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

For the first time this offseason, thanks to new NCAA legislation allowing coaches to work with their teams over the summer, coaches began official practice with a good grip on what to expect from their teams this season. This is a generally positive development. It helps eliminate some of the rust players typically carry into fall workouts, allows coaches to begin formulating and implementing tactical tweaks earlier than usual, and gives incoming freshmen a chance to leave a positive first impression while benefiting from a longer and more relaxed transition into their college careers. Sadly, this takes some of the luster off Midnight Madness, which is traditionally viewed with excitement and anticipation as the official start of hoops practice and the symbolic commencement of another season-long slate of hardwood drama. But from a coaches perspective, getting an early look at your team before the usual date would seem like a positive change of pace, if nothing else.

All the Hoosiers need to do is sneak by Georgia to do battle with a promising UCLA squad in the Legends Classic final (Photo credit: Sandra Dukes/US Presswire)

With teams starting preseason preparations early this year, some of the usual sloppiness of non-conference play should be replaced by a more crisp and disciplined brand of basketball. This hypothesis may or may not bear fruit, but whatever the effect of the rule – whether it better conditions teams for promising starts, or eliminates the intensity of fall preseason workouts – the value of an extended offseason program will be put to the test in rather abrupt fashion with the annual slate of non-conference tournaments. These little events spring up stateside just as much as they do in island states and commonwealths, from Las Vegas to Brooklyn, Hawaii to Puerto Rico, and pretty much anywhere with a basketball court, hotels and some bleachers. It’s awful hard to keep track of them all, so I’ve chosen five events to narrow your focus. Each fixture is intriguing in its own way, and a variety of factors went into constructing the list. Exciting games between top teams carried the most weight.

On a side note: I decided to exclude mega-events such as the ACC/Big Ten and SEC/Big East Challenges, as well as the Preseason NIT. Those are great events, no doubt, but they’re great events each and every year. Plus, they don’t fit the categorical purpose of this exercise, so listing them here is unnecessary. I also excluded mini-events such as the Gotham Classic, Jimmy V Classic, Champions Classic and Wooden Classic in favor of actual tournament-style events.

1. Legends Classic 

• Where: Barclays Center; Brooklyn, New York
• Teams: Indiana, Georgia, UCLA, Georgetown
• When: November 19-20
• Bracket

Before we get to breaking down the matchups, the venue – the state of the art Barclays Center, which offers a cutting-edge food-ordering app, free wi-fi and the very real possibility you might spot hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, 2013 Super Bowl halftime diva Beyonce, or both – is a spectacle on its own, an urban hoops palace taking a lead role in modernizing the sports viewing experience with unprecedented technological amenities. Watching basketball played on that court is exciting no matter what teams inhabit it. Then you take a shiny new stadium and put two Top 25 squads on the floor, both of whom will still be figuring out their lineups and rounding into form, and it’s hard to envision anyone being disappointed by the end product. If Indiana can get by Georgia in one semifinal and UCLA takes care of business against Georgetown in the other (which, admittedly, is far from a guarantee), the championship game could make for one of the upcoming college hoops calendar’s best non-conference games altogether, let alone the bracketed tournament variety. Indiana will get its first real test of the season, while UCLA may still be feeling things out with an expected freshman-heavy lineup. If I had my druthers, I’d rather see this game played later on in the  schedule, mostly because of the very real possibility that No. 1 recruit Shabazz Muhammad won’t be available due to an ongoing NCAA review of possible violations committed during his recruitment. With Muhammad, the potential Indiana-UCLA Final is a Final Four-worthy bout. Without him, it’s exciting but incomplete, insofar as it won’t accurately gauge the Bruins at full strength against another legitimate national title contender.

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We saw this bit of news on Twitter a little while ago, and now an AP story on SI.com confirms it: Mississippi State’s Renardo Sidney fought with a teammate in the stands on Thursday night just moments before the tipoff of the Hawaii vs Utah game at the Diamond Head Classic. According to the linked article (and the video below, of course), punches were thrown and Sidney was escorted out by police. No arrests were made.

[h/t: @dlhil00]

Sidney’s opponent in this particular scrap was junior forward Elgin Bailey. Earlier in the day, Sidney had scored 19 points and pulled six rebounds in just 20 minutes of action in the Bulldogs’ 69-52 win over San Diego, playing in just his second game for MSU. Bailey had two points and eight boards in 21 minutes of play.

Susan Shan, a sportswriter covering the tournament and proprietor of SusanShan.com, posted an eyewitness account from a person associated with the team who saw the buildup to the fight as well as the aftermath. In the account she received from this witness, while the reasons for the squabble were rather trifling, Bailey appears to be more in the wrong, and may have even tried to attack an officer.

Sidney was suspended by head coach Rick Stansbury for Mississippi State’s game against Washington State on Wednesday because of an “outburst” of Sidney’s during the team’s practice on Tuesday. While there have been no official details emerge as to the reason for the fight in the stands on Thursday — we admit, no matter why it started, we can’t think of many things that would justify a brawl in the stands with a teammate — it doesn’t really matter who’s found to be at fault in the end. It cannot be ignored that, since joining the squad, Sidney now has as many behavioral gaffes as games under his belt. Sidney is bound to again face punishment from Stansbury, if not an outright removal from the team. Forget why the fight happened — the point is that it happened at all, and that Sidney, just off a disciplinary action, is seen throwing punches in the stands at a person — a teammate who is on the ground, mind you — in full view of spectators and TV cameras.

This thing brings to mind those awful images from the infamous Pacers-Pistons atrocity exhibition  (the Malice in the Palace) from 2004, one of the lowest moments in American professional sports. True, the court/crowd barrier was never broken in this case — or was it? Whether they’re on the playing surface or sitting in the stands, athletes are representatives their schools, and we wonder how many invites to the Diamond Head Classic that Mississippi State will be receiving in the upcoming years.

Obviously we should all reserve final judgment until the full details are known, or at least until Stansbury comments on this issue. We’ll update the story as details emerge.

After sitting out for a season and nine games, Renardo Sidney made his debut for Mississippi State this past Saturday. The 6’11, 270-pound forward played 25 minutes, scored 12 points, snagged three boards, and fouled out against Virginia Tech. The Hokies smoked Sidney’s Bulldogs, 88-57.

Now, for Sidney, it’s back to the pine. He’s not sitting because of his performance during his only game, though. The problem was his behavior during practice on Monday.

Sitting Out Is Nothing New For Sidney

Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury suspended Sidney one game for an outburst during the Bulldogs’ workout ahead of their game against Washington State on Wednesday in the Diamond Head Classic in Honolulu. Stansbury originally announced the suspension as an indefinite one, but a school official later confirmed that Sidney would only be out for a single game.

 There’s a lot of news out there today…  which only means one thing…

• Goodman continues on his crusade to expose the underbelly of the game with today’s lead – the father of UK’s new hotshot recruit, Daniel Orton, was paid three times over the summer to give talks at Billy Gillispie’s camp.  This is completely legal, by the way.  Discuss. 
• Too many preseason/holiday tourneys?  ESPN announced today that the Diamond Head Classic will begin in 2009 at the University of Hawaii.  It will finish up on Christmas Day, which will provide a nice collegiate alternative to the annual Shaq-Kobe matchup in the NBA.
• Please read this, “conference fans.”  It’s even truer in basketball.
• Is it sad or compelling that this endorsement could tip North Carolina to Obama in three weeks? 
• Ok, great.  Players are graduating more than they used to.  But is that because they’re committed to the degree program or schools are making it easier to get that degree?
• A quick Class of 2009 recruiting update from NW Wins, as well as a nice overview of the likelihood of Carolina running the table in the regular season this year.
• WAC coaches pick Nevada to win their conference, while Big South coaches/media picked Winthrop to win it again. 
• NBCSports picks AJ Price, Stephen Curry, James Harden, Tyler Hansbrough and Luke Harongody as its all-americans.  We’re just not feeling Price, sorry UConn fans.
• Parrish thinks that this year’s Florida squad will be quite a bit better than last year’s, and we can’t say that we really disagree with that.
• Andy Katz assures us that KU’s 2008 national title is safe in light of the re-opening case of Darrell Arthur’s HS transcripts.  You know, because we were worried, or something.
• He also gives his preseason view of 37 teams that he thinks can make a run next March.
• Hey, we’ve always been Stacy Dales fans, BC!  Even when she was married to someone named Schulman.  Looks like we may not be able to root out Psycho T for her attention, though.