Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. Night Line will run on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

Is it possible for a team ranked in the Top 15 of the AP and Coaches Polls for each of the last ten weeks to be considered under-appreciated? It certainly seems that way for No. 11 Georgetown, a team that ranks third in the Big East at 12-5 and 22-6 overall yet never seems to get mentioned as an elite team. On Senior Night for Henry Sims and Jason Clark Monday, the Hoyas throttled Notre Dame by 18 points and in the process held the Irish to their lowest scoring output (41 points) in a conference game since 1993. While John Thompson III’s team is always first associated with the efficient Princeton-style offense, this year’s team also locks up defensively as well as anyone in the Big East. Their methodical approach on both ends will make the Hoyas a very difficult draw in the NCAA Tournament.

The Hoyas Have Been Strong on Defense All Season Long (AP Photo/R. Lipski)

Georgetown has been a surprise team all season, consistently sitting in the top four of the Big East after being picked to finish 10^th in the preseason by conference coaches. But the surprise factor is gone, as the Hoyas were initially ranked in the polls on December 5 and have not dropped out since. This is a classic JTIII team that features a passing big man in the high post (Sims), a bevy of wing players that take and make smart shots in the flow of the offense, and a collective bunch that thrives in a zone defense with their length. While a team like Connecticut has superior NBA talent and big-name scorers, the Hoyas are a far more effective group on both ends of the floor. Monday night’s 59-41 victory over the once-streaking Fighting Irish proved once again that this team is a pain to play against.

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It may still read February on your calendar, but the Big South Tournament tips off tonight and therefore it’s time to start the 35-day journey from 321 teams alive to only one left standing — colloquially known around here as The Best Time of the Year. As we did last season, we’re going to represent this visually with our 2012 version of the Circle of March. We’ll remove teams each day as they’re eliminated from contention.

Brian Otskey is the Big East correspondent for RTC and a regular contributor. You can find him @botskey on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

The final week of the regular season is upon us. While there are no bubble teams in action tonight, we hope you enjoy the last Big Monday of the season.

#18 Notre Dame at #11 Georgetown – 7:00 PM EST on ESPN (****)

• Georgetown enters this game tied with South Florida for the final double bye in next week’s Big East Tournament. The Hoyas have the tiebreaker, but a loss tonight would drop them into fifth place and a single bye. John Thompson III’s team allowed Seton Hall to shoot 61% against its normally stellar defense last week but responded in a big way by limiting Villanova to 28% on Saturday. Against a Notre Dame team that likes to slow the pace and grind out possessions, Georgetown should actually feel comfortable. The Hoyas have a big rebounding edge in this game with Otto Porter and Henry Sims up front. Jack Cooleyis a warrior on the boards for Notre Dame but that’s all the Irish offer in that department. Neutralizing Cooley and limiting Notre Dame’s three point attack will be the two main keys for Georgetown in this game.
  

  Can Georgetown Earn A Double Bye?

• The Fighting Irish shot an anemic 4-31 from three-point land in a loss to St. John’s this past Saturday. A repeat performance against one of the best three-point defenses in the country will send Notre Dame back to South Bend with its second consecutive loss. To avoid that, Notre Dame must move the ball well against a patient defense accustomed to playing at the slow pace the Irish prefer. Eric Atkins needs to play well at the point and Notre Dame’s late shot clock execution must be working well in order for this team to win on the road tonight. With Georgetown’s big rebounding edge and familiarity with low possession games, it’s going to be hard for Notre Dame to control the game and get into a comfort zone.
• This appears to be a bad matchup for the Irish but you never know exactly how things will play out. Both teams guard the three point line extremely well and that’s what the game may come down to. It’s unlikely that ND will shoot 4-31 from deep again but Georgetown’s rebounding edge may be the difference in the game. We have to favor the Hoyas at home.

Zach Hayes is an editor, contributor and bracketologist for Rush the Court.

Locks: Temple, Duke, North Carolina, Florida State, Kansas, Missouri, Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State, Syracuse, Marquette, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Louisville, Michigan State, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Wichita State, Creighton, UNLV, New Mexico, San Diego State, Murray State, Kentucky, Florida, Vanderbilt, Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga.

Note: all RPI/SOS numbers compiled Sunday.

Dee Bost and Mississippi State is falling perilously close to the bubble

Atlantic 10

Saint Louis (22-6, 10-4)- The worst thing a bubble team can do this time of year is sustain a “bad” loss. Bad doesn’t even begin to describe Saturday’s setback at sub-#250 RPI Rhode Island. The overall record, #36 RPI, high KenPom/Sagarin rating and wins over fellow bubble teams Xavier, St. Joe’s and Dayton are positives, but the URI loss is undoubtedly a black mark on the resume. The winner of their rematch with Xavier on Tuesday will feel much more secure about their chances.

Xavier (18-10, 9-5)- The Musketeers haven’t exactly impressed lately, barely dodging Dayton and Richmond at home in between a seven-point defeat at UMass. Their resume is boosted by a difficult non-conference schedule which includes wins at Vanderbilt and home vs. Purdue. Xavier sits firmly on the cut line with an RPI of 53, SOS of 50 and a 5-6 road record. If they fall short at SLU, they’ll need to beat Charlotte at home and at least one game in the A-10 Tournament.

Saint Joseph’s (19-11, 9-6)- The Hawks jumped back into the bubble hunt with their win over ranked and red-hot Temple on Saturday and their computer numbers (51 RPI, 44 SOS, 41 non-conference SOS) suggests they could be around awhile. The win over Creighton is also helpful, but St. Joe’s lost five times to sub-#80 RPI teams, including Richmond, Charlotte and American. They’ll need to avoid a potential pitfall at St. Bonaventure on Wednesday and forge deep into the A-10 Tournament. St. Joe’s beat Dayton and lost to Xavier.

Dayton (18-10, 8-6)- Dayton’s mid-season four game losing skid keeps them on the outside looking in for now and the Flyers also have the worst RPI (61) of the A-10 bubble teams. Dayton’s lost four games to sub-100 RPI competition including #232 Miami (OH) and #251 Rhode Island. The 3-6 road record also stings. Keeping them afloat are wins at Temple and at home against Alabama, Saint Louis and Xavier. Winning their final two at Richmond and vs. George Washington are musts.

ACC

Virginia (21-7, 8-6)- The Cavs have three chances to lock up a bid to end the season: North Carolina, Florida State and at Maryland. They fell painfully short in the first opportunity, losing to the Heels by three in Charlottesville. Only one RPI top-50 win over Michigan from back in November and a #223 non-conference SOS will hurt their seed, Virginia should get in at 9-7 in the ACC in this bubble climate. Virginia also won at Oregon and beat Miami at home. A win over FSU locks up a bid.

Miami (16-10, 7-6)- Despite Reggie Johnson’s suspension, the Canes soundly handled Florida State, a win tremendously important to their at-large chances. Prior to Sunday, their second-best win after Duke was #81 RPI Massachusetts. Miami has a stellar #48 RPI and #32 SOS, but they’re far from comfortably in with a 4-7 road record and a 4-10 record vs. the RPI top-100. Their Wednesday trip to Raleigh is huge. They can’t afford another road setback after losing at Maryland last week.

NC State (18-11, 7-7)- Mark Gottfried’s bunch had three chances for resume-building wins at Duke and home vs. UNC and Florida State. They lost all three and compounded the problem by falling at #144 RPI Clemson this past Saturday. NC State is 0-8 vs. the RPI top-50 and now stands at 7-7 in the ACC with a #67 RPI. A loss in either of their final two games vs. Miami and at Virginia Tech would all but eliminate them from bubble contention. They’ll need to claw their way to 9-7 and defeat one of the ACC’s big three in the conference tournament to have a chance.

Big 12

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We are now in the home stretch, of the regular season, at least. With conference tournaments right around the corner, some beginning as early as this week, teams looking to make a statement win for seeding purposes come March and others looking to ensure that their bubble doesn’t pop are running out of time. As for this week’s poll, it is status quo at the top with Kentucky and Syracuse checking in at #1 and #2, respectively. Wichita State continues to dazzle and has entered the Top 10 for the first time this year, while Indiana rejoins the Top 25 after being on the outside last week. The Quick ‘n Dirty after the jump…

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Unbelievably, even though the calendar reads February 27 and March is still a full 60 hours away, Championship Fortnight begins tonight in Lexington, Virginia, and High Point, North Carolina. The Big South Tournament opening round tips off this evening with two games hosted at VMI and High Point versus Radford and Gardner-Webb, respectively. Tomorrow night the Horizon League Tournament will tip off with games at Butler, Detroit, Youngstown State, and Milwaukee. In all, 16 different conferences will begin their tournaments this week, but only four will crown their champions by next Sunday — the Big South, the OVC, the Atlantic Sun, and the Missouri Valley. The full schedule of each round through next Sunday is below.

If you buy into the theory that (almost) every team has a shot to win it all through its conference tournament’s automatic bid, over the next 14 days we’ll whittle down roughly 321 contenders to the ballyhooed 31 AQs along with the chosen 37 at-larges. Even if you don’t care about that, it’s still worth noting that we start elimination-style, win-or-g0-home basketball as of tonight. No matter the month, that’s always a good thing.

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. 

Last week included much debate about some of the all-time great teams in college basketball. First, we released our RTC Mount Rushmore of the most significant people in NCAA basketball history, which featured discussion about the leaders of several great programs. Then, CBSSports.com released their ballots ranking the 16 greatest teams in college history, followed by our own Joshua Weill highlighting Rodrick Rhodes and his (lack of) impact on the 1996 Kentucky ‘Untouchables,’ the team ranked third all-time by CBS. Meanwhile, this year’s Kentucky Wildcats won another impressive conference road game over Mississippi State and outlasted Vanderbilt on Saturday to improve its record to 28-1 overall and 14-0 in SEC play. All of this got us to thinking: How historically great is this year’s Kentucky squad compared to some of its contemporaries? Let’s take a look at how John Calipari’s team matches up to some dominant modern teams.

How Strong is this Year's Kentucky Team, Historically? (AP Photo/ J. Crisp)

If it weren’t for Christian Watford’s buzzer-beating three on December 10, Kentucky would be 28-0 right now and in the discussion to go undefeated. Instead, Indiana got the win that day and quieted the Wildcats’ buzz for an extended period. Forward Terrence Jones had just four points, one rebound, and six turnovers in that game, concerning many fans that the team could not reach its potential without its go-to offensive guy playing at his highest level. But since that game, UK has cruised in its 14 conference games and Jones has been just fine, averaging 12.2 points and 6.7 rebounds in SEC play. Those numbers are way down from last season and far from the dominance we all expected, but with five other stars on the team this hasn’t been an issue. Shooting 49.6% with just 1.8 turnovers per game, Jones has been quite alright.

The rest of this Kentucky lineup is filled with pros at every position. Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Doron Lamb, and Darius Miller all average double-figure scoring on the season, while freshman point guard Marquis Teague is at 9.6 points and 4.7 assists per game on the year. The three freshmen — Davis, Gilchrist, and Teague — are all projected NBA lottery picks according to DraftExpress.com, while sophomores Jones and Lamb are expected to be selected in the first round as well whenever they declare. The senior leader Miller may very well find his way onto an NBA roster too, as he is currently a top 25 available senior as ranked by DraftExpress.

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Zach Hayes is RTC’s official bracketologist.

• Last Four In: St. Joseph’s, Northwestern, Miami, BYU.
• First Four Out: South Florida, Colorado State, Dayton, Oregon.
• Next Four Out: Arizona, VCU, Illinois, UCF.

Click on bracket to enlarge and check out my latest bubble watch update here.

S-Curve

• 1 Seeds: Syracuse, Kentucky, Kansas, Duke
• 2 Seeds: Michigan State, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio State
• 3 Seeds: Marquette, Baylor, Michigan, Georgetown
• 4 Seeds: Wisconsin, Louisville, Indiana, Wichita State
• 5 Seeds: Florida, Florida State, UNLV, Notre Dame
• 6 Seeds: Temple, Vanderbilt, Murray State, Creighton
• 7 Seeds: San Diego State, New Mexico, Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s
• 8 Seeds: Purdue, Iowa State, Kansas State, Virginia
• 9 Seeds: Memphis, Alabama, Southern Miss, Cincinnati
• 10 Seeds: California, Saint Louis, Connecticut, West Virginia
• 11 Seeds: Long Beach State, Mississippi State, Washington, Harvard
• 12 Seeds: Seton Hall, Xavier, Texas, BYU, Miami
• 13 Seeds: Northwestern, St. Joseph’s, Oral Roberts, Iona, Drexel
• 14 Seeds: Middle Tennessee, Nevada, Akron, Davidson
• 15 Seeds: Belmont, Valparaiso, Weber State, UT-Arlington
• 16 Seeds: LIU Brooklyn, Bucknell, UNC-Asheville, Stony Brook, Mississippi Valley State, Savannah State

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1. With the regular season coming to an end nearly every day over the next week will be filled with Senior Days/Nights. In nearly every case those honored will be seniors with a few exceptions for others (usually juniors), who are expected to leave for the NBA Draft. Honoring a player that is no longer on the team is almost unheard of, but that is what Michigan State planned to do for Delvon Roe, who retired before the season started due to a degenerative knee injury, on their Senior Day game against Ohio State. The Spartans actually wanted to have Roe play, but that proposal was rejected due to NCAA rules on amateurism. Apparently, Roe’s decision to become a professional actor prevents him from participating in college athletics. While the school will still be allowed to honor him before the game, the ruling seems questionable since Percy Miller (aka Lil’ Romeo) was allowed to play for USC despite his entertainment career.
2. Following Saturday’s phenomenal Missouri–Kansas there were probably hundreds of columns about why the Border War should continue, but you will have a hard time finding a better column on the game and the rivalry than the one written by Joe Posnanski, which isn’t shocking for those who are familiar with his work. We are not sure we are willing to agree with his assertion that it was the best rivalry in college basketball, but it certainly ranks up there. To some degree in the modern age, sentimentality has become overrated and a tired fallback for writers, but we will miss the quality of basketball this rivalry has given us particularly of late.
3. Yesterday was a tumultuous day for Miami as Reggie Johnson was declared ineligible yesterday afternoon due to reports of his family accepting impermissible benefits (not related to the Nevin Shapiro scandal) without his knowledge. Johnson, who has averaged 10.6 points and 6.9 rebounds per game since coming back from an injury earlier this year, was questionable for last night’s game against Florida State due to a knee injury, but was forced to sit out anyways with this news. Remarkably the Hurricanes managed to pull out the win without Johnson’s services. For now, Johnson and the Hurricanes will have to hope that this issue gets resolved quickly as time is running out on the Hurricanes as they sit on the bubble.
4. NCAA handed down one of the stiffer penalties in recent memory on Friday when it placed Radford on probation for two years and gave former coach Brad Greenberg a five-year show-cause penalty. The penalty for the school, which was related to its men’s basketball and tennis programs, was based on recruiting benefits and is not that severe, but the problem was exacerbated by an effort by the coaching staff that was spearheaded by Greenberg to mislead the NCAA about those violations. Brad, who is the brother of Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg, is currently an assistant coach for the Venezuelan national team and given the severity of his penalty we do not expect to see him around the college game any time soon unless his brother decides to take him in.
5. Is he actually going to come back? According to reports, Jim Calhoun may make his (sort of) long-awaited return to the sidelines on Saturday against Pittsburgh. With Calhoun returning for what might be his last game ever at Gampel and Senior Day (admittedly with a rather undistinguished senior class) it should be an interesting atmosphere. If Calhoun really wants to get the crowd (and hopefully his team) fired up, it would seem like an opportune time to announce that he is retiring at the end of this season, which many are already speculating that he will do.

This Weekend’s Lede. It was a wild and wonderful college basketball weekend filled with bubble teams fighting for their lives and others maneuvering for seed position. In many of the smaller conferences, the regular season ended and schools are now preparing to begin conference tournament play this week (egads, the Big South begins Monday night!). For most of the power conference teams, though, each game carries more weight than those that came before it, and perhaps nowhere was that more true than in Lawrence, Kansas, on Saturday afternoon. Let’s jump into that game and everything else that went down this weekend…

Your Watercooler Moment. Anthony Davis or Thomas Robinson — Who Ya Got?

T-Rob Won the Weekend, But Will He Win the NPOY? (Topeka CJ/M. Gunnoe)

The National Player of the Year race got even more compelling on Saturday afternoon as the two leading candidates, Kansas’ Thomas Robinson and Kentucky’s Anthony Davis, each made his case through dominant performances in key rivalry games in front of a CBS national television audience. Davis started the day with a near-perfect 10-11 shooting performance against Vanderbilt that included 28 points, 11 rebounds, and six blocks to highlight his candidacy as the most valuable player in America. Robinson finished it with a 28-point, 12-rebound masterpiece of his own that lacked in Davis’ near-perfection (T-Rob shot 10-21 from the field), but more than compensated for it with his timeliness. It was Robinson’s layup (and-one) with 16 seconds left that tied the game with arch-rival Missouri at 75-all, and it was his subsequent rejection of Phil Pressey’s driving shot attempt that sent the game into overtime, where KU outlasted the Tigers, 87-86. Because of Davis and Robinson, both Kentucky and Kansas clinched regular season conference championships, the incredible eighth Big 12 title in a row for the Jayhawks and the 45th SEC title in history for the Wildcats.

We did some crowd-sourcing on Twitter yesterday over this very question and it’s clear that there is no consensus on who the NPOY should be. A common refrain that we heard was that Davis is more valuable defensively than Robinson (probably true) and that should therefore make the difference; conversely, Kansas without Robinson in its lineup may look a lot worse than Kentucky would without Davis on its front line (also probably true). Each player is a certain First Team All-American, but the duo will each have two more games over the next seven days to make their final cases to America — UK vs. Georgia and at Florida, and KU at Oklahoma State and vs. Texas. In a too-close-to-call competition, one particularly good or bad game relative to each other could make all the difference.

Top Storyline. The Border War Showcases College Hoops At Its Best. Given everything that was at stake locally, regionally and nationally in Saturday’s Border War showdown between Missouri and Kansas, the basketball gods cast a fitting tribute to a series that does not deserve to end. The game had just about everything you could ask for except a buzzer-beating game-winner (and let the record reflect that Marcus Denmon’s shot just after the final horn fell into the hole), including All-America performances from players sure to soon be on those lists, a fan environment perhaps unparalleled anywhere else in the sport, and an epic comeback that will no doubt cause glee or consternation for years depending on which side of the Missour/Kansas border you live on. It was just a superb game for any college basketball fan to enjoy, and if Saturday’s masterpiece was indeed the end of the series for a while, it will have to live on through repeated showings of clips such as this one. (note: of course, these games don’t matter…)

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