Story of the Night. Is this the year, after nine straight emasculations at the hands of the ACC, that the Big 10 finally breaks through and wins the ACC/Big 10 Challenge?  Well, considering that going into the last day of the Challenge in 2007-08, the ACC led 5-1, the previous year 4-2, and in fact, the Big 10 has NEVER gone into the final day deadlocked, we consider this a moral victory.  Maybe they don’t, but we do.  Looking at tomorrow night, the ACC still has the upper hand (Wake is a mortal lock at home vs. Indiana, and Georgia Tech will be heavily favored at home vs. Penn St.), but if Michigan St. and Northwestern can protect their home court/field, (big ifs) then Michigan @ Maryland could be the tipping point game.  Maryland will be favored, but Michigan has proven that it can play with anyone this year, and you never know which Terp team will show up.  If only the Illini had held on at home tonight, Big 10 fans!!

This Is What Duke Does.  Duke 76, Purdue 60. The most hyped game of tonight’s Challenge, if not the actual best game, reminded us all of what Duke consistently does every year in November and December – beat all comers.  Those of us who were fooled by Duke’s completely shameful avoidance of true nonconference road contests forgot what Duke typically does when they play those ACC-mandated games away from home – win them.  Duke looked focused and ready to play from the tip, while Purdue was clearly over-focused, to the point of blowing wide open layups and showing an inability to make simple defensive switches.  The Purdue jitters excuse quickly morphed into one involving Duke’s superior defense, though, as Purdue stars Robbie Hummell and E’Twaun Moore were held to a pedestrian 25 pts (six below their average), but 20 of those points were in the last eleven minutes of regulation, when the game was largely out of reach.  The Devils held the Boilers to 37% from the field and a mere 2-13 from three.  Equally impressive, Duke dominated the boards 44-26, including eight extra possessions from offensive rebounds.  Kyle Singler led the way for Duke with a double-double (20/12), but Jon Scheyer (20 pts) and Nolan Smith (12 pts) contributed with timely threes, as Duke improved to 10-0 in the Challenge. Purdue Fan = not happy.

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John Stevens is a featured columnist for RTC.  His columns will appear on Tuesdays throughout the season.

Fine.  If it has to be me, then it has to be me.  I don’t mind, I’ll take the heat.  I’ll be the one to bring up the subject that nobody else wants or has the stones to bring up.

I’m calling him out.

I don’t know what Tyler Hansbrough’s plans are for this Wednesday, but they had better involve showing up at Ford Field in Detroit at around 9pm.  In uniform.  Ankles taped.  Ready to play, a self-proclaimed 100% healthy.

Or, they better involve not just a DNP, but a long-term hiatus from basketball.

Now, I know that, in college basketball circles, saying anything negative about Tyler Hansbrough is just the worst thing you can do.  To know that he has an injury but still demand that he get out onto the floor and actually play basketball paints me as unfeeling, a heathen — possibly even a heretic, given the public perception of Hansbrough, his head coach Roy Williams, and the entire UNC basketball program which has gotten to the point to where the image surrounding all of them can only be described as, well…almost HOLY, for some reason.  I might as well go tell a bunch of little kids that I hate puppies or a roomful of girls that I can’t stand weddings.

I don’t care.  I’ll be the one to suggest that there’s an ugly truth behind the false beauty.  I’m going to point at the emperor and call him naked.  Someone has to say it, and I’m volunteering, because it’s best for college basketball – and for Tyler Hansbrough – that he and his handlers make a decision on his status once and for all.

I say “he” because that’s who the play-versus-sit decision evidently falls to before every game.  Since the season began, we’ve heard that Hansbrough is the one who determines whether he’s well enough to go or not.  We’ve heard nothing about team physicians or their opinions.  We’ve seen Ol’ Roy (expectedly so, since it’s what you’re supposed to do) talk about how Tyler’s just rip-roarin’ to play and how they basically need to use chains to keep the guy on the bench…but the decision to play or not has still been Hansbrough’s.  The only thing close to an exception has been their last game against UNC-Asheville where we were told that Hansbrough was “held out,” though it wasn’t specifically stated who did the holding.

Acceptable Reason to Sit Out

That in mind, let’s look at Tyler’s season so far.

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If you haven’t heard, the ACC – Big 10 Challenge starts continues tonight!  We were certifiably swamped yesterday with catch-up, so we’ll sorta forget that the Wisconsin v. Virginia Tech game already happened (brought to you by Trevon Hughes), and spend a few minutes taking a sideways glance at the tonight’s slate of games.

The Challenge is usually an exercise in futility for the Big 10 (0-9 all-time), but we think this year they have a shot (just a shot, mind you) at pulling off a 6-5 upset for the first time in the history of the event.  Remember, thanks to Wisconsin, the league already has a 1-0 lead in one of the key tossup games.  We expect the league to come out of tonight at 3-3 (possibly 4-2) with two home games left.

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And we’re back… We hope that our fair readers had a luckier Thanksgiving weekend than we did.  Due to substantial computer issues, we were unable to keep the site updated over the weekend.  But we managed to watch a fair number of the multitude of games this weekend, so rather than recapping what has effectively become stale news, we’ll instead offer our observations.

What We Learned.

Old Spice Classic.

• Maryland is equally as likely to pull a major upset as to lay a gigantic egg (beating Michigan St. by 18, then losing by 22 to Gonzaga and 27 to Georgetown).
• Michigan St. isn’t going anywhere without a healthy Delvon Roe/Goran Suton and learn to make its FTs (49-84, .583 for the tourney).
• A Gonzaga team that actually defends (with a healthy Josh Heytvelt) is a dangerous one.  Oklahoma St., Maryland and Tennessee shot 36.7%/29% against the Zags.
• Georgetown is going to be dealt with.  With tremendous balance between their inside/outside players, the Hoyas should only get better as the year (and Greg Monroe) progresses.
• Tennessee is far and away the best team in the SEC, and the Bobby Maze experiment at PG appears to be working (so far).

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We’re really not in the mood for this tonight, so it’s going to be short/sweet.  Either you pass or fail, that’s the deal.

Game of the Night. UNC 102, Notre Dame 87.

• Notre Dame. EPIC FAIL.  Carolina shot 58% on you.  Just.  Go.  Home.
• Tyler Hansbrough. PASS.  He’s back (34/5 on 13-19 shooting).
• Kyle McAlarney. PASS.  39 pts on 10 threes, many of which seemed from halfcourt.  The only ND player who came to play tonight.
• Luke Harongody. FAIL.  13/7 and thoroughly outplayed by Psycho-T.
• Rest of College Basketball. FAIL.  If Carolina is going to play like this…

Preseason NIT. Oklahoma 77, UAB 67 & Purdue 71, Boston College 64.

• Blake Griffin. PASS.  Another 32/15 and an OU win.  POY.
• Paul Delaney III. PASS.  23/6 on 10-14 shooting for UAB.
• UAB Finishing. FAIL.  With 5:09 to go, UAB was ahead.  The Blazers scored two more relevant points.
• Robbie Hummell and E’Twaun Moore. PASS.  29/11/8 assts combined.
• Purdue Down the Stretch. FAIL.  A 19-pt lead with 6:30 to go shouldn’t go to two possessions that quickly.

Anything Else?

• Oregon St. FAIL.  Another close loss 82-79 in overtime.  To Montana State.
• Arkansas. PASS.  A solid win 79-77 at South Alabama for one of the worst SEC teams.
• Indiana. PASS/FAIL.  A pass for getting another win (there won’t be many more).  A fail for barely skating by D2 Chaminade 81-79.

So the Maui Invitational ends tonight in an early-season blockbuster game – Notre Dame vs. North Carolina – and the CBE Classic and Paradise Jam are already finished, but fear not, hoopheads, there’s plenty more on the way this week..

Continuing tonight in MSG, we have the semifinals of the Preseason NIT.  The finals will be on Friday night.  Although the marquee teams aren’t as illustrious as some of the other names we’ll see over the next few days, the PNIT still holds a certain aura in terms of its prestige and respect among college fans.  We like Purdue to wear down a spirited BC squad in the first game tonight, and Oklahoma to outlast Robert Vaden’s UAB team in the second game (Blake Griffin will have another monster game against UAB’s soft interior), setting up a top 10 showdown on Friday night between teams that you may not get to see much of this year (definitely  must-see tv on Black Friday night). Read the rest of this entry »

John Stevens is a featured columnist for RTC.  His columns will appear on Tuesdays throughout the season.

Ah, Thanksgiving week.  As if ESPN’s 24-hour binge of college basketball last week wasn’t enough, here comes the oh-so-appropriately-named Feast Week, another avalanche of hoops awesomeness spread out over seven days that not only launches college basketball right back into the middle of the sports radar where it belongs, but also goes great with Thanksgiving leftovers, paid days off of work, as well as pizza and garlic bread (in case you’re sick of all that turkey by Saturday’s games).  Aside from the month of March, it doesn’t get much better than this for college hoops fans.  The daytime games, the intriguing match-ups…good God, who would want to brave the lines on Black Friday?  THIS is the way to kick off the holiday season.

Maui Turkey

The holiday tournaments are a great time to familiarize oneself with the big boys of the game – see UNC in Maui, Georgetown in the Old Spice Classic (why are these tournaments called ‘classics’ when they’re 2-3 years old?), and so forth – since some of them might be making their first appearances on national television.  I’ve always thought one of the best things about the holiday onslaught of games was the opportunity to find a team that wasn’t getting much hype and, if they give one of the highly-ranked teams a game or even pull off an upset, follow them throughout the season and maybe use them in March when I’m doing way too much bracket-filling analysis, if there is such a thing.  I mean, we all know about Carolina and Oklahoma and Michigan State.  Who will we see that bears watching in these Thanksgiving tournaments that we haven’t been hearing a lot about?  Here, in my opinion, are a couple of squads to keep an eye on not just over this holiday weekend but also to see how they mature over the course of the season: Read the rest of this entry »

Indiana & Kelvin Sanctions (cont.). The big news of the day was of course that Indiana managed to avoid postseason sanctions even though they’ll formally be on probation for the next three seasons.  Kelvin Sampson, to his credit, took responsibility for the complete lack of oversight at Indiana ‘while on his watch,’ but at least once Tom Crean gets this program moving in the right direction again, the Hoosiers won’t also be burdened by the crimson scarlet letter of postseason sanctions.  Recruits can still be sold on the basis of playing in the postseason at Indiana (although admittedly, that seems farfetched at this point, even within three years).  Sampson is now working for the Milwaukee Bucks as an assistant, but he’s now effectively barred from coaching in the NCAA for the next five years as part of a ‘show cause’ restriction (a school would have to show cause for the NCAA to allow it to hire him).  Frankly, this seems to us like a penalty that was ‘easy’ for the NCAA to prove, but one that doesn’t necessarily fit when we know of so many other obvious recruiting violations that are simply untidy for prosecution and therefore ignored.

Games of the Night. We had two great games today, for the first time all season.

• Notre Dame 81, Texas 80. This game was nearly everything we expected, and a little more (featured by Justin Mason, below).  Notre Dame was led by Luke Harangody’s 29/13 and a 40-footer at the shot clock expiration to what seemed like a solid win with a minute to go, up 79-71.  Then the bricks started – Tory Jackson missed two from the line; Zach Hillesland missed two from the line; then Harongody missed both with five seconds left, leaving the door open for Texas to win the game with a two (ND was only up 81-80 at that time).  Luckily for Notre Dame, AJ Abrams’ 60-footer at the buzzer was just a bit short (but right online).  Good performances abound – ND’s Kyle McAlarney had 19/5 including five threes, and Texas’ was led by AJ Abrams’ 23/5 and Damion James 11/12.  Both of these teams are top ten worthy, in our opinion, and we expect Notre Dame to give Carolina all they want tomorrow evening.

• Syracuse 89, Kansas 81 (OT). This was a phenomenal game with enough eye-popping plays to cause Beetlejuice to take notice.  Kansas appeared as if they were going to blow the game open in the mid-second half until Jim Boeheim changed his trapping defense up and seemingly stole the ball a dozen straight times for dunks and layups.  This 13-2 run led to a tight game down the stretch which was capped by Jonny Flynn’s (25/5 assts) dagger three with 6.4 seconds remaining (see below) to effectively send the game to overtime.  Cuse continued its hot shooting in the OT – Andy Rautins and Eric Devendorf combined for six threes in the game – and KU appeared to lose its confidence in the extra period.  KU’s Cole Aldrich (15/14) and SU’s Arinze Onuaku (19/12) both showed a strong skill set in the post as each tried to one-up the other during the game.  Both of these teams are going to be very good this season.

What’s Wrong with Steph Curry? Davidson 78, Loyola (MD) 48. Nothing, that’s what.  As in Steph Curry put up a donut tonight in the points column (get a good look below because we doubt you’ll ever see it again).  The word is that Loyola head man Jimmy Patsos strategized to take Curry completely out of the game by double-teaming him on every offensive possession, anywhere he went on the court.  Curry, happy to let his teammates play every possession 4-on-3, stood in the corner and watched as they got open look after open look (14 threes went down).  Remember, Jimmy Patsos is the coach who decided to leave the bench last week during a game to sit in the stands.  We’re starting to seriously worry that he could be losing his mind.  We’re not sure if a player averaging over 35ppg has ever had a scoreless game, but jeez, Steph, what happened on the three shots you missed?

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Ray Floriani (pictured, center) of College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the MAAC and NEC Conferences.  A dilettante of the highest order, he attended the Coaches vs. Cancer final rounds in New York last week.

*(ed. note: Ray wrote in to say that Jamie is the redhead on the far left – no, not the Bruin)

NEW YORK CITY – Part of the excitement and ambience of college basketball involves the fans. As in fanatic, passionate and devoted. Largely associated with them is the spirit groups, cheerleaders, dance teams, etc.

Coaches vs. Cancer last week in New York afforded the opportunity to meet with the UCLA Dance Team, the only team in town. “We appear at weddings, civic events and charity events,” coach Molly Vehling said. “But our most important job is cheering for our teams. We cheer at  football and basketball games and it makes me proud that we traveled the farthest and have the only (spirit) group here.”

Those chosen for teams as UCLA dancers go through tryouts. After being selected comes weekly practices punctuated by conditioning. The ladies on the dance teams, at UCLA and other schools, are athletes in their own right.

To a member, this was the first trip to Madison Square Garden for the team. They took in the obligatory sights from Central Park, Fifth Avenue to Ground Zero. Getting on the Garden floor brought added meaning to their performance.

“This (MSG) is a great place to cheer,” said Jamie, a senior. “I’ve cheered in the Staples Center which is similar but here there is so much history.” Jamie used the trip as a test. She’s a microbiology major hoping to go to law school. She’s looking at NYU Law so her first trip to the Big Apple had added significance. Her impression? “New York is a great city, just a little chilly.” Understandable since the region was hit with unseasonably cold temperatures in the low thirties.

Her teammate Michelle summed up the experience, ”this (Madison Square Garden and New York) is just an awesome place.”

After finishing the trip on a high note as the Bruins defeated Southern Illinois in the consolation game, the dance team was off to Broadway.  What show, I asked? ‘The Rockettes,” they answered in unison.  Makes sense one talented dance group seeing another.

Somehow in the libational haze of last Friday night’s self-induced dystopia, we noted a strange factoid surfacing across the ESPN bottom-line crawler.  Tennis great Jimmy Connors, he of the former #1 ranking and a current Santa Barbara resident, had gotten into some kind of row with another fan outside the UCSB Thunderdome prior to the Gauchos’ game with #1 North Carolina, and found himself arrested.  The story got lost among all the football and hoops this weekend, but we wanted to make sure that we remembered it correctly.  Turns out, we did.  From the NY Daily News report:

Tennis giant Jimmy Connors was arrested outside a college basketball game in California for standing his ground, police said.  Connors, 56, was ordered to move away from the entrance of the Thunderdome just before UC Santa Barbara and top-ranked North Carolina were set to play Friday night.  The eight-time Grand Slam champ, known for his fiery temperament in his heyday, refused and was arrested, police said.

(photo credit: MensVogue)

We can only speculate as to who the other guy must have been or what he must have done to elicit such rage in Connors so that he would miss the once-in-a-generation opportunity for the local school (of which he supposedly is a fan) to host the nation’s #1 ranked team.  Hmmm…

Just thinking out loud here, but who fits that description?  What nemesis is capable of eliciting such rage so that Connors would refuse to comply with police instructions and move his arse?  Who could that have been? 

Oh, right. 

(photo credit: Ron Waite)