We know about the on-court tradition of the University of Cincinnati men’s basketball program — two titles, six final fours, ten conference titles, and so on.  Mention the program in any conversation, however, and most people will, by reflex, immediately think of a place once known as “the UNLV of the East.”  The unflattering legal history of players and sometimes coaches involved with this team over the last 25 years could fill an entire series of law journals, and there’s been little progress made in rehabbing the program’s public image in recent days.  Imagine our surprise, then, when we saw this tweet from UC’s Cashmere Wright yesterday, evidently about a little soiree happening…well, as we post this:

According to Wright’s bio on the UC website, his birthday is 1/9/1990 — making him 20 years old.

Now, there’s been no crime committed, here, but the implication of that reference to “ALCOHOL ON US” is that there will be one committed, since Wright can not lawfully buy or consume alcohol, or (even if he was 21) be responsible for other persons under 21 drinking it.  And this comes not even two weeks after that incident at Notre Dame, where 41 individuals were arrested for underage drinking, including ND’s leading returning scorer, Tim Abromaitis, and ten other athletes.

We’re not saying anything untoward happened, or is happening, at this party.  Maybe he was tweeting this for his housemates who are all at least 21.  And maybe everyone drinking at this bash, assuming it happened, is also at least 21.  Considering the team Wright plays for, though, was that your first thought?  We understand that college kids do this kind of thing all the time.  They have house parties and, yes, that law about the drinking age is often violated, and it happens at almost every college in the country, not just Cincinnati.  We just thought that maybe the folks at UC would at least like to appear to be trying to mend their basketball team’s public image.  Wright’s tweet just makes it look like he doesn’t care, or he hasn’t been made to care enough by people in charge.

As we mentioned in today’s Morning 5, Dana O’Neil’s enlightening piece exposing the raw perceptions that coaches have on their peers in the world of college basketball and the sport in general is fascinating stuff.  It’s obvious that she knew it too, as the bulk of the article was filled with direct quotes from anonymous high-major coaches telling the truth as they saw it.  There is a lot of meat to this article — numerous raise-your-eyebrow statements that had us questioning and hopeful for more.  So we thought it might be interesting to cherry-pick the nine quotes that we thought were the most compelling and do what we do (make inappropriate comments and wildly speculate about things).  Enjoy.

Dana O'Neil Sheds Light on Unseen Areas of the Game

Regarding fraternity among coaches:

“It’s sad,” another coach said. “I grew up in this game with an idea of what I thought it was or what I thought it should be. Now I see it’s not like that at all. You have low- to mid-major guys aspiring to move up who will do anything to get there and you have guys who, once they get used to a certain lifestyle, will do whatever it takes to keep it.  There’s less of a brotherhood here than there is in football and that bothers me,” another added. “We have more guys stabbing each other in the back or using you guys [the media] to go after their agenda. That’s a big problem.”

We found this quote somewhat surprising in that we figured that competition among football coaches would be even more intense given the structure of their system, where the pyramid is extremely top-heavy and the small schools have virtually no chance to get there. 

On gender roles:

Along with the coach who called the women, “the gestapettes,” another said, “If the NCAA was serious, they’d hire someone who knew what they were doing, not these women out here trying to get a husband.”

Sexist caveman coaches, for the win!  Dana must have especially enjoyed hearing those quotes as the only nationally-focused female college basketball writer of note in the industry.  Ridiculous, and we’d happily buy her a Cosmo if she would tell us who these cretins were (see what we did there?). 

On recruiting to name-brand schools:

Here’s what I think happens a lot — a team loses a kid to someone else and all of a sudden that someone else is cheating. Every time North Carolina loses a kid, someone else is cheating. It’s like there’s so much arrogance with them; they can’t believe someone would rather go somewhere else, so the other team has to be cheating.

We hear this from fans of the major schools (like UNC) all the time.  Seriously – ALL the time.  But it was enlightening to hear it coming from the coaching ranks as well.  We guess nobody is excused from the tendency to blame extraneous factors when things go wrong.  Not even coaches. 

On expense accounts:

One of my players [who left early for the draft] was working out with another top-five draft pick.  They got to talking and my kid said something about not having money or whatever on campus. The other kid said, ‘My coach set up expense accounts all over town for me. Yours didn’t?”

We discussed this one on the M5 and in the comments.  If we assume that the coach in question was talking about the most recent NBA Draft (fresh on his mind), then we’re talking about four schools here — Kentucky, Ohio State, Syracuse or Georgia Tech.  One commenter pointed out that DeMarcus Cousins and Derrick Favors worked out together in New Jersey before the draft.  Connecting a few dots together, we can make some further assumptions about which school was setting up expense accounts and which school wasn’t.  Or, we could just admit that this is nothing more than rumor and means absolutely nothing. 

Regarding phone call violations: 

I get a kick out of the phone calls. Who gets caught with that anymore? It’s a joke. They’re out there catching the guy with the one phone. How about the guy with two and three bat phones?

This quote really makes the UConn assistant coaches and Kelvin Sampson look stupid, right?  Even low-level drug dealers and amateur terrorists  know that you should use burners for any illicit calls. 

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After catching this on their local news a few nights ago, Kansas fans are probably feeling even more thankful about the successful recruitment of Josh Selby.

OK, we’re just teasing, but we wonder how much hand-wringing (however misguided) this has caused in Jayhawkland.  KU rising senior Brady Morningstar took part in a game of HORSE against Andrew Baker and Kevin Romary, a couple of sports anchors from 6 News in Lawrence and, in a bit of a surprise, the local news boys took a few letters off of him:

Credit: KUSports.com

To be fair, in terms of the actual competition, Morningstar — who shot 39.6% from three-point range and 40.2% overall last season — had nothing to gain and everything to lose by going up on television against these guys, and he had to know that giving up anything past an “H” was going to raise some eyebrows, if not some audible groans, from KU backers.  And we have to give Brady some props for making fun of himself by using his slip-up free throw against Texas from last year as one of his shots in this contest.  Still, you’ve got to figure that he was at least a four-letter favorite, here.  That he got out to a four-letter lead on both anchors but still had an “R” taken off him means that there are probably some Jayhawk fans out there who have a few four-letter expressions they’d like to offer.  All credit to Morningstar, though, for being a good sport.

It’s not like Nebraska and Colorado were going to be on anyone’s short list for prime-time basketball in the 2010-11 season anyway, but we were a little intrigued to see how the Big 12 might handle its two lame ducks this season as a part of ESPN’s annual Big Monday coverage.   Excluding the other three bottom-feeders from last season — Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Iowa State — the remaining seven Tories schools will be featured on the package, beginning on January 17’s MLK Day with a rare Big 12 double-header and continuing each following Monday through the last two months of the regular season.  Here’s the schedule (all times CDT):

A Sunflower State Sorta Winter (Again)

• Jan. 17 – Kansas State @ Missouri – 4:30 pm
• Jan. 17 – Kansas @ Baylor – 8:30 pm
• Jan. 24 – Baylor @ Kansas State – 8 pm
• Jan. 31 – Texas @ Texas A&M – 8 pm
• Feb. 7 – Missouri @ Kansas – 8 pm
• Feb. 14 – Kansas @ Kansas State – 8 pm
• Feb. 21 – Oklahoma State @ Kansas – 8 pm
• Feb. 28 – Kansas State @ Texas – 8 pm

For two schools who supposedly held no value to anyone in conference realignment-land, the good people in Bristol sure seem to think that they’re worth something.  Kansas and K-State are involved in no fewer than seven of the eight Big Monday contests next season, with the biggest one of course falling on Valentine’s Day between the two in Bramlage Coliseum.  We’ve said it before, but the Big 12 continues to be a loaded league, and there’s a slight but realistic possibility that if the Texas schools and Oklahoma State come on strong late next season that all eight of these games could involve ranked teams on both ends of the court.

It’s seeing stuff like this start to come out, though, that really makes us anxious for next season.  What game do you guys like best in this television lineup?     

It’s the middle of summer and hotter than hell pretty much everywhere, and college basketball feels a long way away.  Luckily, CBS College Sports has realized that some of us will watch great college hoops year-round if given the opportunity, and they’re using the next couple of weeks to replay the entire 2010 NCAA Tournament for people of our ilk.  They started this feature last week, but there are still plenty of great games on tap.  Here’s a taste of some of when some of the better games will be on — set your Tivo accordingly…  (although make sure to check the complete listings because most of these games and many others are televised multiple times over the next week).

Um, Why Does Summer Madness Have a Football Field in the Background?

Saturday July 17

• 4:30 pm – St. Mary’s vs. Villanova (2d Round)
• 6:30 pm – Murray State vs. Vanderbilt (1st Round)
• 11 pm – Northern Iowa vs. Kansas (2d Round)

Monday July 19

• 6 am – Old Dominion vs. Notre Dame (1st Round)
• 12:30 pm – Michigan State vs. Maryland (2d Round)
• 6:30 pm – Xavier vs. Pittsburgh (2d Round)
• 9 pm – Texas A&M vs. Purdue (2d Round)

Tuesday July 20

• 12:30 pm – Butler vs. Syracuse (S16)
• 7 pm – Tennessee vs. Ohio State (S16)
• 10 pm – Xavier vs. Kansas State (S16) — make sure to read Luke Winn’s recent article on this game.

Wednesday July 21

• 6 pm – Butler vs. Kansas State (E8)
• 11 pm – Tennessee vs. Michigan State (E8)

Thursday July 22

• 12 pm – Baylor vs. Duke (E8)
• 2 pm – Butler vs. Michigan State (F4)
• 6 pm – Butler vs. Duke (Ch)

Friday July 23

• 8:30 pm – Wake Forest vs. Texas (1st Round)

For nearly two decades the Duke–UNC rivalry has been the de facto national showcase game for college basketball. While many fans appreciate the skill of these two teams and the passion of their fans there is also a sizable group that has become disenchanted with the way that certain entities (notably ESPN) obsessed over the two (or more) games per year between the teams instead of talking about the other compelling rivalries in college basketball. The fans that fall into the latter group might want to skip to another article because earlier today CBS announced that it will be broadcasting the second game of this year’s rivalry (on March 5, 2011 from Chapel Hill) during prime time for the first time. The game is expected to be the feature game of the regular season for CBS, who is celebrating their 30th year covering college basketball. The match-up between the two schools (winners of 14 of the past 15 ACC Tournament championships, 12 of the past 14 ACC Regular Season titles, and 7 of the past 20 NCAA titles) who are separated by less than 8 miles will be the 231st between the schools with the Tar Heels holding a 130-99 advantage coming into the season.

Next Stop: Prime Time

The Blue Devils should be loaded for this match-up returning much of the nucleus from last year’s championship team including Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith while adding freshman Kyrie Irving and transfer Seth Curry. If the Blue Devils sweep the regular season series this year, Coach K will finally get over .500 against the Tar Heels (34-35 all-time coming into this season). While the defending national champion Blue Devils should be favored against a young Tar Heel squad, we expect the Dean Dome to be a tough place to get a win in March with Roy Williams (8-10 all-time versus Duke including 7-7 while at UNC) having almost a full season to work with Harrison Barnes, the presumptive #1 pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, and home court. And if you are one of the people who cannot stand all the hype this rivalry gets, we do have one small nugget of good news for you: CBS is broadcasting this game so you will not be subjected to over 2 hours of Dick Vitale mentioning how all these students got 1500s on their SATs, which incidentally is pretty mediocre now that the SAT is on scored a 2400-point scale.

Conference realignment is not without its backchannel communications and intrigues.

Earlier today the AP sent out a report about an e-mail from April 20 that was sent from Ohio State president Gordon Gee to Big Ten commish Jim Delany.  In that message, Gee writes about how he spoke with Texas president Bill Powers, and — we love this — claims that Powers would “welcome a call to say they have a ‘Tech problem.'”

Powers: fine with any future Tech problems.

The AP report admits not knowing what that could possibly mean — perhaps a reference to Big 12 rival Texas Tech?  All that RTC can confirm about the e-mail is that it was indeed written by Gee and not by one of the specimens from his unarguably excellent collection of bow ties.

Another e-mail that found its way into the hands of the Columbus Dispatch had Gee telling Delany that the Big Ten “controls its own destiny, but must move swiftly.”

The birds of prey are circling.  Our sport is going to look a lot different…soon.  Meanwhile, watch out for those “Tech problems,” and we’ll be waiting to see if Missouri tells someone they’re OK with getting a call saying that they have a “Jayhawk situation.”

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and Pac-10 conferences and an occasional contributor.

Although not official yet, it has been reported that ESPN and the ACC have come to an agreement on a new TV deal, with ESPN reportedly outbidding FoxSportsNet to the tune of $1.86 billion over twelve years for exclusive rights to ACC football and basketball. The new deal for the ACC will more than double their previous television revenues from their contracts with Raycom and ESPN; the previous ACC deal was for about $67 million per season, while the new deal will bring the ACC about $155 million per season.

The size of the new contract is seen as a major victory for the ACC, and is rumored to be the result of a bidding war between ESPN and Fox. However, Fox did not get a chance to match ESPN’s final offer because the ACC found ESPN’s brand to be too attractive to lose out on should ESPN drop out of the bidding. As for Raycom, they are expected to continue broadcasting some ACC games, which they will buy from ESPN (much like ESPN bought the rights to individual games from Raycom in the past), but the ACC Tournament will likely be exclusive to ESPN in the future.  An interesting side note of the new TV deal: Jim Young of ACCSports.com reports that there will be a new name for the league’s syndication package with Raycom: the ACC Network. However, for now this will not be a business venture similar to the remarkably successful Big Ten Network, rather just the regional syndication of games shown on Raycom.

As no official announcement has been made by either party, there are likely continuing negotiations on the fine print, and plenty of questions remain. With rumors swirling about ACC teams perhaps jumping to one conference or another (Maryland and Virginia are among the most recently rumored schools that the Big Ten is interested in, while schools like Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Miami have been mentioned in conjuction with possible SEC expansion), there will potentially be binding clauses in the contract allowing ESPN buyout options should the makeup of the conference change during the lifetime of the deal. There are also questions as to when and where ESPN will televise games and the fate of things like FSN’s ACC Sunday Night Hoops feature. It is possible that Fox will continue to purchase games from ESPN for broadcast on their networks. Once a final announcement is delivered, hopefully we’ll get answers to these things.

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Over the past few months this site and many others that cover college basketball were filled with columns about what was viewed as an almost certain expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams. It turns out that almost everyone in the media (including us) had it wrong as the NCAA announced its plans to expand to a 68-team tournament while being broadcast on CBS and the 3 Turner networks (TBS, TNT, and truTV). Technically the NCAA Board of Directors still has to approve the changes next Thursday, but that should be a rubber stamp situation given the unanimity in today’s decision. The deal, which should account for approximately 96% of revenue for men’s college basketball, will pay the NCAA $10.8 billion over 14 years (or a little over $771 million per year) compared to the previous deal of $6 billion over 11 years (or slightly more than $545 million per year). That deal, which was signed in 1999, allowed the NCAA an opt-out by July 31 of this year. Once the NCAA exercised that option it was widely believed that their intention was to sign with ESPN in the network’s attempt to take over all things sports-related. When it became clear that ESPN was no longer the front-runner in the bidding, everyone’s attention turned to the CBS/Turner bid. We will get to the whole 68 team thing in a bit just bear with us while we go through the TV issues.

Coming soon to TBS. . .

While everybody is familiar with CBS’s work on the NCAA Tournament since they have broadcast every NCAA championship game since the 1982 Tourney which involved a freshman named Michael Jordan hitting the game-winning shot, Turner’s association with college basketball is a little less well-known. When I say “less well-known,” I mean that I am unaware of any prior association between Turner Sports and college basketball.  Some news reports are indicating that the NCAA was leaning towards the joint bid because of their desire to have every game broadcast nationally, which would require four channels broadcasting games. Even though ESPN would have that capability (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, and ESPN Classic) and we are still searching for truTV on our local cable provider (Comcast in Boston) it is being reported that this desire favored the CBS/Turner deal. All of the games will continued to be streamed online. What this will do is eliminate the need for Greg Gumbel to switch you to a different game (often at inappropriate times) and allow those of us who don’t get DirecTV’s March Madness package to watch two close games at once on a split screen (assuming you have picture-in-picture on your TV). [Ed. Note: TNT/TBS reaches almost six times as many households as DirecTV (99 million versus 18 million).] It is unclearexactly how much ESPN bid for the NCAA Tournament, but it is believed to have been relatively close to the CBS/Turner bid.

We won't be seeing these two broadcasting NCAA Tournament games any time soon

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Has there ever been a non-prime number so beautiful as this one? 

The NCAA made the right decision, from its release this afternoon:

Late Wednesday, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee unanimously passed a recommendation to the Division I Board of Directors to increase tournament field size to 68 teams beginning with the 2011 Championship. The recommendation will be reviewed by the Division I Board of Directors at its April 29 meeting.

Much more later…