Black Wednesday in RTP.  A bit of hyperbole here, as we make reference to Black Sunday (March 11, 1979), the infamous day when both UNC and Duke lost NCAA second round games on the same afternoon.  Still, tonight’s surprising losses by both Carolina and Duke to the two ‘other’ schools in the traditional Big Four represent the first time in nearly seven years that they both lost conference games on the same night.  How on earth could this have happened?  Are big scary red/black aliens shaped in Deacon and Wolf form landing tonight to take us all away?  Will tears of blood flow from the sky as God weeps for us?   Will high-profile recruits clown Uncle Roy?  These are all good questions for the people of central North Carolina to be asking tonight, so we’re here to help them make sense of it all.  (ed. note: what?  NC State wasn’t shipped out to somewhere like Pembroke in the late 80s?)

NC State Exorcised Their Devils Tonight (N&O/Ethan Hyman)

• NC State 88, #6 Duke 74.  There were a lot of shocking parts to this game, but by far the biggest shocker was the knife-through-butter ease by which NC State repeatedly shredded the Duke defense.  The Devils have held their opponents to 41% from inside the arc and 28% from beyond it all season long, but the Pack paid that no mind, shooting a red-hot 58% for the entire game and hitting five timely threes on a reasonable twelve attempts.  Even the expected collapse that everyone thought was coming immediately after halftime (and Nolan Smith’s ridiculous catch-and-shoot trey just before the buzzer) never materialized.  Instead it was NC State that appeared to have the confidence, pushing their lead back out into double-digits and answering the Devils each and every time they cut the lead to eight.  The night belonged to NCSU’s Tracy Smith, the 22d birthday boy who could seemingly do no wrong, dropping 23/5 on 10-12 FGs on a variety of post moves and drives to the hole.  The Duke defense, one of the very best in the nation coming into tonight, seemed bewildered and confused by Smith all night long, almost as if he’d been left off the scouting report.  Coach K’s group allowed over a point per possession for just the fourth time all season, and at 1.23 PPP tonight, it was easily their worst performance of the year.  Something tells us that their level of effort on that end will not go unnoticed by Krzyzewski.  With the win, NC State moves to 2-3 in the ACC race, and would you believe that the leaders of this conference are Virginia (3-0) and Maryland (2-1)?  Is it too early to start calling the ACC the Pac-10 East with its nuttiness so far this year?  Final thought: nice RTC, State students.  And, deserved (start at 2:50).

• Wake Forest 82, #23 UNC 69.  Freshmen?  No, I don’t think so.  Wake’s C.J. Harris and Ari Stewart were impolite guests in their first visit to the Dean Dome as collegians, to say the least.  In the first half, Wake cajoled UNC into questionable shot selection while taking good ones themselves and went into halftime with a three point lead.  When UNC came out quickly early in the second and almost immediately made it just a one-point deficit, you got the feeling that Roy Williams had indeed gone into his magic bag and come up with a speech that would now put things right.  You could feel that UNC had finally shown up and that they — the ranked team, at home — would redeem themselves, take advantage of the young Deacon guards, pull out a win, and SURELY avoid a three-game losing streak, something that’s never happened here under Roy Williams.  It cannot happen here under Roy Williams.  Right?  RIGHT?  Well… it just did.  Harris and Stewart looked like anything but frosh in the second half right about the time UNC started getting their legs under them.  First, almost halfway through the second half, it was Stewart.  A three.  Then another.  Then ANOTHER.  That last one is in caps because it was from about 22 feet, finishing the triple of triples that came in a span of a minute and 26 seconds.  About a minute later, it was Harris, drilling two straight from the same spot on the left.  Those five threes were courtesy of assists from four different players.  At that point the Deacons’ lead was 15, and the Tar Heels were done.  A couple of minutes later Ish Smith — a terror tonight, with 20/7/6 on 9-17 shooting — drilled another three for the official dagger.  A team on which each player knows and cherishes his role is a dangerous thing, and that is this Wake Forest team — at least, it was tonight.  Aside from the aforementioned guards providing the outside threat, Smith distributes well and is a heady senior point guard.  Al-Farouq Aminu, whose 13/11 we haven’t even mentioned, is a fine interior defender and rebounds like a maniac.  Chas McFarland might not take many shots (1-3 tonight), but he gets to the line and hits the boards (ten against UNC) and anchors the defense inside with Aminu.  And they seem to be buying in to what Dino Gaudio is teaching.  Sure, the Heels didn’t have Ed Davis, and this might have been Wake’s best outside shooting night of the season.  But this is North Carolina.  At home.  What can you say about this team at this point?  Is Roy about to lose them?  It’s been an incredible three-year run.  But sometimes after such a period of sustained success, when hard times arrive it can be easy for a young team to fold.  They’re 12-7 and 1-3 in the ACC, have twelve games left, with seven of them away.  A split does not get them in.  The Heels have six days off, and it’s a good time for it.  They have a lot to think about.  It’s soul-searching time.

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Message Received, Loud and Clear.  #15 Purdue 84, Illinois 78.  Matt Painter threw everyone on his team other than E’Twaun Moore and Robbie Hummel under the bus over the weekend in comments he made about the lack of hustle and energy from his players during the Boilermakers’ recent three-game losing streak.  It’s a tried-and-true coaching strategy, and it seemed to work tonight as his team used a strong second half run out of the game to take control of this game and make Painter look like a genius.  Examining the players that Painter referred to in his diatribe, he conspicuously omitted JaJuan Johnson from a preferred starting lineup (composed entirely of Moore and Hummel clones), and that slight resulted in a dominant 24/12/2 blks evening for the big man.  When JJJ plays up to his abilities on the offensive end, Purdue is nearly unbeatable, going 8-1 in the last two seasons when he breaks twenty points.  When he’s held under ten for the game, the Boilermaker record is 6-6 over the same period, including all three losses this season.  Additionally, usual starters Keaton Grant and Chris Kramer were relegated to bench duty tonight, but 7/9/3 assts between the two of them show that they were focused on defense and hustle stats.  Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was sophomore guard John Hart coming off the bench to contribute a career-high 14/2 in eighteen inspired minutes of action.  Believe it or not, tonight was Hart’s first minute of action in a Big 10 game — nice debut, young fella!  Illinois played well enough to win the game on the defensive end, but like so many other Illini games over the year, they simply couldn’t get enough production aside from Demetri McCamey (28/9) and Mike Davis (17/15).  Freshmen guard duo DJ Richardson (12/2) and Brandon Paul (5/3) shot 6-18 from the field, which was surprisingly their best combined output in three weeks, but Illini fans have to be wondering what happened to the pair that combined for 34 points in the big comeback at Clemson in early December.

Johnson Accepted Painter's Challenge Tonight (AP/Robin Scholz)

Watch Out, ACC. #18 Georgia Tech 66, #16 Clemson 64. The Ramblin’ Wreck moved to 3-2 in the ACC with its third win in eleven days over a ranked team (nevermind that pesky loss to UVa sandwiched in between).  And while the win is very nice and worth talking about on its own merits, what we really want to discuss is that the nation’s #2 incoming recruit, Derrick Favors, may have awakened from his season-long slumber to serve notice that the second half of the year may be a somewhat different story for his opponents.  His numbers weren’t Michael Beasley or Blake Griffin-esque (17/14/3 blks), but they do represent his best all-around performance of the season (career highs in pts and rebs), and had he made his FTs (1-5) he would have broken the 20-point barrier as well.  As Favors said after the game, he is ‘playing better,’ and if he is putting it all together just in time for the home stretch of the season, Georgia Tech suddenly becomes the most interesting team in the ACC.  Gani Lawal added 16/10 for Tech and Zachery Peacock (6/5) hit the game-winning FTs with 3.2 seconds remaining.

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The Good.

The Bad.

The Ugly.

Once-Proud Indiana RTCs Against Unranked Minnesota?

In fact, the last one was so ugly that nobody bothered to put a video of it onto YouTube.  We can only surmise that the guilt and shame of a school with five national titles RTCing against an unranked Minnesota team was too much to bear.

The RTC That Wasn’t.  #9 Kansas State 71, #1 Texas 62.  We know that there was an RTC tonight in Manhattan, Kansas, right?  We had to have missed it while concentrating on Bob Knight’s screeds about how to cheer correctly.  After all, Kansas State had only beaten a #1 team twice before tonight in its long and not-so-illustrious modern history, and the last of those wins was nearly sixteen years ago.  Still, the K-State students showed an amazing amount of self-control in choosing to not rush the court tonight, and given how relatively quiet they were during the last five minutes of a game against the nation’s #1 team, we’re starting to wonder if they realized that was even an option.  Ok, giving them the benefit of the doubt — they’re saving it for January 30th, right?  As for the game itself, Texas was coming off an OT-win over its rival Texas A&M on Saturday night (see below writeup), and they appeared emotionally drained throughout the first half.  The Horns shot 10-33 in the first half and committed eleven turnovers, often appearing that they weren’t sure who was in charge out there (a point made by Mike DeCourcy after the A&M win) as they found themselves in a 10-point hole at the half.  The Horns made their run to tie the game and briefly take the lead in the second behind Justin Mason and Clint Chapman off the bench, but K-State was able to use an 11-1 run late to finish off the nation’s #1 team.  What’s amazing about this win is that Jacob Pullen was terrible offensively (2-15 FG, 0-6 3FG) and the team couldn’t hit a three from anywhere (1-12), but Jamar Samuels (20/12) came off the bench to more than pick up the slack and Texas’ Damion James didn’t have his Superman cape on tonight.  The Wildcats also got 17/8 from Curtis Kelly, and Frank Martin’s group served notice tonight that the race to the Big 12 title may be more than a two-horse race this season.  The Longhorn offense has looked shaky the last two games, and we’re starting to wonder if teams have figured out that the key to beating this team is to deny the hell out of their interior players and defend the guards on the drive.  UT travels to UConn next, while K-State will try to avoid the letdown game with a home date against Oklahoma State.

Jamar Samuels Celebrates Beating #1 (AP/Charlie Riedel)

Other Big Games This Weekend.

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Elias Harris Introduces Himself to America/RTC Live.  Gonzaga 89, St. Mary’s 82.  We really hope you stayed up for this WCC tilt between the two titans of this league tonight.  If you didn’t, you missed what someone less of a wordsmith than RTC might call a ‘coming-out party.’  Gonzaga’s Elias Harris not only had a career-high night in terms of scoring (31/13), but he also spent seemingly half of the game hanging from the McKeon Pavilion rims after throwing down a beyond-athletic dunk.  Maybe it was the soft rims at the Moraga school, but each time Harris was doing chin-ups on their hoops, we thought the entire place might come down with him.  St. Mary’s had the raucous crowd, the early three-pointers from Matt Dellavedova and Mickey McConnell, the late power game from Omar Samhan, and a four-point deficit with under a minute to go (plus the ball).  But what the Gaels didn’t have at all tonight (and was clearly a concern of Randy Bennett’s after the game) was the ability to defend the Zags.  GU shot a scorching 60% from the field and was +8 on the offensive glass, which means that Gonzaga’s percentage of scoring possessions was off the charts at over 71% for the game.  You’re simply not going to be in a realistic position to win many games when you’re getting stops only three of every ten defensive trips. It’s a testament to how well Omar Samhan played in the second half (26 of his 31 came after the break) that SMC had a chance to win within the final few minutes.  Gonzaga leaves Moraga with a 2-0 WCC record, but those two wins already represent what are likely its two toughest road games this season (@ Portland being the other).  Even if Gonzaga drops two games the rest of the way, St. Mary’s would have to lose only one other game AND beat Gonzaga in Spokane to tie them for the regular season title.  Good luck with that.  As for Harris, he wasn’t a very highly recruited player coming from Germany, but he’s proving that once again Mark Few and his staff have a keen eye for talent somewhat off the beaten path.  Tonight he appeared to be the Zags’ best player, and his 15/8 on 59% shooting this year puts him in elite company among freshmen this season.

Pac-10 Wrap. Rather than do an individual breakdown of each game in this crazy conference, since eight teams played tonight we’ll just do a wrapup paragraph tonight.  The lesson in this year’s Pac-10: pick who you think will win the game… then pick the other team — there’s your winner.  The Arizonas visited the Oregons tonight, and if you had Oregon getting destroyed (76-57) for the second straight game at home while Oregon State snuck past Arizona on a Lathen Wallace three with 1.1 seconds remaining, give yourself a pat on the back.  In Washington, we had the NorCal teams visiting tonight, and if you had Stanford getting destroyed by UW  (coming off three straight losses) and Cal winning a road game (!!!) at Wazzu, give yourself a full-on hug.  Jerome Randle had a career-high 39 points, outdoing conference scoring leader Klay Thompson (18/6) in Pullman, while Quincy Pondexter dropped 27/10 on the Cardinal in Seattle.  The Pac-10 standings now have Cal at 3-1, six teams with two losses, and three teams with three.  Can we just set each team at 9-9 for the regular season and get on to the Pac-10 Tournament?

Other Games of National Interest.

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Big 12 Home Teams No Longer Unbeatable.  We saw the stat floating around on one of the ESPN360 feeds for the first time over the weekend, and by the early part of this week it was ubiquitous.  Undoubtedly last week somebody in the Big 12’s stats department realized that the league’s home teams had only lost a single game all season (Northern Iowa’s victory at Iowa State in early December) and began marketing it as unassailable proof of the conference’s superiority.  It’s a manufactured statistic, but anytime people start repeating such a meme it takes on a life of its own.  By last night, after Kansas State and Colorado’s home wins to move the league to 114-1 on the year in their own buildings, you might have thought from listening to the announcers on the night’s games that we were in the midst of an epic realignment of the balance of power of the sport.  Sigh…  such is the 24-hour national news cycle.  At any rate, tonight’s three games featured three really good Big 12 teams going on the road to a conference rival, and collectively those three teams — #1 Texas, #3 Kansas,  Missouri — made mincemeat of that stat.  Let’s not speak of it again.

• #1 Texas 90, Iowa State 83.  Texas’ freshman crew continues to impress, as they combined for 46/11/7 assts in UT’s 16th consecutive win to start the season.  This game was close for about a half, but UT came out and wrested control of the game in the second half behind Avery Bradley’s scoring (16 of his 24 in the 2d) and if this kid is going to keep playing like his last two games (22-28 from the floor, 7-7 from three), then Kansas’ Xavier Henry is going to have some serious competition for Big 12 FrOY this season.  Up next to stay unbeaten: rival Texas A&M at home.
• #3 Kansas 84, Nebraska 72.  Kansas found itself down double-figures very early on the road in this one, but the Jayhawks were able to stay composed and use their superior depth and experience to pull away from pesky Nebraska late behind turnovers and strong interior play.  Cole Aldrich didn’t have a huge game (6/9/3 blks), but he didn’t need to, because Marcus Morris came off the bench to provide 19/7, including several timely plays during they key stretch where KU pulled away.  Kansas doesn’t utilize the three-point shot to a great degree, but the Jayhawks hit thirteen tonight, including 4-5 from Sherron Collins (22/5 assts).
• Missouri 94, Texas Tech 89 (OT).  Mizzou used its fullcourt press to force 18 Red Raider turnovers and get a great game from Marcus Denmon off the bench (20/6) to win a key road game in Lubbock tonight.  The Tigers very nearly blew it, though, letting an 11-pt lead slip away in the final four minutes of regulation and allowing the game to be sent to overtime on two FTs by Tech’s John Roberson.  Then in the overtime period, it was Texas Tech’s Nick Okorie who had two FTs to give his team the lead, only to miss both of them with 20.4 seconds remaining and allowing Mizzou to hang on.

Clemson, You Simply Cannot RTC in This Situation!! #19 Clemson 83, #13 North Carolina 64.  Surprisingly, this was over very early.  Clemson came out and jumped on UNC with two large Trevor Booker-sized feet, and for the rest of the game the Tar Heels were one big turnover machine (25 total).  Closest UNC came in the second half was 12.  Booker’s 24/9/4 assts led Clemson to only their fifth win in sixteen tries against the Tar Heels, and their first since 2004.  Message to Clemson fans: we at RTC agree that this was an important win and dealing with UNC has caused you some recent frustration.  But you were FAVORED in this game, and UNC was only six spots ahead of you in the rankings.  We hope you enjoy the win, because you deserved it.  But this version of Gathering at the Paw (which we thought was a football tradition only) does not meet our criteria as a valid RTC.  You simply cannot RTC when you’re the favored team!

Jamie Dixon, COY.  #20 Pittsburgh 67, #15 Connecticut 57.  On Tuesday night we saw Evan Turner inject himself right back into the Player of the Year race with his late-game tour-de-force in stealing that win at Purdue.  Wednesday night gave us all a good look at a man who is likely the favorite for Coach of the Year (we just got some mean looks from people in Lexington) at this point — a certain Jamie Dixon of the University of Pittsburgh.  Going to Hartford and playing Connecticut is a tough task for anyone, but getting UConn coming off a loss makes that trip even more treacherous.  The Panthers didn’t care.  They started the game by streaking to an early ten-point lead, immediately putting UConn on the defensive.  The Panthers then led by 32-39 at the half and, even though they shot a tepid 39% from the field (23-59, and 4-12 from three-point range), held off the Huskies for the first part of the second half, causing the Hartford crowd to grow restless.  Just like you knew they would, Connecticut then made their run, a 10-0 stretch that gave UConn a one point lead at 47-46.  It was back-and-forth until the 5:00 mark, at which point Pitt took a lead (52-51) that they would not relinquish for the remainder.  The stats show that Pittsburgh was able to hold off UConn by outrebounding them 26-13 in the second half and by hitting 17-20 at the free throw line.  We say, however, that it was the intrinsic toughness of this Panthers squad that earned them this victory.  To outwork UConn on the glass (both offensive and defensive) in their own building, to drive the lane and take contact with abandon in the way they did…that takes guts.  And that’s a product of what Dixon has instilled in this team.  If you’ve heard his players do interviews over the last couple of weeks, you’ve noticed that these Pittsburgh kids love talking about how great the chemistry is on their team and how much they’ve bought into Dixon’s mindset and vision for their squad.  Everyone knows you have to have quality players (the “Jimmies and Joes”) to be competetive at all, especially in a cut-throat conference like the Big East.  But team chemistry is the ultimate catalyst for success.  Coaches can go whole seasons without having their players “buy into” what they’re trying to teach.  Dixon has achieved this with a team that lost 60% of its scoring from last year and had been forgotten about by just about everyone up until they started their current seven-game win streak, the last three coming on the road in-conference against Syracuse, Cincinnati, and Connecticut.  The Huskies now find themselves going out of conference to Michigan this Sunday, needing a win to stay ranked…and relevant.

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Hummel vs. Turner.  Ohio State 70, #6 Purdue 66.  Evidently Robbie Hummel got tired of hearing about how great Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds was last night.  My favorite tweet last night from a hoop-o-phile friend came in two parts: “What do Robbie Hummel and a Swarthmore sorority have in common?  They both have a lot of threes.”  Hummel came out and hit eight shots from behind the arc in the first half, setting off a chain reaction of texts, tweets, and phone calls that rivaled the second half of Tennessee vs Kansas a couple of nights ago.  Hummel tied a school record in the first half — meaning a record for a whole game — with his eight treys, also adding a two and, for completeness’ sake, a trio of free throws to end the half with 29 points, equaling Ohio State’s output for the half.  That’s right.  At halftime, it was OSU 29, Robbie Hummel 29.  Here’s the problem, though.  The rest of the Purdue squad contributed only 12 points in the first half on five field goals.  The halftime lead was 41-29, and if you were watching this one you never felt like the Buckeyes had been put away.  You also saw Evan Turner get a little more confident in his movement and ability to take contact with each trip down the floor.  In the second half it was almost like Turner was waiting to see how much his teammates would contribute before wresting control of this game.  And that he did.  This thing looked like a done deal just before the under-4 TV time-out with Purdue up 62-52.  Turner then went on a 14-0 run by himself, and in doing so, not only put OSU in a position to win with a 64-62 lead, but vaulted himself back into the talk for Player of the Year…as one of the two favorites.  OSU simply outhustled Purdue down the stretch and, with Turner solidly back as master and commander, were effectively unfazed by Purdue’s tight defense in both the half- and full-court sets.  Purdue never so much as tied the score after Turner’s 14-0 run.  Two William Buford (19/7) free throws with 16 seconds left closed the scoring and sealed the unlikely Buckeye victory.  Robbie Hummel’s first half was legendary, there’s no question.  And it had a lot of flash (something you don’t necessarily think of when you think of Purdue basketball), since 24 of the 29 points were from threes.  We don’t mean to drag down Hummel’s 35/10 night, but Evan Turner had 23 of his 32 in the second half, and considering whom he did it against, where it was done, and the fact that he did it while playing all 40 minutes with two bones still healing in his spinal column, we think it’s an easy call to say that Turner’s second-half 23 was more impressive than Hummel’s first-half 29, even though that probably won’t be the popular opinion.  There’s one thing on which everyone can agree, though, after what we saw from Evan Turner tonight: his backbone is not to be questioned.

Turner is Back

Kentucky Remains Unbeaten.  #2 Kentucky 89, Florida 77.  In an era of college basketball where many teams (even in the Top 25) have barely a single serviceable point guard, John Calipari’s team boasts two.  Everyone knows about the spectacular John Wall, but it might just be his backcourt mate Eric Bledsoe who has the longer-lasting impact on the UK program (think: Brandan Wright’s vs. Tyler Hansbrough’s careers at UNC).  Tonight Bledsoe scored in just about every way imaginable — driving, twisting layups, mid-range jumpers, three-pointers — as he dropped 25/7/5 assts/3 stls on a Florida team that appears to be going nowhere fast.  Think about how far this Gator program has fallen since the “04s” left Gainesville.  With a record of 11-5 (0-2 SEC) and an RPI rating in the 80s (and dropping), a third straight NIT is looking like a realistic possibility.  When is it acceptable to openly question whether Billy Donovan simply caught lightning in a bottle with that spectacular recruiting class to win back-to-back national titles in 2006 and 2007?  It’s utterly ridiculous that he hasn’t been able to sustain the success of at program after winning back-to-back (it’s not like we’re asking for F4s; a simple NCAA second round would be nice at this point).  As for Kentucky, the Cats moved to a still-perfect 17-0 and broke a five-game losing streak in Gainesville tonight while shooting 52% and answering every run that Florida made (including the start of the game when the fans were wild, and a late run to tie the game at 72-all).  We’re on record as saying that when UK loses (and they will), it will be in a situation where the young players are not focused because they do not respect the opponent — they were clearly focused for Florida.  John Wall added 19/4/6 assts and Patrick Patterson had 15/7, while Florida got 20/4 from Erving Walker who almost singlehandedly brought the Gators back into the game late.  According to Pomeroy, UK will be favored in every game it plays until February 16 at Mississippi State, but we have a sneaky suspicion that one of these ‘lesser’ teams will give the Cats their first loss (@ South Carolina is our best guess).

More Upsets!

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Scottie Reynolds Makes an Ugly Game Beautiful.  #4 Villanova 92, Louisville 84.  66 fouls.  94 FTAs.  A two-and-a-half-plus hour game, and it was only forty minutes of game time.  Just another night in the Big East or did Tim Donaghy call in a favor on the over tonight?  It’s a good thing that viewers at home got to see Scottie Reynolds playing in this game; otherwise, they may have confused this physical battle in front of the Louisville “white-out” crowd for a scene out of the UFC over on Versus tonight.  Louisville came out firing on all cylinders, shooting out to a 17-point first half lead behind their pressure (forcing 21 Nova turnovers) and a steady diet of Samardo Samuels (21/7/4 blks) and Edgar Sosa (17/3).  But Villanova never panicked (have they ever under Jay Wright?) and before long, Scottie Reynolds had taken over the game and brought his team back into the lead by the early part of the second half.  At the end of the night, he stood strong with a 36-point season-high effort, and the fourth-ranked Wildcats had themselves another impressive road win to go to 4-0 in the Big East.  To say he was scorching insults the word — Reynolds was 9-10 from the field, 5-5 from deep (look at the form, below) and 13-17 from the line.  Bench this guy – he missed five attempts the entire night!  The only major criticism we have about Wright’s team in this one is that Reynolds didn’t get much help (Corey Fisher and Taylor King each had 12 points), but when you have a guy so incredibly dialed in, the smart thing to do is to ride him until he misses, and Reynolds didn’t miss much.  As for Rick Pitino’s Louisville, we realize they’re 3-1 in the Big East, but we’re still not buying this team as a contender in the conference.  The three wins were against USF, Providence and St. John’s, but the Cards are going to have to play some legit competition (Pitt, Cincy, UConn, WVU) soon, so if our supposition is correct they’ll let us know soon enough.  One very positive note for Pitino has to be the play of Samuels, though — the sophomore center didn’t miss from anywhere tonight (4-4 FG; 13-13 FT) — in one of the better games of his career.  Louisville has no chance at another great season unless Samuels becomes a consistently dominant force inside for the Cardinals.

Gonna Need to Get Out on That (credit: Jonathan Palmer)

Other Games of National Interest.

• Oklahoma 62, Oklahoma State 58.  This was an absolute must-win for Oklahoma against their bitter rival tonight, and they were able to leverage a head injury to the Cowboys’ James Anderson into an opportunity to get that victory.  Tiny Gallon had a monster game inside (13/18), but it was Tommy Mason-Griffin’s three in overtime that gave OU the lead for good.  The Sooner defense has been by far the worst in the Big 12 this year, but it was active tonight in holding the Pokes to a miserable shooting night (28% from the field, 20% from three).  We don’t expect a major turnaround based on a single game, but it’s a good start for Jeff Capel’s team to get to 1-1 in the Big 12, and they have Missouri coming to town next weekend (a winnable game).
• Siena 82, Canisius 70.  A light night like tonight is a good opportunity to remind everyone that Siena is a team to once again keep an eye out for in March.  The Saints are currently 6-0 in the MAAC and even though they never got their marquee OOC win, they’re dominating their league so far (avg. margin = 16.0).  A fearsome foursome of Edwin Ubiles (15/4), Alex Franklin (15/9), Clarence Jackson (14/2) and Ryan Rossiter (13/10) make it very difficult for opposing defenses to focus on one (or two, or three) players.  Siena will always have someone who can hurt you.
• Cal State Northridge 98, Seattle 90.  Beat a Pac-10 school by fifty, then drop games to Sacramento State followed by CS Northridge.  Sure, makes sense to us.

Upset Weekend.  Let’s get one thing out of the way right away.  It was a great weekend of college basketball, with over 175 games of juicy goodness, starting with Friday evening’s Sunshine State battle of A-Sun foes Jacksonville and Stetson, and ending with tonight’s Civil War game in Eugene between the Ducks and Beavers.  If you didn’t get enough hoops over the last 54 hours, then you probably need your head checked (our appt. is Tuesday morning).  But let’s not get too excited about this weekend just yet.  By our count, there were ten upsets involving ranked teams, and a host of others barely survived.  But this is something we all knew was coming.  It’s called life on the road in conference play (note: we realize, of course, Kansas was on the road in non-conference play), and it’s what makes the next ten weeks so much more fun than the previous ten.  No longer will teams be able to play Holy Names and Penn Central and St. Augustanus to pick up easy Ws.  No, they now have to face conference foes — the family — and like your nutty Grandma at the holiday dinner table, the family can be harsh in its brutal honesty.  If your team has a weakness, the family will find it and exploit it.  If your team has multiple question marks, your days of skating by with superior athletes and a friendly home crowd are over.  If your team has been using smoke and mirrors to get it done this year, well, the seven years of bad luck are about to begin.  This phenomenon happens every single year, and every single year we all get all fluttery and hyperbolic talking about the early upsets, but the fact of the matter is that there are no dominant teams in the 1-and-done era and truthfully the real surprise would be if we didn’t have great weekends of parity like this one.

Hopson Crushed It on Aldrich (credit: Saul Young)

Now, About That Kansas Thing.  #15 Tennessee 76, #1 Kansas 68.  This was going to be one of the tougher games of the season for Kansas regardless of the Tennessee personnel issues, but you can almost imagine Bill Self fretting about his team’s focus when he found out that 40% of the Vol offense would not be available for this game.  There’s no question that Kansas has elite talent, but they’re not robots, and it’s understandable that all the news about the UT players might have led to a bit of a letdown.  Bill Self referred to his team’s lack of aggressiveness as manifested in the worrisome fact that KU’s all-american center Cole Aldrich (7/18/4 blks) only took five shots in 30 minutes despite a considerable size advantage inside.  Repeated post-ups in the halfcourt offense resulted in few touches for Aldrich, as Sherron Collins and Tyshawn Taylor in particular were more interested in chucking threes and calling their own number throughout (20 and 11 shots, respectively).  Tennessee, to its credit in using just six scholarship players and several walk-ons, kept hustling and scrapping for loose balls and hitting big shot after big shot every time it seemed that the superior KU talent was surging.  Skylar McBee’s step-through three from the left side as the shot clock expired and UT up three very late was the stuff of legend (see below), and we doubt the walk-on marksman will be buying his own meals in Knoxville for many a year after he graduates.

In a game where the odds were repeatedly stacked against the Vols — the missing players, the foul trouble of Wayne Chism and JP Prince, the horrid FT shooting (15-29) — Pearl’s team was able to take to heart what has always made the colorful coach such an interesting guy.  He sees himself as an underdog, but his teams only seem to take on that scrappy mentality when they are actually sitting behind the eight-ball.  Tennessee always comes strong when they’re not expected to win — the game at Memphis in 2008, the wins over the national champion Gators in 2006 and 2007 — but it’s the games where they’re considered the heavy favorite that give Pearl’s teams trouble (last year’s two blowout Ls against struggling Kentucky come to mind).  You could very reasonably argue that in the Vols’ two wins this week with six scholarship players (vs. Charlotte and the Jayhawks), they’ve looked better than they did when they went ten deep.  The problem is that the underdog role can only be embraced and milked for so long, and there’s still an entire sixteen-game SEC slate ahead of them.  Today was a tremendous, mood-lifting sort of win for the UT basketball program, but it won’t mean much if the Vols finish at 8-8 in the SEC East.  Still, Bruce Pearl’s charges should be incredibly proud of themselves and by all means should stay away from rental cars and various weaponry after this big win (Pearl didn’t mention that, but he did mention complacency in his postgame speech below).  Final thought: Scotty Hopson (17/4).  Kid looked like a superstar today; his dunk over Aldrich was ridiculous.  Keep it coming, young fella.

RTC Meets Ashley Judd.  RTC editor John Stevens got to meet Kentucky Superfan Ashley Judd after Saturday’s Georgia game, and given that this may be a once-in-a-lifetime event, it deserves its own space.  Here’s John:   

I have to include the fact that I got to meet Kentucky alumna Ashley Judd at this game…and by “meet,” I mean shake her hand, stand beside her with my recorder (one of about 30 total) in her face, ask her a question, and smile dumbly at her like a mental patient who knows it’s almost pill time.  Let me tell you something, folks.  I don’t usually get star-struck (when you’ve sat behind Goodman, Bozich, DeCourcy, and Forde in a media room, hell, you’re ready for anything, heh), but when Ashley Judd looks you dead in the eye?  Ballgame.  Good night, everybody.  Yes, she’s very attractive.  But it’s not just that.  She’s got that “star quality,” meaning that when she’s looking at you and talking, it’s morphine.  You are tractor-beamed, and you’re very aware of it when your time is over.  This is not something she’s trying to do, it’s something with which you’re born or you aren’t.  They say politicians have this ability, too, though I doubt I’d feel the same effect if I were standing in front of, say, Strom Thurmond.  As for my question, because she had been asked every possible hoops-related question by the 30 or so reporters around her, I asked her how that frenzy in the media room compared to the scene on a Hollywood red carpet.  She replied like someone who, though she was glad her Wildcats escaped, was even happier to be home, even if temporarily.  She smiled, thought for a second, and said with relish,  “This is better!  This is the blue carpet!”

Ashley is Happy to See RTC There

Moving On… Obviously, there were a bunch of other upsets this weekend beyond #1 Kansas going down, but we don’t have time to discuss them all so here are some of the key takeaways as we see them.

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So When Do Boise and Alabama Play? The interminable bowl season finally came to an end with the only game that mattered, as Texas’ Colt McCoy got knocked out of the BCS National faux-Championship Game and Alabama’s Nick Saban earned his second title as a member of a rival SEC school.  So we’re once again left with more than one unbeaten team in the college football season and we have no legitimate way of separating those teams other than using statistics and computer printouts, a tenuous proposition at best.  After all, Cal was a ten-point favorite versus UCLA last night.  That’s what all of the computer algorithms told us.  So they’re clearly the better team, right?  No reason to even play the game, right?  Let’s just declare Cal the winner based on their strength of schedule and power rating…  Get outta here with that nonsense.  Seriously.  Thankfully we’re moving on to basketball, where our championships are earned on the court.  (ed. note: we’re going to publish this picture every time it’s appropriate, which, given the BCS’s foibles year after year, will be annually).

Other Games of National Interest.  Well, sorta.  Slow night.  There was only one game involving any of the BCS conference teams, and they were both from the Big Ten.  Guess they knew that league wouldn’t be playing on the gridiron tonight.

• Michigan 64, Penn State 55.  The Wolverines got off to a horrid start in State College, shooting 0-12 from three and finding themselves down 31-16 at the half.  But they kept their poise and made a huge second-half run of 38-13 to close out the game and put John Beilein’s team at 2-1 in the Big Ten.  DeShawn Sims was huge, scoring 25 points and pulling six boards, but it was really Laval Lucas-Perry’s four second-half treys that helped spur the run.  With games against Northwestern and Indiana coming up at home, UM has a good shot to go to 4-1 before trips to Madison and West Lafayette later this month.
• Western Kentucky 67, South Alabama 64 (OT).  This was a key early-season game in the Sun Belt, and WKU got the leg up by taking this one in overtime tonight.  Steffphon Pettigrew (16/5) hit a layup with five seconds remaining to tie the game and send it to the extra period.  In the OT, which  only saw a total of seven points between the two teams, AJ Slaughter (18/5) hit the go-ahead three and WKU hung on.  USA will get another chance at the Hilltoppers in Bowling Green on February 18.
• Xavier 68, La Salle 62.  XU got a win in its A10 opener after nearly blowing a 20-point second half lead on the road tonight in Philadelphia.  Jordan Crawford had 22/6/4 assts to improve upon his 19 PPG average coming into the contest.  Of course, he’s also thirteenth in the nation in shot% at 35.4, which means he’s our candidate for Human Cannon Midwest.
• Oakland 67, Oral Roberts 64.  Oakland picked up a key Summit League win tonight on the road against its likely toughest competition in Tulsa behind Keith Benson’s 13/8/5 blks and Johnathan Jones’ 16/4 assts/3 stls.  Interesting that Jones was the nation’s leading assist man last season at 8.1 per game, but he’s only dropping 5.6 dimes so far this year.

The (Big) Red Scare. #1 Kansas 71, Cornell 66.  Normally, an early January game between a top-ranked Kansas squad and…well, pretty much any Ivy League school sounds about as thrilling as getting the measles twice.  Tonight was different.  Cornell came into Kansas’ dreaded Allen Fieldhouse already with a few wins over big-conference teams like Alabama, Massachusetts, and St. John’s.  They were riding the momentum of a ten-game winning streak and could boast a kid in Ryan Wittman who is nothing close to a kept secret any more.  Wittman (24/4/3 assts), a 6’6 long-range bomber averaging 19 PPG and 44% from distance, had appeared on various “best outside shooters” lists (including ours) and already had people wondering if Cornell was actually good enough to get in as an at-large team this year.  But this is no ordinary place or opponent.  This is Kansas, and this is Allen Fieldhouse, they of the 50-game home winning streak and current #1-ranking that, to be honest, hasn’t really been challenged yet.  It was close from the start; neither team led by more than three in the first half, and Cornell actually led at the break by that margin.  You still had the feeling, though, that this was one of those games in which Kansas would come out in the second half and end it early.  We’ve all seen this game before, right?  A team hangs around for a half by playing the best 20 minutes of basketball they’ve ever played, like Mike McD thinking he’s going to complete his run on Teddy KGB’s place.  We all know it’s a matter of time until Kansas turns over the two aces and sends whatever upstart they’re facing back to law school, a bratty Gretchen Mol, and Joey Knish’s delivery truck, right?  But when Cornell jumped on the Jayhawks to start the second half and extended their lead to eight, panic began to take root.  With Kansas up 53-47 with 9:45 left, the calls, texts, and more frequent network updates started.  When Kansas had still failed to reclaim the lead with under five minutes left, it was on.  Upset alert.  #1 is in trouble.  And it’s an Ivy League team. I mean, come on — ESPN even broke off of a DUKE GAME to provide bonus coverage!  Kansas, elevated by the home crowd, would eventually break free from Cornell’s expert control of the pace and take a 61-60 lead with 4:03 left, and you got the feeling that Cornell was done.  They would actually take the lead once more at 64-63 with less than a minute left, but Sherron Collins decided it was time to take over.  Handling the ball almost exclusively for Kansas, Collins (33/4/3) scored his team’s last eight points and four out of five FTs down the stretch.  Give Cornell credit for going for the kill, though.  Down 66-64, they found Wittman off a screen with 29 seconds left and he was never thinking about a two.  He would miss that three, and a later one to tie, and Kansas would eventually prevail.  This was probably the worst thing that could happen to the rest of the Big 12, since now Kansas has learned (if they weren’t aware before) not to take their position for granted, and they know there’s no such thing as a night off.  Coaches secretly love these close games early in the season because it empowers and tempers your squad, making them tougher for eventual tournament games.  As for Cornell…if the committee still considers “quality losses,” it doesn’t get much more quality than this one — to #1 Kansas, in their house, a 50-game home win streak on the line.  The Big Red will probably gain Top 25 votes from this, and it should actually help their curb appeal.  So, hands up, who wants to see Cornell opposite them as a first round opponent on Selection Sunday??  Yeah, we thought not.

Evan Turner Triumphantly Returns.  Ohio State 79, Indiana 54.  OSU wasn’t going to lose this game at home regardless of whether Turner played or not, but his presence on the court was apparent in terms of inspiring confidence in his teammates and his ability to share the ball.  He played twenty minutes, contributed 8/4/5 assts while committing three fouls, but most importantly, he didn’t really appear rusty out there other than the first few sets.  The only thing that kept him from playing more than half the game was early foul trouble, but the most important takeaway from this blowout game was that it was obvious to anyone who has watched the Buckeyes play without Turner that everyone else appeared comfortable again.  Jon Diebler in particular was the primary beneficiary, as he had a 21/3 assts/3 stls night on 5-8 from three without having to worry about running the offense (along with William Buford) nearly as much.  Turner said afterwards that the eight-week prognosis originally suggested by OSU officials was a bit of a hedge, and he was only out of commission for 4.5 weeks, but all that matters now is that Turner is back in the lineup and OSU should be back in contention for the Big Ten title and the Top 25 in short order.

Unreal Score of the Night.  Seattle 99, Oregon State 48.  Right now Craig Robinson’s numbers are looking even worse than his brother-in-law’s, as Seattle — barely a D1 school, as a brand-new Independent — came into Corvallis and obliterated the Beavers in their own building.  A 58-21 second half is simply unconscionable for a Pac-10 team playing at home against a mid-major of any kind.  Seriously, even Gonzaga with Adam Morrison, Dan Dickau and Austin Daye all starting shouldn’t be able to do what the Redhawks did to Oregon State tonight.  Cameron Dollar should be proud of his team with road wins over Utah and OSU this season already, and circle 1/26 on your calendar as Seattle will visit crosstown rival Washington for another program-making shot at glory.  

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