1. Coming into this season we figured that Mark Turgeon was going to have a difficult time with a team that lacked a solid inside presence to the degree that there was quite a bit of speculation that he might play four guards. Yesterday he lost one of those guards for a significant part of the season when Pe’Shon Howard broke a bone in his left foot and is expected to be out for up to 3 months recovering. Howard’s injury leaves Maryland with just seven healthy scholarship players and to be honest those seven are not that good, which means that this could be a very rough start for Turgeon even if Howard comes back midway through ACC play.
2. When the NCAA announced that it would be adopting an APR minimum of 930 (two-year average) or 900 (four-year average) for inclusion in the 2013 NCAA Tournament quite a few writers immediately noticed that defending national champion Connecticut probably would not be eligible. This was based on the assumption that the school would not be able to achieve a two-year average over 930 between the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons after it scored 826 in 2009-10, which would bring the school’s average down enough that even a reported unofficial 975 in 2010-11 would only get them up to 900.5 for two years and 888.5 for four years. It turns out that the decision may be more complex. Essentially what it boils down to is that in February the NCAA will have another series of meetings to decide whether to use scores from those years or 2010-11 and 2011-12 for inclusion in the 2013 NCAA Tournament. If they were to do the latter, they would have to move up the release of APR scores from the traditional date of May. If they stick with the current measurement, then the Huskies and other programs in a similar situation would have to rely on an appeals process or hope the NCAA creates a waiver. We would say stay tuned, but there is no way that the NCAA would risk losing a school like UConn to a new rule when the Huskies could very well be playing for a three-peat at that point.
3. The NCAA announced another interesting policy change yesterday, but this was involves recruiting. The major change is that coaches can call or send text messages to recruits as much as they want. It also allows increased messaging on social networks and changes the recruiting periods. As nearly everybody on Twitter noted yesterday, it is somewhat amusing that Kelvin Sampson was essentially kicked out of college basketball for something that is legal just a few years later making him a pioneer of sorts.
4. We would  like to send along our best wishes to Billy Kennedy, who revealed that he was diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s disease in a statement he released through Texas A&M. Kennedy had taken a leave of absence earlier this month to recover from what can best be described as fatigue and other non-specific symptoms. During that time he was seen by physicians, who diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease. We will not get into the effect this will have on the Aggies (that can come later) other than to note that Kennedy will be taking an extended leave of absence to attend to his health, which is certainly more important than basketball. We also will not delve into the progression and treatment of Parkinson’s disease other than to note that there are several medications and treatments that are available, which should hopefully help Kennedy deal with the condition.
5. Uber-recruit Mitch McGary has narrowed his list down to Duke, Florida, and Michigan after taking Maryland and North Carolina off his list and will commit to one of those three schools next week according to his blog post on ESPN.com. Most of the speculation we have heard so far is about Duke or Michigan and we are not sure how UF fits in here, but they have obviously done something to attract McGary’s attention. At any rate, you can expect Twitter to explode next week when he makes his announcement particularly if he decides to become a Blue Devil as he may very quickly become Public Enemy #1 for the rest of the college basketball world.

Last week we examined the sixty or so major programs that Vegas feels is worth offering as action to win the 2011-12 national championship. Unsurprisingly, the top several teams in the preseason Coaches Poll — North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio State, Duke, Syracuse — generally mimic the top several teams in terms of the odds Vegas is offering. The one stunning exception to that trend is Connecticut, whom the pollsters have listed among the few teams most likely to cut the nets down in New Orleans next April, but from whom the oddsmakers still aren’t seeing much value (+2000, or a 4.8% chance, as of now).

This week we’ll take a step further into the odds and consider the probabilities that Vegas has assigned to each power conference team to win its regular season championship. These odds are by no means foolproof. In reviewing last year’s preseason tables of the same six leagues, only Pittsburgh in the Big East and Arizona in the Pac-10 were favorites that came into the money by March. The other four league favorites this time last year? Try Duke in the ACC (UNC), Baylor/Kansas State in the Big 12 (Kansas), Michigan State in the Big Ten (Ohio State), and Kentucky in the SEC (Florida). So while all of these favorites looked reasonable one year ago today, keep in mind that college basketball seasons have a tendency to work themselves out differently despite what the oddsmakers and pundits think.

Ed. note: These odds are published on The Greek as of October 27, 2011. If you’re unfamiliar with how futures odds work, +150 represents the amount of money a potential gambler would receive back if he placed a $100 wager on that team and it won.  He would, in other words, win back 1.5 times his original wager.  Those few teams sporting a negative odds notation (e.g., -175) represents a situation where someone would have to wager $175 to win back $100. Since the aggregate of futures odds are designed to add up to a figure much larger than 100% (removing the incentive to wager on every team), we’ve added a far right column normalizing the odds to a true 100% value for each conference.    

ACC

Quick Thoughts on the ACC:

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1. What’s that? You were worried there wouldn’t be a conference realignment article in today’s Morning Five? Well, never fret. The New York Times is reporting that a Missouri move to the SEC is imminent. Yes, this is news, but I’m not ready to call it fact quite yet. If conference realignment was based strictly off media reports, Texas and Oklahoma would be battling it out for Pac-16 supremacy, and Missouri coach Frank Haith would be studying Purdue and Michigan State film.
2. Billy Kennedy, the new coach of Texas A&M basketball, missed the team’s first practice due to an “unspecified medical condition”.  Kennedy has been directed to sit out by his doctor and will undergo numerous medical tests before returning to Reed Arena. While obviously upset over missing his team’s initial practice, Kennedy said, “don’t worry, I’ll be back soon”. We hope so, Coach. RTC wishes you a speedy recovery.
3. Andy Glockner from SI.com has an article up, reviewing the off-season for every conference in twitter format (140 characters or less). The Big 12 section is humorous and relevant, and actually has a bit of good information peppered in.
4. The Public Policy Polling organization conducted a survey for Nebraska residents, and one of the questions was how they currently felt about their University of Nebraska’s move from the Big 12 to the Big 10. Cornhusker fans aren’t living in the past,a s 65% of residents are glad they bolted to the Big 10, and only 12% wished they still remained in the Big 12.
5. Kansas has been dealt a blow, as the NCAA declared two Jayhawk players partially ineligible for this season. Ben McLemore and Jamari Traylor will not be allowed to suit up for the Jayhawks until second semester. I wouldn’t write off the Jayhawks quite yet, however. Every time events occur that appear to lead to a Jayhawk rebuilding season, they win the Big 12.

1. With RTC expanding our coverage of the SEC, we should lead off with news about the SEC Expansion 2011: ALL YOUR TEAMS ARE BELONG TO US! The Southeastern Conference has developed a transition team that is working out the details to squeeze Texas A&M into the 2012-13 season. (Does anybody have a roll-away bed the Aggies can borrow?) The transition team is still working out the football scheduling, trying to find a way to balance Texas A&M’s schedule across the conference divisions while maintaining competitive balance. Not much has been released in respect to the basketball schedule yet. A few weeks ago Vanderbilt’s Kevin Stallings told ESPN’s Andy Katz that a 13-team schedule will likely involve each team playing each other once and several protected in-conference rivalry games.
2. It might be easier to manage the basketball schedule if there were an even number of SEC teams. A nice number like… fourteen, perhaps? Nothing official has been announced regarding the next member, though that hasn’t stopped rampant speculation. Missouri is still trying to decide whether it wants to leave the Big 12 or stay; either way, the school won’t be able to change conferences until 2013 at the earliest. There also is reportedly some problems with how Missouri would fit within the football East/West division: Alabama would prefer Missouri to be in the East division so that the football divisional rivalries can be protected. By this time next week, another school might be the hot new name for the SEC’s fourteenth school. (We’d love to see your suggestion for the fourteenth SEC school in the comments.)
3. Best wishes to Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy as he takes a medical leave from the team. The Aggies will be led by assistant head coach Glynn Cyprien, a former Kentucky assistant in the Billy Gillispie Era. Coach Cyp was well-respected during his time in Lexington and should be able to give Coach Kennedy all the time he needs to recover.
4. The Post-Gillispie Era at Kentucky has been headlined by coach John Calipari and his line of extraordinary point guards, including former Kentucky guards John Wall and Brandon Knight. The Courier-Journal’s Rick Bozich writes about how freshman guard Marquis Teague is rising to the challenge of being “the next” Calipari point guard and all the comparisons to Wall, Knight, Derrick Rose and others. Teague’s ability to quickly master his role in the Wildcats’ offense will be crucial for the team’s early tilts against North Carolina and Kansas.
5. Mississippi State’s Renardo Sidney put in work with former NBA player John Lucas over the summer to improve his conditioning and attitude. This commitment to improvement has seemingly paid off; he is now meeting expectations in his conditioning drills with the Bulldogs. Head coach Rick Stansbury told the Clarion-Ledger‘s Brandon Marcello that Sidney’s attitude has also improved: “We haven’t had any blow ups… Call it maturity, call it whatever you want to call it; that’s what we want. I don’t care what you call it. That’s what we expect and need from him.” We call it “we’ll believe it when we see it”, and then we’ll call it “bad news for the rest of the SEC.”

Catlin Bogard of OVC Ball is the RTC correspondent for the Ohio Valley Conference. You can find him on Twitter @OVCBall.

Readers Take I

Top Storylines

• Here Come the Cougars:  Although SIU Edwardsville is in its final year of transition to Division I, the Cougars will play a full Ohio Valley Conference slate. SIUE will be eligible to win the OVC regular season title, but cannot enter the conference tournament until they have completed their transition in 2012-13. The Cougars are unlikely, however, to make a major impact this season after going 0-9 against OVC teams a year ago.
• Out of Balance: As a result of the Cougars entrance to the conference, the now 11-team league will play an uneven schedule of 16 games, much shorter than the 20 and 22-game schedules seen since the last OVC expansion. But the current structure won’t stay in place for long. After it was announced that Belmont will join the conference next season, OVC commissioner Beth DeBauche told the voice of the Racers, Neal Bradley, that “it appears that it would make sense to have divisions, most notably for our men’s and women’s basketball teams.” But the OVC might not remain a 12-team league long enough to matter. Jacksonville State is exploring a move to a FBS conference according to a release from the school, and the Huntsville Times reports that Tennessee State has been invited to join the SWAC.
• What Was Old is New Again: Two teams on opposite ends of last year’s final standings have one thing in common: inexperience. Both Morehead State and Jacksonville State will feature teams with more new faces than old this year. Last season’s last place Gamecocks have seven transfers and four new players, with Stephen Hall being the only Gamecock with more than one year of experience. Meanwhile, MSU has eight new faces, including six freshmen joining the defending OVC Tournament champions.
• New Sideline Patrolmen: Two of the top teams last year, Murray State and Tennessee Tech, will feature new coaches this season. Steve Payne replaces Mike Sutton, who retired after eight seasons with the Golden Eagles. Steve Prohm will take over the Racers after Billy Kennedy left to take the head coaching job at Texas A&M.

Predicted Order of Finish

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There’s a reason the Sixth Man of the Year award exists. Our society values toughness; it roots for the underdog, and it appreciates good character. In short, America loves bench players, and so do college basketball coaches. The game’s best recruiters find hidden gems to help them off the bench when stars need to take a breather. Alas, here are the Big 12’s top reserves, listed in terms of their ever-important roles.

Mr. Ferocious

Ray Turner, Texas A&M: Turner’s statistics won’t blow your mind, but his leaping ability certainly will. A&M students didn’t campaign Turner for class president for nothing, after all. He’s probably the most exciting reserve in college basketball because of his athletic ability, but he can also rebound the heck out of the ball. Even though Turner is still playing in a crowded front court this season, new coach Billy Kennedy will figure out a way to give him valuable minutes. Or else he’ll miss out on dunks like the above.

The Backup Point Guard

Bubu Palo, Iowa State: It’s about time to give this walk-on a scholarship. Palo is more than just a funky name off the bench for the Cyclones. He’s a very good passer with some scoring punch, and overall, he’s the quintessential backup point guard. He played in every game last year and even started three contests, cracking double figures in the scoring department four times. Coach Fred Hoiberg has to find Palo a role on this team again in 2011-12.

The Steady Veteran

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It’s now official.  After over a month of hinting, positioning and closed-door legal wrangling, Texas A&M officials have received approval from the Big 12 Conference that its stated intention to “explore its options” with respect to conference realignment will not be met with resistance (of the litigious kind, at least).  Earlier this week, commissioner Dan Beebe sent A&M a letter outlining the school’s options for withdrawal from the Big 12, and today the TAMU president, R. Bowen Loftin, wrote Beebe with the school’s next steps:

A&M: We're Not Saying Where We're Headed, But We're SEC-eding.

I have determined it is in the best interest of Texas A&M to make application to join another athletic conference.  We appreciate the Big 12’s willingness to engage in a dialogue to end our relationship through a mutually agreeable settlement. We, too, desire that this process be as amicable and prompt as possible and result in a resolution of all outstanding issues, including mutual waivers by Texas A&M and the conference on behalf of all the remaining members.

The essential phrase in Loftin’s statement of intent to the Big 12 is ‘mutual waivers.’  This language implies that there is a tentative agreement in place between the other Big 12 institutions and the conference itself to waive any future legal redress so long as A&M pays its due and propers at the door on its way out.  How much dough that will be is anyone’s guess, but by comparison, Nebraska’s skip to the Big Ten last year cost it a one-time fee of $9.25 million dollars, while Colorado’s venture west to the Pac-12 cost it $6.9 million dollars.

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Andrew Murawa is an RTC correspondent and columnist.  He takes a look at the potential fallout from a Texas A&M move to the SEC, viewing it as still more fallout from 2010’s conference realignment maneuvering.  

It’s baa-aack.

A year after the Big 12 and Mountain West (among others) averted Armageddon in a nationwide game of conference realignment, it appears things are on the move again. Last year’s juggling of teams between conferences ended with the Big Ten adding Nebraska, the Pac-10 expanding to 12 with the addition of Colorado and Utah, and the Mountain West adding Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada, just as BYU went independent and TCU threw in with its most obvious natural rivals in the Big East (ahem). But, all things considered, the wildest potential moves from last year’s round of positioning failed to materialize. However, there were some hurt feelings then as a result not only of the shakeup, but also as a result of some of the new television contracts that were negotiated. And now, with Texas A&M seemingly locked on moving to the SEC in 2012, it appears that Texas’ decision to strike out on its own in creating the Longhorn Television network is the primary force generating what could be the second set of conference realignment waves.

Will This Become an SEC Road Trip in 2012?

As mentioned above, all signs point to an A&M move to the SEC; the only thing missing is an official announcement. A special  regents meeting will take place Monday afternoon, with one agenda item discussing the “Authorization for the President to Take All Actions Relating to Texas A&M University’s Athletic Conference Alignment.”  Aggie fans and administrators have long bristled at the uneven playing field in the Big 12 (heavily tilted in Texas’ favor), a sentiment that was only further fueled in recent months as the Longhorn Network and ESPN discussed the possibility of airing the high school games of potential Texas recruits, a possibility that has since been squashed by the NCAA. Nevertheless, it appears that A&M’s flirtations with the SEC, which date back to last year’s near destruction of the Big 12, are about to be consummated. The question is what happens next. An SEC invitation to Texas A&M is likely predicated on their ability to secure a 14^th team for their conference with potential invitees including Clemson, Florida State, Missouri, and even potentially North Carolina, among others. However, with the SEC currently near the start of a 15-year/$209 million television contact with ESPN and CBS, the addition of one team, two teams or four teams likely means a reduced piece of the pie for each school. There may be room for renegotiating a bit based on the addition of new teams and new markets, but all indications are that as more teams are added to the conference, each individual member school pockets less, with the new invitees potentially getting an even thinner end of the stick. While the A&M move has been reported as a nearly done deal, there are still quite a few details that need to be worked out.

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With the completion of the NBA Draft and the annual coaching and transfer carousels nearing their ends, RTC is rolling out a new series, RTC Summer Updates, to give you a crash course on each Division I conference during the summer months. Our latest update comes courtesy of our Big 12 correspondent, Evan Pfaff.

Reader’s Take

Summer Storylines

• Round Robin Scheduling – For the first time since the Big 12 was formed, the conference will implement full round-robin scheduling, meaning each school will play a home-and-home with each of the other nine schools in the conference.  In the past, schools played the teams in their division in a home-and-home, but only played schools in the other division once per season, switching home courts every year.  That meant the epic battles between the Texas Longhorns and Kansas Jayhawks happened only once per regular season, and whichever school hosted the game had a monumental advantage over the other.  With a full round-robin format, not only will each school play two additional conference games, but seeding will be based more on outcomes on the floor than the scheduling fates.
• Reloading Talent – The Big 12 is used to replacing an enormous amount of talent. In 2010, ten Big 12 players were taken in the NBA Draft.  Two months ago, the Big 12 cupboards were once again raided, as seven players heard their names called. The conference should again be stacked and we might hear as many as ten names called on draft day 2012. From incoming freshmen like Baylor’s Quincy Miller, Texas’ Myck Kabongo and Oklahoma State’s LeBryan Nash, to returning stars like Kansas’ Thomas Robinson, Baylor’s Perry Jones III and Texas A&M’s Khris Middleton, the Big 12 should again be a breeding ground for NBA rosters.
• New Coaches… EVERYWHERE.  Change is inevitable in college athletics, but stability at the top usually translates into success on the floor. So it is eye opening that from Mike Anderson and Mark Turgeon leaving to Pat Knight and Jeff Capel being shown the door, the Big 12 had a 40% coaching turnover this summer. Now with Frank Haith, Billy Kennedy, Billy Gillispie and Lon Kruger roaming Big 12 sidelines, the conference has some questions to answer. Can Missouri conform to a set offense? Can A&M meet high preseason expectations under new management? Do Billy Clyde Gillispie and Lon Kruger have another run left in them?

Kansas head coach Bill Self has a tall task in front of him after losing most of the punch from last season's potent lineup.

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1. The Zeller family (of Luke, Tyler, and Cody fame) runs “DistinXion,” which is, as they call it, “a basketball/cheerleading and character training camp.” Yesterday, new Indiana signee Cody posted on the organization’s website his 10 favorite NCAA recruiting rules, with personal tidbits on how he and his family have dealt with them as coaches have made their cases to the boys over the years. It’s definitely worth a read, if only to hear Cody explain how programs can get around the phone-call restrictions, how some schools sent him empty envelopes in the mail, how Old Dominion made a great impression, and why everything he’s written for his family’s site has to be removed after he enrolls at IU.
2. Yesterday it was player pinball, today it’s more of the coaching carousel. With Billy Kennedy off to Texas A&M, Murray State decided to promote from within and move assistant coach Steve Prohm into the honcho position. While we’re sure Prohm has his own way of runnin’ things, we’d say future Racer teams will look similar to those under Kennedy, since Prohm had a 12-season association with Kennedy over three schools. Why mess with success?
3. The move that turned some heads yesterday was Ed DeChellis leaving Penn State and going to…Navy. Yes, that Navy. Why would a coach at a major-conference program that made the Big Ten Tournament title game and the NCAA Tournament last season leave his alma mater for a place that has virtually no hoops tradition, offers a smaller salary, and possesses admissions criteria that make it near impossible to put together a team that can win at the D1 level? Despite this past season’s “success,” next year was going to be another tough one for PSU, a place that barely acknowledges its basketball program, anyway, so perhaps DeChellis was just getting out a little early on his own terms to a place that genuinely wants him.
4. Maryland, it’s your tax dollars at work. The Baltimore Sun offered a breakdown of the highest-paid state employees yesterday, an interesting discussion for a couple of reasons. Most of the people who make more than the governor (who makes $150K) work for the university system, or are doctors employed by the state’s (rather alarmingly named) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The highest-paid state employee in 2010? Gary Williams, who pocketed $2.3 million, though most of that came from endorsements/appearances, etc, added onto a base of over $450,ooo.
5. Let’s give a shout to Kenneth Lyons of the University of North Texas. Not familiar? Well, he’s the all-time leading scorer for the Mean Green and he’s in the school’s athletics hall of fame. He left the program after four years in 1983 without a degree, and the Philadelphia 76ers drafted him, but he never played a single game in the NBA. In 2000, he returned to UNT (it was North Texas State when he played hoops there) — not as a coach or a graduate assistant, but as a student. Tuition money has been hard to come by at times, but two weeks ago, 32 years after he started it, Lyons finished his degree in sociology. If you think college basketball has changed a lot in 32 years, just consider how different life in a classroom is now compared to then.