1. We figured that the NCAA’s decision to pull its championship events from New Jersey was the last we would hear of their issue with the state’s legalization of sports gambling. It looks like the NCAA (and the four major professional leagues) are just getting started. You may or may not remember that back in August those organizations sued the state for its legalization of sports gambling, which the state attempted to throw out. On Friday, the leagues/organizations filed a motion in an US District Court to stop New Jersey from dismissing the lawsuit. At the heart of the issue is New Jersey’s assertion that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, which restricted sports gambling to a handful of states, was unconstitutional. We haven’t dug too deep into the legal minutiae of the case, but it seems like New Jersey would have a pretty good case on the surface. Of course, they are going against a group of organizations who are all essentially federally enabled monopolies so maybe we are giving being too rational here.
2. On the court the biggest news of the national happened out west where Mike Moser dislocated his right elbow during UNLV’s one-point win over California last night. At this point all we know is that he didn’t break any bones, but the extent of the injury is still not known and early reports indicate that Moser will be out for anywhere from a few weeks to the whole season. For a team that has struggled to find backcourt play to match the production and level of play of an absolutely loaded frontcourt could be a huge blow. We should have more information about Moser’s injury and how long he is expected to be out within the next couple of days.
3. Moser’s injury is by far the most significant loss over the weekend (and possibly this season), a pair of players in the SEC will not be seeing the court any time soon as Mississippi kicked junior transfer Jason Carter off the team for violation of team rules while Louisiana State suspended Anthony Hickey indefinitely over a violation of athletic department and university policies. Carter, who never played a minute for Mississippi, was a transfer from Alabama via junior college and had been suspended before the team’s first exhibition game and never had that suspension lifted. We are not sure what Hickey, LSU’s starting point guard, did other than showing up late for tutoring sessions, but since the school’s fall semester ended recently we are guessing his suspension has something to with his grades.
4. Utah State junior Danny Berger, who fainted during a practice last Tuesday requiring CPR and the use of a defibrillator, was released from the hospital and honored at the team’s game on Saturday. From what the school is saying the cause of Berger’s syncopal episode is still not known and he will need to be monitored for at least six more weeks before a decision will be made on if and when Berger can return to the court. Creighton guard Josh Jones, who had been hospitalized after fainting during warm-ups of the Bluejays game on Thursday, was out of the hospital and was on the bench watching the team’s victory over Akron yesterday. Jones has a history of fairly significant heart disease as he had his aortic valve replaced as a high school senior after developing a severe case of infective endocarditis–essentially a bacterial infection on his heart valve(s). The reason for Jones’ syncopal episode also is not known yet and he will undergo more tests this week before a decision can be made as to whether he can play again.
5. Finally, Taylor University did its annual Silent Night event on Friday night. The event, which is done on the Friday night before finals week, was a cute, relatively unknown event where students attend the game, but are totally silent until team scores its tenth point of the game at which point the students make as much noise as they possibly can. The event has gained a great deal of notoriety in the past few years as more and more blogs feature it yet it still remains one of the more unique events in college basketball.

Who Won the Week? is a regular column that will outline and discuss three winners and losers from the previous week. The author of this column is Kenny Ocker (@KennyOcker), an Oregon-based sportswriter best known for his willingness to drive (or bike!) anywhere to watch a basketball game.

WINNER: Chicago State

The Cougars found themselves a home. Amid the constant turmoil found during this extended period of conference realignment, Chicago State has managed to go from the schedule conglomerate of the Great West to an actual conference in the WAC. (Let’s ignore the fact that the WAC would lose its automatic bid if the historically black university didn’t join its ranks.) Granted, the Cougars are 0-8 in Division I play this season, but their campus lies atop a recruiting hotbed, and they could easily snag many a player who falls through others’ cracks, especially now that they offer the same chance at an automatic NCAA Tournament bid that about 250 other schools promise every season. This move makes sense for both parties, but it should help save Chicago State from the fate of Winston-Salem State, another HBCU that tried to make the move to Division I but failed before retreating back to Division II.

(Related winners: The WAC. Related losers: None.)

LOSER: Florida State

Hamilton Hasn’t Been Smiling Much This Season (Photo Credit: Glenn Beil / Democrat).

The Seminoles have had an extended run of success in the Atlantic Coast Conference, one unseen for that program since the Hugh Durham era in Tallahassee, but that’s threatening to fall apart in Leonard Hamilton’s 11th season roaming the Florida State sidelines. FSU is currently riding a three-game losing streak, and last week’s losses to Mercer and Florida were both ugly in their own ways. Falling 61-56 to a team from the Atlantic Sun is ignominious in its own right, but especially so for a team riding a school-record four-year NCAA Tournament streak. Having only one player score more than seven points in the process is even worse. But the Seminoles actually managed to one-up that loss with an embarrassing 72-47 loss to rival Florida, this time where no Florida State player scored more than 10 points. Michael Snaer, the scoring guard who helped lead the team to three wins in the last two years in the NCAA Tournament, scored 17 points between the two games on 5-of-17 shooting while having five assists and seven turnovers. This is foreboding for a team many picked to finish in the top half of an ACC that has often looked lackluster during the start of the season.

(Related winners: Florida; Mercer, but more so had the Bears not gotten shelled by Denver later in the week. Related losers: The ACC, Snaer.)

WINNER: Greg Gantt

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Brendon Mulvihill is the head curator for @SportsGawker and an RTC contributor. You can find him @TheMulv on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

With a month to go in the non-conference season, we are starting to sort out the contenders from the pretenders. This weekend provides some additional match-ups that will give us a better indication of which teams we should watch out for come March. Let’s get to the breakdowns.

Colorado at #10 Kansas – 2:00 PM EST, Saturday on ESPN2 (***)

This Weekend Colorado Tries to Beat Kansas for the First Time Since 2003

• You might call this game a renewal of a Big 12 rivalry but the reality is that it has been far from a “rivalry.” Kansas has not lost to Colorado since the 2002-03 season. While this will be the first time that CU plays Kansas as a member of the Pac-12, coach Tad Boyle is 0-3 against the Jayhawks since taking the helm in Boulder two seasons ago. The big question for the Buffaloes will be how they handle KU center Jeff Withey. A few weeks ago, CU was able to slow down another seven-footer in Isaiah Austin when they defeated Baylor. However, Withey is not a freshmen trying to fit himself into “The Pierre Jackson Show.” He’s a senior who has proven to be a dominant force on defense and a capable offensive threat. Withey also cleans up on the glass, particularly on the defensive end. Colorado needs to figure out how to grab some of those misses lest it become a long night. Keep an eye on the three-point shooting of Colorado guards Askia Booker and Spencer Dinwiddie. Both are threats from deep and both need to be on target to have a chance to win this one.

Temple vs. #1 Duke – 3:15 PM EST, Saturday on ESPN (****)

• Last season, Temple beat Duke in Philadelphia on the backs of Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson and Khalif Wyatt. Hollis-Jefferson and Wyatt combined to go 15-22 from the field in a somewhat surprising upset of the Blue Devils. The Owls also did it without this season’s leading scorer, Scootie Penn. However, when you compare this Duke team to last season’s team, they are more balanced and more patient without Austin Rivers dominating the ball. The Blue Devils have scoring threats all over the floor and point guard Quinn Cook is proving to be an excellent distributor. Additionally, Mason Plumlee has been superb. The key for the Owls will be figuring out a way to stop Plumlee in the paint. Unfortunately for Temple, scoring can come from anywhere when playing the Blue Devils. They are too balanced and too battle tested at this point to drop one to the Owls this year.

Holidays, travel and other nonsense got the best of us for a couple of weeks, but the RTC Podcast is back in action with a look back at the first few weeks of the season. As always, Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) hosts our discussion which includes this week a discussion of the top four teams in the polls, some of our hits-and-misses from the preseason, and a look at some of the surprising teams of the first month of action.

This full podcast will suffice for this week but we’ll back with our regular schedule next week, with a full podcast on Tuesday followed by our shorter (~15-20 minutes) podblast on Friday taking a quick look at the intervening week’s worth of news and action. Feel free to jump around using the outline below.

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

0:00-2:30 – Duke’s great November.
2:30-4:20 – Why can’t there be more good games in December?
4:20-12:00 – Duke/Indiana/Michigan/Florida impressing the most early on.
12:00-17:30 – What’s wrong with UCLA?
17:30-21:30 – Can Kentucky rally for a third straight Final Four run?
21:30-26:15 – NC State leads the disappointments in the ACC.
26:15-29:15 – John Groce finds early success with Illinois.
29:15-31:45 – Minnesota another Big 10 surprise.
31:45-33:45 – Quick Big 10 power rankings.
33:45-35:50 – Back pats – what we got right in the preseason (Michigan/Ryan Harrow).
35:50-40:15 – Back tracks – what we got wrong (DeShaun Thomas/Tennessee).
40:15-45:00 – Weekend preview and wrap up.

We welcome any and all feedback on these podcasts including topics for future discussion or if you want to send us any questions for our “May Not Be From Actual Listeners” segment. Hit us up atrushthecourt@yahoo.com or @rushthecourt on Twitter.

Seven Sweet Scoops is the newest and hottest column by Chad Lykins, the RTC recruiting analyst. Every Friday he will discuss the seven top stories from the week in the wide world of recruiting, involving offers, which prospect visited where, recent updates regarding school lists, and more chatter from the recruiting scene. You can also check out more of his work at RTC with his weekly column “Who’s Got Next?”, as well as his work dedicated solely to Duke Basketball at Duke Hoop Blog. You can also follow Chad at his Twitter account @CLykinsBlog for up-to-date breaking news from the high school and college hoops scene.

Note: ESPN Recruiting used for all player rankings.

1. Wiggins Got Game?

Down in Tallahassee, Florida the nation’s No. 1 overall ranked senior, Andrew Wiggins, took his first official visit to Florida State this week. The 6’8″ Canadian small forward out of Huntington Prep (West Virginia) is highly regarded as the best high school basketball player in the country and rightfully so. However, the visit is now being highly publicized for the off-court attention he received more than just basketball. Before watching the Seminoles’ intrastate match-up between No. 6 Florida, in which they were routed 72-47, the big story that has gone viral since Wednesday came from one small tweet from @NosillaDraw, a Florida State co-ed, who was one of Wiggins various “tour guides” on Tuesday. “If my girls and I didn’t convince you to come to FSU last night I don’t know what would,” tweeted the young female, attached with a photo of Wiggins and three other FSU co-eds. The tweet, which was picked up originally by Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio, caused quite the recruiting stir in Lexington and in Tallahassee moments after being sent to the masses. Wiggins, who is also considering Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio State, was then spotted behind the FSU bench along with his parents and FSU alums, Marita Payne and Mitchell Wiggins, for the game. Fans and cheerleaders alike also made their case for why he should become a Seminole, with chants, signs taking shots at Kentucky, and white T-shirts that spelled out “We Want Wiggins!” across the chest. While Florida State has a lot of work to do on the court this season, landing Wiggins would give the Seminoles their most coveted recruit during head coach Leonard Hamilton’s tenure. One thing is for certain — the Seminoles faithful reassured Wiggins that he is their No. 1 priority; however, time will tell in the spring if Wiggins agrees and makes Florida State his No. 1 choice.

A group of Florida State co-eds tried their hand at luring Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 overall ranked senior, to Tallahassee

2. Jabari Parker Returns To Court

He’s back. The nation’s No. 2 overall ranked senior, Jabari Parker, made his on-court return on Saturday night for Simeon Career Academy (Illinois) at the Chicago Elite Classic after nursing a fracture in his right foot suffered in the summer while participating with the U-17 Team USA squad. Parker was not expected to play for Wolverines as of the night before, but felt well enough to suit up and return to the court with his teammates in their season opener. Limited to just 10 minutes of action, Parker finished the game with six points, four rebounds and two assists as Simeon got a win in which they led wire-to-wire. Parker, who is deciding between BYU, Duke, Florida, Michigan State and Stanford, showed some signs of rust, but viewed it as just another hurdle in the recovery process. “I felt good,” the 6’8″ small foward said. “Of course I had some bumps and bruises coming in, but as the game progressed I was a little sore. But I’m learning how to get my wind back and trying to get back in shape.” He has taken four of his five official visits and will prepare to trip to Stanford before making his highly anticipated decision either in January or February. Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo was on hand at the Chicago Elite Classic as the Spartans, along with Duke, have been mentioned as the co-favorites to land his services.

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David Cassilo is an RTC columnist who also writes about college basketball for SLAM magazine. You can follow him at @dcassilo.

What do we do about Cody Zeller? That’s what we’re asking after his second game this season with fewer than 10 points. The preseason pick for Player of the Year has simply not been the monster in the middle that was expected, but he hasn’t been a disappointment either. We’ll start with the bad. He’s scored 20 or more points just twice in eight games and is averaging a pedestrian 15 PPG and 7.6 RPG this season. You’ll find about 100 players with numbers like that. Now the good. He’s shooting 63.2 percent from the field and his numbers are almost identical to his stellar freshman season. To be honest though, Zeller is likely staying as high as he is on this list based on expectation. But now we’re giving him one final chance. If he doesn’t break out by the end of December, he’ll be off the top 10 list.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

10. Elias Harris – Gonzaga (Last Week – NR)
2012-13 stats: 16.8 PPG, 8.1 RPG

Harris has Gonzaga thinking national title. (AP)

As a senior, Harris is finally coming into his own in all areas of the game. That has especially been true for his offense. After a slow start, he’s scored at least 16 points in five of his last six games. As Gonzaga continues to win, his candidacy will pick up steam. This week: December 8 vs. Illinois

9. Isaiah Canaan – Murray State (Last Week – 7)
2012-13 stats: 21.4 PGG, 3.7 RPG, 3.9 APG

With one game this past week against an NAIA opponent, Canaan essentially had an off week. His slight fall down the rankings has more to do with the other players on the list than with himself. Canaan’s biggest challenge for the rest of the season will be playing well enough to overshadow his weak competition. This week: December 8 at Evansville

8. C.J. McCollum – Lehigh (Last Week – 3)
2012-13 stats: 24.4 PPG, 5.0 RP, 3.2 APG

We’ve said all season that if a player from a conference like the Patriot League is going to win this, he needs to be beyond spectacular. McCollum has been close to that, but performances like the 13 points he put up against Fordham in his last game won’t cut it. Chances are we’ll see another 30-point game from him soon enough, though. This week: December 8 vs. St. Francis (Pa.)

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1. The news that have the Twitterverse buzzing yesterday was the news that next season might start out with four games being played simultaneously at Cowboys Stadium. The idea, which is being proposed by Mark Hollis (the man who brought us the Carrier Classic and the game at Ramstein Air Base in Germany), is on the surface ridiculous, but when you dig a little deeper. . . it is even more ridiculous. Look, we appreciate the fact that Hollis is trying to come up with a way to promote college basketball, but at some point gimmicks stop being cute and start becoming ridiculous. There have already been a number of writers who have went into detail about why this would be a logistical nightmare (dealing with whistles, shot clocks, etc from the other three games) so we won’t go into too much detail other than saying somebody needs to put a stop to this madness. As we noted on Twitter yesterday we don’t need gimmicks to market college basketball we just need a quality product on the floor.
2. Most programs tend to maintain a similar style of play, but as Corey Schmidt as Basketball Prospectus notes that is not always the case. Earlier in the week he pointed out a handful of teams that were playing at a significantly faster pace than last year and yesterday he released his list of teams playing at a significantly slower pace than last year. Most of them can be explained by a change in coaches, but there are several teams that have managed this transformation while keeping the same coach. It will be interesting to see if these trends will continue once conference play starts.
3. It appears that Clemson does not have a three strikes policy for Milton Jennings as they have reportedly decided to bring their troubled senior forward back after a two-game suspension following an arrest for marijuana possession. Jennings is expected to be back for the team’s game against Arizona on Saturday. We appreciate the thought of trying to help a young adult out by keeping him in the program and (hopefully) on track to get a college degree, but the timing of this seems a little too convenient for a repeat offender.
4. We have mentioned the pending death of the Big East for a while now and if you were not convinced perhaps the reports on their upcoming TV football contract may change your mind. According to reports the Big East is looking at a deal near $60-80 million per season, which might sound like a decent amount of money until you consider they were expecting well over $100 million per season going into negotiations and the Pac-12 has a $250 million per season deal. If the new TV deal is around the reported range then the schools would be looking at shares around $4-5 million per season compared to over $20 million per season for Pac-12 schools.
5. As much as we hate to say it college football and the revenue it brings in through its TV contracts is really what drives realignment (see the above point). This point is further driven home by data from recently released figures from the federal government looking at the revenue of the various athletic departments and the share that comes from football. The figures also demonstrate the large gap between the haves and have-nots. We still have a hard time getting behind schools who say they cannot afford to give players a stipend, but when you see such a large gap between schools that are still in BCS conferences you start to understand why there is so much dissension about finances at the NCAA level.

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

Tonight’s Lede. Final Exams: UGH. The recent frenzy of quality match-ups between nationally-relevant programs far and wide, Power Six to low major, blinded me from the annual scheduling lull that accompanies final exams. Starting Monday, the number of quality games over the next week will diminish as student-athletes hit the books in advance of the the winter holiday. Games will bore. Viewing intrigue will plummet. You’ll get nights like Thursday – with maybe one or two, if that, interesting fixtures, and a large dose of filler comprising the rest of a given night’s slate. For anyone who enjoys watching college basketball, it is not a fun time. What follows is my humble attempt to spin the oncoming dry period into a positive. The dip in activity serves as reminder of one of the few moments where class work takes precedence over sport and spectacle, where student-athletes implement the primacy of the word “student” before “athlete” in a tangible way that goes deeper than the NCAA’s willful definitional standard, where it reflects beyond a mere byword for amateurism. As much as I love watching and writing about the sport’s best teams, it’s rare we see the national TV tycoons and broadcast conglomerates that lord over Division I’s revenue-producing sports rendered powerless against the common academic mission of its money-producing subjects. I’ll suffer through a few boring nights of hoops if it means maintaining at least some measure of scholastic purpose in this whole college athletics thing. 

Your Watercooler Moment. Let’s Not Get Ahead Of Ourselves: Creighton Owns Nebraska Hoops.

The Huskers are improving under Miles, but Creighton remains far and away the more capable team (Photo credit: AP Photo).

The revenue-producing sports’ dichotomy in Nebraska is self-evident. The Cornhuskers handle the football side of things, while Creighton dominates all major headlines on the court. New Nebraska coach Tim Miles accepted his post earlier this year with designs on changing that perception, or at least narrowing the gap. Generating hoops interest on a football-dominated campus like Nebraska is not easy; Miles has a multi-year project on his hands. Still, the early part of the season provided green shoots of hope for the long-dormant program. The Huskers had won seven of eight to open the year, with respectable if noteworthy victories over Valpo and USC. There were noticeable improvements all over the floor. Miles was making headway on the recruiting trail. The arrow was pointing up. All of which – even in the wake of Creighton’s 22-point beatdown in Lincoln – hasn’t really changed all that much. In truth, Nebraska was never ready to handle a team as capable and offensively potent as Creighton. Thursday night’s humbling reminder of its little brother status doesn’t disabuse Nebraska of any of the progress it has made thus far. Nebraska is in good hands going forward with Miles at the helm. If you were looking for a quick-fix turnaround in Lincoln, well, sorry! The Huskers are headed in the right direction – they’re just not quite ready to challenge a national contender like Creighton.

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1. Last night’s scheduled game between Utah State and BYU was postponed after Danny Berger‘s collapse one day earlier. Given the circumstances of Berger’s collapse (occurring at practice requiring CPR and used of a defibrillator) this seems like a very sensible decision as Berger remains in what has been described as being in critical condition although he has been extubated and is reportedly talking with family and staff members. There has not been an announcement as to if or when this game would be made up, but frankly that should not really be a concern for either team.
2. One of the few amusing things about conference realignment has been the fighting between conferences and schools about exit fees and the mandatory waiting periods before schools are allowed to leave their current conference. Apparently, the administrators at Rutgers do not find it that amusing as they filed a lawsuit against the Big East claiming that the exit fees and waiting period are arbitrarily applied to departing members while also claiming that the conference has failed to collect the $39.5 million it was owed by departing members. We can certainly get behind their issue with the 27-month waiting period and need to collect the exit fees from other schools, we don’t think that their issue with the different exit fees should be valid since the fee was raised to the current $10 million just before Rutgers left although if the argument is that the Big East doesn’t collect the fee in the first place from some schools then their case gets even stronger. While this will certainly drag on for months and likely lead to many news releases filled with legal jargon it does raise an interesting issue: If the Big East actually collects that $39.5 million it is reportedly owed it could go a long way to subsidizing the exit fee for Rutgers.
3. With all of the movement going on with conference realignment we didn’t even notice that the WAC was on the verge of losing its automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament before it added Chicago State. The conference, which is described as “ever-changing” in the AP article needed seven schools in the conference to retain its automatic bid, but was going to lose it while waiting for Grand Canyon, a school that has its own issues as Deadspin detailed, to officially join Division I. Fortunately for the conference, Chicago State will join for the 2013-14 season, which is within the NCAA’s two-year grace period allowing it to retain its bid.
4. As usual Luke Winn delivers with his always enlightening Power Rankings offering a variety of interesting stats that may change the way you view some of the best teams in the nation. For us, the two most interesting stats in this week’s edition concern the defenses of Duke and Florida (and we have vastly differing view on how long they will be able to sustain that performance). The stat that Winn cites for the Blue Devils is that the marked improvement of their interior defense, which has gone from mediocre to one of the best in the country through eight games. While they have already faced a tough early slate we have a hard time believing that they will able to maintain such a marked improvement. The statistic for the Gators regarding the frequency they use man-to-man or zone defense and how much better they are at both defenses. Given the change in players from last year’s defense (highlighted in the article) and their performance against FSU (a team that admittedly struggles at times on offense against mediocre teams) it seems like a stat that might hold up as the year goes on even if it tails off a little during SEC play.
5. We are still a long way away from the NBA Draft, but Jeff Goodman is already looking forward to it and it doesn’t look pretty. According to Goodman (and we tend to agree with him here) this is one of the worst draft classes in recent memory and that is assuming that the talented freshmen leave instead of staying another year (or two or three) to work on their games. While there are a few notable players in this year’s Draft who seem like they are a cut above the rest of the class in terms of potential, but there is nobody that we see as a superstar yet and probably nobody that we see as a perennial All-Star.

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

Tonight’s Lede. A Reminder Of College Basketball’s Lesser-Touted Rivalries. When you think college basketball rivalries, you think Duke-Carolina or Kentucky-Louisville. You think about infectiously enthusiastic student sections and fight songs and longstanding grievances. Wednesday night ran the gamut on college hoops rivalries, from the bloodletting knockout that took place on Florida State’s home floor, to the grossly underrated but cancelled BYU-Utah State clash in Provo, to Colorado’s nascent feud between the Buffaloes and Rams. Three different games, all of different styles and talent levels, each with its own unique outcome. Nothing comes close to the Commonwealth’s rivalry or the famed Tobacco Road clash, but Wednesday night provided a diverse selection of some of the nation’s lesser-known tussles. These games often get swept under the rug in the face of more storied fixtures between blueblood programs. I get that. Rivalries mean different things to different segments of the college basketball-watching public. Let this be a plea for greater and more careful analysis of the lesser known hatefests. Disillusioned by Wednesday night’s events though you may be, give these rivalry games a few minutes of your TV allotment. You won’t be disappointed.

Your Watercooler Moment. Florida’s Good and All, But What Happened To The Seminoles? 

The Seminoles are reeling after this latest blitzing in Tallahassee (Photo credit: Getty Images).

The key to unlocking Florida State’s typically suffocating defense is not difficult to discover. No one’s getting worked up about preparing for the Seminoles’ relentless pressure, or their ability to turn you over, or disrupt your offensive flow. That’s a safe conclusion to make following the Seminoles’ most embarrassing result yet in a long line of disappointing outcomes to open the season. Rival Florida handed Florida State its fourth home loss, and did so with a punctuating 25-point margin of defeat, just three days after losing at home to Mercer and eight days after Minnesota’s win at the Tucker Center. I could go on about how incredibly dominant Florida looked, how well the Gators defended, how the ability to sustain tonight’s complete effort over any extended context precludes but the slightest challenge from a Kentucky, Missouri or whoever else wants to emerge from the muck of mediocrity in the SEC to challenge the Gators for a league crown. I’m more concerned with Florida State, because the Seminoles are no longer the most perplexing team in the country. They’ve long retired that label. I’m starting to wonder whether Leonard Hamilton’s team simply isn’t what it was billed to be. Not only are the Seminoles not defending – after ranking first nationally in defensive efficiency in 2010 and 2011, the Seminoles have dropped to 80^th in that category – they’re not scoring efficiently enough (their 107.1 offensive rating ranks 54^th in the country) to offset their aberrant ball-stopping tendencies. The Seminoles need to figure things out sooner rather than later. They’ve squandered every prime non-conference opportunity, which means they’ll need to run through ACC play with minimal hiccups in order to secure an NCAA Tournament berth and continue their recent curve of success under Hamilton.

Video of the night. Many were quick to praise the Gators after their evisceration of the Seminoles in Tallahassee. Florida has every right to be excited — not only about Wednesday night’s comprehensive beatdown but also their place in the national landscape.

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