And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#19 – Where Norfolk Freakin’ State! Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#20 – Where Dream Game II Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

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

The latest development in the Darrell Williams sexual assault case snuck under the national college hoops news radar Thursday afternoon, with word breaking that Williams filed a notice to appeal his recent sentence and conviction. In a long legal battle with numerous twists, turns and hot-button issues, including accusations of racial bias and prejudiced legislative procedures, Williams’ most recent defensive measure is only the tip of the iceberg. The story goes back to December 2010, when Williams, a member of the Oklahoma State men’s basketball team, was accused of fondling and making unsolicited sexual advances on two women at a house party. He was later convicted on two counts of rape and remained in jail until receiving a suspended sentence last week. The incident reportedly took place in the basement, but Williams claimed he has no recollection of any interactions in the specified room. He went on to question the merits of the allegations, and raised the possibility that he had been misidentified among several others at the party wearing OSU athletic apparel. The lack of physical evidence and the very real possibility of a false accusation invited skepticism and doubt over the validity of the women’s allegations. But the real rub surrounded the process by which Williams was identified. Immediately following the party, the women wrote an anonymous letter to various media outlets providing a brief description of the assault, but failed to specify an attacker. According to testimony, the women – one of whom already knew Williams from seeing him play – pointed Williams out three days after the alleged crime when Stillwater police showed them a photo of the entire OSU basketball team.

After receiving a suspended sentence, Williams remains in courtroom limbo as he prepares to file an appeal (Photo credit: US Presswire).

That pretty much wrapped things up. Williams was locked up on questionable testimony, with little in the way of actual hard evidence, and a tenuous if vague account of what actually happened. That was all the prosecution needed. The possibility remains that Williams will win his appeal and clear his name, but clinging to hopes that a typically rigid legal system will provide vindication is a foreboding proposition. Williams has maintained his innocence throughout the process, but barring a successful ruling on his requisition, he will have to register as a sex offender. A coalition of fans and media members have rallied around Williams’ cause, springing a Facebook group and donning “Free Darrell 25” (a reference to his number at OSU) t-shirts at Friday’s hearing. This would not be the first time the legal process committed an egregious misstep. False accusations — whether through error or vendetta — happen all the time, and there are plenty more that are never brought to light. It is difficult to say whether miscalculated courtroom procedure is at work here, or if Williams was simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you pack 80 people into a house party, with many large athletes crammed into the same suffocated space, parsing the truth from the specious – particularly if alcohol is involved, which is a reasonable assumption at collegiate social gatherings like this – is never easy.

Read the rest of this entry »

And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#21 – Where 2013 Player of the Year? Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

1. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski went on the Colin Cowherd Show yesterday on ESPN Radio to riff about the state of college basketball as he heads into his 38th year as a head coach. During a conversation about one-and-done players (of which Coach K has had four: Corey Maggette, Luol Deng, Kyrie Irving, and Austin Rivers), Krzyzewski gave his opinion that it his belief that the NBA-imposed age limit of 19 has hurt the college game. “Overall I think it hurts our game, the college game, a little bit because it kind of ruins, or can hurt, the relationship we have. You know we are all members of academic institutions and it kind of throws the academic side of it down because you’re not there for a total education, you’re there for six or seven months.” Krzyzewski goes on to say that he prefers the preps-to-pros route with the caveat that if players choose to come to college, they must stay in school for at least two years. It’s not an uncommon position for head coaches weary of investing so much energy in recruiting the services of players for a single season on campus, but as we’ve written in this space before, coaches like him don’t seem to remember or realize how important it is for the greater good of the sport to have marketable players such as Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving representing the NCAA side of the equation.
2. The Colonial Athletic Association has been actively in pursuit of replacements for the three schools it has already lost or is losing in conference realignment: VCU (Atlantic 10), Old Dominion (Conference USA), and Georgia State (Sun Belt). After somewhat surprisingly being spurned by Southern Conference member Davidson earlier this week, fellow league member College of Charleston is expected to take the CAA up on its own offer. The school’s Board of Directors is planning to meet on Saturday morning to put the move to a vote. According to George Mason athletic director Tom O’Connor, the addition of the Cougars would bring the league to 10 and “there is nobody (else) we’re targeting right now.” You have to wonder if Davidson, one of the more consistent basketball powers from the low-major conferences, may have made a long-term mistake in rejecting this offer to move to a better league.
3. Former Oklahoma State player Darrell Williams has filed a notice to appeal his recent conviction of rape by instrumentation and sexual battery. His case has drawn national attention outside the insular world of sports media for what he argues is a clear and convincing case of misidentification at a 2010 house party where two young women were groped. Last week, Williams was given a suspended sentence by an Oklahoma judge and ordered to register as a sex offender; he plans to move back to his home state of Illinois, where he will be held to a very restrictive set of daily living conditions such as avoidance of children, erotic materials, and yes, hitchhikers. There’s clearly been a lot of he-said/she-said in this case on both sides, but we’d hope that the appellate court will give the Williams case a fair and comprehensive review of the facts to make an independent determination that the allegations against him are legitimate.
4. While on the subject of criminal matters, Minnesota’s Trevor Mbakwe could face additional jail time for his recent DUI conviction. Mbakwe has collected reams of meaningless adverse letters in his permanent file by now, but his previous conviction for a felony assault charge in Miami in 2009 could come back to seriously bite him in this instance as he may have violated his probation as a result. Mbakwe has already violated his Florida probation once by sending a public Facebook message to his former girlfriend, but his July DUI in Minnetonka puts him in a do-or-die situation where his senior season as a Gopher is seriously in jeopardy. The talented (possible) first-team Big Ten forward could be facing significant jail time depending on how Florida chooses to handle his recidivism — at a certain point, you wonder whether all the trouble is worth the headaches. Good luck, Tubby.
5. Finally, this week, let’s take a look at Seth Davis’ examination of one of the most confounding teams of the 2012-13 preseason: The Ohio State Buckeyes. Last season, on paper at least, OSU was one of the very best teams in America. It took a couple of comebacks the last two seasons from blue-blooded programs such as Kentucky and Kansas to keep the scarlet and gray out of the national finals, but we have to believe that the combination of experience and talent that Bill Self and John Calipari had at their disposal were part of the issue each time around. Thad Matta will certainly have his work cut out this season without William Buford and Jared Sullinger in tow, but the question everyone is asking themselves is whether the remainder of his blue-chip recruits can continue to push OSU ahead as an elite team.

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

College basketball is nearly here. You can feel it now, the palpable hype (both good and bad) growing around the various players, coaches and teams who over the next five months will provide a steady dose of tantalizing hoops action. Each season brings a host of unpredictable variables and elements, which makes divining conference and national championship contenders in October a notoriously futile endeavor. Preseason polls are nonetheless afforded at least some measure of credibility and national attention. And I have to admit, a wave of excitement came over me when I pored over the preseason USA Today Coaches Poll. These rankings hold little to no bearing for the events of the upcoming season, and they’re almost entirely based on perception. The upshot is that we’re talking about college basketball – and not NCAA violations or transfer culture or conference realignment – real, actual basketball topics. Everyone will have their own say on these rankings, and many will protest their favorite team’s slot in the Top 25, but remember this: Competition and team rankings have a way of sorting themselves out over the course of a season. So if your team deserves a spot in these rankings, it will prove as much. Despite the ultimate meaninglessness of this list, I highlighted some interesting items worth discussing. To frame my thoughts, I’ve come up with three “underrateds,” three “reaches,” and one puzzling snub. Again, this is all speculative, so put these rankings (and my resulting analysis) in perspective without fretting over your team’s placement all too much.

The Rebels will need time to integrate a stable of young players, but they should be a dangerous group in March (Photo credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images).

Underrated

UNLV (#19)

There’s no questioning UNLV’s talent. On that front, the Rebels are undeniably loaded. Pittsburgh transfer Khem Birch joins NBA prospect Mike Moser and highly-touted freshman Anthony Bennett to form arguably the nation’s best frontcourt. Experienced guards Justin Hawkins and Anthony Marshall provide leadership and control on both ends of the floor. Incoming combo guard Katin Reinhardt, the No. 8 ranked player at his position according to ESPN, could play a key bench role right away. Within the confines of Dave Rice’s throwback high-speed UNLV system, a conference championship and top-four NCAA Tournament seed are realistic goals. That said, there are a bunch of moving parts to account for, and it’s never smart to assume freshmen – no matter how highly touted – can make seamless transitions into the college game. These are legitimate concerns. But when you have this much talent, and you combine it with Rice’s up-tempo system, the end result is predictably excellent. UNLV’s ceiling is limitless; the question is whether it can congeal so much young talent into a cohesive unit. If it can, the Rebels will surpass this ranking by season’s end.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathan Reed of Big Sky Basketball is the RTC Correspondent for the Big Sky Conference. You can find him on Twitter @bigskybball.

Top Storylines

• The Injury to Will Cherry – Cherry was the runaway favorite for Big Sky Conference Player of the Year, and one of the best perimeter defensive players in the country. However, he will miss the start of the year with a broken foot. The most likely scenario is that he misses the non-conference portion of the schedule and returns for conference play. However, nobody is sure if he will be 100%, and there has even been a little talk that he could redshirt if he can’t come back fully healthy this year. With Cherry, Montana is the favorite. Without him, the conference race is wide open.
• Change is Everywhere – There are two new teams in the Big Sky, as North Dakota and Southern Utah join the fray. This brings the total number of teams to 11, and with each team playing everyone else twice, everyone will be playing 20 conference games. There will also be an increase from six teams in the Big Sky Tournament to seven teams this season. Three new coaches enter the league. Changes are all around (and more on them later).

Kareem Jamar Will Have To Step In As Will Cherry Recovers From Injury. (AP Photo/Jake Schoellkopf)

• Life Without Damian Lillard – Lillard was the best player to come out of the conference in a long-time, as he was the sixth pick in the NBA Draft and arguably the best college point guard in America last season. Now, Weber State must move on. Either Jordan Richardson or Gelaun Wheelwright will step into the starting lineup, and they have big shoes to fill. They will need multiple people to step up and perform, and they will have the personnel to do it.
• Weber State and Montana Reign Again – Heading into last year, these two teams were the media and coaches top two choices. Heading into this season, it will be more of the same. Simply put, they are the most talented and deepest teams in the conference, and they have continuity on the coaching staff. With the way they are recruiting, it won’t be a surprise if the two teams stay in the top two for a long while to come.

Predicted Order of Finish

1. Weber State (17-3)
2. Montana (16-4)
3. Northern Colorado (13-7)
4. Sacramento State (12-8)
5. North Dakota (11-9)
6. Montana State (10-10)
7. Eastern Washington (9-11)
8. Portland State (8-12)
9. Northern Arizona (5-15)
10. Southern Utah (5-15)
11. Idaho State (4-16)

Read the rest of this entry »

And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#22 – Where An Unsung Hero Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

1. Wednesday was a huge media day around the world of college basketball, with not one, not two, but three power conferences holding their Media Day yesterday. Why conferences don’t think to stagger these a little better to dominate the entire national spotlight seems like really poor planning to us, but nobody asked for our opinion on marketing best practices either. The ACC Media Day (“Operation Basketball”) took place in Charlotte; the Big East in New York; and, the Big 12 in Kansas City. Let’s take a brief look at some of the storylines from each one. In Charlotte, the ACC media cartel mimicked the coaches earlier this week in rating NC State as the preseason favorite to win the league, with 26 first-place votes. Duke followed in second place with 21 first-place votes, while North Carolina was picked third. The preseason all-ACC first team includes UNC’s James Michael McAdoo, Florida State’s Michael Snaer (unanimous), Duke’s Mason Plumlee, and NC State’s  Lorenzo Brown and CJ Leslie (unanimous, POY). The Wolfpack are certainly the school du jour this preseason in the ACC, but can a 9-7 team from last season really get over its losing tendencies to overtake Duke and North Carolina this season? We certainly shall see.
2. A few hundred miles up the eastern seaboard, the Big East did its thing in NYC, with the media sniffing around for angles related to the last season for conference stalwarts Syracuse and Pittsburgh. Louisville made immediate headlines for its unanimous selection by conference coaches to win the league this season, but it was the Cardinals’ loquacious coach who caused the biggest stir with his comments that his team “could have the best 10 players in America” — including Big East preseason player of the year, Peyton Siva — and that, according to Zagsblog, he still truly believes that the additions of Temple and Memphis next season can adequately replace the losses of the Orange and Panthers. Jim Boeheim, quite naturally, vehemently disagreed with Pitino’s assessment (“I think he’s full of s–t.”). Boeheim’s team was picked to finish second in the league standings, with Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Georgetown and Pittsburgh following the Orange in the top six. Joining Siva on the preseason first team were Cincinnati’s Sean Kilpatrick, Georgetown’s Otto Porter, Notre Dame’s Jack Cooley, Providence’s Vincent Council, and Siva’s Louisville teammate, Gorgui Dieng. Pitt’s Steven Adams was selected as the preseason Rookie of the Year. In one other significant announcement from Big East Media Day, the league announced an extension with Madison Square Garden that will keep the Big East Tournament there through 2026.
3. Moving to the Midwest and Kansas City specifically, the Big 12 emphasized a league in transition with the additions of West Virginia and TCU replacing the dearly departed schools of Missouri and Texas A&M. Throw in new coaches at Kansas State and Texas Tech, and there were quite a few get-to-know-you introductions going around the Sprint Center on Wednesday. We plan on having a more detailed post on what happened there a little later today on our Big 12 microsite, but to whet your appetite, take a look at this quasi-live-blog from the Charleston Daily Mail‘s Mike Casazza. His descriptions of the day’s events have a definite “we’re not in the Big East anymore” feel to them, as the Mountaineers are a minimum of 870 miles from the nearest Big 12 school (Iowa State). Here’s hoping that WVU hedged on jet fuel when it was at its lowest market rate.
4. And now to today’s Kentucky segment, as the defending national champion is pretty much a daily newsmaker for one thing or another. On Wednesday during an ESPN segment with Hannah Storm, head coach John Calipari said without reservation that superstar recruit Nerlens Noel is in fact eligible to practice and play this season (video clip here). Additionally, the Wildcats picked up their fourth commitment from a top 30 player in the Class of 2013 yesterday when power forward Marcus Lee picked UK over California. Calipari of course still has his eyes set on adding top 10 prospects Julius Randle, Andrew Wiggins and/or Aaron Gordon to his mix, a group of which — on paper at least — would represent the best recruiting class of all-time. Finally, on Wednesday evening ESPN played its first All-Access piece on Calipari’s Wildcats — which basically comes off as a half-hour infomercial promoting his program. Remember when UK fans once complained that Coach K’s AMEX commercials were an unfair advantage? We wonder what those people are saying now.
5. We’re hoping that this is the last time we mention this player’s name in this space, but former UCLA malcontent Reeves Nelson‘s defamation lawsuit against Sports Illustrated was thrown out of a Los Angeles court on Wednesday. Defamation suits often turn on the status of the plaintiff as a public or private figure, and Nelson’s notoriety as a prominent college basketball player at one of the nation’s elite programs qualified him as a “limited public figure” that would require a clear showing of malice toward him by the magazine. In the absence of evidence that author George Dohrmann made up some of the anecdotes involving Nelson in the March story about UCLA’s out-of-control program, “Not the UCLA Way.”  Nelson’s case was destined for failure. The judge said that the story was well-sourced and that Dohrmann had “spent a lot of time” on it.

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Chad Lykins, the RTC recruiting guru. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are at the lower levels of the sport. We also encourage you to check out his contributions 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. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Young and Lee Join Historic Kentucky Class

Young’s Addition Bolsters UK’s Already Star-Studded Class (US Presswire)

If your familiar with the phrase “the rich get richer”, that describes Kentucky basketball recruiting. After landing a pair of top-five prospects from the class of 2013, twin brothers Aaron and Andrew Harrison, the Kentucky Wildcats received verbal commitments from two more highly ranked 2013 prospects, in the form of James Young last Thursday and Marcus Lee on Wednesday afternoon. Young is a 6’6″ shooting guard out of Rochester High School (Michigan) and is the No. 5 ranked prospect in the ESPN 100. Lee, a 6’9″ power forward out of Deer Valley High School (California), is the No. 28 ranked recruit. Along with Kentucky, Young listed Kansas, Michigan State and Syracuse in his final four while Lee had just listed California as his only other possible destination. Young and Lee will now join the Harrison twins and unranked prospect Derek Willis as a part of Kentucky’s 2013 recruiting class.

“Kentucky has always been my dream school,” said Young, who revealed his choice by holding up a “Kentucky Bound” blue T-shirt. “I’m not just looking for the NBA. I’m looking for an education and a national championship and that’s about it.” Young emerged as a prime recruiting target for the Wildcats in the spring and had listed Kentucky as the team to beat for his services since the summer. Young has made two consecutive visits to Lexington, once for Kentucky’s alumni weekend and the other this past weekend for “Big Blue Madness.”

Kentucky will now possess the most lethal perimeter trio in all of college basketball for the 2013-14 season with the addition of Young to complement the Harrison twins. In the left-handed Young, the Wildcats are getting one of the best pure scoring guards in the country. An aggressive scorer who can stroke it from deep or utilize his mid-range game, Young is exceptional at scoring off the catch and has a plethora of moves to get to the rim. On the defensive end, he uses his athleticism and length well to disrupt the opposition. The one aspect of his game that needs the most work is his ball-handling. In transition, he can fill lanes but with improved ball security, he could be even more deadlier running the fast break and making plays for either himself or his teammates.

Read the rest of this entry »