuring out who they might be). Our one quibble might be that they left out a transfer student who became infamous for perhaps the greatest missed airballed dunk layup of all-time last season — Georgetown’s Joshua Smith. But no worries — the 6’10” jumping jack of a center will be tearing down rims at a DC-area arena near you soon.