Tuesday Night Hoops.  Tonight’s games weren’t all that compelling from the perspective of must-see TV, but we learned a few things.  Such as… don’t ever underestimate a Bo Ryan-coached team (that rings a bell…), John Wall is happy as a clam, and Wes Johnson should save the flips for the Winter X Games coverage.

Bo Ryan Can Coach a Little Bit. #16 Wisconsin 67, #5 Michigan State 49. Could there be a better blueprint for the basketball philosophy of Bo Ryan and the Wisconsin Badgers than this game?  Clock control, care of the basketball, good shot selection, and tough defense.  The Badgers didn’t come with any secret weapons or snazzy new game plans, here.  Just the same recipe for success they’ve employed for years, now.  In fact, they’re still without Jon Leuer and had to play without Trevon Hughes for a big chunk of the first half because of some early foul trouble.  Jason Bohannon (19/4/2) and Jordan Taylor (17/4/4) amped up their games to fill the void, both playing all 40 minutes, and accounting for half of their team’s field goals.  The most impressive number you can take from this one is found in the turnovers column; Wisconsin is the BEST in the nation when it comes to taking care of the basketball, averaging only 9.4 turnovers/game coming into this one.  The Badgers gave it up only five times on Tuesday night (they’re down to 8.4 a game) while forcing MSU into 13 of their own.  Kalin Lucas going down with a pretty ugly sprained ankle in the second half didn’t help on that front, either; more details on that injury after imaging is done on Wednesday.  The win moved Wisconsin to within two games of the Spartans in the Big Ten, and both squads have four home and four away games remaining.  For additional information, RTC Live was at the game tonight.

Wisconsin Punished MSU Tonight in Madison (Steve Apps)

Scary Situation Involving Wesley Johnson. #4 Syracuse 85, Providence 68. Coming into the game most fans viewed this as seemingly inconsequential, but the most important moment of the college basketball season may have happened with 11:56 left in the first half in Syracuse this season when uber-transfer Wesley Johnson went up to throw down an alley-oop, but got flipped by Brian McKenzie who was underneath his flight path. For a second everyone watching both in the Carrier Dome and on television had flashbacks to Travis Roy. Fortunately for Johnson, Jim Boeheim, and college basketball fans everywhere Johnson was able to get that extra half of rotation and land on his back rather than his head.  He talks about it here.  [Ed. Note: This is why we stay on the floor. Or is it our single-digit vertical?] After a rough stretch that saw the Orange struggle to take a 3-point lead into half, Syracuse rebounded behind a strong effort from Kris Joseph (career-high 23 points) and Arinze Onuaku (season-high 20 points) to lead the Orange to their best start (22-1) in school history.

Luckily Wes Johnson Wasn't Injured (Dennis Nett)

How’d the Rest of the Top Ten Do Tonight?

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Knockout Game? Louisville 82, Connecticut 69. Ok, it’s too early to start talking about knockout games in any serious manner, but we shouldn’t gloss over the fact that this game was very important for both of these teams.  Louisville came into tonight’s game having lost four of five, and UConn had dropped five of seven, as both Big East powerhouses were facing uphill climbs to get back into the NCAA Tournament picture this year.  Tonight Louisville managed to keep hope alive by moving to 5-4 in the Big East with a convincing win over the Jim Calhoun-less Huskies.  Edgar Sosa led Louisville with 15/3/8 assts in one of his better performances of the year, as he set his season high in dimes and also continued his consecutive games streak with multiple threes (Sosa hit two tonight, the eighth game in a row he’s hit at least that many).  Three other UL starters hit double-figures tonight, and the Cards hit the halfway point of the Big East schedule with a reasonable shot at getting to ten wins and the commensurate expectation of an NCAA Tournament berth.  We’re not sold on the long-term viability of this Cardinal team, but they can probably win enough games to get back to the Dance this year.  As for UConn, where to begin?  The good news is that the Huskies have played one of the top schedules in the nation so far; the bad news is that they have one quality win (Texas).  Wins over Harvard and William & Mary and Notre Dame are nice, but they alone won’t get you into the Tournament.    Eventually UConn is going to have to win another marquee game, and they’ll have at least four more chances to do so (home games against WVU and Louisville; road games versus Syracuse and Villanova).  Tonight was more of the same for the Huskies, as the last two games  have been their worst defensive performances of the season, allowing 1.16 points per possession vs. Louisville and 1.04 against Marquette on Saturday.  This is especially disconcerting given that the UConn defense has been the primary reason they’ve avoided a complete disaster — it’s the offense that has struggled.  The Husky offense shot 38% from the field, hit only four threes and committed 17 turnovers, and those kinds of numbers have to improve if UConn expects to earn its first true road win sometime this season.  Jerome Dyson and Kemba Walker, in particular, continue to have trouble putting the ball in the basket, combining for 11-32 tonight — only a little worse than their season average of ~41%.  We realize that Jim Calhoun IS UConn basketball, but we’re not sure that he can turn things around when he does return later this season.  Winning just the home games will get the Huskies to 7-11 in the Big East, and that means late road games against Rutgers, Notre Dame and USF are extremely important this year.

Louisville Got the Upper Hand Tonight

Jordan Hamilton Says Hello.  #10 Texas 72, Oklahoma State 60.  This game was a tale of two halves in Stillwater tonight.  At halftime, OSU looked the more aggressive team and had built as much as an eleven-point lead behind the habanero-like shooting of James Anderson (8-9 FGs for 24 points in the first half).  Texas managed to crawl back within four at the break, and the ensuing half belonged to the Longhorns.  Rick Barnes’ defense held the scorching Anderson to 2-9 shooting and four points for the rest of the game, and in the meantime, may have found a new offensive option on their own team in the form of Jordan Hamilton.  The freshman from LA came into the game averaging less than 8 PPG, but he made the most of his minutes tonight, drilling five threes and hitting 11-16 FGs for a career-high 27/4.  Eighteen of those points came in the second half, including an 11-point burst in the middle of the half that gave Texas the lead for good.  The core of the UT lineup is experienced, with Damion James, Dexter Pittman, Justin Mason, Dogus Balbay and Gary Johnson all juniors or seniors, but the offensive production that Rick Barnes gets from the talented freshman trio of Hamilton, Avery Bradley and J’Covan Brown will ultimately decide how far the Horns will go this season.  The firepower that those three bring to the table surpasses all but what Damion James can do on a regular basis — Coach Barnes would be wise to unleash their talents a little more as his team heads into the stretch run of the Big 12 regular season race still only two back of #1 Kansas in the standings.

Other Games of National Interest.

Is none an acceptable answer?  We’ll be back tomorrow with a fuller slate of games.

Game of the Weekend. #2 Kansas 81, #13 Kansas State 79 (OT). First, props to the K-State fans for stepping up on Gameday.  They created an environment for this one that was as electric as any place we’ve seen this season.  There’s no doubt their players felt the love, too.  They needed to.  If you think these teams thought this was just another game, think again.  Sherron Collins was so amped up that he was dehydrated BEFORE the game started.  Jacob Pullen was seen on two different occasions dry-heaving into a trash can at the KSU bench.  If Kansas could manage a win in such surroundings, they’d be the presumptive #1 on Monday and would certainly deserve it.  The first narrative hook came early when Bill Self yanked Cole Aldrich (18/11/3 blks) and evidently reminded him on how to use his size to eat up space on the inside, because he began to hit layup after layup and pull rebound after rebound.  KSU stayed close even with Aldrich’s elevated play, but as the Wildcats’ shot selection began to fail them, KU built a five-point lead.  This was quickly erased as Jacob Pullen began to get more touches, and KU’s halftime lead was a mere point.  The Jayhawks managed to build it back to eight early in the second half, but KSU remedied that by settling for layups instead of bad looks from three, and by hitting the offensive glass HARD.  After regulation time couldn’t decide it, and a neck-and-neck overtime, it’s only fitting that this game should be effectively decided by an incredible play by a big time player.  With KU up by a point and thirteen seconds left, Sherron Collins — battling dehydration and muscle spasms the entire night — drove to the hole knowing he was going to take contact, knowing there was little chance he was going to land in any way except on his back, and banked in a lay-up for a three-point play.  The Wildcats’ body language told the story.  He couldn’t convert the free throw, but after a Cole Aldrich offensive board and two Brady Morningstar free throws (which proved to be vital, after Jacob Pullen drilled a long three at the buzzer), it was done.  There were a few moments of celebration by the Jayhawks, but soon after, what you saw was more solemn pride and relief.  True, there isn’t much difference between the one-loss teams at the top of the polls.  But you can’t really have a three-way tie for #1, and the way the wins and losses have fallen — and after seeing what Kansas went through to win in Manhattan — the Jayhawks deserve the top position for now.

Collins and KU Will be Back at #1 (KC Star/Rich Sugg)

Finally, No Obama Jinx. #11 Georgetown 89, #7 Duke 77.  Well, at least Duke shot 84.6% from the free throw line. And that’s because you can’t guard free throws.  If you look at the numbers on this one, you might simply assume that the Hoyas “out-defended” the Blue Devils, since they held Duke to a 37% shooting day, including 31% (9-29) from three-point range.  All due respect to the Hoyas, because that statement is formally true — in this case, though, it’s not profound.  This wasn’t the Duke defense to which we’ve grown accustomed.  If you were looking for that in this game, you saw it on maybe one of every five Georgetown possessions.  Even more importantly, John Thompson III instructed his squad to be as selective with their shots as the admissions committees are with applicants at these schools.  As a result, Georgetown took 16 fewer shots in this game than the Devils — but hit 72% of them (33-46), an unfathomable number against anyone, let alone Duke.  All but maybe two of Georgetown’s attempts from behind the three-point arc were good looks, and they hit six of them (46%).  What was it that forced Duke out of their usual game plan?  Was it just Georgetown’s economical approach?  The excellence of Greg Monroe (21/5/5)?  The presence of Barack Obama and Joe Biden on the front row?  RTC Live in the building?  Hard to say.  Maybe it was the fact that this wasn’t Cameron Indoor, since Duke has dropped four of the five true road games it’s played this year.

Obama Giving the Zebra Tips on Dipomacy (AP)

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Will the Least Ugly Team Please Stand Up?  #12 Purdue 60, #16 Wisconsin 57. This was your typically ugly conference season Big Ten game; you know, the kind that makes you wonder why you started watching the game in the first place.  But in a battle for standing as to who will be the team to challenge Michigan State if/when they falter, it was Matt Painter’s Boilermakers who protected their home court tonight against Wisconsin (36-2 at Mackey against the Badgers) and pulled a victory out of the slugfest.  Purdue got 20/4 from E’Twaun Moore (including the game-winner with 25 seconds left), 12/13 from Robbie Hummel and was happy to see injured point guard Lewis Jackson back on the court even though he only played twelve minutes and contributed two points.  He’s the true PG that Moore and Chris Kramer are not, and it stands to reason that the Boilermakers will be a better team in the long run with Jackson back in action.  On the Wisconsin side, Keaton Nankivil blew up for 25/8 on 7-8 shooting from three, almost singlehandedly keeping the Badgers in the game at certain points.  Therefore, it was interesting that Trevon Hughes (9/4 on 3-11 FGs) got the ball with Wisconsin down one point and he missed a short runner that would have won the game.  Purdue’s JaJuan Johnson was benched for being late, yet he came off the pine to contribute 14/3.  As we’ve discussed before, Purdue is a much better team when Johnson is scoring and boarding, so it’s a testament to the quality of the Boilermaker defense that he was kept relatively in check tonight.   Both of these teams, along with Ohio State and Illinois, now have three losses in the Big Ten, and while none may catch Michigan State, they’re all vying for position in the #2 through #5 spots.  With Purdue and Wisconsin splitting their season series, it may come down to who has the easier schedule over the next four weeks, and from our viewpoint that team is Purdue (Indiana and Penn State twice, as well as Iowa once).

Moore Hits the Game Winner (AP/Michael Conroy)

The Courtney Fortson Show.  Arkansas 67, Mississippi State 62. In an otherwise ugly game with about seventeen people in the stands due to inclement weather in NW Arkansas, Courtney Fortson and his braids pulled off their best Devan Downey impression tonight with a 33-point second half that matched the visiting Bulldogs point-for-point.  He ended with a career-high 35/7/4 assts and even found time to have a mini-altercation with his coach during the outburst, and this will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of a disappointing season in Fayetteville.  Mississippi State couldn’t buy a bucket for much of this one (31% FGs, 19% 3FGs), but they still could have won the game deep into the second half had they merely been able to get a handle on Fortson.  They never did, and recently ranked MSU has now lost two in a row and really hasn’t played a strong game in three weeks.  You have to wonder if all the hubbub over Renardo Sidney (is he in?  is he out?) might be weighing upon them a little bit.  Their defense has remained consistently good, but the offense is just not producing enough good shots for talents like Jarvis Varnado and Dee Bost.  With the loss by MSU, Vanderbilt and Kentucky remain as the only two teams in the SEC with one loss or fewer in conference play.

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Wednesday Night of Upsets.  Although all four of these games were upsets using the Vegas sense of the word, only UT and UConn were what we’d call significant ones.  Still, it’s not often that we see three unranked teams pull wins over ranked teams on a random Wednesday night.

Is Kevin Stallings' Vandy Team the Most Underrated in America? (AP/Wade Payne)

• #23 Vanderbilt 85, #14 Tennessee 76.  Behold, the value of senior leadership.  On a night when A.J. Ogilvy and Jeffrey Taylor could only combine for 22 points on 7-18 shooting, senior Jermaine Beal stepped up to lead Vanderbilt to a message-sending road win in one of the toughest places to play in America.  The Commodores earned their tenth straight win behind Beal’s 25 points on 8-12 from the field, which included 4-6 from beyond the arc.  Those four treys were half of Vandy’s total of eight, which came on 14 attempts (57.1%).  Tennessee, by contrast, could only manage 6-20 (30%) from three, often settling for shots from deep when there were better ones to be had.  J.P. Prince led UT with 22/4/3, and Wayne Chism owned the boards in this physical game, pulling down 16 boards in addition to his eight points.  Still, Vanderbilt was able to out-rebound the Vols, 37-35 — a major reason why Tennessee just suffered their first home loss of the season.  At the start of last night, Kentucky was the only undefeated team in the nation; now, Vanderbilt is the only undefeated team (5-0) in the SEC, a game ahead of UK in the East.  Eleven days ago, the Commodores did what Kentucky couldn’t — win at South Carolina — but they’ll visit Lexington this Saturday.
• New Mexico 76, #10 BYU 72.  The two best teams in the underrated Mountain West Conference faced off tonight with more than just conference pride on the line.  BYU came into the game riding a 15-game winning streak, and New Mexico was trying to get its swagger back after starting 0-2 in the conference including an almost unheard-of loss at their home venue, The Pit.  The swagger might just be back, as the Lobos endured a horrid shooting night from their star Darington Hobson (5/14 on 1-11 FG) in giving the Cougars their first loss in conference play.  Stepping up in his place was Dairese Gary, who scored a career-high 25 points, including nine in the last minute-plus to seal the win.  BYU’s star Jimmer Fredette did his part for the visiting team, but the New Mexico defense made him work for it, resulting in an 8-21 shooting night for 27/7 assts.  New Mexico has shown this season that they can play with anybody — beating four ranked teams — but losses to Oral Roberts, SDSU and UNLV show that they sometimes lose their focus.  Expect to see both of these teams remain at the top of the MWC standings during the next month, with the rematch scheduled for February 27 in Provo.
• Charlotte 74, #15 Temple 64.  In a great way, the A-10 is a mess.  Charlotte’s win over Temple on Wednesday means there are three teams (Temple, Charlotte, and Xavier) at the top of the league with identical 5-1 conference records, Richmond and Rhode Island just a game back at 4-2, and three other teams have three wins apiece.  The 49ers’ Derrio Green went nuts for 26 points on 9-15 shooting, including a three (one of his four) with two minutes left that lifted a four point lead up to seven, and quelled a last comeback attempt by the Owls.  An under-the-weather Juan Fernandez tallied just 3 points in only 24 minutes for Temple, although Lavoy Allen (12/14/2) and Ryan Brooks (20/3/2) did all they could against a Charlotte zone defense that threw up traps at any possible chance at any location on the floor.  Temple was up 32-38 at the half, but just couldn’t decipher that 49er zone which forced The Owls into a poor shooting night (34.8% FG, 31.4% 3FG).  Charlotte took their first lead with seven minutes left, lost it for thirty seconds, and never trailed again after regaining it.
• Providence 81, #19 Connecticut 66. Someone needs to tell these schools that Connecticut 2010 is not Connecticut 2004 or even 2009, and they don’t need to be RTCing every time they beat the Huskies (see below).  Trust us, they’re going to lose several more games this year.  According to Gavin Edwards, once the Huskies got a ten-point lead in the first half, they thought the game was won.  Providence, however, had other ideas, and used old-fashioned hustle and grit to storm back and dominate the last eight minutes of the game to blow UConn out of the building.  Despite PC’s porous defense this season, they were able to hold Connecticut to 39% shooting and 4-18 from three.  Kemba Walker (17/8/7 assts) and Stanley Robinson (14/4) were able to get theirs, but Jerome Dyson was poor (3-14 FG) and nobody else stepped up.  For Providence, Jamine Peterson had 23/14/4 stls and Sharaud Curry chipped in with 18 points, but this game ultimately came down to the who-wanted-it-more factor, and that team tonight was clearly the Friars.  Now, about that RTC…

Other Games of National Interest.

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Devan Takes Down the Cats (Ky Kernel)

The Obama Curse.  South Carolina 68, #1 Kentucky 62.  First the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid, next Martha Coakley’s Senate race, now Kentucky’s short-lived reign at #1.  Just hours after President Obama had telephoned the Wildcat team to congratulate them on reaching the top ranking and raising over a million bucks in their Hoops for Haiti telethon, UK got lit up by South Carolina’s Devan Downey in Columbia to give the Gamecocks their first-ever win over a #1-ranked team.   Much like the president over the course of the last year, John Calipari and his team tonight learned the hard way that it’s considerably tougher playing the game with a giant blue target on your back.  Now, about this Downey kid.  Last weekend he was spectacular in a shoulda-been-win at Florida.  His one-on-five dribble drive to get through the entire Gator defense and make a running bank shot to give his team the lead was legendary.  Tonight he had three of those.  Or at least it seemed like he did.  What we do know for a fact was that there was nobody on the Kentucky defense who could stay in front of the guy (can anyone in America?), as he sliced, diced, and spiced his way through Wildcat defenders for 30/5/3 assts like Heidi Montag’s plastic surgeon with a scalpel in his hand.  He didn’t shoot well (9-29 FG), especially in the first half, but when it counted, it was Downey who appeared to be the best player on the floor (real estate shared tonight by at least three lottery picks).  UK’s superstar guard John Wall did his best to bring the Cats back late in the game, as Downey and he went mano a mano, but his 19/4 was too little, too late, and the result is that there will be another new #1 team next week.  So what can we take from this loss by Kentucky?  Well, we wrote last week that there was a large disconnect between Kentucky as top team in the human polls and Kentucky as a top 10-15 team in the computer numbers.  But the two areas that concerned us — three-point defense and forcing turnovers — weren’t the root cause of tonight’s loss.  The defense was good enough (.941 PPP holding SC to 34% from the field and 25% from three), but it was the Cats’ second-worst offensive performance of the year that made this happen.  The stat ESPN kept quoting was that Kentucky’s freshmen were scoring all of the second-half points, but what it really should have said is that DeMarcus Cousins (a dominant 27/12/3 blks) and John Wall were putting in the work.  Fellow freshman Eric Bledsoe (4/5 assts) is a helluva player in his own right, and he had the only other two second-half points, while UK’s junior all-american, Patrick Patterson, was completely forgotten the entire game (five points on four shots).  When Calipari’s offense is clicking, Kentucky puts four or more players into double-figures; tonight it was only two.  If Kentucky has aspirations to reach the top spot again this season (and we think they do), the key to making that happen will be impressing upon the youngsters to get more touches to one of the most versatile and efficient players in America, Patterson.  When all three of he, Wall and Cousins are clicking, few teams have the ability to match that kind of firepower.  Final note: beautiful, well-executed RTC by the Gamecock students — security can put up all the yellow tape they want, but RTCs on nights like tonight can’t be suppressed (start at the 1:20 mark).

Call 1-866-rtc-wins For Our Tip Hotline.  And there are no unbeatens left.  Just a quick aside, but three weeks ago we posted an article examining when we thought were the most likely games the four remaining unbeatens would lose.  3-1 ain’t bad.  The lone miss we had was Kansas’ stumble at Tennessee a couple of weekends ago, and we’re ok with that.

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Big Monday, Not So Much.  And this is why they play the games.  On paper, the two ESPN games tonight looked like tremendous matchups with the potential of both going down to the wire.  Didn’t really work out that way, though.  Perhaps better luck tomorrow night…

It had an 80s Feel at the Dome Tonight (The Post-Standard/Gloria Wright)

• #4 Syracuse 73, #7 Georgetown 56.  It may not have been a classic, but the first matchup between the Cuse and Georgetown in twenty years with both teams residing in the top ten was certainly interesting.  The Hoyas denigrated the Syracuse zone from the tip, jumping out to a 14-0 lead behind four threes and a layup that had the 25,000+ upstaters wondering when Jim Boeheim’s team was going to show up.  The answer wasn’t long in coming, as Syracuse shook off the early doldrums and put together a 30-15 run of their own to take the lead before the half ended.  From that point it was all downhill for JT3’s team, as the well with which the Hoyas had hit early jumpers ran dry throughout the rest of the game.  The biggest problem for the Hoyas was that two of their primary scoring options — their star point guard, Chris Wright, and center, Greg Monroe — were completely ineffective tonight on the offensive end, scoring only fifteen points on 7-17 shooting (0-6 from three).  Considering that Georgetown gets so much of its scoring from its starters (92%), they simply cannot afford off nights from these players (note: the Hoya bench contributed zero points tonight).  As for Syracuse, their offense is incredibly efficient — in 15 of the Orange’s 21 games this year, they’ve shot over 50% from the field, and tonight was no exception (53%).  They know what they’re good at and they force other teams to deal with it — most cannot, which means they better hope they’re having a strong shooting night against the confounding SU zone.  Good luck with that.  In terms of the Big East race, does this mean that Syracuse and Villanova are clearly the teams to beat?  Hard to say because VU has had a very weak conference schedule to date, but we can state without equivocation that Syracuse is in the top tier of contenders.
• #2 Kansas 84, Missouri 65.  When Kansas plays team defense like they did tonight against rival Missouri, there is nobody in America who can beat them.  Not Kentucky, not Texas, not Villanova, not Duke, not Syracuse.  It’s a testament to just how dominant their D was tonight that the Jayhawks could turn the ball over twenty-three times (vs. four for Missouri) and still have absolutely no trouble with the Tigers, whom they held to 28% shooting.  Imagine what it would have looked like if they’d been more careful with the ball.  The KU defense of course starts and ends with Cole Aldrich inside, and he was spectacular, nearly earning a trip-dub with 12/16/7 blks.  Marcus Morris continues to come on strong with a 17/9 night in his fifth straight game of double figures as well.  Mike Anderson’s Tigers never got into any kind of offensive groove after an opening 8-3 run, as there was often a sense that Kansas had a sixth defender on the floor to get out on the Missouri shooters.  Since the loss at Tennessee three weekends ago, the Jayhawks have yet to play another tough road game, but they’ll have their hands full with Jacob Pullen and Denis Clemente on Saturday night in the Little Apple.  It says here that the brief issues of focus that KU had, in part because of Aldrich’s family matters, are put behind them and will be tough to beat more than once the rest of the year.

Other Games of National Interest.

• Western Carolina 100, Charleston 90.  A wild offensive-minded game in the SoCon tonight, with Western Carolina giving Charleston its first loss in league play.  Both teams put five players each in double figures, with the Catamounts hitting eleven threes and shooting 59% from the field while Charleston nailed a scorching nineteen treys on 57% shooting.  The SoCon is more than likely a one-bid league this year, but with WCU possessing the scalps of Louisville and Charleston holding UNC’s, keep an eye on one of these two as a possible first-round darkhorse in March.

1. Thoughts and prayers from the RTC family to Samford head coach Jimmy Tillette, who collapsed on the bench Saturday during a game versus UNC-Greensboro.  He was in the process of being airlifted to UAB Hospital in Birmingham Sunday afternoon, and was in stable condition, so that’s good to hear.
2. You may have heard about this on Saturday, but Michigan’s Manny Harris was held out of the Wolverines’ game against Purdue by John Beilein for “unsportsmanlike conduct” during a practice last week.  Of course, Michigan got rung up by the Boilermakers without Harris in the lineup on Saturday, but what did he do?  Word out of Ann Arbor is that he may be held out of the Michigan State rivalry game on Tuesday night as well, which suggests a fairly serious offense (beyond throwing a wayward elbow, per a UM message board).  For what it’s worth, Fab Fiver Jimmy King says that he doesn’t know the specifics, but that Harris needs “to understand that the coach is the man and ultimately you’re the player so you can’t go against the coach regardless if you feel you’re right.”  That sounds fairly specific to us, and suggests a lot Harris did something more than throw a ‘bow.
3. Tyshawn Taylor got himself into more Facebook hot water last week after posting that he wanted to transfer out of Kansas last Wednesday night (if anyone has a screenshot of this, send it to us).  His FB account was deleted soon thereafter, and Bill Self spent part of his Friday press conference refusing to talk about it.  Whatever the case, Taylor put up numbers of 7/5 in thirteen minutes of action against Iowa State on Saturday.
4. So what’s wrong with North Carolina?  BP says it comes down to their three-point shooting and defense.  The three-point shooting is understandable, as Will Graves appears to be the only reliable threat from distance, but the defense is a little perplexing given all the size and length there is on that team.  Maybe Roy should consider actually slowing the game down a bit to utilize his interior strength?
5. That rule about the invisible charge-restriction area under the basket?  The NCAA Coordinator of Officiating, John Adams, thinks it’s working fine.  We absolutely agree that the Shane Battier Rule is a great thing for the game, but we’re not still not clear on why we can’t just put a dotted line down there to make it clearer where the zone starts and ends.

This Weekend’s Big Games.  This wasn’t an exceptional weekend of games, but there were three that, at least on paper, held significant hope.  Two of the three turned out pretty well, but the third was a disappointment.  Let’s see if you can figure out which.

Good to See Ya Back, UConn...

• #22 Connecticut 88, #1 Texas 74.  If you haven’t beaten a ranked team all year long, then what better place to start than to take out the team on top.  True, Texas was a lame-duck #1, having lost to Kansas State earlier in the week, but let’s not quibble.  For the Huskies, this wasn’t exactly a great time for a possible NCAA Tournament top seed to show up in town; so far this year, UConn had underachieved their way to an anemic 12-6, dropped three of their last four, fallen out of the AP Top 25, and their coach — a man known for his toughness as much as his two titles — was going to miss his second straight game because his doctors told him to get away from basketball for a while.  It’s not a matter of talent on the team, that’s never been questioned.  It just hasn’t been there for UConn; they’ve shown nothing close to the confidence and will to win that they’ve possessed for so long.  Sure, Texas had lost on Monday and was probably going to lose the top spot in the polls, but they were still a potential #1 seed come March, and the K-State loss wasn’t exactly a shocker.  After a half, this looked exactly like the game everyone expected.  Connecticut was listless and turnover-prone.  Texas looked like so many fine teams coming off a loss — angry, and wanting someone to pay.  The Huskies were down 42-34 at the break and showed no signs of a likely second-half charge.  And then — they found something.  Hard to say what it could have been — did they suddenly realize how talented they were?  Did they rally around a “Let’s do it for Coach Calhoun!” mentality?  If you’re a Connecticut fan, do you even care?  Because a different Connecticut team came out of the locker room.  Suddenly, you saw UConn players getting down in defensive stances instead of standing straight up.  They seemed three times as quick and hundred times as interested as their first half doppelgangers.  Like it so often is, defense was the trigger.  Runs of 13-0 and 9-0 paced the Huskies to a second half that saw them outscore the ‘Horns by 22, shut down Dexter Pittman, and frustrate Texas into a game total of 30 fouls.  The offense flowed through Jerome Dyson, whose 32 points (on 12-32 shooting) often came courtesy of Kemba Walker’s 10 assists (not that his 19 points and six steals didn’t help) on possessions started by one of Stanley Robinson’s (17/12) 12 rebounds.  For Texas, Damion James’ 23/7 and Avery Bradley’s 15 points simply couldn’t match whatever transfused into Connecticut at halftime.  Lots of questions, now, mostly on the UConn side.  We know Texas hasn’t peaked already, but what of Connecticut?  Can they continue to summon whatever it was that visited them at halftime of this game?  If they can, the Big East just got even more interesting than it was 48 hours ago.
• #6 Duke 60, #16 Clemson 47.  This was what you call a defensive lockdown by the Devils.  Taking a page from the way they played Gonzaga earlier this season, Duke allowed do-it-all Clemson forward Trevor Booker to go to work (22/6), but other than Demontez Stitt’s 10-point effort, the rest of the Clemson starters had a grand total of one field goal.  The openings just weren’t there, and with no three-point shooters on the court to help instigate a prolonged run, the Tigers couldn’t get enough consecutive buckets to ever threaten Duke in the second half.  Nolan Smith (22/3) continues to play impressive basketball, as he shot 8-13 yesterday and is showing an aura of confidence that well suits a player shooting lights-out this season (49% FG, 51% 3FG).  It was his nine points during an 11-2 Duke run early in the second half that broke open the game and quieted the combustible Littlejohn faithful.  If you want to know one reason of many that Duke is playing so well this year, look no further than how well the Duke backcourt holds onto the ball.  The trio of Jon Scheyer, Andre Dawkins and Smith all rank among the top 315 players in the country in turnover percentage, with each turning it over less than 15% of the time.  As an example of this, Duke had twelve TOs yesterday in a hostile road environment against a team in Clemson that ranks in the top in forcing them — the Duke backcourt only had three.  We still have concerns about the Duke players wearing down over the course of the season, as both Kyle Singler and Scheyer played the full forty minutes and Smith logged thirty-seven.  But for now, Duke has avoided the injury bug and Coach K is very good at providing his players spot rest during games when needed.  As for Clemson, it’s back to the drawing board for Oliver Purnell’s team.  The Tigers are going to have to figure out how to find more offense beyond the consistently good play of Trevor Booker and the occasional good night from Demontez Stitt and Tanner Smith.

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Louisville Joins UNC on the Early Bubble.  Seton Hall 80, Louisville 77.  We realize of course that Louisville has had a tendency in the Pitino era to start off slowly and finish strong, but we have a feeling that isn’t going to happen this year.  The problem is with a Pitino staple, their defense, the efficiency of which is currently the worst in the last five years for his teams.  The Cards allow a very average 46% from two and 35% from three, which mitigates the robust amount of turnovers that they   force in their trapping defense.  And tonight’s game against Seton Hall is a good example of the defensive struggles that Louisville is enduring this year — the Pirates shot 53% from the field, put all five starters in double figures, and even the human cannon known as Jeremy Hazell (25/5) hit a good percentage (9-12 FG) against the Card defense.  So what’s the answer?  We’re not sure that there is one with the personnel Pitino has at his disposal.  In the last three games (all losses), the Cards have given up greater than 1.15 points per possession against teams that do not typically do that well in that regard.  This loss puts Louisville at 12-7 and 3-3 in the Big East, but we could easily see seven or eight more losses in the conference for the Cards should they not tighten up that defense in the next few weeks.  An 8-10 record, even in the loaded Big East, may not be enough given that really hasn’t beaten a “good” team all season (and only three in the KenPom top 100!).  Seton Hall should be proud of itself for stepping up to take this game, which they very nearly let get away from them in the last few minutes.  Having lost four of five, the Pirates could have easily folded up the tent and allowed Louisville to steal a much-needed road win, but Bobby Gonzalez’s group instead showed their mettle and put came out with a win in one of their best performances of the season.

Seton Hall Didn't Back Down From Louisville (AP/Bill Kostroun)

Um, Who? UCLA 62, Washington 61. Someone named Mustafa Abdul-Hamid, a reserve guard who had taken only 22 shots all season coming into tonight’s game, received the ball at halfcourt with three seconds remaining on the clock and does what all players who are thrust in that position do: three dribbles, rise and fire.  His shot from the top of the key at the buzzer was all net, and UCLA earned a hard-fought win over what has to be one of the most disappointing teams (other than these very Bruins) in the country in UW. (see below at 1:00)  We’ve stopped trying to predict the crazy Pac-10 this year, but given just how poorly UCLA has played on both ends of the floor this season, Washington has no excuse for dropping this game, even in Pauley Pavilion.  Quincy Pondexter had 23/6, but he didn’t get much help with Isaiah Thomas only adding 11 and nobody else in double figures.  For a team averaging nearly 80 PPG, they were well below their normal offensive output.  As for UCLA, all we can say is that when a player like Abdul-Hamid is taking your game-winning shots, even if he’s making them, you have tremendous problems to solve.  All that said, it wouldn’t shock us if Washington ran off ten straight in this league now that we’re piling on them here.

Super Mids Keep Rolling.  #10 Gonzaga and #20 Butler got scares in their respective conferences tonight, but as usual, they both came out with another win.

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