Walker Carey is an RTC contributor.

Lately in college basketball, there has been a troubling trend of certain players who just do not understand what it means to be a part of a major collegiate basketball program. These individuals have failed to represent their schools in a positive manner. Some have paid the price by being dismissed from their respective programs, while others have been allowed to continue to play. On Wednesday evening, news broke that Coastal Carolina coach Cliff Ellis dismissed star forward Mike Holmes from the program following an altercation with Chanticleers’ leading scorer Desmond Holloway. Coastal Carolina is the second program that Holmes has been dismissed from in a little over a year. Last season, when Holmes was at South Carolina, coach Darrin Horn dismissed him from the program after he suffered an eye injury due to what he referred to as “horsing around” at his home. Following his injury, Holmes behaved strangely by attending South Carolina women’s games, but not attending his own team’s games.

Mike Holmes Was Dismissed For the Second Time in a Year

While both Darrin Horn and Cliff Ellis realized that Mike Holmes could no longer be a part of their programs, there has been an instance this season where a coach has not gotten the same message. The well publicized brawl between Mississippi State forwards Elgin Bailey and Renardo Sidney ended with both players suspended indefinitely. Shortly after the brawl, Sidney was reinstated, while Bailey was permanently invited to leave the program. The situation at Mississippi State could be more understandable if this was not the first problem Sidney had while a member of the Bulldogs. Shortly before the brawl, he was briefly suspended for a violation of team rules. This situation leaves one failing to fully understand how a player who continually embarrasses himself and his school is allowed to remain on the team.

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It’s no revelation to say that basketball is a city game.  More specifically, it’s an inner-city game.  And inner-city has essentially become code for urban decline, crime and unsavories — a more politically correct way of saying a place that a dude doesn’t want to find himself walking through late at night.  So basketball and hard-knock stories overcoming them are almost cliche at this point in our history — few high-level D1 players come from environments that anyone would describe as safe, and even fewer were raised in wealthy enclaves.  These days, it’s more surprising to hear about someone like Notre Dame’s Ben Hansbrough and his millionaire surgeon father than it is to learn of Missouri’s Marcus Denmon and his troubling childhood.  Crime or the threat of it is simply a fact of life for vast swaths of this country, and especially so in nearly every urban core across America where many of today’s players hail from.  Witness Jeremy Hazell’s shooting on Christmas Eve in New York as a stark example — all Hazell was doing was visiting family and friends during a couple days off but unlucky happenstance nearly cost him his life.  This is an all-too-familiar hometown storyline among many of today’s players, as a great deal of the United States’ 13,000+ annual murders occur in those places. 

Gutierrez Faces Far More Worries Off the Court Than On

That said, we’ve heard countless tales of players making it through rough-and-tumble environments over the years, but we’re not sure we’ve ever heard of anything like what Cal guard Jorge Gutierrez’s old haunts have turned into.  You see, Gutierrez is originally from the Mexican border state of Chihuahua, a place where drug cartel violence has reached astronomical proportions in recent years, to the point where regular folks like Gutierrez’s mother (a retired nurse), father (a teacher), siblings, grandparents and cousins no longer feel safe doing menial tasks such as going to the market or walking the dog.  As the Oakland Tribune discusses in this piece on Gutierrez’s family, the weight of constant peril on his mind is beyond what most of us will ever deal with.

My mom and dad tell me a little bit about it.  I don’t think they tell me a whole lot because they don’t want me to worry about it.  We used to be very friendly, but things changed.  It’s pretty bad right now. When I was there, it was all good. You could walk around the streets at night.  It changed (because of) the drug war. Right now it’s one of the most dangerous cities or states in the world. Nobody’s safe down there.

And it’s not just woe-is-me hyperbole on Gutierrez’s part.  There have been over 15,000 drug-related murders in Mexico in the last year (a country with a population one-third as large as the U.S.), over 34,000 in the last four years, and his state is ground zero for many of the beheadings and execution-style killings that make the news stateside.  In fact, the only other places in the entire world with as many bodies piling up on a regular basis are Iraq and Afghanistan, which as we all know are quite literally war-torn provinces.  The power of a group of battling druglords has created war-like conditions for many formerly-quiet places with our neighbors to the south, and even though the Gutierrez family has not  yet been specifically impacted, you have to wonder if it’s only a matter of time.  Hopefully the junior guard who has more than doubled his scoring output this season for Mike Montgomery’s squad will be able to use his versatile talents as a scorer and defender in the next year or so to earn enough money as a professional player to move his family to a safer place — if that’s not something we should all be rooting for, we don’t know what is.    

After Florida State’s victory over Duke last night, there are but four undefeated teams left in D-I college basketball: San Diego State, Kansas, Syracuse, and the heir apparent to the #1 ranking on Monday, Ohio State. You’ve probably heard about that today just as much as you’ve heard the analysis about how hard it is for a team to go undefeated any more (no kidding). Soon, we’ll make our predictions on when the remaining four undefeateds will lose. Because they will.

Kyle Randall and UNCG Have Made It Just Past the Midpoint of Their Schedule Without a Win

But what about the other side — the unvictorious? It’s been three seasons since a school has gone through the entirety of their schedule without a single win, an ignominy achieved by the 2007-08 New Jersey Tech (NJIT) Highlanders, God love ’em, and their 0-29 run as an independent. Last year, two teams came close, when Marist and Bryant both went 1-29. Marist rung in 2010 by beating Manhattan, 72-66, on January 2nd. Bryant, however, had everyone holding their breath late into the season until, with only four games left, they finally snagged that first victory on February 18th — a 53-51 squeaker at Wagner.

This season, there are still two teams without a victory. UNC-Greensboro is 0-15 with 14 regular season games left on their schedule. And even though they may have one of the best nicknames in the game — the Gentlemen — Centenary is 0-17 with 13 games remaining.

The future is a tad brighter for UNCG than it is for Centenary, it would seem. The oracle that is KenPom projects the Spartans to finish at 4-25 and has them winning their first game on January 20th against Georgia Southern,  a game that also represents their best chance at a victory (75%). Unfortunately for the Gentlemen, it’s pretty dire. KenPom’s projection relegates them to the dustbin of history, a perfectly unvictorious 0-30, with their best chance for a win coming on February 24th against Western Illinois — a mere 15% chance, at that. We should note that Centenary, the smallest D-I school in the country,  is playing with lame duck status. They’ll move back down to Division III next season.

Good luck, fellas, and we’ll be watching. We hope you both get at least one before season’s end!

At this moment, somewhere on I-75 or I-24 between Athens, Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee there is a bus taking on the unfriendly elements in an attempt to get the Georgia Bulldogs to their next game, a Wednesday contest at Vanderbilt. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported yesterday evening that, because of the ice storm happening in that part of the South and the resultant slowdown at Jackson-Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, the Bulldogs were considering hopping a bus and heading out on the highway for the 300+ mile trip to Nashville, a journey that takes about five and a half hours in a normal automobile in perfect driving conditions. This tweet from head coach Mark Fox apparently confirms that decision:

That was about 2:30 pm ET. We assume the going’s been satisfactory so far (that is, they’re still upright and truckin’ along) based on another Coach Fox tweet from a half hour ago:

Georgia replaced the Commodores in the AP Top 25 (though both teams reside in RTC’s rankings) in the poll released yesterday. It’s UGA’s first appearance in the rankings in eight seasons. Their reward: a 300-mile bus trip like some minor league baseball team through treacherous conditions and a game against the conference foe whose place you took in the Top 25. Welcome back, guys!

Last night during a closely-fought CAA battle in Richmond between two teams sporting 1-1 records and with eyes on a conference crown this season, Drexel head coach Bruiser Flint lost his mind.  With fifteen seconds to go and Drexel down a single point, star guard Chris Fouch misfired on a three-pointer, but on the rebound opportunity, Flint believed that his team had gotten fouled.  This is the aftermath to that non-call.  (h/t VCURamNation)

Flint’s two technical fouls and subsequent ejection gave VCU four foul shot opportunities which Joey Rodriguez converted, blowing a one-point margin up to five and effectively ending the game.  Had Flint gotten his point across in a subtler way to the referees, his team would have at worst been down three with the ball and a chance to tie the game on a final possession. 

Considering that Drexel held VCU to under 30% shooting on its home floor and the Dragons hadn’t won there in five years, Drexel fans have to be thinking that this was a major brainfart on Flint’s part.  He apologized after the game, but per CAA rules, he’ll be forced to sit out Saturday’s game against Delaware.  The fiery coach has shown a temper in the past, but after ten years of relative mediocrity at the school, you have to wonder that if Flint isn’t able to get something going in the CAA, this season will be his last.  Drexel has been to several NITs under Flint, but he has yet to make the NCAA Tournament there.  Losing your cool over a blown foul call to cost your team a chance to win and having to miss another conference game (possibly costing them another) isn’t the way to break that kind of record. 

Last night’s St. John’s win over Georgetown in Madison Square Garden represents the high-water mark of the proud Red Storm program in the last ten years.  It had been fifteen tries since the Johnnies last defeated a ranked team, and it might as well have been a hundred.  It certainly seemed that long.  The last time the Queens school was relevant in the national landscape, a herky-jerky forward named Ron Artest was better known for his stylin’ haircut than for thanking his psychiatrist after winning an NBA title and throwing haymakers into a Detroit crowd.  Before that?  A sweater-wearing coach who went by Louie stalked the sidelines as a parade of NYC-born and bred All-Americans passed through the hoops temple on 34th Street & 8th Avenue — players with the names Mullin, Berry, Jackson, Sealy.

Just Like Old Times in the Garden (Newsday/J. McIsaac)

Steve Lavin’s arrival last summer already gave the hordes of New Yorkers yearning for a quality program in the City a reason to get excited about college basketball again, but at a certain point anticipation morphed into reality as consecutive losses to questionable Atlantic 10 foes St. Bonaventure and Fordham tamped out much of that fire.  After all, the Johnnies enjoyed the services of an experienced team in a post-adolescent’s landscape, but that same  group of seniors had gone 44-53 (17-37 Big East) in their previous three seasons and were ignominiously labeled underachievers.  Perhaps rightfully so.  The Johnnies have for some time been that team on paper who looked dangerous, but analysts have learned to check themselves for even temporarily believing in them.

Now that the bandwagon is warming up and collecting tickets, will we all get burned again?  This much we know to be true.  The Big East is not the SEC, Pac-10 or even the ACC this year — it is a brutal and unrelenting league full of teams among its top three tiers (national contenders; conference contenders; legitimate NCAA teams) that can cause very good teams to hit tailspins involving several-game losing streaks in a hurry.  If the schedule lays out in a certain way, top twenty teams can face two-,  three-, or four-game losing skids and still be worthy of a ranking.  Georgetown of two seasons ago and UConn last year are examples of solid teams who were brutalized and emasculated by the Big East schedule — either of those teams would have finished among the top four in the much-weaker SEC or Pac-10 those years.  Yet Steve Lavin’s team has already navigated two road games in places that are not the easiest to come out with a win (West Virginia and Providence), and followed that up with a home nailbiter victory over another experienced team that specializes and thrives on winning those kinds of games (Georgetown).

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Kenny Ocker is an RTC contributor.

Oregon’s basketball game Saturday against Arizona State on the surface seems to just be an early-season Pac-10 Conference game between two teams that started off their seasons earlier this week with disappointing blowout losses. However, the game is also the last men’s basketball game at McArthur Court, Oregon’s 84-year-old on-campus arena, before the Ducks move into the $200-million, Phil Knight-funded Matthew Knight Arena on the other side of campus.  McArthur Court was constructed in 1926 and was paid for by an increase in student fees. The arena has played host to many events and teams over the years, from Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, to the Japanese men’s national gymnastics team’s first loss in international competition, to Oregon gymnastics and wrestling, but the building nicknamed The Pit is best known as the home of Oregon basketball.

Mac Court Will Be Retired Saturday

The Ducks have an occasionally storied tradition as a basketball school, and McArthur Court has been there for nearly all of it. The team dubbed the Tall Firs won the NCAA’s first national championship in 1939, led by the wonderfully named center Slim Wintermute and the wind-erfully named forward Lauren Gale. Those two, along with point guard Bobby Aney, were named All-Americans, as the Ducks went 29-5 in the season en route to the NCAA title. (I don’t believe “One Shining Moment” was played then.)  Oregon’s form suffered after this, with only three NCAA Tournament berths between the 1939 title and 1995. The Ducks went to the NCAAs in 1945, 1960 and 1961, with an Elite Eight trip in 1960.

However, the program undertook a rebirth in the 1970s, led by former Penn head coach Dick Harter, who dubbed McArthur Court “The Pit,” a nickname that lives on to this day and is reflected in the name of the student section, the Pit Crew. Harter’s “Kamikaze Kids” had three straight berths to the NIT from 1975 through 1977. Those teams were led by All-American Ron Lee, but also featured future Oregon basketball coach Ernie Kent, the man who put Ducks basketball back on the map after a lackluster decade in the 1980s.

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One of the best things about college basketball is the rivalries. Whether rational or not, rivalries usually manifest themselves through the players and fans of the involved schools in the form of true, unmitigated disdain for the other side. Because we love making trouble, and with apologies to Orwell, we give you the Two Minutes’ Hate, a series of posts in which we give fans/bloggers/writers of both sides of a given rivalry a chance to vent about the other side, with minimal but identical prompting from us. We encouraged them to cut loose and hold nothing back, and we’ll be doing this with various rivalries throughout the year as such games arise. If you want to nominate a rivalry or even offer a submission, email us at JStevRTC@gmail.com. And remember, the published opinions are those of the respondents and not necessarily those of RTC, heh heh.

Today’s Rivals: Louisville and Kentucky

Coaches Crum And Hall Might Be Smiling Here, But BOY, Do These Two Teams Hate Each Other.

First, speaking on behalf of the Cardinals, we have Mike from the excellent Louisville site Card Chronicle. You can follow him on Twitter here. And you should, if for no other reason than because his bio describes him as the “fourth-ranked Chaucer scholar in the Ohio Valley.”

1. In your opinion, what was the Ville’s greatest win over UK?

The 1983 “Dream Game” without a doubt.

Even after Louisville had established itself as a national power, Kentucky refused to play them. The game finally happened in ’83 when the teams were paired in the same region and met in the Mideast Regional championship on March 26 in Knoxville. Despite a buzzer-beating shot by Jim Master to send the game into overtime, the Cardinals ran off 14 straight points in the extra period and prevailed, 80-68.

The U of L community erupted and quickly the governor, legislators and even the boards of trustees at both universities began to talk about a series between the two. Shortly thereafter, the announcement was made that Louisville and Kentucky would begin playing each other annually.

The game played a huge role in making the rivalry what it is today. If Louisville loses that day, the two might still not be playing annually.

2. What was the most painful loss?

Probably the ’04 game where Louisville led by 15 at half and as many as 18 before the Cats came all the way back and won it on Patrick Sparks‘ free-throws with less than a second left. Sparks walked twice. Neither were called. Louisville won the game.

Still, we went to the Final Four a few months later and UK didn’t.

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During tomorrow’s matchup between Xavier and Florida at the Cintas Center, you might notice a unique smell wafting from the concession stands — that of fried alligator.

Get it? Fried alligator? Florida Gators? Of course you do. That’s not a typo, though. For the XU vs UF game — while supplies last — the folks from Xavier Dining will have fried alligator on offer.

We Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny That Your Serving Will Be This Large

Not that we’re anti-Florida around here, but you have to love this move. And going by the linked article, fried alligator isn’t exactly cheap, but I guess you’ve got to expect that, since they flew these babies in from Louisiana. We think that Florida should take this as a compliment, since this is the kind of thing you’d do only if you think it’s a big, important game. If you attend the game and you try this delicacy, we’d love to hear what you think of it, so don’t hesitate to e-mail or tweet us your Bourdain-like review.

[grateful h/t to the Lexington Herald-Leader’s John Clay, at @johnclayiv]

Given the growing popularity of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge over the past few years it seemed inevitable that the other power conferences would join the fray and earlier today the Big East and SEC announced that they would be expanding their relatively under-the-radar SEC/Big East Invitational into a more comprehensive Big East/SEC Challenge. Over the past four seasons the two conferences have engage in a series of 4 games to decide a winner. To date the conferences are tied 1-1-2 with the conferences splitting the overall games 8-8.

We could be seeing more huge SEC/Big East games in the future

While the SEC/Big East Invitational has yielded a few good match-ups over the past few seasons with the most recent being Tennessee‘s big win at Pittsburgh the fact that it only involves 4 match-ups between the conferences limits the ability of fans of either conference to confidently claim superiority based on these results although we have a sneaking suspicion that the Big East fans would have a stronger argument over the past few seasons. The new format would involve 12 games meaning that all the SEC teams would play every year and 12 of the 16 (then 17) Big East teams would participate each year. Because only the SEC teams would get to play every year the home-and-away rotation would be based on the SEC team. The games will be played over 4 days beginning on the Thursday after Thanksgiving. Keeping the Challenge to a confined period should keep fans interest and avoid some of the pitfalls that plagued the Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series that is coming to an end. In a somewhat amusing move the name will alternate each year from the Big East/SEC Challenge in 2011 to the SEC/Big East Challenge in 2012 and so on. The match-ups have not been announced yet, but will be broadcast on one of ESPN’s family of networks starting on December 1, 2011.