Backdoor Cuts is a college basketball discussion between correspondents Dave Zeitlin and Steve Moore that will appear every Wednesday in Rush the Court. This week they review the horror film Binghamton: 2009.

DAVE ZEITLIN: So I have this friend who’s about as optimistic a sports fan as they come. How do I know this? Because he watches nearly every single Kansas City Royals game, and is convinced each summer they have a good team. (They’ve had only one winning season since 1994.) It’s no different when he talks about the college basketball team at his alma mater. He’ll text me as soon as the schedule comes out, claiming the mid-major he roots for will surprise some big-name squads. He’ll predict big things from players I’ve never heard of. He’ll take moral victories out of 20-point losses. If you ask me, rooting for an underdog with that kind of attitude is admirable. But the last time I talked to him about his favorite college basketball team, he took a different tone. It was jarring but predictable. “They should just cancel the season,” he said with a sigh. His favorite team is Binghamton, and this is the point of the story where you should feel bad for my friend, who after these all years may finally need to look for the It’s-time-to-give-up switch.

By now, everyone knows the almost unfathomable plight of Binghamton basketball. From Division I newcomer to Division I upstart to Division I laughingstock, the Bearcats managed to follow the program’s first NCAA tournament berth last season with the kind of disaster that terrifies even John Cusack and the little girl on his back. After just about every impact player was dismissed from the program (RTC gives a nice recap here) for juicy stuff like stealing condoms, getting in bar fights, selling crack, the head coach responsible for bringing these guys in was put on paid leave for essentially giving high school players his business card a day after the NCAA contact period ended — which almost seems akin to Al Capone getting arrested for a speeding ticket. (Also, paid leave? Can I get paid to destroy a basketball program and then do nothing all day? Is there a listing for that on Monster?)

While the Binghamton implosion has faded somewhat from public view, there are still many things to discuss here. There’s the issue of the right and wrong ways to build a program (guess which way Binghamton did it) and there’s the issue of how Binghamton was even able to field a team this season (though these guys did pretty well with just a handful of players) just to name a couple. But first I’ll let Steve, a fan of a rival America East school, take his digs. Just try to remember my poor friend.

STEVE MOORE: Back in college at Boston University, I covered the men’s hoops team for the school paper during one of Binghamton’s first seasons in Division I. They struggled a little then, but they seemed to have everything in order, and were far ahead of their don’t-call-us-SUNY-school brethren — Albany and Stony Brook — who joined the America East at the same time. They had a beautiful on-campus facility being built, some solid recruits in the pipeline, and a seemingly bright future. They locked up the rights to host the conference tourney for a few years, and everything seemed on track.

But the stories in the last few seasons had gotten a little different, at least from what I read from afar. Friends I knew who covered the team recently told stories about the arrogance and insanely huge ego of head coach Kevin Broadus, and anyone who looked at their roster knew it had more than a few shaky names on it. There’s nothing wrong with scooping up transfers from other schools, but to do so with total disgregard for personal history is irresponsible. And it ended up setting this program back by five or 10 years.

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Welcome to another edition of RTC Live, coming to you from freezing cold Logan, Utah. Tonight we bring you a heated in-state rivalry. BYU makes the two hour drive north on I-15 to take on the Utah State Aggies. The Cougars come in with a spotless 5-0 record, and are putting the hurt on opponents with a 27-point average margin of victory. Meanwhile, Utah State bounced back after a couple of heartbreaking road loses to Utah and Northeastern by beating Idaho State and Southern Utah at home by a combined 77 points. Last year, this rivalry game came down to the final minute when BYU won by fivce at Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City. Will Utah State’s vaunted home court advantage (36 straight home victories, 2nd longest streak in the nation) be enough to stop the Cougars? Join us tonight on RTC Live and find out.

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Tonight RTC Live is heading to the Sooner State for another great game from the nation’s abdomen.  The Oklahoma State Cowboys were the top vote-getter in the “others receiving votes” part of both the AP and Coaches Polls this week — in other words, they’re ranked #26.  The Pokes sit at 6-0 with two impressive wins over the weekend vs. Bradley and Utah in the Las Vegas Invitational, using the same pressing, trapping, turnover-inducing defense that we’ve become accustomed to with Travis Ford’s teams.  Tulsa, on the other hand, is coming off a somewhat surprising loss at Missouri State on Saturday, where the Bears torched the Golden Hurricane defense for 52% shooting and nine well-timed threes.  We’re pretty sure that Tulsa will be ready for this one, as it’s fairly rare when the Golden Hurricane gets a visit from one of the state’s two flagship universities.  In a strange reversal of roles for most mid-major vs. BCS games, it will be Tulsa who has the best point guard (Ben Uzoh) and center (Jerome Jordan) on the court; but OSU will counter with superb wings James Anderson and Obi Muonelo.  This should be a great one in Tulsa tonight, and we hope you’ll join us!

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The More They Stay the Same… #11 UNC 89, #9 Michigan State 82.  Ok, can we now all just agree that UNC just has Michigan State’s number?  For the fifth straight time, and the third episode within one calendar year, North Carolina made Tom Izzo’s Spartans look like charlatans on the basketball court.  How is this possible?  How can a team like Nevada hang with the Heels a few days ago for most of the game, and a loaded, deep, talented, athletic team like MSU continually get punked and embarrassed by the same squad?  Well, motivation helps.  Ed Davis (22/6) and Larry Drew II (18/6 assts) both had career highs in points, and in watching the game, it seemed as if Carolina could get and make nearly any shot it wanted.  Michigan State, for some reason, seems to think that it can run with Carolina, and as they learned for the third time with the same core of Lucas, Morgan, et al., they cannot.  Why do they try?  The thing about MSU is that they weren’t the second-best team last year, and they surely aren’t this year either — but aren’t we used to this with Izzo’s teams by now?  They typically underachieve in the regular season, only to overachieve in the NCAA Tournament.  The problem is that teams that are routinely blown out do not win national championships.  Granted, Michigan State made a run in this game to get the margin back to a respectable score, but Carolina was never seriously threatened after the first ten minutes of the game.  So what went wrong other than allowing UNC to shoot lights-out again?  How about 2-20 from three (and many of those misses were open looks), a terrible evening from deep for a team that came into this game shooting 37% from distance?  How about allowing point guards Drew and Dexter Strickland to torch the MSU defense for repeated forays to the rim for easy buckets (9-12 FG)?  How about the rough-and-tumble Spartans getting outrebounded (36-34) by the admittedly bigger (but tougher?) Heels?  Honestly, the reason we thought this game would go Carolina’s way was because they were playing at home, but we’re not sure that it would have gone any differently had they played this game on Mars.  Michigan State simply cannot get over on Carolina, and it’s starting to get ridiculous.  At least Raymar Morgan (18/6) looked healthy and played well, right?

ACC/Big Ten Challenge.  We’re deadlocked at 3-3 going into the last day, and yeah, it’s gone exactly as we predicted so far.  Which of course means all five games tomorrow will go crazy — expect all kinds of upset specials.  Seriously, though, we still think it comes down to the BC-Michigan game tomorrow night.  Winner of that one wins the Challenge (our choice: UM).

• #6 Purdue 69, Wake Forest 58.  Wake played well enough for a half to win this game, but the Deacs don’t have enough offensive threats beyond Al-Farouq Aminu when he has an off game (12/10 on 3-11 FG including 6 TOs) and they turn the ball over like it’s their job.  But we knew that already.  Purdue, on the other hand, is only getting production from their Big Three of Robbie Hummel (11/11 on 3-11 FG), E’Twaun Moore (22/4/3 assts) and JaJuan Johnson (21/9/3 blks) — the rest of the team only scored fifteen points.  That’ll carry the Boilermakers against the lesser teams, especially in Mackey Arena, but we have concerns about when they start playing athletic teams like WFU that also have multiple serious scorers.  Wake played superb defense, holding Purdue to 34% for the game and 1-15 from deep, but their endemic problems with ballhandling and lack of a three-point threat will be problematic all season.
• Northwestern 65, NC State 53. Northwestern is quickly becoming our second favorite team of this season (behind Portland).  With the injury troubles that they endured to start this season, we would have completely understood if the Wildcats had simply packed it in and hoped for next year.  But they didn’t.  Beating Notre Dame, Iowa State and NC State isn’t exactly equivalent to Michigan State, Purdue and Ohio State, as they’ll face in the Big Ten, but the key is that NW is gaining experience with winning and they’re doing it in environments away from the comforts of home.  Tonight Michael Thompson stepped up with 22/4 and Jeremy Nash also chipped in 12/8/4 assts in the win.  The Wildcats could realistically enter Big Ten play at 10-1 by the end of this month.  Good for them.

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Ray Floriani of College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the MAAC and NEC conferences.  He also regularly covers all levels of basketball in the New York City area.

NEW YORK CITY – The morning started on a Northeast Conference note. I officiated three basketball games in the NJ Goats (love that name!) Thanksgiving Tournament. My partner was Ed Mills, a NEC official who occasionally will do a 12-and-under boys tournament such as this. Our third and final game had a former NEC official, Tony Banks, who stepped down a few years ago due to illness.  Three nice games in the book and off to New York. Forget Black Friday shopping.

A final look back on the Pre-Season NIT finals and consolation. Duke knocked off UConn 68-59 for the championship.

Think of Duke and the images of motion offense, passes quickly distributed around the perimeter, precision cuts and open shots come to mind. Friday’s Pre-Season NIT final gave us a look at this year’s Duke, a team that will battle you in the paint and contest everything. The offensive rebounding rate is proof enough. Overall the Blue Devils outrebounded UConn 56-43 with a 25-14 edge on the offensive glass. And this was against a Husky team with several skilled, tough big men.  The principal damage on the offensive glass was inflicted by Brian Zoubek (7 off boards) and Lance Thomas (5 off rebs). Zoubek scored only 2 points but impacted things contesting the paint and adding 11 rebounds overall. Coach Mike Krzyzewski noted two of Zoubek’s offensive rebounds resulted in pitches back out to the perimeter that resulted in three point field goals.

UConn shot 0-4 on the afternoon from three. Not a big concern for Coach Jim Calhoun as the gameplan was to attack the basket. Offensively two things stood out for the Huskies: the field goal percentage of 37% (22-59) and worse yet, a 15-28 mark from the charity stripe. Time and again as UConn was in the process of a run a missed free throw or two put a serious dent in their momentum. Two key points were emphasized by Calhoun. “I can’t remember holding an opponent to 28% field goal percentage (for the game) and limiting them to eight second-half field goals and losing.” Calhoun answered his own question looking at the stat sheet and lamenting the loss of the battle of the boards.

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Each week RTC will posit a That’s Debatable question or topic that is relevant to the world of college basketball.  Sometimes whimsical, sometimes serious, we’ll post the thoughts from our core editing crew (in 200 words or less), but we’ll also be expanding to include our contributors and correspondents as appropriate throughout the season.  We also invite you, the readers, to join us as we mull over some of the questions facing the game today.  Feel free to send us your takes and/or leave them in the comments below.

This Week’s Topic: Now that we’re through the majority of the early-season tournaments and the calendar has turned to December, what have you learned from the first several weeks of the season?

zach hayes – editor/contributor, RTC

I’ve learned that the Big Ten may be actually be overrated for once. Purdue picked up a quality win against Tennessee and Michigan State survived Gonzaga at home, but it was a very rough week overall for the conference. Michigan barely beat a Creighton team that ended up losing to Iona and finish in 8th place at the Old Spice Classic, then were crushed by Marquette and fell to Alabama. Illinois saw their freshmen guard duo take some serious lumps in stunning defeats to a down Utah team and Bradley. Minnesota fell to both Texas A&M and Portland in Anaheim. Northwestern’s stock dropped with Kevin Coble’s season-ending injury and their two wins this weekend over two likely-NIT teams in Notre Dame and Iowa State in Chicago aren’t that impressive. Penn State fell to UNC-Wilmington and Tulane in Charleston two weeks ago when Ohio State got demolished by a flawed North Carolina squad. The prevailing thought around college basketball is that the Big Ten can’t play up to the level of other conferences like the ACC, Big East and Big 12. While this year was supposed to change that notion, it has, frankly, only done the opposite for the conference as a whole. Winning the ACC/Big Ten Challenge for the first time would certainly change some people’s minds, including myself.

john stevens – editor/contributor, RTC

I’ve learned that, as of right now, the last ten teams listed in any Top 25 you can find are an absolute crap shoot.  If you examine the few polls we’ve had this season, you’ll see that pretty much everyone agrees on the first 15 teams, and after that… we don’t know.  It’s chaos.  I can’t remember a season where we’ve seen such craziness in the bottom half of the polls.  This week’s AP and ESPN/USA Today Coaches Polls are great examples.  In the AP, six of the bottom 11 teams are different from the previous week, five in the ESPN/USA Today.  California sits at #25 in the ESPN poll, #37 in the AP.  Four of the new teams in the AP poll LOST last week but still got in (two in the Coaches’), while unbeaten Oklahoma State sits at #26 in both.  This is all something to celebrate rather than lament, as it just means that there are more really good teams out there than a Top 25 poll can accommodate.  I’ll gladly buy any stock in Siena, Dayton, and Mississippi State if anybody’s selling, and you can come see me again in March.

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The sputtering Ben Howlands took yet another hit today in a season that is quickly turning into a nightmare for the bluebloods from Westwood.  UCLA announced this afternoon during the coach’s regular press conference that starting center Drew Gordon, one of the few bright spots on the team so far this season, will be transferring.  It’s no secret that Gordon and Howland had gone at each other over the last year-plus since the player’s arrival on campus, but this particular decision appears to have been precipitated by a quiet two-game suspension from practice that the coach levied on Gordon earlier this week (Andy Katz states it was for “conduct detrimental to the team“).  According to his father, even though the suspension may have been the proverbial straw, Gordon has different ideas about how to best utilize his talents, citing an “up-and-down” system other than the methodical Bruin offense as a better fit.  To which we say, did Drew Gordon ever watch UCLA play prior to committing there?  An up-and-down system it is not, nor has it ever been, under Howland. As for where he’s headed, other than stating that transfer to another Pac-10 school was out of the question, there is no obvious leader for Gordon’s services (he hails from San Jose in NorCal).

Gordon was a member of the nation’s deepest and strongest recruiting class in America in 2008, with five players ranked in the Rivals top fifty.  But we honestly have trouble remembering a class that has been a bigger bust than this one.  The reason that UCLA took three losses in the 76 Classic last weekend is directly attributable to the fact that the core of sophomores that remained — Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson, J’Mison Morgan, and Gordon — haven’t lived up to their billing.  The fifth member of that class, Jrue Holiday, had a lackluster freshman season (9/4/4 assts) before heading off to NBA riches.  But it has been Gordon among the remaining four who has shown promise as the most efficient player on the UCLA roster this season, averaging 11/5/2 blks and shooting 57% in a little under 25 minutes per game.  With the loss of Gordon, who was one of the only post options at Howland’s disposal, he will have to hope for support from freshman bigs Reeves Nelson (7/5 in 15 MPG) and Brendan Lane (3/2 in 9 MPG) unless J’Mison Morgan (2 pts and 1 reb all season) can find the game that had national powers Kentucky, Louisville and much of the SEC and Big 12 recruiting him two years ago.  Given the obstacles that UCLA is already facing this season, we’re just not convinced that the Bruins can turn things around to get back to the NCAA Tournament for the sixth consecutive year.

1. We’ll have more on this later today, but the AP received the records of the NCAA’s response to Memphis as a result of the Derrick Rose SAT Scandal.  In a succinct statement, it comes down to the fact that the NCAA believes that schools must fear punishment for using sketchy players, and if they don’t, they’ll act with impunity in recruiting those guys.  It’s a very interesting argument, but not one that everyone is buying…  more later.
2. Very tough news for Villanova, as they will likely lose freshman center Mouphtaou Yarou for the entire season due to a viral infection that is not life-threatening.  This puts even more pressure on Antonio Pena to contribute from the inside.  There were already serious concerns as to how VU would replace Dante Cunningham in the post, and now we’re not sure that the Wildcats can even come close to doing that.  Jay Wright may want to consider the four-guard lineup again.
3. Seth Davis gives us his weekly Hoop Thoughts — make sure you check out page two for the best of the article.
4. Mike DeCourcy riffs on the UNC-MSU game tonight, the irrelevance of polls (thankfully this isn’t football), and Alabama’s JaMychael Green (whom we’ve been hyping for a while now).
5. Occasionally, we’ll find an amusing (often, non-PC) tweet from one of the coaches, players or media folks we’re tracking and we’ll put it up here for your enjoyment as well.  Today’s entry is from UT-Arlington’s Marquez Haynes.  Guess he was hungry?

Gauntlet, Thrown.  #4 Kentucky 94, UNC-Asheville 57.  DeMarcus Cousins was the star of the game for the Wildcats tonight, as his 6’10, 250-lb frame was simply too large for the much smaller Ashevilleans to handle.  Cousins dropped 24/10 in seventeen minutes of action on the hapless Bulldogs, who you may recall lost to Tennesee by about 1000 points two weeks ago.  But it was a post-game comment to the media that has people buzzing, as it exhibited a little bit of the youthful naivete/candor that you rarely see in players who have had a little more time in from of media microphones.  When asked what he thought of the next team Kentucky will play, the defending national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, Cousins said with a shoulder shrug, “I’m not impressed.”  Copy machines immediately went into overdrive in Chapel Hill to place said quote into the lockers of UNC bigs Ed Davis, Deon Thompson, Tyler Zeller, John Henson, and the Wear twins.  Roy Williams is a master motivator and you know that he’s going to use that quote to get his players, especially his ridiculously large frontline, to come out spitting fire when they enter Rupp Arena on Saturday afternoon.  It’s better for all of us as fans when players and coaches on the elite teams don’t particularly care for each other, so maybe we’ll get something fired back from the other side — perhaps even a tweet or two!  Regardless of any future social networking smack, John Wall did not get involved in that, but he did find time to dish out fourteen assists (4 more than UNCA) to go with his twelve points and six steals.

ACC/Big Ten Challenge.  Penn State 69, Virginia 66.  We wrote up our predictions here earlier today on how we thought this year’s Challenge would go, and so far, so good.  We said that there were three either/or games that would probably decide which league won this thing, and the only Monday night game in Charlottesville was one of those.  Now if the Big Ten can win one of the remaining two, and have everything else go as reasonably expected, then we’re predicting they will win this Challenge for the first time since its inception eleven years ago.  As for this game, it was the Talor Battle show, as the mercurial and clutch guard from PSU scored 28 of his 32 points in the second half to lead his team from a 6-pt halftime deficit to build a commanding 12-pt lead with under four minutes to go.  Virginia made a furious rally to cut the lead to one point with 5.7 seconds remaining, but Battle (who else?) stepped to the line and drained both to give Penn State the insurance they needed to win.  Tomorrow night there are five games on the Challenge agenda, and the Big Ten already has a huge early advantage by virtue of this win tonight.

Other Games of National Interest. Really light night tonight, which makes sense given almost everyone played (sometimes multiple times) over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

• #7 Syracuse 92, Colgate 58.  Syracuse ran out to a very quick dominating lead over Colgate, ultimately taking a 31-pt lead into the halftime break.  The Orange got 19/9/5 assts from Wesley Johnson and put five players into double figures as they shot a blistering 57% for the game.
• #14 Georgetown 83, Mt. St. Mary’s 62.  Do these teams think it’s Big Monday or something?  The Hoyas enjoyed a balanced scoring effort tonight behind Greg Monroe’s 19/11, but it was once again the play of Julian Vaughn (14/8/3 assts/3 blks) that turned heads, putting together his second consecutive outstanding game.
• Seton Hall 93, NJIT 53. Did you guys realize that NJIT already has two wins this season?  We didn’t either.  Granted, one of those Ws was against a St. Joe’s in Brooklyn (not Philly), but they did defeat Wagner.  Tonight was no such equivalent night, as Herb Pope dominated NJIT for 22/11/5 blks.
• Memphis 77, Oakland 46. Memphis completely dominated a team that many were picking to make some noise in the Summit League this year behind Elliot Williams 20/3 stls.
• St. Mary’s 78, San Jose State 71.  SMC roared back from a 15-pt halftime deficit in their first road game this season by getting 19/8 from guard Mickey McConnell and 12/13/3 from center Omar Samhan.

Welcome back to our weekly RTC Live schedule update.  Just looking back last week, we covered fourteen more games in holiday tournaments from Anaheim to New York City, and our frequent flyer miles are starting to add up around here.  Now that we’re moving back into a more normal schedule of games, we’ll be lightening up our travel schedule a little bit, but don’t worry, we’ll still be making it to as many games of national interest as we can.  Here’s this week’s schedule, and as always, check back for updates because often we add games at the last minute.

Tuesday December 1

• Wake Forest @ #4 Purdue – this game, as part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge will have more gold and black than you can handle.  We ultimately think Purdue as the home team will win the game, but watching Robbie Hummel match up against Al-Farouq Aminu should be fantastic.

Wednesday December 2

• Oklahoma State @ Tulsa – Oklahoma State makes a visit to in-state rival Tulsa for what will undoubtedly be a packed house to watch Jerome Jordan and Ben Uzoh match up against James Anderson and Obi Muonelo.  OSU is 6-0 and was very impressive over the weekend in Las Vegas Invitational.  A win here and they could be in the top 25 next week.
• BYU @ Utah State – people in Logan, Utah, are calling this the greatest week of basketball they’ve ever had on campus at USU, as BYU visits midweek followed by WCC power St. Mary’s over the weekend.  USU is 3-2 with two heartbreaking losses to Utah and Northeastern, but don’t mistake their pedestrian record for evidence that they’re not a good team.  The Aggies will give BYU in their first real test this season all they can handle.

Friday December 4

• Kent State @ Xavier – Xavier returns from a tough weekend at the Old Spice Classic (1-2) to take on a Kent State team that has aspirations of winning the MAC this season.   We know that the Musketeers have talent, but we’re interested to see if they can start getting consistency from their stars Jordan Crawford and Jason Love.

Saturday December 5

• St. Mary’s @ Utah State – St. Mary’s will take its 5-1 record to Utah State on Saturday, and you can read the above as to why we also think this will be a good game between two middies looking for respect.