1. After Butler announced that it would be heading to the Atlantic 10 for the 2013-14 season one month ago most observers put the Bulldogs in the back of their mind when it came to conference realignment. That decision appears to have been premature as Butler announced yesterday that it was heading to the Atlantic 10 immediately. The move, which is widely believed to have been made in reaction to the likely decision by the Horizon League to ban the school from its postseason tournament as a response to the school’s prior announcement that it was leaving the conference, makes what is already one of the premier conferences in the country even better. For years, fans of Atlantic 10 basketball have scoffed at some writers referring to the conference as a mid-major. After this move, we should probably start rating them along with the BCS conferences as they would probably rate fairly highly on that scale even if they probably lack the premier team that their counterparts will have next season.
2. Florida may have found an eventual replacement for Patric Young in the form of South Carolina transfer Damontre Harris. Ok, so that may be an exaggeration based on the 6.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 2.3 blocks per game Harris put up as a sophomore, but Harris could help the Gators out on the inside when Young and Erik Murphy leave Gainesville. Harris, who should be eligible for the 2013-14 season and would have two more years of eligibility left, could be part of a plan for rebuilding the interior for the Gators that is focused on adding Chris Walker, a top-10 recruit in the class of 2013 who hails from Florida.
3. College basketball players can find a lot of strange ways to injure themselves whether it is working out, playing another sport, or being involved in a car accident. Rarely are they involved in an event like what Chad Renfro experienced while visiting his parents. The junior from Barry University was surfing near Jacksonville, Florida last week when he noticed a sharp pain in his leg and quickly realized that he had been bitten by shark. Renfro was able to make it back to shore and was sent to a local hospital where he received treatment including 85 stitches. Renfro appears to be in good spirits though and should not miss any time during the upcoming season.
4. Say what you want about John Calipari, but he knows how to get his point across. Yesterday, we included a link to a piece by Mike DeCourcy offering advice for five players on how to improve their games this summer. In a post on his personal site, Calipari offers advice to Kyle Wiltjer and in doing so also finds a way to turn the advice for his rising sophomore into a propaganda piece. According to the site, the letter is the same for every returning player on the team although we doubt he thinks of Sam Malone as a potential sixth man unless he is talking about the sixth man figuratively. For us the key point is Calipari using his website to give us all a peak inside his program while casually mentioning the program’s accomplishments in case any of us were unaware of those accomplishments.
5. The Mayor just got a pay raise in Iowa as Iowa State announced that it had signed Fred Hoiberg to an eight-year extension that increases his annual salary from $800,000 per year to $1.5 million per year. That might seem like a pretty hefty pay raise and it is, but Hoiberg has had a pretty impressive run recently including being the reigning Big 12 co-Coach of the Year. In just two years, Hoiberg took a team that had posted a sub-.500 record three straight years and led them to a 23-11 record and a NCAA Tournament victory before losing to eventual national champion Kentucky. Some of that performance can be attributed to serendipity in the form of Royce White, who was able to overcome his personal demons to terrorize Big 12 defenses. Hoiberg will have his work cut out trying to find another player of White’s caliber willing to come to Ames, but he will have a little more time to do so now.

The 2012 NBA Draft is scheduled for Thursday, June 28, in New York City. As we have done for the last several years, RTC’s team of writers (including Andrew Murawa, Kevin Doyle, Evan Jacoby, Matt Patton, and Danny Spewak) will provide comprehensive breakdowns of each of the 35 collegians most likely to hear his name called by David Stern in the first round on draft night. We’ll work backwards, starting with players who are projected near the end of the first round before getting into the lottery as June progresses. As an added bonus, we’ll also bring you a scouting take from NBADraft.net’s Aran Smith at the bottom of each player evaluation.

Note: Click here for all published 2012 NBA Draft profiles.

Player Name: Jeffery Taylor

School: Vanderbilt

Height/Weight: 6’7”, 225 lbs.

NBA Position: Small Forward

Projected Draft Range: Late First Round

Jeffery Taylor's Athleticism, Defensive Ability and Perimeter Jumper Should Find Him An NBA Home (AP Photo)

Overview: When Taylor first showed up in Nashville four seasons ago, there was little doubt that he had the athletic ability to make an impact at the collegiate level. However, despite his above-average athleticism, there were enough holes in his game to make him a questionable NBA prospect. While he was a ready-made defender, his jumper was a mess (he hit just 22% of his 41 three-point attempts as a freshman, then attempted just 11 from deep as a sophomore), his handle was just average and his effort seemed to be hit-or-miss. But, from day one he was an important part of the Commodore offense, using up 26% of the team’s possessions and taking 25% of his teams’ shots, numbers that stayed pretty stable throughout his career. The difference was that over the years he began to use those possessions and shots more efficiently. In his final season with the ‘Dores, he hit just a shade under two three-pointers a game at a 42.3% clip, posting a 57% effective field goal percentage, while still keeping up his game-changing defensive play and chipping in on the glass and playing the most complete basketball of his career. And, he did all that while playing four seasons without any true play-making offensive player alongside him. Still, he heads into the NBA Draft needing to convince basketball executives that he is ready for the big time. Athleticism and defense are not in question, but he’s not got great size for his position (6’7” with a 6’6” wingspan isn’t very exciting), he has never proven the ability to create his own shot and, the fact that he’s 23 years old means there’s not a whole lot of upside left for his game.

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1. With yesterday being Memorial Day (or Labor Day if you are Ron Artest) there was quite a bit of talk about veterans and their sacrifices. For some individuals who have been affected in particularly profound ways basketball has played a pivotal role, Dana O’Neil takes a look at few of those individuals. As you can see, for these individuals the commitment to veterans and other individuals who have served our society is more than a one day a year event.A
2. After experiencing last year’s Carrier Classic Michigan State wants another chance to play on an aircraft carrier. With this year’s event apparently out of the question, the Spartans are hoping to play in the 2013 event, which would be held in Florida. Plans for the 2013 event are tentative as the organizers are not even sure what city in Florida the event would be held in, but the Spartans are lobbying to play against Notre Dame, a school they have not played since 1979. Despite the recent success of the Irish, this seems like it would be a poor marketing decision as the event should feature two programs with some brand recognition. The Irish certainly have it in football, but basketball is a completely different situation. The event would generate plenty of publicity by virtue of being held on a naval carrier, but the event would benefit from having a bigger name team especially in its third year.
3. For the most part this conference realignment business has made everybody look bad, but there are a few exceptions and Chuck Neinas appears to be one of them. The Big 12 interim commissioner is starting to get praise for holding together the conference when it looked like it was on the verge of falling apart. Following the tenure of Dan Beebe, which was most notable for the creation of the fake Twitter account, Neinas appears to have acted quickly and prudently while stabilizing the conference according to reports. We take most of these columns with a grain of salt because we do not know who is feeding these writers their information, but if what the writer is saying we would be surprised if Neinas does not get the interim qualifier removed from his title in the near future.
4. We are still having a hard time getting used to seeing Rob Dauster’s face on SI.com next to people like Peter King, but his article on how Georgetown develops its centers is an interesting one. While his father’s centers will be the more historically significant ones, John Thompson III has developed his interior players in a very different way as fits their abilities. So even though the Hoyas may still be defined by their big men they are doing it in a distinct way that reflects not only their roster, but also the different coaching philosophies of the father and son.
5. Most people come up with New Year’s resolutions, but Mike DeCourcy has some for the summer and instead of making them for himself he has a few for college basketball players. Highlighting five well-known players who have had varying degrees of success in their college career DeCourcy gives them a few tips on how to improve their games over the summer to take a step to the next level. While we do not expect these five players to compete for National Player of the Year awards all five of them could play major roles in the teams winning either conference or potentially national titles next season.

1. On Friday the NCAA ruled that Central Michigan transfer Trey Zeigler would be able to play for Pittsburgh next season without having to sit out the usual one year. Citing historical precedent, Zeigler was granted a waiver because his father, Ernie, had been fired by Central Michigan. The addition of Zeigler to the Panther roster gives them one of the best backcourts in the country and makes them a potential top 25 team even if they have to work out a few things after last season’s disaster. We should note the curious decision by the NCAA to give athletes a waiver in this situation. Even though we are all for giving student-athletes the best opportunity to improve themselves it seems like the NCAA is creating some of these rules arbitrarily as your father losing a job is very different from someone in your family battling a terminal illness. In any event, it will be interesting to see how the Panthers utilize Zeigler over the next two seasons.
2. As expected Connecticut transfer Roscoe Smith announced that he will be transferring to UNLV after leaving the Huskies program that will be forced to sit out next year’s NCAA Tournament. It is expected that Smith will be able to play for UNLV next season as his former team is ineligible for the postseason. If it is true, it could create a potential glut in the frontcourt for the Rebels. In fact, it will probably seem strange to many observers to say that a Mountain West team might be better to have a player who got regular minutes in the Big East sit out a year, but having Smith for two more years post-Mike Moser years might be of more benefit to the program. We doubt that Smith would want to do that so we might be seeing ridiculously early “buzzer-beater” shots coming to Las Vegas very soon.
3. Another one of the 10 defendants charged in an illegal gambling ring that tried to influence the outcome of San Diego basketball games pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court. Richard Thweni became the third individual to enter a guilty plea in the case investigating the gambling operation that reportedly ran from January 2009 until April 2011. There are still seven more individuals who are waiting to be tried in court (or enter pleas), but we are unsure if all of the information surrounding reported attempts to influence those basketball games will ever come out.
4. After a rumor was started that three teams from the ACC–Florida State, Clemson, and Miami–were looking at the possibility of moving to the Big 12. Of course that rumor was quickly refuted as a miscommunication, but it still got plenty of people talking. We did not really read too much into this as we assume that every school is constantly on the lookout for options that are better for themselves. Shawn Eichorst, Miami’s athletic director,  felt it was necessary to reiterate the Miami’s commitment to the ACC. It seems like a curious statement to make at least publicly, but to us there is only one translation–none of the better conferences want the Hurricanes right now..
5. Remember all that talk about Kendall Marshall coming back from a scaphoid fracture to play within a week? It turns out that there was more wrong with Marshall than just that fracture as he also had a fractured elbow. In reality the injury is academic since no reputable medical staff would have cleared Marshall to play with the scaphoid fracture he sustained, but it makes all the talk about him playing again so soon in the NCAA Tournament seem even more ridiculous.

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. 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. 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.

Lead Story: Georgetown Reels In Top-50 Junior Wing

Domingo Is A Great Pick-up For Head Coach John Thompson III And Georgetown.

Domingo A Big Pick-up For the Hoyas. Georgetown has been working hard on local guys in the Class of 2013 such as point guard Rysheed Jordan, shooting guard Davon Reed and center BeeJay Anya, but the Hoyas went to the opposite end of the country to pick up their first commitment in the junior class as small forward Stephen Domingo, a California native, made a verbal to head coach John Thompson III. Domingo is actually the second California wing to commit to Georgetown as Hollis Thompson a Los Angeles native. Domingo also has ties to the nation’s capital since his grandparents are D.C. residents and his mom is a District native. Domingo is a great pick-up for the Hoyas since he is a great shooter with terrific range and a smooth stroke. He can knock it down off the bounce or in catch-and-shoot situations and has great height and length. Georgetown is also chasing after point guard Tyler Ennis, small forward Nick King and power forward Jermaine Lawrence in the Class of 2013 although they may be out of the race for top-100 small forward Josh Hart now.

What They’re Saying

Junior Juwan Parker on where each school stands in his recruitment: “I’m considering three schools right now: Memphis, Georgia and Stanford. I would rank them in that order.”

Memphis Leads For Junior Standout Juwan Parker. (Daryl Paunil/National Recruiting Spotlight)

Junior Stanford Robinson on why he committed to the Hoosiers: “[Indiana head] coach [Tom] Crean, we connected very, very quickly. We shared a lot of laughs, he presented his plan of where he sees me fitting in and how I could play a part in it.

Junior Stephen Domingo on choosing Georgetown: “It was really the relationship I developed with coach [John Thompson III] and the way they promote the versatility of their wings. They rely on their wings a lot and they use their wings in a way I can be productive offensively and defensively.” Read the rest of this entry »

1. It wouldn’t be the Morning Five without a John Calipari mention, as the sport’s biggest newsmaker spins the media like a top with his almost-daily appearances, interviews, and social media missives. Yesterday on his website the Kentucky head coach wrote that his new scheduling strategy — pushing for more neutral site appearances against marquee opponents — will result in a one-year hiatus in the Kentucky-North Carolina series, but the home-and-home battle between two of the best programs in the country will return in 2013-14. The purpose of this move according to Calipari is to alternate years where the Wildcats will have to travel to Chapel Hill and Louisville, meaning that UK will play at least one tough non-conference road game each year. The Wildcats have also picked up a home/neutral series with Baylor starting next season that will allow them to play in Cowboys Stadium in 2013-14, the site of that year’s Final Four. Perhaps most interestingly, though, is that Calipari says that he’s in negotiations with Duke to begin an annual rotating neutral site game that he says would be on the same weekend each year and become “THE GAME” to watch. We certainly can’t argue with that.
2.  What we can argue with was a curious comment that Calipari made in his post explaining why he’s so gung ho on scheduling future neutral site games in football stadiums: “I’m convinced we would have won the title two seasons ago if we would have played in a dome during the regular season. Our guys weren’t prepared for it.” At first blush, this sounds reasonable on its face. But closer examination suggests that the head coach is tailoring the facts of his argument to justify what he wants. First of all, the Wildcats lost to West Virginia in the Elite Eight in Syracuse in 2010, which means of course that they had to win a Sweet Sixteen game in the Carrier Dome two days prior — on the same floor, in the same dome, only against a different team (Cornell). Did John Wall and company forget what they’d learned about playing in a dome environment just 48 hours before the loss to WVU? Next, the 2012 team that just won the national championship in the Superdome didn’t play in a dome environment at all in this year’s regular season or in the SEC Tournament. Still, without that ‘necessary’ experience, the Wildcats successively rolled through Indiana, Baylor, Louisville and Kansas to win it all. All in domes. If Calipari wants to play the lack of experience card to forgive the failure of the 2010 Wildcats, he probably should be looking at the ridiculously soft schedule that his Wildcats ran through on its way to a 35-3 record that year. When both teams matched up in the Elite Eight, the Mountaineers were by far the best team UK had faced all season. Kentucky’s lack of experience in playing good teams was the problem; it wasn’t that they hadn’t played in a dome. [Ed. Note: It is unclear which team Calipari was referring to, but the 2010 team was a far superior team if he was talking about winning a national championship.]
3. From a coach spewing nonsense to players doing likewise… Deadspin published a really interesting piece on Thursday examining in great detail documents from the cottage industry of companies who are tasked with monitoring college athletes’ social networking accounts. The article describes how it works: First, the schools get access to each player’s account through a special tracking mechanism that scans their pages regularly. Then, “once the computers gather all that data, the firms’ software searches it for trigger words and reports back to coaches and athletic department functionaries. This happens in near real-time.” It wouldn’t be Deadspin-worthy unless the examples were equal parts hilarious and horrifying, so we’d just suggest you set aside a few minutes of your time and get over there to poke around. Of particular interest is one company’s documentation and definition of many of the most common trigger words and phrases that could get players in trouble. Let’s just end this by saying that if you’re over 30 years old, you’re probably going to learn a few new slang words or acronyms to test on your buddies during the long weekend.
4. More conference realignment! And it doesn’t involve yet another rumor about Florida State, Clemson or Miami. No, UT-Arlington, a Southland school who is (we’re not kidding) joining the WAC on July 1, will spend one year in that league before movin’ on up to the Sun Belt, effective next summer. You read that correctly — in a span of 366 days (from June 30, 2012 to July 1, 2013), UT-Arlington will be a member of three different conferences. At the mid-major level, it’s just short of impossible to keep up with who is heading where, but we think that the Sun Belt will also pick up Georgia State and Texas State to replace the losses of FIU, Denver, and North Texas to the WAC and Conference USA. Whether the WAC survives all of this re-shuffling remains to be seen.
5. A couple of head coaching positions at the mid-major level were filled on Thursday, with Rider and Binghamton inextricably connected through the transition. Binghamton hired Rider head coach Tommy Dempsey to take over for Mark Macon, a former star player at Temple who was unable to dig out of the morass left by his predecessor, Kevin Broadus. Rider acted quickly to fill the vacuum, promoting assistant coach Kevin Baggett to the helm for purposes of continuity. Rider has averaged 18.5 wins per season in the six years that Baggett was an assistant for Dempsey, so it makes sense that the administration wants to keep the momentum moving forward.

The 2012 NBA Draft is scheduled for Thursday, June 28, in New York City. As we have done for the last several years, RTC’s team of writers (including Andrew Murawa, Kevin Doyle, Evan Jacoby, Matt Patton, and Danny Spewak) will provide comprehensive breakdowns of each of the 35 collegians most likely to hear his name called by David Stern in the first round on draft night. We’ll work backwards, starting with players who are projected near the end of the first round before getting into the lottery as June progresses. As an added bonus, we’ll also bring you a scouting take from NBADraft.net’s Aran Smith at the bottom of each player evaluation.

Note: Click here for all published 2012 NBA Draft profiles.

Player Name: Will Barton

School: Memphis

Height/Weight: 6’6” / 175 lbs.

NBA Position: Shooting Guard

Projected Draft Range: Early Second Round

Barton Can Score, But How Will He Translate In The NBA

Overview: Although his Memphis Tigers were very much an up-and-down team during his two years playing for Josh Pastner, Barton made tremendous individual strides during his time there. The Tigers earned bids to two NCAA Tournaments, but many would claim that Memphis underachieved especially when analyzing their high preseason ranking both years. As for Barton though, he certainly pulled his weight as a sophomore elevating himself to one of the premier shooting guards in the country. As a freshman, there was little doubt of Barton’s sheer ability and natural talent, but he struggled with his decision making on the offensive end. He settled for contested shots rather than creating his own off the dribble—being able to create your own shot is an absolute must at the next level—and his shooting percentage was an unimpressive 43% (26.5% from three) as a result. More disconcerting was averaging just a shade over two free throw attempts per game. Over the summer months, however, Barton became a much more polished player on the offensive end, and it showed. Using his quick first step to penetrate the line, Barton’s shooting percentage and three-point percentage rose by nearly 10 percent, and he was getting to the line much more frequently (over five attempts per game). His fluidity and smooth game on offense is a joy to watch—some would call him “slippery” with the ball as he has a knack to get to the basket—and his basketball IQ has really grown since his days at Brewster Academy. While Barton won’t be a lottery pick like his fellow Brewster alum Thomas Robinson will be, he does have an outside shot to be a first rounder assuming he performs well in workouts leading up to the NBA Draft.

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1. You may have heard that a group (Coalition of Intercollegiate Athletics) issued a statement criticizing John Calipari for his recent actions and statement regarding Kentucky‘s scheduling. The group, which is composed of 59 faculty members from FBS schools, says that Kentucky’s desire to play neutral site games is “the type of warning sign we would expect to see on the path toward a full professional model.” Most writers who have already written about this statement have, in our opinion, correctly ripped the COIA for their self-righteous tone, which is mildly amusing with all of the other bad things going on in college athletics and they decide to focus on this. One thing that we are still having trouble understanding is why those same writers continue to rip Calipari for his decision to essentially put the Kentucky-Indiana series on hold because of his desire for neutral site games. Numerous writers have penned columns saying that Calipari should submit to Indiana’s wishes in order to continue the series to do what is right for college basketball. Calipari’s job isn’t to make college basketball overall better it is do what is best for his players and his program. If he decides to do something that is not “in the best interest” of college basketball and it does not break any rules, we could care less about how he schedules and think that any criticisms of him for doing so come off as self-righteous.
2. If you thought that the conference realignment rumor mill could not get any more ridiculous yesterday may have raised the bar as reports surfaced that Florida State, Clemson, and Miami were exploring a move to the Big 12. Those reports were based on a statement made by TCU‘s athletic director, but were subsequently squelched by the same person who said that he was only making a statement that the rumor mill indicated those schools were interested in moving. Outside of FSU, we had not heard of any potential moves so basically he was the driving force of the majority of that rumor. Of course, with all of the strange moves we have seen during the last few years nothing would surprise us at this point.
3. The report that Reeves Nelson was suing Sports Illustrated for its  story earlier this year about UCLA did not really come as much of a surprise to us given what was reported about him and how litigious our society has become. The story, which was written to show how chaotic the UCLA program had become, featured several stories about Nelson including one where he urinated on a teammate’s bed. The lawsuit states that the reported events were not adequately investigated and is asking for $10 million in damages. We doubt that Nelson will get that much, but Tyler Honeycutt the supposed victim of the aforementioned incident claims that it never happened so the case may be a little more interesting than it appears at first glance.
4. Ohio State plans to give 500 of its student-athletes iPads this coming school year as part of a new digital initiative the school is undertaking with a plan to give all 1,110 athletes the devices within the next two years. The iPads will be pre-loaded with materials already given to the student athletes and will have Wi-Fi capability. We applaud the effort to try to give the student-athletes something educational in addition to their scholarships, which we assume many of these individuals are already getting, but we know that this will become the subject of quite a few jokes for rival schools given the tendency of some old Buckeyes for trading in things for tattoos.
5. Many Kansas State fans are probably interested to see what Bruce Weber can do to replace Frank Martin. There may be some question about Weber’s ability to coach, but there should not be any question of his ability to lure in assistant coaches after the stunt that one of his new assistant coaches pulled this past week. Newly hired assistant Chester Frazier, whom you may remember from his days at Illinois playing under Weber and getting a little too physical with Eric Gordon, was playing for a German professional basketball team until he got a call from Weber inviting him to join the Kansas State staff, which Frazier jumped at. And we literally mean jumped at as he abandoned the team he was playing for in the middle of their league playoffs. While we are sure that some Kansas State fans appreciate the dedication we imagine that he will have a tough time selling his future players on sticking with the team after he has done something like this.

The 2012 NBA Draft is scheduled for Thursday, June 28, in New York City. As we have done for the last several years, RTC’s team of writers (including Andrew Murawa, Kevin Doyle, Evan Jacoby, Matt Patton, and Danny Spewak) will provide comprehensive breakdowns of each of the 35 collegians most likely to hear his name called by David Stern in the first round on draft night. We’ll work backwards, starting with players who are projected near the end of the first round before getting into the lottery as June progresses. As an added bonus, we’ll also bring you a scouting take from NBADraft.net’s Aran Smith at the bottom of each player evaluation.

Note: Click here for all published 2012 NBA Draft profiles.

Player Name: Festus Ezeli

School: Vanderbilt

Height/Weight: 6’11” / 255 lbs.

NBA Position: Center

Projected Draft Range: Late First Round/Early Second Round

Festus Ezeli Will Give an NBA Team a Strong Interior Force (US Presswire/J. Brown)

Overview: Festus Ezeli brings a lot to the table besides having the best name of any available prospect. At 6’11” and 255 pounds, Ezeli is a physical specimen who stands out immediately as usually the strongest player on the floor. His wide body allows him to carve out space on the low blocks to make simple moves in the post. But most impressive is his ability to defend the rim with his prototypical size and wingspan (7’4”) for a center. Unfortunately, Ezeli suffered a knee sprain at the start of his senior year that forced him to miss 10 games and seemed to hamper him throughout the entire season. His lack of elite athleticism was already a concern and remains an issue after he struggled to recover from injury. As a result, he averaged just 10.1 points and 5.9 rebounds as a senior, a far cry from the numbers that we expected after a breakout junior year. He also has poor floor awareness in the post, leading to an atrocious 0.14 assist-to-turnover ratio. His 2.0 blocks per game in 23.2 minutes, though, shows that he maintained his strongest asset as a shot-blocking force. Because of the overall unproductive senior campaign, Ezeli may be dropping on the center totem pole behind guys like Fab Melo and Andrew Nicholson, both players he was arguably ahead of prior to injury. This could make him a strong value at the end of the first round or in the early second round for a team in need of some size and strength defensively.

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1. With the ongoing changes to the landscape of college athletics it is often difficult to remember who is headed where and which conferences have ended up as the winners and losers in realignment. As usual, Luke Winn has proposed a solution by looking at how each conference’s overall strength has changed with the moves using data from KenPom. We can already see a certain segment of our readers beginning to twitch with that last sentence. As you would expect the biggest loser out of the major conferences is the Big East. Of course, there will be certain segments (probably the same ones that were already twitching) that will continue to believe that the overall strength of the conferences will not change even with all the movement.
2. Speaking of the Big East, do you remember that conference tournament that was held at Madison Square Garden and was one of the highlights of March? Yeah, not so much any more. Despite getting significantly weaker, there are some individuals in the Big East who are looking to expand its conference tournament to 18 teams. Outside of the logistical nightmare of trying to hold the Big East Tournament over six days in Madison Square Garden there is the even bigger nightmare of watching what could be the early-round play-in games for a significantly weakened conference. As it is some of the early-round games are sparsely attended by fans of schools who know their teams are mediocre at best. Can you imagine what it would look like with the worst Big East teams in those same spots? Yeah, we don’t want to either.
3. After a disastrous past few season Binghamton will be looking to head in a different direction as they are set to name Rider coach Tommy Dempsey as their next head coach. Dempsey, who grew up near Binghmaton, compiled a 119-105 record in seven seasons at Rider, which would be a big step up from the 23-70 that Mark Macon posted in three seasons at Binghamton including 2-29 last season. It is worth noting that despite his respectable overall record Dempsey has never taken Rider to the NCAA Tournament and last season his team had its fewest wins (13) since he took over since he took over as interim coach.
4. After last season’s Crosstown Shootout brawl, which we detailed from the scene, pundits from across the country weighed in on how the administrations from the two schools should handle the rivalry going forward. Yesterday, they revealed one part of their reaction–moving the game to a neutral site–and judging from the response we have heard the public does not appear to be buying into the move. Personally, we don’t understand this move. Outside of the symbolism of playing on a neutral court it seems like a pointless action since the same players will be on the court regardless of where they are and the same fans will be in the stands. If people want to act like idiots, they will do so regardless of which arena they are playing in.
5. We may not be fans of the decision to make the Crosstown Shootout a neutral site rivalry, but we are fans of the Crossroads Classic, which is held in the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The Classic, which was started last year to pair the premier programs in the state of Indiana–Butler, Indiana, Notre Dame, and Purdue–against each other, has been extended for at least two more years. As we have stated before we are big fans of these type of match-ups and advocated for more in our Big Four State Tournament series last year. For some states like North Carolina where the premier programs are all located in the same conference it is not a major issues, but there are plenty of other states, which we identified where it would be a big boost to all the teams involved and more importantly would generate more interest in college basketball.