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

Tonight’s Lede. Winning the NCAA Tournament requires a fortuitous boost of momentum. Getting hot at the right time is just as important as crafting a gaudy NCAA Tournament resume. The tourney is a sprint, not a long-winded journey, the very essence of the regular season. Teams face 30-game gauntlets of varying difficulty, but getting through unscathed – regardless of schedule strength – is immensely difficult. To go undefeated in the regular season is to survive dozens of potential pitfalls and enormous mounting national pressure. You’re pestered with constant questions about “the streak” and “the goal.” Coaches dedicate extra hours to engineering the foolproof game plan that will slay the giant. Student sections get geeked up beyond reason in the hopes of helping their favorite teams spring the upset. Only special teams can make it without bowing to those pressures. There are no special teams in 2012-13; no one is running the table this year. There are no dominant teams, no 2012 Kentuckys or 2009 North Carolinas – two all-time great teams who couldn’t make it through the regular season without taking at least one loss. Three undefeated teams entered Thursday night’s games, all nationally prominent programs from high major conferences. Two now remain, and the other two will meet their unbeaten doomsday sooner rather than later.

Your Watercooler Moment. A Close Game Arizona Couldn’t Win.

Dominic Artis (left) celebrates the win over Arizona with a fan after the student section rushed the court. (Photo by Rockne Andrew Roll)

A universal theme in advanced statictical analysis at the team level is skepticism over narrow margins of victory. Over time, close wins balance out, luck turns into late-game misfortune, and all those last-possession victories stacked up early in the season are joined by a near equal number of nail-biting losses. Four of Arizona’s best wins this season – at Clemson, vs. Florida, vs. San Diego State and vs. Colorado – came down to the final moments. It’s most recent closer-than-close triumph against Colorado was the best reminder of the fine-tooth comb that is late-game management. The difference between winning and losing hotly-contested fixtures can be a missed jump shot, a pass thrown out of bounds, an errant dribble off one’s leg, a clanked free-throw. Or, an outdated replay monitor can blur the referees’ review efficacy and rob one Sabatino Chen of a classic buzzer-beating upset. Arizona had the looming specter of karmic reprisal hanging over its heads as it traveled to Eugene to take on a quality Oregon team. The stage was set for the Ducks to dethrone Arizona on the final possession and end the Wildcats’ streak of late-game fortune. Instead, Oregon battled Arizona from the start with physical defense, a hyper-athletic frontcourt, a couple of really intriguing freshmen (Dominic Artis and Damyeon Dotson can really play) and a balanced offensive attack. The victory wasn’t sealed until Nick Johnson committed a crucial turnover near the three-point line with Arizona down just three and less than 10 seconds to go, but the Ducks held double-digit leads for large stretches in the second half. This wasn’t a fluky, home-crafted upset. Oregon was every bit the better team tonight.

Tonight’s Quick Hits. 

• About That “Crushing” Reggie Johnson Injury. The prevailing view on Reggie Johnson’s thumb injury was that Miami was really going to miss its senior big man. Johnson isn’t the most skilled or the most athletic frontcourt player around. What he is – and I mean this in a totally positive, not-Josh Smith way – is massive, an immovable force who eats up space and hoards prime positioning under and around the basket. Plus, Johnson really gets after it on the offensive and defensive boards, protects the rim and physically dominates whoever enters the painted area. Since Johnson went on the mend around Christmas, Miami has won four of six games, its only losses coming against Arizona and Indiana State at the Diamond Head Classic. None of its wins (Hawaii, LaSalle, Georgia Tech) really cemented the belief that Miami could thrive without Johnson in the lineup, but Thursday night’s triumph over North Carolina did exactly that (UNC is no world-beater, but a solid win nonetheless) especially because forward Kenny Kadji – an extremely talented but inconsistent frontcourt piece – was excellent. Once Johnson returns, throw him into a frontcourt rotation with Kadji, and this team is as qualified as any to make a run at Duke for league bragging rights. Read the rest of this entry »

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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Some quick thoughts from today’s first Maui Invitational semifinal game between North Carolina and Butler…

Three Key Takeaways.

1. Butler Lives For These Games. And it was apparent in the warmups. Whereas the Carolina guys had a very relaxed — almost too relaxed — attitude in the layup lines (Maui living!), Butler was all business. And from the opening tap, it was clear that if UNC was going to walk out of the Lahaina Civic Center today with a victory, it was going to have to cost the Tar Heels considerable blood, sweat, and tears. This was not going to be another Mississippi State laydown event. Brad Stevens knows that his program, even despite back-to-back national championship game appearances in 2010 and 2011, is still not respected in the same way that, say, even Wisconsin is. As an example, the Bulldogs were not ranked in the Top 25 this preseason. After wins over Marquette and North Carolina this week, they will be now.
2. Remember Those 15 Threes? Yeah, We Don’t Either. At the 11:30 minute mark of the second half, the UNC guard quartet whom we lauded yesterday had put up a huge stinker. And that’s a problem, because they along with James Michael McAdoo are going to have to carry most of the Tar Heel offense. At that point, they had combined for a measly 13 points and had shot somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-20 from the field (they finished 17-46 with . And the credit goes 100% to the Butler defense, which Brad Stevens had clearly designed to bump, pressure, and challenge the Tar Heel guards. They didn’t like it. Generally, they settled for jumpers in the thinking that since they fell yesterday, so why not tonight? The difference, of course, was that Butler was defending them. By the time Carolina figured out how to speed up the game by returning the favor with full-court pressure on the Butler guards, the game was too far out of hand to matter.
3. The Comeback. With nearly three-quarters of the game gone, UNC finally got a couple of outside shots to fall and started pressuring the Bulldogs fullcourt. From that point forward, the Heels went on a 37-15 run that included seven Butler turnovers (keep in mind that the Bulldogs committed zero second half turnovers yesterday). Down 28 to begin with, though, and playing a team that typically doesn’t rattle and makes the right play with the ball, it was highly unlikely that Butler was going to completely cave — still, UNC deserves credit for getting back into the game. As Roy Williams said afterward, he’s never had a “team quit” on him, so this will certainly be a teaching point about bringing that same toughness out of the gate.

Star of the Game. Kellen Dunham, Butler. Butler’s attack tonight was rather balanced, but it was Dunham’s five treys (on nine attempts) that really helped Butler build an insurmountable lead tonight. He also provided the assist on one of the Bulldogs’ late threes that stemmed the onrushing UNC tide, while adding five rebounds and a couple of assists in the game. Of course, we all know that the true star here was Brad Stevens’ game plan, but we’ll save that one for later depending on how tomorrow goes.

Quotable.

• “I love giant killers.” Butler head coach Brad Stevens in reference to a question about Chaminade beating Texas and possibly playing his Bulldogs if they get past Illinois.
• “I’ve never had a team quit… one possible exception could have been Florida State [last year].” UNC head coach Roy Williams, paging Kendall Marshall, Harrison Barnes, Tyler Zeller and John Henson, possibly.

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

Your Weekend Lede. Nonleague Tournaments Offer Raw But Exciting Brand of Hoops. The best teams don’t peak in November. They use the non-conference season as a testing lab to kick around various formations and tactical tweaks. They fashion early judgments on rotation splits and playing time allotments. The college basketball season is a process that involves building and maturing over a four-month period, rounding into form around late February, then peaking in time for the postseason. Most squads are far from finished products. So the basketball you see being played in exempted tournaments across the country in recent days isn’t nearly as crisp or fundamentally sound as the fine-tuned brand of tourney hoops. Think of early-season tournaments as more as barometers for improvement: Based off its performance, each team gets a decent sense of the progress of its development, and how much tweaking needs to be done before conference play. Sloppy or not, nonleague play gives us no shortage of storylines. Here are a few that stuck out over this pre Feast-Week weekend.

Your Watercooler Moment. Another Big 12 Contender Throws Its Hat In Ring.

The Cowboys look invigorated by the arrival of Smart, and it showed in Sunday’s big win over NC State (Photo credit: AP)

Talent is the primary governing force of college basketball. It is the lifeblood of any successful team. Sure, you can do without it, but a marginally-talented team will only get you so far. We saw the tremendous implications of talent with last year’s Kentucky team, when three preternaturally-gifted freshmen carried the Wildcats to a national championship. And we saw it Sunday night, when Oklahoma State – led by sophomore forward Le’Bryan Nash and freshman guard Marcus Smart, both top-10 recruits in consecutive years – routed NC State to take first prize in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off. Much was made this preseason about NC State’s talent, and without doubt, the Wolfpack have it in droves. What separated the Cowboys Sunday was their defense. Travis Ford’s team held C.J. Leslie, Lorenzo Brown, Rodney Purvis and the rest of the Wolfpack to just 35.5 percent shooting. Leslie, a likely future first-round draft pick and a popular choice on preseason All American lists and top-player rankings, finished just 1-for-5 from the field with two points. Poor shooting helped doom the Wolfpack, to be sure, but for a team that entered this game missing several key players due to injuries (Brian Williams, John Paul Olukemi) and/or unsuspected departures (Cesar Guerrero), this counts as a massive victory over an ACC contender that the Cowboys can bank for the rest of the season. I’m not sure Ford could have drawn up a more favorable start to his tenure-defining season. If Nash and Smart continue to connect on this level, and the Cowboys can replicate Sunday’s defensive effort to any effect, the Big 12 title race could be more undecided than once believed.

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

The interminable offseason breeds countless hours of boredom and frustration. With seven months separating the net-cutting ceremony that signals the end of every college hoops campaign and the opening tip that begins it, perusing the internet and conjuring up ideas to write about on a daily basis becomes an exercise in creative determination. This is not the NBA, where free agency bridges the gap between the Finals and training camp. The college basketball season has a definitive start and end. Though that line is beginning to blur with amplified recruiting coverage and limited summer practices, when the field of 68 is finally whittled down to one, and the soft tunes of One Shining Moment set off an emotional carousel unlike any other in American sports – from utter despair and devastation for the losing fan base to extreme delight and exultation for the national champion – the hardwood action that has so thoroughly captivated fans across the nation over the previous five months with nonstop intrigue and resume-building/crashing drama grinds to a screeching halt. It’s why the National Championship game always feels like a foreboding culmination, like the end of an enchanting joyride that closes with equal parts satisfaction and disappointment. The warped sense of reality defined by conference races, argumentative bubble talk and AP Poll hand-wringing is swept away without but a single warning to prepare for the lull. Amidst all the joy of a championship celebration and the highly-anticipated lead up to the Final Four, there stands the harsh reality of a painfully long college hoops drought. We college hoops scribes have grown to accept this dichotomy as one negative in an overwhelmingly enjoyable state of affairs. Because no matter how much we dread the dry offseason, the gloomy days spent panging for loaded campus gyms, and buzzer beaters, and visible fan passion, the torture is justified by the sweet end.

Three shipside games will christen a new college hoops season (Photo credit: Getty Images).

The journey to that end begins tonight, and not a moment too soon. We here at RTC have a date with college hoops, one that’s seven months overdue. She cannot evade us, nor the rest of the hoops viewing public, any longer, because tonight the lovefest commences. If you are a first-time viewer of the sport, consider this a warning: What you are about to see may distort your expectations. Over the next three days, teams will eschew traditional playing grounds to meet on aircraft carriers and foreign military bases. It is a patriotic inauguration of the sport we love, but it is not – however delighted you may be by the gorgeous vistas and military backdrops adorning the proceedings – the norm. It won’t be long before geeked-up student sections and campus hysteria inhabits your nightly viewing experience. And for that, we are thankful. Ecstatic. Tantalized. However you wish to describe it or appreciate it, the message is the same: the wait is over.

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With the season tipping off tomorrow, there’s no better time to roll out our preseason superlatives and All-America teams: National Player of the Year, National Freshman of the Year, and First, Second, and Third All-America teams. More than anything, our preseason All-America teams are here to foster discussion. Our crack panel of 10 national columnists provided ballots over the last week or so, and this is where we ended up.

• Preseason National Player of the Year—Cody Zeller, Indiana
• Preseason National Freshman of the Year—Shabazz Muhammad, UCLA

First Team All-America

Cody Zeller, Indiana (unanimous)—The day Cody Zeller committed to play basketball for Tom Crean at Indiana was the day Hoosier basketball would officially begin its climb back to national relevancy and prominence. The first three years weren’t easy for Crean, who compiled a dismal 28-66 combined record during those seasons, but Zeller was his key recruit that led Indiana to a 27-9 record last year and a trip to the Sweet Sixteen. Named Mr. Basketball for the state of Indiana as a senior at Washington High School, Zeller was destined for big things right from the get-go. His ability to run the floor like a 6’5″ athletic forward—despite standing at 7’0″ — and sound post-game with a smooth jumper — is a joy for purists of the game to watch. Now, in his sophomore year, he has the Hoosiers eyeing a National Championship.

Zeller is Everyone’s Cover Boy, and With Good Reason… IU is Back

Factoid: Sophomore Cody Zeller may be bigger than life on the basketball court, but his talents are multi-faceted. Off the court, he goes by the moniker The Big Handsome around the Indiana campus.

Twitter: @czeller40

Doug McDermott, Creighton (unanimous)—The ability to score from virtually anywhere on the court—whether it is from in the post of either shoulder, or beyond the three-point line—McDermott is perhaps the most talented and feared offensive player in the country. Shooting better than 60% from the field and a ridiculous 48.6% from three, McDermott is poised to put up video game offensive numbers in the Missouri Valley. There may not be a more efficient offensive player in the game—averaging nearly 23 PPG on fewer than 15 shots is impressive.

If Zeller Falters, McDermott Could Take the NPOY Crown

Factoid: Similar to fellow preseason First Team All-American C.J. McCollum who is notorious for being lightly recruited out of high school, McDermott didn’t exactly have a laundry list of schools knocking on the basketball office door at Ames High School. In fact, his own father wouldn’t even offer him a scholarship to play at Iowa State. And now, well, he just may be the best player in college basketball.

Twitter: @dougmcd3

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

“Most valuable” or “Most Important” has always seemed like an incredibly fuzzy concept to define. Statistical greatness doesn’t do it justice. Neither does sheer talent differential – is a player important just because the rest of his team isn’t very good? Such crude measures don’t take into account other vague elements that often go into describing these players. All in all, given the indeterminate criteria used, arguments can be made for a handful of different players any given year. Amid all the uncertainty, one thing remains clear: These players are indispensable to their respective teams. They are the underlying force that sets the course for a strong season, that fuels the competitive motor for five months and upwards of 30 games, that captivates fan bases and crushes opponents’ dreams. You may not have a grounded explanation for why these players are so very crucial. You just know. It’s one of the reasons singling these guys out is highly subjective. So bear with me as I reveal one player from each power league whose value transcends analytical or statistical strength, and whose importance can’t be boxed into any single dimension. They are their teams’ X-factors, and that’s all you need to know.

Three qualifying parameters: The mid-major ranks are littered with teams whose winning formula relies heavily on one player. In the interest of narrowing the focus of this expansive and rather ambiguous category, they will be excluded here. Selections will also be geared towards teams with credible conference and national championship aspirations. Lastly, there are no freshmen included here (here’s a fresh look at this season’s batch of impact newcomers).

North Carolina – James Michael McAdoo

So much of North Carolina’s offensive output will rely on McAdoo’s development (photo credit: Getty Images)

There are few teams that can overcome losing three first-round draft picks and still have enough in the reserve ranks to retain their competitive equity. That is the challenge UNC faces this season following the departures of Tyler Zeller, John Henson and Harrison Barnes, who each played more than 66 percent of available minutes and combined to use 73 percent of their team’s possessions. Replacing such a large heaping of production will require a huge sophomore leap from McAdoo. While his playing time was limited last season thanks to the NBA-bound forwards in front of him, McAdoo arrived with McDonald’s All American-level hype and made good on that reputation in the little court-time he saw. He even contemplated leaving for the draft after last season, and many speculated he would have been taken as a lottery pick. Now he has a chance to elevate his draft stock in a central frontcourt role. UNC’s lack of complementary scorers will make McAdoo’s scoring responsibilities a significant component of their offensive calculus. Freshman power forward Brice Johnson should provide help on the glass, and senior Reggie Bullock is more than capable of raising his scoring output, but it will be incumbent upon McAdoo’s promising but somewhat unproven offensive game to keep the Tar Heels in the hunt for the ACC crown.

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Throughout the preseason, the ACC microsite will release a preview for each of the 12 teams.  Today’s victim:  the North Carolina Tar Heels.

UNC certainly didn’t end the season like they expected, but the unfortunate timing of injuries to key players was mostly to blame. After Bob Cousy Award winning point guard Kendall Marshall went out with a fractured wrist against Creighton in the Sweet Sixteen, the Tar Heels struggled to recapture the offensive flow that led them to a 27-4 record and a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Elite Eight loss to Kansas goes to show that you shouldn’t judge an entire season by that team’s postseason finish, due to the unpredictable nature of a single elimination tournament.

Roy Must Reload Without the Magician Marshall Leading His Attack (News Observer/Robert Willitt)

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

Managing expectations is more difficult for some players than others. While some rise to the occasion and meet their preseason billing, others flop under the pressure. For the latter group, often times the hype was never justified in the first place. Fans and media have a way of drumming up baseless buzz and hype. Strong performances in small sample sizes, particularly in NCAA Tournament settings, are pointed to as signs of future stardom, affixed with a level of permanence that ignores the player’s mostly average career before his moment in the spotlight. Each and every year, players are expected to meet and sustain prescribed performance levels, and each and every year, they just don’t get there. It is one of the sadder aspects of college sports, because these kids often don’t deserve the immense pressure they’re dealt. However expectations surface around a certain player, there’s no questioning their existence, and my job is to predict one player from each power league who is susceptible to falling short of his predicted performance marks this season. As usual, freshmen will be excluded from this list, which is probably for the best anyway – if we gauged every top-end recruit by their scouting report descriptions, only a select few would actually arrive as advertised. With that qualifier out of the way, let’s give this a shot.

James Michael McAdoo – North Carolina

The frontcourt losses presents a huge challenge for McAdoo(photo credit: Getty Images).

At North Carolina, even lottery-bound talents like McAdoo aren’t guaranteed playing time early in their careers. Thanks largely to a frontcourt featuring three first-round picks (Tyler Zeller, John Henson, and Harrison Barnes), playing time was especially difficult to come by in the Tar Heels’ big man rotation last season. And McAdoo, the No. 2-ranked power forward and No. 6-ranked player overall in the class of 2011, according to ESPN Recruiting Nation, was shelved to a marginal reserve role. Now that the frontcourt logjam has moved on to the professional ranks, it’s up to McAdoo to control the low block. But he’s not just replacing three NBA talents; no, McAdoo’s job is tougher than that. He will need to shoulder the Tar Heels’ scoring load, and do so without master creationist Kendall Marshall running the show at point guard. Unlike the Tar Heels’ talented low-block trio of last season, who had the benefit of siphoning away defensive attention from one another, McAdoo will command opponents’ full range of resistance. And without Marshall, the McDonald’s All American will have to earn every clean look he gets. Such a massive jump in responsibility will require a huge transformation. From a talent perspective, McAdoo is ready to make that leap. But the pieces around him (or lack thereof) make his job an inherently difficult one.

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The NBA tips off its regular season tonight, which for most college basketball fans means little more than just another sign that the season is imminent. But it is always nice to keep an eye on former college players that we grew to know and love way back when. With that in mind, we’ll take a quick spin around the Pac-12 and briefly touch on what can be expected of each of their 54 former players currently on NBA rosters. We’ll group these guys by their former schools, starting with UCLA, who has 12 alums playing in the league, down to Washington State, whose sole representative is Klay Thompson, and Oregon State, whose Jared Cunningham debuts this season. And then, once college hoops tips off in a little more than a week’s time, you can forget all about these guys again until April.

After Forming A Dynamic Duo In Westwood, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love Are Now Among The NBA’s Best.

UCLA (12)

• Arron Afflalo (Orlando) – Back when Afflalo was playing for the Bruins, you saw his future NBA self pretty clearly – a professional, hard-nosed defender with the ability to score on the perimeter. With five years of experience behind him and his best NBA season directly in the rear-view mirror (15.2 PPG in 33 minutes per night with Denver), Afflalo landed in Orlando as part of the deal that sent Dwight Howard to Tinseltown.
• Trevor Ariza (Washington) – He was awful as a Bruin, but he’s made quite a career for himself in the NBA. A key factor on the Lakers’ 2009 title team, Ariza has bounced around since he left for a big free agent contract, proving himself more of a role player than a go-to scorer.
• Matt Barnes (Los Angeles Clippers) – After spending a couple years with the Lakers, Barnes heads down the hall to the Clippers locker room, where he’ll be expected to play a big part early while Chauncey Billups and Grant Hill recover from injury.
• Darren Collison (Dallas) – After striking out in their bid to sign free agent Deron Williams, the Mavericks settled on Collison as their backup plan at the point, trading their backup center Ian Mahinmi to Indiana for the former Bruin. Collison has been solid in his three years in the league, but lost the starting job with the Pacers last season. Read the rest of this entry »