Special to RushTheCourt.  Ryan Restivo of the MAAC-based SienaSaintsBlog is the RTC correspondent for the Colonial Athletic Association. SienaSaintsBlog now features exclusive video!

The BracketBuster matchups are out, and as promised, RTC is here with some analysis of some of the top games!  Five Colonial Athletic Association teams lead the pack into these February weekend matchups. The Western Athletic Conference drew four bids and the Missouri Valley drew three.  One problem with the BracketBusters? Five of the television games will be on ESPNU, which of course means they’re not available on ESPN360.  However I’d say there are five games where you must, to quote another piece here, “quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live.”

Friday 2/19  (RPI)

Old Dominion (#46) @ Northern Iowa (#17)  – 7 pm on ESPN2/ESPN360

Get to Know Gerald Lee

The Monarchs will travel to Cedar Rapids to play where the Panthers have won every home game by an average of 14 points per game entering this week. 6’8 UNI senior Adam Koch is a tough-to-contain inside presence, scoring a team high 12.7 points per game. 6’10 ODU senior Gerald Lee will likely be assigned to the task of guarding Koch, an he has been a beast this year for the Monarchs, shooting 53% from the field and leading the team with 14.3 points per game. The matchup to watch in this game will be to see if Old Dominion can defend Koch on the inside while keeping their shooters, junior Kwadzo Ahelegbe (11.1 ppg) and Senior Ali Farokhmanesh (team high 42 3-pointers made), at bay. Both teams are first in their respective conferences in FG percentage defense at eerily similar numbers: Old Dominion’s 39.5% FG-defense is 21st while Northern Iowa’s 39.9% ranks 37th nationally. The Monarchs have had some defensive trouble lately, trying zones at Northeastern on Saturday when facing a team with similar size and offensive weapons as the Panthers, to give up a season high 59.5% field goal percentage. 

Saturday 2/20 (RPI)

Siena (#44) @ Butler (#19) – 11 am on ESPN2/ESPN360

The owner of the nation’s longest winning streak, Siena at thirteen straight, will go into an extremely tough environment at Butler in Saturday’s first Bracketbuster game. The Saints are led by 6’5 senior Edwin Ubiles and his 15.8 points per game as he makes his case for MAAC Player of the Year despite some lingering shoulder issues. Alex Franklin plays bigger than his 6’5 frame to lead the Saints down low with 16.1 points per game. On the other side, Butler’s Gordon Hayward has been a beast for the Bulldogs this year, scoring 16.1 points per game and tying a season-high 25 in Sunday’s comeback win over UW-Milwaukee. Hayward, a sophomore, is already attracting the attention of NBA scouts. Fellow sophomore Shelvin Mack has scored 15 points per game and Matt Howard, when not in foul trouble, scores 11 points per game. Howard has been tough to defend inside, going off for 23 points in Butler’s nine-point loss to Minnesota, but has had issues with foul trouble, getting disqualified in three of the Bulldogs’ four losses. It will be interesting to see how Siena defends Hayward and Howard and how this veteran Saints team led by seniors Ubiles, Franklin and Ronald Moore can contain this explosive offense on the road.

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***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2012
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Ole Miss @ #3 Kentucky – 7 pm on ESPN (***)

Have John Wall and Coach Calipari gotten over their performance at South Carolina?  It would have appeared so after they defeated a strong Vanderbilt team by 13, but recent comments by Wall quickly put away any ease that was in Lexington.  After initially criticizing the way Calipari handles him, Wall has clarified that their relationship is fine, but more importantly, Wall is not playing his best basketball.  Going back to the end of the Arkansas game, he has made only 10 of his last 30 shots, and was held to only two assists in Columbia.  With 27 and 21-point performances in his last two games, could DeMarcus Cousins be the best player on the team and best freshman in the country?  Calipari would like help from both players against Ole Miss, a team that is tied for first place in the SEC West at 4-2.  This game would have appeared much more dangerous for UK before Ole Miss blew a three-game winning streak with a home loss against a struggling Arkansas team.  The game is in Lexington, where the Wildcats are 14-0, but the Rebels have shown the ability to play tough on the road this year.  They were beating Tennessee by 12 in the latter part of the second half before losing in OT, and only lost to West Virginia by 10.  Kentucky’s offense may rank higher in points per game, efficiency, and rebounds, but Ole Miss has the potential to stay with the Cats throughout.  They don’t have any lottery picks, but they score over 80 points per contest and have five guys who score in double digits.  Kentucky should win this game, but don’t expect the Rebels to get blown out.

Miami (FL) @ Wake Forest – 7 pm on ESPN2 (***)

Miami might be a bad team who just happened to have a good game, and Wake Forest may be a good team who just happened to have a horrible game, but judging by the last performance of both squads, it is tough to tell where these teams are heading.  The RPI would like to confirm that WFU is a vastly superior team, as the Demon Deacons come in at #23 while the Hurricanes rank #86, but both teams have five losses on the year, and Miami has two more wins.  UM started the ACC season 1-5, so it should be interesting to see how they play against the only conference opponent they have beaten this year.  In that game, James Dews connected on a shot with 30 seconds to go to give the Hurricanes a 67-66 victory in Coral Gables.  Dews scored 21 points in Sunday’s win over Virginia Tech, and will have to give his team a similar performance to upset the Deacons for a second time this year.  Wake Forest, on the other hand, is trying to get the taste out of their mouths from a 21-point loss to Georgia Tech.  WFU is one of only two teams in the country to average over 40 rebounds per game, but have been inconsistent offensively in the past few weeks.  Although Miami’s defense is ranked 83d in terms of efficiency, the Hurricanes allow less than 63 points per game, and if they hold Al-Farouq Aminu to nine points like they did last game, they will come out of Winston-Salem with a victory.

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These two teams have perfected the art of wining close games lately, with the Spartans winning back to back road games by one point.  Wisconsin lost a nail biter against Purdue on Thursday, but has had recent comebacks in the closing minutes against Northwestern, Michigan, and Penn State.  The Kohl Center is one of the toughest places to play in all of college basketball.  Wisconsin’s slow style of play does not make for the most exciting games, but if they take the Spartans down to the wire, The Grateful Red will make for quite an atmosphere.  The Badgers have not lost at home this year, but this may be the best team Wisconsin has seen all year.

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Yes, it’s Groundhog Day, but you’ve probably never seen this before, Northwestern is on the NCAA bubble. Tonight’s game starts a stretch of “must wins” for the Wildcats that will take them through this week and quite possibly the rest of the Big Ten regular season. Don’t be tricked into thinking Northwestern isn’t a contender by their 3-6 conference record as this game against Michigan is NU’s 10th straight Big Ten game this season against a team that made the 2009 NCAA Tournament field. (Yup, that’s all of them.) The Wildcats pulled off the upset at Michigan on Sunday, January 10, after trailing by as many as 17 points. The Wolverines have since recovered and are 4-5 in conference and trying to sneak back into the postseason picture if they can pull off some big upsets down the stretch. It should be a good one. John Templon will have all the action from Welsh-Ryan Arena starting 15 minutes before the ridiculously early (made for TV on Big Ten Network) 6 p.m. tip. Join us!

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1. It’s Groundhog Day 2010, and just for a little perspective, let’s look back one year ago.  On February 2, 2009, the nation’s #1 team in the AP poll was UConn (ok), #2 was Oklahoma (alright), #3 was UNC (definitely ok), and #4 was Duke (um, no).  The other two Final Four teams besides the Huskies and Heels — Michigan State and Villanova — were #13 and #17, respectively.  Look at a few of the other names in the top ten… #7 Wake Forest, #8 Marquette, #10 Clemson.  There’s a lot of season left, folks.
2. We always love this… when conference officials admit to a bad call or calls that impact whether a team wins a game by stating there were “procedural and communications errors” without giving specifics as to what those were (as Big East officials did after the Louisville-West Virginia game).  Maybe they should just start going back and disallowing baskets based on the replay, similar to how they vacate wins for using an ineligible player?
3. Jameson Fleming at the Bleacher Report recently interviewed ESPN analyst Doug Gottlieb about his somewhat abrasive honest style of analysis, which endears him to few fans other than lonely bloggers who appreciate hearing something beyond Team X is “getting it done” and Player Y has the “total package.”
4. A lot of people are understandably focusing on the small rift that seemed to manifest over the weekend between John Wall and his coach, John Calipari, but the underlying truth of the matter is that Wall’s play has fallen off considerably in 2010.  The question we have is not whether there’s some kind of problem between player and coach, but whether Wall has the ability to bounce back for the last 6-8 weeks of the season.
5. We hope to have an analysis of these up later today, but the Bracketbuster matchups were announced last night, and the obvious choice for the best game on the docket is Siena visiting Butler in Hinkle Fieldhouse.  Some other games of major interest in our book are: 1) Old Dominion @ Northern Iowa; 2) Charleston @ George Mason; and 3) Wichita State @ Utah State.

Knockout Game? Louisville 82, Connecticut 69. Ok, it’s too early to start talking about knockout games in any serious manner, but we shouldn’t gloss over the fact that this game was very important for both of these teams.  Louisville came into tonight’s game having lost four of five, and UConn had dropped five of seven, as both Big East powerhouses were facing uphill climbs to get back into the NCAA Tournament picture this year.  Tonight Louisville managed to keep hope alive by moving to 5-4 in the Big East with a convincing win over the Jim Calhoun-less Huskies.  Edgar Sosa led Louisville with 15/3/8 assts in one of his better performances of the year, as he set his season high in dimes and also continued his consecutive games streak with multiple threes (Sosa hit two tonight, the eighth game in a row he’s hit at least that many).  Three other UL starters hit double-figures tonight, and the Cards hit the halfway point of the Big East schedule with a reasonable shot at getting to ten wins and the commensurate expectation of an NCAA Tournament berth.  We’re not sold on the long-term viability of this Cardinal team, but they can probably win enough games to get back to the Dance this year.  As for UConn, where to begin?  The good news is that the Huskies have played one of the top schedules in the nation so far; the bad news is that they have one quality win (Texas).  Wins over Harvard and William & Mary and Notre Dame are nice, but they alone won’t get you into the Tournament.    Eventually UConn is going to have to win another marquee game, and they’ll have at least four more chances to do so (home games against WVU and Louisville; road games versus Syracuse and Villanova).  Tonight was more of the same for the Huskies, as the last two games  have been their worst defensive performances of the season, allowing 1.16 points per possession vs. Louisville and 1.04 against Marquette on Saturday.  This is especially disconcerting given that the UConn defense has been the primary reason they’ve avoided a complete disaster — it’s the offense that has struggled.  The Husky offense shot 38% from the field, hit only four threes and committed 17 turnovers, and those kinds of numbers have to improve if UConn expects to earn its first true road win sometime this season.  Jerome Dyson and Kemba Walker, in particular, continue to have trouble putting the ball in the basket, combining for 11-32 tonight — only a little worse than their season average of ~41%.  We realize that Jim Calhoun IS UConn basketball, but we’re not sure that he can turn things around when he does return later this season.  Winning just the home games will get the Huskies to 7-11 in the Big East, and that means late road games against Rutgers, Notre Dame and USF are extremely important this year.

Louisville Got the Upper Hand Tonight

Jordan Hamilton Says Hello.  #10 Texas 72, Oklahoma State 60.  This game was a tale of two halves in Stillwater tonight.  At halftime, OSU looked the more aggressive team and had built as much as an eleven-point lead behind the habanero-like shooting of James Anderson (8-9 FGs for 24 points in the first half).  Texas managed to crawl back within four at the break, and the ensuing half belonged to the Longhorns.  Rick Barnes’ defense held the scorching Anderson to 2-9 shooting and four points for the rest of the game, and in the meantime, may have found a new offensive option on their own team in the form of Jordan Hamilton.  The freshman from LA came into the game averaging less than 8 PPG, but he made the most of his minutes tonight, drilling five threes and hitting 11-16 FGs for a career-high 27/4.  Eighteen of those points came in the second half, including an 11-point burst in the middle of the half that gave Texas the lead for good.  The core of the UT lineup is experienced, with Damion James, Dexter Pittman, Justin Mason, Dogus Balbay and Gary Johnson all juniors or seniors, but the offensive production that Rick Barnes gets from the talented freshman trio of Hamilton, Avery Bradley and J’Covan Brown will ultimately decide how far the Horns will go this season.  The firepower that those three bring to the table surpasses all but what Damion James can do on a regular basis — Coach Barnes would be wise to unleash their talents a little more as his team heads into the stretch run of the Big 12 regular season race still only two back of #1 Kansas in the standings.

Other Games of National Interest.

Is none an acceptable answer?  We’ll be back tomorrow with a fuller slate of games.

Call it what you want, but that’s what college basketball fans might be experiencing as soon as next season.

The buzz today among college hoops lovers is the latest talk regarding changes to that holiest of holies, the NCAA Tournament.  According to an article on the website SportsByBrooks from earlier today, after this season, the NCAA could very well opt out of its current deal with CBS and start negotiating with other networks for broadcasting rights, either in whole or in part.  We’re not saying it’s going to happen for sure, yet, and Jeff Goodman reported this afternoon that it’s not a “done deal” according to the NCAA.  But the talks that are evidently taking place about this are assuming an expanded tournament field — specifically, a 96-team beast — which would evidently meet with the approval of at least one big-time coach (and certainly countless others).

As for when the NCAA will make its decision, your guess is as good as any, but late spring/early summer would probably be a good bet.  Sports Business Journal, citing the NCAA’s RFP (request for proposals) on the matter, states that the organization has until August 31, 2010, to opt out of its current $6B deal with CBS, and can do so at any time prior to then.  Undoubtedly no decision will be made until after the 2010 season is complete, but with the NIT contract also up for renewal after this season, there’s a strong indication that the NCAA could be looking to fold that tournament into the Big Dance.  Other networks said to be in the mix for the Dance include ESPN (no surprise, they’ve been there), Fox (Joe Buck?  Calling NCAA hoops?), and Turner Sports (OK, now we’re alarmed – keep the Carays 500 miles away from any and all NCAA events).

Obviously, money is at the heart of these talks, as it is at the center of any negotiation.  Increasing the number of tournament teams by 50% to a 96-team weirdness would obviously add untold revenue to the pockets of both the NCAA and the winners of the TV rights.  It would also screw up the nice, even, symmetrical bracket and add a round or two of “bye games.”  Adding rounds means you’ll have venues dying to host those games, and probably an extra week added onto an event that already spreads eleven days of actual game play over three weeks.  And of course, the most important issue; the NCAA could never again hold up its alleged value of the term “student-athlete” as some badge of honor.  With money as the only motivating factor here, it sounds like they’d still be willing to pull a greater number of  students out of class for a longer amount of time.

In less than a half-hour from now, ESPNU will be broadcasting their ESPN Bracketbusters Selection Show, hosted by Lowell Galindo and analyst Mark Adams.  Will this year’s schedule give us some choice matchups such as Siena-Cornell or New Mexico-Northern Iowa?  What about a St. Mary’s-Radford matchup so we can see Omar Samhan battle with Artsiom Parakhouski?  Check back in later as we’ll have a comprehensive analysis of the best games to keep an eye on as part of your viewing schedule in three weekends (February 19-20).  As if you didn’t already have enough good hoops to watch this month!

A good discussion on twitter today about how to rank the top four (all one-loss) teams.  Here’s our version, with analysis after the jump:

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***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2012
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Connecticut @ Louisville – 7 pm on ESPN (**)

It’s not too often that a team can be ranked one week and out of the Tournament the next, but that is what UConn could be facing after following up a #19 ranking with back to back losses.  The Huskies lost at Providence and allowed Marquette to come back in the final minute for another loss, and the Huskies now stand on the outer edge of the bubble at 13-8 overall.  Their RPI ranking is fairly acceptable at #44, but they are going to have to play well at Louisville to give themselves a chance.  The Cardinals, who have not been ranked for a while, have a lower RPI and really need to turn things around soon to receive a Tournament bid.  They have lost four of their last five games and the Huskies have lost five of their last seven games.   Both of these teams are going to have to play to their strengths if they want to be successful down the stretch.  Louisville has a solid offense at 79.8 points per game, largely due to their efficiency and solid rebounding.   The Huskies have played well defensively this year, leading the country with 8.5 blocks per game.  These teams have occasionally struggled even when they have been able to play their style.  UL lost its only Big East games when Samardo Samuels scores over 20 points, and Connecticut has lost games when they gave up 70, 68, 67, 64, and 68 points.  Still, UL is not going to win games by holding opponents to 60 points, and the Huskies aren’t going to be lighting up the scoreboard.  The Huskies have not won on the road this year, and I do not expect them to start winning tonight in the midst of another losing streak.

#6 Texas @ Oklahoma State – 9 pm on ESPN (***)

James Has Been On Fire Lately

These teams are struggling despite some of the best individual performances we have seen in the Big 12 all year.  The Longhorns have lost three of four games, but senior Damion James has been on a tear.  He’s averaging 24/13 in his last three games.  Oklahoma State’s James Anderson scored 31 points in his last game against Missouri and still lost, largely due to giving up 95 points to a Missouri team that shot 55 percent from three in the game.  Nobody knows what to expect from either of these teams anymore, but look for the Cowboys to get a close win.  Oklahoma State is undefeated this year at home, while the Longhorns have dropped their last two road games.  Despite the Longhorns ranking in the top 10 in defensive efficiency on the year, they have played quite poorly as of late.  They have surrendered over 80 points per game in this four-game stretch, and have also seen their offensive numbers drop.  UT is second in the country at 85.3 points per game, but when they only rank 34^th in offensive efficiency, they are going to lose some games when they play poorly on the other end.  James and Anderson can only lead their teams so far, so somebody else will have to step up and make a difference in this game.