North Carolina Flying Under the Radar

 Heading into tonight’s showdown with rival Duke, the North Carolina Tar Heels have won seven straight games since a 1-4 start to ACC play that had some folks wondering if this team would even make the NCAA Tournament. North Carolina has assuaged those concerns while ascending the ACC standings where it sits fourth entering tonight. Roy Williams’ team has done it with defense. Since allowing 1.23 points per possession in a January 20 loss at Virginia, North Carolina has held all but two opponents under 42 percent shooting with lower defensive efficiency numbers to match that effort. While the competition hasn’t been brutal, the Tar Heels are playing like the team that beat Louisville, Michigan State and Kentucky in non-conference play. James Michael McAdoo seems to be finally asserting himself as a go-to guy but his free throw shooting remains a liability on one of the nation’s worst teams from the charity stripe. However, that can be misleading. When the game is on the line, Williams can put the ball in Marcus Paige’s hands and not worry too much. Paige is an 89.4 percent free throw shooter. The Tar Heels have two games with Duke left plus a tricky trip down the road to Raleigh to face NC State. Other than that, there isn’t a game North Carolina shouldn’t win left on the schedule. An 11-7 or 12-6 conference record is definitely possible for this group and I am not sure many people would have predicted that after the Tar Heels lost four of their first five ACC games.

Marcus Paige is a great guy to have on the foul line late in games.
(Photo: Robert Willett/ Raleigh News & Observer)

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1. Wyoming’s hopes of making a surprise run to the NCAA Tournament by winning the MW Conference Tournament took a huge hit yesterday when a MRI on Larry Nance Jr. revealed that he had a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and will miss the rest of the season. Nance led the team in scoring, rebounds, blocks, and steals this season so it is a devastating blow for the Cowboys. We do not know any additional details about other damage in Nance’s knee, but according to Andy Katz’s source Nance is awaiting surgical intervention on his knee.
2. As any Wichita State fan will point out Alabama’s season has not gone according to plan. Now the Crimson Tide will likely have to play the rest of the season without forward Nick Jacobs who is taking “an indefinite leave of absence” from the team. Jacobs, the team’s third leading scorer at 8.4 points per game, had been playing regularly, but it appears that “off-the-court issues” are the reason for his leave of absence according to Anthony Grant. Jacobs is still a junior so he still can return to the Tide next season. He has been a steady scorer for the Tide during his three seasons, but has not shown a significant increase in his production while at Alabama (6.1 points per game as a freshman, 7.6 as a sophomore, and 8.4 this season). Still he would be a big loss for the team if he does not return as a result of whatever the issues are.
3. We are sure that the last thing that some of you want to read is another piece about Duke, but Sports Illustrated‘s article about how Mike Krzyzewski has helped transform Jabari Parker‘s game is an excellent read. Told through a series of anecdotes it shows how Parker has developed from a top recruit recovering from injury to possibly the most complete player in the country outside of Doug McDermott. Perhaps what is more interesting is the interaction that he and Krzyzewski have and how Krzyzewski even at this point in his career still appears to be learning and developing.
4. We tend to head about the big NCAA violations that schools commit. What we usually do not hear about is some of the smaller infractions–real and imagined–that they commit. The Oklahoman obtained a report of violations that Oklahoma self-reported to the NCAA including one for what appears to be a pasta bar violation (see the May 10, 2013 entry). According to the report, three student-athletes ate more than the amount the NCAA supposedly allows at a graduation dinner and the school had the students pay $3.83 (the cost over the amount allowed by the NCAA) to the charity of their choice. To their credit, the NCAA has come out and said that it does not have any such rule. So for all the criticism that the NCAA gets for the way it runs college sports it appears that sometimes the schools make it harder for themselves for no reason.
5. According to Andy Katz, Arizona is making a push to end court storms after their two losses this season were marred by premature court storms (we don’t use our name when it is done that way). Since our site is named for something similar (done correctly) we often get asked about this. We have answered it several times and even been misquoted so here is our basic take. We understand why some people are against it (risk of injury, etc), but when done correctly (and this is partly on the school and its event staff) it is a reflection of the passion and energy that the fans have for the game. Taking that away would not necessarily detract from the game at least the on-court product, but it might affect the in-game experience for the fans who drive the sport. We won’t try to argue that college basketball has better basketball than the NBA in terms of athleticism and precision because it doesn’t, but the one thing it does have is a passion that the NBA rarely has, which you can see in the difference of the intensity of the regular season games for the two. Obviously, there need to be some limits on what fans can and cannot do at the games, but the administrators need to tread lightly or risk taking away part of what makes college basketball so special.

1. With the way this season has been going some of the more overzealous Indiana fans might be feeling like the sky is falling and yesterday they were right as a large metal beam fell from the ceiling onto the seats yesterday. Fortunately, this happened earlier in the afternoon before their scheduled game last night. As a result and perhaps out of concern for additional danger, yesterday’s game between Iowa and Indiana was postponed. What has not been postponed is tonight’s women’s basketball against Michigan will go on as scheduled with fans kept away from the corner. We suspect that the crowd at Assembly Hall will be even thinner than usual tonight.
2. Wyoming may have suffered a major setback late last night when Larry Nance Jr. injured his right knee in a win against Fresno State. Nance, who leads the Cowboys in scoring (15.3 per game), rebounds (8.8), blocks (2.1), and steals (1.4), was injured with 14:51 left in the game. The extent of Nance’s injury is unknown at this point, but he was on the floor for several minutes and had to be helped off unable to bear weight on that leg. We are expecting that Nance will get imaging on his knee and some sort of prognosis within the next 48 hours, but it does not look good at the time being for the Cowboys star.
3. Chris Obekpa‘s right ankle sprain comes at a particularly bad time for St. John’s as the Red Storm have turned their season around and are at least on the bubble in many mock brackets. Obekpa’s injury–a sprain and a bone bruise–is expected to keep him out for 10 to 14 days. That will Obekpa, the team’s leading shot blocker at 3.2 per game (11th in the nation), out for Saturday’s game against Villanova and next Tuesday’s game against Xavier. Even though St. John’s was able to beat Butler easily without Obekpa their next two games will not be nearly as easy.
4. We have heard of NCAA bracket pool winners employing a variety of deep analytic methods–picking which mascot would win a fight is a popular one–to win significant office pools. With Warren Buffett’s $1 billion perfect contest being announced a few months ago, Chris Jones of ESPN The Magazine reached out to Craig Gilmore, last year’s ESPN Tournament Challenge winner, to find out how he did it (winning the pool not going undefeated, which he didn’t). Gilmore’s strategy–four pints of Guinness–is certainly not unique (we assume at least a few college students might have had something to drink around the time they filled out their brackets), but it might be the first time we have seen it cited as a strategy. In Gilmore’s case he claims that going with his gut and not overanalyzing his bracket was the key to his success. We are expecting that we will see plenty of columns like this in the coming months with various writers trumpeting some method to help you win a billion dollars, but in the end it all comes down to one thing: luck.
5. At this point we are very familiar with athletes using the graduate student transfer waiver. So when we heard that Aaron Bright was using it to transfer from Stanford to St. Mary’s we were not particularly surprised. That is until we tried to figure out what graduate programs St. Mary’s offered that Stanford did not. We are not trying to knock St. Mary’s which is an excellent school, but we were just curious as to what programs a school as prestigious as Stanford would not offer that a nearby school would. The best answer we have comes from RTC correspondent C.D. Bradley who pointed out that St. Mary’s offers three masters programs–Kinesiology, MA in Leadership, and MFA in Creative Writing–that Stanford does not. Honestly, we never really doubted that Bright would end up in a program that Stanford didn’t offer, but it made us wonder (even before seeing the options) how many players end up getting majors in things that they have no interest in just to obtain a graduate student waiver.

RTC columnist Bennet Hayes (@hoopstraveler) is looking for the spirit of college basketball as he works his way on a two-week tour of various venues around the West. For more about his trip, including his itinerary and previous stops on his journey, check out the complete series here.

No conference has been decimated by conference expansion like the WAC. Perennially one of the better mid-major conferences for much of the last two decades – even sending a team (Utah) to the national title game in 1998 – the current iteration probably looks nothing like how you remember it. Good luck figuring out who is in this new WAC, because only two schools have been conference members for more than a full season (New Mexico State and Idaho), and many of the newbies emphatically fail to fit the geographic profile of the conference. After beginning my Saturday with a signature member of WAC’s past (Utah State), the second half of the weekend two-fer had me paying a visit to the unlikely leader of this new and (un)improved league: Utah Valley University. I think my sanity might be called into question if I had any idea of what to expect out of the trip to Orem, so suffice it to say, I headed in there ready for anything.

After An 89-88 Victory Over Idaho Saturday Night, Utah Valley Is Still Your WAC Leader — Try Processing That Information!

What I got was a highly entertaining basketball game. There wasn’t much defense to be found (that’s usually what happens when teams ranked 210th and 304th nationally in defensive efficiency meet), but Utah Valley and Idaho submitted a tidy offensive display, combining to score 177 points on 58 percent shooting from the floor. The Vandals’ leading scorer, 6’5” forward Stephen Madison, poured in 42 points (16-of-21 FG), but UVU forced the ball out of the crafty senior’s hands on the game’s final possession, and two misses later, the Wolverines had escaped with a one-point victory. In doing so, Utah Valley hardly conjured up memories of ’98 Utah or ’04 Nevada, but at least for a few more days, the road to the WAC title still runs through Orem.

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Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Sean Moran, the RTC recruiting guru. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to discussing the recruitments of the top uncommitted players in the country. We also encourage you to check out his contributions at The Intentional Foul dedicated to recruiting coverage and analysis. You can also follow Sean at his Twitter account @Seanmohoops for up-to-date news from the high school and college hoops scene. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Shaqquan Aaron’s Long Journey

Take a current look at the MaxPreps Top 25 High School basketball rankings. The top two teams in the country are separated by over 1,000 miles, but Mater Dei (CA) and Rainier Beach (WA) share a common link. That link is four-star small forward Shaqquan Aaron, a player who stands 6’7” and is currently ranked No. 34 in the class of 2014 (No. 11 SF). Next year he will put on the red and white for Rick Pitino, but before heading to Louisville the sinewy wing is trying to close out his tumultuous high school career with one more state title.

Before Aaron even played a game in high school, the word was out about his talent. After a summer day in Las Vegas, well-respected talent evaluator Dave Telep wrote the following: “This isn’t going to be a very difficult evaluation. The word out of the West was that he’s the best freshman prospect in a long time. OK, we’ll buy that. He turned 15 on July 21 and celebrates the occasion by coming off the bench for SCA and looking like a major prospect. He’s 6-foot-5, drills threes and oozes potential. Catch him if you can!”

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Nick Fasulo is an RTC correspondent who writes the column College Basketball By the Tweets, a look at the world of college hoops through the prism of everyone’s favorite social media platform. You can find him on Twitter @nickfasuloSBN.

Big/Fat Heads are all the rage in college basketball student sections these days. Personally, I believe that deviating from mainstream, easy-to-identify faces with more obscure mugs deserve bonus points. A tip of the cap, Seminole fans:

Who is this pic.twitter.com/RI2FBs655X

— SB Nation CBB (@SBNationCBB) February 18, 2014

Brad Stevens is Probably a Great Person

By all accounts, The former Butler head coach is an incredible individual. Here he is visiting former player Andrew Smith after he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Yes, that means Stevens made an impromptu trip from Boston to Indy last week to check in on a friend.

Once a @butleru Bulldog, always a Bulldog. Thanks for flying in, @BCCoachStevens! pic.twitter.com/ttdWGvlDMM

— Samantha Smith (@Samantha44Smith) February 11, 2014

Brad Stevens-great coach, better person.

— John Cimasko (@jersey_johnny) February 11, 2014

“We're building a #culture of #accountability, #trust, and togetherness. Entitlement will not be tolerated." Brad Stevens #TLIM #leadership

— Chad Smith (@chad_d_smith) February 9, 2014

Words cannot express how awesome Brad Stevens is for flying in for Andrew Smith's first round of chemo. #ClassyMan

— kalie (@kaliehoover) February 12, 2014

Bayloring

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It’s a little hard to believe, but the regular season is slipping away from us. Some of the small conference tournaments begin in a mere two weeks, and a few teams are running out of time to make a positive impression on the NCAA Selection Committee. One team that has made quite the recent impression is Florida, which has parlayed a two-win week over SEC rivals Tennessee and Kentucky into a #2 national and RTC25 ranking. The guys discuss the ascent of the Gators, the descent of the Wildcats (both Kentucky and Arizona), and a good number of other things in this week’s RTC Podcast, hosted by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114). We also welcomed in RTC national columnist Bennet Hayes (@hoopstraveler) as he pushes into week two of his #rushthetrip covering the western half of the country. He shares some stories from the road, riffs on his favorite venues, and talks about what he’s looking forward to (other than his own bed) as he finishes up things later this week.

Make sure to subscribe to the podcast/podblast on iTunes so that you’ll get all of the episodes immediately downloaded to your listening device.

• 0:00-6:52 – Randy Eats Humble Pie on Florida
• 6:52-11:06 – What a Home Loss Means for Kentucky
• 11:09-16:54 – The Pac-12 Version of Struggling Wildcats
• 16:54-18:02 – What the Win Over Arizona Means for Arizona State
• 18:02-24:06 – WTF Sunday in the Big Ten
• 24:06-27:00 – Other Weekend Notes
• 27:00-40:37 – RTT: Bennet Hayes #rushthetrip
• 40:37-45:19 – Rivalries Fit for a Documentary
• 45:19-51:47 – Creighton Pounds Villanova… Again
• 51:47-56:11 – This Week’s Preview

1. For the past month we have been talking about how dangerous Michigan State will be when it gets everybody back healthy later this season. Yesterday, we got our first indication that the Spartans might not be made whole the rest of the season as Tom Izzo announced that Keith Appling might be out for the rest of the season. After about 20 minutes of panic in East Lansing, Izzo clarified his comments to say that Appling might sit out the rest of the regular season. Still Izzo’s initial comments about “shutting [Appling] down” should serve as a reminder that we should be careful about projecting how a team will look when they get all of their pieces back until those pieces are ready to return.
2. After the initial buzz around former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter’s move to push for union status for college athletes we had not heard much about the process. We figured that it would be a long drawn out process that would take years. It still probably will, but tomorrow Colter will attempt to make his case at a meeting in front of the National Labor Relations Board. We will not try to pretend to be experts on labor law, but as Dennis Dodd notes the hearing is to help determine whether the players have the right to collectively bargain for workplace rights. It could be another year before the NLRB even makes that initial decision, which does not even account for the NCAA trying to place injunctions, etc on any progress the athletes makes, but it is still an important step.
3. Over the weekend there were two pretty glaring missed calls that might have affected the outcome of the Arizona–Arizona State game and Duke–Maryland game. The former, Jahii Carson’s pull-up on the rim preceding the other craziness, was pretty obvious to any observer. The latter, the officials and scorekeeper forgetting to change the alternating possession arrow, was less so. Still both the Pac-12 and the ACC admitted that they missed the calls in both situations. In terms of impact, the one in Cameron was probably more significant as it occurred with 6:39 left and took a possession away from Maryland in a game that they lost by two points. At the end of the day, it probably will not affect NCAA Tournament bids since neither Arizona State nor Maryland are getting anywhere near the NCAA Tournament outside of watching from their couch, but it is still not a good look for either conference.
4. Outside of Jameson’s weekly Award Tour posts we have not put much thought into the end of season awards. But this week’s edition of Seth Davis’ Hoops Thoughts, which includes a list of his top ten choices for Coach of the Year, reminded us of just how much people are sleeping on the job that Larry Brown is doing at SMU. Brown might not end up winning National Coach of the Year honors this year, but he certainly has to be in contention and we would be hard-pressed to come up with ten coaches who have done a better job this past year than Brown.
5. Speaking of the most impressive coaching jobs this season, Dan Hanner published an interesting article looking at the changes in efficiency margins after a coaching change for current coaches. The way the numbers and trends suggest which coaches are doing good and bad jobs might not be particularly surprising the degree of some of these changes are quite striking. It should noted that often times the trends are often related to things outside of the coach’s control as you will see with Colorado State, which went from an efficiency margin of 7 before hiring Larry Eustachy to 17 in his first season then back down to 3 this year.

RTC columnist Bennet Hayes (@hoopstraveler) is looking for the spirit of college basketball as he works his way on a two-week tour of various venues around the West. For more about his trip, including his itinerary and previous stops on his journey, check out the complete series here.

Saturday featured a Utah double-dip. My day began with an afternoon matinee in Logan (Utah State-UNLV) and would close up some 120 miles South in Orem, where WAC leader Utah Valley (yup…) was hosting Idaho. To be fair, my day actually began at 7:30 AM in Butte, MT, where some inclement weather had me holed up for the night. I wasn’t sure if my Chevy Malibu, replete with Arizona plates, would have the juice to push through the snowy conditions, but I somehow arrived in Logan just as the Aggies and Rebels were tipping off. Regrettably, I found myself walking through the front doors of The Spectrum just as the “I Believe” chant was dying off, but I figured forty minutes of basketball would provide the boisterous student section ample opportunity to show off.

Saturday Didn’t Showcase The Dee Glen Smith Spectrum In It’s Brightest Light, But Utah State’s Home Floor Is Truly One Of A Kind

Logan is immediately striking. For one, if you are arriving from the North, there is almost no evidence of the town from 15 (the major freeway that runs North-South through Utah). Imposing mountains frame a valley well off into the distance, but it’s not until you climb a smaller hill in the middle of 15 and Logan that you actually catch sight of the town. From a distance, it’s a looker. Downtown and the University sit directly in the shadows of the mountain range visible from the freeway, but snow-capped peaks can be found in any direction you look. It was obvious before I reached town that Logan’s buildings were older, but the full antiquation of the scene didn’t hit home until I was in the midst of it. The combination of the cloudy day, dated architecture and snowy mountains evoked fairy-tales from decades past, and in a very monochromatic way. Logan is definitely not your classic college town – that was obvious after spending just three hours there.

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Daniel Evans (@bracketexpert) is Rush the Court’s resident bracketologist. He will update his brackets at least twice a week through the rest of the regular season here at RTC, but his updated brackets can be viewed daily at Bracketology Expert. As we approach March Madness, he’ll also provide occasional blind resumes. Evans has been ranked by the Bracket Matrix as the nation’s 11th-best bracketologist out of hundreds of entries. 

A handful of teams made statements over the past week, but Florida made the biggest statement of all. The Gators went into Rupp Arena, where the Wildcats rarely lose under John Calipari, and won by 10 points. The SEC may be having an awful season as a collective, but Florida may actually be the nation’s best team. For a squad that many were doubting as a #1 seed just a few short days ago, Florida has clearly separated itself from many of the others chasing them at this point.

Syracuse survived games with Pittsburgh and NC State, but for bracketing purposes all that matters is that the Orange won those two games. Because of the victories and Arizona‘s Friday night loss to Arizona State, Syracuse remains the No. 1 overall seed. Wichita State is still fourth on my overall S-curve. The Shockers have been helped by losses from the teams behind them for a No. 1 seed.

The race for the last few at-large bids is a complete mess. After a win over Michigan State Sunday, Nebraska is now in the mix. Yes, Nebraska. The SEC needs somebody not named Kentucky to beat Florida towards the end of the regular season or in the SEC Tournament, but any wins other than one over the Gators is pretty useless.

First Four Out: LSU, West Virginia, Baylor, Florida State