1. The biggest story in college basketball in the past week was Deandre Ayton‘s commitment to play at Arizona in 2017. Ayton, a 7′ center who is widely regarded as the top recruit in this year’s class, chose Arizona over Kansas and Kentucky in a move that surprised many recruiting insiders who expected him to go to Kansas. While Sean Miller has had a surprisingly good record at getting a top recruits to commit to play at Arizona recently (and getting them there is another matter) this is certainly his biggest pick-up yet. The big question now is whether Ayton, who is originally from the Bahamas, but moved around recently before apparently deciding to finish high school in Arizona, will be eligible (and want to play) in college in 2017 as there are questions as to whether he will be able to meet eligibility requirements.
2. We have to hand it to Ben Howland as he continues to bring top talent into Starksville as he picked up a commitment from Nick Weatherspoon, a five-star point guard out of Mississippi, to play at Mississippi State in 2017. Weatherspoon picked Mississippi State over schools such as North Carolina, Louisville, and Ohio State. While landing an in-state recruit who has a brother already in the program might not seem like that big of a feat to some, it is a sign that Howland is making some progress with the program even if their record does not reflect it yet after just one season there.
3. While Ben Howland’s first season at Mississippi State was underwhelming, he certainly has more room for error at this point than Richard Pitino has at Minnesota after going 8-23 last season including 2-16 in the Big Ten along with some well-publicized off-court issues for several of his players last year. That makes Isaiah Washington‘s commitment to play at Minnesota in 2017 even more important. Washington, a four-star point guard out of New York, who likely won’t have the immediate impact of some more highly touted prospects in the class, but could be a solid four-year player for the Gophers.
4. One of the key points of contention surrounding the idea of amateurism in college athletics is the limitations on freedom of movement in transferring. In many cases when a student-athlete transfers, he/she has to sit out an academic year before being eligible to play. Now a lawyer is going to court representing two former student-athletes who say this restriction limited their ability to play college sports and consequently their college education. While many of the coaches in Jeff Goodman’s article seem willing to accept an easier out for student-athletes in special cases (like when the coach leaves the program), other coaches (not surprisingly ones who didn’t have their names mentioned in the article) take a less optimistic view with one even saying it would turn college basketball into “the wild, wild West”. We can understand the desire of coaches to keep the status quo particularly with their large salaries, but we tend to favor any change that would benefit student-athletes.
5. Speaking of doing what is best for student-athletes, Goodman also had an interesting article on what coaches thought of the graduate transfer exemption (a rule we have mocked many times here) and what they do to prevent athletes from taking advantage of it. As in the other piece, the coaches most critical of it didn’t have the courage to put their names behind it, but several unnamed coaches admitted to essentially preventing a student-athlete from graduating early by slowing down that individual’s academic progress in order to eliminate the option of the graduate transfer. As Goodman says many of these transfers are for athletic purposes when they are supposed to be for academic purposes, but when you look at things from the bigger picture we would rather have 100 student-athletes transfer for non-academic reasons than prevent 1 student-athlete from transferring for academic reasons since this should be more about the student-athletes and their growth than supporting coaches to maintain the same job they have when it would be filled by someone just as qualified if they are fired (basically a zero-sum game unlike that of the student-athlete).

1. Yesterday, North Carolina released the latest statement in its seemingly never-ending battle with the NCAA regarding allegations of academic fraud at the university. At this point, the school has basically admitted that there was academic fraud committed although they are still fighting the charges of failure to monitor, but now they are challenging the NCAA’s authority to punish it for academic fraud saying it should be done at the discretion of the school’s accrediting agency and not the NCAA. As much as we have criticized North Carolina for the massive academic fraud at the school, we have to agree with them (and we have pointed out as much in previous posts in this space–much like we had an issue with the NCAA doling out a punishment to Penn State for its handling of the Jerry Sandusky case). We will have to see how the NCAA responds to UNC’s statement, but as we have been saying for a while with this case: we don’t see it ending any time soon and based on how the NCAA has treated UNC compared to other schools who self-imposed it seems like UNC may have chosen the right course of action.
2. One of the biggest criticisms of UNC’s decision to fight the NCAA on this has been the shadow it cast on them in recruiting circles with Brandon Ingram even saying that the threat of NCAA sanctions was a big reason he did not go to UNC. That cloud makes Coby White‘s commitment to play at UNC even more significant. The commitment of White, a top-5 point guard in the class of 2018, gives the Tar Heels three top-30 recruits in the class of 2018. While it is still very early in the recruiting cycle for a class that is two full academic years away from matriculating to college, it is a great start for the Tar Heels.
3. Meanwhile, at Missouri, which can probably be best described as a dumpster fire of an athletic department, the NCAA added a year of probation to Missouri’s self-imposed punishment (full statement here) after finding that the school had provided players and their families with $11,402 in impermissible benefits between 2011 and 2014. While most of the violations occurred while Frank Haith was there some also occurred under Kim Anderson, but the NCAA decided that neither coach was responsible for the lapses at their program. For his part, Haith (or more specifically his lawyer) issued a statement (included in this article) essentially reminding everybody that Haith was not found to be responsible for any violations and that the school/institution was solely responsible for the failures while he was leading the program. We wonder if Haith’s lawyer charged him the full rate for his services or if he gave Haith a discount since it could have been able to recycle seems like he has been getting a lot of use of out of these types of letters for Haith he could have just reused the letter for Haith’s role in the scandal at Miami just a few years earlier.
4. The strange saga of Nick Marshall at Memphis appears to have come to an end. The 6’11” sophomore forward left the program under circumstances that can best be described as unusual (according to Gary Parrish he reportedly left under false pretenses in this series of tweets: 1, 2, 3, and 4). Marshall, who averaged 3 points and 2.6 rebounds in 8.6 minutes per game last season, but was expected to play a much bigger role this season, has committed to play at Motlow State Community College. If Marshall can get his act together, he has the talent to play at the high-major level again as he was a borderline top-50 recruit coming out of high school.
5. In one of the more interesting moves we have seen, Brenda Tracy, who says she was raped in 1998 by four men including two Oregon State football players, and her son are putting forth a petition to the NCAA asking them to ban sexually violent athletes. The actual petition, written by her son, does not specify exactly what qualifies someone as a “violent athlete”. As much as we would like to see more strict penalties for people who commit crimes (especially sexual assault and other violent crimes) it seems like the NCAA would run into a a long line of lawsuits if it tried to enforce a strict ban on individuals especially if the legal system had deemed that person to be fit to not be incarcerated.

1. We post stories of college basketball players dying way too often on this site. The latest one is Tyrek Coger, a recent transfer to Oklahoma State, who died on Thursday while participating in an outdoor team workout. Coger, a 6’8″ forward who had transferred from Cape Fear Community College, had gained some notoriety back in high school for challenging John Wall to a pick-up game, which became a popular YouTube video. Coger had struggled for a while to show his potential, but he appeared to be realizing some of it recently. Details regarding Coger’s death will not be released, but it appears to be related to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a not infrequent cause of death in men’s college basketball players which we discussed in a post in 2011. Currently, there is no recommendation to proceed with more aggressive screening in athletes, but we do wonder how many times this will need to happen before schools decide that they need to screen even if the financial numbers don’t work on a bigger scale.
2. On Thursday ESPN formally announced its plans for the ACC Network, but to us the more interesting news was that the ACC would be expanding its conference schedule from 18 to 20 games beginning with the 2019-20 season. The obvious motive behind this is to help fill their network with original content and for some of the lower-tier ACC programs it will also bring in extra revenue by increasing the chances that they will get one of the marquee programs to visit even with an unbalanced schedule. The real question will be how schools will compensate for this on non-conference schedule. We suspect that most programs will react by scheduling even fewer tough non-conference opponents, which is unfortunate, but the reality of the business of college basketball.
3. When videos of Mike Rice verbally and physically abusing his basketball players at Rutgers came out three years ago the media widely condemned his actions. Now with reports coming out of George Washington that Mike Lonergan may have been verbally abusing his players we have been interested to see a much more muted response. The obvious differences are the lack of video/audio evidence and the absence of physical abuse, but we also suspect that some of this is the expectation that players at a certain level will have to deal with some verbal abuse (this is also true in some workplaces). To be fair to Lonergan, several of his former players have come out to defend him against the reports from anonymous former players. We still haven’t heard anything about how the George Washington administration is dealing with this and we doubt that anything significant will happen although we do suspect that Lonergan’s relationship with athletic director Patrick Nero will probably be more strained.
4. Many media members noted that the NCAA’s announcement that it would require future championship host cities to submit an outline of how they will prevent discrimination came out just a day after the NBA decided to change the site of its 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte due to North Carolina’s controversial HB2 law, but it seems pretty clear that the NCAA has been working on this for some time. The questionnaire (PDF here) requires the host cities to provide the NCAA with assurances that both participants and spectators will not be discriminated against. We have never delved into politics on this site, but it will be interesting to see how strict the NCAA is in its interpretation of discrimination and if/how it could influence legislation since getting to host a NCAA championship can mean millions in dollars in revenue for some cities.
5. If you are still waiting on the NCAA to drop the proverbial hammer on North Carolina for its academic fraud we might be getting one step closer (ok, we can’t say that with a straight face). UNC has announced that will submit its response to the NCAA regarding its amended Notice of Allegations on August 1 with the response being made public the following day. We won’t go into the details of the academic fraud because at this point we almost as sick of it as UNC fans are, but we will point out that this is unlikely to be anywhere close to the end and as Andrew Carter notes in the article it is unlikely that the case will end this year.

1. Conference media days are usually full of mundane questions and people trying to make big stories out of mostly irrelevant issues, but the Big 12 appears to be an exception to that this year as it announced that it has decided to explore expanding. That announcement has led to plenty of speculation as to what schools would be the best fit. With the conference expected to add either two or four schools in a bid to not only become bigger/expand its geographic footprint, but also possibly move towards having its own television network (see below), the most commonly mentioned options appear to be Boise State, Brigham Young, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Colorado State, Connecticut, Houston, Memphis, South Florida, and Tulane with BYU, Cincinnati, and Connecticut being the favorites to most observers.
2. One of those schools that did itself no favors with the timing of release of bad news is South Florida, which is being investigated by the NCAA for academic fraud. Very few details about the case have come out yet, but it already appears to have led assistant coach Oliver Antigua, brother of head coach Orlando Antigua, to resign within hours of the story breaking. Plenty of people online have been making jokes about how the program should be better if they are cheating, but the reality is that they should be better just based on the location of where they are. Tampa is by no means a high school basketball hotbed, but there are plenty of talented players in the area including many talented two-sports players who focus on football. Much like Central Florida, the program really should be better than what it is. We will have to wait and see what they are accused of and how hard the NCAA will come down on it before seeing what kind of obstacles they will have to overcome.
3. If you thought you didn’t get enough ACC basketball (ok, you already get enough Duke and North Carolina), you are in luck as the ACC Network is now expected to launch in 2019 as part of a report that also indicates that the league is extending its grant of rights through the 2035-36 season. The latter is interesting as it means the conference keeps all media revenue generated by the school even if it tries to leave the conference until that period. We aren’t sure how well that would hold up in court, but it would make poaching schools away more difficult if it could be enforced.
4. In probably the most predictable recruiting announcement ever, Michael Porter Jr has committed to play at Washington. For those of you who don’t follow recruiting, Porter, who was mentioned in last week’s Morning 5, seemed like he was guaranteed to play at Washington since he is the godson of Lorenzo Romar and the school has recently hired his father to be an assistant coach. These type of package deals are nothing new (we wrote about them back in 2008 and they were going on well before that), but they continue to leave a sour taste in some people’s mouths. We are not what exactly the NCAA can to prevent them since there are certainly family members of top recruits who would be reasonable coaching hires (like if Doc Rivers had been out of coaching when Austin was being recruited), but it seems like it will continue to be a contentious point going forward.
5. Unfortunately, we have to cover legal issues around college basketball players way too much and this week’s case is Xavier senior guard Myles Davis (10.8 points, 4.1 assists, and 3.6 rebounds per game last year), who had a protective order placed against him after his ex-girlfriend accused him of threatening her, breaking her cellphone, punching holes in a wall, and trying to break her windows. For the next three years, Davis, who denies the allegations, is barred from coming within 500 feet of the woman except on-campus where he has to stay at least ten feet away at all times. The school has not handed down any punishment for Davis yet although we doubt it will be anything substantial unless he has a history of these type of incidents.

1. Larry Brown‘s decision to resign last week as head coach at Southern Methodist University should not come as surprise to those who know his history. According to reports Brown was seeking a five-year extension, but the school was only willing to offer a three-year, $10 million expansion leading Brown to resign just at the start of the start of the very important July reporting period. Fortunately for SMU they already have a coach-in-waiting in Tim Jankovich, who left a job as head coach at Illinois State in 2012 to be a coach-in-waiting at SMU and he is expected to receive a contract that is at least five years in length. Normally when someone Brown’s age (75) resigns we would expect that it would be the last we see of him, but Brown has always been different. If this is the last we see of Brown, his legacy will be a very interesting one as he is undoubtedly one of the best basketball coaches ever, but he was also one who could never stay in one place very long and also managed to be the coach at three schools who were hit with significant NCAA sanction.
2. July might seem like a weird time for Luke Winn to come out with new Power Rankings, but as he notes we are at the point where we can reasonably expect that every significant recruit/player has committed to play somewhere or decided to transfer out of their current program. While this version of the Power Rankings is lighter on GIFs/clips and numbers than in-season versions (totally understandable since there isn’t as much new data to look at as there is in-season), it does serve as a good concise recap of where the top teams stand coming into next season. If you’re looking for those really interesting stats, we would point you to the three-point shooting of Kentucky‘s incoming guards and Purdue‘s efficiency numbers with Caleb Swanigan on- and off-court.
3. If you happened to miss the coverage of Peach Jam, the big winners from the weekend appear to be Michael Porter Jr and Trae Young and not just because their team took home the title. According to most analysts the pair were two of the most dominant players in the entire tournament and probably did as much to boost their stock as anyone at Peach Jam. While DeAndre Ayton doesn’t seem to be in danger of losing his spot as the top recruit in the class, Porter made a strong case to be in the discussion. Of course, that probably doesn’t matter since everybody already has him penciled in going to Washington since his father was hired as an assistant coach there (ok, that’s probably more Sharpie than pencil). Young’s situation is more interesting as he is considering multiple schools with Kentucky reportedly making him one of their top targets.
4. Jeremiah Tilmon didn’t participate in Peach Jam as he is still recovering from a dislocated shoulder, but he still managed to make news with his decision to commit to Illinois. Tilmon, a 6’10” center who is top-30 recruit in the class of 2017, is originally from Illinois even though he plays for a school in Indiana now so we guess this counts as an in-state recruit. In any event, he is the highest-rated recruit to commit to Illinois since John Groce took over in 2012. The big question now for Illinois is whether he will stay committed to the school if they struggle this year and particularly if Groce appears to be in danger of losing his job, which he could be if they have another subpar season.
5. Outside of the obvious differences in coaching philosophies in terms of offensive and defensive sets, substitution patterns are probably the most important part of in-game coaching. Ken Pomeroy’s analysis of which coaches are most/least likely to let a player continue playing during the first half when that player already has two fouls offers an interesting look at that. While we don’t necessarily see a particular patterns (so-called “good” and “bad” coaches fall all over the spectrum) there are some pretty stark differences. The one thing that we would like to see applied to this analysis is the season-to-season variation in a coach’s tendencies, which could reflect a lack of an adequate substitute, and how this is related to percentage of minutes played by starters.

1. USC has taken a series major hits this off-season with several players leaving school earlier than expected, but Andy Enfield got an excellent consolation prize on Friday when Duke transfer Derryck Thornton Jr. announced that he would transferring to play at USC. Thornton, who was a five-star recruit in the class of 2016 before agreeing to reclassify and come to Duke a year early, was unhappy with his role in Durham despite averaging a respectable 7.1 points and 2.6 assists per game, but saw his playing time diminish as the season progressed leading to accusations that Thornton had been promised that Duke would build its offense around his skill set when he decided to come to Duke a year early. Thornton, who also reportedly was considering Kansas, Washington, and Miami, will be available to play for the Trojans in the 2017-18 season after sitting out his transfer year.
2. Charles Matthews might not be the same caliber recruit as Thornton was, but his decision to transfer to Michigan after a year at Kentucky is still a big boost for the program. Matthews, a four-star recruit out of high school, averaged just 1.7 points, 1.6 rebounds, and 0.4 assists while playing 10.3 minutes per game as a freshman. In most programs a player could expect to see more playing time as players in the rotation graduate or leave school for various other reasons, but at Kentucky (and in some sense Duke now) that is far from guaranteed and Matthews probably saw the writing on the wall. After sitting out this season, Matthews will have three more years of eligibility left and should find a bigger role on a Michigan roster that will give him more opportunities to find playing time.
3. Speaking of USC, the end of Pat Haden‘s time at athletic director cannot come soon enough for its boosters as new allegations have surfaced that Haden may have directed funds from a scholarship foundation toward USC preferentially and paid himself and other family members with large sums of money from the foundation. While directing money towards USC seems unethical at best, paying himself and family members such large sums of money (reportedly almost 10% of the foundations entire endowment for working essentially an hour a week) seems to be going into a more nebulous area that might merit a deeper investigation.
4. When Shaka Smart took over at Texas last year the big question was how he would be able to recruit particularly in the state of Texas. As Seth Davis notes in his look at how Smart recruits, he appears to be off to a very good start. While it would seem like Smart would be able to recruit easily at Texas with a national brand behind him as a young, dynamic, African-American coach, but the reality is that he is recruiting a very different type of player at Texas than he did at VCU, which makes the process much different. If Smart is able to make that transition, there is no reason that he will not be able to make Texas into a national power.
5. Over the summer you will will hear plenty of people criticizing AAU basketball and the culture surrounding it, but that pales in comparison to the stuff that goes on at some of these prep schools/basketball academies. As Luke Cyphers and Teri Thompson note in their story on Faith Baptist Christian Academy North (GA), some of the individuals running these schools prey on these teenagers who often come to the United States on student visas in the hope of getting an education and potentially a career playing basketball, but are often lied to about what they are coming to and then exploited in hopes of capitalizing on their basketball abilities. We would like to think that this story is an isolated case, but we suspect that this type of stuff happens more often than that.

Bonus: With all the stuff going on this past Sunday, it would have been easy to not realize that it was the 30th anniversary of the death of Len Bias. We won’t get into the impact it had on NBA history (basically imagine that the Warriors had won the title this year and then added a “can’t-miss talent”), but it was a defining moment in basketball history and led to some major changes at Maryland that impacted the basketball program in many ways (we touched on it a bit in our interview almost six years ago with Lefty Driesell). The Washington Post has an excellent piece on the 30th anniversary of his death, but we encourage you to watch the 30 For 30 on Bias as it also touched on the societal impact of his death in relation to drug laws.

1. The coaching carousel is essentially finished for the offseason, but it may not be long before we see movement of a bigger variety with expansion “likely” coming to the Big 12, per ESPN’s Matt Rittenberg. While the potential move would be football-driven — like most realignment shake-ups — it obviously would impact basketball as well, no matter who the Big 12 plucks. There are a handful of reasonable candidates for expansion (well, reasonable as far as realignment goes), but Cincinnati is particularly appealing and realistic for a few reasons, all of which make sense: Most importantly, they would instantly bring (what would be) the second-biggest TV market in the conference. The Bearcats also offer an underrated football program and, as we all know, a consistently strong hoops team. Lower on the list, their inclusion would provide a less taxing travel partner for West Virginia, which is 850 miles away from its closest Big 12 opponent, Iowa State. Cincinnati’s administration has been lobbying the Big 12 for inclusion over the past two years, and while that may not make them automatic, that familiarity certainly can’t hurt from either side. We’ll continue to keep an eye on any developments, but after a few years of rumblings, this summer could be the one where the talk finally leads to action.
2. While there was never any reason to think that Josh Jackson would back out of his commitment to Kansas, the blue-chipper officially inked with the Jayhawks earlier this week, which means that Bill Self was allowed to talk publicly about him for the first time, and those first comments were pretty interesting. Among Self’s praises for the wing was the remark that “his (Jackson’s) impact on our program next year will be as much as any freshman will have on any college program.” While it’s traditional for coaches to talk up their newcomers, that particular comment sure sets a high bar when you consider how strong and deep the 2016 class is purported to be. Self went on to praise Jackson’s competitive nature, which is also worth pointing out in this space. One of themes of Kansas’ recent teams has been the lack of a vocal leader capable of igniting something within his more stoic teammates, so the degree to which that part of Jackson’s game translates in a much tougher environment will definitely be worth monitoring as the coming season wears on.
3. Jamie Dixon‘s key challenge at TCU is finding prospects who are willing to spurn better programs in favor of one that has struggled mightily to achieve any semblance of success or build more than a passing following, but his first commitment in Fort Worth signifies that he’s up to the task. On Wednesday, the Horned Frogs secured the commitment of 2016 point guard prospect Jaylen Fisher, a former UNLV commit. The Running Rebels’ coaching shake-up led Fisher to reopen his recruitment, and he stayed loyal to his lead recruiter, former UNLV assistant Ryan Miller, who left Vegas to join Dixon’s staff. Perhaps more importantly, though, Fisher is a consensus top-75 recruit, which makes him TCU’s highest-ranking prospect in ages, crazy as that may sound. While the Horned Frogs will return most of their roster from last season, it’s also a roster that went 12-21, so Fisher will have a chance to make an impact from the get-go. It’s clear that Dixon is wasting no time in adding the level of talent that can change TCU’s fortunes in arguably the nation’s best conference.
4. While there are still some players to be had through both the 2016 high school class and through transfer, the biggest Big 12 prospect still on the board is Jarrett Allen. The Longhorns are currently counting on rising senior Shaquille Cleare and freshman James Banks to fill the void left by the departures of Cameron Ridley and Prince Ibeh, which isn’t a great starting point. Cleare scored just 3.6 PPG last season as he struggled with conditioning and foul trouble, and while Banks may pan out eventually, he’s no guarantee to make an immediate impact. A commitment from Allen wouldn’t make Texas a top-ten team, but it would give Shaka Smart a little less to worry about as he looks to replace the Longhorns’ top three scorers, top three rebounders and top two shot blockers.
5. Staying with the Longhorns, plans are reportedly being made for a December 17 match-up in Houston pitting Texas against Arkansas as part of a neutral court doubleheader. The Longhorns may be in rebuilding mode next year, but the Razorbacks will be a work in progress as well. Mike Anderson’s team is coming off a disappointing 2016 campaign that saw them go 16-16 and finish in a tie for eighth place in the SEC before losing its top freshman, Jimmy Whitt, to transfer. It won’t be the most intriguing match-up on paper regardless of what happens between now and then, but it’s early May; We’ll take whatever we can get.

1. On Monday, North Carolina received a revised Notice of Allegations from the NCAA regarding alleged violations in its Afro-American Studies department. The 13-page document lists five Level 1 violations and overall does not differ that much than the original Notice of Allegations. Two key differences are that the amended Notice of Allegations no longer lists either the football or men’s basketball programs as it seems to focus instead on the women’s basketball program and it also no longer mentions impermissible benefits related to those classes leading some analysts to speculate that neither of the school’s revenue-generating programs will be touched. The other major change is that the original document covered the period between 1993 through 2011 while the new document only covers the period between the fall of 2005 to the summer of 2011, which would mean that UNC’s 2005 title would not be touched although the 2008 title could theoretically be vacated although enrollment in the classes in question were considerably lower than what it was for the 2005 team. As you probably know by now, this is far from the end of this case, which will probably drag on for several more years. At this point it seems likely that the NCAA will not hit UNC with any severe sanctions. To be fair to the NCAA, this should be more of an accreditation issue and we doubt that UNC’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, will pull its accreditation as it has already put the school on probation.
2. One of the more interesting subplots of the early entry process this year has been the maneuverings of Memphis forward Dedric Lawson who entered the Draft then withdrew his name before putting his name back in. These rapid decisions have led some to speculate that Dedric has been using the prospect of leaving Memphis for the NBA as leverage against new coach Tubby Smith in order to get Dedric’s father, Keelon, a spot on Smith’s staff after Memphis changed coaches. When news came out that Keelon, previously an assistant coach at Memphis, had accepted a position as Director of Player Development, many writers expected that the NCAA would block the hiring because its rules do not allow anybody associated with a student-athlete to be hired as support staff within two years of that student-athlete enrolling in the school. However, as Rob Dauster pointed out [Ed Note: Yes, we are as surprised as you are] the NCAA is expected to pass Proposal No. 2015-30 tomorrow that would make the move permissible as the associated individual would only have to be at a school for two academic years on the countable coaching staff before he or she could move from a countable coach to a member of support staff. We suspect that no program will be as interested in how the NCAA’s Division I Council votes tomorrow as Memphis will be.
3. With so many players declaring for the NBA Draft without signing with agents it is a waste of time to list all the early entries. Looking at the players who didn’t submit their name under the early entry list is more interesting with the most notable of these names being Cal center Ivan Rabb, who will return to Berkeley despite being a borderline lottery pick this year after a freshman season where he averaged 12.5 points (on 61.5% from the field) and a team-high 8.6 rebounds per game. With Cal already losing Tyrone Wallace and Jaylen Brown, Rabb’s return will help Cal remain in the upper-tier of the Pac-12. An extra year of development could also make Rabb a top-10 pick even with what is supposed to be an extremely strong incoming freshman class is.
4. Frank Martin’s offseason just got a lot better yesterday when former Delaware guard Kory Holden announced that he would be transferring to South Carolina. Holden, a 6’2″ guard who averaged 17.7 points and 4.2 assists last season, was one of the most coveted transfers available and had attracted interest from schools such as Baylor, Kansas, Seton Hall, and Virginia Tech. Holden is a traditional transfer meaning that he will sit out next season and be eligible to play in the 2017-18 season at which point he will have two more seasons of eligibility remaining. Given the differences between the CAA and the SEC (yeah, go ahead and make your jokes) the extra year to practice and watch higher level competition will probably help him and make the transition easier.
5. We are still a little over a month away from NBA teams drafting college players, but with the NBA regular season over and the NBA coaching carousel already underway there are already plenty of rumors about the NBA poaching some prominent college coaches. The most enticing opening on the market right now is in Los Angeles after the Lakers fired Byron Scott after another atrocious season. While the Lakers roster is nothing to write home about (unless you want to complain), it is in Los Angeles, which is enticing both for a coach and his family (especially compared to some of these college towns) and for potential free agents. Plenty of college basketball coaches have been mentioned, but the two that make the most sense to us are Jay Wright and Kevin Ollie. We have seen Roy Williams, Tom Izzo, and John Calipari mentioned, but all three are either much older/established where they are, have health issues, or already turned down huge offers from the NBA. Wright leaving might seen like an odd choice coming off a title, but his stock will never be higher and if the NBA doesn’t work out he will be a hot name at the college level whenever he is available. Ollie is an even more interesting name as his program isn’t on quite the high that Villanova is right now, but he also has a national title on his resume and more importantly significant NBA experience including playing with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden in his last year at Oklahoma City, which we suspect would be enticing to the team’s executives with all three of those players having expiring contracts in the next few years.

1. After extended struggles in the NCAA Tournament, the Big 12 pulled through by sending three teams — Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa State — to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2009. What’s particularly interesting about the league’s current standing is that the three teams still alive are the ones we all thought had the best chance to make a run when the season started. It was tough to see Baylor, West Virginia, Texas and Texas Tech lose games they could have (perhaps should have) won, but all in all, Big 12 supporters have to like this year’s results.
2. With Stephen F. Austin falling in a heartbreaker to Notre Dame on Sunday, you can expect the chatter connecting Brad Underwood to the Oklahoma State job to ramp up over the next couple of days. He checks many of the necessary boxes for the Cowboys: He’s been tremendously successful; he has connections to the area; he worked in the Big 12 earlier in his career and is a hot name who could reinvigorate the program and re-energize the fan base in very short order. We’ll have more on the coaching search in Stillwater a bit later today, but even though Underwood won just a single NCAA Tournament game this year, his potential addition to the program in Stillwater makes a lot of sense.
3. In other Big 12 coaching news, a report Sunday indicated that Pittsburgh head coach Jamie Dixon is strongly considering a move to take the vacant TCU job. While it isn’t often that you hear of a coach of Dixon’s stature being connected to a program with as little historical success as TCU, there are a few reasons why this could be a reasonable next step for the Horned Frogs. Dixon is a TCU alumnus and the school just unveiled substantial facilities upgrades, and the timing of Trent Johnson’s firing suggests that athletic director Chris Del Conte wants to take an aggressive approach towards escaping the Big 12 basement. The move could also be appealing from Dixon’s side, too. Fan unrest in Pittsburgh is growing as Dixon has turned only two of his 11 NCAA Tournament bids into Sweet Sixteen runs, and, though there’s not much to suggest he’s at risk of termination, the athletic director and chancellor who were in place when he was hired are now gone, so it’s fair to wonder just how much support he has from the current administration. Given all of those circumstances, the TCU job could represent something of an escape hatch. While the Horned Frogs don’t have the most well-regarded program around college basketball, we haven’t seen what they can do with an accomplished leader like Dixon at the helm. It’s also no secret that Texas is loaded with the kind of prep talent that can make TCU competitive with the right coach.
4. Returning to the league’s NCAA Tournament performance over the weekend, it has to be especially redeeming for Iowa State to have extended its season for at least one more game. While this year’s campaign hasn’t been without its highlights, the Cyclones have just been through the wringer. First, they lost Naz Mitrou-Long eight games into the season. Then they started 1-3 in conference play, dashing hopes of knocking Kansas from the top of the Big 12 mountain and leading to a level of fan criticism that prompted head coach Steve Prohm to delete his Twitter and Facebook accounts. The team then spent a decent chunk of February working through various challenges with Jameel McKay before ultimately finishing fifth in the conference and going one-and-done at the Big 12 Tournament. Flash forward to this past weekend, and the Cyclones delivered one of the most refreshing stretches of play they’ve had all year. While it’s not a huge surprise to see Iowa State in the Sweet Sixteen, that they’ve done so in spite of all the challenges they’ve faced likely makes this run a little more special than it would be otherwise.
5. The Big 12’s Sweet Sixteen action will tip on Thursday night when Kansas and Maryland meet in Louisville. At first glance, the most intriguing individual matchup in this game centers on how Mark Turgeon’s team will defend Perry Ellis. Doing so is a tall order, but with four regulars at 6’9″ or taller, the Terrapins certainly have the bodies capable of altering Ellis’ inside shots. Part of what makes Ellis such a matchup nightmare, however, is his ability to force opposing big men defend him in space, so it will be interesting to monitor how often Bill Self utilizes Ellis on the perimeter.

1. When Bo Ryan retired as Wisconsin’s head coach in December, many thought he wanted to give his longtime assistant, Greg Gard, a trial period so that athletic director Barry Alvarez would seriously consider him for the full-time position. If that was Ryan’s intent, the move appears to have worked. On Thursday, The Milwaukee (Wisc.) Journal-Sentinel reported that Wisconsin is prepared to offer Gard a long-term contract. Gard has led the Badgers to a 12-5 Big Ten record, which includes 11 wins in their last 12 games.
2. Two Big Ten players were named to the College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America team on Thursday: Nebraska’s Shavon Shields and Iowa’s Jarrod Uthoff. Shields, who owns a 3.72 GPA in biological sciences, made the team for the second straight year. Uthoff had a 4.0 GPA in the fall semester while pursuing his graduate degree and has a 3.42 overall GPA and with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Iowa.
3. Northwestern will be a frontcourt player short for the rest of the season. Head coach Chris Collins announced Wednesday that graduate transfer Joey van Zegeren will miss the remainder of the season with a knee injury suffered in Monday’s practice. The Netherlands native was averaging 3.6 points and 3.0 rebounds per game. Collins said that sophomore forward Gavin Skelly could play center if primary centers Alex Olah and Dererk Pardon get into foul trouble.
4. Although conference tournament season hasn’t even begun for the Big Ten, non-conference tournaments for next fall are already announcing participants. On Wednesday, The Cancun Challenge announced a Big Ten team as one of its eight participants. Purdue will play in the Challenge’s Riviera Division, where they will join Texas Tech, Utah State and Auburn. The tournament will be played Nov. 22 and 23.
5. On Tuesday, Richard Pitino decided to make the one-game suspension of guards Nate Mason, Kevin Dorsey and Dupree McBrayer a season-long one. Pitino did not comment on the reason for the suspension, but a sexually explicit video posted on Dorsey’s Twitter account is the believed cause. Dorsey’s family says that cannot the case. In a statement faxed to the Twin Cities (Minn.) Pioneer Press, Dorsey’s family said he could not have posted the video because his phone was stolen at Minnesota’s Mall of America two days before the video surfaced. Bloomington (Minn.) police said they are investigating a phone theft at the mall and that there is video evidence of it being taken from a store there.