We’ll be bringing you these Fast Breaks more frequently thanks our new intern who will be sending me the best of the web, which I will then filter and send out to you, our loyal readers.

• Seth Davis doesn’t think the NCAA tournament should expand.
• A bunch of bloggers trying valiantly, but failing to match the standard set by RTC’s own Zach Hayes. Searching For Billy Edelin has their own prediction for the field of 65. So do Shawn Siegel.
• RTC friend Jeff Goodman has made an all-freshman team that is pretty solid. I like the fact that he included Gordon Hayward (Butler) on there with all the BCS guys.
• Will Smith is a either a fan of Brian Collins or he is a devoted follower of Rush the Court. I’m going with the latter.
• Outside the Lines with a report on “package deals” in college basketball.
• Jameson Fleming drops some Zone Defense knowledge on you.
• Mark Schlabach makes the questionable argument that Elliot Williams is the answer at the point for Duke. So Jeff Teague having his way with you is a credential for good point guard play…but I guess its not that bad an argument.

Lot of good links today with many of them follow-ups of stories we have reported on in the past.

• Apparently the Miami coaches were onto something when they suspended Eddie Rios indefinitely earlier this month because he was arrested yesterday afternoon on charges of burglary and grant theft.
• I’m sure you remember Aubrey Coleman‘s “curbing” of Chase Budinger‘s face from this weekend and his subsequent 1-game suspension. Well, things have gotten messy as apparently Coleman and Houston’s athletic department have been getting threatening e-mails filled with racial slurs and the FBI has been called in. Side note: I like how Houston coach Tom Penders is blaming ESPN for its editing of the video claiming that it is the cause of the backlash against Coleman.
• Tubby Smith is not leaving Minnesota (at least not for Alabama). Anthony Grant can continue to sit next to his phone.
• Interesting article by Luke Winn about Wake Forest’s James Johnson‘s fighting background. All I know is that if there is a “Malice at the Palace” moment with Wake this year, I’m taking the Demon Deacons in that one.
• Speaking of Wake, Dino Gaudio appears to be a big fan of the Pomeroy Ratings and other voodoo mathematics.
• Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette surveyed 50 media members for their picks for the National Player of the Year at this point in the season. Like Michael, I haven’t seen much stuff done on this yet. Look for a running column similar to this out of Rush the Court in the near future.
• Kelvin Sampson is still complaining about the NCAA’s penalty even though he is in the NBA now. Let it go, Kelvin. Let it go. . .
• A fairly long piece talking about the effect of moving the 3-point line back a foot. Summary: It has decreased the number of 3-point shots only marginally (18.42 per game from 19.07 last year) and decreased 3-point percentage slightly (34.32% from 35.23% last year).
• Vegas Watch with an interesting piece on the impact of seeding in the NCAA tournament.
• Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt offers his thoughts on the prep-to-pro issue. While I agree with him on some stuff I am not sure how you could legally differentiate a Lebron James from a Kwame Brown or worse yet a kid who entered the draft, but was not selected.
• Seth Davis plays “Jigsaw Man” looking at a dozen top 25 teams, identifying their weakness, and picking out a player who does not play on that team that could eliminate the weakness. Interestingly theoretical exercise, but I’m not that sure what to do with it. Example: NJIT. Weakness = Talent/Inability to win (more than 1 game in a row). Missing piece: UNC’s or UConn’s players.
• Speaking of SI writers, where is Grant Wahl’s annual “Magic 8”? I hope rtmsf’s “deconstruction” of last year’s Magic 8 (and subsequent e-mail conversation about the Magic 8, life, and haircare products) did not convince Wahl to give up on writing about college basketball.
• File this one under “Jokes that I would really like to make, but can’t. . .” Jin Soo Kim, the first Korean to earn a D1 basketball scholarship, has been ruled academically ineligible at Maryland.
• Patrick Stevens of The Washington Times with an interesting list of the D1 coaches with the longest tenure. Perhaps it should not be that surprising that only 3 of the coaches in the top 10 come from major programs with all the trouble Gary Williams has been having.

We have a pretty nice set of links for you today.

• Thayer Evans and Pete Thamel of the New York Times with a great piece about the influence of Skip Prosser on the current Wake Forest team. Many people don’t realize that Prosser was actually the architect of this team as he recruited all of the current players. However, a great deal of credit has to go to Dino Gaudio for keeping the team together after Prosser’s death in 2007. I’m guessing this will become a bigger story if Wake Forest can stay near the top of the polls late into the season.
• We have touched on the APR issue before, but now it looks like the NCAA is looking at extending APR ratings to include coaches. I am not sure if this is necessary since coaches rarely switch schools over short periods of time and I have a feeling the methodology will be questioned on how a student-athlete’s academic performance at a school will affect a coach’s APR after the coach has left that school.
• Arkansas freshman forward Brandon Moore has been suspended indefinitely on DUI charges. I’m not naive enough to believe that underage college students won’t drink, but getting a DUI while being underage. . .
• Another story out of the SEC as Alabama’s Ronald Steele has decided to forgo the remainder of his senior season citing ongoing injury issues. It is a sad end to what was a promising career. I still remember some of the hype coming out of the South about this explosive guard. We wish Ronald the best and hope he at least got a good education at Alabama.
• Pete Thamel with an interesting piece on Arinze Onuaku, who will likely be the key to Syracuse’s chances of making a run deep into the tournament in March.
• An interesting account of Bill Self‘s recent interaction with John Wall, the #1 recruit in the nation. I’m amazed that Self could be this reckless, but to be honest this seems like a rather minor infraction compared to other stuff that goes on.
• Seth Davis with his take on NCAA’s policy regarding the length of time a player has to enter the NBA Draft and come back to college.
• A depressing article about former West Virginia star Kevin Pittsnoggle. I’m sure there are several NBA teams who could use a big man who can shoot.
• Vegas Watch with a mid-season look at the best odds for his top 10 title contenders and the odds he would take them at. Although it is not as exact (calculating the likelihood they would win each round based on their expected seed) as some of his other work, it is still an interesting read.

This is the last installment of Fast Breaks for the calendar year, but it’s a loaded one with lots of news before the New Year’s ball drops.

• After being spoiled by ridiculously talented freshmen the past two years (Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, and Michael Beasley), it appears as if we have returned back to normal. While there are several talented diaper dandies out there, none of them has really caught our eye as the next big thing. Pete Thamel gives a short run-down of the candidates for freshman of the year at this point. I’d be interested to hear what you guys have to say about this year’s class because quite frankly I haven’t been that impressed.
• Syracuse has announced that Eric Devendorf will be reinstated and is expected to play this Tuesday against Seton Hall in their Big East opener. Devendorf has completed the necessary requirements (missing 2 games and performing 40 hours of community service) that the school’s University Appeals Board asked of him for hitting a female student in the face. I’m expecting this to have some sort of anti-Sterger effect on female applications to Syracuse.
• Jai Lucas appears to have found a new home in Austin, Texas with Rick Barnes and the Longhorns. Lucas decided to transfer out of Gainesville late this summer with most people speculating that it was based on a lack of expected PT in the upcoming season. I’m not exactly sure how going to a better program in Texas will lead to more minutes, but I guess Jai has his reasons.
• Speaking of the Gators. . .UF recruit Austin Rivers, son of Doc (the head coach of the world champion Boston Celtics), led his high school team to a win over nationally-ranked Marietta-Wheeler (GA). Rivers put up 46 points including 30 in the 1st half. We still don’t have word if Doc let him start the next game or made him play JV after his career night.
• In a surprising story, Anthony Crater, a highly rated PG coming out of high school last year, was granted a release from his scholarship by Thad Matta. I’d be interested in hearing some of the reasons behind this. It looks like Crater hasn’t been getting much time on the court this year, but it’s really early to be deciding to leave Ohio State just based on that. If any of the Buckeye fans (or haters) have the inside scoop, I would be interested to hear it.
• Seth Davis with a look back at the Super Saturday games and a few recommendations on how to make them even better. Seth might want to remember that the “antiseptic environments” he refers to from Super Saturday are probably better than where the Final 4 is played at every single year.
• Kansas will be adding another giant to their current crop with 7-foot tall Jeff Withey transferring from Arizona to Kansas. Withey’s decision appears to be related to Lute Olson’s retirement in October.
• The New York Times recently ran the inspiring story of Kevin Laue, who could probably beat any of our readers one-on-one despite the fact that he was born with one playing arm. It’s definitely worth a read and we wish Kevin the best of luck in his search for an offer from an Ivy League school.
• Think you have a rough week ahead of you? Try trading places with Rutgers coach Fred Hill who takes his Scarlet Knights up against #1 UNC, #2 UConn, and #3 Pittsburgh in the same week. On the bright side, only 2 of the 3 games are on the road so Hill at least gets a shot at Pittsburgh in New Jersey. I’m guessing their strength of schedule might go up a little bit this week.
• Kevin Armstrong with a look at the changes at Duke that have resulted from Nolan Smith replacing Greg Paulus as the team’s starting guard. While Paulus was often overmatched physically against bigger, stronger guards, I think he could make an excellent backup/change of pace for the Blue Devils in March as he rounds into shape.
• Rick Pitino wants you to know his team’s problems are all mental. He also wants you to know Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish will not be walking through that door.
• Apparently, Rick left a few of his books back in Rupp Arena because Billy Gillispie wants you to know that the Wildcats can get better. To be fair to Billy, the Wildcats have certainly been much better than what they were like at the beginning of the season, but I don’t think any of us have been wondering if the Wildcats have been playing great basketball recently.

A short, but solid list of links for you going into the holidays. . .

• Seth Davis with a good primer on the various foul calls. Hopefully, this clears things up for a lot of you and will stop a lot of whining about officials making the incorrect foul call. That means you Xavier fans.
• I wasn’t expecting many impact players to be coming back, but Jeff Goodman provides a good list of the top mid-season additions.
• The NCAA came up with a cool idea recently where they set up 11 games in 4 days in the state of Indiana. They project which was called the “Indiana Basketball Extravaganza” featured games from all divisions including women’s games. Howard Smith did a great job live-blogging the event and we think the NCAA should do more of this to increase basketball awareness of all levels not just the D-1 games featured on national TV.
• Bill Simmons already mentioned it on one of his podcasts, which means that 95% of you have probably already heard about it, but we wholeheartedly recommend you check out Mark Titus’s Club Trillion blog. The hoops aficionados already know what a trillion means, but for the rest of you it is the box score when a player plays but doesn’t record any other stats (points, assists, rebounds, steals, field goal attempts, etc.). Just the name alone should give you an idea what his blog is like.

Some notes for your weekend of debauchery…

• It’s harder than it looks, huh?  Former #1 recruit Brandon Jennings was supposed to become a trailblazer by going to Europe rather than Arizona for one year.  According to this Washington Times piece, he’s averaging 5/3 in a mere 17 minutes per game.  As for his peers who matriculated at US colleges, they’re not exactly tearing it up either.
• Gary Parrish points out an interesting stat about Stephen Curry’s shooting vs. BCS and non-BCS opponents this year.  Definitely something to keep an eye on (although this is consistent with Curry’s 41.1% shooting against Georgetown, Wisconsin and Kansas in the NCAAs last year). 
• From the completely shocking and out of character department, Jim Boeheim is upset with the terms of Eric Devendorf’s suspension from Syracuse. 
• John Wooden would like to see the rims raised to some point less than eleven feet high. 
• Kentucky all-time assists leader Dirk Minniefield was indicted in Houston for engaging in a fraudulent real estate scheme.
• Here’s a pretty good piece on Dick Vitale’s vocal cord problems – we love to rip the guy’s partisanship, but we’ve never wavered on his passion and love for the game. 

We have a lot of links to get through despite rtmsf’s best efforts to cover for me so I’ll get right into the links. . .

• Seth Davis making the case that college basketball’s regular season is more meaningful than college football’s regular season. While Seth has ventured over to RTC on several occasions and left kind words, I don’t agree with him here. The BCS is far from perfect, but that doesn’t mean its regular season is diminished. Having said that, the fact that the college basketball regular season is relatively less important than the college football regular season doesn’t mean that college football is superior to college basketball.
• Several other big sites have noted that Bruce Pearl’s ex-wife opened up a nail salon in Knoxville named “Alimony’s Hair & Nail Salon”, but only RTC provides you with the reason she is his ex-wife (3rd pic on the video tour).
• Mike Gundy has nothing on Jimmy Patsos.
• Eric Devendorf appears to be in trouble. You would think that the Kelvin Sampson fiasco last year would have taught people to avoid using cell phones and text messaging if they are going to do something bad. [Ed. Note: RTC does not endorse violence against women or text messaging]
• I’m sure most of you have heard about Rodney Rodgers and his unfortunate ATV accident that left him paralyzed. I still remember watching him at Fleet Center as a key part of the 2002 Boston Celtics Eastern Conference Finals team (acquired along with Tony Delk in the Joe Johnson trade–doh!) and it’s still shocking to know that he’s paralyzed now.
• It’s never too early to prepare your bracket. Prepare all you want, but that freshman girl down the hall who drinks a little too much on the weekends and only remembers the “cute” players on your school’s basketball team is still going to kick your ass in March anyways.
• Comparing this year’s top freshman to Victoria’s Secret models. To be perfectly honest, this list makes no sense at all, but you probably won’t notice once you get to the diaper dandies counterparts.

It’s been a while since we did this consistently, but now that we actually know which games will be played more than 24 hours in advance it’s time to get back into our routine of providing you with the best college basketball links we find each day. If you find something that you think would be of interest to other college basketball fans, leave a link in the comment section and we’ll include it in the next Fast Breaks. Some of these are a few days old, but we have some catching up to do. . .

• Dana O’Neil with a look at the gray areas in recruiting top prospects. It makes us long for the days when Pete Bell bought Neon Bodeaux with a Lexus that he didn’t even ask for.
• Seth Davis with his annual “Ten sophomores ready to break out” selections, which selects the sophomores that he expects to have big years after relatively quiet freshman years. This eliminates obvious selections like early national POY favorite and thespian Blake Griffin.
• Kevin Armstrong with his very early season freshmen All-American. Having seen Greg Monroe against Tennessee last week (there’s a post coming about that someday) I agree with Armstrong’s assessment of the Hoyas big man although I wish Monroe would become a bit more aggressive, but I guess seeing freshmen like Kevin Durant and Michael Beasley has spoiled me.
• Xavier will have to wait one more year before Jordan Crawford can suit up there after the NCAA rejected his petition to not miss a season following his transfer from Indiana. Score another one for Kelvin Sampson.
• ESPN with a look at the transition at Bucknell. Do they really have NCAA 2nd round banners?
• We wrote about the passing of Pete Newell a few weeks ago, but last night approximately 200 people gathered in Berkeley, CA to remember him.
• It looks like Tyler Hansbrough is healthy enough to save lives. Last night, Tyler responded to the “challenge” posed by RTC columnist John Stevens. The question now is will Psycho T keep on playing or continue to be day-to-day?

Feasting on a feastly week of hoops… here’s the news…

• Remember 73-yr old Ken Mink’s first game where he scored two points?  We wondered who and how he could possibly get fouled?!?  Believe it or not, watch the video here of this CBS News report where Mink pump-fakes on the wing and gets hammered by some 19-year old defender (#23) who never learned to properly close out on shooters.

• Loyola Marymount head coach Bill Bayno is taking a leave of absence from his position, effective immediately, due to an undisclosed medical condition. 
• UCLA’s Alfred Aboya didn’t break his hand in Friday’s game against SIU, but SIU’s Nick Evans did (out 4-6 weeks). 
• Another blow for St. John’s basketball – their best player Anthony Mason, Jr is out for the year with a torn tendon is his foot (ouch).
• The 2009 Maui began today, but the 2010 field is already set with: UConn, Kentucky, Washington, Wichita St., Michigan St., Oklahoma, Virginia and Chaminade. 
• More changes at Arizona – they’re bailing on their home-and-home with UNC starting next year.
• Oh, and this.  Erin Andrews at the UNC game (h/t Deadspin).  Dude must have had RTC up on his cell phone to explain his lack of interest in what was in front of him.

The news is piling up again, so let’s knock one of these out quickly today…

• The injury bug continues to strike the nation’s #1 UNC Tarheels.  Tyler Zeller broke his wrist in a breakaway foul near the end of last night’s game vs. Kentucky (see below video) and will likely be out for the remainder of the season.

• Here are your 2012-16 F4 sites, in order: New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, Indianapolis, Houston.  The dirty south is the place to be, sayeth the NCAA.
• Caught this in a brief mention – did you know that former NBA guard David Wesley is now the equipment manager at Baylor?  Apparently he’s finishing his degree there and is using his time to help out the team.  We think that’s just awesome. 
• It would be shameful if UAB lost out on its best recruit, um, EVER, because they won’t promise to release DeMarcus Cousins if his presumptive coach, Mike Davis, leaves the program.  Get some stones, UAB.   
• Everyone’s favorite sideline reporter Erin Andrews gives her top college basketball venues in an interview.  She also mentions that she would have liked to have attended UCLA, USC or Texas had she not gone to Florida.  Interesting.