1. Central Florida got some good news yesterday when the NCAA ruled that AJ Rompza would be able to return to play for the team on December 30 after it concluded its investigation into his relationship with an individual who was known to be working for a sports agent. Rompza was the only active player who was named in the NCAA notice of allegations to UCF (all the names were redacted in the public version, but the school has stated that Rompza was the only active player who was named) so the Knights appear to have cleared that hurdle from an individual standpoint although there is still the potential for significant penalties from the NCAA for the program as a whole. Rompza’s return means that the Knights will have all of their expected pieces back for the start Conference USA play after starting the season with five players suspended for what appear to be unrelated matters.
2. One of the under the radar stories around Connecticut this year is the “rat-tail” that Shabazz Napier has been sporting. Up until now it has become a source of amusement for the media and a source of ridicule from the opposition and opposing fans although Napier’s triple-double on Sunday may have shut up the latter group for a little while. It turns out that there is a reason behind Napier’s fashion statement and it is not just some youthful fashion indiscretion; instead, it is a tribute to a slain friend. Napier claims that he might cut it pretty soon due to the amount of ridicule he is getting and his fear that he might harm his team if he reacts to someone who either doesn’t know the story or is trying to bait him into doing something dumb. We are guessing that now that the rest of the college basketball world knows the meaning behind it he will be getting mocked a lot less for it.
3. We have already provided our guide for NBA fans who will be flocking to our beloved sport. Seth Davis has also decided to chime in on the subject and has offered his thoughts on the matter. Looking through Seth’s 13 points we agree with pretty much all of them especially the point about not using his picks to guide your selections for your NCAA Tournament pool. Use our picks instead. Actually you probably shouldn’t do that either. Find the person who knows the least about college basketball and see which teams they are picking. Come to us so you can sound intelligent when everybody asks you how you know so much and you can regurgitate what we say in our recaps as we desperately try to rationalize what just happened.
4. Yesterday was Monday, which can mean just one thing: a Gary Parrish Poll Attack (actually Mondays can mean a lot of things, but just play along). Maybe the voters are getting a little less idiotic or maybe Parrish is just feeling a little holiday cheer, but this week’s version seems to be a little less angry than usual. This week’s attacks focus on voters not watching games or not bothering to even check head-to-head results. We have to say that we are a little surprised that Parrish has not lived up to his promise to attack voters who pick anybody other than North Carolina as the #1 team in the country. There are a handful who did so this week (including us) and Parrish appears to have “spared” them. For the record, we are more than willing to defend our selection of a new #1 in college basketball.
5. Finally, here is your daily Bernie Fine update: things are starting to get a little more messy from a legal and PR standpoint for Syracuse. The Syracuse district attorney’s office and police department appear to be in an argument about whether the findings from the 2002 investigation into the allegations against Fine will be released for the grand jury to hear and the district attorney has actually obtained a subpoena requiring the police to hand over the records. As you can imagine the police department is not too happy and claims that they do not want to hand the information over “in a piecemeal fashion”. Meanwhile, both ESPN and Syracuse are starting to feel the pressure surrounding the original news report and the how the news was handled. Jason Whitlock, who is no stranger to ESPN bashing, came out with a column ripping ESPN’s journalistic integrity to release such a damaging story when so much of the information is being contested. Whitlock then went to the Deadspin, the beacon for journalistic integrity, and their editor claims that he would not have run such a story. We are not sure if this was included as a joke or not since the site seems ok reporting on the rumored dalliances of low-level ESPN employees (giving names in all of its stories) and posting explicit personal photos online. As for the university, it, more specifically Jim Boeheim, has come under attack by a child advocacy group for statements that Boeheim made about the reliability of the two individuals accusing Fine.

Evan Jacoby is an RTC columnist.

Returning nearly all of its contributing players from a 21-win team, Michigan has high hopes this season. But the one departure suffered by the Wolverines was a big one, as sophomore Darius Morris’ decision to turn pro left the team with a massive void at the point guard position. While Morris, a second-round pick, is now waiting out the NBA lockout, Michigan has found his successor much sooner than expected. Today was freshman Trey Burke’s warm welcome to the national stage.

Beilein Is Excited About His Team's Performance in Maui (Kemper Lesnik)

Playing its first major opponent of the season on Monday, John Beilein’s team was led by the confident play of its young point guard in a convincing win over No. 8 Memphis in the opening game of the Maui Invitational. Burke scored 14 points with four assists while logging a team-high 35 minutes for Michigan, and he displayed impressive poise with the basketball throughout. He successfully managed a swarming Memphis full-court press and looked just as comfortable in the half-court offense, directing Michigan to shoot 53% from the field for the game. You can’t ask for much else from a freshman guard against an elite team, and it’s an exciting development for Michigan’s prospects this season.

Burke’s emergence gives Michigan a second major playmaker alongside Tim Hardaway, Jr., and suddenly the Wolverines again have one of the most dangerous backcourts in the country. Hardaway is a star and he played like one against Memphis, finishing with a 21/7/5 assts line fitting of his dominant all-around game. Fellow off-guards Stu Douglass and Zach Novak continue to fit in perfectly with Beilein’s system with their ability to make shots from deep. Burke completes the offense with his skills at the point.

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Twelve straight hours of hoops here in Maui can leave you a little loopy, but that’s the situation we’re facing here after 160 minutes of fairly entertaining basketball spaced out over half a day. Ok, maybe it was 140 minutes of compelling stuff until UCLA woke up against Chaminade in the first evening game, but the point is that the quality of hoops being played this year in Maui is good for so early in the season.

Here are some thoughts from the afternoon/evening games. For Act I on the morning/early afternoon games (Michigan-Memphis and Duke-Tennessee), click here.

• UCLA is a conundrum surrounded by a riddle wrapped in a question mark. There’s just no figuring this team out. It’s spurious to try to draw reasonable conclusions from a game against a D-II school, but in two halves we saw a team that couldn’t impose its will against a group half its size versus a team that looked talented enough to make it into the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend. Here’s what we do know — the Bruins’ company line in the aftermath of Reeves Nelson’s latest flub (oversleeping and missing the team bus to the airport, causing him to need to take a later flight) is that his addition to the game in the second half “brought energy” and helped UCLA go on a 29-3 run to blow the game wide open.
• So let’s talk about Nelson, shall we? The 6’9″ junior was forced to sit out the first half as a penalty for his transgression, but if you heard Ben Howland and his players talk about his contributions after the game, you’d have thought he went for 20/10 after the intermission. Instead, he took two shots (making neither), hit one of two free throws, grabbed five boards (all defensive), tallied a couple of assists, and got a steal and a block. For 11 minutes of action, it’s a nice hustle line — no doubt about it. But to hear Team Bruin tell it, they wouldn’t have won this game without his performance. While we love glue guys who put their all into every play, Nelson typically isn’t that guy and this situation sounded a bit too much like Intervention where everyone is afraid to tell the truth about someone for fear it’ll set him off.  This UCLA team is definitely worth watching for the next few weeks, at least until the semester break.

Jeff Withey's Only Bucket of the Game Was Impressive (KemperLesnik/B. Spurlock)

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RTC Live is taking a brief interlude to do a one-timer game during a busy opening Monday of Feast Week. CMU’s Trey Zeigler makes a west coast journey to Malibu in an effort to start turning around his dad’s program with a win tonight. Join us for the conversation, after the jump.

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They say that Aloha means hello and goodbye here in the Hawaiian Islands, but after an entertaining morning/afternoon session of basketball, we’re still busy figuring out what to say during all the in-between periods. Regardless of our problems with language, and despite the breathtaking beauty of the landscape outside the gymnasium door, there is some equally compelling, if not gorgeous, basketball being played inside.

Maui Never Disappoints, Inside or Out (KemperLesnik/B. Spurlock)

Here are some of our thoughts from the afternoon session, BGTD-style, here at the Lahaina Civic Center.

• Michigan picked apart Memphis in a way that well-coached teams do to athletic, undisciplined teams. In some aspects of the game — most notably, running the offense and crashing the boards, Michigan made the more athletic Tigers look silly in their approach. John Beilein’s team hit over 50% of its shots by selectively deciding when to drive the ball and when to pull up, and it worked to near-perfection. The Memphis defense at this point all too often tries to rely on its athleticism rather than principles, and with the precision of clockwork, Michigan found back door opportunities repeatedly as a result. Tim Hardaway, Jr., was excellent in both picking his spots (6-13 FG, but 9-10 FT for 21 points), crashing the glass (seven rebounds) and looking for others (five assists). He has the ability to put up those kinds of numbers every night out  — like his dad, he has the look of a star (“I got skeelz.”).

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RTC Live comes to you from Kansas City for the semifinal rounds of the CBE Classic at Sprint Center. Four power conference schools will square off tonight, with Missouri facing Notre Dame in the first game and Pac-12 contender Cal meeting Georgia in the nightcap. Join us for the conversation on a busy Monday of Feast Week, after the jump.

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RTC Live is back at the IZOD Center this evening for another double-header involving four teams with a lot on the line in the early going of this season. In the third place game, Texas will face NC State, followed by the championship game featuring Vanderbilt and a surprising Oregon State squad.  Join us for the conversation on a busy Monday of Feast Week, after the jump.

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North Carolina still sits atop the rankings, but they have a partner with them this week as Kentucky has slipped into the top spot as well. The Wildcats were impressive in posting wins against Kansas, Penn State, and Old Dominion to move to 4-0 on the young season. On the whole, very little change in the Top 10 other than Pittsburgh predictably dropping out after their loss to upstart Long Beach State. The Quick ‘n Dirty after the jump…

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Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish on Mondays throughout the season. In this weekly piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED….finding out answers on Opening Night. After last year, we all knew UConn’s Jeremy Lamb had the chance to be special, but weren’t sure exactly what we’d get with Kemba Walker gone and a new team in Storrs. It took all of 32 minutes and 11 seconds against Columbia for Lamb to go baseline and throw down a “Yeah-I’m-A-POY-frontrunner-and-don’t-you-forget it” posterization. I’ll be shocked if that’s still not a Top 10 play by year’s end, and take note – this is the kid to watch for the next six months.

I LOVED….that moment when you realize college basketball is back – not necessarily the first game, but the first time you jump halfway off the couch and let out a little Ohhh!!! For me it was Alabama/Maryland, when Bama’s Tony Mitchell timed a tip jam so perfectly that he had time to cock it back into a semi-tomahawk and absolutely rip the net apart. The best time of the year is here.

I LOVED….the uniqueness of the North Carolina/Michigan State Carrier Classic. Yes, it was a great matchup, great coaches, a great tribute to our veterans, etc. But more than that, for the first time I can remember the backdrop setting of the game truly overtook the importance of the matchup or the result. Organizers have tried to do that in the past by setting up courts in huge venues, but this trumped them all. Five years from now, I think far more people will remember pictures like this than the final score. OK, well, maybe they’ll remember Roy Williams in combat boots, too.

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Brendon Mulvihill is an RTC contributor. You can find him @themulv on Twitter.  See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

ESPN kicks off Feast Week with a trip to Hawaii for the Maui Invitational.  The field is loaded and things get started today with several recent national championship teams.  Let’s dig into the action.

Memphis vs. Michigan – 3:00 PM EST on ESPN2 HD (***) (simulcast on RTC Live)

John Beilein will Loosen Up His Tie Against Memphis to Tip Off the Maui Invitational

• Memphis dominated an experienced Belmont team in their first and only game of the season thus far.  The Tigers shot a blistering 64.7% eFG, and they will be facing a Wolverine team that is allowing over 50% shooting from inside the arc.  Look for Josh Pastner’s team to take the ball to the hole frequently with sophomore guards Will Barton and Joe Jackson leading the way.
• While Michigan’s field goal defense is allowing teams to shoot over 50% from inside, they are forcing teams to turn the ball over on a superb 36.8% of their possessions (first in the nation).  However, Memphis only turned the ball over nine times against a tough Belmont team that is known for creating turnovers.  Like Memphis, the Wolverines have gotten off to a hot shooting start inside the arc (60.8%).  Unfortunately nearly half of their shots are coming from three-point land and they are only hitting 28.9% of them.  Wolverine guards Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway, Jr., Zack Novak, and Stu Douglas are going to have to hit some threes to prevent Memphis from just packing the lane on defense.
• This game hinges on Michigan’s ability to extend the defense and grab offensive rebounds.  Memphis allowed Belmont to grab too many of its offensive rebounding opportunities.  If the Wolverines can pull the Tiger defense out with a few made three-point shots and open up the lane, look for Michigan to cash in on the offensive glass.  If John Beilein’s team continues to miss from outside, though, it will be difficult to pull the Memphis defense away from the lane, which will allow the more athletic Tigers to own the inside.

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