1. The NCAA has taken a lot of criticism, but we have to give them credit for coming to their senses and granting Kerwin Okoro a hardship waiver after transferring from Iowa State to Rutgers. The NCAA has managed to make plenty of highly questionable decisions over the years, but Okoro’s struck a chord due to callousness of it. We have questioned the NCAA’s at times over the top willingness to grant family hardship waivers to players who had some distant relative who was sick or a father who lost or quit a job as a coach. In the case of Okoro, the NCAA denied his request to transfer to be closer to his family after his father and brother died within a span of three months presumably because they were already dead (I know stupid). In the end, the NCAA corrected itself so Okoro will get what he deserved in the first place.
2. Before we start to sound like NCAA homers, we should point out that we don’t agree with their decision to ban college coaches from attending practices at schools that are not underneath a governing body. The decision appears to target two schools–Findlay Prep and Huntington Prep–that produce an abundance of Division I talent so we suspect that coaches will be after the NCAA to reverse this. We can certainly understand the NCAA’s desire to cut down on diploma mills (not calling either of these programs that), but we are not sure what this accomplishes. The coaches will still be able to watch the recruits in games. This just makes it more difficult for recruits to catch the attention of a coach and slows down the process of recruitment. We also are not sure why they singled out these two schools as the ruling opens up a huge can of worms. Our best guess is that this ruling will get amended very quickly.
3. Although they missed out on Emmanuel Mudiay, Kentucky got a nice consolation prize in Tyler Ulis, a four-star point guard, who committed to Kentucky on Friday night. With Andrew Harrison a likely one-and-done player it was essential that Kentucky get a point guard to replace him and after missing out on Mudiay it appeared that they were essentially down to Ulis or Tyus Jones, who is believed to be a Duke lean at this point. Kentucky beat out Michigan State and Iowa for Ulis’ services. The one catch with Ulis is his size, or lack thereof, as he measures just 5’9″ and around 150 pounds. We would never doubt John Calipari’s eye for talent (or at least his ability to recruit it), but this will certainly be something to watch for when Ulis presumably comes in as Wildcats starting point guard in 2014.
4. It turns out that there is one more elite point guard in the class of 2014 who is still up for grabs after Louisville commit JaQuan Lyle backed out of his verbal commitment. Lyle is the second top point guard prospect to decommit from Louisville since July as he is following Quentin Snider, who backed out of his commitment from Louisville to commit to Illinois. It appears that the primary reason for Lyle’s decision was concern over playing time in a crowded Cardinal backcourt. We are a bit surprised that a player who is a top-25 overall recruit would be that worried about getting playing time on a team that admittedly has plenty of talent, but is not loaded with first round talent. Although Lyle has listed several teams, Kansas is the clear leader if they are willing to extend Lyle a scholarship.
5. On Friday we mentioned the very real possibility that Syracuse and Georgetown would restart their rivalry even after they moved to different conferences. We hoped that they would serve as an example for other schools that had abandoned rivalries due to conference realignment. Based on a recent radio interview with Mike Krzyzewski it appears that it is unlikely that Duke will resume playing Maryland anytime soon. In between criticizing conference realignment, Krzyzewski essentially said he did not think that the two schools would play unless they were paired against each other in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge (this is your chance, ESPN). We understand the logistical challenges of  scheduling non-conference opponents with the increasing size of conference schedules, but there are certain match-ups that we think should happen on a not infrequent basis and this is definitely one of them.

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

Conference realignment is destructive and all-powerful. It is not all-conquering. The most recent frenzy of shifting league alliances, fueled by a nauseating blend of football, greedy athletic department officials and lavish broadcast rights deals, prompted all kinds of doomsday scenarios for college basketball. At one point, as the Big 12 inched closer and closer to a landscape-altering implosion, it looked as if Kansas, one of the true bluebloods of the sport, would be left without a conference to play hoops in. We actually reached the point where Kansas joining the Mountain West was a real, imminent thing. You know what happened next. The Big 12 survived, and the Jayhawks continued to win conference championships without blinking. The Border War – Missouri and Kansas’ long-standing rivalry, which dates back to a bitter slavery-motivated Civil War-era feud – was lost with Missouri’s move to the SEC, and a host of defections from the old Big East led to the creation of a new hoops-only Big East and a super-charged ACC. But in hindsight, the movement was less injurious for college hoops than most predicted early on.

The extension of the SU-GU rivalry should motivate others to remake similar games into annual nonconference fixtures (AP Photo).

The biggest casualty? Rivalries. I mentioned the Border war, but the Georgetown–Syracuse hatefest – which reached peak intensity in 1980 when John Thompson II ended the Orange’s 57-game winning streak at the old Manley Fieldhouse, Syracuse’s home before the Carrier Dome – was also cast aside by conference switches. The Hoyas and Orange had played their last game as co-members of the Big East last season – including a thrilling, emotional overtime match-up in the Big East Tournament semifinals – and unless the two schools came together and decided to rekindle the rivalry outside of league play, college basketball would lose another of its great annual hate-filled match-ups. Syracuse and Georgetown were parting ways, but was there a legitimate reason they couldn’t they toss scheduling logistics and lopsided recruiting benefits (the Orange playing in talent-rich Washington D.C. is eons more valuable than the Hoyas traveling up to the great rural countryside of Syracuse, NY) aside, and agree to some sort of home-and-home arrangement? Was there really no hope? Syracuse had already schedule out-of-conference series with former Big East rivals Syracuse and Villanova, after all. Setting something up with Georgetown seemed like the logical next move.

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1. When last season ended many college basketball fans bemoaned the end of some of college basketball’s most significant rivalries including Georgetown–Syracuse. Both of last season’s match-ups between the two schools were hailed with a great degree of anticipation as they were expected to be the last time the rivals faced off for the foreseeable future and rightfully so. Well except for the fact that the two schools are now reportedly negotiating a ten-year deal that we would bring back the rivalry again. According to Syracuse officials their side has agreed to the “concept” of it, but are still waiting on a response from Georgetown officials. For his part, Georgetown coach John Thompson III also appears to be in favor of this. We doubt that there is anybody who would oppose rekindling the rivalry on purely basketball terms so we hope that conference and administrative politics do not get in the way of one of the best rivalries in college sports.
2. The deicision by Quentin Snider, a point guard who is ranked 28th overall in the class of 2014, to commit to Illinois over UCLA is a huge get for John Groce. The second year coach already had picked up a commitment earlier this month from Leron Black, a power forward ranked 36th overall, so this is shaping up to be one of the better classes in recent memory for the Illini. On the other end of the spectrum, this is a fairly significant blow for the Bruins who lost out of Jordan McLaughlin one day earlier. The Bruins should be able to weather the storm thanks to the presence of Kyle Anderson who will probably be staying at UCLA longer than he anticipated, but it still raises questions as to who will succeed him when he eventually leaves.
3. According to Myron Medcalf, Wichita State freshman guard D.J. Bowles underwent an unspecified surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota yesterday morning. Bowles had gone to Mayo earlier this week where he underwent a series of tests after collapsing while working out on September 3. We have no idea as to what kind of surgery Bowles underwent or when (if ever) he is expected to return to the court as the Wichita State staff is appropriately releasing extremely limited information. We could speculate as to what type of procedure Bowles had, but instead we will just wish him the best of luck in his recovery.
4. It turns out that schools with limited resources and questionable academic standards are not the only ones with issues with APR scores. A column in The Harvard Crimson earlier this week pointed out the relatively low APR scores of many programs including men’s basketball. Now, we will start off by saying that Harvard‘s APR scores for basketball are well above the numbers required to participate in the NCAA Tournament, but the article and more specifically the comments, which appear to be from Harvard students and alumni, indicate some of the sociological issues–seen more clearly in the big academic fraud scandal at the school a year ago–within the campus and these APR scores only seem to add to that.
5. We are getting to that point in the year where various publications start unveiling their preseason All-American teams. The Sporting News is one of the first we have seen and for the most part we tend to agree with their picks (you can watch the video and ignore the slideshow if you refuse to click through a slideshow). Our biggest issue with their first team is also their biggest issue with their first team, which is the omission of Julius Randle. To be fair it is hard to criticize them for leaving off a freshman, but we probably would have given him the nod over Mitch McGary. There should be plenty of other preseason All-American lists coming out over the next month or two, but we suspect that most of them will look fairly similar to this one.

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

Dunk City was short-lived and it was awesome. Those are the two descriptions that pop into one’s head when you look back on Florida Gulf Coast’s headline-grabbing run to the last season’s Sweet 16. The Eagles didn’t just beat second seeded Georgetown and seventh seeded San Diego State in succession, they played some of the most ostentatious, brazen, high-flying hoops March Madness has ever seen. Florida Gulf Coast would have been a huge national story (which it was) even without the alluring mystery surrounding its Wall Street-bred head coach and his supermodel wife. All the elements – the highlight reel alley-oops, the beach-side campus dorms, the rollicking on-court celebrations, under-recruited point guard Brett Comer’s neglected high school basketball career, the immense branding and academic exposure the Eagles’ run granted the barely two decades-old university, Andy Enfield’s wife – made the Eagles America’s collective sweetheart. Florida Gulf Coast’s reign was brief, but it was brilliant. No one will forget Dunk City.

With his first big recruit in tow, Enfield is acquiting himself well in his new job (AP Photo).

Nor did prospective employers believe the man behind the madness, Enfield, just happened to get hot at the right time – the typical formula for big NCAA Tournament upsets. The moment Florida finished off its humbling 12-point Sweet 16 win over the Eagles, Enfield became one of the nation’s hottest head coaching candidates not named Brad Stevens (Speaking of which: miss you, Brad). His name was floated about the college hoops coaching carousel, though for a time it seemed no one was convinced (after just two NCAA Tournament wins), that Enfield had more to prove before landing a high-major job – until USC finally, with immense outside apprehension, took a leap of faith with Dunk City’s creative genius. A lot of people were dubious about USC’s perceived decision to hire a coach because of two impressive wins in a wacky, unpredictable, upset-breeding ground of a single-elimination basketball tournament.

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

Recruiting has never been as simple as John Calipari makes it look. Winning national championships, plucking the annual Rivals Top 150 of its very best talent, sending them off to the NBA Draft, and  grinning with every lottery selection. It is a self-sustaining cycle, and it has long since worked. That’s the part that makes sense. Most coaches don’t have the luxury of bringing in six McDonald’s All Americans to an iconic, tradition-laden program – so they use scouting acumen, and developmental prognostication, to find the best players the best teams have neglected (or temporarily dismissed) and scoop them up before engaging in a recruiting battle they can’t possibly win. Most high-major programs offer their own uniquely attractive features, true–even non-bluebloods offer variously amenities and benefits many top high schoolers find appealing. But generally, their job is more difficult than John Calipari’s. At this point, Calipari’s program basically recruits itself (Calipari is a terrific recruiter on his own merits, and he’s been in battles for top players with other big-name programs before, but there are a number of factors – program, coaching history, track record of NBA preparation – that give him a leg up on competitors). Most other coaches need to do a lot more heavy lifting before landing the players they sign.

From national championships to alumni games, Calipari has no rival on the recruiting trail (Getty Images)

Not only does he boast those obvious advantages, Calipari has a few recruiting tricks up his sleeve that he can pull out at a moment’s notice. There was the famous Jay-Z incident, in which the hip-hop mogul visited Kentucky’s locker room after the Wildcats advanced to the 2011 Final Four, not to mention his backstage access to Hov’s Barclays Center-opening concert. Or the controversial “greatest day in the history of the program” remark, which referred to Kentucky’s landmark five first-round selections in the 2010 draft, a statement representative of Calipari’s desire to – above winning championships, even – turn the high schoolers he recruits into wealthy professional basketball players using one year of Kentucky-based tutelage as their developmental pathway (in lieu of the impossible solution: the abolition of the NBA’s 19-year-old age limit). And then, my personal favorite: Calipari apologizing to recruits in June 2012 because “I’m spending the majority of my time answering questions from NBA teams about my six guys.” The subtle brilliance of that tweet is everlasting; sorry, five-star high school hoops stars of the world, but I’m busy talking to NBA scouts.Your questions will have to wait. It’s perfect.

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1. Yesterday was the 12th anniversary of one of the most horrifying days in American history. You undoubtedly read, heard, or watched many individuals discuss their experiences during that day and afterwards. While most of the coverage focused on first responders and people directly affected by the attack the events of that day affected people in this country in all walks of life including college basketball. Jeff Eisenberg was able to speak with several coaches about their memories of that day. In many ways, we have moved on from the events of that day (for better and worse), but as anybody who is old enough to remember the events of that day will tell you it is something we will never forget.
2. Over the past month USC has picked up several transfers. Yesterday, Andy Enfield picked up his first significant high school recruit as Jordan McLaughlin committed to play for the Trojans. McLaughlin, the #4 point guard and #18 overall recruit in the class of 2014 [Ed. Note: He is #43 according to Rivals], chose USC over UCLA, Indiana, and Kansas. Given the dearth of backcourt talent at USC, McLaughlin should be able to step right into the role of starter for the Trojans. The one issue this will raise for USC is with Katin Reinhardt, who transferred from UNLV to play point guard to increase his chances of playing in the NBA. The arrival of McLaughlin–an actual point guard–might affect the team’s chemistry if Reinhardt is unwilling to accept a subordinate role in the backcourt.
3. With McLaughlin committing, there is one less elite point guard recruit available and according to reports another one–Tyler Ulis–is on the verge of committing too. Ulis is said to be deciding between Iowa, Kentucky, and Michigan State. Ulis will make his announcement on Friday at 8:20 PM ET with the live coverage being provided by High School Cube News. The addition of Ulis would be big for any of the three programs, but is considered particularly important for Kentucky who lost out on Emmanuel Mudiay and will likely lose Andrew Harrison to the NBA Draft after this season.
4.  The team that Bobby Hurley inherited at Buffalo contained some excellent building blocks, but the Duke legend also appears to be quite adept at recruiting as he managed to land Lamonte Bearden, a 4-star point guard out of Wisconsin. Hurley managed to convince Bearden to come to Buffalo over Oregon State, Saint Louis, and San Francisco although there are some reports that his grades may have cooled his recruitment by those schools. If Hurley is able to get Bearden to campus and eligible to play, it would be one of the more impressive recruiting jobs for this year’s class that we have seen.
5. Sports Illustrated released the second part of its five-part investigative series on Oklahoma State‘s football program yesterday. This part focused on the questionable academic standards required of the team. The series has managed to inspire the expected outrage from Cowboy fans, but as we mentioned on Twitter yesterday the outrage seems to be much less than it was for Miami and almost seems muted. As for our overall reaction to this series and others like it is that while we can appreciate the amount of work that goes into it, we feel as though the work and outrage is incorrectly directed at the programs when instead we as a society should be focusing on the culture around these institutions and society at large that allows this type of behavior to happen.

1. When Luke Winn recently wrote about the up-transfer phenomenon his examples were typically players whose performance exceeded the expectation of observers allowing them to move up a level of play. Robert Upshaw, a top-50 recruit coming out of high school, does not quite fit into that category. During his freshman season at Fresno State Upshaw averaged 4.1 points and 3.8 rebounds per game before being dismissed from the team this summer. Despite his poor performance Upshaw will be one of Winn’s up-transfers as he is heading to Washington. For his part Upshaw has acknowledged that he “had some maturity issues” while at Fresno State so hopefully he can turn his career around and fulfill some of the promise he showed coming out of high school.
2. By now you have probably read the piece by Doug Gottlieb analyzing the controversy surrounding Johnny Manziel and the media’s coverage of the situation. While Gottlieb is very eloquent with his analysis of Manziel’s situation and open in how he relates it to his own well-chronicled ordeals we are not sure his column is necessarily as strong of an argument against paying student-athletes as some would believe. We can certainly see Gottlieb’s argument and student-athletes are given much more than many observers would like to believe, but the reality is that there are certain individuals who if allowed to utilize free-market forces would certain generate significant sums of money. Of course, as we have pointed out in the past this entire issue is much more complex economically and politically than most pundits have stated.
3. Florida State may have lost out on Xavier Rathan-Mayes (at least temporarily) after he was ruled academically eligible for the coming season, but they got a nice consolation yesterday when Cinmeon Bowers, a 6’6″ junior college forward who averaged 11 points and seven rebounds last season, committed to play for the Seminoles. Bowers, like Rathan-Mayes, was heavily recruited by the Seminoles, but initially failed to qualify academically leading to his time at Chipola Junior College. Bowers fielded quite a few offers and was reportedly also seriously considering Louisville and Memphis, but eventually opted to stay in the area. Bowers will be eligible to play during the 2014-15 season, which is the same point that Rathan-Mayes could become eligible too potentially providing the Seminoles with a much-needed boost.
4. Yesterday, Sports Illustrated released the first part of its five-part series detailing its 10-month investigation into Oklahoma State and its football program. While the investigation focuses on the football program and we are a basketball site, we thought the public reaction to the story (admittedly to only one-fifth of the story) was interesting in how little the media reacted to this story as we predicted in yesterday’s Morning 5 given how worked up they got over a fairly similar story about Miami just a few years ago. Perhaps the most interesting reaction to the report was the reaction of Jason Whitlock to Thayer Evans and the lack of support Evans got from other media members.
5. For your incredibly awkward link of the day we will turn to Durham where Mike Krzyzewski recently discussed his encounter with Jay-Z and Beyonce. After introducing LeBron James as Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year, Krzyzewski took his seat and noticed a pair of empty seats that were eventually filled by the couple who are arguably the most influential couple in music. While Krzyzewski reports that he is a fan of Jay-Z (we have a hard time imagining Krzyzewski listening along to almost any of Jay-Z’s music), he claims to be “madly in love with Beyonce”. What happened next according to Krzyzewski appears to be an encounter that was not much different than Chris Farley’s famous Saturday Night Live interview with Paul McCartney.

Bennet Hayes is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @HoopsTraveler.

Selection Sunday rarely leaves us unsatisfied. Sure, there will be questionable inclusions in the field and a handful of notables left out of the bracket, but give me a shout when you find a college basketball fan who counts themselves as a Selection Sunday detractor. The same cannot be said when it comes to the fad that is quickly becoming college basketball’s second most important selection process – the immediate eligibility transfer waiver. Maybe we are all a bit starved for relevant college hoops information, but in these dog days of summer the NCAA’s administration of the transfer waiver has become a definite hot-button topic. Two cases in particular have stirred the pot: the rejection of Rutgers transfer Kerwin Okoro, who lost two family members within a year and sought to be closer to the rest of his family, and the denial of wannabe Minnesota Golden Gopher Raheem Buckles due to FIU’s APR issues, but only after a former FIU teammate was granted the same waiver that Buckles sought. Many different outlets have weighed in on the issue, but only one thing is clear – there is no perfect solution.

Kerwin Okoro’s Failed Immediate Eligibility Hardship Waiver Has Left Many Asking For Answers From The NCAA (Credit: WNCN.com)

One of the more supportive analyses of the NCAA and their waiver selection process comes from John Infante, who believes that in the big picture, “the waiver system is one of the NCAA’s success stories.” He does admit to the many individual failings when it comes to the enactment of the system and clamors for increased transparency, but the above point is one that many seem to miss. There may have been a number of cases, especially of late, that don’t seem fair, but we forget how many lives have been aided due to the existence of the waiver. Critics of the mere existence of the hardship waiver will argue that a player is free to transfer closer to home even without a waiver, but sitting that year out on the court is a sacrifice that should not be overlooked. Most of these kids have spent their entire lives building for these four years of basketball. Even severely ill (and selfless) parents may seek to avoid them missing that year on the floor, and potentially at all costs. The hardship waiver removes that gut-wrenching decision for student-athletes and their families. As Infante argues, it would be great to know a little more about the process behind the decision-making, but there are student-athletes out there whose lives have been unequivocally improved as a result of the waiver.

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1. We are still trying to piece together the news about BYU coach Dave Rose, who reportedly had “cancerous spots” removed during a semi-annual screening that he has after being diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2009. By its nature, this finding was likely asymptomatic and given the vague nature of the description we do not even know where these “cancerous spots” were located in his gastrointestinal tract. However, based on the report the intervention appears to have been successful and Rose is expected to be back with the team by October 7 when they officially start practice.
2. After a year spent in NCAA Tournament purgatory for their low APR scores Connecticut seems primed to potentially make a run this coming March. Those plans appear to have taken a slight detour after the school announced that forward Tyler Olander had been suspended indefinitely for what was initially reported to be a violation of team rules (later found out to be a DUI). Although Olander put up modest numbers last season (4.3 points and 3.7 rebounds per game) he was expected to play significant minutes for a team that is lacking on depth on the inside. We are unsure of how long Olander’s suspension will last, but we suspect that it will be for at least a few games since Olander was also arrested in March for trespassing while on Spring Break in Panama City.
3. One would think that being the head of a program that was embarrassed in front of a national audience less than half a year ago would you a pariah, but that does not appear to be the case of recently disgraced Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti. Pernetti, who was widely blamed for the school’s failure to react to Mike Rice’s actions, has somehow landed a job as Chief Business Officer of New York City Football Club. Now we have no idea how prestigious the job is (obviously it is a step down from Rutgers), but the fact that he was able to land a job with a professional sports team (ok, they don’t start playing until 2015) speaks volumes for how easily administrators and business people are willing to overlook such ridiculous behavior.
4. We have been critical of the ways that colleges recruit and get commitments out of kids who are often still in middle school. So it may come as a surprise that we support the decision by Bradley to sign two brothers who are still in elementary school. The decision to sign the brothers–Johnah and Jarrett Sahrs–is not the result of some ridiculous YouTube video or even some coach looking to make a recruiting splash, but instead it is the result of five year-old Johnah’s 18-month battle with a high-grade neuroblastoma that he has fought with Jarrett, his nine year-old brother by his side. Obviously, these two have much bigger things to deal with than being part of the Bradley basketball team, but it was a nice touch by the school to help lift their spirits.
5. If you are a Louisville fan and/or want to support a good cause, the school is selling pieces of this past season’s Final Four floor with proceeds going towards pediatric cancer research. With prices ranging for $99.99 for a 9″ x 12″ plaque with a section of floor on it to $499.99 for a 18″ x 13″ piece signed by Rick Pitino (“limited” to only 1,000 pieces) there is a pretty good chance that this sale will top the $200,000 that Kentucky reportedly earned last year for a similar sale. While the $499.99 price might seem ridiculous to some it is going towards a good cause and given the state of the economy (or at least the stock market) we wouldn’t be surprised to see many of those pieces sell.

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

If there was any debate about who is the most influential sports figure on Michigan State’s campus, a funny exchange before Saturday’s Spartans home football game against South Florida effectively ended it. One week after some Michigan State students refused to leave the student section when inclement weather prompted an evacuation from Spartan Stadium bleachers, athletic director Mark Hollis – known to college hoops fans more for his innovative non-conference scheduling endeavors than anything else – used a different method to urge fans to depart the bleachers when thunderstorms approached the area. He summoned basketball coach Tom Izzo, a man no Spartans fan (or even college basketball fan) could possibly ignore (or even slightly resent), to hasten students’ exodus from Spartan Stadium. Only there was a trade-off: in exchange for leaving their seats, Izzo vowed to return to the student section when the game began. Mlive.com beat writer Diamond Leung captured this little back-and-forth, and Izzo, per usual, offered a few candidly humorous quips:

“I’m going to ask you for respect for of our university, myself and you guys,” Izzo told the crowd. “If you can just walk out and abide by it, I promise I’m going to come back and sit right in the middle of you when this game starts, all right?

“I’m going to watch you guys. Please do this for you, for me, for the university, as we show ourselves across the nation as the university that can get it done right. 

“I’m going to be right in the middle of you! Come on guys! I love you! I love you! Thank you so much for doing this! And you adults over there, all you adults, same thing! You adults, you better get out of here! It’s coming right over here! It’s coming, and it’s coming fast. Thank you so much. You’re the greatest fans in America, and I love you!”

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