Ray Floriani is the RTC correspondent for the NEC and MAAC.

Reader’s Take I

Top Storylines

• Coaches Enjoy Honors: In September, Mount St. Mary’s coach Robert Burke coached in the Congressional County All-Star Classic. Burke coached a team of members of Congress while George Washington mentor Mike Lonergan guided a team of lobbyists.  The game was at GW’s Smith Center. Hopefully Burke did not allow his ‘club’ a lengthy recess. In other news, Wagner assistant Bobby Hurley was inducted into the Duke University Hall of Fame in September. Hurley scored over 1,700 points, handed out an NCAA record 1,076 assists and led Duke to two national titles during his playing days (19989-93).
• A Long-Awaited Repeat In The NEC? Long Island is attempting to become the first NEC school in nearly two decades to successfully defend its conference title. The last? Current  MAAC  member Rider, which captured the NEC crown in 1993 and 1994.

Can LIU Capture the Blackbird Magic Again? (credit: NY Post)

• The Numbers Game: Among starters lost, FDU and Quinnipiac lead the way with three each. It’s a matter of perception. FDU, coming off a five-win season, can look at this as a fresh start. Quinnipiac, a 22-win team from a season ago, has spots to replace. Tom Moore has options as he has the Bobcats primed for another run. The program with the least amount of starters lost? Wagner. The Seahawks, coming off an encouraging 9-9 conference slate good for a sixth-place tie, have every starter back on board.
• Sacred Heart Mourns Loss Of Former Star: On a sad note, Sacred Heart is mourning the passing of Chauncey Hardy, a prolific player for the Pioneers from 2006-10. Hardy scored over 1,200 points during his Sacred Heart career and was playing professionally overseas in Romania at the time of his tragic death, which came after Hardy was assaulted in a pub.

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It wouldn’t be Midnight Madness without a dunk contest (or a hundred), so we fished around to find the 13 best dunks from the opening weekend’s many extravaganzas.  There are some impressive flushes here, but nothing like Keion Bell’s record-breaker from last season, so if you know of something better send it to us @rushthecourt or rushthecourt@yahoo.com for inclusion.

#13.75.  Another late addition — Rhode Island’s Jonathan “Sponge” Holton soaking up all kinds of nasty with this 360.

#13.5.  A late addition (sent from reader, Dennis) — Reggie Smith of UNLV uses all 5’9″ of his frame to get after this one.  Unreal.

#13. Mitchell Watt of Buffalo Performs the Very Difficult Two-Ball Dunk.

#12. Marshall’s Justin Coleman Completes an Impossible Side-Backboard 360 (stick with it).

#11. White Men CAN Jump! (Duke’s Miles Plumlee Over His Brother).

#10. The Involvement of People in Farm Animal Costumes is Always Worthwhile (Minnesota’s Rodney Williams).

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Will Rothschild is the RTC correspondent for the Atlantic Sun. You can find him on Twitter at @warothschild.

Reader’s Take I

Top Storylines

• Belmont’s Last Dance In The A-Sun: In May, realignment hit the conference when it was announced that Belmont will join the Ohio Valley Conference starting in the 2012-13 season, meaning this campaign will mark the Bruins’ A-Sun swan song. The repeal of a stipulation requiring every OVC program to field a football team (which Belmont doesn’t have) appeared to be the final hurdle. Belmont’s new home is a step up in terms of competition and is more favorable for its travel schedule.  As the Bruins have represented the Atlantic Sun in the NCAA Tournament four of the last six seasons, a new leader will have to rise.

Mick Hedgepeth Leads Belmont In Its Final Season As A Member Of The Atlantic Sun. (Getty Images)

• New Coaches To Watch: On paper, the A-Sun’s three first-year coaches look to be as good a collective group as has ever entered the conference. How they deliver – and how quickly – both on the court and in recruiting will be worth watching. All three – Casey Alexander at Stetson, Andy Enfield at Florida Gulf Coast, and Lewis Preston at Kennesaw State – inherit programs that lost 20 or more games last season. All three also are first-time head coaches who were highly-regarded assistants at successful programs: Alexander at Belmont, Enfield at Florida State, and Preston at Notre Dame, Florida (where he was on the staff of the repeat title teams in ’06 and ’07) and Penn State.
• ETSU Hopes To Stay Afloat: In eight seasons in Johnson City, coach Murray Bartow has taken the Bucs to three NCAA Tournaments while averaging just under 20 wins per season and finishing third or better in the standings five times. Most recently, the Bucs enjoyed a 24-win campaign in 2010-11, earning a spot in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament and advancing to the semifinals of that event, marking the first time in school history the team had captured two postseason victories in the same season. During the regular season, the Bucs enjoyed their highest RPI ranking since 2004, and won road games against quality opponents such as Mississippi State and Dayton. But to keep ETSU near the top of the A-Sun this year will require Bartow to do one of his best jobs. Gone are POY Mike Smith and two other standouts who combined to average more than 42 points per game, a whopping 60 percent of ETSU’s offensive production. Bartow welcomes in another highly-regarded recruiting class and welcomes back 6’4″ forward Tommy Hubbard, a major talent who missed all but four games last season with an injury. How well Hubbard regains his old form and meshes with the talented newcomers will determine whether this proud program maintains its traditional perch among the top three or gets overtaken by one of several improving programs.
• Bruins Poised For A Cinderella Run: For what has become one of the best mid-major programs in the country, the only thing missing on Belmont’s“To Do” list is a run in the NCAA Tournament. After nearly knocking off Duke in 2008, the 13th-seeded Bruins lost to four-seed Wisconsin last March and are seeking their fifth NCAA tournament trip in the past seven seasons. So Belmont is well past any “We’re just glad to be here” feelings about making it to the Dance. With four starters and all but two of its 11-player rotation back from a 30-5 (19-1 A-Sun) team, the Bruins have the look of a team that could become a national darling in March.

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Walker Carey is an RTC correspondent.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are a bit of an unknown entering this season after last year’s wildly successful campaign.  Gone from last season’s 28-7 squad are Big East Player of the Year guard Ben Hansbrough, forward Tyrone Nash and forward Carleton Scott. The Irish return two starters in forwards Tim Abromaitis and Scott Martin.  Martin, who is versatile enough to play shooting guard and both forward positions, is looking to build his 2010-11 campaign where he averaged 9.9 points per game to go along with 4.9 rebounds.

Tim Abromaitis (#21) & Carleton Scott (#34) Will Be Expected to Lead the Irish This Year

Irish head coach Mike Brey believes that the time has come for Martin to light up the box score and he can do that by becoming more aggressive offensively.  “Scott has always been a great fit in our offense,” Brey said. “It is time for him to go ahead and be aggressive and be the man for us.”  Abromaitis returns for his fifth year after putting up averages of 15.3 points per game and 6.1 rebounds per game last season. He believes that he can improve on those numbers due to some facets of the game he concentrated on over the summer.  “I did a lot of work playing off the dribble, as well as refining my rebounding skills,” Abromaitis said. “I am usually looked at as a spot-up guy, but I think that can change a little bit this season.”

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Another preseason preview gives us reason to roll out the 2011-12 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured the most compelling moments from the 2010-11 season, many of which will bring back the goosebumps and some of which will leave you shaking your head in frustration. For the complete list of this year’s reasons, click here. Enjoy!

#20 – Where How Can We Lose Gus? Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11 seasons.

Ed. Note: this column originally ran on October 15, 2010.  We received such a positive response from it that we’re running it again this year, and quite possibly every year until changes are made. 

Blasphemer.  Defiler.  Hater.

These are the words you’re going to use to describe us after you read this column.  In fact, you may already be using them simply by scanning the title.  What’s wrong with this joint, you might say?  Isn’t Midnight Madness day a ritualistic celebration of the return of college hoops — a singularly original basketball-only event that juices up the masses of fans from coast to coast yearning for the shortened fall days where the lonely bounce of an orange ball in a far-away gym represents that all is right with the world again?

To this we respond: well, yeah… it was.

Charlie Brown Represents a Bygone Era of Midnight Madnesses

Forgive us for going all Charlie Brown Christmas on you, as we’re definitely going to sound like our dad when we say these things, but the “good old days” of Midnight Madness were simply better.  What was once a localized phenomenon driven by student interest and an excuse to go crazy on a random Tuesday night has become an over-the-top, over-produced, over-compensated can-you-top-this Lady Gaga show filled with indoor fireworks, race cars, people dangling from the rafters and the rest of it.

This isn’t a Kanye concert or Cirque du Soleil, folks; it’s a basketball practice.

Give us Lefty Driesell and his car headlights illuminating a track at 12:01 am or hell, even Dick Vitale losing his mind after drinking so much coffee that his very DNA was jittery.  Give us a countdown clock that actually counts down to something and a student body that’s had enough down time to get, shall we say, socially lubricated.  Give us a grand introduction without all the peripherals followed by a high-wire dunk contest and a spirited scrimmage.  Give us hope that we’re going to be in for a special year as we leave the arena at 1:30 am on a cool fall night, because hope always wears a little better with a group of buddies heading back to the dorms in the wee hours of the morning.

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BEHOLD, friends, as the countdown clock approaches the all-zero for the first time this year, signifying the moment that we can at least say that practices are in session and our game has returned. The rocket has been moved to the launching pad and we’re about to light this candle, and just as launching a rocket into outer space is a process with many stages, so is getting a college basketball season off the ground. There’s Midnight Madness, or what might be more accurately called the First Official Day of Practice (FODP). The first exhibitions. The first official games. The ESPN 24-hour Marathon is considered a season-starting event. Our game, as we all know, has many Opening Days. That’s been a point of criticism from many sources in the past, including us. Let’s worry about that later. For now, let’s just prepare ourselves to enjoy the ride.

We’re going to be watching coverage and keeping track of the events around the country all evening, so feel free to tweet @rushthecourt and/or contact us at rushthecourt@yahoo.com if you have some great photos, videos or simply anecdotes and rumors to share.

Just like we provided last year, here is a list of last season’s NCAA Tournament teams and their status as far as holding FODP festivities:

Event on October 14th:

• Alabama State — Late Night Madness at Dunn-Oliver Acadome.
• Connecticut — UConn Basketball First Night. Prima noctis! Doors open and autograph session at 6 PM, and showtime with the defending champions begins at 7 PM.
• Duke — Countdown to Craziness. Scrimmage, dunk contest, live performances among other activities. And you know what? They got Raftery.

• Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Parks is the RTC correspondent for the Summit League. You can find him on Twitter at @CharlieParksRTC. 

Ed. Note — yesterday’s Summit League primer was actually a re-publish of the summer update.  We apologize for the error.

Reader’s Take I

For the Summit League, having someone win Player of the Year may be the ticket to a title. Five of the last seven conference champions have also been the home of the Summit League Player of the Year.

Top Storylines

• Realignment Hits the Summit: Word got out recently that Oral Roberts was flirting with the Southland Conference. ORU bolting could be a devastating move for the Summit League, which would lose one of its few premier teams. The Summit would take a definite step back. As for ORU, the Southland Conference isn’t exactly an upgrade — in fact, it is probably a downgrade in RPI and level of competition — but the move just makes sense. The Southland offers more natural conference matchups with teams from Arkansas and Texas, and better local recruiting opportunities. Let’s face it; no one from Oklahoma wants to travel to North Dakota in January to play a conference game. Also, Pat Knight just took the head job at Lamar. The Suttons and Knights have always been pretty close, and they have a long history together in college basketball. Scott Sutton versus Pat Knight would be a nice “new” rivalry. But unless the Southland pays the Summit League’s $250,000 buyout for Oral Roberts, this move couldn’t happen until 2014.
• Bears With Bugs: Has the injury bug found its way to the Golden Grizzlies? Reggie Hamilton and Drew Valentine underwent some recent surgeries; Hamilton shouldn’t miss any time, but what about Valentine? It was a minor knee operation, but knives, knees and basketball don’t go well together at all. Oakland fans should keep a close eye on the situation, but I see no reason for panic… yet.

Predicted Order of Finish

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Another preseason preview gives us reason to roll out the 2011-12 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured the most compelling moments from the 2010-11 season, many of which will bring back the goosebumps and some of which will leave you shaking your head in frustration. For the complete list of this year’s reasons, click here. Enjoy!

#21 – Where The End of the Interminable Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11 seasons.