The first weekend of games in December is upon us. Here are 10 things to consider throughout the weekend.

Xavier (USA Today Images)

1. Will Cincinnati get a win at Xavier? Cincinnati has lost their last six true road games at Xavier in the Crosstown Shootout, and this will be the first true road game of the season for the Bearcats. Xavier will be the second Cincinnati opponent with a top 100 KenPom rating and the first within the top 50.
2. Will Wichita State make a statement against the Big 12? A weekend trip to Baylor starts a stretch for Wichita State in which three of their next four opponents come from the Big 12. The Shockers demolished Savannah State last week, but several consistency questions arose while they were in Hawaii. Wichita State needed a second-half rally to beat California, but just days later sleptwalk through a second-half collapse against Notre Dame.
3. Who will control the pace in SMU vs. USC? Last year’s matchup between these two teams had 73 possessions, 9.5 more than the SMU season average and its highest total of the season. Coming into this year’s match-up, SMU ranks among the bottom 50 nationally in pace, while USC ranks in the top 75 overall (and top 20 in offensive pace).
4. Which Arizona team shows up in Las Vegas? Arizona has had no problems winning at the McKale Center this season (4-0) but its recent trip to the Bahamas resulted in three straight disappointing losses. The Wildcats have a marquee game upcoming against top-10 Texas A&M, but will they avoid looking past an interesting UNLV team? The match-up to watch will be down low between freshman bigs DeAndre Ayton of Arizona and Brandon McCoy of UNLV. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s Trending is a column examining the week that was in college basketball social media. Matthew Eisenberg (@matteise) is your weekly host.

The road to San Antonio started on Friday…

The journey to the #FinalFour begins today. Who’s journey will end in #SanAntonio ? pic.twitter.com/VAMw7dEPRT

— Final Four SATX (@FinalFour) November 10, 2017

It’s only after one game, but… Cincinnati is the best team in the country…

Good start for Cincinnati. pic.twitter.com/3eUMMIfmjI

— Ken Pomeroy (@kenpomeroy) November 10, 2017

It’s only after one game, but… Frank Haith‘s seat is getting warmer…

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And so it begins — that wonderful time of year when we once again see old familiar faces on the television along with our favorite teams playing college basketball. It is a glorious time, indeed. With a sizable slate of games set to commence on Friday, we officially unveil our 2017-18 preseason (and revamped) RTC Top 16. We have decided to trim our poll from 25 to 16 teams this season as a means to provide more thorough analysis and justifications for the best teams in the country. This initial poll will hold for the next 10 days or so, but you can expect our weekly regular season RTC16 to release on every subsequent Monday morning starting November 20. Along with the rankings will be the usual quick and dirty analysis that dives more deeply into how those teams are shaking out from top to bottom. To see how we did last year, check out our 2016-17 preseason poll — sure, we nailed a few (North Carolina, Oregon, Kansas, Gonzaga and Kentucky), and missed on some others (Indiana, Syracuse, Connecticut and Texas). We promise we will try to do better this time around. Here’s the preseason poll. Enjoy opening weekend!

Quick N’ Dirty Thoughts.

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RTC is providing coverage from start to finish of the NCAA Tournament for the next three weeks.

UCLA Soars Into the Sweet Sixteen (USA Today Images)

Key Takeaways.

1. UCLA Plays Its Game. As written in Friday night’s Rushed Reactions after UCLA had dispatched Kent State, the Bruins will go as far as their supernaturally-good offense takes them. Many pundits before the NCAA Tournament and leading into tonight’s game with Cincinnati suggested that the Bearcats’ grinding, defense-first style would ultimately frustrate UCLA into a bunch of bad shots and an early loss. Didn’t happen. It says here that a team’s best bet to beat Steve Alford’s team is simply hoping that UCLA’s shots are off and finding a way to outscore them. The nation’s 11th-best defense coming into tonight’s game gave up a 63.3 percent second half that included 7-of-14 from three as the Bruins took control and ultimately ran away with the game.
2. The Diversity of Options Makes Runs Impossible to Fully Contain. It’s basically pick your poison. UCLA clearly came into the game thinking that it had the interior size advantage and sought to punish the smaller Cincinnati front line with Thomas Welsh and TJ Leaf. Neither guy is a very comfortable post-up player, however, which allowed for a series of empty possessions for Cincinnati to stick around. But eventually the Bruins’ shooters — Bryce Alford (3-of-7 3FG in the second half), Lonzo Ball (3-of-4) and Isaac Hamilton (1-of-2) — found the range and opened up opportunities for Welsh and Leaf driving to the basket. The pair converted four dunks in the second half alone. Pick your poison.
3.  Cincinnati Needed Troy Caupain. Given that the Bearcats were going to have to out-offense UCLA in order to win this game, they needed a monster day from Troy Caupain. And when he nailed an early three it appeared that he might be ready to continue his stellar play from Friday against Kansas State He didn’t hit another three-pointer for the rest of the game, going 1-of-8 from distance, and finally settling on a line of nine points on 3-of-11 shooting, five rebounds and four turnovers. UCLA clearly prioritized him in its defensive schemes, but sometimes it’s also just not your night. That appears to be what happened to Caupain tonight, who finishes an excellent four-year career at Cincinnati.

Star of the Game. Lonzo Ball, UCLA. The multifaceted Ball got himself going in the second half today, ultimately providing the fuel for a run that pushed UCLA’s lead to double-figures and ultimately the win. His game totals of 18 points, seven rebounds and nine assists were all team-highs, and yet it actually felt during most of the game that he was quiet. This is an extremely talented player who knows how to pick his spots.

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Rush the Court will be covering the NCAA Tournament from start to finish over the next three weeks. 

Mick Cronin’s Team Was Very Impressive Tonight (USA Today Images)

Key Takeaways.

1. Cincinnati is More Offensive Than You Think. Forgiving the pun here, but if you haven’t watched much of Cincinnati this season you likely don’t realize that the Bearcats — known under Mick Cronin for its generally offensive offense — broke 80 points in 15 games this season. That’s not to say that anyone will mistake his team for UCLA or North Carolina on the offensive end of the floor, but it is to say that the painful droughts that often ended up beating the Bearcats have become more sporadic this year. In tonight’s first half against Kansas State, Cincinnati delivered a 65 percent shooting clinic that effectively put offensively-challenged Wildcats in a bind — how to make up an 11-point deficit without the pace or ability to make sustained runs? The Bearcats did their typical defensive work too — especially in several key moments of the second half — but beware the team that thinks the likes of Troy Caupain (23 points) and Gary Clark (15 points) aren’t legitimate scorers.
2. And Yet, the Defense. Cincinnati isn’t like Press Virginia in that it doesn’t turn you over to fuel blistering 12-0 runs that run teams out of the building. Rather, the Bearcats’ style is more like death by a slow, excruciating boil. Kansas State experienced this firsthand in the middle of tonight’s second half when, after cutting the lead to eight points with around 12 minutes remaining, the Bearcats made stops on the subsequent five possessions (including a couple blocks on what appeared like easy conversions) over three minutes to push the lead back out to 14 points. And while that may not sound like an insurmountable margin with nine minutes remaining, you could feel the air being sucked out of the sails on the Kansas State sideline. The Wildcats never got the lead under double figures again.
3. Kansas State Showed Out Well. Many of the things that Kansas State does well, Cincinnati simply does better. But to make the NCAA Tournament field as the last at-large team in and win a First Four game over a trendy team like Wake Forest showed that the Wildcats, led by senior Wesley Iwundu but primarily run by underclassmen, will be back. Bruce Weber seems in perma-hot seat status, but you’d have to think that he did enough this season to keep his job for at least one more year.

Star of the Game. Troy Caupain, Cincinnati. The Bearcats’ senior guard put together a stellar First Round game tonight, scoring 23 points on 7-of-10 shooting, grabbing seven boards and adding a couple of dimes. When he is cooking, Cincinnati is tough to beat because the defensive effort will always be there to support it.

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Preseason rankings may seem irrelevant when it comes to college basketball, but history has shown that their predictive value are surprisingly important. For example, as we have shown in this space before, the preseason poll is in fact just as predictive of a run to the Final Four as the current AP Poll. The reasoning behind this phenomenon is that the preseason polls take into account all of the changes that the mathematical models have more difficulty accounting for (i.e. coaching changes, big recruiting classes, injuries, etc.). The conventional wisdom entering the season is actually fairly sophisticated and smart.

Are You Sure You Want to Choose Michigan? (AP)

Given this intuition, let’s examine the teams that defied that wisdom throughout the season and went from unranked in the preseason to ranked in the final AP poll before the NCAA Tournament. Had the preseason polls gotten something wrong? Or did these over-performing teams regress back to their expectations in the postseason? Using the last 10 years of data that includes seed win expectation data from fivethirtyeight.com, I investigated. Of the 97 teams who qualified for analysis, 32 (33%) of those teams outperformed their win expectations in the NCAA Tournament while 65 (67%) underperformed. As a whole, a group that was expected to win 138.8 games over the 10-year sample won just 107. A statistical T-test found this difference statistically significant. In fact, only one team — Kemba Walker’s 2011 National Championship team, Connecticut — even made the Final Four.

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All day on Monday we will roll out our region-by-region analysis for the 2017 NCAA Tournament. Here, Bennet Hayes (@HoopsTraveler) breaks down the South Region from top to bottom. Also, be sure to follow our RTC South Region handle on Twitter for continuous updates the next two weeks (@RTCSouthRegion).

South Region

Favorite: #2 Kentucky (29-5, 16-2 SEC). It’s hard to pick a true favorite when examining the top three seeds in this region, as North Carolina, Kentucky and UCLA will all garner buzz as Final Four candidates. However, the Wildcats get the RTC nod as region favorites after a dominant SEC Tournament title run. The Tar Heels are the more experienced unit, but it’s possible that no team in the field can match the talent of these young Wildcats. At the very least, Malik Monk (20.4 PPG) and De’Aaron Fox (16.1 PPG, 4.8 APG) make up the scariest backcourt – freshmen or not – in the entire country, and we’ve heard that guard play matters a little bit this time of year. The Wildcats loom as a favorite in a top-heavy region.

Malik Monk and De’Aaron Fox have Kentucky rolling into this NCAA Tournament (Photo: USA Today Sports)

Should They Falter: #1 North Carolina (27-7, 14-4 ACC). The Tar Heels enter the NCAA Tournament with less momentum than Kentucky, but the ACC regular season champions have proved plenty dominant all season long. Whether it was during a three-game romp to the Maui Invitational title in November, or its perfect campaign at the Dean Dome, North Carolina sprinted past opponents like so many other Roy Williams coached teams have before. Justin Jackson (18.1 PPG) evolved into the go-to offensive weapon many thought he would never become, while Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks have manned an extremely effective frontcourt operation. The Tar Heels’ notation as secondary favorites in the region should not be perceived as a slight; this is a very good team that at worst is the 1B to Kentucky’s 1A.

Grossly Overseeded: #5 Minnesota (24-9, 11-7 Big Ten). If you are trying to make sense of Minnesota’s placement on the #5 seed line, do not look at the committee’s S-Curve for clarification. The Gophers are closer to a #4 seed than a #6 at #18 overall, and the slew of teams right behind them – Notre Dame, Iowa State, SMU, Cincinnati – all feel significantly more deserving/scarier than Minneapolis’ favorite team. As is always the case in situations like these, it’s important to note the merit of Minnesota’s season – Richard Pitino turned last year’s disappointment into success faster than any Gopher fan could have hoped – but a #5 seed this is not. Middle Tennessee State stands to benefit, and you don’t have to dig deep into the memory banks to recall a Blue Raiders’ March takedown of a Big Ten foe.

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It’s official: Conference play is here. Tuesday’s quartet of Big Ten games may have done little to impact next week’s edition of the RTC25, but it did signal the beginning of college basketball’s second season. Fans across the country shouldn’t be sad about this development, either, after a quiet final week of the non-conference season carried us through the winter holidays. The RTC25 reflects the depth of last week’s college basketball moratorium, as South Carolina (home losers to rival Clemson) was the only team to move up or down more than two spots, sliding out of the poll from #22 last week. The only other game of true consequence was significant in reality, but Louisville’s defeat of Kentucky did more for its NCAA Tournament resume than it did the Cards’ standing in the RTC25. Rick Pitino’s team rose two spots to #7 in this week’s poll, while the vaunted Wildcats dropped past the Cardinals to #8. It was a big game during an otherwise quiet week, but with conference foes lying in wait, consider the silence broken. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis of the RTC25 is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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As RTC heads into its 10th season — Season X, if you will — covering college basketball, it’s time to begin releasing our annual compendium of YouTube clips that we like to call Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball. These 30 snippets from last season’s action are completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight rather than 30 days from now. Over the next month you’ll get one reason per day until we reach the new season on Friday, November 11. You can find all of this year’s released posts here.

#8 – Where Fractions Happens.

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 preseasons.

For a little while on Monday, it seemed like the Big 12 might actually expand after months of indecisiveness. As we all know now, the league’s press conference ended up being a whole lot of nothing as commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced an extension of the status quo (until it comes up again this winter and we do this dance all over again). The will-they/won’t-they is frustrating enough for college football fans with their sport driving the decisions (or lack thereof), but it’s also exasperating on the basketball side as we’re merely along for the ride. If there’s any solace we can take from the seemingly seasonal Big 12 expansion talks, it is that the programs mentioned most frequently each have considerable basketball juice to bring to the table. Football may steer the ship in terms of overall revenue potential, but the hoops programs at BYU, Cincinnati and Connecticut would certainly make basketball even more competitive than it already is, with invested fan bases and strong histories in tow. Let’s take a closer look at each.

BYU

Jimmer Fredette Was a Household Name at BYU Several Years Ago (Jack Dempsey/AP)

• The Lowdown: The Cougars may not be as nationally relevant as they were when NPOY Jimmer Fredette was rewriting the school’s record books twice a week, but there’s still a lot to like about this program. Head coach Dave Rose has led BYU to NCAA Tournament appearances in eight of his 11 seasons at the helm, although they’ve only advanced to the Round of 32 twice and the Sweet Sixteen once in those chances. They play a very entertaining brand of offensive basketball, pushing tempo, valuing possessions, and knocking down threes. That might suggest a finesse style in the vein of Hoiberg-era Iowa State, but they also crash the defensive glass with complete abandon, ranking among the upper echelon in defensive rebounding rate on an annual basis.

With such a high level of success and an entertaining blueprint to match, the Cougars have transformed the Marriott Center into a fortress, losing just four conference games there over the last three seasons. BYU regularly ranks among the top 15 schools in attendance, topping every current Big 12 program other than Kansas.

• Recent Big 12 Meetings: The Cougars are incredibly tough to beat at home, but Iowa State did just that in November 2014, winning a 90-88 thriller in Provo. Just five days later, though, BYU exacted revenge on the Big 12 with an 86-82 win over Texas in Kansas City. Going back even further than that, BYU also lost to Iowa State in Ames in 2013 and dropped a pair of games to Baylor that same year — once in Waco and then in New York in the NIT semifinals. Read the rest of this entry »