We’re a little over a month into the 2011-12 season and most teams have played somewhere in the range of eight to ten games. That’s enough time to get a decent sense as to teams’ potential for the rest of the season, rather than relying on little more than preseason guesswork and conjecture. At the end of October, we went through an exercise analyzing Vegas futures odds and came to the conclusion that North Carolina and Kentucky were the odds-on favorites to cut down the nets next April (a normalized combined total chance of 20%). As of December 15, Vegas still thinks similarly, although with two key differences — first, Kentucky, at +300 and a 14.6% normalized chance to win the title, has moved ahead of North Carolina, who still sits at +350 and now has a 13.0% chance. Secondly, the two favorites have a combined 27.6% chance to win it all according to the oddsmakers, which basically means that if you played the NCAA Tournament four times, either UNC or UK would win it once.

Here are your preseason odds for the sake of reference. Note that these odds came from The Greek and this discussion is for entertainment purposes only. The table below provides the futures odds (e.g., +300), which converts to a percentage chance to win (e.g., 25.0%), but also a normalized change to win if all chances added up to 100%. We also provide a simple up (blue)/down (gray)/even (white) stock measurement based on whether a team’s odds profile has risen or fallen since October. We provide some analysis of this table after the jump.

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Bill Hupp is the RTC correspondent for the Horizon League. Follow him on Twitter (@Bill_Hupp) for his thoughts on hoops, food, Russian nesting dolls and life.

Reader’s Take

The Week That Was

• Cream of the Crop Rises: It’s only mid-December, but don’t let the overall records fool you: The conference cream of the crop has already risen to the top. There is a clear division between the upper and lower halves of the Horizon League in 2011-12. Some teams (Milwaukee, Detroit, Butler, and Valparaiso) chose to test themselves before conference play begins. With Butler having a down season, a conference crown is there for the taking and each of these schools is hoping that their tough-minded scheduling philosophy pays off late in the season.
• UW-Milwaukee Pushes Wisconsin: Playing in front of the largest regular season home crowd in school history at the U.S. Cellular Arena in Milwaukee, the Panthers went on a 16-1 run in the second half to cut 17-point deficit to two. But Wisconsin hit a few big shots down the stretch to hold on for a 60-54 win. UWM – who were without injured starters Kyle Kelm and Ja’Rob McCallum – dug themselves a hole in the first half after they shot just 30% from the field and made seven of 17 free throws for the game. Tony Meijer scored all of his team-high 15 points in a seven-minute stretch in the middle of the second half.
• Return of the Titan: 6’10’’ center Eli Holman returned from an indefinite suspension and played in his first two games this past week. Though he didn’t start either game, Holman dunked his way to 21 points and snagged seven rebounds in his season-opener against Western Michigan and then went for nine and nine (points and boards) in the Titans’ loss to Alabama. Coach Ray McCallum Sr. seems to be making Holman earn his way back into the starting lineup, which is probably smart for the sake of team chemistry. Detroit survived a tough non-conference schedule without him including a nice win over St. John’s, but a low-post force like Holman is a rarity in the Horizon League. With him, the Titans should challenge Milwaukee and Cleveland State for conference supremacy.

Brad Stevens May Have Scheduled A Bit Too Aggressively With Significant Graduation Losses Giving Way To A Young Team

Power Rankings

1. Cleveland State(10-1, 2-0) –The two best non-conference wins of the season thus far belong to the Vikings (road wins over Vanderbilt and Mid-American Conference favorite Kent State). Senior D’Aundray Brown has bounced back nicely from an injured hand to lead the team in scoring (12.7 PPG) and is second in rebounding (4.5 RPG). Guard Trevon Harmon was named conference Player of the Week after averaging 20 points in victories over Robert Morris and at Akron. The key to CSU’s early-season success, however, has been tough defense. With former star Norris Cole now in the NBA, the Vikings have used a quick, smaller lineup and their trademark pressure defense to hold opponents to just 57.5 points per game while swiping ten steals per game, both conference-bests. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight’s Lede. On the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, it’s only fitting that tonight’s slate of games was filled with the element of surprise. Astonishment at the ending of regulation in Florida versus Arizona; marvel at Vandy’s big man returning to the floor several weeks early; shock at just how far Utah basketball has fallen since its run to the finals in 1998; wonder that Badger fans didn’t pack the place tonight. There’s plenty to discuss on a busy Wednesday night in college basketball, so let’s jump to it.

Your Watercooler Moment. Florida’s Decision to Foul Arizona.

Donovan Could Not Believe That Prather Was Called For a Foul In the Late-Game Situation (AP)

Clearly Florida’s plan with five seconds to go and leading Arizona by three was to quickly foul the Wildcats to send them to the line. We’ve discussed the merits (and demerits) of this strategy in this space and on Twitter many times before, but it always creates an additional element of intrigue when a coach chooses to employ it. According to HSAC, teams only chose this strategy 12% of the time in 2009-10, and there was no discernible advantage in terms of the final outcome of the game (meaning teams won and lost at a statistically equal rates regardless of strategy). In tonight’s game, Florida’s decision for Casey Prather to immediately reach in and foul Solomon Hill on the inbounds play with five seconds remaining backfired in that the nearby referee rewarded Hill for throwing his arms into a shooting motion immediately after the catch. Three foul shot makes and a missed Florida prayer later, the game was headed to overtime. Florida ended up winning in the extra period, 78-72, but Donovan’s decision to have his player foul in that situation shows exactly why it terrifies coaches to employ the strategy. Even if it were statistically sound (and that’s not yet been proven, as far as we know), no coach wants to hear all the second-guessing that comes with such a decision when it backfires, as it very nearly did for the Gators tonight. More on the Arizona-Florida game below.

Dunkdafied. When Xavier’s Dezmine Wells dunks the ball, he shoots it down the rim like it’s a nerf ball coming out of his hand. As for Illinois’ Brandon Paul, he just takes everyone within a five-foot radius with him.

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This Weekend’s Lede. Every Week a Playoff… Until It Isn’t. No matter your opinion on whether Oklahoma State or Alabama should have the right to play LSU for the BCS national championship next month, can we at least come to an agreement that college football’s tired meme of “every week a playoff” has once again been blown out of the water as farcical? Look, we all know that the NCAA Tournament system is far from perfect in terms of anointing the best team as the champion, but like every other major American sport, at least every team that has a reasonable claim to the crown gets a chance to prove its worth on the hardwood. The old saying goes, “in order to be the best, you have to beat the best,” but as this comical CFB playoff scenario shows, at least one deserving school will get no such chance to do that. On to basketball…

Your Watercooler Moment. Anthony Davis’ Game-Saving Block.

Kentucky vs. North Carolina. North Carolina vs. Kentucky. What else could it be? Saturday afternoon’s tilt in Lexington was one of those rare fulfilling games where the action on the floor not only lived up to the hype, but exceeded it. And the hype for this game was extraordinary, especially considering that it took place on the first Saturday in December rather than sometime deep in March. Our post-game takes on what we’d seen in the one-point Kentucky win are located here, but the long and short of it is this: Carolina should feel as if they were only a play away from winning a difficult road game that didn’t cater to its strengths (61% on threes, but only 33% on twos), while Kentucky should feel that its extremely young but talented team stood toe-to-toe with the other most talented team in America and didn’t blink. Both UNC and UK should be playing in New Orleans next Spring, and if we’re lucky they’ll tip off for the fourth time in just over 16 months with nothing less than the national championship on the line.

Five More Weekend Storylines.

1. Big East Dominates SEC in Challenge. Coming into Friday, the SEC was tied with the Big East at 2-2 in this year’s Challenge. The Big East then won the next six games before dropping the final two Saturday evening to finish at 8-4. The most impressive wins over the weekend were Pittsburgh and Cincinnati’s road wins at Tennessee and Georgia, respectively(the Big East had four roadies), and as we noted in our commentary on Saturday, the Big East appears to be an eight- or nine-team NCAA Tournament conference, whereas the SEC seems to deserve roughly half that. Nothing too surprising here, just further confirmation that the Big East, along with the Big Ten, are the top two conferences in college basketball this season. Read the rest of this entry »

It may have felt like #1 Kentucky’s big win over #4 North Carolina was the only game of the day, but another 200+ teams who suited up today might beg to differ. Our thoughts on the earlier Game of the Century are located here, but this post will deal with the rest of the afternoon’s key games.

• Marquette Wins Badger State Battle. The second-biggest game on today’s slate was a rivalry game in the Badger State. Marquette wasn’t feeling very Badgerly today, though, as Buzz Williams’ team made a statement of superiority in taking down Wisconsin in Madison. You know, at the Kohl Center, also known as the building where Wisconsin never loses (12 times under Bo Ryan coming into today). MU exploited its better quickness and play-making ability to regularly break into the gut of the Badger defense and gang-rebound the basketball, and despite a good second-half comeback from Wisconsin, Marquette remains unbeaten and served notice to the rest of the Big East that, once again, the small school on the frontier of the conference will be heard from. With a home-heavy schedule the rest of December and a neutral game against Washington next week at the Jimmy V Classic, the Golden Eagles have a great chance at hitting 2012 at 13-0. As for Wisconsin, Jordan Taylor suffered a poor game (4-10 FG, one assist, five TOs) write the Badgers out of your top ten at your own peril.
• Tu Holloway: Xavier Savior. We’ll probably be writing this a lot this year, but Tu Holloway put his team on his back in the second half of Xavier’s game against a fired-up and better-than-advertised Purdue team this afternoon, and carried the Musketeers to another win after being left for dead down 19. With under two minutes in the game and XU still down five points, Holloway drilled a three to cut the lead to two. After a Purdue turnover, here’s where we pick it up:

 These are just one-on-one moves by a player good enough to not only create his own space, but also to knock down the long jumpers. XU had a horrendous first half (18 TOs), but was able to claw back into the game by taking better care of the ball and tightening up its defense. The key, though, is Holloway. He’s such a difference-maker with the ball in his hands that you have to believe that Xavier will win just about every close finish they’re involved in this year.

• Big East Dominance. The SEC/Big East Challenge hasn’t formally ended yet, but as of this writing, the Big East had run out to an 8-2 lead with the two remaining games happening later today. After Friday night’s 4-0 Big East record, the SEC had virtually no chance to tie, but Connecticut ensured the victory in a convincing win over Arkansas, while Pittsburgh outlasted Tennessee in Knoxville. Right now, we’d peg the SEC as a four-team NCAA league with a reasonable shot at a fifth, while the Big East looks like a surefire eight-team NCAA conference with a reasonable shot for a ninth and an outside shot at a tenth.
  
• Pac-12: Best Mid-Major Conference in America? We hate to pile on this league so much, but there were five Pac-12 games this afternoon, and the league went 1-4. Perhaps worse, other than Arizona State’s somewhat surprising win at Tulsa by three points, the other four teams — UCLA, Oregon, USC, and Utah — were all noncompetitive in their losses. And it’s not like they were playing ranked teams here, folks. UCLA couldn’t hang on to an early lead against Texas in its home-away-from-home; Oregon got run out of the EnergySolutions Arena by BYU; USC put up a miserable 40 points in a loss against Minnesota; and, shudder… new Pac-12 member Utah lost by 30 to a largely mediocre Fresno State team. We were joking in the blurb title here about being a mid-major league, but the Pac-12’s KenPom profile is actually closer to the Atlantic 10, Mountain West and Missouri Valley than it is the SEC or ACC. (note: gulp, and that was before today!)

• Butler Not Butler. Nobody expected Butler to immediately recover from its personnel losses after last season’s run to the national championship game, but Brad Stevens’ team is really struggling after an overtime home loss to Valparaiso today. Through eight games, the Bulldogs’ best win came against Savannah State, and a murderer’s row awaits in the next few weeks — Purdue, Xavier, Gonzaga, Stanford. We have learned our lesson about writing off Stevens teams, but right now it wouldn’t surprise us in the least if BU enters the meat of the Horizon League schedule with an overall losing record. The Bulldogs are having trouble shooting the ball from both the line ( 61% on the season, 17-29 today) and behind the arc (29% on the season, 6-20 today), two key components of their attack — until Stevens shores up those areas, Butler will be just another mid-major team.

Kevin Doyle is an RTC contributor and the Patriot League correspondent. Each week he will examine the other 26 non-power conferences in college basketball. You can find him on twitter @KLDoyle11.

Introduction

Well this is refreshing, isn’t it? College basketball on the tube every night, several Other 26 teams already knocking some ranked BCS teams off of their high horses, and a whole lot of goodness upcoming with more early season tournaments and games. There is not a specific theme that has made itself apparent to open the season — I will usually try to hone in on a theme during the introduction of each column — but business has been usual to open the season. We have seen two major upsets with Long Beach State and Cleveland State shocking Top 10 teams — both have crawled into our Top 10 as a result — and we have not seen The Jimmer all over ESPN routinely hitting shots from 35 feet, something that was all too common last year. Rest assured though, as more and more games are played, storylines and themes will naturally develop. For now, let’s dig into the Top 10 teams for the week.

The Top 10

Tidbits from the Rankings

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In college basketball they say the coaches are the stars.  Thank goodness for that because when No. 8 Louisville (2-0) takes on reigning two-time national runner-up Butler (1-1) on Saturday at Hinkle Fieldhouse the marquee value on the rosters will not possess the sizzle it might have had a year, or even a couple of days, ago.  While many may need to rifle through programs and online game trackers to identify players, the head coaches certainly require no introduction in a game that will prove an ample test of their considerable skills.  And let’s face it, as we scour through a November slate that includes several undercard match-ups leading up to the Big East’s main events, we need something to sink our teeth into!

Pitino Will be Working Hard Against Butler

Rick Pitino is faced with the challenge of heading into a tough road venue with a team that has been besieged by injury. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish certainly are not coming through that door, and where is Greg Kite when you need him anyway?  With junior leader and point guard Peyton Siva doubtful for the game following the recent long term losses of backcourt mates Wayne Blackshear, out six-to-eight weeks due to shoulder surgery, and Mike Marra, gone for the season with an ACL tear, the Cardinals are especially thin right now, particularly at the point.  While Pitino said Siva’s injury could impact his availability beyond Saturday, he also left the door open for a cameo appearance should the game situation dictate.

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1. Just when the circus around Penn State was starting to calm down a little bit the college sports world appears to have an eerily similar situation at Syracuse. The basics of the story are that Bobby Davis, a former ball boy at Syracuse who is now 39 years old, has accused Syracuse assistant coach Bernie Fine of molesting him for more than a dozen years. It should be noted that even the strongest report of sexual abuse that we have heard out of Syracuse pale in comparison to the extent to the accusations and crimes that are now widely accepted as having happened at Penn State. Fine, who has become a fixture at Syracuse as an assistant to Jim Boeheim since Boeheim took over as head coach in 1976, has been placed on administrative leave by the school and has not commented on the accusations yet. However, Boeheim has strongly denied the accusations over the phone and in a press release issued by school. While we disagree with the tone of Boeheim’s statement (particularly the one over the phone) it should be pointed out that the local Syracuse newspaper is reporting that it looked into these claims in 2005 and could not verify any of the claims that Davis made including ones that other boys had experienced something similar as all of the people they contacted reportedly denied those claims. However, given the emotional nature that these cases can take we would caution anyone who might jump to conclusions quickly.
2. We don’t link to rankings very often because we realize that in general they are just educated guesses at best, but very few people do them like Luke Winn. Winn, who consistently puts out some of the best content you will find, came out with his latest power rankings yesterday. We won’t even bother getting into the rankings because they are irrelevant as we already mentioned, but there is a ton of interesting statistical information and even a few amusing photos that make it worth reading every week.
3. By now you have undoubtedly heard about the story of Arizona‘s Kevin Parrom and like rankings we normally would not link to a human interest story on Parrom because many of the details have already been published, but like Luke Winn with ranking posts few people do human interest stories like Dana O’Neil and her piece on Parrom is a great example of that. O’Neil actually does not talk to Kevin much for the article (at least for what is used in the article) and instead goes to those who are very close to him to get a good look at what he has had to endure over the past few months and what keeps him playing despite all that he has been through.
4. We cannot remember many top-tier teams that have had to deal with as many significant injuries as early in the season as Louisville has had to deal with this year. The latest to join the walking wounded is Peyton Siva, who sprained his ankle during a practice on Monday and is listed as “day-to-day”. In the long run, it looks like this should not be a significant setback for Louisville, but could be an issue on Saturday when they take on Butler at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Louisville should have enough to beat a Bulldog team that is not very good right now, but Siva’s injury may make them susceptible to Butler’s guards, who have been solid so far this year.
5. Tuesday night was a historic night in college basketball as Mike Krzyzewski became the all-time wins leader for men’s Division I basketball. After the press conference, Krzyzewski went into a small room close to the court where he addressed a large group of former Duke players who had come to the game to support him in addition to a group of players who played for him on the US Olympic team. One player who was not there, but played for Krzyzewski although not in a Duke uniform was Michael Jordan, who we had always assumed had been targeted by Krzyzewski early in his career at Duke. Recruiting information from the early 1980s is sparse, but a letter appeared online yesterday that appears to have been sent from Krzyzewski to Jordan (h/t Lost Letterman for the find) after Jordan told the new Duke coach that he was not interested in playing for Duke. The letter’s content is fairly generic, but it is amusing to read now and consider what might have been if Jordan had decided to play for the other team on Tobacco Road. While we were looking this up, we noticed that Jordan’s childhood home had been sold in 1998 for $37,500 (ignore the ridiculous Zillow estimate and we are assuming there was a shift in zip code boundaries because the 28405 and 28411 zip codes are next to each other) and found it humorous that you could own the house that Jordan grew up in and the backyard court that he waged his legendary battles with his brother Larry for less than half of what you would pay for for a 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card. For that price, we are surprised that some loaded foreign businessman has not bought the house and transported the entire house and yard to his or her home country as a very unique collectible.

This Weekend’s Lede. All the Way Back. College basketball trickled out last week, but with a total of 232 games taking place between Friday and Sunday nights, it’s safe to say that the November fire hose of hoops has been turned on. Every Top 25 team except one (Memphis) played at least once over the weekend, and those schools went 30-2 playing mostly unranked teams that never had much of a chance. There were a couple of exceptions, of course, and we’ll be sure to get to those below. Regardless of the quality of the ball (and it mostly ranged from adequate to poor), how satisfying was it to see regular updates over the weekend bringing you scores, highlights and storylines from games that actually count? It was fantastic, and with all of the great events coming up in the next two weeks — Champions Classic, Coaches vs. Cancer, CBE, Legends, Maui, PNIT, the conference challenges — it’s a great time to be a college basketball fan.

Your Watercooler Moment.  This one is easy.

The Setting For Outdoor Basketball in San Diego Was Spectacular (credit: US Pacific Fleet)

It’s somewhat rare that a gimmicky game like the Carrier Classic could end up being so completely awesome, but you could tell when you heard the voices of the players, coaches, media and military personnel on Friday night that they all felt like they were in the midst of something special. Maybe it was the fact that it was Veterans Day, or that President Obama was there, or that the Coronado evening came through with a gorgeously orange sunset… we don’t care. What we do care about is that the setting and venue put college basketball on a pedestal (literally) for its unofficial opening night, and for a game that sometimes fails to promote itself in a manner commensurate with its passion, fanfare and excitement, the inaugural Carrier Classic was a big-time hit. Oh, and #1 North Carolina needs to work on its offensive rebounding…

Dunktastic. Is it possible that the best dunk of the entire season was on the opening weekend?  Goodness… Jeremy Lamb, who knew?

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For two teams that aren’t near each other, play in different conferences, and don’t have some sort of natural relationship to one another, it’s not an exaggeration to say that North Carolina and Michigan State have an intense and storied rivalry. It’s a rivalry that started out with an absolute bang.

Izzo & Williams Have Elevated This Odd Rivalry

In 1957, Michigan State had a breakthrough year with it’s first share of the Big Ten title and a run in the NCAA Tournament that took the Spartans to the Final Four. There, in the semifinals, the Spartans took on the undefeated Tar Heels in a triple overtime thriller that resulted in UNC eking out a 74-70 win. This led to a championship clash with an also-undefeated Wilt Chamberlain-led Kansas team that somehow also resulted in another triple overtime slugfest and a 54-53 North Carolina victory for Frank McGuire’s team. It was North Carolina’s first national championship. In a consolation game, Michigan State would go on to play the two-time defending champions, San Francisco, which was making its first Final Four run without the great Bill Russell.  With all the big names, undefeated teams, and pair of triple overtime games, it was undoubtedly one of the best Final Fours in history. It was also only the beginning of the Spartans’ rivalry with the Tar Heels.

Since that first fateful meeting in the 1957 Final Four, it seemed like these two teams were destined for postseason clashes.  On five separate occasions, the two have squared off in the NCAA Tournament, and, unfortunately, for the Spartans, each game served as a bitter reminder of ’57. What the ’98 and ’07 clashes lacked, the ’05 and ’09 matches made up for in terms of stakes and drama. The ’05 game was another Final Four bout that was chock full of exciting moments, while the ’09 championship tilt was a remarkable rematch between two teams that had played each other at Ford Field once already that season. Of course, the rematch turned out to be nearly identical to the regular season game and quickly turned into a UNC rout.

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