1. The Dominican Republic’s national basketball team arrived in Kentucky yesterday before they start their training camp on Sunday. The team from the Dominican Republic is training in Lexington per request of their coach, John Calipari. While most of the college basketball world’s interest in the Kentucky Legends team that is being assembled and will feature many recent NBA stars who recently played for the Wildcats, we are more interested in the Dominican Republic team that has Al Horford (Florida) and Edgar Sosa (Louisville) on it staying in Lexington for at least 2 weeks (the game against the UK Legends is on August 15th) with the, um, crazed Wildcat fans around them. If ESPN or any network decided to follow this team while they were in Lexington we would definitely tune in.
2. UNLV‘s hiring of Dave Rice was widely praised as a sign that the program was headed in the right direction, but don’t count Runnin’ Rebel legend Larry Johnson in that group. The 1991 National Player of the Year has come out recently and been very critical of the program and the direction it has taken under an administration that is headed by Jim Livengood, who came from Arizona, which has led Johnson to say, “It’s not UNLV Runnin’ Rebels no more, it’s UNLV Wildcats right now.” Johnson concedes that former coach Lon Kruger had made some attempts to bring some of the former UNLV players back into the program. When Kruger left Johnson put his name in for consideration, but was reportedly not even contacted by the current administration. While Johnson does not have any coaching experience that we are aware of and his name probably doesn’t carry a lot of weight with players who are entering college or younger, it is pretty clear that the UNLV administration made a mistake here by not even reaching out to Johnson even if it was only for show. Given UNLV’s recent efforts to land local recruits having someone of Johnson’s reputation on their side would be a major pull even if it was only the AAU and high school coaches who knew how good “Grandmama” used to be.
3. After arriving at Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon talked openly about installing a 4-guard offense. That task and creation of a rotation to make the feasible became harder earlier this week when rising sophomore Haukur Palsson announced that he was heading back to Europe to play professionally. Normally the loss of a player who averaged 2.8 points and 2.1 rebounds per game would be relatively minor, but with Palsson’s ability to play inside and outside he would have been an ideal player to use in the rotation as a guard who could also battle underneath for rebounds. With Palsson gone the Terrapins only have eight scholarship players and fitting them into an unconventional offense could be a big challenge for the new head coach.
4. When we first saw the headline mentioning that Jabari Parker, one of the stars of the class of 2013, was seriously considering BYU we brushed it off as just more ridiculous Internet speculation until we remembered that Parker is a member of the LDS Church. While BYU has had its share of star players they very rarely land a major recruit (Danny Ainge is the only even close to Parker’s level that I can think of). The hype on Parker is already getting to ridiculous levels (Mike Krzyzewski has compared him to Kobe Bryant and Grant Hill and Seth Davis has already written a feature story on him for Sports Illustrated), but don’t think that just because Parker is a member of the LDS Church he will be a guaranteed commit to BYU. Our older members will remember that when 1997 Sporting News National Player of the Year Chris Burgess turned down BYU then head coach Roger Reid told him that he was letting “the other 9 million members of the LDS Church down” (before he let millions of Duke fans down with his play during his two years there).
5. When former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl was fired in March there was plenty of speculation about where he would head next. While the logical choice seemed like a TV studio or announcing booth, it looks like Pearl wants to get back into coaching. With a NCAA show-cause penalty imminent Pearl would have to head to the NBA (former Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson’s hiring is a pretty clear indication that the NBA doesn’t care about breaking NCAA rules). It appears that the Texas Legends, the NBDL franchise for the Dallas Mavericks, are interested in hiring Pearl as a head coach. Pearl will meet with the team on Thursday in Dallas and reportedly has the job locked up if he wants it. Even though we will miss Pearl’s antics and his excellent coaching we have a feeling that this may be a sign that we won’t be seeing Pearl around college basketball any time soon.

If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

General News

• The Death of Desmond Allison: The former Kentucky Wildcat, who was a high school star in Tampa before his two controversial seasons in Lexington, was shot yesterday in Columbus, Ohio. (Kentucky Sports Radio: News and Retrospective)
• KFC Yum Center named one of world’s top arenas: “In its first year of existence, the KFC Yum Center (you forgot the exclamation point, bro) is already being honored as one of the world’s top arenas. Pollstar, a trade publication covering the worldwide concert industry, tabbed the Yum Center as the 24th-best arena in the world and 10th best in the United States in its 2011 mid-year rankings.” (Card Chronicle)
• Ricky Kreklow reportedly chooses Cal: “For the past few weeks, rumors have been swirling that Missouri transfer Ricky Kreklow would be the newest addition to the Gonzaga Bulldogs. He visited campus a few weeks ago and most fans were simply waiting for confirmation he would join the team. Well, we can cancel all that.  Kreklow has decided to transfer to Mike Montgomery and Cal.” (The Slipper Still Fits)

1. Amidst reports that the University of Connecticut was working on a buyout of embattled athletic director Jeff Hathaway, the school’s new president, Susan Herbst, confirmed that she has initiated a comprehensive evaluation of the school’s athletic department.  The evaluation, performed by an outside consulting firm, is clearly meant to provide cover for the ouster of Hathaway, or even better, just cause for an outright firing.  But as Hartford Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs writes in a scathing piece about the politics behind this situation, Hathaway never had a chance to survive at UConn with Jim Calhoun remaining “bitter Hathaway didn’t defend him vigorously enough in the Nate Miles case” with the NCAA.  According to Jacobs, the three-time national championship coach felt he did nothing wrong (even though the NCAA found him guilty of failure to monitor his program).  Interesting stuff, but assuming Hathaway is done at UConn, what is the back-up plan for the 2012 NCAA Selection Committee chair?
2. We did this in  yesterday’s M5, right?  From Connecticut to Tennessee again with the release Monday of UT’s 190-page response to the NCAA’s notice of allegations on various violations including the infamous cookout photograph of Bruce Pearl at his home with Aaron Craft.  If you’re a fan of legalese and you have a couple hours to kill, feel free to read the entire thing, but if not, the key takeaway from our view of the world is that the Vol program is kidding itself if it believes that its remedial measures of firing the coaching staff responsible will somehow insulate the program from future restrictions.  There’s simply too much to account for here.
3. Summer is high time for prep basketball camps around the country, with events like the adidas Super 64 in Las Vegas this week becoming the epicenter of elite high school talent for college coaches to do their one-stop shopping for the stars of tomorrow.  But today’s desert hoops, or the LeBron James Skills Academy, or the Peach Jam, weren’t always the shining stars of the summer circuit.  For much of the 1990s and 2000s, it was instead a tiny gymnasium on the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, and the Newark Star-Ledger over the weekend took a look back at those halcyon days.  The ABCD Camp, founded and run by the inimitable Sonny Vaccaro, had a certain panache that the others to this date still haven’t been able to live up to.  It was a place where the top stars from all around the country played against each other, and where reputations were made.  From Tracy McGrady exploding onto the scene in 1996 to LeBron James’ destruction of Lenny Cooke’s psyche in 2001, it all happened there.  Great stroll down memory lane.
4. Regardless of  where the elite players play during the summer, people will watch and report on it.  Mike DeCourcy checked in with an interesting story about one of the most intriguing players in Las Vegas this week.  Andre Drummond might be listed as a member of the Class of 2012, but the 6’11” center in the mold of Dwight Howard, has several options after the summer circuit ends which makes his situation particularly compelling.  Since his high school class graduated this year, he could potentially spend next season at prep school for a year, head off to college at the last minute, or even consider offers to play in Europe as he awaits the NBA’s lockout decision over the winter (to determine if he’ll be eligible to decleare in the summer of 2012 or 2013).  Personally, we’re rooting for him to just show up on a random campus on the first day of classes and walk into the head coach’s office with a declaration, “I’m ready to play.”
5. We’ve been waiting to link this, but now that Basketball Prospectus‘ Drew Cannon has finished his list of the Top 100 returning players in college basketball, it’s ready for prime time.  Believe it or not, the SEC ended up with four players in the top nine of the list, and the only team with two guys in the top ten was none other than Vanderbilt.  And we’re betting dollars to doughnuts that you’ll be surprised at the Commodores player chosen who is not named John Jenkins.  An added bonus to this list: all-conference teams for each of the six major leagues and a preseason POY the top mid-major conferences.  Great stuff.

If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

General News

• Moe Harkless cleared to play for St. John’s: “It looks like the first big eligibility hurdle for the Red Storm has been cleared. Zach Braziller reports on Twitter that sources tell the New York Post that Maurice Harkless is cleared to play for the Red Storm.” (Rumble in the Garden)
  
• More details emerge in Bruce Pearl NCAA Scandal: An update on Pearl and the allegations against him. (Kentucky Sports Radio)
• News on Garrett Green to Indiana: Some updates on the potential transfer. (Inside the Hall: His potential impact and Q & A)
• Former UK Legends to Play Game vs. Dominican Republic in Rupp: “Calipari is organizing an exhibition game between former UK players and the Dominican Republic National Team on August 15th in Rupp Arena. Rosters have yet to be finalized.” (Kentucky Sports Radio)

1. Perhaps never in the history of modern college basketball has such an inconsequential player (to this point of his career) caused so much message board speculation over where he might ultimately land (Makhtar Ndiaye?).  Former Wake Forest center Tony Woods, he of the misdemeanor assault plea for pushing and kicking his girlfriend last year, will finally re-surface at Oregon after months of rumors and endless chatter that he would end up at Louisville, then Kentucky, then Texas.  The situation took a turn in favor of Dana Altman’s Duck program when it was discovered that Woods could be eligible to play in Eugene immediately because UO utilizes a quarter system, whereas the other schools are on a semester calendar.  This quirk will allow Woods to finish up his associate’s degree coursework prior to school beginning in September, making it so that he can begin practicing with the team in October and suit up for games again in early November.  Oregon certainly has the need, as last year’s best interior player, Joevon Catron, was a senior and has moved on.  If Woods can tap into some of the promise that made him a Top 50 recruit in the class of 2008, Oregon may move more quickly up the Pac-12 standings than expected next season.
2. Speaking of the topic of eligibility, it appears that St. John’s recruit Maurice Harkless will in fact be eligible to play for Steve Lavin next season.  Late last week the NCAA cleared Harkless to play for the Johnnies as a result of an investigation to determine if he had played for current SJU director of basketball operations, Moe Hicks, during his prep AAU career.  Call it the package deal rule, but the NCAA has a regulation to avoid situations where schools hire AAU coaches to get to their elite players (see: Michael Beasley), and since Harkless had played for the New York Gauchos a couple of times, there was some question as to whether his association with Hicks (an administrator with the Gauchos) violated that rule.  The NCAA ultimately ruled that Hicks never actually coached Harkless, a fine-line distinction no doubt making Lavin a very happy man over the weekend.  Harkless is the type of elite recruit based in the NYC area that St. John’s must attract in order to get back to upper echelon of the Big East conference on an annual basis.
3. Act One of the Bruce Pearl aftermath came to light on Friday in Knoxville, as the News-Sentinel reported that Tennessee has imposed a two-year probation on itself as a result of NCAA wrongdoing under Pearl’s (and former football coach, Lane Kiffin’s) direction.  Here’s the key statement: UT believes that “the penalties imposed during the course of its investigation, coupled with its corrective measures, adequately address the violations that occurred.”  As such, the school’s “probation” levies only a very minor restriction on new head coach Cuonzo Martin’s program, removing an ability to feed players occasionally through off-campus meals.  Arguing that all of the principal bad actors have since been removed from the program, the school clearly believes that it has suffered enough as a result of the Pearl fiasco.  Of course, the NCAA Committee on Infractions has the final ruling on this, and we have to believe that UT basketball will lose more than the occasional pizza party when the ruling finally comes to pass in the next several weeks.
4. Well, this is certainly interesting.  Over the weekend, Connecticut confirmed (and then denied) that it is in the process of negotiating a deal to oust current athletic director Jeff Hathaway from his position.  Normally, we may not have much of an interest in this administrative decision or non-decision, but according to UConn insiders, the departure of Hathaway may be just the thing to inspire three-time national champion Jim Calhoun to give another year (or two, or three) a shot.  The other intriguing angle to this power play against someone who presided over the basketball team’s latest national title and the football team’s bid to the Orange Bowl is that the Hathaway is scheduled to take over as the Selection Committee’s chairman next season.  This of course begs the question as to whether he might remain in that role if he is no longer affiliated with a Division I school.  Keep an eye on the UConn Blog for the latest on this story.
5. It’s not very often that the mother of the nation’s top-rated recruit openly questions why a school she likes isn’t recruiting her son, and even less so when that school is a rather pedestrian mid-major, but that appears to be the case with respect to Class of 2012 superstar Shabazz Mohammed and his mom’s alma mater, Long Beach State.  Faye Mohammed starred in track and basketball at LBSU in the mid-1980s, but to hear her tell it, she “would have liked to see [head coach Dan Monson] come in and get involved and see what happened with that.”  Admittedly, the former Gonzaga and Minnesota coach would likely have faced a losing battle going up against schools like Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Memphis, Texas, Texas A&M, UCLA and UNLV (his official list), but don’t you at least make a few calls and hope for a hail mary?  After all, other than that school over in Westwood, Long Beach is the only other local school.

1. One of the main topics of discussion that has come out of the NBA Finals has been the continuing confounding play of LeBron James. There have been several theories proposed about why James has apparently failed to live up to the hype on the NBA’s biggest stage. Some of the theories are personal (founded on such flimsy rumors that we won’t even reprint them here) while others are about his willingness to assert himself as the dominant presence on the team. One of the more controversial (yet non-libelous) theories from this weekend was that LeBron’s failures are due to not having learned under the crucible of the NCAA Tournament. The theory, which was proposed by Mike DeCourcy, sparked a minor firestorm on Twitter over the weekend. Although another editor on the RTC Twitter feed appears to have agreed with DeCourcy, the opinion is not universal among the RTC chiefs. While I can agree that James and some other prep-to-pros might have had improved areas of their game playing at the college level I have a hard time using a sweeping statement that says that everybody (or even James) would necessarily have been better off having experienced college basketball (yes, it hurts to say that as a college basketball site). For every flaw in LeBron’s game that we can see (there aren’t many) we can point to twice as many in most four-year college players who played under some of the finest coaching minds that college basketball has seen. While DeCourcy’s argument will spark some debates it is too simplistic to really capture the difference between the prep-to-pros and the 4-year players.
2. Speaking of college players making the transition to the pros, it appears that several of the biggest names in college basketball last season are having difficulty adjusting to the rigors of the NBA Draft work-out sessions. We have heard many reports of prospects dropping out of workouts followed by reports that the prospect had already been given a guarantee at a higher spot. Unless those prospects are Kyrie Irving or Derrick Williams don’t buy into any reports of a guarantee this year. The post also has some interesting notes on Kawhi Leonard and Brandon Knight as well as a few other players.
3. The saga of Tony Woods seems like it won’t end. The former Wake Forest forward who was dismissed from the team after a domestic violence charge has been drawing a lot of attention from some big names like Kentucky, Louisville, and Texas. However, some analysts (Rick Bozich in particular) think that the hype for Woods has been way overblown and some teams will be lucky to have not signed him. Any team would welcome some with the talent of Woods, but the question becomes is whether the potential off-court trouble is worth it. That is a question the various coaching staffs will need to answer themselves.
4. Tennessee went before the NCAA over the weekend and one of the people called to speak was former coach Bruce Pearl. The testimony, which is essentially sealed for now, will be the only meeting between the two sides before the NCAA hands down its penalties later this summer. This was important not only for the entire Tennessee athletic department, but also Pearl, who many expect will receive the show-cause penalty, which has served as the death knell for many promising coaching careers.
5. Just when you thought all of the recruiting for the class of 2011 was done it turns out that yet another previously committed player has reopened his commitment. This time is was Merv Lindsay, who had orally committed to Texas Tech back in April before Pat Knight was fired. Lindsay visited Kansas on Friday and reportedly enjoyed his visit there. Although Lindsay doesn’t have the typical pedigree for a Jayhawk recruit (wasn’t even in the Rivals top 150) Bill Self has an open scholarship after DeAndre Daniels decided to go to UConn so Lindsay may end up playing in Lawrence if he decides the place is right for him.

Have you heard this one before? New York Times. John Calipari.

Shots fired.

[That’s a favorite of the Twitterati.]

In Wednesday’s online edition of the New York Times there appeared an article written by Harvey Araton about Kyrie Irving attending the live NBA Draft Lottery rank-order show and about how Irving could go as the first overall pick to Cleveland. In the piece, Araton makes a point to mention that, according to Kyrie’s father, Drederick, Kyrie’s decision to leave school after a single college season (one in which he played in a mere 11 games due to injury) did not represent a “long-planned escape from the often unholy alliance of Division I sports and academia.” In other words, the father is asserting that Kyrie isn’t just leaving school early to avoid college nor is Kyrie abandoning his plans for obtaining a degree. The elder Irving is a financial broker on Wall Street, and Araton quotes him as saying, “Everybody in my family has gotten their degrees, their master’s. We value the education aspect of it with Kyrie.”

Calipari Is Characterized As Someone Who Devalues Education Because He Embraces One-and-Done Players, a Logical Fallacy Not Many Critics Will Own Up To

Here is Araton’s next sentence in the article:

“Had they not, Kyrie would have been with John Calipari at Kentucky last season, where [Kyrie’s] godfather, [Rod] Strickland, works as an assistant coach.”

Uh…beg pardon? Let’s make sure we got that straight. Using Araton’s own words, what he said there was, “Had they not cared about the education aspect of it with Kyrie, Kyrie would have been with John Calipari at Kentucky last season, where the godfather, [Rod] Strickland, works as an assistant coach.”

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1. Coaches, administrators, and fans have been critical of unscrupulous agents for a long time, but were limited in their ability to get back at them. That group may now have a legal method to do so in the state of Texas as the state legislature has sent a bill to Governor Rick Perry proposing that agents and their runners could be charged with a felony and face up to 10 years in prison if their actions lead a college athlete to lose his or her eligibility. The details on how this law would work are not clear and we cannot even imagine how ridiculous these cases could get (many top agents are also lawyers) if they ever go to trial, but it’s certainly worth tracking in the coming months.
2. It is always unusual to see a coach who once worked on a big stage take a step (or two) down to continue coaching at a lower level. In the case of Jim O’Brien the cause is a little more clear. As many of you may remember, O’Brien, who had previously coached at Ohio State and Boston College, was forced to leave the former after the school was accused of multiple NCAA violations and was hit with severe sanctions including having their 1999 Final Four run vacated. In addition, O’Brien also received a two-year show-cause penalty (he pocketed $2.4 million from OSU after a judge ruled that he had been wrongfully terminated, however). O’Brien will be returning to Boston to coach at Division III Emerson College. We doubt that O’Brien will ever get back to being a head coach at the Division I level, but he is one of the few coaches that that has been hit with a show-cause penalty that has received a head coaching job at the NCAA level with Morgan State’s Todd Bozeman still being the only one who got a Division I job. Bruce Pearl might want to keep that in mind going forward.
3. On Thursday a segment on NBC’s Today Show will air (estimated at 7:45 AM ET) in which a (former?) Wake Forest student will speak about an alleged sexual assault involving members of the Wake Forest basketball team that occurred hours after the team was eliminated in the first round of the 2009 NCAA Tournament. We are not sure if she will name names on-air, but luckily their attorney already has: Mike Grace stated that former Demon Deacons Jeff Teague and Gary Clark were accused on that fateful night in Miami, but both players were completely exonerated by both the Miami-Dade County police and the Wake Forest code of conduct hearing council.  It’ll be interesting to see how this student spins the interview in light of this new information on Thursday morning.  Quick sidenote: leave it to Andy Katz (link above) to drop recruiting news into a story about sexual assault — another former Wake Forest player accused of assualt, Tony Woods, is reportedly close to transferring to Kentucky.
4. The schedule for the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, which has grown in popularity in recent years, was released yesterday. Looking through the schedule we have to say that it’s underwhelming. Outside of the Duke–Ohio State and UNC–Wisconsin games few of the games look particularly interesting. We’re sure that ESPN will find a way to hype it up as being a series of great games, but don’t fall for it. There are three other games that might be worth watching (Miami–Purdue, Illinois–Maryland, and FSU–Michigan State), but other than that most of the games are close to unwatchable. This could be because the ACC is experiencing a bit of a dry spell, but the organizers need to find a way to keep this fresh (switching conference match-ups?) or these type of events will lose the public’s interest very quickly.
5. Doug Gottlieb takes a look at some of next year’s impact transfers (ESPN Insider required) and we have to say it is a pretty impressive group. Maybe we are forgetting how good prior transfer classes were or overrating the current crop (most of these guys left their prior programs for a reason), but this seems like an exceptionally talented group. Keep this group in mind when you are trying to figure out what impact the newcomers will have on college basketball next season instead of just focusing on the freshmen.

1. The biggest news on Monday was that UNC’s Harrison Barnes announced that he would return to Chapel Hill for his sophomore season.  His decision makes UNC the presumptive #1 team in most prognosticators’ preseason top 25s, but the real winner of his and others’ (notably Perry Jones and Jared Sullinger) returns might just be the sport of college basketball in general.  With these stars joining a strong freshman group from the Class of 2011, many teams will be considerably stronger than they otherwise might normally be in a year without an NBA lockout looming, and if you’re not already excited for a possible blockbuster rematch of bluebloods UNC and UK  in Lexington next December, then you should have your motor checked.
2. In keeping with the theme of Barnes return to the Research Triangle, Luke Winn goes one step further (when doesn’t he?) and analyzes the relative impact of the player who got progressively better as the year went on in 2010-11.  He points out that the Heels with Barnes, Tyler Zeller, John Henson and James McAdoo in the lineup next season could join only 1999 Duke and 2005 UNC as two schools with four lottery picks on the roster — it says here that while an extremely impressive feat if it occurs, the 2012 Heels will be nowhere as good as either of those other two teams were (and he points out why in the later part of the column, weaknesses of their guard play).
3. Over the weekend, Winthrop mascot Big Stuff — a bird representing the Winthrop Eagle — walked “basketball-mad” fan Johannes Schneider down the aisle of his wedding to marry bride-to-be Michelle Waters.  While mascots getting involved in superfan nuptials is nothing new, the best part of this story relates to the mascot asking a date to the wedding and how he tried to describe that he would be acting as Big Stuff in the proceedings.  Great stuff, Big Stuff.
4. SEC Commissioner Mike Slive spoke in an informal Q&A on Monday about the logic behind the unprecedented eight-game suspension he placed on Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl last season as a result of NCAA and SEC violations.  He also said that the conference had no role in Pearl’s dismissal from UT (“sole purview of the institution”), and that he still keeps a good relationship intact with the now-unemployed coach.  Obviously, you can believe what you want, but a quick review of the comments at the bottom of that article certainly relates a general feeling that most UT fans do not particularly care for Mr. Slive nor his logic.
5. As top dog at Indiana for three decades, Bob Knight was rarely on the Christmas list of the blue-and-white faithful living one state to the south.  But the Sweatered One has reserved a special place in hell for John Calipari, as he has used his bully pulpit as Crotchety Commentator in Chief to repeatedly goad and rip the current Kentucky head coach as pretty much a horrendous person with no ethical compass whatsoever.  The latest incident occurred during a speech over the weekend in Wabash, Indiana, where Knight referred to UK’s 2009-10 team as having “started five players…who had not been to class that semester.”  He’s referring in vague terms to the four one-and-done players (plus junior Patrick Patterson) whom Kentucky put into the NBA Draft last summer.  UK fired back almost immediately, stating that “every starter from the 2010 season finished the spring semester in good academic standing,” but the damage was once again already done.  Whether fair or not, Knight expressed the perception that many (most?) sports fans around the country have about Calipari, and it’s an open question to us if he or Kentucky can do anything to change that (erroneous?) sentiment.  Here’s the clip from the speech:

Jared Quillen is the RTC correspondent for the SEC conference. We will be publishing a series of conference report cards over the next week for conferences that got multiple NCAA bids to recap the conference, grade the teams, and look at the future for the conference.

Conference Recap

• It was a good year for the Southeastern Conference. After a weak showing in the NCAA Tournament last year, the SEC was the only conference with multiple teams (Kentucky and Florida) in the Elite Eight. The SEC also got five teams into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three years. It was a major improvement over the sad slump that was 2009 when the SEC only qualified LSU, Tennessee, and Mississippi State at 8, 9, and 13 seeds, respectively.
• When the season started, I predicted the conference could get five and possibly six teams in the tournament and I still contend that Alabama was snubbed.  But regardless of that, five teams is a good showing and a sign of improvement for a conference that lost a little respect as an elite conference in the past few years.
• Florida was consistent all year, winning close games by playing calmly even when trailing late, but the biggest turning point for the conference came when Kentucky finally was able to win those same close games.  The Wildcats were sitting at 7-9 in conference play and likely facing a first-round game in the SEC when they won close games against Florida, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee finishing the regular season 10-6 and easily marching through the conference tournament.  Kentucky was the favorite at the Final Four in Houston, but poor shooting likely cost the Wildcats their eighth national championship.  And the debate about John Calipari’s ability to win it all with young teams goes on.

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