Christopher Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The most recent wave of conference realignment was set off by a desperate scrambling of high-major powers to elevate their statures in a changing (re: dying) BCS landscape. Inevitably, the movement shook the college hoops world, and while most of the changes either weakened conferences, ended rivalries, or both, some leagues were made better off from the frenzied switches. The biggest victim, so it has been said, was the Big East, whose long and fruitful marriage with Pittsburgh and Syracuse will cease to exist after this season. The main beneficiary was the A-10, with newcomers Butler and VCU entering the fold this season. There were plenty of other less heralded moves – from Northern Kentucky’s jaunt to the Atlantic Sun to Texas-San Antonio’s voyage to the crumbling WAC – but I’m singling out four schools who harbor bright short-term outlooks in their new stomping grounds. New environments typically guarantee unpredictability. For these four teams, there’s nothing unpredictable about their ability to compete at the top of their new leagues upon arrival.

VCU (Leaving: CAA — Joining: Atlantic 10)

Every college hoops coaching candidate hot list starts with two names: Butler’s Brad Stevens and VCU’s Shaka Smart. They are the pipe dream of any athletic director’s wildest coaching replacement desires, and both have spurned the power conference ranks on multiple occasions. We’ll get to Stevens’ squad a little bit later (Spoiler!), but there’s no question Smart’s team, which returns basically everyone of note besides guard Bradford Burgess, is poised to make a statement in its new home. Forget the fact that the A-10 will feature its strongest competitive lineup in years. Forget that VCU is entering a league where every game will require intense focus and execution just to avoid an upset. What Smart has built during his tenure – a consistent outfit with the stability to compete at the sport’s highest level on a yearly basis – is not going away, nor will it be swayed by one of the nation’s best collections of inter-conference strength.

Better all-around competition won’t phase VCU as it makes its move to the A-10 (Photo credit: Getty Images)

VCU is not, as many speculated two seasons ago, a one-year Cinderella. The Rams are a mid-major in name only; they are as talented and as deep as most high-major ensembles in any conference. Now that I think of it, VCU is a perfect microcosm for the A-10: technically excluded from the Power Six denomination, but ripe with Tournament-bound teams and stars. Navigating that landscape will be a stark change of pace, even for a program conditioned to creating “havoc” in 40-minute samples, but VCU is no stranger to top-end competition. Last season’s Tournament run didn’t quite live up to the previous year’s Final Four appearance, but it’s worth remembering the Rams very nearly took out preseason AP No. 1 Indiana in the Third Rund. VCU is ready to join a league that offers formidable tests on a nightly basis. This season will reflect as much.

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Brian Otskey is a contributor for Rush the Court. Let him know what you think at @botskey on Twitter.

Can you believe it? Real, live college basketball begins this coming Friday and continues through early April. From San Diego to Miami to Ann Arbor and all places in between, here is your guide to the top 68 games of the 2012-13 college basketball season. NCAA Tournament and conference title implications ride on each and every one of these games so settle in and mark your calendars. Games later in the season, when teams are gelling and making a postseason push, are valued more than match-ups earlier in the season when teams are still trying to find their identities. We begin our countdown with games #68 to #52, listed below in order. The countdown will continue as we move through the week prior to opening night on November 9. Check back all week for the rest of the list. (h/t to Zach Hayes for his assistance in building this list).

68. November 30: Syracuse at Arkansas (8:30 PM, ESPN) – The marquee non-conference home game for Arkansas (as part of the Big East/SEC Challenge) is also a quality early season road test for Syracuse, a team that rarely leaves New York before conference play begins. The Razorbacks haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2008, having gone 22-42 in SEC play over the last four seasons. With Michigan being the only other top shelf team on their non-conference schedule, this game is a huge opportunity for this potential bubble team to notch a win that will make the committee take notice.

The Hoosiers and Bulldogs Will Bring Its Local Rivalry to the Crossroads Classic

67. December 15: Indiana vs. Butler (2:00 PM, CBS) – It will be interesting to see how Butler performs against their conference schedule in the Atlantic 10 versus the Horizon League but before they get a chance to do that, they’ll take on intrastate rival Indiana in Indianapolis. The Crossroads Classic, as it’s called, is a mid-December boon for a state with basketball entrenched in its culture. Now eligible, sharpshooter Rotnei Clarke (transfer from Arkansas) could keep the Bulldogs competitive against Indiana’s porous perimeter defense but Cody Zeller and company may be too much for Brad Stevens’ team to handle.

66. March 5: Arkansas at Missouri (7:00 PM, ESPN) – Razorbacks head coach and former Missouri headman Mike Anderson makes his return to Columbia for a late season tilt that should have postseason implications. Anderson’s teams love to play in the style of Nolan Richardson’s “40 minutes of hell” but you can bet Missouri will be well equipped to handle it with some holdovers from the Anderson regime still on the roster. With the combination of the return of Anderson and senior night, you can bet the crowd at Mizzou Arena will be fired up and ready to go for this one.

They also meet: February 16 in Fayetteville.

65. February 25: Syracuse at Marquette (7:00 PM, ESPN) – Despite being criminally underrated seemingly every season, Buzz Williams and Marquette will likely be in the Big East mix ahead of this late February matchup. The Golden Eagles will have a different look without Jae Crowder and Darius Johnson-Odom but an infusion of newcomers, headlined by Arizona State transfer Trent Lockett and a talented core of returning players ready to take the next step. Syracuse will start a new lineup this season after losing many key players but make no mistake, the Orange are among the favorites to take home the Big East crown in their final season in the conference.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Every college basketball season brings a new cast of stars. There are freshman, the super-prospects hyped up to disproportionate levels who may or may not live up to their billing. Then there are the returning players, the guys who showed flashes of stardom the previous season and are ready to truly hit their stride after an offseason honing their games. Highlighting these players doesn’t require much insight or deep thought. You know a star when you see one. Discovering under-the-radar gems, the diamonds in the rough, the players who emerge from the depths of the unknown to make a splash on the national stage, is another matter entirely. It requires a comprehensive knowledge of the game – and not just the Kentuckys and the North Carolinas and the Dukes of the world. You know those guys. The focus here is the more unheralded crop of players ready to make the leap into the general college hoops consciousness. What follows is my vain attempt at singling out those very players I described above. You may not know these names now, but by the time March rolls around, my bet is that you will.

*Editor’s note: you will notice there are no freshmen on this list. That is no mistake. This list is geared towards returning players. If you’re interested in a more freshmen-centric preview analysis, check out this list of newcomers who are “ready to play big roles on their new teams.”

Rotnei Clarke – Butler

The Bulldogs three-point shooting will improve immensely with Clarke joining the fold (Photo credit: Getty Images).

Relative to recent history, Butler did not have the best 2011-12 season. Let’s not sell the Bulldogs short: They reached the semifinals of a national postseason tournament for the third straight season. Only this time, it wasn’t the NCAA Tournament. Instead, Butler got bounced in the semifinals of the CBI, a huge downturn from the two preceding Final Four trips. Butler may never again string together that level of Tournament success, but Clarke gives Brad Stevens’ team a much better chance than it had last season. Plain and simple, Clarke, who made 91 of 208 three-point attempts in 2010-11 (he sat out last season after transferring from Arkansas), can shoot the lights out from beyond the arc. And what does Butler desperately need as it enters its debut season in the A-10? Long-range shooting, where last season it finished ranked 341st in three-point field goal percentage.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope – Georgia

Basically any chance Georgia has of challenging in the SEC this season and making a push for an NCAA bid rests on Caldwell-Pope, whose freshman season was something of a disappointment considering the McDonalds All-American hype he brought to Athens. With a year of experience under his belt, and a greater chance to showcase his talents without being comparatively dwarfed by the likes of Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Caldwell-Pope should blossom. Georgia doesn’t offer much help in terms of solid complementary players, so Pope will be asked to carry the load. Kentucky and Missouri are heavy favorites to challenge for the SEC crown this season, but if Pope plays to his recruiting promise, the Bulldogs are more than capable of notching a few wins against the league front-runners. NBA scouts are already drooling over the 6’4’’ guard’s potential. He’ll make good on those claims this season.

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The Big Ten microsite will be analyzing the non-conference schedules for all of the Big Ten teams in the coming weeks. Today, we continue with the Northwestern Wildcats. Check out their full schedule here.

Where we left off: Last year, Northwestern coach Bill Carmody thought he had put together a solid non-conference schedule. There weren’t any marquee wins, but there were good wins against Seton Hall, Tulsa and LSU, respectable losses to Baylor and Creighton, and no bad losses. That didn’t turn out to be a winning formula, as the NCAA selection committee favored teams that had some marquee wins and forgave their bad losses. This year, there is a chance for several marquee wins — some even in Evanston — and NU must take advantage of those opportunities in order to finally make the NCAA Tournament.

Northwestern Wants to See More of These

Major tournaments: Last year, Northwestern won the Charleston Classic, which isn’t a huge tournament but a respected one nonetheless. This year, NU heads to the South Padre Island Invitational to face TCU, and then either UAB or Illinois State. That’s…um, well… a terrible schedule. Luckily for the Wildcats, they’ll have other chances pick up big wins, but that set of games certainly won’t be the most entertaining group we’ll see this season.

Toughest opponent: Last year, Northwestern was utterly embarrassed at home by Baylor, and this year, the Wildcats have to go to Waco for what will undoubtedly be their toughest non-conference game. Last year’s game was probably the biggest mismatch NU faced all year, as Baylor was dominant on the boards and has athleticism down low, while the Cats couldn’t do anything in the paint offensively or defensively. This NU team will be better inside and Baylor isn’t quite as talented as it was last season, so it shouldn’t be as much of a blowout but it will still be NU’s toughest non-league game by far, especially coming on the road.

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We’re just four days away from the official opening to the 2012-13 college basketball season as schools will be able to start officially practicing Friday night. Before then, though, we’re going to take a look at the various pre-conference tournaments that have become synonymous with the first month of college basketball. Nearly every Big 12 school is competing in one of those tournaments this season and we’ll take time each day this week to preview each bracket, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico to New York City. We start the week with the premier programs in the conference, Kansas and Texas.

CBE Hall of Fame Classic

Dates: November 20-21
Location: Sprint Center, Kansas City, Missouri
Teams: Kansas, Texas A&M, Washington State, Saint Louis

The Sprint Center Will Have a Partisan KU Crowd at the CBE This Year

Technically, there are 12 teams in the CBE Hall of Fame Classic. The four host schools listed above each play two “host round” games at home before advancing — win or lose — to the Championship Rounds at the Sprint Center in Kansas City. The “win or lose” part is why talking about teams like Chattanooga or Utah Valley as if they’re really in the tournament field is unnecessary. If you cut through the algebraic details of the “host rounds” and “sub-host rounds” listed on the tournament website, things get much simpler. Texas A&M plays Saint Louis on Monday, November 20. Kansas plays Washington State soon after that. The winners and losers play the next day.

Most of the Sprint Center will be decked out with KU’s Crimson and Blue, but the biggest storyline heading into the 12th annual tournament might be the unexpected departure of Saint Louis head coach Rick Majerus, who stepped down in August due to heart problems. The Billikens nearly knocked off No. 1 seed Michigan State in the second round of last season’s NCAA Tournament and have been a fringe Top 25 team on many preseason ballots.

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1. If you’re in the market for an experienced scorer just a few weeks before practice begins and you missed out on the extremely late and unanticipated transfers of Xavier’s Dez Wells and Rice’s Arsalan Kazemi, you might still be in luck. Washington State shooting guard Reggie Moore was dismissed from his team on Monday for an undisclosed “violation of team rules,” effectively ending his career in Pullman and making him an immediate free agent for a team in need of some help. Even if Moore were able to find a school with an open scholarship at this late date, it’s unlikely he’d be eligible for the upcoming season anyway; but, Moore has shown flashes of offensive pop (10.7 PPG) and good play-making acumen (4.4 APG) in his three years at Wazzu. Whether Moore will be able to clean up his act (he was suspended in 2011 for marijuana possession) is another story, but sometimes the incentive of a last, best chance in a new environment is what it takes.
2. On Monday ESPNU announced its television schedule for this year’s Midnight Madness whirlwind, scheduled to begin at 5 PM on October 12, which, if you’re scoring at home, is a shade over 17 days from now. The broadcast will begin at likely preseason #1 Indiana with an actual nuts-and-bolts practice rather than the fan frenzy Hoosier Hysteria (scheduled for one week later), and will be followed by a studio show peeking in on 12 other prominent programs including Kentucky, Missouri, Baylor, North Carolina, Georgetown, NC State, Syracuse, Murray State, Pittsburgh, Maryland, Florida State and Kansas. While we’re absolutely thrilled to have college basketball in any form coming back in two weeks and change, can we strongly encourage the producers at ESPNU to focus predominantly on the action on the floor at these schools rather than endlessly talking at us in the studio? There will be plenty of time for that as we get closer to the start of the season.
3. In yesterday’s M5 we mentioned a piece by Gregg Doyel excoriating the NCAA for its presumed lack of interest in aggressively investigating the allegations involving Lance Thomas’ 2009 trip to a New York City jeweler. In the interest of equal time, today it’s North Carolina‘s turn. AOL Fanhouse‘s David Whitley doesn’t break any new ground in his scathing piece against the governing body (and his missive could be premature, depending on what the Martin Report shows), but the way in which he frames the NCAA’s lack of interest in the school’s academic scandal is amusing. Whitley’s best line: “The fact a basketball power like UConn got nailed shows that the NCAA is somewhat serious about putting the student in student-athlete. The fact UNC skated shows that the NCAA is still the NCAA. It wrote the manual on double standards and arbitrary justice. In fact, NCAA officials could teach a course on those subjects. If they taught it at North Carolina, it would be in front of an empty room.” The NCAA is an easy target to pile on — everyone knows that — but its weirdly inconsistent usage of precedent given very similar sets of facts is without question confounding.
4. With rumors persisting that Class of 2014 superstar prep player Andrew Wiggins will reclassify to the Class of 2013 soon, one of his peers beat him to the idea. Noah Vonleh, a 6’8″ power forward who was considered a top five player in his class, has performed enough academic work at New Hampton School (NH) to reclassify as a senior for the current academic year. ESPN.com‘s Dave Telep reports on the move and says that Vonleh compares favorably with some of the elite players in his new class, rating him as ESPNU’s #7 overall player in the Class of 2013. This is actually the second reclassification for the 17-year old in that this move represents Vonleh’s return to his original class, so let’s hope that he’s finished moving around so that some lucky suitor — Indiana, Ohio State and UNC have recruited him the hardest — will have him in uniform just over a year from now.
5. It’s nothing new that Butler’s Brad Stevens is a prominent user of advanced statistical metrics as a tool to understanding his team’s strengths and weaknesses. This article by WISH-TV in Indianapolis explains that one of Stevens’ directives for this offseason was for his staff (led by statistical wunderkind Drew Cannon) to determine what kind of RPI the Bulldogs will need heading into conference play to ensure an NCAA Tournament bid now that they’ve moved to the more competitive Atlantic 10. People game the system in all kinds of different ways — some ethical, some not — but we get the feeling that coaches like Stevens and Buzz Williams are so far ahead of their competitors in this regard that it’s astonishing to us that the rest of the coaching lemmings haven’t already fallen in line.

1. There were obviously two huge stories yesterday and we could lead with either one, but for us the imminent retirement of Jim Calhoun is the top story. Over the next few days you will see an endless stream of stories recounting Calhoun’s spectacular work turning a program that was essentially nothing into one of the top programs in the country. You will also see a number of anecdotes from media members about some of their memorable interactions with Calhoun. For now we will just focus on the near-term future for the Huskies, who will apparently name Kevin Ollie as their interim coach. Ollie certainly has his work cut out for him taking over a team that was expected to struggle next season even with a legend like Calhoun at the helm. We hope that the school grades Ollie on a curve here because otherwise his position will probably last only one season before the school looks elsewhere. If that does happen, it will certainly test the rankings we released last year for the most desirable coaching spots in the country. Will the brand appeal of Connecticut be enough to overcome the location and the current condition of the program for potential coaches?
2. We are guessing that most sites will go with Notre Dame moving to the ACC in all sports except for football with the expected moved happening in 2014 at the earliest. While this is certainly another significant loss for the Big East it doesn’t come close to the significance of losing Pittsburgh and Syracuse especially since the real prize of Notre Dame’s athletic program is its football program, which isn’t exactly a revelation to anybody. The ACC was able to get Notre Dame to play a certain number of football games (five) against other schools within the conference, but Notre Dame was still able to keep its ludicrous lucrative contract and BCS privileges. Having said that, the Irish do bring a solid if unspectacular basketball program to the conference that will add more depth and strengthen its claim as the best in the country again [Ed Note: Many ACC fans would have you believe that they always were the best conference in the country.] For us, the more interesting facet of the story is that Notre Dame becomes the 15th basketball team in the conference, which as you may notice is an odd number. The ACC has insisted that there are no plans to expand to 16 teams, but it seems more than a little naive to think they won’t be looking out for another school to add to reach an even number. More on this later today.
3. After a disappointing year in 2011-12 (and any Brad Stevens team that doesn’t make the Final Four is by definition, disappointing), Butler was looking to rebound with a strong 2012-13 season, but those hopes were dealt a significant blow when the school announced that Chrishawn Hopkins had been dismissed from the basketball team. Hopkins was one of four returning starters on a team that is also adding Arkansas sharpshooter Rotnei Clarke and was expected to be a tough out in next year’s NCAA Tournament. Fortunately for the Bulldogs they have some depth on the perimeter, but anytime you lead the #3 scorer from the previous year it has to hurt at some level. We are still not aware of which team rule Hopkins broke, but the fall term at Butler just started on August 22 so whatever he did was probably not related to grades.
4. Another player who will not be seen on campus any time soon is Maurice Jones, who announced yesterday that he was transferring from USC after having been ruled academically ineligible. Jones, who was supposed to be the leading returning scorer for the Trojans, will certainly draw some interest despite his 5’7″ frame, but it will most likely be in the form of mid-majors where a smaller guard could be even more successful. Assuming Jones is able to get his academics in order he could be an excellent addition for a top mid-major and can give his new school two more years of eligibility. A potential destination somewhere in Michigan would not be out of the question given that is where Jones hails from, but with his skill set he should be able to look broadly.
5. While the NCAA continues to fall behind on investigations into the wrongdoing of schools and their administrators it continues to excel at chasing after teenagers with questions regarding their eligibility. Two highly touted incoming freshmen — Sam Cassell, Jr., and Myles Davis — have been ruled ineligible by the NCAA as the result of classes they took at Notre Dame Prep, the same school that produced Michael Beasley, Lazar Hayward, and Ryan Gomes, among others. As Jeff Goodman points out, there are eight other individuals currently cleared by the NCAA to play who took those same classes. The entire situation appears to revolve around classes they took last academic year that at least Davis’ family claims were cleared by the NCAA until it was too late to change and maintain their eligibility. While this case will probably start out of the mainstream media for the most part it will be interesting to follow to see if the NCAA backs down or if the eligibility of the other students in those classes is questioned.

This weekend represents the end of the summer, and as such, our last offseason status of the high mid-major leagues. Up next: the Atlantic 10.

Joe Dzuback is the RTC correspondent for the Atlantic 10 Conference.

Five Offseason Storylines

Majerus Will Be Missed by A-10 Fans and Foes Next Season

1. The Evolving Conference. Recruiting new members to replace those moving on, hiring new coaches to meet rising expectations and postseason performance, and finding a brand new venue to highlight the conference championship tournament, the Atlantic 10 and its individual members continue to respond proactively to the Division I conference realignments of the past eight years.
2. Changing Membership. “Atlantic 10” is a misleading description for this conference. The footprint stretches from Kingston, Rhode Island, south to Charlotte, North Carolina, and west to Saint Louis, Missouri. The membership will expand from 14 to 16 for the 2012-13 season (only… at this point). The “not quite Atlantic, not quite 10” conference will add Virginia Commonwealth University (late of the Colonial Athletic Association) and Horizon League powerhouse Butler, before returning to 14 teams in 2013-14. Two schools — Temple, a conference stalwart since 1982 will depart for the Big East, and Charlotte, a member since 2005, will rejoin Conference USA. The faces may change, but all the departing and arriving members share a common passion – outstanding college basketball.
3. Changing Faces. Since expanding to 14 teams in 2005, the conference has welcomed 14 new head coaches, an average of 1.75 new regimes per season. In the early weeks of the 2012 offseason both Rhode Island and Duquesne fired their head coaches. Jim Baron’s curmudgeonly reputation was tolerated (barely) as his teams recorded four consecutive 20-win seasons. The 25-year veteran (11 in Kingston) had no good will to draw on as the Runnin’ Rams struggled through a 7-24 season. Rhode Island AD Thorr Bjorn tabbed Wagner head coach Danny Hurley as the man to bring the program back to the NCAA Tournament. The offseason shocker came with Duquesne AD Greg Amodio’s announcement that 18-year (the last six at Duquesne) veteran Ron Everhart was out. Everhart interviewed for the Penn State job in the 2011 offseason before he withdrew from consideration (much to the relief of Dukes fans). Duquesne hired 14-year veteran coach Jim Ferry, who spent the last 10 years at Long Island University, to bring stability to the roster and coaching staff.
4. Changing Venues. When Saint Bonaventure cut down the nets in Boardwalk Hall last March, the conference closed out a six-year run in the venerable old facility. The 2012 conference championship will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, on track for completion next month. The brand new venue offers 675,000-square feet devoted to state-of-the-art sports and entertainment with an 18,000 seat basketball arena as the centerpiece. Given the access to the New York City media, will the stage be bright enough for the geographically diverse membership, which includes seven members not located along the Mid-Atlantic coast?
5. Rick Majerus Takes a Leave of Absence from Saint Louis. For those who attended postgame pressers hosted by the Billiken mentor last season knew that head coach Rick Majerus was in fragile condition. Though he was attentive and animated during the games, his voice was lower and answers more deliberate than in previous years afterward. Athletic Director Chris May’s August 24 announcement that the 25-year veteran — the last five with Saint Louis — was in California “undergoing evaluation and treatment for an ongoing heart condition” and would not take the first chair this season at SLU was not surprising. Jim Crews, a former head coach at Evansville (1986-2002) and Army (2003-09) will assume the job on an interim basis. Crews was hired in October 2011 and was set to start his second season as an assistant when Majerus made the decision to step aside temporarily. Crews will be assisted by Jim Whitesell, also hired last offseason. The timing – late August after a stent operation in July – speaks to both Majerus’ reluctance to step aside and to his confidence in Crews and Whitesell.

Reader’s Take I

Summer Team Notes

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Christopher Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

For college hoops fans, winter Saturdays are an overwhelming blur. With so many games spaced out throughout various networks, sitting down and selecting an optimal day-long viewing experience can be somewhat bewildering. When in doubt, the consensus gravitates towards ESPN, where the “College Gameday” crew doles out a constant flow of college hoops action, providing insightful commentary along the way. Starting at 10 AM ET with a studio show staged at that week’s featured game site, a raucous crowd howling in the backdrop, the panel lays out the day’s action, capped with a late-show pick ‘em segment which invariably has the effect of inciting the avid supporters on hand. Then it’s a day’s long succession of enticing fixtures, spanning different leagues, time zones and intrigue levels. The crew — Rece Davis, Digger Phelps, Jay Bilas and for the first time this year Jalen Rose, plus whoever else graces the courtside stage in any given week —  puts a bow on the day’s action with an hour-long recap show, which leads into that week’s marquee matchup. There are few things better than a “Gameday” Saturday: a highly entertaining and energetic crew of college hoops enthusiasts sandwiching a whirlwind of hoop with enlightening breakdowns and analysis about the day’s happenings.

Loved or Hated, Everyone Watches Gameday

In this early-August college hoops lull where the happenings on the gridiron seem to take precedent at most every power conference university, we long dearly for those delightful, couch-side Saturdays. Fortunately, ESPN provided a sneak peak of just how magnificent those Saturdays might be. The network released its “Gameday” schedule Wednesday, and the lineup – at least as far as I can tell from a rather distant August viewpoint – is the best I’ve seen in quite a long time. Maybe ever. The bad news is that January 19, the first Saturday of viewing, seems a pretty long ways away. Not to worry. Before you know it, Midnight Madness will arrive, November and December will slide by and the eight-week selection of action-packed Saturdays will commence. To pique your interest, I’ve put together a ranked list of the eight featured games. There’s no hard and fast criteria here; take this as a simple preferential ordering of which match-ups I feel carry the most appeal. Longstanding rivalries, interesting venues and conference/national title implications will all factor into this 100%-for-fun exercise. On paper, it’s hard to find fault with the selected games. But between now and January, a bad start or two could dampen the hype factor around some of these games. All we can hope is that the scheduled contests maintain their outwardly riveting stature throughout the winter months.

Note: All game times ET.

1. March 9: Syracuse at Georgetown (12 PM), Duke at North Carolina (9 PM)

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1. Coaches who are fired from their plum head coaching positions have to end up somewhere, and two former power conference guys who were not quite able to get it done at that level have resurfaced this week at a pair of unusual destinations. First, former rising star Todd Lickliter, the NABC Coach of the Year at Butler in 2007 but a miserable failure subsequently at Iowa with an overall record of 38-57, was formally hired on Wednesday as the new head coach at NAIA school Marian University, located in the same part of Indianapolis as the program he helped put on the college basketball map a decade ago. Lickliter spent last season as an assistant at Miami (OH), but will look to re-legitimize himself in the NAIA before no doubt angling for future D-I head coaching positions.
2. The other unusual coaching hire this week was former Colorado and Northern Illinois head coach Ricardo Patton taking a high school gig as the top man at Central High School in Memphis, Tennessee. Patton spent last season as an assistant at Maryland-Eastern Shore, but he has ties to the Memphis area and was interestingly enough a candidate for the Memphis (University of) head coaching position there 15 years ago. The Memphis area churns out top-notch recruits annually so the cynical side of us wonders if Patton is looking for some kind of package deal in the next few years with some future star player he latches on to at Central HS.
3. An article posited in a recent volume of The Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that conference realignment – at least from the years of 2004-11 – could actually have a significant and measurable impact on the academic standing of the school in addition to the undisputed benefits to the athletic side of things. Really? The authors state that subsequent to realignment colleges became generally more selective, their admissions yield rates were higher, and their incoming college admissions scores were greater. All of those things, if controlled for in the study, make sense, but are we really supposed to believe that Missouri’s move to the SEC or Houston’s to the Big East will make those institutions better academic schools? We’ll wait on the follow-up studies before buying into this one.
4. Did the ACC recently shoot itself in the foot – either willfully or wantonly – when it decided to include its third-tier media rights in its latest television package with ESPN for an estimated $238 million per year? Forbes’ Chris Smith argues that the league made a grievous error in failing to exclude those properties because it essentially amounts to the conference leaving money on the table and exposes it to future poaching by other leagues (ahem, Big 12) with richer deals. As he puts it, “the ACC is giving away more and getting back less.” Of course, Smith’s analysis fails to take into account the obvious academic benefits, such as BC’s 37% increase in applications after joining the ACC, right?
5. Wisconsin’s Jared Uthoff made a lot of headlines in April for his personal battle with Bo Ryan and Wisconsin over his transfer papers. Well, the redshirt freshman decided that the battle was for naught as he will move on to Iowa as his next destination and will have to sit out a year regardless of any restrictions imposed upon him by that school in Madison. No disrespect to Ryan and the Badgers intended, but Uthoff’s transfer is something that we encourage among more than everyone involved in college basketball. Let’s hope that he finds the success he hopes for at his next destination.