The preseason magazines hit bookshelves across the country a few weeks ago. Each year some get progressively better, others get progressively worse and some continue to be excellent (I’m talking to you Blue Ribbon). First up is Athlon Sports, which didn’t score all that well two years ago, but I promise the magazine has taken a few strides forward.

I. Covers (5 pts) – are they cool? inclusive?

The 32 covers this year are down from 34 last year, but they include a cover for Canada (as seen above) so at least they are thinking of the Canucks up north.

Coolest Cover: Duke/North Carolina. Yes, this rivalry gets enough attention as is, but it is one of few covers that is posed. Ed Davis and Kyle Singler look like they are about to kill each plus Singler looks like he is using the men’s room.

Say what? The Memphis/Arkansas cover doesn’t feature the FedEx Forum imploding. I guess without the recruits coming in next year, the Tigers aren’t that bad off.

Total points = 4

II. Ease of Use (5 pts) – how hard is it to find confs/teams?

Table of contents in the beginning is very easy to use. Plus, you can pretty much just open up the magazine and figure out where you need to go quickly as the magazine is done alphabetically first by conference then by team.

Total points = 4.5

III. Roundup (10 pts) – every mag has one – tell us something new!

10 Things to Watch is a little better than last year’s version. This one is a little more original and contained a few nuggets that surprised me: #8 about LaceDarius Dunn and his incredible lack of assists stands out.

Hoops Madness is the same old. Nothing really jumps out at me this year. The Hoops Superlatives  is full of debate — Scottie Reynolds is listed as the top scorer!?!

Total points = 4.5

IV. Features (15 pts) – give us some insightful and unique storylines.

There are three main features this year–one is above-average, the next is average, and the final one is a little below average. There’s an outstanding feature on whether mid-major coaches should make the jump to a larger conference. There’s also the standard “look at what John Calipari is doing” feature and finally one that seems like it is a year late. Athlon takes a look at the trend of players going overseas.

Athlon also has The Scoop which is a collection of interviews with some of the game’s top players. Nothing too noteworthy except Washington‘s Isaiah Thomas plans to stick around Seattle for awhile.

Overall, the section is better than last year, but there is still lots of room for improvement.

Total points = 8

V. Predictions (20 pts) – how safe are their picks? do they take any chances? are they biased toward the big boys?

Athlon projects the full field of 65 as well as a preseason top 25. A rematch of one of last year’s Elite Eight games is their projected national title game (doesn’t take long to figure out which two teams they are picking in the finals).

Big Conference Bias: Only one mid-major makes their Sweet 16, but then again, they make their bracket based on their rankings with the higher seed always advancing. Butler is the only mid-major Athlon has in its top 16.

Mid-Major Watch: Athlon seems pretty high on the three teams they’ve got in the top 25: BYU, Butler, and Dayton. Major diss on Siena though. The Saints are projected as a seven seed, but get barely a blurb in the magazine. That’s a big-time negative.

All-Americans: Putting Devan Downey, Patrick Patterson, and Kyle Singler on the first team is debatable. Downey is great, but first team? Patterson may not put the numbers up needed to be a first-teamer and Kyle Singler should have an outstanding year, but put him ahead of Sherron Collins, Evan Turner, or Willie Warren? Athlon also doesn’t include any freshmen on its top three teams which is unrealistic.

Boldest Prediction: The Pac-10 receiving only three bids to the dance. Athlon has California, Washington, and UCLA going dancing. It’s going to be a really down year for Pac-10 ball, but it’s tough fathom only three teams getting in. Someone else (Arizona? Oregon State?) has to step up.

What they got right: It’s hard to argue with most of Athlon’s conference standings predictions. The SEC, Big East, and ACC stand out the most as being the most realistic.

Total points = 14

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Ed. Note: for all of the posts in the RTC 09-10 Class Schedule series, click here.

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams has been down this road before.

After hoisting his first national title on that early April night in St. Louis, Williams had to endure an eerily similar task as to what faces him this upcoming season, his seventh in Chapel Hill. The 2004-05 champions lost center Sean May, swingman Marvin Williams, point guard Raymond Felton and shooting guard Rashad McCants to the riches of the NBA, yet Williams managed, in large part to a recruiting class led by Tyler Hansbrough with returnees David Noel and Reyshawn Terry, to finish 21-6 (12-4) and in the top 15 in both polls. The situation this season parallels the tremendous overload facing Williams after his first banner. Losing Hansbrough, ACC POY Ty Lawson and sharpshooters Wayne Ellington and Danny Green, a group that made up the large portion of the Heels scoring rampage a season ago, will be difficult to overcome. Luckily for Williams, he returns some decent pieces to complement a loaded recruiting class. Not to mention he’s the best coach in the nation.

North Carolina returns some high upside players that could truly emerge after playing behind the mentioned superstars of the previous few campaigns. There’s senior and experienced leadership still in the fray- notably forward Deon Thompson and defensive stopper Marcus Ginyard– that should help out all of the incoming young talent on the Heels roster. Knowing he’d lose such integral pieces, Williams loaded his 2009 class with top-50 talent such as skilled forward John Henson, guards Dexter Strickland and Leslie McDonald and big men David Wear and Travis Wear. Many believe sophomore Ed Davis is a surefire lottery pick and Tyler Zeller may emerge with a healthy full season. Last year’s backup to Lawson, Larry Drew II, is also back and will be the engine that controls the Heels attack.

Just because Williams has a predominantly young squad, he didn’t shy away from challenging his team early and often on this year’s schedule to go along with the rigors of the ACC. Let’s examine:

Non-Conference Schedule Rank: 10. One way to sum up the Heels schedule this season: I’ll be stunned if North Carolina isn’t at the top of the strength of schedule list when we’re starting to look at those types of numbers in February and March. Forget playing NCAA tournament teams Duke and Georgia Tech twice in conference play (along with contenders Wake Forest, Boston College, Clemson and Wake Forest on the road), the Heels scheduled three preseason top-ten teams on the slate for this non-conference season. It wasn’t exactly planned like this; who could have planned Damion James would stick around for another year or John Calipari would completely overhaul Kentucky in such a short period of time? Still, give Williams credit for setting up these huge games against prestigious programs. North Carolina will take on possible Big Ten contender Ohio State in the semifinal of the 2K Sports Classic and likely top-15 California should they emerge victorious. Also planned is a visit to Rupp Arena to battle Kentucky in one of the top non-conference games on the season and a trip to Arlington to face Texas in Jerry Jones’ new monstrosity. Both Kentucky and Texas are projected top ten teams. Not enough for you, Roy? Michigan State will visit Chapel Hill in a national title game rematch as part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, another squad that could finish their season in Indianapolis.

Cupcake City: The Heels do receive a few easy warm-ups before traveling to New York in Florida International (Isiah Thomas’ college coaching debut, marred by minor controversy) and North Carolina Central. Carolina also faces Gardner-Webb, Presbyterian, Marshall, Valparaiso and Albany at home while taking a trip to Charleston to face Bobby Cremins’ Cougars in a rare instance of a ACC school visiting a SoCon opponent. Not exactly cupcakes, but Nevada and Rutgers also make appearances at the Dean Dome this season.

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On the eve of college football’s start…  let’s get caught up on the news and notes from the last week in roundball.

• Preaching to the Choir.  Gary Parrish wrote an article that was ostensibly about the A10’s financially-motivated decision to move from its ancestral home of Philadelphia to its Sun Belt environs of Newport News, Virginia, but morphed into a scathing critique of the rapidly increasing revenue gap between the power conferences and the mid-majors.  We liken this a little bit to what has happened in major league baseball over the past twenty years or so.  It’s not an issue of there once being equality where now there is none; it’s more an issue of relative inequality being much larger than it ever has been (and only increasing).  The Yankees and other major market franchises in MLB always had more money to spend on players, marketing, etc., and were summarily rewarded with larger media deals and ticket prices.  This is similarly true for the power conferences in football and basketball.  But in the modern era of 100-million dollar contracts for baseball players and billion-dollar contracts for media rights, what we’re witnessing is an acceleration of the revenue gap between large and small to a future point that is completely unsustainable.  As an example of the disparity, the $2.2B television contract that the SEC has with ESPN is probably worth more than the contracts of every mid-major league in existence has ever had, combined.  Seriously.  As Parrish points out, this sort of exposure leads to recruits, and the cycle starts all over again.  We’re really uncertain as to how the NCAA plans to deal with this over the next decade, but if we know anything about the entity at all, we’re betting that they’ll be completely behind the curve when something happens.        
• Vegas Watch: Big 12 Preview.  We mentioned this in a previous FBs, but Vegas Watch is leading an exercise previewing each of the six BCS conferences using last year’s Pomeroy rankings, this year’s incoming recruits, and the sharp eye of his respected cronies (Money Line Journal and Sports Investments).  He invited RTC along for the ride this time around, and we tried to provide some value where we could.  Keep an eye out for the remaining installments over the next several weeks.  (note: not even a regression analysis is needed to determine KU is #1 in the Big 12)
• Get Creative, SEC Schools.  Look, it’s not every year that a player named Nimrod Tishman comes into your league as a freshman, assuming that the NCAA clears his amateur status in the next few weeks.  But Billy Donovan’s Florida Gators picked up the 6’6 Israeli to replace Nick Calathes and you should expect to see his curious name all over the place next season.   So here’s our request of the other 11 SEC schools – get creative.  Come up with some really clever signs and chants for when Florida visits your house this winter.  If we hear a school derisively chanting his first name with no further thought or effort put into it, we’re going to be extremely disappointed.  Come on, UK and UT fans, we know you’ve got something up your sleeves – an opportunity like this only comes around once a decade. 
• SI’s 25 Things We Miss in Basketball.  This wasn’t exclusively a list of college basketball memories, but the ones chosen by Grant Wahl, Seth Davis and others were exceptional.  It’s not every day we can honestly say we learned something completely new about the modern era of CBB, but the piece about Bo Ellis designing Marquette’s national title year “untucked” jerseys indeed was (image here).  It was so ugly that the NCAA banned it a few years later.  We also enjoyed the pieces on great team nicknames, Len Bias and the SEC in the 80s.  Give it a read.  You won’t regret it.
• Closing Out Pitino/Sypher.    An awful lot of bandwidth was used writing about the Pitino/Sypher Scandal, and presumably there’s more to this story coming down the road.  But the best piece we read last week was this one on CNNSI by Pablo Torre, who attempts to describe Pitino’s inner circle and how intertwined they all are.  The worst one was this abomination by Jason Whitlock.  Then there was this hard-hitting interview from WLKY in Louisville… 
• Comings and Goings.  J’Covan Brown was cleared to play at Texas this season.  Ditto with Mississippi St.’s John Riek, who will sit out the first nine games of the season over extra benefits.  Pitt’s Gilbert Brown, on the other hand, will be sitting out the fall semester due to academic troubles.  South Carolina picked up a heckuva transfer in walk-on Malik Cooke, who averaged 9/5 for Nevada last season.  Darryl “Truck” Bryant’s legal troubles don’t appear to be too burdensome – he’ll face no jail time after leaving the scene of an accident and striking a WVU student with his vehicle in separate incidents this summer.  What’s that get you under Huggins?  A one-game suspension?  Finally, in the let’s-keep-our-fingers-crossed dept., BYU’s Dave Rose got a clean bill of health after his pancreatic cancer surgery earlier this summer.  He’s hopeful that he’ll be back on the court this season (his next scan is in two weeks).
• Quick Hits.  John Wooden: On death, penises and politics.  Calipari: disappointed in Memphis penalties.  NCAA Selective Enforcement: we need as many people writing as many articles about these inconsistencies as possible.  Tom Crean: Marquette HOFer.  Kevin Stallings: forgoes $100k raise for team trip Down Under.  Greg Paulus:  starting QB at Cuse.  Goodman: impact transfers for 09-10.  Patrick Christopher: the new JJ Redick.  Eric Bledsoe: better than Wall?  Scout: summer all-americans and class of 2011 rankings.   Delaware: looks like NFL parlays or nothing at all, folks.  Arizona: can the Cats scratch their way to 26 in a row?  Billy Clyde: the least hirable coach in America?  FIU: caves, will play UNC after all.  Jarvis Varnado: heading home, but what caused his sudden illness?  Ed Davender: ticket scammer.  BBall Prospectus: careful slurping that class of 09 just yet…  Nebraska: inventing new ways to hold scholarship players.  Teddy Dupay: 30 days in jail.  NCAA Ethics: John Beilein is the head man, and here’s what coaches want to see.  Bank Robber Recruit: Anthony DiLoreto signs with Utah St. 

Ed. Note: for all of the posts in the RTC 09-10 Class Schedule series, click here.

Just one summer ago, Lorenzo Romar was firmly entrenched on the hot seat. In the past two seasons, the once proud Washington program compiled a lackluster 34-27 (15-21) record, the 2006-07 campaign ending without postseason play and the 2007-08 season concluding with a first round CBI loss to Valparaiso. The Brandon Roy and Nate Robinson era in the middle of the decade- complete with two Sweet 16’s, a #1 seed, a conference tournament title and one of my personal favorite NCAA Tournament games ever– seemed like ages ago for the purple-clad Washington faithful that were pining for their first Pac-10 championship since 1985.

Enter stud freshman Isaiah Thomas. Add in a large dose of senior double-double machine Jon Brockman. Sprinkle in an overachieving supporting cast and a raucous Bank of America Arena and you have the ingredients for that long-anticipated Pac-10 title. Sure, the Huskies fell in a heartbreaker to Purdue in the second round of the tournament, but the Washington basketball program was back in a big way. The Lute Olson departure and subsequent mess at Arizona also prompted five-star point guard Abdul Gaddy to de-commit from the Wildcats and join Washington for the upcoming season.

Will the Huskies repeat as Pac-10 regular season champions? Let’s dissect the route that Romar and his team must take to accomplish such a feat:

Non-Conference Schedule Rank: 2.5. With a lacking Pac-10 and a non-conference schedule that appears extremely easy at first look, Washington’s computer numbers could suffer in February and March when seeds are being discussed. The quality wins may not just be there, and Romar has nobody to blame but himself for the lack of challenging non-conference contests. After a meeting with Central Washington, the Athletes in Action Basketball Classic will bring Wright State, Belmont and Portland State to Seattle. Other home games include such powerhouses as San Francisco, San Jose State, Portland, Cal State Northridge and Montana. The Huskies will have to travel to Lubbock to take on a Texas Tech team still finding its bearings and Texas A&M visits Seattle just prior to conference play. Even a trek to Anaheim to take on Georgetown should find the Huskies favored.

Cupcake City: Washington’s frosting-filled schedule means the matchup with Georgetown is crucial. Lose to the Hoyas and Romar won’t have one single significant non-conference victory to tout unless one of those two Big 12 teams surprise (A&M is the most likely). It’s never too early to be projecting where teams may stack up in relation to seeds and brackets. Even if Washington wins another conference title, the Pac-10’s RPI will not stand out and the Huskies non-conference RPI could be in the 200’s. Don’t think the committee won’t pay attention to that number.

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Ed. Note: for all of the posts in the RTC 09-10 Class Schedule series, click here.

I’m extremely proud to introduce a new feature here at Rush the Court, one you’ll be seeing every few days or so up until the much-anticipated opening tip in November, called RTC’s 09-10 Class Schedule. The premise is simple: dissect and analyze the schedules of the most notable teams in the nation this season, from the easiest to the hardest stretch, the most intense rivalry to the early season tune-ups, upset watch to RTC potential. If your team is lingering around the expected preseason top-25, their schedule will be scrutinized in the next couple of months. There’s no rhyme or reason to the madness (we won’t be going conference-by-conference or ranking each team), just a prominent school every few days as the releases begin to trickle out from the respective schools.

We figured it would be appropriate to begin the feature with the team expected to represent the class of college basketball in the 2009-10 campaign: Kansas. Here’s the official team schedule:

Non-Conference Schedule Rank (ranked 1 thru 10, 10 being the most difficult): 8. Bill Self realizes he must challenge his Jayhawks if they wish to reach the promised land in April this season, and while the Big 12 certainly provides distinct challenges, Self has loaded the non-conference slate with three games against potential top-15 competition and two more storied programs on the fringe of being ranked. Kansas will take on Michigan and California at home in back-to-back contests in December, two teams returning plenty of talent from a season ago and featuring playmakers like Manny Harris and Jerome Randle. Self also scheduled a home-and-home with Tennessee (last season’s barn burner) and the Jayhawks will make their return trip on January 10 in one of the more anticipated non-conference games this season. Other than Tennessee and a trip to Philly to take on Temple, Kansas’ only true road game during non-conference play is a meeting with UCLA as part of the Big 12/Pac 10 Hardwood Series. They also travel a short ways to St. Louis for a matchup with Memphis. While Kansas playing such big name schools sounds sexy, neither should pose an enormous conundrum for a loaded KU squad. Overall, give Self credit for challenging his team rather than padding the record. The RPI will notice when they’re battling for a #1 seed in February and March.

Cupcake City: The Jayhawks may have scheduled their fair share of below-average competition, but Self did a fairly decent job of bringing teams to Lawrence with a recent history of success. Even the typical November and December schools are somewhat formidable in the big picture (they may not be against KU, of course): Radford, Belmont and Cornell have recent tournament experience, Oakland is the favorite in the Summit and La Salle is one of the sleepers in the Atlantic 10. The portion of the schedule covered with frosting, though, has to be November 19- December 2 with Central Arkansas, Tennessee Tech and Alcorn State coming to Lawrence. I’m not going out on a limb when I say some lopsided scores could be in order.

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Did you all miss Bracketology as much as I did? While the intense days of February and March seem like eons away, here’s a dose of bracket madness to keep you college basketball diehards happy in the heart of Summer 2009. Some brief notes regarding the bracket:

– The preseason #1 seeds are (in order) Kansas, Kentucky, Texas and Michigan State. As the number one overall seed, Kansas plays the closest to home in St. Louis, Kentucky is placed in Houston as higher priority over Texas, and so on. The only #2 seed that was considered for a top seed was Purdue, but I gave the slight Big Ten edge to last year’s national runner-up from East Lansing.

– They lost Tyler Hansbrough, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, Danny Green…and North Carolina is still a #2 seed? It’s true. Due to an outstanding recruiting class, an overall decrease in talent across the board in college basketball (especially from upperclassmen) and returnees like Ed Davis, Larry Drew and Deon Thompson expected to make a significant leap in production, North Carolina will most likely be at the top with Duke as preseason ACC favorites.

– The other difficult call was in the Pac-10 between Washington and California. While the Golden Bears return all of their talent from an overachieving season, I’m in love with the Huskies backcourt of Isaiah Thomas and Abdul Gaddy. As the returning champions, I gave them the slight nod as the #3 seed in the Salt Lake region, with Cal sliding to a #4 seed.

– This might be painful to swallow for all the Big Ten haters out there (I’m definitely not one of them), but it’s going to be the best conference in the land this season. Michigan State and Purdue are both potential number ones, Ohio State returns nearly everyone besides the disappointing B.J. Mullens, Illinois returns a talented group (losing Frazier and Meachem could hurt initially), and both Minnesota and Michigan have plenty returning. You can never discount Wisconsin either.

– The last team in? Vanderbilt from the SEC. The last team out? Pittsburgh from the Big East. Really, I wanted to put the Panthers in, but they lost DeJuan Blair, Levance Fields, Sam Young, Jermaine Dixon and Tyrell Biggs. That’s just too much to overcome, even if Jamie Dixon is their head coach and the Petersen Events Center is one of the most difficult places to play.

– The Pac-10 has only three teams in at this point. I expect them to receive more bids when it’s all said and done, but right now I just can’t put anyone else in the field besides Washington, Cal and UCLA. Both Arizona and USC are total messes. Washington State, Arizona State and Oregon State appear to be NIT clubs at this point.

Last Four In: Wisconsin, Vanderbilt, Syracuse, LSU

Last Four Out: Pittsburgh, Seton Hall, Mississippi, Miami (FL)

Next Four Out: Marquette, Creighton, Florida State, Arizona

Bids per conference: Big East (8), ACC (7), Big 12 (7), Big Ten (7), SEC (7), Pac-10 (3), Atlantic 10 (2).

Automatic bids: Binghamton, Dayton, North Carolina, Jacksonville, Kansas, Villanova, Montana, Radford, Michigan State, Long Beach State, Old Dominion, Tulsa, Butler, Cornell, Siena, Akron, Morgan State, Northern Iowa, BYU, Mount St. Mary’s, Murray State, Washington, Holy Cross, Kentucky, College of Charleston, Sam Houston State, Prairie View A&M, Oakland, Western Kentucky, Gonzaga, Utah State.

This is admittedly a really stupid exercise given that it’s not very easy to project how these teams will look in six months, but everyone does it anyway, so as your full-service college basketball service provider, we feel obligated to disseminate the information for you.  Send us more links as they come available and we’ll add them to the list.

Update: here are some insanely too early all-americans for 2009-10, courtesy of CHN.

Update 2: here are the new aggregate rankings, taking into account Parrish, Goodman and Katz’s rankings.

Note: for the aggregate ranking, we only aggregated the top ten, and teams that were named on every list were ranked higher than those ranked on all but one, all but two, etc.  Then teams were ranked within that criterion (ie, KU, Syracuse, MSU and Purdue were each ranked by all five lists, but UNC was only ranked on four).

Some very quick notes on these rankings:

• Clearly most everyone thinks Kansas is going to keep Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich around for another year.   Fair pick there, but Pete Thamel at the NYT must think differently in that regard.
• Same thing with Syracuse and Jonny Flynn.
• North Carolina will probably lose Lawson and Ellington, but we all know they’ll still be a top ten team next year.  Undoubtedly Vitale would have had them there if he’d bothered to list more than five teams.
• Duke will likely lose G-Henderson, but they’ll have more than enough coming back and entering the program to keep themselves squarely in the top 10.  Not sure what the NYT and Chicago Tribune are thinking there.
• Wake Forest and Kentucky are wildcards at this point.  Wake could end up losing both Al-Farouq Aminu and Jeff Teague, which would put the Deacs back in the NIT, while Kentucky could end up with largely the same team it had last year if none of the top recruits follow Calipari to Lexington.  These are two huge stay-tuneds.
• People overrate Tourney performance.  Texas, UCLA, Cal, Texas A&M… even Florida should be strong next year.  St. Mary’s if they keep Patty Mills and Davidson if they keep Stephen Curry as well.

While most of the nation has been fixated on the Final 4 and the circus going on in Lexington, which is probably over (for now), several players have decided to enter the NBA Draft. Here’s the list:

• DaJuan Summers (Georgetown, junior)–#47 in Chad Ford’s Top 100/#47 in the DraftExpress Top 100
• Nick Calathes (Florida, sophomore)–#38 in Chad Ford’s Top 100/#73 in the DraftExpress Top 100
• Patrick Christopher (California, junior)–Unranked
• Brandon Costner (NC State, junior)–Unranked
• Greivis Vasquez (Maryland, junior)–#55 in Chad Ford’s Top 100/#78 in the DraftExpress Top 100
• B.J. Mullens (Ohio State, freshman)–#21 in Chad Ford’s Top 100/#15 in the DraftExpress Top 100

Summers is the only one who appears to be in the process of selecting an agent, but don’t expect to see Mullens back in Columbus next year as he did not even register for spring classes accordging to some reports.

We’re back with the second annual review of how the major conferences are doing after one weekend of the NCAA Tournament.  As we all are aware, the Dance eliminates the pretenders – that means you, Wake and Washington – so that the teams with legitimate chops remain standing.  Chalk has predominantly ruled this tournament so far, but that doesn’t keep us from evaluating which conferences are performing better or worse than expectations.   We review the conferences with multiple bids below…

Big East  (7 bids, 5 remaining, 11-2 record)

The Big East was the most powerful conference all year and they are proving it in the postseason.  West Virginia was the only first round loser, and Marquette was outlasted by a tough-as-nails Missouri team in the second round.  All other Big East teams advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, setting a new record for the total number from one conference (5).  What’s more is that each of these teams are F4-caliber; there isn’t a single Cinderella in the group.  It wouldn’t surprise us if this league managed to get 75% of the F4 entrants this year, and we fully expect all five to play into the national quarterfinals.

Verdict:  A.  The Big East’s expected # of wins for the tournament is 16.2, and there’s a solid chance that the league will bust through twenty wins this season in setting another new record.

Big 12  (6 bids, 3 remaining, 9-3 record)

For the second consecutive year, the Big 12 had another great first round (6-0), culminating in their three best teams making it to the Sweet Sixteen.  The league hasn’t had an upset yet, and the three losing teams – Texas, Oklahoma St., and Texas A&M, acquitted themselves nicely in five of their six games (lone exception: TAMU vs. UConn).  Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma all have tough but winnable games if they play well, and the Big 12 should reasonably expect to see one of them playing into next weekend.  For a “down” year in the league, this is a great performance.

Verdict: A.  The Big 12 already has nine wins against an expected performance of 10.57 wins, which basically means they’re doing really well so far.

Atlantic 10  (3 bids, 1 remaining, 3-2 record)

The A10 got three teams into the Dance and made the most of its opportunity, winning two first round games (one an upset with #11 Dayton over #6 WVU), and sending Xavier to yet another Sweet Sixteen.  We don’t feel that XU has much of a chance to advance the league’s banner further against Pitt, but never count out a Sean Miller team.  Xaviercruised to the Sweets against two good teams.

Verdict: A-.  The league was expected to win 2.52 games and they’ve already won three, so anything beyond that is gravy.  How pathetic is it that the A10 is outperforming the SEC by a country mile?

Horizon (2 bids, 0 remaining, 1-2 record)

The Horizon had a chance to make some serious noise in this Tournament, but typically-solid Butler couldn’t hold up its end of the bargain when it lost to #8 LSU (who was probably underseeded).  However, Cleveland St. so far has had the upset of the Dance with its throttling of #4 Wake Forest, so we’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

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Maryland (#10, West, Kansas City pod)
Vs. California (#7)
Thurs., 3/19 at 2:55 PM
Vegas Line: Pick ’em

General Profile
Location: College Park, MD
Conference: ACC, At-Large
Coach: Gary Williams, 417-228 at Maryland, 622-356 overall
08-09 Record: 20-13, 7-9
Last 12 Games: 6-6
Best Win: Defeated UNC, 88-85 on February 21st
Worst Loss: Lost to Morgan State, 66-65 on January 7th (Ed. Note: We think the 41-point loss at Duke on January 24th may have been just as bad.)
Off. Efficiency Rating: 108.2; 72nd
Def. Efficiency Rating: 93.5; 47th

Nuts ‘n Bolts
Star Player(s): Greivis Vasquez (17.2 PPG, 5.5 RPG, and 5.1 APG)
Unsung Hero: C Dave Neal (8.3 ppg, 39% 3pt shooter)
Potential NBA Draft Pick(s): Greivis Vasquez (58th in 2010)
Key Injuries: PF/C Jerome Burney, out for season
Depth: 28.3% (233rd nationally); percentage of minutes played by reserves
Achilles Heel: Lack of size. Maryland doesn’t have anyone on the team bigger than 6’7″. The Terps’ starting center is 6’6″ and can’t jump. If a team has good big men, they can have some great games. They’ve been able to neutralize by extensive use of zone defense, but it can only do so much.
Will Make a Deep Run if…: Greivis Vasquez gets hot and someone else (Eric Hayes, Landon Milbourne, or Sean Mosley) can step up and provide another consistent offensive option.
Will Make an Early Exit if…: They can’t defend in the post or get any rebounds. That’s caused quite a few losses this year already.

NCAA History
Last Year Invited: 2007. Lost to Butler in the second round.
Streak: N/A
Best NCAA Finish: National Champion (2002)
Historical Performance vs. Seed (1985-present): +0.28. On average, Maryland wins 0.28 more games per year than would be expected for their seed based on historical standards.

Other
Six Degrees to Detroit: Two famous Terrapins (Juan Dixon and Joe Smith) have played for the Detroit Pistons in recent years, but the Terrapin with the greatest success in Detroit was Gene Shue. Shue was a 5-time All-Star as a Piston including a 1st team All-NBA selection and a 2nd team All-NBA selection.
Distance to First Round Site: 1,072 miles
School’s Claim to Fame: On the field/court, Maryland’s renowned for having a great all-around athletic program – soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, football, basketball, and even competitive cheer all consistently compete at the highest levels. Outside of the playing field, Maryland grads are responsible for Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld (Larry David), the Muppets (Jim Henson), 30 Rock (Beth McCarthy), The Boondocks (Aaron McGruder), The Wire (David Simon), Outback Steakhouse (Robert Basham), SIRIUS Radio (Robert Briskman), and Under Armor (Kevin Plank). Oh, yeah, and Google, too (Sergey Brin).
School Wishes It Could Forget: Several things, unfortunately. First, there was the near-death sentence punishment passed down by the NCAA, which set the program back several years. There was also the massive riots after the Terps won the natty in 2002 which included burning couches and massive crowds throughout the streets. (Ed. Note: Len Bias too.)
Prediction: I have Maryland winning over Cal, simply because Cal’s size advantage isn’t nearly as pronounced as some of the teams Maryland has played recently. Having a team to go eye-to-eye would be quite a change. Memphis just has too much athleticism, though, and will probably have a chip on their shoulder due to the seeding.
Major RTC stories: Gary Williams Hates Graduation, Maryland Responds, Make Your Case: Maryland Terrapins, Daily Obituaries: 03.08.09 (oops), More Intrigue at Maryland, Trouble in College Park,

Preview written by “bbroman” of Testudo Times.