Phil Knight is known as many things, but being a bore isn’t one of them.  The founder of Nike who has launched hundreds of campaigns of cool over the past three decades is a well-known University of Oregon supporter, and his creative stamp on Duck uniforms has given legions of commentators great discussion material over the years.   As we all know, Oregon’s brand new hoops home, the Matthew Knight Arena, is scheduled to open for business in early 2011 and the Nike CEO may have outdone himself this time with its design.  Or more specifically, the design of the centerpiece of the building — the Ducks’ basketball floor.

Is It a Rorschach Test or a Basketball Floor?

This isn’t the best photo, but the floor, designed by Nike’s VP for Design and Special Projects Tinker Hatfield, depicts the evergreen forests that the Pacific Northwest is known for with the motto “Deep in the Woods.”  There’s also a secondary meaning behind the floor, as UO’s 1939 national title team (in the first NCAA Tournament) was nicknamed the “Tall Firs.”  Hatfield, who may have staked his reputation and career on this design, had this to say: “We wanted to design the most iconic television presence possible for the University of Oregon by conjuring up a highly unique and visible basketball floor design. It’s inspired by our beautiful tree-covered region and the UO 1939 NCAA Championship basketball team nick-named the ‘Tall Firs.’”

Score one for unique and visible.  But unless Hatfield was going for the always-hip unvarnished Rorschach Test look, we’re not sure what he was thinking.  Looking at this thing makes us want to climb down there with a bucket of paint and a few brushes — well, after we’ve spent an hour wondering why the iconic Oregon “O” sits upon what appears to be a Stonehenge structure that spells out Tatt (ed. note: obviously, it is supposed to read “Matt”).  Other than wondering where that damn sailboat is hidden, we see a few problems with this floor.  First of all, the actual floor doesn’t have nearly the contrast of the artist’s rendition (see below), but we’re honestly not sure if that would make it better or worse.  Next, other than the emerald in the lettering and playing lines, this floor doesn’t really appear to capture the school’s primary colors of green and yellow.  It looks more like wood color, which would be fine on its own if they weren’t actually going for something else.

Color us skeptical, but maybe this floor will look a lot better in high-definition television with 12,000 green/yellow-clad screaming fans around it come January, but for now, we’re more aghast at this design than anything else.  This floor in its current form is definitely a candidate for our Ugly Floors post from a couple of years back.  We will say this about Oregon, though — more than any other school in America, they’re willing to try new and imaginative things, even if those attempts are incredibly  ugly and easily mocked.

Halloween, as most of us know, is and always will be one of the Four Pillars of Absolute Kid Happiness, right up there with Christmas (where celebrated), birthdays, and the moment of the announcement of a snow day. It seems like only a blink of an eye ago that we were those kids, but alas, each of us at RTC has long since put away our ghostly sheets and our Star Wars masks (we eBayed those) and — some more gradually than others — over time, evolved, kicking and screaming, into what we suppose you’d call…a grown-up. Just because the body has matured, though, doesn’t mean the mind has, because we still get jazzed for All Hallow’s. Not only is it a metaphorical “Next Exit” sign for an upcoming holiday season (which we still dig, and always will), but October 31 is a city limits line, as well. It signals that the last non-college basketball month has passed. It means that it’s been a long summer, but now we’re all back in town for another golden autumn in Hoop City.

It's Time To Hand Out Treats To Things We Like, and Tricks (Or Rocks) To Those We Don't.

What better time to reward with treats some of the recent developments or teams/players/coaches in our game we’re diggin’ on these days, and require tricks of things that we’re not. It’s time for Rush The Court’s Tricks and Treats for 2010.

Treats (no particular order):

Harrison Barnes and Jared Sullinger. We haven’t been this high on big men since Andre’ the Giant’s turn in The Princess Bride. We’re just as hyped to see these guys take the court as we were for Messrs. Wall, Favors, Henry, and Cousins before last season. When each of us here at RTC was 18, our worries included things like summer fast food jobs and blowing money on these things called CDs (discoid objects that played music). These guys have to worry about things like, oh, making sure Ohio State basketball doesn’t drop at all after losing the Player of the Year, and bringing North Carolina basketball — home to not exactly the most patient of fan bases — back to prominence. Plus, as they’re instant program-changers, we want to finally see these dudes play against college competition. We’ve waited long enough. And heck, let’s throw Baylor’s Perry Jones in there, too.

We're Ready For Some Sullinger. Is the Big Ten?

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Having had sand kicked in its face for long enough, the Sun Belt Conference has taken a long, cold look at itself in the mirror, and decided that it’s time to hit the gym.

On Monday, the conference announced that it planned to implement rules designed to increase the conference’s RPI rating. Specifically, the Sun Belt will mandate that its member basketball schools must only schedule non-conference opponents that, as ESPN.com’s Andy Katz reported, have a “three-year combined power rating within the top 150,” and/or teams that ended the previous season with an RPI within the top 150. The scheduling of games against non-Division I teams will be forbidden, and programs must constantly endeavor to average an attendance that surpasses the national average of 5,038 fans per game (as Katz reports, the Sun Belt brass are planning to help with this). The theory is that this scheduling upgrade en masse will raise the Sun Belt’s conference RPI and, in doing so, might lead to more than the single auto-qualifier each year in the NCAA Tournament, or at least a higher NCAA seed for the conference tournament winner. This would seemingly lead to other positive effects that all conferences love, like rising attendance at games, an increased television profile, and — to put it frankly — more respect. The rules outlined above will take effect starting in the 2011-12 season.

Troy's New Trojan Arena Will Seat Just Over 5,200 Hoops Fans

The Sun Belt is certainly ripe for a drastic self-determined change, meaning one that’s not being executed just to keep the conference alive. The great Sun Belt schism happened in the off-season of 1991, when most of the conference’s members bolted for other leagues and the remaining schools had to merge with the American South Conference to keep the Sun Belt in existence.  Since that time, the Sun Belt has had more than one representative — its conference tournament winner — in the Big Dance exactly three times: 2008 (#10 South Alabama, at large; #12 Western Kentucky, auto), 1994 (#11 Western Kentucky, at large; #11 Louisiana-Lafayette, auto), and 1993 (#7 Western Kentucky, auto; #8 New Orleans, at large). Note that long drought, there — the span from 1995 to 2007 represents thirteen consecutive tournaments in which the Sun Belt was a single-bid league. And they logged only one win in that interval (#8 Western Kentucky def. #9 Michigan, 1995). In terms of actual conference RPI, the Sun Belt finished last year at its 10-year nadir of 22nd out of 32 conferences, averaging a year-end rank of 17.5 over that time period.

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Nothing seems to come easy for Josh Pastner and the Memphis Tigers lately. Coming off a summer where the eligibility of nearly the entire incoming freshman class was in question, the Tigers appeared to have finally turned things around first with Will Barton being declared eligible, then the rest of the eligibility chips falling into place. Earlier today, however, that aura of placidity came crashing down with the news that Jelan Kendrick, an incoming McDonald’s All-American small forward, had been suspended from the team. Kendrick had first left the team on October 22nd for what had been described as “family issues,” but today news broke that Kendrick had in fact been suspended indefinitely by the team with reports that the suspension was related to multiple altercations with teammates, including making a verbal threat against a teammate. According to Kendrick’s AAU coach, several other programs have started calling about the possibility that Kendrick might transfer at the end of the semester, but at this point Kendrick still plans on playing for Memphis once the issues are resolved.

Kendrick expects to be back in Memphis uniform soon

It is worth noting that there are other reports that this is not a suspension, but instead is a mutual decision while Kendrick gets some things straightened out. Honestly, that sounds like PR spin to us, but in any event don’t expect to see Kendrick in a Tigers uniform for the time being, although we doubt that Pastner will keep him out for a significant portion of the season unless something egregious happened.

Upon first viewing of the following video involving UCLA teammates Malcolm Lee, Reeves Nelson and Jerime Anderson mixing metaphors between playing basketball and saving the Earth through green initiatives such as recycling, turning the lights off and, um, driving Benzes (??), we thought that Paul Thomas Anderson had to be somewhere behind the scenes directing this thing.  With the musical score reminiscent of  movies such as Magnolia or There Will Be Blood, we figured that he had to be associated with this clip in some odd way.  Alas, PTA briefly went to school at NYU, not UCLA, and Philip Seymour Hoffman was nowhere to be found, so we don’t think he was actually there; nevertheless, it’s certainly an interesting and novel way to get a message across — take a look.

So what do you think about this thing?  We’ve certainly seen far worse efforts from collegians — especially those who play basketball — but despite the professional editing and polished look of the piece, it still seems a bit hokey, right?  This is the school of John Wooden, so a healthy dose of down-home folksiness is ok, but we’ve watched this thing three times and we still can’t get a sense as to how to feel about it.  About the only thing we can say without question is that we haven’t seen anything quite like it coming from the sport, and it’s certainly more interesting at a fundamental level than another “Free Enes” video from a bunch of fans.  Then again, ask us tomorrow.  One final note — what’s up with the gal wearing a Virginia shirt halfway through the video?  We thought that the school, along with Dave Matthews, went out of style in the  late 90s.

(h/t Malcolm Lee via Twitter)

Pittsburgh head coach Jamie Dixon pulled over on an interstate highway and helped “at least one of the two occupants” out of a car that had flipped over against a guard rail last night in Pittsburgh, according to a Pennsylvania state trooper’s statement to ESPN.com’s Andy Katz.

Dixon Played the Role Of Good Samaritan Last Night, Which Should Surprise Nobody

It’s not certain if Dixon helped one or both passengers out of the crashed vehicle, since the driver of the car reportedly took off on foot. Dixon suffered unspecified “injuries to his hands,” according to the linked ESPN.com report, in helping at least the passenger get out of the car through the windshield. After being treated at a local hospital, Dixon was sent home — and was at practice this morning.

Some might find the superhero designation a tad much, since Dixon exhibited what should be the norm for behavior in human beings. That countless cars drove by and did not pull over to help (we all know how easy it is to rationalize that everything’s under control when driving by a scene like that) reaffirms that it’s not, though, and Coach Dixon is one of the last people who would ever openly pat himself on the back for this. We hope he doesn’t mind us taking the opportunity to do it for him. Bravo, sir.

Last year Keion Bell sent shudders through college basketball nation when he dunked over five of his teammates at Pepperdine’s Midnight Madness.

A year older and a year wiser, Bell decided to up the ante at Friday night’s version, dunking over a preposterous seven people of varying sizes.  Some of the others weren’t half-bad either.

Next year: he plans to bring the entire student body out of the stands and dunk on them too.

We already know what you’re thinking — when can we watch the 6’3 junior guard play on television this year?  The Waves are rebuilding in a major way after a 7-24 slate last season, so as of now you only have two chances to see Keion Bell soar through the clouds (do they have clouds in Malibu?) this season.

• 11/15 – @ UCLA (Preseason NIT) – 11 pm ET (ESPNU)
• 2/16 – @ Loyola Marymount – 11 pm ET (ESPNU)

(h/t PDine)

You may have heard that a little thing called Midnight Madness went down Friday night in packed gyms across the college basketball landscape.  From Duke to Kentucky to Marquette to Kansas to Gonzaga to even little ol’ Cal Tech (ok, they celebrated Thursday, but give ’em a break, they’ve lost 300 conference games in a row), fans filed into arenas to celebrate the return of roundball.   Despite the fact that we remain on the record that MM has lost its uniqueness over the years and could stand to get back to its roots, we’ll admit that even the over-produced pyrotechnic-style monstrosities we saw on the tube enabled a few pangs of excitement in our tummy.  How can it not?  After all, bad college basketball is still college basketball, and from the perspective that the Madness is a celebration of the sport, we’re completely on board with that.

Make sure that you check out our Boom Goes the Dynamite from Friday night where we commented on all the goings-on where we could find them in real time.  Today’s postmortem will share some of the biggest highlights we noted from the evening.  If you think we missed something major, send us a tip at rushthecourt@yahoo.com or tweet at us @rushthecourt.

Duke

Duke’s Countdown to Craziness was, as expected, a celebration of the 2010 national champions, replete with the unfurling of Coach K’s fourth national championship banner and a collection of hardware at center court (starting at the 1:15 mark).

Those championship rings are HUGE!  We much prefer seeing Nolan Smith this way instead of the creepy-as-hell video he did at last year’s CTC.

Kansas State

As we referred to last night, Jacob Pullen has only trimmed the beloved beard, not shaved it, so major meltdown averted there.  As if he wasn’t already one of our favorite players in the country, Pullen further endeared himself to us by running around in the scrimmage with his jogging pants still on.  He looked like a cross between Barack Obama and somebody’s uncle out there; that is, until he started draining 28-footers with ease.  The other big news of the night was the announcement that the school will be building a new $20M practice facility, showing that the Wildcats have no designs on losing their hoops momentum of recent years.

This clip is from the introduction at Madness in Manhattan, and it features the cast of ABC comedy Modern Family all wearing Kansas State gear around the set and studio lot — Eric Stonestreet (“Cameron”) is a K-State alum.  Apologies for the smallness of the video, but if you try, you can just make out Ty Burrell’s (“Phil”) cap which says “Screw KU” on it.  Not to mention that there’s a Sofia Vergara (“Gloria”) in a t-shirt sighting at the 2:07 mark, which means we’re going to have to put John Stevens back on his calming pills.

Michigan State

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As we wrote in our piece earlier today listing the biggest “Midnight Madness” events planned for Friday evening, it’s really not appropriate to refer to these things as “Midnight” any more than it is appropriate to call Jennifer and Scott Petkov “humans.”  Neither entity has any semblance to the word regularly used to describe them.  Imagine our surprise, then, while researching some of the various Madnesses around the country that we came across relatively unknown Florida Atlantic’s notice for their extravaganza.

Notice anything out of the ordinary here?  Well, first of all, they tout the event as “Midnight Madness” but as discussed above we know that nobody actually has their event at the witching hour anymore.  It’s a little odd that they didn’t call it something else to make that clear ((Mike) Jarvis Jaunt?  Owl Madness? Hoot n’ Holler?), but that’s not the biggest item that jumped out at us.  No, look at the date — FAU is having their Midnight Madness tonight.  As in, a few hours from now.

Last we checked, Florida Atlantic was still a member of Division I men’s basketball, so our immediate reaction was that we were uncovering a case of a clear NCAA rules violation; but cooler heads prevailed, and after calling the FAU media relations folks for confirmation, we quickly realized that tonight’s Basketball Kickoff will not actually be a practice as much as a promotional event where fans can meet players/coaches, sign autographs and win various prizes throughout the evening.  How are they allowed to do this?  Well, it’s right there in the rulebook under Section 17.3.2.4.1 (yes, we had that memorized) —Team Promotional Activities.

So this begs the question — is FAU ahead of the curve on this or is this just a meaningless outlier from a school trying desperately to drudge up interest in its basketball program in a difficult place to do so (South Florida isn’t exactly a college hoops hotbed)?  Considering we’re writing this story about Florida Atlantic and Florida Atlantic alone, it could represent a crafty strategic marketing move on their part; although their hoops SID said that the primary reason for the school having it tonight was that they didn’t want to interfere with the football stadium’s ground-breaking tomorrow.  So there’s that, too.  Still, we wonder if some other enterprising school in future years might try to jump the gun a little by having a heavily-marketed “first” Midnight Madness in a similar manner as this one.  It’s well worth watching, and if Billy Clyde Gillispie ever gets another head coaching job in D1, we think we already know who the candidate will be to try this.

Remember UConn gadfly and thorn in Jim Calhoun’s rear Ken Krayeske?

Too Bad Krayeske Isn't Running For Governor

Of course you do — he’s the rabble-rouser who two seasons ago had the temerity to question Calhoun about his salary while the country was still in the throes of a once-in-a-generation recession.  Whether you believe he brought up a fair point or was an obnoxious twit, he’s now running for the US House of Representatives as the Green Party candidate for the First District of Connecticut (north central CT including Hartford). Unfortunately, his campaign doesn’t appear to be gaining much traction even in light of the brief brush with national fame he experienced eighteen months ago (perhaps claiming he was never actually a member of a coven or a practitioner of witchcraft may have helped?).  Fivethirtyeight.com’s Nate Silver gives incumbent congressman John Larson (D) a 100% chance of winning back his seat in this district, showing a commanding lead of  23% over his Republican competitor in his aggregation of poll data.  Needless to say, Krayeske does not even merit inclusion in the data, presumably because the good people of Connecticut saw his latest internet ad where he fixates on Jim Calhoun (a Larson supporter) as a manifestation of the evils of capitalism…  enjoy.