1. Jim Boeheim finally heard from the NCAA in his appeal of his nine-game suspension that was supposed to coincide with the start of NCAA play. Unfortunately for Boeheim, it was not the ruling he wanted as the NCAA decided to start the suspension immediately with the Syracuse‘s next game, which is against Georgetown on Saturday. Boeheim will still miss the same number of games, but will only miss three ACC games. Boeheim is also not allowed to have any contact with his players during that time. Many pundits have chimed in claiming that it is unfair of the NCAA to wait so long to make a decision that begins so quickly. We can agree with that to a degree, but as usual we tend to side with Luke Winn on his thoughts about Boeheim and the reaction to the NCAA’s decision.
2. BYU freshman Nick Emery has been suspended for one game for punching Utah’s Brandon Taylor late in their game on Wednesday. For his part, Emery apologized to Taylor and basically everybody else in attendance. The one-game suspension is an automatic suspension by the NCAA and the West Coast Conference issued a statement calling it “unacceptable”. Interestingly, BYU has not issued a comment on the matter and Emery will not face any additional punishment from the school (apparently, punching your opponent isn’t a violation of the Honor Code).
3. Stephen Curry may be putting together one of the greatest offensive seasons we have ever seen in the NBA and he is the most famous person ever to go to Davidson (ok, he’s probably the only reason most of the country has even heard of Davidson), but that doesn’t mean the school is going to break its rules for him. To be honest, we weren’t even aware that Davidson had not retired Curry’s jersey yet (they probably could have done it after he led them to the Elite 8 his sophomore year and before he returned for his junior year), but the school has a policy that it only retires the jerseys of players who have graduated (Curry says he will eventually go back and get it). While we applaud Davidson for sticking by this (something other more prominent programs in the state did away with years ago), we have to wonder how long they will wait if Curry doesn’t go back and get his degree.
4. For a program that has been so successful over the past few years Villanova tends to fly under the radar. This year is no different as despite their high rankings in the polls we don’t see them on TV that much as the featured game of the night. So there is a chance you might not have seen (or possibly even heard) of Jalen Brunson yet despite the fact that he was one of the top recruits in the class of 2015. Lee Jenkins has an excellent piece about Brunson and how his father’s career and the struggles he had helped shape Jalen into the player he is today. It’s well worth your time even if you don’t see Brunson play much during the regular season because you could be seeing a lot of him in March.
5. We usually don’t touch on media matters here in the Morning Five outside of TV contracts and things like that, but we thought Ed Sherman’s article on the changing landscape of media access to be fairly interesting. The concept/complaint is not particularly new and it is part of the reason that you won’t find as many in-depth pieces as you used to see (also a reflection of the desire of the public to read short pieces instead of more intricate stories). Sherman focuses on college football, but we are sure the issues are the same in college basketball. One of the things that Sherman doesn’t talk about, but is worth mentioning is that many schools are trying to brand themselves as media entities and control the message and the way their student-athletes and program is presented to the public.

Another year down, another tally in the win column for the Big Ten in what is the top challenge series that college basketball has to offer. Per the norm, the teams that have traditionally dominated this series continued to do so, but there were some surprises along the way. Here are 10 key takeaways from this season’s event.

1. The Big Ten won again. Iowa’s thrilling 78-75 overtime victory over Florida State in Iowa City clinched back-to-back Challenge victories for the conference, with five of the last seven events going to the Big Ten. With the other two ties (2012 and 2013), it remains true that the ACC hasn’t won the challenge since George W. Bush was still President back in December 2008. That’s a really long time. It’s even longer when you consider that the ACC won every challenge during his presidency as well as the final two years of Bill Clinton.

Peter Jok (left), who notched 24 points in Iowa’s 78-75 victory in overtime over Florida State, was one of the shining stars of the challenge. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

2. Duke won again. The Blue Devils are a staggering 15-2 lifetime in the challenge and are undefeated at Cameron Indoor Stadium (7-0) during that time. This is even more impressive when you consider that Duke almost always draws one of the Big Ten’s best teams. You have to go back to 2011 Michigan State (19-15) to find a Duke opponent that didn’t win at least 28 games that season, and before that, 2006 Indiana (19-12) is the other one that didn’t win at least 20. Granted, this year’s Indiana squad is looking like it will slot in nicely with those couple of outliers. Read the rest of this entry »

In theory, what we know as Thanksgiving week but ESPN has christened “Feast Week” should be a relatively easy time for a highly-ranked college basketball team. Board a plane and head somewhere sunny. Throw on a polo or a Hawaiian shirt if that’s more your style. Win a few games, maybe lose a tough one against another top team. Have some turkey before heading home to continue your season. For many schools, this is exactly what happened. Kansas, for example, went out to Maui, learned that Chieck Diallo was cleared to play, had some fun, and won the tournament. But for several other teams, their Feast Week did not go as planned. Four formerly ranked teams had a rude awakening in the midst of their early season tournaments, with more questions raised than answers.

LSU

Ben Simmons Needs to Find More Aggression (USAT Images)

The Bayou Bengals might have the best player in college basketball in Ben Simmons, but the problem is that his teammates aren’t exactly playing as if that is the case. During the Legends Classic in Brooklyn, Simmons posted two impressive stat lines in the Tigers’ two losses. Against Marquette, he finished with 21 points, 20 rebounds and seven assists. He followed that up with four points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists against NC State. (Ed. note: LSU continued its swoon on Monday night in a 70-58 loss at College of Charleston where Simmons logged 15 points, 18 rebounds, four assists and committed seven turnovers.)

In both games, Simmons showcased the high-level talent that has NBA scouts drooling. He leads all of Division I basketball in rebounding and has flashed elite passing ability for a player his size. If the Tigers are going to win more games, however, Simmons needs to be a bigger scoring threat. Against NC State, he only attempted six shots from the field while teammates Tim Quarterman and Antonio Blakeney took 20 and 17 shots, respectively. Some of this discrepancy is likely because of Simmons’ great vision leading to good shots for teammates, but neither player was able to capitalize. Simmons was more aggressive offensively in the previous game against Marquette but he chose to pass to open teammates on two separate occasions in the Tigers’ final possession. He’s only a freshman, of course, but if LSU is going to contend in the SEC or make some kind of a run next March, it will be on the back of a more aggressive Ben Simmons. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Today is the culmination of the #FreeDiallo campaign as Cheick Diallo, the heralded Kansas freshman, will make his debut tonight at Allen Fieldhouse.The whole saga has been discussed ad nauseum so we won’t rehash it here (you can follow Jay Bilas on Twitter for an almost daily recap), but would encourage you to watch the Jayhawks tonight if only to see the reception Diallo gets from the Kansas crowd the first time he steps on the court.
2. Diallo may be free now, but David Collette is still waiting for Utah State to lift its universal block on his attempt to transfer. The circumstances around Collette’s decision to leave the Utah State basketball team might seem suspicious, but the school’s decision to prevent him from transferring to any program is absurd. Jeff Eisenberg details some of the other petty steps that the school has taken to try to get back at Collette. While these seem extreme the school is hardly the first to do this sort of thing and it always seems to backfire on the school so we are not sure why schools continue to do it.
3. We probably would not have realized that former Duke star Chris Duhon is back in college basketball as an assistant coach at Marshall if not for his arrest early Monday morning for driving under the influence. Duhon was reportedly found asleep in the driver’s seat of his car with the engine running and had a blood alcohol level of 0.202, which is more than 2.5 times the legal limit. Duhon, who is an assistant under Dan D’Antoni, has been suspended for violating department rules and policies. We aren’t sure how long the suspension will last, but we hope that Duhon gets the help that he needs.
4. The college basketball world lost an icon last Thursday when Guy Lewis died at the age of 93. Lewis, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, is best known for his Phi Slama Jama teams of the early 1980s that featured [H]Akeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, but his career was much more than that. Lewis won 593 games making the Final Four five times and first came to national prominence in 1968 when he engineered the “Game of the Century” in which his Houston Cougars led by Elvin Hayes knocked off a UCLA team led by Lew Alcindor [Ed. Note: We’re a college site so we go by college names.] Lewis was also one of the first coaches in the South to openly push for integration, an often overlooked aspect of his legacy.
5. This actually is not the first time we have talked about Cal Tech on the site, but Chris Ballard’s in-depth look at the program is too good not to pass along. We will warn you that this definitely falls into the #longreads category, but we doubt that you will find an article that provides a more in-depth look at the personalities around a program that what this does. Obviously this program is very different than almost any other program in the nation (probably one of the few where student-athlete is used in the correct order), but in many ways that makes it even more interesting.

Feast Week brought chaos. A lot of chaos. Six RTC25 teams lost twice and several more experienced one setback. Amid the chaos, previously unranked Syracuse and previously-#22 Xavier were able to grab several impressive victories and show they will be forces to reckon with for the balance of the season. The Orange were the surprise champions of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament after earning wins over Charlotte, #24 Connecticut and #18 Texas A&M. Jim Boeheim’s unit was led to the title by the stellar play of seniors Trevor Cooney and Michael Gbinije along with the emergence of freshmen Malachi Richardson and Tyler Lydon. Xavier was equally as impressive in taking home the AdvoCare Invitational crown. The Musketeers notched victories over Alabama and USC before blowing out Dayton in the tournament’s title game, and the relative balance of Chris Mack’s lineup was on display all weekend. After very impressive Feast Week performances, it will be intriguing to watch whether the Orange and Musketeers can keep the good vibes rolling through the non-conference portion of the season. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Thoughts.

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The Ben Simmons bandwagon is filling up quickly. The LSU freshman came into the season hyped as the next big prospect to go one-and-done and first overall in the NBA Draft, joining an illustrious group of NBA stars (and Anthony Bennett) in the process. But his double-take-inducing statistics and the raw athleticism exhibited in the first five games have led many to ask if he can be even more than that.

Ben Simmons May Already Be Working on an All-Time Great Freshman Season. (Getty)

Simmons’ season has been so incredible through two weeks that we feel the need to examine where he fits amongst the best freshmen in the modern era of college basketball. If we were to be measured and retrospective, we would take a deep breath and say that he’s only played five games, three of which were against the likes of McNeese State, Kennesaw State and South Alabama. But that reasoned perspective is somewhat antithetical to sports media and the blogosphere in general, so let’s overreact and see how the superstar rookie fares against some of his historical comparisons. We will start with the one-and-done era, which began in 2006.

Keep in mind that Simmons, at the time of this writing, is averaging 16.2 points, 14.4 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game.

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The school-managed exempt tournament is going extinct. The proliferation of corporate-owned events, including those put on by ESPN, have made sure of that. But out on the Last Frontier, the last holdout is conducting its last event on its own: The Great Alaska Shootout, organized and hosted by the University of Alaska-Anchorage, goes until Saturday, with its champion being the final team to win the tournament before Basketball Travelers takes over as managers next season.

The Great Alaska Shootout Produced One of the Best Moments for Bob Huggins at Cincinnati, in 1998. (AP)

The 50-plus-year-old tradition of exempt tournaments started when schools off the U.S. mainland needed to have an incentive before teams would schedule visits, and for a long time it stayed on an island floating off the coast of the NCAA landscape. But when eccentric Louisianan Bob Rachal took over the UAA men’s basketball program during its inaugural year in the NCAA’s Division II in 1977-78 – donning a tuxedo and top hat in his first game on the sidelines – he found that metaphorical island and used it to his advantage.

“He wanted something that could make a splash, something that could get the program on the map, so he dug around in the NCAA bylaws and he found out that you could host basically free games held under the exemption for any teams playing in Alaska or Hawaii at that point,” Seawolves sports information director Nate Sagan said. Well, not quite free, but close enough: A tournament of up to four games could count as one game against the NCAA’s limit of contests per season.

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday by a significant margin. From the moment I wake up to the moment I slide into a food-induced coma at the end of the night, I have a wide smile on my face. My relationship with college basketball is much the same. It’s my favorite sport by a comparable margin and I certainly find my share of smiles throughout the season. The two are unquestionably intertwined, with Turkey Day acting as an unofficial turning point of the season. Everything prior feels like two boxers dancing and feeling each other out, but once Thanksgiving comes and goes, the real haymakers start to be thrown.

And a Happy Thanksgiving to All…

Even if that may be well and good, I want to mash them together even further. If notable college basketball teams were the dishes on your Thanksgiving table, what would you eat? What would you pass along? What would you hoard all for yourself?

Turkey – Wisconsin

The bird may be the centerpiece of Thanksgiving dinner, but even that status can’t outweigh the connotation of its name. If we’re calling someone the “turkey” of the young season, it’s not a compliment. And that distinction goes to the Badgers. Losing the likes of Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker wasn’t supposed to be easy, but count me among the masses who though Bo Ryan, Bronson Koenig and Nigel Hayes would be able to steady the ship in the wake of their run to the National Championship game last season.

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As we head into what is certain to be a very happy holiday weekend, the guys wanted to get a Feast Week podcast in the books before things got too crazy. Little did they know that the great state of Nebraska would leave its indelible footprint on this week’s RTC Podcast. Spreading holiday cheer from Lincoln to North Platte! Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) hosts and Bennet Hayes (@hoopstraveler) once again joins, as the group goes through some of their early season tournament takes and looks ahead to the rest of the week. Oh, and this.

Five-oh Makes an Appearance on This Week’s RTC Podcast!

Make sure to add us to your iTunes subscription list so it will automatically download to your listening device each week. The full rundown is below!

• 0:00-8:27 – Champions Classic Review
• 8:27-15:17 – True Home Games vs. Neutral Sites
• 15:07-21:14 – Early Season Takeaways
• 21:14-25:51 – Battle 4 Atlantis
• 25:51-30:21 – Other Early Tournaments/Randy Gets Arrested
• 30:21-35:57 – Player of the Year Discussion
• 35:57-39:17 What We Are Thankful For/Wrap

Brian Goodman is the lead Big 12 correspondent for Rush The Court. He’s in Kansas City this week for the CBE Hall of Fame Classic. You can follow Brian on Twitter @BSGoodman or the RTC Big 12 Twitter account @b12hoops.

The CBE Hall Of Fame Classic wrapped in Kansas City on Tuesday night, with North Carolina overcoming a hot night from Kansas State to take the title by a score of 80-70. In the consolation round, Northwestern withstood a second half Missouri run to topple the Tigers 67-62.

• North Carolina’s late run deflates Kansas State. The Tar Heels and Wildcats traded jabs for most of the night, with Kansas State pulling ahead for a prolonged stretch in the second half. In the closing minutes, however, North Carolina reeled off a 21-3 run to put Bruce Weber’s team away. It was a collective effort down the stretch for North Carolina, but one specific play turned the tide in the Tar Heels’ favor. Coming out of a media timeout with a touch under four minutes left, Roy Williams drew up a baseline out-of-bounds designed play for Joel Berry, who found himself open thanks to a pair of screens to bury a three-pointer off a pass from Brice Johnson. The Tar Heels were soft on offense for the better part of 35 minutes, allowing Kansas State to keep up on the glass and get some steals, but they tightened their game up when it mattered most and showed some toughness to close things out.

Down the stretch, Kennedy Meeks and UNC had just enough to hold off hometown Kansas State. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

• Kamau Stokes puts on a show as the young Wildcats put a scare into UNC. We talked yesterday about Dean Wade‘s great effort on the blocks on Monday, but it was a different Kansas State newcomer who grabbed the attention of everyone in the Sprint Center last night. Stokes came into Tuesday’s final shooting a paltry 3-of-14 from distance on the season, but caught fire against North Carolina with a 6-of-8 effort from distance. With each passing bucket, Stokes grew more confident, firing up the crowd and his teammates. Stokes’ hot stretch even drew a double-team from the Tar Heels at one point. His night was made even more unexpected by the fact that he required an extra year at prep school just to get a Division-I scholarship offer. It’s just unfortunate that the rest of the Wildcats shot just 36 percent from the floor and couldn’t buy a stop late in the game. Tonight served as a reminder that even though Bruce Weber has a young team full of guys that want to play for him, it’s still going to be a process. Stokes will continue to get opportunities as Weber figures out his rotation, but while we wouldn’t expect him to be this hot regularly, even decent three-point shooting would be a big lift to Kansas State as it retools.

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