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. 

The movement in my latest bracket is not at the top.

• The No. 1 seeds remain the same with Syracuse, Arizona, Florida and Wichita State on the top line. After winning at Northern Iowa, the Shockers have survived all of their major regular season hurdles and appear destined to be an outstanding 34-0 going into the NCAA Tournament.
• Most of this week’s changes are at the bottom. The difference between the last eight teams in and the first eight teams out is minimal. For instance, LSU, Missouri and Tennessee are all among the last few teams in, while Ole Miss is among the last four out. That’s how close the SEC is to only having two teams — Florida and Kentucky — make the field this year.
• A big winner this week includes SMU, a team that dominated Cincinnati Saturday night. On the flip side, Oklahoma State is now a No. 8 seed following another loss and the Marcus Smart situation, which leaves the Cowboys without their best player for the next three games. Of course, I’m not projecting those games (potential losses) into the field here.

Bids by Conference: Big 12 (6), ACC (6), Big Ten (6), Pac-12 (6), SEC (5), AAC (5), Big East (4), Atlantic 10 (4), Mountain West (2), WCC (2)

First Four Out: Dayton, Oregon, Georgetown, Ole Miss

The full bracket is after the jump:

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The first full week of February has come and gone and with that another thrilling week of college basketball. The Big Ten race is no clearer than it was a week ago, as #9 Michigan State and #12 Michigan continue to keep pace with one another. The injury-laden Spartans are now 9-2 in conference play after a victory Thursday over Penn State and a narrow loss Sunday at #24 Wisconsin. The Wolverines are also now 9-2 in conference play after a blowout victory Wednesday over Nebraska and a decisive defeat Saturday at the hands of #12 Iowa. With approximately a month to go in the regular season, it will be interesting to see whether either school can grab control of the conference lead or if this close race will go down to the very end. In other movement, previously #20 Oklahoma State continued its free fall last week, as the Cowboys fell at home to #15 Iowa State on Monday and suffered a fairly surprising road defeat Saturday at Texas Tech. Just two weeks ago, Oklahoma State was sitting pretty at #9 in the RTC25 and is now an unranked team that will be without its most critical player for the next three games. This goes to show that the unexpected should become the expected in college basketball. The quick n’ dirty analysis of this week’s poll is after the jump.

Quick n’ dirty analysis.

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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.

College basketball had its Richard Sherman moment Saturday night in Lubbock, Texas, as Oklahoma State superstar Marcus Smart shoved a notable Texas Tech fan named Jeff Orr to spark a flurry of discussion via Twitter. Even if you weren’t watching the Cowboys suffer their fourth consecutive loss, one quick check of your news feed would have immediately brought the story to your attention, along with varying opinions and perspective surrounding the incident. We now know that Smart has been suspended for three games. Below is how the story evolved from the initial reaction up through Sunday’s announcement of Smart’s suspension.

The Initial Reaction

It all started — for me at least — with a Vine of the Smart shove posted by CBSSports.com‘s Matt Norlander:

Wow. Suspension? RT @MattNorlander: Marcus Smart pushes a fan/older man. Video https://t.co/jRczeykegj

— Nick Fasulo (@nickfasuloSBN) February 9, 2014

Within minutes, everyone had responded to the shove.  Some people immediately knew a developing story was afoot. The very first with the trigger was Pat Forde:

Good lord Marcus Smart just lost his mind. Shoved a fan at Texas tech.

— Pat Forde (@YahooForde) February 9, 2014

The subsequent knee-jerk tweets are fascinating to look back on. Certainly nobody is in the wrong, but based on what we learned, these now feel like nascent observations.

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1. By now you have heard that Marcus Smart has been suspended for three games for shoving an Oklahoma State fan (press conference quotes here). You have have probably formed an opinion about the incident as well as Smart and the fan (reportedly a longtime Texas Tech fan named Jeff Orr, who denies using a racial slur). As we stated when the incident occurred there is more than enough blame to go around to both parties here (including the officials and Oklahoma State coaches who let Smart stay in the game and on the court, respectively), but it is pointless to try to assign relative degrees of blame. The unfortunate thing for Smart is that this will be part of his legacy no matter what he accomplishes (see Bobby Knight and his chair). Hopefully he and the fan can learn from the incident and grow from it.
2. The incident in Lubbock was not the only ugly one involving fans as Oregon coaches are reporting that an Arizona State student repeatedly spit on two Oregon staff members after Saturday’s game. According to Oregon, the same student also spit on staff members at halftime as the set up in Tempe requires the visiting team to walk between two student sections on their way to the locker room. Oregon declined to press charges so we probably will not find out the identity of the student, who will probably still be punished by the school. This incident has already been overshadowed by the Marcus Smart one because the staff did not react physically to the fan and they are not nearly as well-known as Smart, but it is no less troubling.
   
3. The Marcus Smart and Oregon incidents will overshadow it (along with the Sochi Olympics and the Michael Sam announcement), but the bigger news in terms of its impact on this college basketball season and the eventual national champion may have come out of East Lansing as Michigan State announced that Keith Appling would be “out for a couple weeks” with a wrist injury. This is the same wrist injury that has been bothering Appling for much of the season and only adds to the growing list of injuries that the Spartans are dealing with this season. When they are healthy there probably is not a better team in the country than Michigan State, but the problem is how infrequently they have been healthy this season and at this rate we are not sure if we will see a healthy Michigan State team this season.
4. Adam Silver, the new NBA commissioner, reportedly wants a higher NBA age limit raising the age from 19 years old to 20 years old. From a selfish college basketball fan perspective we would love this as it would most likely give us an extra year of college basketball for the best players assuming they decide not to go the Brandon Jennings route and play overseas. Realistically and practically we do not see it happening because as is the current age limit is on tenuous legal ground and it seems unlikely that the NBA Players Association would be willing to acquiesce to this even if it would theoretically give current members an extra year of roster protection from college players. So unless the owners are willing to give the Players Association major concessions on salaries/revenue sharing, which we do not see happening, we would not expect to see this change any time soon.
5. A lot of people like to throw out various advanced metrics, but few do as good of a job explaining them as Ken Pomeroy does when he takes the time to blog about them. His most recent entry on looking at the factors that contribute to average possession length is a pretty thorough tutorial on why advanced metrics can be so useful. Essentially what it does it boils down several smaller factors into a more meaningful overall stat. There are certainly some limits to what they can be used for, but the field is an evolving one and will continue to get better.

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.

West of Lawrence, Kansas, there may be no better home court than either of the two I visited to start this trip. The folks at UCLA, Gonzaga and Utah State might all have reasonable gripes (especially Bruins fans) with that assertion, but back-to-back nights at The Pit and McKale Center is about as good as college basketball can get. Some 450 miles separate the two universities, so six hours of driving (which included a successful journey through Truth or Consequences, New Mexico) brought me to Tucson to watch Arizona host Oregon.

There’s No Doubt About It — Arizona’s McKale Center Is One Of College Hoops’ Grandest Stages

The obvious storyline entering last night’s game was how the Wildcats would bounce back from not only their first loss of the season, but also the season-ending injury suffered last weekend by Brandon Ashley. Not surprisingly, the hoops-savvy McKale faithful were keyed in on Ashley’s absence (and its impact) throughout the evening. It began in pregame warmups, when Ashley’s crutch-waving at midcourt fomented the student section into a moderate frenzy, and continued when his replacement in the starting lineup, freshman Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, received the loudest ovation of any Wildcat during introductions.

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What’s Trending is a column examining the week that was in college basketball social media. Nick Fasulo (@nickfasuloSBN) is your weekly host.

Chris Walker Debuts for Florida

Finally, after sitting out the Gators first 21 games of the season, the much-hyped freshman Chris Walker made his first appearance for Billy Donovan.

The highly anticipated debut left us with a definitive highlight, but it was not really related to Walker’s box score.

Chris Walker's hickey tattoos put Kenyon Martin's to shame: http://t.co/okrSL1TNr2 pic.twitter.com/dbQfTvdXTb

— LostLettermen.com (@LostLettermen) February 5, 2014

Are we sure Chris Walker has three tattoos of lips on his neck or might he have had a spectacular pregame makeout session?

— Joe Walljasper (@JoeWalljasper) February 5, 2014

A Sea of Golden Bears Fans

Perhaps it is the look yellow and blue gives when a filter is applied, but there’s  an abundance of gorgeous pictures and videos that were captured from Saturday’s wild scene at Haas Pavilion following Cal’s upset of then undefeated and No. 1 Arizona. Click on the image below or here to browse through the entire feed from Instagram.

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1. Rashad Vaughn Ready To Decide

Five-star shooting guard Rashad Vaughn was supposed to be getting ready for his official visit to North Carolina on February 15, but instead decided that he was ready to end the recruiting process. On Tuesday, the 6’5” Vaughn tweeted that he would be making his college decision on Saturday.

Where will Rashad Vaughn end up? Iowa State, UNLV, UNC, or Kentucky?

Currently ranked as the No. 2 shooting guard in the country and No. 13 overall, Vaughn will decide between UNLV, Iowa State, UNC and Kentucky. The only two schools that received official visits were Iowa State and UNLV, with those visits taking place on November 8 and November 25, respectively. Vaughn took an unofficial visit to Chapel Hill last year with his mentor Pete Kaffey, but he never made it to Lexington. Vaughn currently plays for Findlay Prep (NV) after transferring from his hometown school in Minnesota. Whichever school gets Vaughn will land one of the top scorers and a guard that will contribute from Day 1.

The contenders:

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1. If you have watched many Michigan State games this season you have probably heard about the friendship that Adreian Payne has developed with Lacey Holsworth, an eight-year-old who is being treated for a neuroblastoma. Jason King has a phenomenal story on not only the friendship that Payne and Holsworth have developed, but also the obstacles that Payne has overcome to get to where he is today. Outside of the stories regarding Payne and Holsworth our favorite part of the column is how Payne kept John Calipari waiting for an hour because Payne wanted to finish his tutoring session after Calipari had taken a helicopter there to meet him during Payne’s recruitment.
2. We are nearly a month away from the NCAA Tournament, but we can already say that Creighton will be one of the most intriguing teams in the field. Not only do they have the National Player of the Year in Doug McDermott (you can already send him all the trophies and plaques) and one of the most ridiculous deep threats in the country in Ethan Wragge, but they also have one of the worst defenses among contenders in the country, which means they should be playing highly entertaining games. Now it appears that they may be on the verge of getting back starting point guard Grant Gibbs, who has been out since January 7 after injuring his knee. According to Gibbs there is a chance that he could play as early as tonight against DePaul. The addition of Gibbs, who was averaging 6.1 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game, would make the Bluejays an even more dangerous team in March.
3. Tarik Black may not be producing the kind of numbers that one would have expected based on the attention his transfer to Kansas generated (for the record, we questioned Black’s utility when schools were chasing after him), but it appears that he has caught the eyes of some individuals as a pro prospect. Perhaps not surprisingly those individuals–Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in particular–are looking at Black as a potential NFL tight end. Given Black’s size and the success of former college basketball players Tony Gonzalez, Antonio Gates, and Jimmy Graham (and Black’s lack of production on the basketball court) it certainly seems like a feasible option. We will be interested to see how many moderately successful college basketball players decide to pursue this path rather than head overseas to play professional basketball.
4. Every week Luke Winn’s Power Rankings are filled with a veritable smorgasbord of useful statistics, but usually one or two jump out at us as particularly interesting. This week’s edition is no different as the stat that jumps out at us is how dependent Syracuse is on Trevor Cooney for its three-point shooting as he accounts for 57.1% of the team’s made three-pointers. Only Marcus Paige at North Carolina accounts for a higher percentage at 57.6%. As Winn notes it is risky to rely so heavily on one individual for three-point shooting and it could end up being one of Syracuse’s weaknesses in March that many have overlooked thus far.
5. On our podcast a few weeks ago Ken Pomeroy talked about the growing influence of advanced metrics at the NBA level and how it is so far beyond anything we saw at the college level. As Kirk Goldberry details these metrics are promising to analyze every move a player makes on the court. If what Goldberry says is true this movement should revolutionize how we analyze players in much the same way that advanced metrics have revolutionized the way baseball players are evaluated. However, as Pomeroy also noted college basketball is pretty far behind the NBA so it will be a long time before we see it at the college level.

Kenny Ocker (@kennyocker) is a national columnist for Rush The Court and spent way too much time on these articles.

With the calendar turned to February and the meat of conference play upon us, the most dominant and least effective teams are showing their colors against equal competition. And with the halfway point of conference season rapidly approaching for many – and already here for others – now is a good time to take stock of both teams that are undefeated in conference and those who have yet to win. Tuesday’s installment took a look at the less fortunate teams among us, ranked from least likely to most to not win a game in conference play. Today, we do the same, but with the 10 teams still undefeated in conference play.

Note: All statistics dutifully harvested from kenpom.com.

Syracuse (22-0, 9-0 Atlantic Coast Conference)

Jim Boeheim has done a masterful job managing his lineup. But will the grind of the ACC season catch up to the Orange? (Getty)

• Odds: 1.8 percent chance to go undefeated
• Most likely losses: Feb. 22 at Duke, 67 percent; March 1 at Virginia, 59 percent
• Biggest strength: Top 10 offense; defensively, second in block rate and steal rate
• Achilles’ heel: Middle-of-the-road free-throw shooting
• Key player: Freshman point guard Tyler Ennis (12.1 points per game, 5.6 assists per game, 2.3 steals per game; plays more of his team’s minutes than any other power conference freshman)
• Outlook: Syracuse’s chances of going undefeated are not equal to their chances of beating the teams on this list. (In fact, I’d take the Orange in each match-up, and I hope that the team most likely to go undefeated and this Syracuse squad end up facing off in the NCAA Tournament, because that would be one hell of a game.) But the Orange still have to go into Cameron Indoor Stadium to face a Duke team that took them to overtime in Syracuse in an instant classic this past weekend. They also have to travel to Virginia and former Big East rival Pittsburgh in the regular season, which are the three toughest away games on their entire schedule. Syracuse has played a grind-it-out slow tempo this season, its seventh straight in which its pace of play has slowed down, going from 27th in tempo in 2007-08 to 344th of 351 teams in 2013-14. That slow tempo lets coach Jim Boeheim play six to seven players regularly, and his starters have played tons of minutes, which could be a big problem as the season drags on or, heaven forbid, a core player gets hurt.

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