Welcome to this week’s RTC Podblast, hosted by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114). It was a week of big rivalry games from Michigan-Michigan State to Duke-North Carolina to Kentucky-Florida and UConn-Syracuse. We hit on a few of these during this week’s podblast, while also finding some time to discuss the MVC and Creighton and looking ahead to what can only be described as a fairly miserable lineup of games over the weekend. Oh well, there’s always next week… this week’s outline is below.

• 0:00-7:45 – Sparty Establishes Itself as the State’s Best Team
• 7:45-10:20 – Syracuse Drops Last Big East Game vs UConn
• 10:20-12:45 – Creighton Struggling in MVC Play
• 12:45-15:44 – Thoughts on Randy’s NorCal Night (UCLA-Cal/Gonzaga-St. Mary’s)
• 15:44-18:55 – There Should Be More Games to Preview This Weekend

1. The college basketball community was abuzz last night discussing the gruesome-looking knees injury suffered by Kentucky center Nerlens Noel during the second half of the Wildcats’ loss to Florida in Gainesville. At the time of this writing, no official news has been released as to the severity of the injury, but as you can see from this video and this photo, the star freshman’s knee buckled in a way that caused him quite a bit of pain. Afterward, head coach John Calipari said that he feared the worst but hoped for the best, but the collective mood around Big Blue Nation suggests that Noel may not be coming back this season. You hate to see a player of any kind suffer a serious injury, and this is especially so when it involves a player with the talent, skill and future of Noel. Let’s all hope that by the time you’re reading this on Wednesday morning that Calipari’s hopes for only a sprain have rendered true.
2. From a potential season-ending injury to a definite one, Northwestern forward Jared Swopshire‘s career is officially over after he underwent arthroscopic knee surgery on Tuesday. The Louisville transfer graduate student had hoped to spend his only year in Evanston contributing toward the Wildcats’ first-ever run to the NCAA Tournament, but the snake-bitten team that has suffered multiple key injuries this year now sits at 13-11 and 4-7 in the Big Ten with a Thursday trip to Ohio State looming. Without the team’s best rebounder available, Bill Carmody’s squad expects to now have only seven scholarship players available for that game. Ouch.
3. While on the subject of bad news, a bizarre and sad story is developing in the Philadelphia area this week as Maria Reyes Garcia-Pellon, the wife of former Penn starting center and 1979 Final Four participant Matthew White, was arrested on charges of murdering her husband with a pair of kitchen knives. She claimed to police that she found White “looking at pornography, young girls,” which caused her to attack him as he slept, but it’s unclear whether White was actually doing so. According to a written statement from a spokesperson for the county attorney’s office, “there is no indication that [what White was looking at] was child pornography,” but we’re sure that the specific details will come out if such an accusation is true. The last Ivy League team to make the Final Four was White’s Quakers, who lost to eventual national champion Michigan State in the Final Four.
4. You’re up three points with eight seconds left and the opponent heading your way — do you foul or choose to defend? This strategic discussion has been bandied about for the last several years among the punditocracy, with a data-driven cabal arguing that fouling is the proper decision — that the likelihood of the sequence of events that will cause your team to lose is even smaller than forcing a tough contested three. Ken Pomeroy begs to differ. Looking at three years worth of data, he found that defending the three results in a win 94.0% of the time, while putting your opponent on the line produces a victory 92.7% of the time — a minor difference, to be sure, but a difference over a data set of 804 instances nevertheless. Considering the margin of error, perhaps there’s no meaningful difference between the two strategies, but Pomeroy argues that the preponderance of game-tying threes (witness: Wisconsin’s buzzer-beater versus Michigan over the weekend) compared with instances of  successful fouling strategies gives a false impression of one solution preferred over the other. It’s a fair point — perception drives reality for most — but we also wonder if the answer here might be mostly driven by the personnel on the floor analyzed through a matrix of three-point shooting, foul shooting, and rebounding prowess.
5. It’s the end of the Big East as we know it, and Grantland‘s Charles Pierce does not feel fine. In a wide-ranging piece that focuses on ancient Eastern basketball rivalries, anti-Catholic nativism in the South (read: Tobacco Road), and somehow, a sluggishly-paced game between Georgetown and Marquette, Pierce laments the loss of one of the great college basketball leagues there ever was. While we’re just as torn up as anybody with the implosion of the venerable conference, we also recognize that the league really did this to itself. And when given the opportunity to shore up its ranks by getting back to what made the Big East relevant in the first place — basketball — the conference instead made a mockery of itself by reaching near and wide to schools like TCU, Boise State and (egads) Tulane and expected everyone to keep a straight face. Well, there is that new NBC Sports television contract, we suppose.

Another week, another RTC Podcast. This week’s version (hosted by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114), as always) digs deeply into the core group of supposedly ‘elite’ teams that comprise the top of the rankings, discusses whether parity if necessarily bad for the game, and of course takes a look at a full slate of action heading into the rest of the week.

Check back on Friday of this week for our shorter RTC Podblast, which will run down some of the action from this week and look ahead to the weekend’s biggest games. And don’t forget to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after each recording. Thanks!

• 0:00-9:43 – So Why Is Parity a Bad Thing?
• 9:43-14:26 – Kansas and Florida Losses Most Concerning
• 14:26-17:40 – Re-evaluating the #1 Seeds After a Wacky Week
• 17:40-23:01 – 5 OTs Later – Louisville Still a Mystery
• 23:01-27:32 – Player You Want Taking the Last Shot
• 27:32-29:14 – Hey, Our Preseason Rankings are Pretty Good
• 29:14-32:56 – How to Handle Kansas’ Awful Week in the Rankings
• 32:56-35:29 – Should Marquette’s Gaudy Big East Record Earn a Top 25 Ranking?
• 35:29-36:46 – Saint Louis Deserves Some Recognition
• 36:46-38:30 – Great Battle in the Great Lakes State – Michigan/Michigan State Preview
• 38:30-40:35 – Kentucky-Florida Preview
• 40:35-45:45 – Miami and Duke on Upset Alert vs. In-State Rivals
• 45:45-50:32 – Big Mid-Week Games on the West Coast
• 50:32-53:18 – Wisconsin-Minnesota Preview/Wrap

We welcome any and all feedback on these podcasts including topics for future discussion or if you want to send us any questions for our “May Not Be From Actual Listeners” segment. Hit us up at rushthecourt@yahoo.com or @rushthecourt on Twitter.

With Groundhog Day and, oh yeah, the Super Bowl now behind us, the next couple of months belong to college basketball. Our RTC Podcast host Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) is back to lead us down a primrose path of hoops enlightenment, including a discussion of the two biggest games of last weekend, examine some of the teams among the best in the country we can’t quite get a good read on yet, and riff on underrated names that should be getting more publicity this season. All this and more (outlined below) in this week’s podcast.

Check back on Friday of this week for our shorter RTC Podblast, which will run down some of the action from this week and look ahead to the weekend’s biggest games. And don’t forget to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after each recording. Thanks!

• 0:00-8:32 – Oklahoma State vs. Kansas
• 8:32-20:21 – Indiana vs. Michigan
• 20:21-27:07 – Florida, Syracuse and Duke – just how good are they?
• 27:07-30:21 – When does bubble talk start to mean something?
• 30:21-35:09 – Underrated stars
• 35:09-37:54 – Where does Kansas State belong in the rankings?
• 37:54-41:47 – How far does Oregon drop after 2 bad losses?
• 41:47-47:51 – Mid-week previews & Wrap

We welcome any and all feedback on these podcasts including topics for future discussion or if you want to send us any questions for our “May Not Be From Actual Listeners” segment. Hit us up at rushthecourt@yahoo.com or @rushthecourt on Twitter.

And we’re back for another shiny edition of the RTC Podcast. This week our host, Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114), artfully leads us on a discussion of all the crazy goings-on in college basketball over the last week-plus. With so many topics to choose from, we tried to keep it relevant, discussing Louisville’s surprising fall from grace, the possible #1 seeds at this point in the season, what to think about Miami’s ascendant behavior, and a bunch of other junk throw in between. Feel free to use the outline below to jump around to the areas of interest, of course.

Check back on Friday of this week for our shorter RTC Podblast, which will run down some of the action from this week and look ahead to the weekend’s biggest games. And don’t forget to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after each recording. Thanks!

Joe Dzuback is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after this afternoon’s Villanova-Syracuse game in Philadelphia.

Five Key Takeaways.

1. Jim Boeheim can be very gracious…or not. In the postgame press conference a Syracuse TV reporter asked the venerable coach if a game interference foul should have been called when the Villanova student body rushed the court with 0.5 seconds left. Villanova was set to inbound with Syracuse down four and the coach shot him a look: “That’s nothing,” Boeheim said. “Forget it, c’mon.” Later when the same reporter asked him if free throws would be a point of emphasis going forward the coach asked him if “you can’t cook and you emphasize it, will you be a good cook tomorrow?” He went on to tell the reporter that the Orange have historically been a top three free throw shooting team in the conference, and that he was more worried about three-point shots regardless.
2. Consistency counts for something in the Big East. Efficiently converting shots and possessions no matter who the opponent was the difference for Villanova today. Syracuse was 24-of-35 from the free throw line (68%), missing a number of attempts early in the game. Critical turnovers at the end of regulation fueled a 6-0 Villanova run to tie the game and force overtime. Villanova played with confidence in the last 3:30 of regulation and in overtime, outscoring Syracuse 20-10 during that stretch.
3. Brandon Triche is a beast. The senior guard carried the Orange offensively through much of the game, scoring 23 points while playing 41 minutes. He dished out four assists and managed a steal.
4. Keep shooting. Though he was 2-of-9 from the field through regulation and 1-of-7 from beyond the arc, junior guard James Bell canned three consecutive shots in overtime (two three-pointers) to post eight points in the five-minute period. The first three put the home team up by one, and the layup at the 0:27 mark pushed Villanova’s lead back out to three.
5. The Orange need James Southerland in the worst way. The senior forward, sidelined with an eligibility issue, averages 13.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game . The Orange were outrebounded 50-40 by Villanova  today.

Two RTCs in a Single Week at Villanova

Stars of the Game. Darrun Hilliard and Mouphtaou Yarou. Villnaova’s sophomore off guard matched his career-high of 25 points on 8-of-11 shooting (3-of-6 on three-point attempts). Hilliard dished six assists against no turnovers. Villanova’s senior forward/center posted a double-double, scoring 14 points to go with his 16 rebounds.

Quotable.

• “What a week for us” – coach Jay Wright commenting on Villanova’s second win of the week over a top five team. The last time Villanova posted consecutive wins over top five teams was 1985. In the Final Four.
• “The greatest things about these 11:00/12:00 games… Saturday games is that you have the afternoon, you get a great Italian dinner, it’s the greatest. But when you lose those 11/12 o’clock games, the day goes on forever.” – Wright’s reply to a question about whether he stop and reflect on the week’s wins.
• “I didn’t want to foul at 0:13 because they make one and miss one and get the rebound…” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim on why the Orange did not foul when Villanova had the ball on the last possession and Syracuse was up by three, 61-58.

Sights and Sounds. The Wells Fargo Center is home court for the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. It seats 20,000 fans, and Villanova announced paid attendance today was 18,273. When freshman point guard Ryan Arcidiancono hit his three-point attempt to tie the game with three seconds left in regulation a wall of sound descended on the floor. Courtside observers were literally moved by the force. The court rush at the end was amazing.

Who Won the Week? is a regular column that will outline and discuss three winners and losers from the previous week. The author of this column is Kenny Ocker (@KennyOcker), an Oregon-based sportswriter best known for his willingness to drive (or bike!) anywhere to watch a basketball game.

WINNER: Miami (FL)

Miami Fans RTC’d the Blue Devils Wednesday Night (credit: WaPo)

Jim Larranaga’s Hurricanes, by extension the subject of an NCAA inquiry regarding the alleged payment of former player DeQuan Jones, had one of the best weeks on and off the court of any school this season. First, the NCAA botched its investigation so much that it has to investigate its own investigators, according to CBS Sports. Then the ‘Canes went off and destroyed No. 1 Duke by the score of 90-63 on Wednesday, putting the third-worst beating ever onto an AP top-ranked team. Wednesday’s game also marked the return of gargantuan center Reggie Johnson (listed at 6’10”, 292 lbs.), who scored two points and grabbed five rebounds in his first game back from a broken thumb that was supposed to leave him out for up to another month. Miami now has a two-game lead on the rest of the ACC, although a return trip to Duke does remain. You know you had a good week when knocking off the top team in the country isn’t even the best thing that happened to you.

(Related winners: Miami guards Shane Larkin and Durand Scott, who combined to shoot 17-of-28 from the field on their way to 37 total points. Related losers: Duke guards Quinn Cook, Seth Curry and Tyler Thornton, who combined to go 1-of-29 from the field on their way to six total points; the NCAA – see below.)

LOSER: The NCAA

This was all set to be Frank Haith’s spot, as his Missouri team got shellacked by Florida 83-52 on Saturday, barely escaped at home Tuesday against South Carolina, and then news broke that Haith could face unethical conduct charges from the NCAA relating to the aforementioned DeQuan Jones issue. But instead, the NCAA now must review its own investigators’ conduct, particularly related to the release of Haith’s supposed looming punishments. So Haith is safe for now, and all of a sudden NCAA President Mark Emmert has another public relations maelstrom on his hands. Bummer.

(Related winners: Florida, because it still shellacked Mizzou. Related losers: Ethics.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Who Won the Week? is a regular column that will outline and discuss three winners and losers from the previous week. The author of this column is Kenny Ocker (@KennyOcker), an Oregon-based sportswriter best known for his willingness to drive (or bike!) anywhere to watch a basketball game.

Sorry about the hiatus. Let’s get on with the show.

Winner: Doug McDermott

Doug McDermott is Blowing Up Again (USA Today)

After coming into the season as one of the top NPOY candidates, the Creighton forward has backed that up on the court. He took that to the next level in the Jays’ convincing wins over Missouri State and Northern Iowa last week. McDermott had a season-high 39 points on the road against the Bears, shooting 15-of-19 from the field and 3-of-4 from three-point range, while also grabbing 10 rebounds. He then turned around and went for 31 points against the Panthers, getting back-to-back 30-point games for the second time this season. For Creighton, tomorrow’s game against fellow conference undefeated Wichita State will be the first of two (and hopefully three, if the MVC Tournament breaks right) match-ups between the two elite teams in the Missouri Valley. And no player is a bigger part of what the Bluejays do than McDermott, whose 24 points per game is second best in the country.

(Related winners: Creighton. Related losers: Nets, because McDermott keeps burning them up; the MVC, in which the Jays are 6-0 so far.)

Loser: Wyoming

The Cowboys were one of the darlings of the non-conference season, remaining as one of the last four unbeatens before leading scorer Luke Martinez broke a bone in his hand during an altercation at a bar in late December. Since then, the wheels have started to fall off the cart for coach Larry Shyatt’s bunch. Wyoming started out Mountain West play by losing on a buzzer-beater to Boise State, and it didn’t get much better last week. The Cowboys went on the road to beat Nevada in Reno, but didn’t put up a point per possession in the 59-48 win. Meanwhile, police reports were released about Martinez’s fight, which said the guard admitted to kicking a defenseless man in the head as he was knocked out on the ground. Then the Cowboys capped off their week by producing one of the most unwatchable games of the season, a 49-36 snooze-fest of a loss at a mediocre Fresno State, in which they shot 24 percent from the field, 5-of-27 from three-point range and an abysmal 7-of-20 from the free throw line. Wyoming has gone from aspiring to get to the NCAA Tournament to a team that needs to quickly right its ship.

(Related winners: The top of the Mountain West, which will benefit from Wyoming’s heretofore nice computer numbers; Fresno State, for shooting 52 percent against what was one of the best defenses in the country. Related losers: Martinez, who is at risk of serving jail time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to this week’s RTC Podblast, hosted by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114). There has been no shortage of big games this week and there will be even more on a blockbuster Saturday this weekend. We review everything and give our takes on who needs to do what, and when. The outline is below.

Remember that our full podcasts (roughly 45 minutes to an hour long) will publish on Tuesdays during the season, while our shorter (~15-20 minutes) podblasts will drop on Fridays with a quick look at the intervening week’s worth of news and action. Feel free to jump around using the outline below.

• 0:00-5:31 – Michigan Bounces Back with a Win Over Minnesota
• 5:31-7:44 – NC State Fails in Follow-up
• 7:44-11:03 – UNLV Putting It Together?
• 11:03-12:21 – Louisville-Syracuse Preview
• 12:21-13:22 – Gonzaga-Butler Preview
• 13:22-14:40 – Missouri-Florida Preview
• 14:40-15:46 – Ohio State-Michigan State Preview
• 15:46-16:28 – Oregon-UCLA Preview
• 16:28-19:36 – Rapid Fire Predictions

Also make sure to add theRTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after each recording. Thanks!

Welcome to the 10th episode of the 2012-13 version of the RTC Podcast. We’re in the heart of the season and there’s no shortage of things to talk long and hard about, so this week — with Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114), per usual, as our host — we went a little long with discussion of such wide-ranging topics as who was snubbed on the Wooden Award midseason watch list, whether Louisville is a legitimate #1 team, and what’s going with those nutty basketball programs in the City of Angels. The entire outline of the podcast is located below, so feel free to skip around.

Check back on Friday of this week for our shorter RTC Podblast, which will run down some of the action from this week and look ahead to the weekend’s biggest games. And don’t forget to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after each recording. Thanks!

• 0:00-6:47 – Duke Falls for the First Time – What’s next for them and NC State
• 6:47-10:57 – Michigan Falls for the First Time – What’s next for them and Ohio State
• 10:57-15:02 – How Do the Top Big Ten Teams Stack Up?
• 15:02-18:13 – Louisville – Nation’s New Number One
• 18:13-24:07 – USC Fires Kevin O’Neill
• 24:07-28:01 – The Most Watchable and Unwatchable Teams
• 28:01-32:59 – VCU Fun to Watch But How Good Are They?
• 32:59-35:44 – UCLA Rights the Ship
• 35:44-39:04 – Pac-12 Hierarchy
• 39:04-42:00 – Mountain West Discussion/Week Preview
• 42:00-43:47 – NC State-Maryland preview
• 43:47-44:42 – Minnesota-Michigan preview
• 44:42-54:27 – Wooden Award Discussion/Wrap

We welcome any and all feedback on these podcasts including topics for future discussion or if you want to send us any questions for our “May Not Be From Actual Listeners” segment. Hit us up at rushthecourt@yahoo.com or @rushthecourt on Twitter.