Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

The negative side of yesterday’s preview segment, which highlighted one team from each major conference ready to make the leap, are programs that look set to move the other way, to backslide into a less favorable place than the one they ended up in last season. Just as returning players and prized recruiting classes and injury recoveries presage improvement and success (at least theoretically), there are a host of other factors that can just as easily bring a team down. As I mentioned in yesterday’s precede, these factors are awfully tough to predict, because college hoops is an inherently unpredictable sport. Teams don’t always perform quite the way we expect. It happens. Some do, of course, and the following programs – in keeping with yesterday’s theme – represent one team from each power league that appears likely to take a step back in 2012. Not every team on the list is coming off a huge season. Regressing is a relative phenomenon. There are no restrictions on win totals or conference positioning or postseason success . Aside from last season’s truly dour outfits, the league bottom-feeders, everyone is in play.

Big 12 – Baylor

The return of Jackson and arrival of Austin is good news for Baylor, but it will be hard pressed to capture another Elite Eight appearance (Photo credit: Getty Images)

There’s a tendency to fall in love with NBA-bound players. Usually, they offer eye-popping athleticism, at least one or two extremely gifted traits that just plain jump off the screen and the general feeling that this whole college thing is but a mere stopping point along a path to a bigger and more-monied basketball future. These players are extremely fun to watch, if only for the fact that – this applies particularly to elite echelon of one-and-done guys – their time spent on a college hardwood is fleeting. Kentucky has embodied this ethos since hiring John Calipari in 2009. Needless to say, it’s been extremely effective. Now Baylor has adopted that mindset, and for the third straight season, they will have a super-hyped, extremely athletic, NBA-lottery-written-all-over-him big man in their lineup. I need not recount the story of Perry Jones III and the mostly disappointing career he had under Scott Drew. Because Isaiah Austin, the No. 1-ranked center in 2012 and No. 3-ranked overall player, might do it for me. Austin is a McDonald’s All-American with huge upside and potential. He also stands seven-feet tall and only 210 pounds. That’s the portrait of a Perry Jones III redux, only slightly taller. What’s more, scouting reports praise his versatility and his extended range, which is exactly what had scouts and NBA front office types so geeked up about Jones when he made his debut two seasons ago. I’m not saying Austin will be Perry Jones III. He could step on campus, flash a polished offensive game from day one, dominate the low post and exhibit the consistent effort and toughness Jones never developed. It’s just that Austin’s physical and observational profile is so similar to Jones’, and that – however statistically baseless a comparative measure – is reason to worry. If Jones belies this comparison with a monster season, the Bears – who bring back floor leader Pierre Jackson, long-range gunner Brady Heslip, and a cast of effective complementary players — may once again compete at the top of the Big 12. If not, this is an average team, destined for a middle-of-the-pack finish, with an immensely-talented freshman big man.

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Eli Linton is the RTC correspondent for the Summit League. You can follow him on Twitter at @elilinton.

Top Storylines

• Out With The Old, In With The New: As most fans of the conference already know, Southern Utah and Oral Roberts are long gone, which makes this season an interesting one to watch in the Summit League. South Dakota State is the heavy favorite to win this conference, but there is now room for new contenders to fill the void. Replacing teams like Southern Utah and Centenary with South Dakota and Omaha has the potential to create more natural rivalries. But there is still room for more new members and with teams like Oakland and IPFW sniffing around for a new conference, there may be more change ahead for the Summit League.
• Has The Summit Seen Its Best Days? In the past four or five years the Summit League has steadily improved, rising all the way to the 16th-ranked conference in the country. But with the departure of ORU, the talent level has now gone down in the Summit. Outside of Oakland and South Dakota State, there isn’t a nationally competitive team. That the Summit League was unable to keep Oral Roberts around, whether that was by design or not, is going to hurt the conference in the long run. Unless another team can surprisingly rise up and become competitive, the Summit League has likely already seen its best days.

Is This The Year Nate Wolters Gets The National Publicity He Deserves? Leading A Mid-major Favorite In South Dakota State Could Be Enough.

• Naters gonna Nate: Ever since his 34-point beatdown against Washington and the unprecedented run to the NCAA tournament by South Dakota State last season, Nate Wolters has been getting a lot of time in the national spotlight. From CBS Sports to ESPN and everyone in between,basketball writers are jumping on the Wolters bandwagon, and why not? He is the best player the conference, and being the only player in division I to average 20/5/5 last season, he is arguably one of the best players in the country. He overpowers other guards with his 6’4” frame, getting whatever he needs around the rim, although Doug Gottlieb could still use some convincing. DraftExpress writer Joey Whelan already had Wolters as a mid-second round draft pick back in 2011, so you have to think his stock will continue to rise if he has another monster season. The Summit League has gotten a lot of exposure because of the Wolters cult-heroism, and they get a chance to display some more of their talented players as the troop of NBA scouts follow Wolters from city to city. Guys like Nate are helping make the Summit League relevant to the rest of the country.

Reader’s Take I

Predicted Order of Finish 

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And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 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 here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#15 – Where First Time Ever Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

It’s time to start running down each of the power conference previews on the RTC Podblast, so we’ll be rolling one of these out every few days until we’ve got all six in the books. We hope to also knock out an Other 26 podblast along the way at some point. We begin with our good friends Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) and Big Ten microsite correspondent Deepak Jayanti breaking down the 2012-13 version of the Big Ten Conference.

We welcome any and all feedback on these podcasts including topics for future discussion or if you want to send us any questions for our “May Not Be From Actual Listeners” segment. Hit us up at rushthecourt@yahoo.com or @rushthecourt on Twitter. For now, enjoy the listen and feel free to jump around to the areas you’re most interested in by using the below outline.

Make sure to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after each recording.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

College basketball, like most sports, is cyclical. Aside from the truly elite crop of blue-blooded programs, the Kentuckys and Dukes and Kansases and UNCs of the world, most teams are just as prone to have truly transcendent seasons as they are to crash and burn. Ok, that’s overstating the truth. I define these parameters in dramatic terms not as an accurate depiction of most teams’ year-to-year trajectories – it’s rare for a program to follow up a high-win season with an epic flameout – but to emphasize the fickle nature of the sport. We media types tend to overreact to single-season sample sizes, but in truth, most programs, whether through coaching changes, administrative shake-ups or otherwise, chart a steady long-term course. Teams suffer long downturns, sure, and some last longer than others. But most find ways (coaching changes, administrative shakeups, etc.) to right the ship, if only for one memorable season, to compete at the top of their respective leagues.

With a healthy Woodall, and a potential first-round talent in Adams, Pitt will regain its usual status among the Big East elite (Photo credit: US Presswire)

Underlying these trends is the inherent potential for random variance, for teams to break out of their expected competitive range and “make the leap.” It happens each and every season. Teams bounce back from particularly disappointing seasons to bump their win totals and challenge the same teams who oversaw their downfall one year prior. Predicting which teams are ready to fulfill that narrative is never easy. There are a variety of factors involved that make pinpointing breakout teams a fundamentally risky exercise. Sometimes conventional wisdom – decades-long concepts like returning starters directly correlating to success, or promising bench players seamlessly carrying their production rates into larger minute distributions and more shot attempts; you know, the ideas that never seem to play out the way you’d expect – does not apply to specific teams. Each situation is different, no matter what conventional logic you use to define a team’s potential.

To account for natural error, and the time-tested axiom that logical thinking does not prescribe college basketball teams to specific win ranges and milestones, I’ve selected six teams ready to make the aforementioned “leap,” one from each of the six power conferences.  As a reminder, this exercise, like most any preseason preview article you’ll see on the web, is rooted mostly in opinion. No one’s actually seen these guys play real games together, at least not within the construct of this year’s team model. The knowledge base from which we make these predictions is limited – though larger and more permitting to some than others. We have observations from previous seasons, recruiting rankings, highlights and random hearsay from coaches and fans and whatnot, and that’s about it. Mistakes are likely, if not guaranteed. That said, each conference features a particularly salient breakout candidate, at least in my eyes. Let’s begin. 

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And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 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 here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#16 – Where #1 Goes Down (Again) Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

There were few topics more thoroughly dissected and debated this offseason than transfers. The discourse began not one month after the coronation of last season’s National Champion Kentucky Wildcats with Jared Uthoff’s highly-publicized transfer tug-of-war with Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan. It continued when the NCAA released word (via ESPN’s Outside the Lines program) of its intentions to review transfer guidelines as part of a larger concern over a the growing frequency of player movement, much of which – as quantified  by SI.com’s Luke Winn – is characterized by a nontraditional upward flow, whereby players seek to improve their competitive situations by jumping to better teams in high-major conferences. There is a growing fear, one that bears out in Winn’s numerical analysis, that coaches are using the pool of dissatisfied players in lesser conferences as a secondary recruiting market, that mid-major teams will increasingly suffer the possibility of having their players lost to a “poaching culture” of high-major powers plucking the lower ranks’ top talents.

After being overtaken by Kendall Marshall, Drew left UNC to reignite his career in Los Angeles (photo credit: US Presswire)

This is a legitimate concern. The NCAA will likely implement policies to cut down on the various loopholes and pathways in which players are allowed to relinquish their initial commitments in favor of joining a new program, or at least skew the cost-benefit analysis of making such a move towards staying put, but those changes may not come to bear for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, we’re left with a college hoops landscape where established players with proven track records can pack their bags for greener pastures. This year’s batch includes several players who could alter their new teams’ seasons in important ways. The list of newly-eligible transfers is long and varied, so I highlighted 10 newcomers whose first seasons in new locales should find immediate success. As is the case with all of these preseason lists, the qualifications for inclusion are at best fuzzy, and at worst, flawed. There are a lot of transfers, so narrowing the list wasn’t easy. So before you rage against your favorite team’s new hot shooting guard being left out of the group, remember to take into account the sheer numerical backdrop from which any selective transfer-based analysis is grounded.

Herewith, in random order, the list:

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David Changas is the RTC correspondent for the OVC.  You can follow him on Twitter @dchangas.

Top Storylines

• Can Murray State Repeat Its Success?  Last year, the Racers took the college basketball world by storm by being the nation’s last remaining undefeated team after starting 23-0. They lose several key contributors, but another run to a second-round NCAA Tournament win is realistic, and coach Steve Prohm proved he can coach in his first season at the helm. Should Murray State win the league’s automatic bid, it likely will not come with a lofty five-seed as it did last year, but any team with potential All-American Isaiah Canaan leading it in March will be dangerous.

Isaiah Canaan Is The Early Favorite For OVC Player Of The Year And Has A Shot At Even Higher Accolades. (Getty Images)

• Belmont Arrives:  In an effort to raise its overall profile, Belmont left the Atlantic Sun and certainly will add cachet to a league coming off its best year in recent memory. The Bruins have been a dominant force in the A-Sun for the past dozen years, earning the conference’s automatic bid in five of the last seven. Their addition to an already formidable league raises its profile that much more, and though Murray State is the league favorite, Belmont will draw attention to the OVC in this and years to come.
• Who is Robert Covington? With all of the hoopla surrounding Canaan and Murray State, plus the arrival of Belmont, the player who isn’t the subject of enough discussion is Tennessee State big man Robert Covington. The 6’9″ senior finished third in the league in scoring and second in rebounding last year, and is projected by some to be a second-round pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.  He scores, rebounds, and shoots the three proficiently, and has an NBA physique.  A player of the year caliber season should be expected from Covington, and the presence of NBA scouts will be commonplace at Tiger games.

Predicted Order of Finish

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And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 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 here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#17 – Where Play of the Year Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

Welcome back to the RTC Podcast. Last season we unveiled this endeavor along with its less-sophisticated cousin, the RTC Podblast, and we enjoyed the hell out of it. Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) returns as your host, with the RTC editing team and several of our national and microsite writers joining us from time to time to riff about all things college basketball.

The plan for the preseason is that we’ll do two nationally-focused podcasts (this edition plus one more recording during Opening Week), plus a number of power conference-specific podblasts that will break down each of the six major leagues over the next three weeks. If we’re feeling especially frisky, we’ll try to knock out an Other 26 podblast while we’re at it. Look for the Big East and Big Ten to drop a little later this week, and make sure to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after we record.

We welcome any and all feedback on these podcasts including topics for future discussion or if you want to send us any questions for our “May Not Be From Actual Listeners” segment. For now, enjoy the listen and feel free to jump around to the areas you’re most interested in by using this handy outline.

RTC Podcast: 2012-13 Preseason Edition

• 2:20 – Connecticut/Jim Calhoun/Kevin Ollie
• 14:30 – Other Coaching Moves (Frank Martin, Larry Brown, Billy Gillispie)
• 21:00 – ACC Poaching of the Notre Dame
• 24:40 – Butler and VCU Moving to Atlantic 10
• 25:45 – Teams Losing a Lot (Kentucky, North Carolina)
• 30:50 – Teams Bringing a Lot Back (Louisville, Indiana)
• 36:05 – Underrated/Overrated Teams (NC State, UCLA, Tennessee, UNLV)
• 42:55 – Players Receiving Preseason All-American Hype
• 53:30 – How Many Mid-Major Players Will Make the AA Team?
• 57:30 – What CBB Memorabilia Would We Want to Own (inspired by Bob Knight)?