Bennet Hayes is an RTC columnist. Be sure to tweet your disagreements with this column @HoopsTraveler.

You may have already caught it, but last week the Princeton Review released its annual list of the top 10 party schools in the country. This coronation of the most “festive” campuses across the country got us to thinking a little bit, and we wondered which schools best combine college basketball and partying. Unfortunately, it is only in a fantasy alternate reality that I have had the privilege of visiting the campuses of all 351 Division I basketball programs (now we all know how sad my dreams are), but with over 100 of them under my belt, including eight of the Princeton Review’s top 10 (Lehigh, really?), I feel at least somewhat qualified to create a list of the schools that best combine college basketball with extracurricular festivities. I’m only working off what I know here (i.e., the places I’ve personally been), and apologies if I went to the wrong frat party during my one night in town – we all swing and miss sometimes. So with those caveats in place, here are college basketball’s five best party schools – plus a few honorable mentions below those.

A Good Time Was Had By All

5. Missouri – Columbia, Missouri is one of the more underrated college towns in America. Not only the midpoint between Kansas City and St. Louis, the home to the Mizzou campus also lays claim to a lively downtown and massive student body as well as a pretty decent athletic program. The newest members of the SEC have made plenty of recent noise under Mike Anderson and now Frank Haith, and passers-through will not be disappointed by the post-game activities on and off East Broadway. Oh, and Shakespeare’s Pizza is an absolute must for food and libations before heading over to the game at Mizzou Arena.

4. Minnesota – Few college basketball arenas can match the eccentric personality of The Barn in Minneapolis, and it’s those little quirks that make Williams Arena the perfect spot to cozy up on a cold Minnesota night. The good but rarely great Gophers have been a bit of a tease over the last few years, but the program has a solid history, and win or lose, the streets outside the doors to the Barn have plenty of immediate options for eating and drinking. Finding a seat at Campus Pizza before or after a game will be a challenge, but well worth the effort if you can make it happen.

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

Covering college basketball year-round can, in the months not filled with actual college basketball, turn into a scavenger hunt for interesting topics to write about. We’ve just about hit the nadir of the offseason college hoops news cycle, and trust me, the next month or so could get even worse. Luckily, ESPN came through early this week with a totally awesome diversion – its release of the schedule, ordered in lockstep with the actual succession of games three months from now, for the 2013 24-hour Tip-Off Marathon, which begins at 7:00 PM on November 11. It’s become annual appointment viewing for college basketball dorks, myself humbly included, and the match-ups this year are just as enticing, if not more so, than anything the Mothership has lined up since the event’s christening. Now that I’ve explained the basics, and there’s nothing else to do during this offseason dry spell but anxiously await the start of games this fall, it’s as good a time as any to pick out the Marathon’s very best games, five of them – which will only have the effect of intensifying your craving for the beginning of the season. But hey, I pine for November just as much as you do. With our mutual longing for the upcoming season now recognized, let’s look ahead to one of the year’s best non-conference events. I’ll be waiting, caffeine and sugary comestibles in hand, buttocks planted to padded recliner, cathartically rejoicing after a long offseason spent, well, doing this.

The Marathon’s final match-up could be one of the best games of the season, full stop. (USA Today)

1. Duke vs. Kansas (November 12, 10:00 PM ET, ESPN)

This selection could have been predicted when ESPN released its highly-anticipated Champions Classic duo a long while ago. There are two match-ups to consider here. First, we get two of the most culturally impactful, nationally successful, blueblood-identifiable programs in the country squaring off in a potential Final Four, or even National Championship, preview. These teams are going to be good. The top-ranked freshmen they inherited this season are even better. Duke’s Jabari Parker and Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins are the main attractions — not just of this game, but of the entire college hoops season writ large; both are expected to enjoy wildly successful one-year stints in college, lead their respective teams on deep NCAA Tournament runs and land a spot in the NBA Draft lottery shortly thereafter. That process will get its formal introduction this November, in the second half of the Champion Classic’s cant-miss double-header (which coincides with the finale of the Tip-off Marathon). If you’re limiting your Marathon sampling size to just one game – first things first: I strongly urge you to reconsider – this is the game of choice, no doubt about it. It’s been a long time since college basketball has seen so much freshmen star power this enticing enter its ranks. Watching the very best of it, two generational NBA franchise-changers, going head-to-head during the first month of the season is a treat no fixture on the 2013-14 hoops calendar can possibly hope to live up to. Maybe the Final Four. Other than that? Nah.

2. Kentucky vs. Michigan State (November 12, 7:30 PM ET, ESPN)

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1. Every year ESPN’s 24 Hours of Basketball feature is one of the highlights of the early-season schedule. This year’s version should be no different as ESPN has another loaded slate. Outside of the obvious appeal of both games of the Champions Classic the most interesting aspect of the schedule to us is that Wichita State is scheduled to play at home at midnight. It goes without saying that Koch Arena at midnight will be crazy and we understand the need for smaller programs to accept awful tip times to get on national television, but Final Four teams should not have to do that. Aside from that the thing that sticks out to us is that it seems like a waste to pair VCU–Virginia and Florida-Wisconsin against Michigan State–Kentucky and Duke–Kansas respectively since on any other night
2. The latest question in the CBS Candid Coaches series asked which coach was most likely to be the next Andy Enfield. Unlike the poll that we linked to in yesterday’s Morning Five, this votes in this poll were more evenly distributed with Bryce Drew (15%), Mike White (12%), Will Wade (9%), and Steve Masiello (8%) leading the way. The selection of Drew as the top choice is not particularly surprising and you could argue that he might already be too well-known to be considered an Andy Enfield-type. The others are certainly less well-known and unless you follow mid-major basketball pretty closely you might not know about them. Of course, a year ago Enfield’s name probably would not have even registered in the “others receiving multiple votes” category so it is quite possible that the next Andy Enfield is not even on this list.
3. Over the years AAU coaches have been accused of doing a lot of sketchy things, but we have not heard of any who were charged with drug trafficking. That is until Curtis Malone, head of the well-known DC Assault team, was charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin. After a year-long investigation, the DEA searched Malone’s home last Friday and uncovered a kilogram of cocaine, 100 grams of heroin, a handgun, and other related items. While we will acknowledge the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” it is worth pointing out that Malone was convicted of distributing crack cocaine in 1991 so this would not be a completely new endeavor if the charges were proven to be true.
4. If you had any question as to why Texas has its own ESPN network the news that Texas led the nation in merchandise royalties for the eighth straight year for schools represented by Collegiate Licensing Company should clear things up for you. Clearly the majority of these sales are driven by the football program, which has historically been much more successful than the basketball program, but it speaks to the popularity of the program particularly when its two biggest sports (football and basketball) are going through what can best be described as a rough patch. The fact that seven or eight of the schools are in the South (depending on what you consider North Carolina) should come as no surprise given the fervor of their fans. It is worth noting that several prominent programs–Ohio State, Michigan State, Southern California, and Oregon–are not represented by Collegiate Licensing Company so those schools might approach Texas in terms of royalties particularly since they might be under a different payment structure than schools represented by Collegiate Licensing Company.
5. For those of you who have short attention spans we suggest you check out Andy Glockner’s Twitter-style season preview where he goes through the most prominent teams in the 2013-14 season. As you would suspect the previews are not exactly comprehensive, but for the purposes of an early August preview this should suffice for pretty much everybody. And if you are in the mood for something a little bit more in depth, you can be sure that those previews are on the way.

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

You can’t blame Jon Duncan for trying his level best. He assumed the NCAA’s Vice President of Enforcement position following the dismissal of Julie Roe Lach, one of the organization’s longest-tenured investigators, for her missteps in the investigation into rogue booster Nevin Shepiro’s alleged funneling of impermissible benefits to Miami football and basketball players. In the months since Lach’s dismissal, a swath of enforcement staffers have bolted on their own volition, the NCAA’s public approval rating has fallen to unforeseen depths, and the purpose of the organization’s sheer existence – long assumed a natural part of the college sports world order – has come under intense scrutiny from all corners. This is not a good time to be an NCAA enforcement official, and Duncan is merely attempting to do what’s best for the organization that employed him on an “interim basis” given the circumstances.

Improving the way the NCAA and athletic departments interact is a well-intentioned, yet mostly impractical, endeavor (Getty).

So when Duncan’s initiative to change the way enforcement staffers approach and conduct investigations was revealed last week, it was hard to view it as anything more than a feckless attempt to repair the NCAA investigators’ battered reputations. The most notable proposal was a program that plans to send members of the organization’s enforcement wing to various college campuses across the country. The hope, according to Duncan, who spoke to the Associated Press on Saturday, is to immerse enforcement folk in the culture and every day-operation of modern athletic departments.

“One of the things I hear is that our staff sometimes lacks an understanding of what campus life is really like,” Duncan said. “So we are piloting a program where our staff will work on campus with athletic directors, compliance staff members and coaches and walk in their shoes so that we have a true understanding of what goes on.”

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1. Early August is certainly a strange time for a team to announce that a player is transferring, but that appears to be the case for Mount Saint Mary’s, which granted Shivaughn Wiggins a release to transfer. Wiggins, the NEC Rookie of the Year last season, averaged 9.6 points, 2.2 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.2 steals per game last season. We have no idea where Wiggins is looking at transferring or what his reasons for transferring are, but we imagine there will be quite a few mid-major programs that will be looking for a player of his talents particularly with three more seasons of eligibility remaining.
2. The news that the rental car that was driven by P.J. Hairston had received 12 parking citations over a two-month period should not necessarily add any more weight to the case against Hairston, but given all of the evidence–circumstantial or otherwise–building up against Hairston it certainly does not help his case. It should be noted that it is unclear if Hairston was in possession of the car at this time and given the fact that the people handing over the keys to this car did not seem to be screening the drivers too closely it might be difficult ever finding that out. Still given the noise around Hairston somehow this has turned into another “major” story about him. We are assuming that North Carolina and Roy Williams will see through this (one of the few times that we can say that about a recent scandal at North Carolina) and wait for more evidence to come out. Of course, with the way things are going for Hairston this summer it might not be too long before that evidence comes out.
3. For the third part of their Candid Coaches series, the writers at CBS Sports asked coaches whether it is realistic to assume that they can prevent a player from accepting impermissible benefits. It is not surprising that 96% said they did not think it was realistic. Some of our more cynical readers might point out that this is somewhat self-serving in the event that the coaches get embroiled in a scandal, but we were more interested in the 4% (maybe one coach out of 25 since they do not specify how many coaches they talked to) who thinks that a coaching staff can prevent a player from doing so. We have read the reasoning behind his vote, but it seems incredibly naive. Coaches and programs can certainly do things to reduce the likelihood of these infractions, but it is ridiculous to think that it can be prevented completely.
4. The rest of the country may have football (or Breaking Bad) on their mind, but we are still counting down to the start of the college basketball season. With that in mind Seth Davis spoke with five prominent coaches–Travis Ford, Josh Pastner, Cuonzo Martin, Mark Few, and Steve Alford–to discuss their off-seasons and thoughts about the upcoming season. None of them gave any shocking quotes (or at least ones that Davis printed), but it was interesting to see how publicly confident they all seemed to be. We are particularly interested in seeing how Alford and Pastner react to their new school and conference over the next few months particularly since they are both in the most precarious situations of any of the five coaches interviewed.
5. Last week we linked to a story about former Northern Colorado assistant Christopher Craig and warnings that police had issued to local churches about the threat he posed. On Thursday, he was arrested for an outstanding misdemeanor drug possession warrant. Craig, who had been labelled an “Islamic jihadist”, was found with marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and shotgun shells. While this certainly is not the ideal outcome for Craig it is certainly a better resolution (for the time being) that what could have been envisioned when he was at large after having made threats against members of churches and was being pursued by authorities. We have no idea what was going on in Craig’s life, but we hope that he can straighten himself out.

1. After Jay Bilas’ crusade against the NCAA’s online store and its use of players names to sell memorabilia the NCAA announced yesterday that it would no longer sell merchandise affiliated with specific universities. To do so the NCAA will shut down the site temporarily while it scrubs any vestiges of its use of amateur athletes’ names for its own profit. Now the NCAA will supposedly only feature merchandise related to its championship events. We are assuming that this merchandise will be allowed to feature the logos or names of the teams competing for those championships or we suspect that those items will not sell either. Having said that we are glad to see that the NCAA is willing to adjust at least a little bit when its hypocrisy is pointed out.
2. In a somewhat cryptic tweet John Calipari both welcomed Steve Alford to Twitter and alluded to the possibility of UCLA and Kentucky playing in the near future. Although UCLA has been down recently they remain the most decorated program in college basketball history. Despite their storied histories the two schools have only met ten times with the Wildcats holding a 6-4 edge . A match-up between the two schools would certainly draw the attention of college basketball fans particularly if Alford is able to keep California recruits in state and make the Bruins a competitive team.
3. As numerous reports have documented the past few years have not been easy for Dean Smith as he is suffering from what appears to be dementia. This has been particularly troubling for those who know him as more than just a legendary college basketball coach, but also a civil rights advocate. So yesterday’s announcement that President Obama would be honoring Smith along with 15 others with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is “presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” The date of the ceremony has not been announced yet, but we imagine it will be a star-studded event particularly with two of the other inductees being Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.
4. With football just around the corner we have been anxiously waiting for the release of college basketball schedules and for the most part we have just been receiving bits and pieces of schedules from various teams that mostly revolve around a few non-conference games that are part of previously arranged events. So the Big 12’s release of this year’s conference schedule is the first real significant release we have seen. We may eventually do a post on this, but really the entire schedule comes down to two dates: January 18 and March 1. Those two dates are when Kansas and Oklahoma State play each other. Everybody in the conference office and ESPN might pretend that is not true, but realistically those are the only two games that matter. A few other teams like Kansas State and Baylor might be intriguing, but we need to see those teams prove something before we can trust them (especially Baylor).
5. We have expressed our issues with how liberally the NCAA hands out transfer waivers, but in the case of Mike Poole we have no objection to his waiver being approved. Poole, a senior guard who averaged 4.4 points and 3 rebounds per game last season, transferred from Rutgers to Iona this off-season and was granted a legislative relief waiver so he will be eligible to play immediately. Given the video evidence demonstrating Mike Rice’s abuse towards his players the NCAA did not really have any option, but to grant Poole a waiver. It will be interesting to see how a change of scenery will affect Poole who had a higher scoring average (6.5 points per game) as a sophomore. The announcement should only further strengthen the Gaels’ position as the MAAC favorite going into the season.

The NCAA has taken a pretty solid beating over the past year or two, but the compromised state of college athletics’ governing body did not stop ESPN’s Jay Bilas from helping himself to a few good hacks at the association earlier this week. Oh, and I should add that said hacks were not the kind you would see outside a bar at three in the morning; these were well-reasoned, deserved punches thrown at a group becoming increasingly defined by their hypocrisy.

These Instructions Wouldn’t Have Worked A Few Hours After Jay Bilas Tweeted Them Out, But Look What Randomly Emerges When Searching For “Nerlens Noel” On The NCAA Store’s Site!

You may be best served by simply scrolling back through Bilas’ twitter feed to Tuesday evening, but to paraphrase his discoveries, if you entered the name of a recent college sports star (say Nerlens Noel, or Denard Robinson) in the search bar at shopNCAAsports.com, the site would lead you to a very specific set of results. In the case of Noel, the result was a page full of #3 Kentucky jerseys.  For Robinson, it was a collection of #16 Michigan jerseys that appeared on the screen. Of course, fans are encouraged to buy this memorabilia from the “NCAA store” because they know which players wore these jerseys in real life, but the NCAA’s infamous stance is that they jerseys numbers are random, unattached to any particular student-athlete. In fact, as this USA Today article points out, one of the defendants in the suite of lawsuits pertaining to the NCAA’s use of college athletes’ names and likenesses said in a court filing that “products bearing college athletes’ jersey numbers do not represent actual college athletes.” Hmmmm, then is this a case of a really smart search function, or a really tone deaf NCAA? Well, the NCAA seemed to agree that it was the latter; the search capability was disabled just hours after Bilas fired his first shots.

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1. We mentioned in this space yesterday that Jahii Carson along with Marcus Smart were not only two of the best point guards in college basketball, but that they are also both rising sophomores who have already publicly stated that next season will be their last in the amateur ranks. Both players are likely to have All-America campaigns ahead of them, but Smart in particular is on everyone’s short list as a NPOY candidate, and with good reason. The latest published results of a poll of coaches from CBSSports.com staff shows that Smart is the most coveted player in all of the land, coming in with a bit more than one-third of the vote (34%). Next on the list was Creighton superstar Doug McDermott (24%), followed by wunderkind Andrew Wiggins at Kansas (15%). A number of other players received votes, including Ohio State’s Aaron Craft, Michigan’s Mitch McGary and Syracuse’s CJ Fair, but the naming of five other freshmen after Wiggins reveals just how strong this year’s incoming class is perceived to be. One notable omission from the list was Louisville’s Russ Smith (his teammate Montrezl Harrell actually received a vote instead), but as the article notes, the choices make clear that coaches value experience and sustained leadership over unproven (or sometimes unstable) commodities. While all this conjecture is great, it’s ultimately meaningless until we start the games in November.
2. And what about those games, the reason we all watch these players in the first place? Wednesday was a good day for folks like us — fans of the sport who like to have concrete games on the schedule to sink our teeth into. ESPN released its Big Monday lineup for 2013-14, and the most notable thing about the 16-game set over eight weeks is that the new slot of ACC games at 7:00 PM ET considerably resembles vintage Big East offerings. The Big 12 still carries the 9:00 PM slot (Andrew Wiggins, anyone? Kansas is involved in half of the broadcasts), but half of the ACC Big Monday games will involve teams who were still Big East entities as recently as 40 days ago. One game in particular — Notre Dame vs. Syracuse on February 3 — comes straight from the old Big East rivalry playbook. Welcome to the new ACC, indeed. Now can we get a west coast flavor at Midnight ET to sweeten the deal even further, like we used to have with the Big West and UNLV slotted there once upon a time?
3. Some other interesting scheduling news hit on Wednesday surrounding the build-up and planning for Super Bowl XLVIII in New York City, as it appears there will be a basketball extravaganza at the World’s Most Famous Arena on the Saturday before the NFL’s title bout. Madison Square Garden, in partnership with Fox Sports 1, will host a hoops triple-header to give people in town for the football game a little something to feast on beforehand. St. John’s will play an as-yet-undetermined Big East opponent in the early afternoon slot (Marquette is rumored to be that team), followed by a blockbuster Georgetown-Michigan State match-up in the late afternoon, and capped off with an NBA tilt between the Knicks and the Miami Heat in the evening. It’s an impressive lineup, for certain, and is suggestive that programmers of college basketball really need to learn to capitalize on those empty weekends starting in late January and through to mid-March… before March Madness hits in earnest and captures the attention of everyone else.
4. Is it too early to already be looking forward to games the following season? We’re talking about 2014-15 here, but hey, it’s a light news cycle. It’s always, always, always a good thing when top 10 programs meet in non-conference match-ups during the regular season, and it appears we’re going to have a good one when regional rivals Louisville and Indiana will face off in the Jimmy V Classic on December 9, 2014. Although the two rosters are likely to look considerably different than they do even this coming season, both Tom Crean and Rick Pitino are recruiting so well that you can count on this being a fantastic game. Even if it won’t tip off until some 16 months from now.
5. It must have been Pac-12 preview Wednesday around the interwebs yesterday, as both ESPN.com and SI.com featured the much-maligned basketball league with a summer update post. The WWL’s piece is more comprehensive in scope, but Andy Glockner’s writeup is the better read. They both have high hopes for Sean Miller’s Arizona Wildcats, while agreeing that the league as a whole is once again on the uptick after a period from 2010-12 that was as bad as many have ever seen. There’s a lot of good information in both pieces, though, so we suggest that you check it out lest you find yourself come November wondering why the league has three or maybe even four teams ranked in the preseason AP poll.