1. Good grief, could yesterday have been any busier in the college basketball world on a random August Thursday?  Between the Karen Sypher verdict, the release of several holiday season tournament brackets, coaching APRs and eligibility issues flying around, it felt like January around here.  Let’s talk Pitino…
2. The Chicago Sun-Times in response to its writer Michael O’Brien’s allegation (later removed) that Kentucky had paid Anthony Davis‘ family $200,000 in return for his commitment?  _________________________________________(crickets chirping)___________________________________________.  A slightly revised article on the S-T website, “Davis No Longer a Hidden Talent,” makes no mention of any payment nor offers a retraction or correction of any sort.
3. On a normal summer day, we might have a blast with this story from Kansas that they’re enlisting the help of students to redo their fight song now that Colorado and Nebraska are no longer members of the Big 12.  The winner will be announced on Oct. 23 this fall at Homecoming, but we can already say that the winner in our hearts and minds will be the clever student who comes up with a ditty trashing Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma for holding the rest of their conference brethren over the proverbial barrel and bringing it Deliverance-style in June.  C’mon, KU fans.  Send us something smart.
4. We dove into the Maui Invitational tournament brackets yesterday, in part because it has the best field and also because of the potential juicy Kentucky-Washington semifinal matchup, but several more tournament brackets were released as well.  Ready for some .pdf brackets?  The CBE Classic (Duke-Marquette and Gonzaga-Kansas State in the semis); the 2kSports CvC (Pitt-Maryland and Illinois-Texas); the Old Spice Classic (Ladies, look at your man…); and the 76 Classic were all bracketed yesterday.  Andy Katz has a tremendous breakdown of all the best pieces of the various tournaments here. 
5. The gray line between advisor and agent is holding up the NCAA’s confirming the amateur status of Kansas’ Josh Selby, according to CBSSports.com’s Gary Parrish.  The question of Selby’s amateurism stems from an association with fellow Baltimore native Robert Frazier, who acts as Carmelo Anthony’s “business manager” and has admitted he acted as an “advisor” to Selby and his mother during his recruitment.  Parrish’s article also contains quotes from Bill Self and Selby’s mom, neither of whom sound terribly worried.

1. The University of Kentucky responded with some legal saber-rattling as a result of yesterday’s Chicago Sun-Times article that alleged a $200,000 payment to super-recruit Anthony Davis.  In parsing the letter from UK’s attorneys to author Michael O’Brien, we find it notable that the second paragraph asserts that no member of UK or its athletic department “offered or paid any money or other illegal benefits to the [redacted] family.”  That’s all fine and well, but even the most naive of us knows that direct payments from universities to players is soooo ’80s.  All the money and illegal benefits run through runners and wannabe agents these days.  We’re not saying any payment of any kind was made to anyone in this case, and in fact it’s most likely that O’Brien simply soiled the bed here, but we do find it interesting how the UK legal team strategically phrased that paragraph.
2. In the ongoing saga known as the trial of Karen Sypher, the defense rested yesterday without so much as calling a witness.  This is an interesting legal strategy, but it clearly represents that Sypher’s attorney believes that the prosecution didn’t meet its threshold of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  The jury will now deliberate on what they’ve heard over the last two weeks and we should know the result presumably in the next day or two.
3. The Legends Classic bracket was released yesterday, with Syracuse, Georgia Tech, Michigan and UTEP slotted into the semifinal round in Atlantic City, New Jersey during Thanksgiving weekend.  The Yellow Jackets will face UTEP in one semi, while ‘Cuse will play Michigan in the other.  Keep an eye out for the release of the bracket (featuring UConn, Michigan State, Kentucky and Washington) for arguably the best 2010 holiday tournament, the Maui Invitational, later this afternoon.
4. Ready for a trip down memory lane?  This re-published Hartford Courant article from June 1986 discusses UConn’s fresh new hire, a fiery New Englander who goes by the name of Jim Calhoun.  The other two finalists for that (at the time) woeful job?  Fairfield head coach (and current Siena top dog) Mitch Buonaguro and Canisius head coach Nick Macarchuk.  Amazing.  Calhoun said that leaving Northeastern to take the UConn job was the hardest thing he’d ever done, a statement that seems borderline absurd colored by a quarter-century of history but made complete sense at the time (NE was in much better shape).
5. This LA Times article about college basketball announcing icon Dick Enberg is mostly about his current gig doing local television games for the San Diego Padres, but there are several jewels in the piece relating to our game.  You can tell he has a deep fondness for the sport, referring reverentially to Final Four Saturday, John Wooden (“Other than my own father… the greatest man I have ever known.”), and Al McGuire throughout the article.  Great read; make sure to check it out.

1. The big news of the day came from East Lansing, as twice-consecutive Final Four team Michigan State announced that it will no longer require the services of rising senior guard Chris Allen, a player who started 27 games last season and averaged 8/3/2 APG in a balanced offensive attack.  Tom Izzo stated that Allen had not met the standards required by him as a player in the MSU program, but he will help Allen transfer to another D1 program for his senior year (incidentally, Allen is the first player Izzo has ever booted).  After a year sitting out as a transfer, some lucky school will be the beneficiary of an athletic perimeter defender with the ability to knock down threes in rhythm (40% last year and 97 on his career).  As for preseason top five team Michigan State, the general consensus is that this loss will be negligible.  Their depth in the backcourt just got much thinner, but the feeling is that Korie Lucious, Durrell Summers and Keith Appling will be able to handle the additional burden.  Frankly, we believe that Izzo could take a team filled with incorrigible circus animals to the Final Four, so the Spartans will be fine.
2. If you believe Tre’Von Willis‘ lawyer, the senior UNLV guard facing domestic battery charges in Sin City expects to play a full season for the Runnin’ Rebels this coming season.  Willis is accused of choking his girlfriend in late June, but his attorney pleaded not guilty for him today and his preliminary hearing will not occur until November 22.  This could mean that any possible trial on this matter (if it came to that) could begin well into 2011, potentially freeing him up to play the entire season.
3. The Big 12 announced its conference composite schedule yesterday, and we’re happy to report that both Sunflower State showdowns will be televised nationally this year.  The game in Lawrence is slotted for Saturday, January 29 (ESPN), and the return game in Manhattan is two weeks later on Valentine’s Day.
4. Can you imagine a 20-team Big East that covered land from Kansas to NYC east-west and Boston to Tampa north-south?  Yeah, half the country, basically.  Adam Zagoria reported yesterday that the conference was looking at this opportunity should the Big 12 have ultimately disbanded earlier this summer.  In a related matter, Big East commissioner John Marinatto emphatically denied the persistent rumor that the conference was set to add Memphis to its lineup.
5. Count Mike DeCourcy among those who think the renewed calls for Rick Pitino to be fired from Louisville to be meritless.  It doesn’t really make much sense to us either, so little in fact that even last summer we never seriously entertained the idea that Pitino might actually lose his job there.  As we all know, basketball is serious business in Kentucky, and Pitino has done very well (although not extraordinarily so) there.  To fire him now (or last summer when the allegations came out) would not only put a huge financial burden on the school, but it would also set back the recruiting arms race that the arrival of John Calipari on the scene in Lexington has put into overdrive.  As for the Sypher trial, the prosecution rested its case on Tuesday; it’ll now be up to the defense team to poke tortellini-sized holes into it.

1. Your Pitino/Sypher trial update…the biggest news from Monday was that Sypher’s ex-husband stated on the record that Sypher told him that she turned down a plea bargain because she wanted to “take Pitino [down] with” her.  The brilliance of this woman should not be understated, folks — she very well may end up imprisoned and penniless, while Pitino simply continues on about his business coaching his team and making millions of dollars (although she might counter with “15 seconds,” FTW).  To that end, CNNSI’s Dan Shaughnessy believes that Louisville should can Pitino for such a public embarrassment, while Seth Davis implores all of us to consider that, while Pitino is many things — including cad, adulterer and narcissist — he’s also a victim in this mess.
2. Two former prominent collegiate point guards joined coaching staffs yesterday, with 1995 national champion Tyus Edney returning to his alma mater UCLA to join Ben Howland’s staff; and Duke basketball/Syracuse football star Greg Paulus joining Billy Lange’s staff at the Naval Academy.
3. The fourth installment of the Flourishing Five finds Texas at #2 on the strength of Mack Brown and Rick Barnes’ programs.  That means that Florida will be #1 when the final installment is released later this week.  How do you guys feel about this?  Certainly we understand that the last five years have been phenomenal for both UF programs (titles in basketball in 2006 and 2007; football in 2006 and 2008).  But now, at exactly this moment in time?  UT hoops is  clearly ahead of Gator basketball, but can we say that UF football is right now that far ahead of Texas pigskin?  Not sure about that.
4. Believe it or not, but practice has already started…at Kentucky.  And this isn’t some loophole that John Calipari has found in the NCAA rulebook, either.  Since UK is taking a mid-August trip to Windsor, Canada, the Wildcats get ten days to break in all of their new players over the next couple of weeks.  One player who won’t be joining the team on the Canada trip or at any point next year (according to Calipari) is Darnell Dodson, the top returning scorer on last year’s team (6.0 PPG).  Another projected top 25 team taking advantage of this mid-summer opportunity to get better is the Pittsburgh Panthers.  Jamie Dixon’s team is in Ireland at the moment as part of a six-game trip over the next week-plus, and they’ve destroyed the two Gaelic teams they’ve faced so far.
5. This is an interesting article by Pete Thamel at the NYT about World Wide Wes (aka William Wesley) in his newish role as an advisor for Creative Artists Agency (CAA).  There are questions as to the amount of access WWW will be able to have with blue-chippers now that he’s formally associated with an agency, but if we know anything about World Wide, he’ll probably figure out a way.

With the summer heat frying most of the nation, it only seems like this summer has been interminable.  But over the weekend, the calendar flipped over into August and we’re actually closer to the start of a new college basketball season than we are to the end of the last one.  Savor it.

1. The Rick Pitino/Karen Sypher trial will continue today and we’ve already had too much fun for a quarter-minute encounter.  Some of the excitement is over now that Pitino has finished testifying but a key question is whether Sypher will actually be convicted as a result of this mess.  KSR examines the possibilities, coming to the conclusion that there’s no slam dunk among the group of charges against her.  They also highlight the top ten moments from last week’s testimony, and make sure, if you read nothing else this week, to read #1.
2. Third on the Flourishing Five list was a bit of a surprise to us — Ohio State.  We figured that the Bucks would be one of the top two (along with Texas).  Now it seems that Florida will join UT at the top, but which school will end up at #1?  Three or four years ago, UF would have been easily first, but nowadays that’s a tougher case, isn’t it?
3. BiaH shows off his Excel skills with the consensus top 100 rising seniors coming out of the July evaluation period.  Everybody seems to love Mike Gilchrist long time.  Austin Rivers, the #2 player coming out of the summer, is apparently a chip off the old doc (not our pun).  Seriously, though, if Calipari gets both of these players, it could be Wall/Cousins part two.
4. We learned over the weekend that the reason for Bob Huggins’ fall that resulted in seven broken ribs and a five-day stay in the hospital was due to him becoming lightheaded after taking medicine on an empty stomach.  Cover story, much?  This article posits that either Huggins is a) injury-prone, or b) has a dangerous medical condition that he should probably get checked out, considering that this was his third collapse in an many years where he hurt himself.
5. CNNSI’s Andy Glockner takes a look at some of the most prominent expected impact transfers coming into new programs in 2010-11.  Steve Alford’s New Mexico program stands to gain the most, with two high-impact players coming in the form of former Tennessee forward Emmanuel Negedu and UCLA forward Drew Gordon.

Thursday was the fourth day of the Karen Sypher extortion trial in Louisville, and it brought the cross-examination of Rick Pitino.  We predicted yesterday that there would be some heated exchanges between Sypher’s defense attorney and the Louisville coach (not exactly going out on a limb, there), and that since he’s a master of preparation when it comes to coaching basketball, he’d be confident and ready to roll — or at least appear so — when it came time to talk about some harrowing and even downright embarrassing stuff, especially with an extra night to prep.  Our information below comes from the summaries written by Louisville’s Courier-Journal and the point-to-point breakdown and analysis at Kentucky sports blog KentuckySportsRadio.com (KSR).

Pitino started the day on the stand and was done by noon, totaling six hours on the stand between today and yesterday.  According to KSR, Pitino was an effective witness for the government/prosecution, though things did get a little testy between Pitino and Sypher’s defense attorney — who started his cross-examination by reading a quote from one of Pitino’s books (that’s cold!) — at a couple of junctures when the details of the fateful night at the Italian restaurant were discussed.  It does not, however, sound like there was any particular incident that resulted in huge verbal volleys or anger above what one would expect.  Pitino knows that he can’t allow it to appear as if the defense attorney is getting to him, and we’d expect that his skills at readying himself for opponents served him well.  Still, a few items from today’s witnesses caught our attention.

Tim Sypher testified today, and said things that helped and hurt both his former wife and Pitino.

First, there’s something we haven’t heard mentioned in any discussion, and that’s the fact that Pitino’s motivational speaking days are gone, and according to KSR he was pullin’ down anywhere between a grand to $40,000 per speech.  You could even assume that figure would have climbed if Pitino claimed a national title or a couple more Final Fours, so there’s no telling how much income Pitino cost himself because of a few drinks at a bar and a grave mistake involving a woman who, in our eyes (as we rely on the reports of others), is coming off  like she had an agenda all along.  Mind you, all we’ve heard so far is the prosecution’s case.

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1. Fifteen seconds to infamy.  Rick Pitino took the stand yesterday and will likely do so again today in the extortion trial of Karen Sypher in Louisville.  The twitterati are all over this in a big, huge, ridonkulous way.  Like here, or here, or maybe here.  We’re thinking that perjury where the only person on earth who could impeach you is also the defendant might have been a better option.
2. Good news from Vegas as West Virginia head coach Bob  Huggins was released from the hospital yesterday.   In less good news, former Missouri State, St. Louis and UNLV head coach Charlie Spoonhour is at Duke University hospital waiting on a lung transplant.  He is on the list, and we’re hopeful that he gets the procedure that he needs, as we’ve always been a fan of his.
3. And even sadder news from Memphis, as the body of former Tiger all-american Lorenzen Wright was found in a wooded section of the city yesterday nine days after a 911 call went out from his cell phone followed by at least ten gunshots.  He leaves behind six children and a legacy of being a great father and never having a harsh word for anyone.  RIP, Lorenzen.
4. On Tuesday, Seth Davis gave us the best of his interviews with eleven college coaches about next season; yesterday he followed it up with part two which consisted of his assessments of various college and high school players that he saw play in Las Vegas last week.  The truth is that few of the returning players that Davis saw seemed all that impressive (Kyle Singler and Shelvin Mack excepted).
5. We admit that we know as much about NASCAR as we do about geophysics, but Jim Boeheim and driver Tony Stewart enjoyed a shooting contest at the Melo Center on the campus at Syracuse University yesterday.  Boeheim quipped about his penchant to speed, but you can watch the whole interview for yourself below.

Boeheim and NASCAR Star Tony Stewart

This was the day that Louisville supporters and scandal followers — and likely Rick Pitino himself — have been waiting on.  Sort of.

Pitino took the stand as a witness for the United States side of things today in the Karen Sypher extortion trial in Louisville.  Under direct examination, Pitino testified that Sypher’s motivation “from the day this all started…was to blackmail me.” He described how he received a pair of voicemail messages from an unknown caller alleging that he had raped Sypher, and that he subsequently met with her to try to identify the caller.  Pitino added that Sypher even accused him of making the phone calls as a ruse.  This information comes from coverage by Louisville’s Courier-Journal, but we’ve got to give props to Matt Jones and KentuckySportsRadio.com, here, too.  Jones, a lawyer himself, is there watching the whole thing, tweeting updates, and updating his site with a nightly breakdown and analysis that all but puts you in the courtroom.

Pitino got to have his say against the accused (above) today.

By far the most popular soundbite to emerge from the day’s testimony was when Pitino revealed that, after Sypher initiated their sexual encounter by undoing his fly and asking Pitino if he had a condom (he didn’t), the whole thing lasted “no more than 15 seconds.”  We’ll not touch that one with, say, a shot-clock joke, but suffice to say that there have been some outstanding resultant tweets (we’re lookin’ at you, @DanWetzel and @ClayTravisBGID).

The reason we added the “sort of” above is because Pitino only had to go through direct examination today.  We’re sure he relished the chance to take the stand and clear his name (even though the trial is really about whether or not Sypher attempted to extort him) as best as he can, but if there are going to be fireworks, they’re likely to come tomorrow when Pitino faces cross-examination by the defense.  According to the breakdown from Jones/KSR linked above, the defense has been effective at crossing potentially damaging witnesses so far, so this could get heated.  Consider, however, what we know about Rick Pitino’s coaching style.  Above all, he’s a preparation coach.  His biggest asset is how much work he invests in getting ready for an opponent ahead of time, and even though he’s surely been prepped like mad for this by his attorneys already, now he’s got another full evening to get ready for the hardest part.  If the defense is able to put together a jewel of a cross-examination, though, it will also be interesting to see if the US can stack him back up on re-direct.

Though no infectious agents have ever been discussed in this whole business and we can assume none ever came into play, that description of the brief event by Pitino reminds us of one of the several great lines from Band of Brothers:  “Remember, boys…flies spread disease.  So keep yours closed.”

1. From the we are completely and utterly shocked, shocked we tell you, department, the two Drexel players who were arrested on Monday on suspicion of armed robbery were suspended indefinitely from the team yesterday.  Jamie Harris and Kevin Phillip will find it awfully tough to play basketball next year while in lockup anyway.
2. Additional information from the WVU program yesterday revealed that head coach Bob Huggins actually broke seven ribs (#3-#9), not four as was originally reported.  He is still having trouble breathing without pain and will continue to be held in a Las Vegas hospital until that pain subsides.
3. Northwestern’s Kevin Coble indicated yesterday that he is retiring from basketball after a summer of worse-than-expected rehabilitation on the foot he injured prior to last season’s first game.  This is obviously very sad news for Coble and Northwestern in their hopes that the all-Big Ten second-teamer in 2008-09 would be back next season to lead the Wildcats to their first-ever NCAA Tournament.  The silver lining for Wildcat fans: Coble is on track to graduate from the elite school in December, and four starters including star John Shurna (18/6) will return from an NIT team next year.
4. Day two of the Karen Sypher extortion trial was Tuesday in Louisville, and jurors were rewarded with a previously unseen video of her making allegations of rape to authorities in April 2009 after the extortion plan fell through when Rick Pitino reported her to the feds.  Testimony was also given by patrons and workers on the infamous night at Porcini’s that suggest Sypher and Pitino were getting along very well throughout the encounter.  Pitino could testify as to his side of the story as soon as today.
5. Seth Davis checks in with a summer report from Las Vegas, where he spoke to eleven prominent coaches about the status of their programs going into next season.  Always good stuff from one of the class acts in the business.

1. The extortion trial of Karen Sypher began Monday in Louisville, and the blockbuster allegation of the day came from the defense.  Sypher says that Rick Pitino threatened to have her “put in concrete in a river” if she didn’t keep quiet about their affair in 2003.  It’s going to be educational to see how the defense tries to spin this so that Pitino is viewed as the guilty party considering the amount of evidence that the feds already have in this case.
2. The second installment of the Flourishing Five came out yesterday, and the Wisconsin Badgers are the #4 pick.  As a reminder, CBS Sports is picking the five collegiate programs with excellent basketball and football programs.  #5 Pittsburgh was named last week.  The Badgers are a solid choice.  We’re going to predict that the next three (in order) are: Florida, Ohio State and Texas.
3. This is an interesting article from Dennis Dodd about how the ACC hasn’t shut the door on future expansion, having mocked up 14- and 16-team scenarios.  The ACC has to know that as a lesser football conference, it behooves them to be more proactive in this arena rather than waiting to get raided by the Big Ten and/or SEC at some future date.
4. The thing is, when Tom Izzo says that he believes Purdue is the Big Ten favorite next season, he realizes that his team (not the Boilermakers) will probably be standing later into March and April.  Would you bet against this guy in the postseason given what he’s been able to accomplish the last two with much the same cast of characters?
5. The Ivy League is still the Ivy League, regardless of the success of Cornell making the Sweet Sixteen and Harvard’s Jeremy Lin getting signed by the Golden State Warriors.  But there are some league insiders who believe the added attention that the conference has received will only help recruiting the type of players who would have otherwise gone to BCS schools.