Fresh off losing its first game of the season to Duke last Saturday, #2 Virginia completed a week that has to put the Cavaliers in any weekly award discussions. Tony Bennett’s squad first went to Chapel Hill on Big Monday and earned an 11-point victory over #11 North Carolina. It then returned home on Saturday to face a hot #9 Louisville squad and emerged victorious with a hard-fought five-point victory. Virginia receives a great deal of credit for its stifling defense and you could see why in that game, as it held Louisville to just 13 measly first half points. All is not perfect in Charlottesville though, as star swingman Justin Anderson suffered a fractured finger on his left hand and is expected to miss four to six weeks. Elsewhere in the ACC, #4 Duke continues to rebound quite nicely from its three previous league setbacks. The Blue Devils scored a victory over Georgia Tech last Wednesday before avenging their January 28 loss to #12 Notre Dame, annihilating the Irish by 30 points in Durham . While Virginia still has a lead in the league standings, the ACC race is definitely one to keep an eye on as the second half of conference play progresses.

This week’s Quick N’ Dirty after the jump…

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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After years of failing health, Dean Smith passed away Saturday night at the age of 83. The tributes flowed in all day Sunday: Michael Jordan remembered his “second father”; Roy Williams reflected on his mentor and former boss; and media members across the country (including SI‘s Seth Davis and Alexander Wolff) shared their memories of one of college basketball’s greatest head coaches. Smith’s 879 wins, 11 Final Fours and two National Titles all found frequent mention yesterday, but equally conspicuous was praise of Dean Smith, the human being. In 1969, it was Smith who ended segregation in the ACC when he offered a scholarship to Charlie Scott, an eventual two-time All-American for the Heels (and later, father of current Ohio State guard Shannon Scott). To reveal the injustices of the American prison system, Smith brought his players to witness death row first-hand and meet some of the prisoners. Perhaps most valuably, he is widely credited as being the first to cultivate a true sense of family within his basketball program. It’s why Jordan viewed him as more than just his coach. It’s also become the elusive ideal that every program in college basketball now aspires to create.

College Basketball Lost One Of Its All-Time Great Leaders On Saturday

“The Carolina Way” may sound like a snippet of cheesy propaganda, but those three words would come to define Smith’s coaching methodology. More than anything, they represented the fact that if you were a Dean Smith guy, you would care about accomplishments and lessons that couldn’t be defined by a simple ‘W’ or ‘L’. Other programs and coaches have successfully constructed programs that stand for that family ideal – with Smith’s old Tobacco Road and ACC rival Mike Krzyzewski still existing as the clearest current example at Duke – but for every program that successfully accomplishes the feat, countless others will try and fail. In a contemporary college basketball era where coaches are under more pressure than ever to win, players are offered more opportunities than ever to defect (either by transfer or to the NBA), and increasingly little is private, creating and sustaining a college basketball program with a clear ethos is difficult. By being a human and father figure first and a coach second, Dean Smith built the template on how to create a program – not just a basketball team – that’s built to last.

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One thousand. Two weeks ago, this column and many more around the country led with that number. Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski had just become the first men’s college basketball coach to reach the 1,000-win plateau on an historic Sunday at Madison Square Garden, and in the aftermath, Coach K and that number were the talk of the sports world.

The Basketball World Paused on Sunday to Honor Dean Smith’s Passing. (USA Today Images)

Today we celebrate another ACC legend. But we do so for a different reason, and in a different tenor. We’ll get to the basketball soon enough, but as you’ve probably heard by now, legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith — a former rival of Krzyzewski’s — passed away on Saturday. He was 83. Since the news broke Sunday morning, messages extolling Smith’s many virtues have come from far and wide. They’ve come from former players and adversaries, columnists and commentators, even from the President of the United States. Many of us have mourned college basketball’s loss, but even more have celebrated a life that so special to so many people. And that’s what this should be: a celebration.

Like Krzyzewski, Smith was obviously an outstanding basketball coach. He was innovative, sharp and bold — and, without question, driven by his competitiveness. He too set a number of records while at the helm in Chapel Hill, but those accomplishments are only the subtext to the discussion. That’s because Smith wasn’t defined by his numbers, as good as they were. Ask anybody who knew the man, and they’ll tell you the same thing: Dean Smith was defined by the way in which he impacted the lives of others. He was defined by stories of grace, loyalty and sincerity. Smith coached before my time. But it’s through those stories that I have gotten to know him, and it is those stories that allow everybody — well beyond the entire college hoops community — to recognize how truly wonderful a man he was. I can’t relate those anecdotes myself, but others — like ESPN‘s Dana O’Neil and The Washington Post‘s John Feinstein — have. And they’re beautiful.

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1. The word legend is overused, but college basketball lost a legend on Saturday night as Dean Smith passed away at the age of 83. Smith, who belongs on any Mount Rushmore you want to make for the sport, was a universally loved and respected figure in the game, which is a rarity. Some of that may have to do with the way he comported himself, but it also has do with his off-the-court work including being a vocal advocate of integration not only in the ACC, but also in the state of North Carolina. We won’t rehash all of his accomplishments, but would  highly recommend that you read some of the pieces that are being written about him now particularly the ones that talk about his work outside of basketball.
2. The second biggest news from this weekend happen in Charlottesville where Virginia junior Justin Anderson fractured a bone in his left hand. He underwent surgery yesterday and is expected to miss at least three weeks, but could be out for as long as six weeks. Exactly how long he will be out could be a big factor in determining how far the Cavaliers will go in the NCAA Tournament. Anderson’s emergence as a consistent outside threat makes the Cavaliers a legitimate NCAA title threat. They still could conceivably when the title without him or even with him not at full strength, but the task would be significantly tougher.
3. Normally the NIT is a forgettable event that we only watch if we happen to accidentally stumble upon it. This year promises to be different (ok, we probably still won’t watch it) as they will be experimenting with various rule changes. The most prominent of these changes is trying a 30-second shot clock that is already proving to be controversial. The other significant move will be to increase the size of the restricted area, which could reduce the number of questionable charges that are called. We will wait after the event is over before passing judgement on either change, but can’t see a downside to increasing the restricted area (within reason). We just hope that the powers that be are paying attention.
4. Providence coach Ed Cooley was briefly hospitalized at a Cincinnati hospital after feeling ill during their game against Xavier. Very little information regarding the hospitalization was released, but it seems like they observed him for hypertensive urgency although his reported symptoms wouldn’t necessarily fit with that diagnosis. From what we have read this does not appear to be a chronic/recurrent problem for Cooley, which is reassuring. Cooley, who left the team with an 8-point lead that they surrendered immediately with Xavier going on an 18-2 run, is planning on returning for the team’s next game, which is on Wednesday against Villanova.
5. Mike Krzyzewski has company in the 1000-win club. Less than two weeks after Krzyzewski became the first coach to win 1,000 men’s college basketball games, Philadelphia coach Herb Magee won his 1000th game too. While Magee generated much less attention doing it at the Division II level, it is still a remarkable accomplishment particularly when you realize that Magee did it all at one school. During Magee’s 48 years at the school, he has led them to a national championship (1970) and has already been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. Regardless of the level of competition, Magee’s longevity and consistent success is remarkable.

1. The decision by Syracuse to self-impose a postseason ban for this year has been controversial to say the least. On one hand it shows that the school understands how serious the allegations against it are, but the decision to announce this self-imposed ban for one of its weaker teams in recent memory seems a little disingenuous. If this had been a Syracuse team that would have been a NCAA Tournament team (not necessarily a high seed either) the announcement might have been viewed as more significant, but it seems like the school is essentially banning itself from something it would not have been invited to anyways. Of course, all of this is assuming that the NCAA won’t hit the school with more sanctions when it makes its own announcements, but given the way the NCAA is handling the North Carolina case we would not hold our breath.
2. While Syracuse was not a realistic postseason team this year, Kansas State certainly is although those chances have been dropping recently. Things got worse for the Wildcats when the school announced that Marcus Foster and Malek Harris had been suspended indefinitely for an unspecified violation of team rules. Losing Foster, the team’s leading scorer (14 points per game) and best player, is obviously a huge loss and it showed in the team’s loss to Texas Tech on Wednesday. The question for Kansas State is how long Foster in particular will be out since this is the second time that he has been disciplined this season. If he is out for a prolonged period of time, Bruce Weber can forget about making the NCAA Tournament.
3. While Ohio State’s place in the NCAA Tournament is more secure than Kansas State’s, we are not sure how long they can maintain that security if Marc Loving misses much more time. Loving, the team’s second-leading scorer at 11.7 points per game, was suspended prior to Wednesday night’s loss at Purdue. The school did not give an explanation outside of that Loving had “temporarily lost his privilege to wear the Scarlet and Gray.” Given the wording we would assume that Loving will be back relatively soon and although the Big Ten is down this year, D’Angelo Russell needs more than just cursory support if he wants to have a memorable March.
4. Kent State also suffered a big albeit apparently temporary loss this week when they announced that Jimmy Hall, who leads the team in scoring (15.1 per game) and rebounding (7.5 per game), would be out for at least a week after being diagnosed with mononucleosis. The Golden Flashes currently are tied for first in the Eastern Division of the Mid-American Conference (four-way tie in a six-team division), but lost their only game without Hall (a one-point loss at Western Michigan on Wednesday). Unlike the other teams we mentioned they don’t have a shot at an at-large bid so as long as Hall is back and healthy for the conference tournament it probably won’t matter in the end.
5. Recently, we mentioned how a court had ruled that Geno Ford owed Kent State $1.2 million for getting out of his contract early. Now it is a college coach (Gib Arnold) who is going after his former employer (Hawaii) for the $1.4 million that they owe him. Arnold is essentially challenging the charges levied against him by the NCAA (including two Level I allegations) and says that the school owes him the full $1.4 million due to him based on his contract as he was fired without cause (reason for challenging the NCAA allegations) rather than the $346,000 that they paid him (presumably based on the idea that there was cause for the firing). His official statement goes into a little more detail about the issues at hand, but we think in the end it will be difficult for Arnold to win his case fighting on two fronts (the NCAA and Hawaii).

Syracuse may no longer reside in the Big East, but that didn’t stop bloggers from an old rival from putting their spin on yesterday’s news that the Orange had imposed a postseason ban on itself this season. Casual Hoya, the occasionally irreverent but always on-point voice of Georgetown fans, had this to say about the news from upstate New York.

In other words, Syracuse will not be accepting an invite to this season's NIT.

— Casual Hoya (@CasualHoya) February 4, 2015

The jab is certainly worth a chuckle, but it should also be good for a firm nod or two. Even as Jim Boeheim’s team currently sits at 15-7 (6-3 in the ACC), the NIT appeared to be a likely destination for the Orange if they had remained postseason-eligible. Their respectable record partially obscures that unpleasant reality, but it shouldn’t be enough to shield Boeheim’s brain trust from a bit of second-guessing on the timing of the announcement. Declining an NIT bid is hardly a sacrifice – heck, ask the Hoyas about that themselves – but Syracuse must be hoping that it will appear as if it is giving up a potential spot in the NCAA Tournament. To be fair, there definitely was enough time and opportunity for Syracuse to play its way into the field of 68; more likely, however, is that February 3 goes down as the high point of an otherwise uninspiring season, rendering the ban meaningless.

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(Ed. Note: quotes may or may not be verbatim. Or accurate.) 

It is not another typical day at the St. John’s campus. Something seems different. Maybe it is the dark clouds that hover in the air, or the students walking around, seemingly faceless and unhappy. Possibly it is the basketball team that is strutting around aimlessly, daydreaming about the things that could have been. Nevertheless, something is strange at 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, NY. Some will say it shouldn’t be that way. St. John’s is a fine school. It enrolls nearly 21,000 kids despite only accepting about half of the people who apply to attend such a fine university. Still, there’s whispers of a big change coming. Not from an academic standpoint, though. A possible looming change could be what is making everyone seem, if not on edge, a bit too sad.

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A man named Steve Lavin is the current face of St. John’s. Steve typically wears fine suits with a pair of sneakers because he treasures comfort as much as he does style. Slicked back hair, slightly pudgy but certainly not fat, Steve has been helping mold young minds at the program for nearly five years. He came to St. John’s after years as a TV personality and before that as a molder of young minds over on the West Coast. Steve is a very likable fellow. He has always had a reputation of getting the best of the best to enroll at whatever school he was affiliated with at that particular moment, but things haven’t quite worked out that way since joining the big New York university. Sure, Steve has shown some glimpses of brilliance that made the people within the university fall in love with him in the first place, yet that era of him being all that and a bag of recruiting potato chips has seemingly passed.

Steve Lavin and Chris Monasch in Happy Times (NY Post)

He isn’t a broken man, though. No one keeps a good guy like Steve down. Few people have been through as much as he on a personal level over the last few years. Still, St. John’s brought him in to do a specific job and he hasn’t lived up to his end of the bargain. It wasn’t always that way. When Steve first took over the basketball program he had a slew of kids brought in by another man, Norm Roberts. Norm and Steve could not have been any different — Steve coming from a high-profile program and gig while Norm coming from the land of lesser known places of higher education. However, where Norm failed to bring St. John’s, Steve did in his very first year with the program. All in all, because of Steve’s immediate success. many thought their basketball program was on the way back up.

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There’s a note on Steve’s desk this morning. It reads: “Steve, we need to talk. Sincerely, Chris Monasch.” Chris is the boss. The head honcho of all things related to sports at St. John’s. Often mentioned as a kind man, who by all accounts really likes Steve and wants him to succeed if for no other reason than Steve being a good person, Chris has been under a different kind of pressure than the head basketball coach. People are starting to implore Chris, through newspapers, new media and social media, to look at the future of the St. John’s basketball program through a different lens. It is that pressure from the outside which has resulted in such a note landing on Steve’s desk.

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1. With Greg Anthony currently dealing with legal issues from his arrest for allegedly soliciting a prostitute, CBS has decided to go with Bill Raftery and Grant Hill along with Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson to call the Final Four. While Raftery is well-established as a broadcasting icon, Hill is relatively new to the field although he has some studio experience and is well-spoken. Overall it seems like a safe line-up that is unlikely to say anything controversial and although they don’t have much any experience working as a group we doubt there will be any major issues.
2. Josh Speidel, a Vermont commit, is listed as being in “critical but stable condition” at an Indiana hospital after being involved in a car accident on Sunday night. Speidel, a 6’7″ senior who is one of the top prospects in the state (25.6 points and 9.3 rebounds per game this season), surprised many observers by committing to Vermont after having received interest from several Big Ten schools. None of the other four individuals involved in the two-car crash were seriously injured. For their part the Catamounts have posted a get well video on YouTube showing their support for Speidel. There is also a GoFundMe campaign #JoshStrong to help assist his family with the medical costs related to the accident.
3. Oregon might have its share of off-the-court problems, but they don’t seem to have any problem recruiting as they received a commitment from Tyler Dorsey, a four-star guard, on Monday giving them three four-star commitments for the class of 2015 to go along with Kendall Small and Trevor Manuel. Dorsey, a 6’4″ combo guard from California, had originally committed to Arizona, but backed out of that commitment as the Wildcats appeared to head in a different direction with their recruiting. With Joseph Young’s departure after this season, Dorsey could have a spot waiting for him in the Oregon lineup.
4. One of our earliest posts on this site was one criticizing Grant Wahl’s Magic Eight, which attempted to narrow down the list of potential national champions. Wahl has since moved onto soccer, which still has less scoring that college basketball despite what some writers would have you believe, and Luke Winn has inherited the task of coming up with a Magic Eight. We can’t quite remember Wahl’s track record, but Winn is quick to point out that his own picks have been far from perfect as he failed to include Connecticut in his list. This year’s list, which requires him to leave out two of the top eight teams in the country and include a team outside of the top 15, doesn’t include any particularly shocking teams (even if we can’t see Wichita State winning) and he doesn’t exclude any big names that people realistically see winning (sorry, Gonzaga), but Winn does point out some of most significant strengths and weaknesses of each team so it is worth a read particularly if you are still trying to catch up after football ended.
5. Lost in all of the talk about President Obama’s budget is a measure that could have a significant impact on college athletics by proposing to end tax deductions for donations made to college athletics for seat-related contributions. For those of you who are unaware of the practice, when college teams sell season tickets a substantial portion is listed as a donation making it tax-deductible. By taking this away, they would in effect be raising the effective price of those tickets. We are not sure what the elasticity is for these type of tickets, but we have to assume they would have a bigger impact on programs that rely on these donations for such a significant portion of their revenues. And the government’s figure of $2.5 billion in increased revenues from taxes over the next decade from this change is a decent if not perfectly correlated indicator of the magnitude of the effect this could have on some athletic programs.

It’s basketball season. At long last, it’s basketball season. It’s a shame that the general sports-loving public takes so long to realize that’s the case, but regardless of their failures and inadequacies, it’s time to look ahead. Football is finally and definitively over, and it’s time for the roundball and the hardwood floor to take center stage on the American sports landscape. The Super Bowl was awesome — one of the greatest of all-time, and a phenomenal advertisement for the competitiveness of the NFL — but as always, it was a bit anti-climactic. After two weeks of buildup, it’s all over; and just like that, there is a major void on the sports scene.

There’s No Better Environment That Those in College Basketball (USA Sports Images)

College basketball must fill that void. For the dedicated fans, it undoubtedly will. But a frequently posed question in recent years has been whether college basketball has become a “niche sport”? According to a recent Harris poll, the game has indeed declined in popularity. Currently only three percent of American sports fans identify college hoops as their go-to game — down from five percent in 2011, and 10 percent in 1989 — and only a seismic shift in popularity could see the sport return to its peak levels in the 1980s and 1990s. Does that matter? For those who attach themselves to the overall health and growth of the game, yeah, it does. But at least in the short run from now until April 6, no poll will inhibit the joy we derive from the on-court action of college basketball. “Niche” can be viewed as a demeaning word when it is used in this context, but niche is fine so long as it can produce compelling games like Duke-Virginia in Charlottesville on Saturday and atmospheres like Kansas-Iowa State in Allen Fieldhouse last night.

Three for the Money

• West Virginia at Oklahoma | Tuesday, 8:00 PM EST, ESPN2. After an explosive Big Monday of important (if not competitive) games, it’s a rather slow work week in the world of college hoops. But before we jump ahead to the weekend’s action, let’s not lose sight of this one on Tuesday night in Norman. It’s time to focus on the season that West Virginia is putting together. All of a sudden, the Mountaineers at 6-2 appear to be the biggest threat to Kansas in the Big 12 race. Bob Huggins has done a spectacular job in rebuilding this team after a couple of down years. He has possibly the conference’s best player in senior Juwan Staten but his true value with this year’s group has been molding them into a new identity featuring pressure defense all over the floor. Four West Virginia players rank among the nation’s top 100 in steal percentage, and the team prides itself on turning opponents over and getting out in transition. Tonight’s game could go either way. Oklahoma could get sucked into West Virginia’s traps and come out on the wrong end of a helter-skelter contest; or the Sooners could constantly be in attack mode, using the fast tempo and a raucous home crowd to play right into their hands.

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The story of the past week in college basketball was highlighted by some really good games between the ACC’s best. It all started last Wednesday when #10 Notre Dame came back from a 10-point second half deficit to knock off #4 Duke in South Bend. The loss dropped the Blue Devils to 4-3 in conference play and, coupled with the dismissal of junior guard Rasheed Sulaimon on Thursday, it appeared that Duke swirling in turmoil. Before the Blue Devils faced off with #2 Virginia on Saturday evening, Duke’s archrival, #11 North Carolina, blew an 18-point second half lead at #9 Louisville, thus suffering its second conference loss of the season. Later that night in Charlottesville, Duke showed that reports of its demise were greatly exaggerated when it rallied late in the second half to best the previously-unbeaten Cavaliers. To make matters even wackier in the ACC, Notre Dame suffered a loss at Pittsburgh earlier in the day for its second league loss of the season. As the calendar turns to February, Virginia is still on top of the ACC standings at 7-1, but it certainly has several teams breathing down its neck:  Notre Dame is right behind at 8-2; North Carolina is at 7-2; Louisville is at 6-2; and always-dangerous Duke now sits at 5-3. The ACC may not be the deepest league in the country, but watching these five great teams battle it out over the final five weeks of the regular season promises to be extremely entertaining.

This week’s Quick N’ Dirty after the jump…

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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