1. Things do not continue to improve for Baylor’s Scott Drew.  Last week his star player LaceDarius Dunn’s basketball future was placed in question over allegations of aggravated assault against his girlfriend, while yesterday Jeff Goodman reported that the Bear program is being investigated by the NCAA concerning the recruitment of Hanner Perea, a 6’9 high school junior from Colombia (the country, not the phonetically-same Missouri/South Carolina city) currently playing in Indiana.  The primary issue ONCE AGAIN COMES DOWN TO TEXT MESSAGES!!!!  Baylor assistant coach Mark Morefield was already serving a suspension for text message-related violations, so what did he do during July’s quiet period?  He of course sent multiple text messages to Perea’s high school and AAU coaches, a rather unbelievable example of Pavlovian conditioning if we’ve ever seen one.  Baylor has already self-reported the latest violations, according to Goodman’s report, and we can only hope that Morefield’s SMS package was turned off on the latest cell plan provided by the university.
2. Are we getting closer to an NCAA decision on the eligibility of Kentucky star recruit Enes Kanter?  Only the NCAA knows that for certain, but NYT’s Pete Thamel writes that the club team in Turkey is standing by its original assertion that it holds bank statements and documentation proving that Kanter was paid well beyond “reasonable and necessary expenses” during his time with the club.  Their representative, Nedim Karakas, says that they promised not to show these documents, however, until the NCAA has made its final decision.  It’s hard to know whom to believe here, but we’re having trouble understanding why the NCAA would care in the least what the Turkish club team does or does not do with its documentation, right?  What are we missing here?
3. Tuesday was KU Media Day and Bill Self told the assembled scribes that he expects his star recruit Josh Selby’s eligibility decision to come sooner rather than later, and he expects it to be positive.  Selby is currently practicing with the team and will be able to suit up on Friday night at Late Night in the Phog at Allen Fieldhouse.  In our view, Selby is the difference between a Kansas team making another serious run at the Final Four and one that will be pleased with playing into the second weekend.
4. It’s looking more and more like the Pac-10 will go to a two-division system in both basketball and football starting in 2011-12.  Final decisions have not yet been made, but this report from Andy Katz suggests that Stanford and Cal are the final hurdle for the league to split into six-team North and South divisions — the Washingtons, Oregons and NorCals in the North, and Utah/Colorado, the Arizonas and SoCals in the South.  The hoops schedule would remain at eighteen games, with home-and-homes guaranteed against each team’s rival (UCLA vs. USC, for example) with six other home-and-homes and four one-games rotated on a yearly basis.
5. This dumbfounded us, but did you know that Arizona State’s Herb Sendek, himself a branch on the incredibly fecund tree of Rick Pitino (yes, we went there), has a total of eight former assistants who are now head coaches in Division 1 basketball, more than any other coach?  The names on the Sendek tree:  Thad Matta (Ohio State), Sean Miller (Arizona), Mark Phelps (Drake), John Groce (Ohio), Larry Hunter (Western Carolina), Ron Hunter (IUPUI), Jim Christian (TCU), Charlie Coles (Miami (OH)).   Louisville’s Rick Pitino and Rice’s Ben Braun currently have six each.

1. Mike DeCourcy spoke with Kentucky freshman Enes Kanter’s father recently, finding that Dr. Mehmet Kanter believes that Turkish basketball officials stating that his son took a salary in cash and benefits while playing for club team Fenerbahce is a smear campaign meant to chill future generations of young Turkish players from bolting overseas to play American college basketball instead of remaining at home.  He speaks extensively about the importance of his son obtaining an American collegiate education and points to the family turning down multi-million dollar offers in Turkey as evidence of their sincerity, but what was notably absent from Dr. Kanter’s comments was whether his son is looking to play at Kentucky for one year or long enough to get that all-important degree.  After all, if we are to believe his assertions about education from the interview, we should expect Enes to stay in Lexington for longer than the next six months, right?
2. We appreciate teams that will schedule tough non-conference schedules, especially if they’re willing to go on the road to do so.  Luke Winn gives us his top ten such schedules, and according to his analysis, John Thompson, III, John Calipari, Rick Barnes, Bruce Pearl and Tom Izzo should be proud of themselves.  We’re looking forward to quite a few games on those schedules.
3. Louisville associate coach director of basketball operations and former WKU/Pitt/Holy Cross head coach Ralph Willard has a pretty sweet new gig if you can get it.  He’ll be paid $375,000 this season in the first year of a three-year deal where he’ll be required to “coach the coaches.”  One of the coaches he’ll be coaching is new Louisville assistant Mark Lieberman, a defensive specialist from Miami who will make about one-seventh the salary as Willard with approximately seventy times as much stress.
4. As of this week, new NCAA head honcho Mark Emmert is on the job in Indianapolis, and several of his initial areas of interest relate to academics and how to ensure student-athletes are getting an education as part of their collegiate experience.  We have no problem with that in principle, nor do we have any problem with his supposed interest in coming down hard on the rule-breakers in the sport; but we have written in this space before that trying to work a deal with David Stern to turn the NBA Draft into something akin to the MLB model (where a prep player has the option to go to the NBA out of high school, but then has to stay for three years if he goes to college) is an absolute mistake.  Get off this, man — there is nothing good that will come from this.
5. Here’s another first for Frank Martin’s Kansas State program — the Big 12 coaches yesterday overwhelmingly put the pressure squarely on his team to win the conference title, earning ten of the twelve first-place votes (coaches cannot vote for their own team).  Kansas followed up in second with two first-place votes and Texas came in third.  It’s interesting to see Colorado come in at ninth — even though head coach Jeff Bzdelik took off for points east, the Buffs still return two of the best players in the conference in Alec Burks and Cory Higgins.  The full list is below, and my how Jeff Capel’s program has fallen…

Big 12 Preseason Coaches Poll

1. Kansas State (10) 119
2. Kansas (2) 109
3. Texas 99
4. Baylor 96
5. Missouri 82
6. Texas A&M 69
7. Texas Tech 52
8. Oklahoma State 51
9. Colorado 46
10. Nebraska 31
11. Oklahoma 27
12. Iowa State 11

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Athletic Club announced its preseason list of the 50 candidates for the Wooden Award. Among those listed are names of players with whom we are all familiar, like Kyle Singler, Kalin Lucas, and Robbie Hummel, but there are also many lesser-known but still talented players like Nikola Vucevic and Kawhi Leonard (feel free to yell “East Coast bias!” in the comments). Even though this is one of about a thousand Player of the Year awards it holds a special place for most college basketball aficionados because of its namesake, the late John Wooden, and especially the year after his death. Established in 1976, The Wooden Award has been awarded to an individual after a 26-member panel — I’m sure our invite is lost in the snail mail or got caught in a spam filter — narrows down the list of candidates down to 20 players and then lets 1,000 voters (seriously, where’s our invite?) pick the ten All-Americans and the Player of the Year (last year Evan Turner took home the hardware). Looking back through past winners provides you with a veritable “Who’s Who” of college basketball in the past quarter century and includes luminaries like Phil Ford, Larry Bird, Ralph Sampson (twice), Michael Jordan, David Robinson, Danny Manning, Larry Johnson, Christian Laettner, Tim Duncan, Elton Brand, Shane Battier, Jason Williams, Jameer Nelson, Kevin Durant, and Tyler Hansbrough.

2010 Wooden Award Winner

One of the big caveats for the early season list is that it does not include freshman or transfers. Now, the latter usually do not factor into these awards with the exception of Larry Johnson and Wesley Johnson, who picked up a few votes last year, but the former (like Durant and Michael Beasley) are beginning to play a growing role in this and other awards. We do have a few issues with the list, which you will see more of over the next few weeks as we unveil our “Impact Players” by region. For today we will just focus on our favorites and some notable freshman who were left off the list, but we expect to be in the running for the actual award later this season. We will leave off the non-freshman omissions because frankly we do not expect any of them to factor into the final ballots.

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It looks like some Kentucky students (we’re assuming) had a little fun with GarageBand recently and put together a little tune and, um, rap “video” about Kentucky freshman-in-limbo Enes Kanter and the desire to see his eligibility confirmed by the NCAA:

Now, we don’t imagine a certain Mr. Mathers is shaking in his sneakers at the prospect of a showdown versus “Rich Breezy,” but we salute the creators of the “Free Enes” video, since it’s certainly better than this particular RTC contributor could do.

The video did remind us, though, of that wonderful annual ritual of sweating out tardy eligibility determinations by the NCAA, that seemingly endless process that players, coaches, and fans must endure before each season. We  are still awaiting final eligibility decisions on three players in the 2010 Rivals top twelve — specifically Kanter, Missouri commit Tony Mitchell and top-ranked Josh Selby at Kansas. Last year, Deniz Kalicli, another extremely talented Turkish player, had to sit out 20 games before making his debut at West Virginia. Kentucky’s John Wall wasn’t cleared to play until late October. Lance Stephenson didn’t know if he was eligible at Cincinnati until November 5th, and Mississippi State’s Renardo Sidney missed all of last season (his situation was admittedly a tad more complex than the others, we should note).

We assume that the NCAA adjudicates these matters as quickly as it can and is reliant upon the timeliness and veracity of the information they receive, but it seems like these decisions get handed down later and later each season. The final decision on Kanter was due almost a week ago, and we’re unaware of a timeline regarding a call being made for Selby, and for Mitchell’s chances to play in the second semester this year (he’s ineligible for the first). We all agree that in the end the most important thing is that the fairest decision be made for each kid, and that the NCAA’s calls are consistent. Unfortunately, with practices officially starting in 17 days, it’s about as likely that all of these issues will be ruled on by the time basketballs hit hardwood as it is that Rich Breezy is a pseudonym for Pete Thamel.

1. You may have missed this news during a busy football weekend, but the Birmingham (Alabama) School Board decided late Friday to not change former Kentucky guard Eric Bledsoe’s official transcript despite an independent law firm’s finding that justifications for grade changes thereon were “not credible.”  We covered this on Friday night, and people are generally falling into two camps.  On one side is the “Really?  WTF?” camp, as articulated by Gary Parrish in his piece on the matter; while on the other side, we have giddy UK fans who seem to believe that they got over on the NCAA, New York Times, jealous Calipari-haters and the liberal media, depending on whom you ask.  This ordeal is probably dead with respect to the NCAA and Kentucky, but Tom Arenberg of the Birmingham News believes that Birmingham schools should seek more answers with respect to what happened here, while we’re left wondering why we didn’t buddy up to a couple of amenable teachers in high school right before our applications to Stanford and MIT went into the mail.
2. California’s 7’3 center Max Zhang will not be enrolled at Berkeley for the fall semester, as he is staying in his native China to play in the Asia Games this November.  He could be back for the spring semester, though, just in time for Pac-10 play and definitely needed after a mass exodus of players from Mike Montgomery’s team this offseason.  He only averaged 3/2 in his sophomore season for the Bears, but with a nice shooting touch and scouts keeping a watchful eye on his development, there is a sense that he is ready to break out and could one day play professionally.
3. Kansas center Jeff Withey is on the shelf after breaking his right foot during individual workouts last week.  Withey played sparingly as a freshman last season in Lawrence, but he was a four-star recruit out of San Diego and is expected to get considerably more run this season.  He’ll be out four to six weeks, which will unfortunately somewhat hinder his development, as practice officially begins in less than three weeks.
4. Late last week John Calipari stated to reporters that he thought Enes Kanter was going to be eligible to play for him this coming season.  Gary Parrish seems to think that Calipari has convinced himself of such a fiction, although he’s quick to say that he doesn’t have any proof to the contrary either (sounds a lot like #1).  Turns out that very few coaches Parrish knows and has talked to about this ever thought that Kanter would be eligible to play college ball (even before Kanter signed with UK).  That seems reasonable enough to us.
5. What do you guys think — will UNC bounce back strong this year after a disastrous (for them) 20-17 NIT season?  Some of the problems the Heels had last year, such as spotty point guard play and a lot of tall but soft players inside, are still there.  Adding a superstar like Harrison Barnes to the lineup won’t solve those specific issues.  Will Roy Williams have the magic touch to get his team back to the NCAA Tournament as he’s done in every season he’s coached but one?  The smart money is that he’ll find a way, but unless Larry Drew II and/or Dexter Strickland suddenly transform into  reasonable facsimiles of Ed Cota, Ray Felton or Ty Lawson, we’re not sure that this team is any better than a borderline top 25 team.  Are we wrong?

While most of the college basketball world has been focused on the ongoing Enes Kanter saga at Kentucky, the  first real punishment of off-season was handed out today to the Wildcats’ SEC rival in Knoxville where the Tennessee administration determined that Bruce Pearl lied to NCAA investigators about excessive recruiting calls made by the Volunteer coaching staff. According to Pearl’s statement, he lied to NCAA investigators during a meeting they had in June about those phone calls (like Kelvin Sampson at Indiana), but due to overwhelming remorse he came to the Tennessee administration with the truth the following month. Upon hearing these revelations the Tennessee administration decided to take preemptive action, as many programs have, in an attempt to lessen NCAA penalties against them. Along with the usual punishments like decreasing the number of official visits recruits can make and limiting recruiting by the staff, they also took the unusual measures of banning Pearl from recruiting off-campus for a year (from September 24, 2010 through September 23, 2011) and essentially taking back $1.5 million of his salary over the next five years, as well as reducing the salary of three assistant coaches by 25% and banning them from recruiting off-campus for anywhere from three months to one year (official document with penalties here).

While this doesn’t mean that the NCAA won’t take additional action against Tennessee, the move is somewhat refreshing in that a major university has finally gone after a coach’s salary for his egregious errors instead of nebulous concepts like rescinding 1-2 recruiting visits per year, although Pearl won’t be on a street corner begging for money any time soon, as he is still scheduled to collect $1.4 million from coaching in 2011 (plus whatever else he gets from endorsements and speaking engagements). The bigger problem for Tennessee’s program will be the off-campus recruiting ban which should have a marked effect, assuming he doesn’t start racking up the cell phone minutes again (the thing that got him into this mess in the first place). Fans of rival programs are understandably giddy at this news, particularly with Pearl’s reputation as a “snitch,” having turned in Illinois for allegedly paying recruit Deon Thomas (full memos here) while Pearl was an assistant at Iowa. Although the Illini were never found guilty of any wrongdoing related to Thomas, the ensuing investigation led NCAA officials to unearth several other violations that led to recruiting restrictions and a one year postseason ban for the Illini. Since that time, Pearl has carried the negative stigma as a “snitch” around with him and many believe it is what prevented him from getting a prominent job for such a long time. As you can imagine, many fan bases will be more than happy to remind Pearl of his wrongdoing and his penalties when the Volunteers are on the road this season.

1. The big news so far this week has been The New York Times reporting that Kentucky recruit Enes Kanter had received improper benefits while playing semi-professionally in Turkey and while we haven’t had the typical full Kentucky explosion we are expecting it to happen any moment now particularly when we stumble upon news like this. If you are looking for the aforementioned explosion we would recommend checking back here intermittently for when Kentucky fans finally decide to go off the deep end on Pete Thamel.
2. We typically save this for our Recruiting Rumor Mills, but Chane Benahan‘s commitment to Rick Pitino and Louisville is notable for the fact that he is the first recruit in quite a while to turn down John Calipari and Kentucky. His reasons for turning down the Wildcats: difficulty getting playing time in Lexington and because he felt that Kentucky only offered him a scholarship because Louisville did. At the very least, Benahan’s decision appears to have convinced Louisville fans that the rivalry between the two schools is back. Of course, the folks over at KSR were quick to post this video of Chane as a back-up dancer for a song that we are sad to admit has not found its way onto our iPod yet.
3. Twenty-one years ago Rumeal Robinson was celebrated for hitting two clutch free throws in overtime against Seton Hall in the 1989 NCAA championship game to seal the victory for Michigan. Yesterday, he was found guilty of 11 charges of various forms of fraud including attempting to sell his mother’s house without her knowledge. We’re going to guess that Rumeal won’t be a popular guy in prison where he could be for up to 30 years in addition to facing a maximum of $1 million fine per charge.
4. The guys from Lost Letterman caught up with former USC star Harold Miner who was once billed as “Baby Jordan”. The content of the interview isn’t particularly enlightening, but we do find it interesting that Miner has been so reclusive that he had not done an interview in over a decade and makes an interview request such an ordeal. We also found the fact that Sports Illustrated selected him as the 1992 College Basketball Player of the Year over Christian Laettner and Shaquille O’Neal rather amusing. Fortunately the current crop of SI writers, whom we all like, had nothing to do with that selection.
5. I know that many of you are not Duke/Coach K fans, but when he gets into an argument with the Russian coach (who happens to be an American citizen) about whether or not the 1972 Men’s Olympic Basketball Final was rigged I think we can all get behind Coach K on this one.

1. Yesterday’s big news:  UConn finally got its response on violations into the NCAA, but we’ll have to wait at least another week to see what it says; and, a NYT report stated that Enes Kanter’s former Turkish club team paid him $100,000 that could jeopardize his amateur eligibility at Kentucky.  Much more on these items will be buzzed, tweeted, posted and emailed about today, you can count on that.
2. The 1990-91 UNLV Runnin’ Rebels were quite simply the most devastating college basketball team the authors of this website have ever seen (we’re not old enough to remember the UCLA dynasty teams nor the last unbeaten team, Indiana).  Granted, Tark’s defending champs didn’t win the 1991 national title, but as Andy Glockner writes in this piece, many folks with far longer and better memories than ours tend to agree.  The best team to not win the championship? — yes, we think so.  How could they have possibly lost?  Well, they played a pretty darn good team with an axe to grind in the national semifinals, and the beauty of March Madness is that upsets happen, even to legendary teams.  For more information on this team, check out our breakdown of the epic UNLV-Duke game from the 1991 Final Four in this piece, part of our Greatest Games series.
3. Embattled Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins retired from his position yesterday, one year earlier than he was originally scheduled to do so.  His seven-year tenure at the school was very successful on the surface — even though he didn’t hire Mark Mangino or Bill Self, both KU football and basketball were extremely productive on his watch, and the athletic department budget doubled from $27M to $55M during this time.  Unfortunately, the last twelve months have been scandal-ridden, from the ugly fights between the football and basketball teams last fall to the recent ticket-favor scandal that the feds are still investigating (Perkins has not been implicated, incidentally).  Sports by Brooks reports that there may be more to this retirement than meets the eye, however, in that KU officials allegedly do not want Perkins’ input on hiring his successor, and sometimes when you want a clean slate, it’s best to cut all ties.  Probably a good move.
4. Oklahoma State received good news yesterday when Matt Pilgrim, one of the Pokes’ top returning players who averaged 8/7 in only nineteen minutes of action per game last year, was cleared of an emergency protective order placed on him by a woman who accused him of rape.  The judge stated that there was insufficient evidence of rape to substantiate a continuation of the protective order, which likely means that there’s not nearly enough evidence to charge him with the corollary crime.
5. Gary Parrish gives us his five players that he expects will have breakthrough seasons in 2010-11:  Kim English (Missouri), John Henson (UNC), Scotty Hopson (Tennessee), Kris Joseph (Syracuse) and Jon Leuer (Wisconsin).  There’s one crossover player (English) with the twelve that we projected as our very own breakthrough guys back in early July, but we don’t have any major beef with his list.

Like much of the state of Kentucky we have spent much of the off-season wondering whether or not Turkish super-recruit Enes Kanter would be declared eligible by the NCAA this season. As late as Tuesday morning it appeared that the NCAA would make a ruling regarding his eligibility within the next two weeks. Typically when the NCAA is ruling on a freshman’s eligibility the focus is on the student-athlete’s academic eligibility, but despite only spending one year in a US school Kanter appears to have been declared academically eligible. The real issue comes from questions over whether he is still an “amateur” due to his time playing semi-professional basketball for a Turkish team during the 2008-09 season. Earlier, Kanter stated that he had not received any money while playing in Turkey. However, today the New York Times’ Pete Thamel reported that Nedim Karakas, the general manager of Fenerbahce Ulker (Kanter’s previous team) had given Kanter more than $100,000 in cash and benefits during Kanter’s time with the team. For his part, Kanter (through his adviser Max Ergul) has stated that this should not affect his eligibility as the amount spread out over his three years with the team is “like any other kid who goes to prep school and gets the $30- or $40,000 scholarship.”

Will Kanter Ever Play NCAA Basketball?

While we wait on Kentucky, Kanter, and the NCAA to sort this out it is worth pointing out the one potentially seedy part of the story — Fenerbahce Ulker’s potential ulterior motive for providing this information to the NCAA. According to most reports, Kanter did not leave the team on the best of terms as his decision to go to the US for high school and then college meant that not only had the team lost one of the top junior prospects in the world, it had also lost out on the opportunity to collect a large transfer fee if he were to go to another European basketball team. If Kanter were to be declared ineligible by the NCAA, it is expected that he would head back to Europe to play while waiting to enter the NBA Draft. His signing with a European team would trigger that transfer fee resulting in a large cash windfall for Fenerbahce Ulker, the same people who are trying to provide the NCAA with information that would make Kanter ineligible to play for Kentucky. When questioned about this conflict of interest, Karakas responded by saying “I am sorry for telling this for Enes, but we cannot lie if someone asks the whole story, we cannot hide. . .This is real, and the NCAA’s main goal is to protect the amateur side of sports.” To be fair to Karakas and Fenerbahce Ulker, Kanter’s previous playing background was enough to scare off such high school basketball powerhouses such as Oak Hill Academy and Findlay Prep from adding a player that many analysts consider the top young interior player in the world.

The NCAA’s decision on Kanter will be a huge determinant of the Wildcats’ success this season as he would fill a void left by the departed DeMarcus Cousins and provide the Wildcats with the spark they need on the inside to help them advance deep into the NCAA Tournament. At the present time the only statement that the University of Kentucky has released about the situation is as follows: “The University of Kentucky is working diligently with the NCAA on this matter and we fully support Enes Kanter and his family through this ongoing NCAA review. We will have no further comment.” Meanwhile, John Calipari, who has been quite active around the state of Kentucky this off-season, has not issued a statement on the recent news although we will be keeping an eye on him to see if he says anything.

This much we know.  The burden will rest with Kentucky to prove that Kanter is indeed eligible, and that any payments he took from Fenerbahce Ulker were  actual and necessary to only cover his (reasonable) expenses and did not rise to the level of a salary.  The organization notably did not provide Thamel documentation of the “salary” that was paid to Kanter, so if they’re truly blowing smoke on this in an effort to destroy Kanter’s amateur status, presumably the NCAA would know this.  KSR breaks down the key questions to focus on in this matter, and but at a certain point (presumably after UK makes its best arguments) it will be the NCAA that has to make the difficult decision as to how much is too much when it comes to whether payments made to Kanter were merely expenses or a full-timer’s salary.

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and Pac-10 Conferences and an occasional contributor.

Hooray! Today is the official end of the Great Sports Desert – you know, that period of time between the first Monday in April and the first weekend of the college football season. Beginning tonight, there are actual meaningful sporting events that I am interested in. Let’s be clear, I love college football. Easily my second favorite sport. But, I’m a college hoops junkie first and foremost, and part of the reason I love the start of college football season is because that means that the start of college basketball is within shouting distance from here. And, while looking over the slate of college football games this weekend, I couldn’t help but imagine some of these matchups as college basketball games. So, here I have, in reverse order, the ten most intriguing matchups of the college football weekend, provided they are re-imagined as season openers in basketball season.  (ed. note: yes, he is sick, but we love him for it)

College Sports is Back on the Calendar!

First, a nod to a handful of games which, being a junkie and all, definitely appeal to me, but were just a bit off of my top-10 list:

• Pittsburgh @ Utah – on Thursday night, with only six other games on. If this was basketball season, and there were only six other games on, you could bet I’d watch some of this. Sure, Utah isn’t going to be very good, but it would be interesting to see Pitt go on the road early into a hostile environment.
• Murray State @ Kent State – a very good mid-major matchup between one of last season’s Cinderellas and one of the MAC’s always competitive teams.
• Connecticut @ Michigan – this game just sounds really good, but in reality, UConn is down and Michigan is, well, I would say Michigan is down, but its been awhile since they’ve been up.
• Richmond @ Virginia – a big intrastate matchup between the A-10 and the ACC. If Virginia was just a little bit better, this may have made the cut, because UR will be very good again, but a road trip into the John Paul Jones Arena would be a good early test for Kevin Anderson and company.
• Northwestern @ Vanderbilt – as enticing as this Wildcat/Commodore matchup would be between two talented teams with NCAA Tournament hopes, this just misses the cut.

And on to the top 10:

• #10 – Washington State @ Oklahoma State – Klay Thompson, Reggie Moore and DeAngelo Casto invade the Gallagher-Iba Arena to provide a good early season test for a young Cowboy squad minus last season’s two leading scorers. While the young Cowboy guards Ray Penn and Keiton Page keep this close throughout, too much Thompson eventually does them in.

Predicted Football Score: Oklahoma State 31 Washington State 10

Predicted Basketball Score: Washington State 72 Oklahoma State 66

• #9 – UCLA @ Kansas State – Kansas State is one of the teams on the short list of national title contenders. UCLA is, well, honestly, not very good at least judging by last season’s performance. But, they’re still UCLA. And their frontline of Reeves Nelson, Josh Smith and Tyler Honeycutt will test Curtis Kelly, Wally Judge and company, perhaps even to a draw. We’ll also get a first chance to see if the Bruins have even remotely solved their problems at the point, an area of concern that will eventually be the deciding factor in this matchup as Jacob Pullen eventually gets over on Malcolm Lee and the Wildcats pull away in the second half.

Pullen is Back With Another Strong Team

Predicted Football Score: UCLA 23 Kansas State 17

Predicted Basketball Score: Kansas State 70 UCLA 60

• #8 – Syracuse @ Akron – Jim Boeheim taking his Orange on the road early against a Midwest mid-major? Sure, that’ll happen. But, if it did, I’d be thrilled to see my first glimpse of Syracuse freshman center Fab Melo battling the Zips own young center, sophomore seven-footer Zeke Marshall. Sure, the Orange’s talent would probably win out in the end with Akron not having an answer for Kris Joseph, but I’m pretty sure that we’d get at least 30 minutes of pretty compelling basketball here.

Predicted Football Score: Syracuse 24, Akron 20

Predicted Basketball Score: Syracuse 67 Akron 55

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