Source: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/

Monday
– Stony Brook at #2 UConn at 7 PM on ESPN Full Court, ESPN360.com, and the Big East Network: The only way this game stays within 20 is if the Huskies actually have to take final exams. Nothing to see here unless you know one of the Huskies benchwarmers and want to see him get some PT.

– Cleveland State at #11 Syracuse at 7 PM on Time Warner-New York: Should be another snoozefest, but you might want to check the Orangemen out to see how they are adjusting to life without Eric Devendorf (or not). If Time Warner-New York is on their game, they will run a feature on the 1985-86 Cleveland State team that upset Indiana in the NCAA tournament that was documented in John Feinstein’s classic “Season on the Brink” (great winter break reading for the erudite RTC fan).

Tuesday
– South Florida vs. Vanderbilt at 7 PM on ESPN 2 and ESPN360.com: This game is officially at a “neutral” location, but the game is being played in Nashville. Even Coach K would be embarrassed to call that a neutral site. The Commodores could use a win here as they have been disappointing so far while the Bulls have been surprisingly competitive. However, since Vanderbilt plays in the SEC and USF plays in the Big East the reverse will be true during league play.

– #23 Marquette vs. #19 Tennessee at 9:30 PM on ESPN 2 and ESPN360.com: The game of the week (before Saturday). Another “neutral” site game in Nashville. The Volunteers will be looking to bounce back from their loss to Dionte Christmas Temple. The loss dropped them 11 spots from a #8 ranking. They can make a case for a top 10 ranking again if they can beat Marquette. Meanwhile, the Golden Eagles have been playing well (7-1) and come into the game with a top 25 ranking. Unfortunately, that only makes them the 8th highest ranked team in the Big East. I know it’s early and sounds ridiculous for a top 25 team, but Marquette could use a win here to start building a case for a NCAA tournament bid in case they fall back a little in the Big East because I still have a hard time believing the Selection Committee will give the Big East 10 bids.

Wednesday
– Cram for your last finals or go through the games you missed while studying for those finals/writing that term paper because this is a weak set of games.

Thursday
– Mississippi State at Cincinnati at 6:30 PM on ESPN 2 and ESPN360.com: The Bearcats (6-2) are off to a respectable start–losses to FSU and Xavier–by almost any league’s standards except for the Big East where they will struggle to stay out of the bottom third of the conference. The Bulldogs (7-3) are also off to decent start, but may be without coach Rick Stansbury who was admitted to a local hospital for new-onset migraines (the administration expects him to be able to coach that night). The Bearcats will have their handful trying to score inside with “The Human Eraser” Jarvis Varnado who comes into the game with a 6.2 blocks per game average.

– Evansville at #1 UNC at 7 PM on ESPN and ESPN360.com: I’m expecting the line for this game to be UNC by 20, but don’t sleep on Evansville. They come into the game with a 7-1 record including a 32-point win over a Western Kentucky team that handled preseason Final Four favorite Louisville its only loss. The Tar Heels may also be a little off their game if they start buying into the hype (we aren’t) or if they continue to have late-night trysts with America’s sideline princess.

– Mississippi at #9 Louisville at 9 PM on ESPN and ESPN360.com: The Rebels shouldn’t really present a challenge Louisville, but I haven’t bought into Rick Pitino’s Cardinals yet. In their only game that could be considered moderately challenging, they fell apart losing to Western Kentucky. If Pitino hopes to contend for a national title this year, his team needs to be able to put away teams like Mississippi early. We’ll also be watching to see Samardo Samuels, who is playing like the best freshman in the country right now.

Friday
– Get some sleep or go get some sun because you’re going to be glued to your couch all day tomorrow.

News & Notes.  First, a few notable pieces of news from the weekend.

• As many as six of Arizona’s players could be ineligible for their opener Monday against Florida Atlantic in the Preseason NIT.  This relates to the ‘big mistake’ that Lute Olson made by allowing a letter with his name affixed to it go out to boosters seeking financial support for a local AAU Tournament (an NCAA violation).  The named players may have received impermissable expenses during this AAU event.
• We’re shocked, shocked we tell you, in finding Ole Miss and West Virginia (of all places) received Fs in a minority hiring report.  Not sure what’s up with Dayton, though.
• South Carolina starting guard Brandis Raley-Ross will miss 3-4 weeks with a sprained left knee.  Similarly, Villanova guard Dwayne Anderson will join teammate Shane Clark on the injury roll with a stress fracture in his left foot – he’ll be out indefinitely.
• This Quinnapiac racial threat thing is just getting more and more bizarre – now the victim is harassing one of the other victims?  Get a grip, folks.
• And here’s another example of Nebraska pushing into the gray area with the rules relating to their supposedly non-public scrimmage with Marquette last week.

Game of the Weekend. Duke 82, Rhode Island 79. Maybe it was the light blue uniforms.  Mere days after barely surviving Brown, URI nearly pulled off a major upset by going into Cameron Indoor Stadium and leading the Blue Devils most of the way before losing at the end in a hard-fought 82-79 battle.  Jimmy Baron’s 24 (8 threes, several of which were ridiculous) led the way for the Rams, but the Devils scored on their last seven possessions to erase a 7-pt deficit with four minutes to go.  Duke was led by Kyle Singler’s 21/5/5 assts and Jon Scheyer’s 23, but it was Duke’s defense that put the Devils in danger of breaking their 62-game home court non-conference winning streak (dating back to 2000).  They gave up 10-14 from three and allowed URI to shoot 55% from the field.  This game was on the U, so of course we couldn’t actually watch it – if anyone did get to see it, feel free to leave comments below.

Upset of the Weekend. Mercer 72, Alabama 69. The middle of the SEC looks pathetic so far this season.  Already there were the Friday night debacle at Kentucky (VMI) and the near-miss at Arkansas (SE Louisiana); well, tonight Mark Gottfried was back to his old underachieving tricks.  The Crimson Tide are projected to be in the SEC West mix for a division title and NCAA bid, but tonight’s game exposed some serious issues with this team.  First, other than Ronald Steele (the good news for Bama fans is that he finally appears healthy), who put up 25 pts tonight, and JaMychal Green (17/12/3 blks), where will points come from?  Alonzo Gee contributed a mere four points, and only one other player reached double figures (Mikhail Torrance).  Perhaps even more importantly, the Tide were outrebounded by the smaller Bears, 49-32, which is simply inexcusable for an SEC team with vastly superior size.  (like anyone in Alabama cares about hoops right now…)  As for Mercer, this is becoming old hat for them.  You may recall last year that Mercer went into USC and dropped the Trojans in their home opener, 96-81.  They then promptly lost their next five games en route to an 11-19 campaign – will this year be any different?  James Florence led the way for Mercer with 23/6/5 assts.

More Upsets.

• Northeastern 70, Providence 66. New Friar head man Keno Davis didn’t want to start like this.  Providence is facing a tough enough conference season in the Big East; they didn’t need to put themselves behind the RPI eight-ball with an opening home loss to a mid-major.  Northeastern has a good team, but what happened to Sharaud Curry (1-8 for 2 pts)?  Matt Janning killed PC with 24/6 on 10-14 shooting.
• Portland 80, Washington 74. Ditto for Lorenzo Romar.  Washington is a trendy pick to make some noise in the Pac-10 this year, but if the Huskies find themselves on the bubble next March, they will lament losing this game.  Jon Brockman had 30/14, but he got absolutely no help on the inside (Quincy Pondexter in particular laid an egg with zero points).  An old bugaboo killed Washington – the free-throw line (19-32, .594).  Nik Raivio (Derek’s little bro) led a balanced Portland attack with 19/7 rebs.

How’d #1 Look? UNC 86, Penn 71. The nation’s #1 team had a solid, if spotty, performance without reigning POY Tyler Hansbrough and their best defender Marcus Ginyard on the court Saturday.  Six players reached double figures, including two freshman bigs, Tyler Zeller (18 pts) and Eric Davis (10/14).  Bobby Frasor played 21 minutes, despite reports late last week to the contrary.  Penn managed to get the game down to a ten-point deficit with four minutes remaining behind 11 threes and a big game from guard Tyler Bernardini (26 pts), but they never seriously threatened.  All in all, considering what UNC didn’t have on the court in this game, we’d have to believe Roy feels pretty good about his team’s performance.

Mid-Major Corner. These games matter on resumes in March.

• George Mason 80, Vermont 79 (OT). This looked like a tremendous battle of mids in Burlington, VT, on Saturday.  GMU’s Darryl Monroe was awesome, tallying 19/17 including a beastly nine offensive rebounds and the game-winning FTs with 0.7 showing on the clock.  Marquis Blakely, his counterpart on Vermont, was equally effective, going for 24/8/4 stls/4 blks in a game that was back-and-forth until the last possession.
• Butler 58, Drake 48. Butler held Drake to 31% shooting and 14 first-half points in a methodical road win between two prominent mid-majors.  Is Drake finished now that Keno Davis is gone?
• UNLV 65, San Diego 60. An undermanned USD team with three players serving suspensions still nearly pulled the upset at UNLV Saturday night.  This game was close throughout until UNLV, led by Wink Adams’ 19/4, made six key FTs down the stretch.  Rob Jones led San Diego with 19/10/4 assts.
• Creighton 82, New Mexico 75. Incredibly named P’Allen Stinnett (30 pts) and Booker Woodfox (26 pts) led a huge second-half surge for Creighton (19-3 in the final three minutes) to start its season off with a nice win.

FIrst Looks. Some coaches had their first games at new schools this weekend.

• LSU 79, Jackson St. 65. Trent Johnson started his LSU career with a victory fueled by a late 17-6 run.  Tasmin Mitchell had 17/7.
• Indiana 83, Northwestern St. 65. Devan Dumes scored 21 pts in Tom Crean’s Hoosier debut.  This was a good win for this program no matter what happens the rest of the way.
• California 68, Pacific 56. Monty returned to coaching on the other side of the Bay by winning his first home game, a hard-fought victory led by Jerome Randle’s 24 pts and Patrick Christopher’s 18 pts.

Statistical Oddities. More like, offensive offensiveness.

• Manhattan 56, NJIT 32.  The abomination continues.  NJIT shot a blistering 23% in tying the NCAA record for consecutive losses (34).  Up next: @ Penn St. Monday night for the win, er, loss.
• Washington St. 76, Mississippi Valley St. 25. Memo to MVSU: stop scheduling Wazzu.  In the last two years, Washington St. has outscored MVSU 147-51 (or, the score of one of Wazzu’s Pac-10 football games).

Saturday Games of Interest.

• Gonzaga 83, MSU-Billings 52. If Josh Heytvelt is once again healthy, this team is legit, and it appears that he is (15/8/3 blks).  Austin Daye added 15/12/4 blks for as talented a front line as there is in the country.
• Tennessee 114, UT-Chattanooga 75. UT set a new record for assists (32) as it won its 33d straight home game in a rout.  Six Vols reached double figures, led by Tyler Smith’s 21/4/5 assts.
• Memphis 90, Fairfield 63. Tyreke Evans came off the bench to lead the Tigers with 19/5/3 in his debut for Memphis.  Despite the blowout, Calipari was upset with his defense – the Tigers allowed Fairfield to shoot 50% from the field and 44% from three.
• USC 78, UC Irvine 55. USC struggled for a half before blowing out UC Irvine behind freshman sensation Demar DeRozan’s 14/3.  Dwight Lewis added 18/7 and Taj Gibson 17/6.

Sunday Games of Interest.

• Florida 81, Bradley 58.  The Gators rode fourteen threes to an easy win over a decent Bradley squad.  Nick Calathes dropped 13/7/6 asst/4 stls, and Dan Werner had Walter Hodge each contributed 17 pts.
• Clemson 76, Temple 72. Clemson held on after blowing a 14-pt second half lead by hitting some big FTs down the stretch in the Charleston Classic.  CU’s Trever Booker had 15/16, while Temple’s Dionte Christmas was relatively quiet with 14/5 and six turnovers.
• Virginia 107, VMI 97.  No upset magic today for VMI, coming off of its miraculous upset at Kentucky.  UVa was led by Sylven Landesberg’s 28/8/8 assts, who set a freshman debut scoring record for the school.
• Wisconsin 68, Long Beach St. 61. Marcus Landry’s (23/4/3 blks) huge three with 22 seconds remaining gave UW just enough cushion to avoid the home upset.  Of some concern for Bo Ryan will be the Badgers allowing 48% shooting from their Big West foes.
• Michigan St. 100, Idaho 62. MSU cruised behind Chris Allen and Raymar Morgan’s twin 21-pt performances.
• Holy Cross 73, St. Joseph’s 69 (OT). This is a really good early win for the Patriot League against an A10 stalwart.
• Notre Dame 94, USC-Upstate 54. Luke Harongody blew up for 30/14, including his fourth career three-pointer, in a blowout at home.  Luke Zeller added 18/5 off the bench.
• Kansas 71, Missouri-Kansas City 56. KU shook off a 1-13 shooting night from three to pull away from UMKC in the second half on the strength of their defense, which held their opponent to 29% shooting.

On Tap Monday (all times EST).

• Davidson (-17.5) v. James Madison – 6pm (NIT)
• Connecticut v. Hartford (ESPN FC & 360) – 7pm
• Boston College (-13.5) v. Loyola (MD)  (ESPNU) – 7pm (NIT)
• Pittsburgh (-14) v. Miami (OH) (ESPN FC & 360) – 7pm
• Purdue (-20.5) v. E. Michigan (ESPN2 & 360) – 7pm (NIT)
• UAB (-10) v. Santa Clara – 8pm (NIT)
• Missouri (-14) v. UT-Chattanooga  (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
• Oklahoma St. (-11) v. N. Texas (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
• Marquette v. Chicago St.  (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
• Belmont v. Austin Peay – 8pm
• Texas Tech v. Sam Houston St. (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
• Oklahoma (-30) v. Miss. Valley St.  (ESPNU) – 9pm
• Arizona (-18.5) v. Florida Atlantic (ESPNU) – 11pm (NIT)

Our new and improved Set Your Tivos is in the format that we expect this feature to take for the rest of the season. It will feature our top games of the week and leave the daily TV schedules to After the Buzzer. Now the top 7 games (add 3 for a few of the late round games in some of the random tournaments to make a top 10 if you want) in reverse order. . .

Courtesy: www.jakeludington.com

7) Illinois at Vanderbilt–Thursday, 8 PM on Fox Sports South, ESPN Full Court, and ESPN360.com: Our only featured game involving two unranked teams. We’ll be watching to see if Bruce Weber has recovered from losing out on Eric Gordon, who would have left Illinois by now anyways even if Kelvin Sampson hadn’t stolen him before destroying Indiana’s basketball program. On the other side, Vanderbilt will be trying to recover from last year’s embarrassing first round loss to Siena in the NCAA tournament after a trip to the Sweet 16 the year before that ended with a close loss to Georgetown.

6) Southern Illinois vs. #5 Duke–Thursday, 7 PM on ESPN2 and ESPN360.com:The Salukis look to recover from last year’s 18-15 season after six consecutive NCAA tournament bids against everyone’s favorite villain Duke. I’m sure most of you would like nothing more than seeing Duke lose in Madison Square Garden against a mid-major, but that’s not happening here. Watch it to see if Southern Illinois will be challenging for the MVC title this year and if Duke is going to try to develop an inside game this year.

5) #4 UCLA vs. Michigan–Thursday, 9 PM on ESPN2 and ESPN360.com: The more interesting of the Coaches vs. Cancer games will feature two of the most prestigious programs in the country with one (UCLA) coming into the season with high expectations following 3 straight Final 4 trips while the other (Michigan) has become a source of humor for visitors to this site. Both teams struggled in the early rounds, but the Bruins will be overwhelming favorites and should advance unless the freshman get caught up in the bright lights of MSG and/or start looking forward to playing Duke in the championship game.

4) Kentucky at #1 UNC–Tuesday, 9 PM on ESPN and ESPN360.com: This game, which was once billed as one of the premier early season games, has lost much of its luster with Kentucky’s opening loss to VMI and the absence of Tyler Hansbrough (and his fellow pool-jumping “Golden God” Bobby Frasor). This game will be more of a barometer for Kentucky than the injury-depleted Tar Heels. A Kentucky win would give Billy Gillispie a temporary reprieve from Wildcat fans who are undoubtedly livid after another embarrassing season-opening early-season loss. If the Wildcats want to do that, they will need to utilize Patrick Patterson much more than they did against VMI.

3) Massachusetts at #12 Memphis–Tuesday/Wednesday at midnight on ESPN and ESPN360.com: Our first look at this year’s Tigers will be a relatively challenging game against John Calipari’s old school. While Tyreke Evans might be one of the top players in this year’s freshman class, he will be a significant drop-off from Derrick Rose. The Tigers may be able to adjust to that, but they will be hard-pressed to replace the veteran leadership and all-around play of Chris Douglas-Roberts. We will be interested to see if the Tigers worked on that small issue of free throw shooting that reared its ugly head at the most inopportune time last year. 

2) Miami (OH) at #6 Pittsburgh–Monday, 7 PM on ESPN Full Court and ESPN360.com: While this might not seem like an interesting game to most of you, I think it will give us a good idea of how good/bad UCLA is given the fact they narrowly held off the Redhawks 64-59 and whether or not Doug Gottlieb is an idiot. Given that we think it’s definitely worth watching and should be a good lead-in to Monday Night Football.

1) 2K Sports Classic Championship Game (if it is #4 UCLA vs. #5 Duke)–Friday, 7 PM on ESPN2 and ESPN360.com: As noted this is only if we get our first top 5 (or top 25) match-up of the season. Both teams should be able to navigate their semifinals despite the fact that the Bruins struggled against Miami (OH) last week. Duke will probably win this game as they tend to dominate early season tournaments and the Bruins are still very green, but the Bruins young talent and Darren Collison will give Coach K and the Blue Devils a stiff challenge.

If I missed any good games and I’m sure I did, tell me about it in the comments and I’ll update the list.

Upset of the Night.  VMI 111, Kentucky 103.  Well, for the second consecutive year we’ve not even made it to Thanksgiving before we have a nominee for biggest upset of the year because a small college from the South went into Rupp Arena and beat the Kentucky Wildcats on their home court.  Last year it was Gardner-Webb; this year it was VMI, who was picked seventh in the Big South and last defeated a BCS team four seasons ago.  The Cats aren’t ranked this season, but they arguably have more raw talent than they had a year ago.  Most pundits have UK finishing second or third in the SEC East and making its 17th straight NCAA Tournament in 2009.  They still might, but watching tonight’s game showed some serious issues with turnovers (too many players leaving their feet to pass the ball), defensive rotation (or a complete lack thereof), shot selection (how does all-american Patrick Patterson only get four shots in essentially a Y-ball game?), and myriad mental lapses.  Does Billy Gillispie really understand where he’s coaching these days?  These kinds of losses are barely tolerable at Texas A&M; at Kentucky, people start putting moving signs in your yard after close wins.  He somewhat redeemed himself last season after the G-W debacle by going 12-4 in the SEC and making the NCAA Tournament (1st round loss to Marquette), but big losses to rivals UNC, Louisville and Indiana weren’t forgotten.  A VMI loss to start this season followed by a trip to Chapel Hill next week and some other Ls to follow will not help his cause.  UK fans care about every game – not just the SEC and March Madness.  As Truzenzuzex over at A Sea of Blue put it, Billy Clyde tonight represented an “epic failure of coaching.”  As for the game itself, what can you say other than it was a classic run & gun shootout.  UK shot 54% from the field, mostly from dunk range, but other than Jodie Meeks, couldn’t hit a three regardless of whether anyone was defending it or not (3-16, 19%).  Meeks led the Cats with 39 pts, and Perry Stevenson had 20/14, but VMI’s attack was more balanced, with all five starters plus one bench player reaching double figures.  Travis Holmes led with 30/7 on 10-13 shooting, but the key difference in the statistical battle were the fourteen threes that VMI knocked down.  Frankly, UK’s defense simply wasn’t closing out on many of these wide-open shots.  All that said, when UK went on a 17-0 run in the late second half to cut the lead to 90-89 after having been down 23 earlier in the half, we figured that VMI was finished.  Several more bad possessions by the UK offense and lackluster defense on the other side ensured that VMI still had life, and the Keydets were able to hang on and pull off the monumental upset.  This Gillispie situation will remain interesting throughout the season. 

Other Games of Reasonable Interest. 

• Pittsburgh 86, Fairleigh Dickinson 63.  The return of Levance Fields is worth a special mention.  Pitt is 52-12 when their oft-injured point guard starts, and a mere slightly-better-than-.500 team when he’s on the bench.  Tonight he showed no ill effects from his twice-broken left foot, contributing 15/8 assts in the blowout victory.  Dejuan Blair had his typical beastly 17/13 inside.  Pitt will have an interesting next game against Miami (OH) on Monday.     
• UConn 81, W. Carolina 55.  Hasheem Thabeet needs to do more of this (23/17/3 blks).  AJ Price was ejected for a sucker punch flagrant foul – nice to see thing haven’t changed much in Storrs.  He made his triumphant return with a 0 pt, 5 turnover night.  Jerome Dyson had 23, and newcomer Kemba Walker contributed 8/5 in his first collegiate game. 

Small Piece of News.  The injury bug continues at Carolina, as it now appears Bobby Frasor will not play in UNC’s opener against Penn tomorrow because he’s been nursing a sprained left ankle.  You don’t think Frasor’s and Hansbrough’s injuries may karmically have anything to do with this, do ya?  Nah.  Didn’t think so. 

Rundown. 

• UT-Martin 121, Maryville 56.  Lester Hudson’s line: 27/7/7 asst/8 stls.  Sick.
• Temple 79, ETSU 65.  Dionte Christmas with 26/11 in first round of Charleston Classic.  Next up is host Charleston.
• Florida 80, Toledo 58.  Unrepentent gambler Nick Calathes with 16/4/7 assts.
• Stanford 75, Yale 67.  Johnny Dawkins gets his coaching career off to a solid start with a road win.  Lawrence Hill’s 22/11 helped. 
• Howard 47, Oregon St. 45.  The same cannot be said for Craig Robinson at OSU. 
• Wake Forest 94, NC Central 48.  Al Farouq Aminu had 21/10 in his debut with the Deacs; James Johnson with 19/10/5 asst.  This Deacon team could be very interesting this year.
• Maryland 81, Bucknell 52.  Gary Williams needed a strong opening win to silence his critics some.
• Oklahoma St. 76, UT-San Antonio 57.  James Anderson with only 10/7 as the Cowboys rolled anyway.  Byron Eaton led with 27 pts.
• Oklahoma 83, American 54.  Forgive us, Blake Griffin.  Despite going 5-14 from the line, he was otherwise brilliant (24/18) in a game we thought American had a chance to win.  His reverse dropstep jam was NASTY. 
• Villanova 78, Albany 60.  Nova put six players in double figures with none of them having over 13 pts. 
• Texas 68, Stetson 38.  AJ Abrams hit five threes as the Longhorns held Stetson to a miserable 26% shooting night.
• Arkansas 91, SE Louisiana 87 (OT).  Very close to a dreadful opening night for the SEC, as Arkansas rallied from a late 9-pt deficit to send the game to OT, which the Hawgs won behind Michael Washington’s 30 pts in the extra period.
• Marquette 95, Houston Baptist 64.  Wesley Matthews had a huge night (28/5/8 asst/5 stls) as Marquette rolled. 
• Purdue 82, Detroit 50.  Hummell and Moore combined for 31/15 in a balanced effort.
• St. Mary’s 86, Seattle Pacific 55.  Patty Mills with 15/3/8 asst/4 stls. 
• Arizona St. 80, Mississippi Valley St. 54.  James Harden dropped 24/10 assts in Sendek’s first opening win at ASU.
• Davidson 107, Guilford 83.  Steph Curry with 29/3/10 asst/9 stls.  Nine steals???  Ridiculous. 

On Tap Saturday (all times EST):

• Florida vs. Bradley (ESPNU) – 2pm (CBE Classic)
• St. Joseph’s @ Holy Cross – 4pm
• Wisconsin v. Long Beach St. – 4pm
• North Carolina (-30.5) v. Penn (FSN South) – 4pm
• South Carolina v. Winthrop (ESPN FC & 360) – 4:30pm
• Duke v. Rhode Island (ESPNU) – 4:30pm
• UNLV (-11) v. San Diego (The Mtn.) – 5:30pm
• Michigan St. v. Idaho – 6pm
• Cincinnati v. South Dakota (ESPN FC & 360) – 6pm
• Charlotte v. Old Dominion – 6pm
• Syracuse v. Le Moyne (ESPNU) – 6:30pm
• Tennessee (-18) v. Chattanooga (SportSouth) – 7pm
• Notre Dame v. USC-Upstate – 7:30pm
• Drake (-6.5) v. Butler – 8pm
• Memphis (-19.5) v. Fairfield – 8pm
• Kansas v. UMKC (ESPNU) – 8:30pm (CBE Classic)
• USC (-19) v. UC Irvine – 10pm

Continuing our UNC-themed week here at RTC, we came across this photo of presumptive Heel point guard doing his best Russell Hammond of Stillwater routine at a local house of fraternage. Also check Psycho-T’s stance immediately behind and to the left of Frasor (getting wrapped up by some TarPoon).

(h/t 850thebuzz)

Far be it from us to wax medical on the proper rehabilitation of an injury, but Frasor tore his ACL in late December and appears ready to take over the reins of point guard from Ty Lawson, who himself is testing the waters (shameless plagiarism, we know).

Update: Tyler Hansbrough got into the I’M ON DRUGS action as well…

(h/t DukeDevilsBB)

Just remember, folks, the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool…