1. Most schools held their Midnight Madness extravaganzas more than a week ago, but a couple prominent schools around college basketball nation didn’t get in on the act until this past weekend. At Indiana, Hoosier Hysteria on Saturday night was just that — a standing room only celebration of Indiana basketball past and present, replete with a three-point shooting Cody Zeller (he made 10 in one round of the contest) and even a Bob Knight sighting (in photo form, on the big screen). For a nice highlight reel from IU’s event, check out this video put together by CityLeagueHoopsTV from the event. Over in Durham, Duke‘s Countdown to Craziness began a festive on-campus weekend (Duke’s football team defeated UNC on Saturday night), as Coach K emphasized “togetherness” among his players and the fans while debuting his squad for the first time this season. For more Coach K hugs than you can possibly imagine, check out this video running along this theme played at the conclusion of the event. Jeff Goodman spent Friday with the Blue Devils, and reports back with 11 thoughts and observations about Coach K’s latest team (including who he thinks will take over for the all-time great upon his eventual retirement). At this point, most every school is finished with the pomp and circumstance and moving into the harsh realities of practice, but more on this in a moment.
2. Practice makes perfect, so the saying goes, but it also provides opportunities for the imperfect to rear its ugly head in the form of injuries. Two prominent players on teams with high hopes for this season were hurt recently — Oklahoma State’s Brian Williams and UCLA’s David Wear. Williams is the more serious injury of the two, as he injured his left wrist in a fall after dunking in practice last week and needed to have surgery to repair the damage done. He’ll have to wear a cast for three months and go through rehabilitation after that, essentially rendering Williams unavailable to build upon a very promising freshman campaign this season. Wear, on the other hand, suffered an ankle sprain during practice on Sunday and will have an x-ray on his foot today. Hopefully this injury isn’t as serious as Williams’ and we’ll see Wear back on the court very soon.
3. Wear might be sidelined with an injury, but his UCLA teammates Kyle Anderson and Shabazz Muhammad have now entered their second full week of practice with no timeline as to when the NCAA plans to make a decision on their eligibility. This report from the LA Times suggests that neither player may be close to becoming eligible as the governing body has not given the players any feedback on the status of its investigation nor a timetable for its resolution. According to the piece, Anderson’s issue relates to the relationship between his father and an NBA agent named Thad Foucher, while Muhammad’s problem involves money given to both himself and his AAU team from friends of the family. There’s nothing new here, obviously, but one caveat from the piece must irk UCLA fans hopeful that things are progressing at a reasonable pace — with only 35 days left for the duo to continue practicing with the team until they must sit out, the NCAA has yet to formally interview Muhammad’s parents about any of this.
4. If you consider yourself at all versed in the analysis of college basketball, you are familiar with KenPom‘s numbers. What you may be less knowledgeable about are the occasional yet insightful blog posts that he publishes from time to time. On Sunday night he presented the results of his analysis of the validity of the preseason AP poll (which has yet to release this season). His finding is that, at least with respect to NCAA Tournament seeding in March, the top half of the AP poll is highly predictive. As he writes: “The chances of being a one-seed get really slim once you get past the top 12 or 13, while the chances of missing the tournament altogether are very real for the teams in the bottom half of the poll.” There’s a better than half chance that a preseason top 10 team in the AP poll will receive a top three seed at the end of the season — that makes sense. What we’d be interested in knowing, though, is what are the common factors that allow us to predict why the other half of teams fall from those original estimations. Great analysis by Pomeroy.
5. Finally, today, let’s talk discipline. Tubby Smith’s son and Minnesota assistant coach, Saul Smith, has been placed on administrative leave by the school related to his Friday night arrest for suspicion of DWI. Meanwhile at Maryland, senior forward James Padgett pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving stemming from his arrest back in June for driving while impaired. Under the school’s code of conduct for alcohol-related driving arrests, he will not be suspended from the team since he is not guilty of a DWI — a true example of legal hair-splitting if ever there was one. Over at Louisville, Chane Behanan must sit out the Cardinals’ first exhibition game this season and has been banned from talking to the media (this is punishment?) for the rest of the semester. Head coach Rick Pitino didn’t specify what led to Behanan’s restrictions other than to say that there were “incidents” over the summer, but he did say that further slip-ups could cause the talented forward to miss more game action.

1. ESPN: North Carolina coach Roy Williams has had a fairly quotable week, sounding off on changes in academic standards and his tendency to go “wacko” despite a medical injunction to avoid just that. But yesterday, he had some words on what seems to be a fairly silly situation. The NCAA has a rule about how teams aren’t supposed to travel to an away game more than 48 hours before the game in question. This, unlike some provisions, seems fairly reasonable and well-intentioned: Students shouldn’t miss too much class. However, the realities of flight scheduling are not always cooperative. Apparently, the number of infrequent flights from Raleigh-Durham to the west coast means that without a special waiver, UNC will have to wait until Thursday morning to travel across the country rather than simply flying out after class on Wednesday. In a case where the provision in question is doing nothing to achieve it’s purpose (preventing athletes from missing extra classes), it does seem a little silly to make sure UNC does no traveling before 11 PM on Wednesday.
2. Washington Post: Coach Mark Turgeon is opening the season with a great deal of optimism, despite losing the conference’s most torrid scorer in Terrell Stoglin. Stoglin was suspended from the Maryland Terrapins at the end of the season and subsequently left school to take his chances on the NBA Draft (a move that didn’t pan out so well for the undrafted Stoglin). The cause for Turgeon’s optimism? A wide variety of roster options. Maryland’s primary point guard rotation features guys who are just as comfortable playing shooting guard, opening up the possibility of some guard heavy line-ups with multiple ball-handlers and playmakers. Just as intriguing, Turgeon apparently plans to experiment with freshman swingman Jake Layman at power forward, an interesting option that will give Maryland even more flexibility in cooking up mismatches.
3. Yahoo! Sports: In  other exciting Maryland news, Under Armor has cooked up some cool new uniforms for the Terrapins to wear in their season debut against Kentucky in the newly opened Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Just kidding: I meant ugly and hard-to-explain. Maryland will be donning grey, faux-wool jerseys in order to honor the Brooklyn Dodgers. Who among us can forget the deep connection between the Dodgers and the Terrapins? Aside from the sheer oddity of the tribute, the uniforms serve as an untimely reminder of one of the worst uniform trends of last year: gray uniforms. If I never see a gray uniform again (with obvious exceptions for teams that use gray as one of their main colors), it will be too soon. Already, I’m pretty sure I have seen more than enough games played in these Maryland jerseys.
4. Sports Illustrated: Damarcus Harrison had a rough freshman year playing spot minutes at Brigham Young University. This year, he was supposed to begin serving his mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS), but, due to some confusion, this didn’t happen and BYU had already allocated all of their scholarships. It’s an unusual situation that had an unusual outcome: Since Harrison couldn’t go on his mission or return to BYU, he transferred to Clemson. BYU has long scheduled and planned for its Mormon athletes to go on their mission in the middle of their collegiate careers, but when complications arise, as in the case of Harrison, things can get complicated very quickly. However, with the LDS changing the minimum age of their standard mission from 19 to 18, this means that many Mormon athletes may put off entering college until after their mission is complete. While this unsurprisingly has enormous implications for BYU, it also may end up being important to Duke University. Jabari Parker, possibly the top recruit in the country is a devout Mormon also considering Duke.
5. Winston-Salem Journal: While most teams typically are weeks away from playing any kind of public exhibition game, Wake Forest will be squaring off twice this weekend with a pair of Canadian foes. The Demon Deacons will face Brock University tonight and Ryerson University on Saturday. Different teams use the international travel provision differently, but Jeff Bzdelik‘s novel tactic of delaying the trip to mid-October means that his mostly young team will get a couple of extra early opportunities to get some live-game practice in as a part of the ramp up to the regular season. Canada isn’t as glamorous a destination as Spain, for example, but it might be just what Wake Forest needs.

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

College basketball is nearly here. You can feel it now, the palpable hype (both good and bad) growing around the various players, coaches and teams who over the next five months will provide a steady dose of tantalizing hoops action. Each season brings a host of unpredictable variables and elements, which makes divining conference and national championship contenders in October a notoriously futile endeavor. Preseason polls are nonetheless afforded at least some measure of credibility and national attention. And I have to admit, a wave of excitement came over me when I pored over the preseason USA Today Coaches Poll. These rankings hold little to no bearing for the events of the upcoming season, and they’re almost entirely based on perception. The upshot is that we’re talking about college basketball – and not NCAA violations or transfer culture or conference realignment – real, actual basketball topics. Everyone will have their own say on these rankings, and many will protest their favorite team’s slot in the Top 25, but remember this: Competition and team rankings have a way of sorting themselves out over the course of a season. So if your team deserves a spot in these rankings, it will prove as much. Despite the ultimate meaninglessness of this list, I highlighted some interesting items worth discussing. To frame my thoughts, I’ve come up with three “underrateds,” three “reaches,” and one puzzling snub. Again, this is all speculative, so put these rankings (and my resulting analysis) in perspective without fretting over your team’s placement all too much.

The Rebels will need time to integrate a stable of young players, but they should be a dangerous group in March (Photo credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images).

Underrated

UNLV (#19)

There’s no questioning UNLV’s talent. On that front, the Rebels are undeniably loaded. Pittsburgh transfer Khem Birch joins NBA prospect Mike Moser and highly-touted freshman Anthony Bennett to form arguably the nation’s best frontcourt. Experienced guards Justin Hawkins and Anthony Marshall provide leadership and control on both ends of the floor. Incoming combo guard Katin Reinhardt, the No. 8 ranked player at his position according to ESPN, could play a key bench role right away. Within the confines of Dave Rice’s throwback high-speed UNLV system, a conference championship and top-four NCAA Tournament seed are realistic goals. That said, there are a bunch of moving parts to account for, and it’s never smart to assume freshmen – no matter how highly touted – can make seamless transitions into the college game. These are legitimate concerns. But when you have this much talent, and you combine it with Rice’s up-tempo system, the end result is predictably excellent. UNLV’s ceiling is limitless; the question is whether it can congeal so much young talent into a cohesive unit. If it can, the Rebels will surpass this ranking by season’s end.

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And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#22 – Where An Unsung Hero Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

Kevin Doyle is the RTC correspondent for the Patriot League. You can find him on Twitter at @KLDoyle11

Top Storylines

• C.J. And Moose: You’ve read about them all summer, and will continue to do so even more during the season. C.J. McCollum and Mike Muscala have developed into household names in the college basketball community on a national scale, not just in the charming land of mid-major basketball. McCollum has garnered more press, understandably, due to Lehigh’s victory against Duke in the NCAA Tournament. His decision to test the waters of the NBA Draft — he smartly did not hire an agent — gave him the opportunity to return to Lehigh. Muscala has earned his fair share of press as well, being named as a Top 100 player by CBS Sports and a Mid-Major All American by NBC Sports’ College Basketball Talk.
• A Two-Bid league? An ambitious thought to be sure, but a possibility, albeit a small one. Prior to delving into what has to break right for either Bucknell or Lehigh to garner an at-large berth, let’s take a look at Bucknell’s 2005-06 resume: RPI of 42, 2-3 versus the RPI top 50 with wins over Syracuse and St. Joseph’s, 23rd-ranked non-conference schedule, and the only loss that could be considered a “bad loss” was to Santa Clara, which had an RPI of 184. The Bison went on to defeat Holy Cross in the Patriot League championship, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, but what if Bucknell had lost? With their resume, they would have almost assuredly earned an at-large bid. Fast forward seven years, and one has to wonder if a similar scenario may play out. Could Lehigh or Bucknell earn an at-large bid? It’s more likely that Bucknell would, considering the Bison’s non-conference schedule is better than Lehigh’s and there are more opportunities to pick up resume-building wins, but one thing is certain: It is possible for a Patriot League team to earn an at-large bid. The notion that it all comes down to “three games in March,” while the case most years, may not be the case in 2012-13.

C.J. McCollum (left) and Mike Muscala are two of the many reasons why the Patriot League is one to watch this season.

• Reed, Paulsen Moving Up? Doctor Brett Reed (side note: Reed received his PhD from Wayne State University in Instructional Technology) and Dave Paulsen have proven to be exceptional recruiters and developers of talent, and the results on the court speak for themselves. Complete conjecture, but it seems they both are on the inside track to move up in the coaching world, especially with their respective star players graduating in the spring of 2013. Reed, a native of Waterford, Michigan, was rumored to have been a candidate for the Central Michigan job (Keno Davis is now the head man for the Chippewas) along with other MAC jobs, while Paulsen was speculated to be a candidate for the Dayton job in 2011. Paulsen, however, was awarded with a five-year extension to his contract last year, so it looks like he will remain in Lewisburg for the foreseeable future. Paulsen has won everywhere he has coached: St. Lawrence, Le Moyne, Williams, and now Bucknell. Reed is one of the brighter young basketball minds in the coaching ranks, and in my mind the smoothest and most eloquent speaker in the game.
• Pivotal Season for Brown, Holy Cross: Although Holy Cross head coach Milan Brown has a less than stellar mark of 23-35 record in his first two years at the helm, he nearly doubled his win total from year one to two (8-21 in 2010-11, 15-14 in 2011-12). As such, it is imperative that he builds upon the success the Crusaders had during conference play last year — Holy Cross won its final six games of the regular season — and continue this upward trend. Brown has made it known he wishes to push the ball up the floor on offense whenever the opportunity presents itself, and to instill a high-pressure man-to-man defense. With two recruiting classes now under his belt, Holy Cross should be more apt in implementing Brown’s offensive and defensive systems. Despite those two recruiting classes on campus, it will be slightly more difficult to build on the success as R.J. Evans elected to use his final year of eligibility at Connecticut. (Hard to blame Evans for his decision as he hails from the Nutmeg State and watched the Huskies win two national titles growing up.)   Read the rest of this entry »

Probably to the dismay of many college basketball fans who are more than curious to find out which school he will attend next fall, reports came out yesterday that Jabari Parker has no plan to sign with one of his final five schools in the early signing period this November, instead likely making a decision in December. So now Duke, Michigan State, BYU, Florida and Stanford will most likely have to wait an extra month to find out where the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2013 will take his talents (though he can’t officially sign with a team until April), barring a sudden change of mind.

Top recruit Jabari Parker Will Wait to Make His Decision (AP)

While I’m sure a similar case could be made for every school still remaining on Parker’s list, this news could be especially good for Stanford. While the Cardinal have had some recent success in the last 10 years, the success Duke, Michigan State, Florida and BYU have had is much more immediate and in most cases, longer lasting. Stanford, by comparison, hasn’t made the Big Dance in the last four years; in that span, the other four schools have combined for a 15 of 16 possible NCAA Tournament appearances (only Florida didn’t make it all four years), three Final Fours (Michigan State twice, Duke once) and one national championship (Duke). Duke, Michigan State and Florida are established national powerhouses, while BYU is very much settled in to being one of those non-power conference schools that are regularly in the spotlight.

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1. ESPN: Not to be outdone by the other ACC schools making recruiting splashes, the Maryland Terrapins have locked down a four-star point guard in Roddy Peters. Peters is a Maryland kid and a very skilled playmaker and scorer who will be able to contribute almost immediately for the Terps. Peters plays for D.C. Assault, the famed AAU team and an outfit that highly paid Maryland assistant Dalonte Hill used to coach, and according to Peters, Hill’s presence played a key role in helping the guard choose Maryland.
2. Baltimore Sun: In more disappointing Terrapin news, this is the week that James Padgett will go to court to deal with charges stemming from a DUI arrest over the summer. Padgett, a senior and the likely starting power forward for the Terrapins, is a favorite in the tempo-free statistics community. Despite relatively mediocre per game rebound totals, Padgett is something of a savant on the offensive glass, posting  possession numbers that surpass every other player in the conference but fellow offensive rebounding wunderkind Miles Plumlee. In any event, Padgett’s court date is this Friday, though he is still expected to participate in today’s Operation Basketball media extravaganza.
3. Greensboro News & Record: Speaking of Operation Basketball, the News & Record has taken the time to go ahead and figure out the preseason rankings for the teams in the conference. Of course, the paper is doing it by counting the Twitter followers for the two player representatives from each school. Duke takes the top spot, largely thanks to the Twitter sensation that is Seth Curry. Curry’s roughly 51,000 followers easily overpowers any other player on the list with North Carolina’s Reggie Bullock coming in a distant second at around 32,500 followers. We’ll have more on Operation Basketball as the day rolls on, but for now, I leave you to pore over these social media numbers. If you want to follow every single basketball player, reporter, and tangential figure in the ACC on Twitter, I would direct you to this rather helpful guide.
4. Chicago Tribune: If you want to talk about meaningful numbers, the number of the day is clearly $9,995. This is the price that a gallon of unopened McJordan Barbecue sauce from 1992 recently sold for on Ebay.  Just when you thought North Carolina couldn’t be more proud of it’s living legend and his accomplishments, a jug of his sauce sells for nearly ten grand and makes you change your whole way of looking at things. The greatness of Michael Jordan is truly unending.
5. Blogger So Dear: On a less silly note, our Wake Forest loving friends at Blogger So Dear have posted some early observations of this year’s Demon Deacons based on what they saw at Black and Gold Madness. There are some good notes on players both incoming and returning here as well as some keen observations on a team with a lot of potential and even more unknowns.

1. ESPN: The ACC coaches have submitted their preseason poll and the results are unsurprising: North Carolina State is the favorite to win the conference, with Tobacco Road rivals Duke and North Carolina rounding out the top three. While North Carolina State hasn’t won the regular season ACC title since 1989, it’s not a big surprise that the coaches like their chances this year. The coaches’ picks of C.J Leslie and Rodney Purvis, both Wolfpack players, for Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year respectively, is an easy explanation of the reason that so many of the conference’s coaches are big on NC State.
2. Raleigh News and Observer: Duke started practice in an unusual venue yesterday. Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina played host to the Blue Devils as they practiced in front of a group of soldiers at the U.S. Army base. Mike Krzyzewski, of course, is a graduate of West Point and former Army captain. In addition to standard practice, the Duke team slept in the barracks Sunday night, got up for an early morning workout and run, and braved an obstacle course on the base.  It seems like it was a memorable experience for both the soldiers who got to watch and participate in the Duke practice as well as the players who got an inside look at the machinations of Fort Bragg.
3. CBS Sports: On a more disappointing note, Marshall Plumlee, the youngest of the Plumlee brothers, has suffered a stress fracture in his foot. He’ll miss 6-8 weeks for Duke, and although he was not expected to be a major contributor to this year’s team, the obvious loss of depth and size inside is always something that gives coaches a cause for concern. Older brother Mason and Ryan Kelly will have to stay healthy themselves lest Duke become painfully thin on the interior over the first month of the season.
4. Syracuse Online: The Orange have a verbal commitment from Chinonso Obokoh, a springy center from Rochester. Of course, while Syracuse continues to play in the Big East this season, their incoming move to the ACC means that Obokoh will become part of the first class of Syracuse basketball players that play their conference games solely in the Atlantic Coast Conference — still a strange thought. Obokoh joins highly-ranked gurd Tyler Ennis as the first two building blocks for Syracuse’s incoming class.
5. NCAA: The governing organization of college basketball has issued a few new interesting guidelines for the upcoming season. These rules include an extra set of standards for correctly determining block/charge calls that seem to be aimed at making the offensive foul a bit harder to draw. The NCAA is also emphasizing coach and bench decorum with a set of explicit standards about what warrants a sportsmanship technical. In news sure to disappoint Roy Williams, “emphatically removing one’s coat” is specifically singled out as an inappropriate action. Perhaps, the implementation of  the new policy banning slippery floor decals will placate him?

1. From the we’ll-believe-it-when-we-see-it department, ACC coaches on Monday squarely put NC State’s Mark Gottfried right into the conference crosshairs with their decision to pick his Wolfpack as the front-runner for the 2012-13 league championship. Whew. NC State received eight of the 12 first-place votes, with second-place Duke receiving three, and North Carolina receiving the other top vote. Nobody will deny that Gottfried returns the most talent in the ACC from a Sweet Sixteen team — and adds quite possibly the best freshman in the league to boot — but still, the Wolfpack were a 9-7 conference team last season and Gottfried has never been a coach who has consistently gotten it done in the regular season. His best two teams at Alabama went 12-4 in the SEC (2001-02 and 2004-05) and he wasn’t facing the likes of Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams when he was cementing those records. From our perspective, the league belongs to Duke and North Carolina until it’s taken from them (the last team to win the ACC outright other than Duke/UNC occurred a decade ago).
2. While on the subject of Duke, the Blue Devil program made quite a bit of news on Monday. While spending the day 90 miles south of Durham at Fort Bragg, going through physical training drills and holding an inspired open practice in front of a number of US Army troops — apparently Duke players applauded the soldiers as they entered the gym — the school also announced some less inspiring news. Redshirt freshman forward Marshall Plumlee has developed a stress fracture in his left foot and will miss the next 6-8 weeks of practice, putting significantly more pressure on older brother Mason and senior Ryan Kelly to man the boards and shore up the low blocks defensively. This is especially true given that the Blue Devils will face an early-season murderer’s row of Kentucky in the Champions Classic on November 13, the Battle 4 Atlantis (including a loaded field of Minnesota, VCU, Memphis, Louisville, Missouri, and Stanford) soon thereafter, and Ohio State at in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge at the end of November.
3. Coach K’s respect for the military of course comes from his time at West Point, where he played under a fiery disciplinarian named Bob Knight. The three-time national championship head coach, who has never struck us as much of a sentimentalist, is planning on auctioning his three Indiana championship rings, his Olympic gold medal (given to him by the LA Olympic Committee) as well as a sports coat and warmup jacket he received as the head coach for the 1984 US Men’s National Team (a squad that included Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing). With his regular speaking engagements plus his lucrative ESPN commentator gig, it’s unlikely that Knight is hurting for money — but, sensing that he could pay for his grandchildren’s college educations with one fell swoop through this auction — this was probably an easy decision for the 71-year old. The “Bob Knight Collection” will be auctioned off through Steiner Sports, ending on December 5 — if you have some money burning a hole in your pocket, that 1976 championship ring from the last undefeated team in college basketball would make for a great conversation starter.
4. Harvard appeared to be on the verge of an Ivy League dynasty prior to a recent academic cheating scandal that has enveloped over 100 undergraduates including two of the basketball team’s best players, Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry. Still, there are hopes among Crimson faithful that Tommy Amaker’s team can bridge the gap this season while awaiting the return of its two stars in 2013-14 (both players withdrew from school this year, but plan on returning next season). Meanwhile, in coming off the school’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in over 65 years, the university is now backing a plan to build a brand-new basketball arena to replace its antiquated 1920s-era Lavietes Pavilion. The new arena will hold 2,700 people and be ready for the bouncing of balls some time between 2017-22. Whether Harvard will grow to become a regular NCAA Tournament participant by that date remains to be seen, but this next step in the progression of the program would not have been possible without the drive and vision for excellence that head coach Tommy Amaker had for Harvard basketball upon his arrival several years ago.
5. Don’t expect any NCAA Tournament games in the great state of New Jersey anytime soon. The Meadowlands/Izod Center in East Rutherford has held multiple East Regionals (most recently in 2007), and the Prudential Center in Newark has taken that mantle more recently (hosting in 2011), but with the Monday’s publication of regulations licensing and outlining operating rules for Atlantic City casinos and racetracks so as to offer sports gambling, the NCAA’s long-running mandate of not offering its championships in states with such laws has gone into effect. Although there are currently no planned NCAA Tournament events scheduled in the Garden State, five other championships — including the Women’s NCAA Tournament East Regional in 2013 — have been pulled effective immediately. The natural outcome from this mandate is that the most prominent New York and Philadelphia arenas, including the Wells Fargo Center, the Barclays Arena, and Madison Square Garden, potentially stand to gain considerably in future bidding for NCAA Tournament sites. But hey, at least you can bet on the games in Jersey!

And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#27 – Where Snaer Gun in Cameron Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.