Arizona head coach Sean Miller called out UCLA this week for its poor attendance at games in Pauley Pavilion. But with only a very few exceptions, lack of attendance at basketball games has been a concern at schools up and down the conference. What kind of impact does this have on the overall health of a basketball program? And what can be done to fix it?

Adam Butler: There’s a lot of layers to this onion. There’s the #HotTake and the presumed “shade” thrown by Sean Miller. Reading between the lines we can also see that Steve Alford had a retort. That’s the fun stuff. I called it feed for the news cycle monster. But Drew’s question here doesn’t really address that fun matter (and it shouldn’t because it’s really not worth it). What I want to explore is attendance as a matter of conference health. As the question notes, the Pac-12 has seen declining average attendance in each of the past three seasons, with the abysmal 2011-12 season having the worst average attendance of any Pac-12 season (7,054 per game). Yet here we are, one season removed from three Sweet Sixteen teams and touting four ranked teams for the first time since the week of January 21, 2008. That’s five seasons of three or fewer ranked teams. And sure it’s early — and no doubt attendance is growing — but in this chicken-or-egg conversation I’m drawn to ask what attendance really means? Literally, attendance is the number of people that go to a game. But over time, attendance has come to be synonymous with popularity. And that’s simply inaccurate. It’s 2015 and we have page views and clicks and impressions. They just played a damn Pac-12 game in China! Games can be streamed on phones, tablets and desktops. Blogs like pachoops.com (wink face emoji) and this microsite can cover the sport at more intimate levels than national publishers that maybe, perhaps chop unique sports voices (cough, Grantland, cough). Miller’s comments aren’t wrong; he even noted that a screaming McKale is what we think of when we imagine college basketball. He’s absolutely right. But let’s not be so quick to dismiss the conference’s popularity because there aren’t as many butts in the seats. Read the rest of this entry »

By the second weekend of the season, most power conference teams have moved past playing cupcakes from one-bid leagues — although some of those cupcakes ultimately got the last laugh — and are now moving up in competition. Stiffer tests begin in earnest for two Big Ten squads tonight, as Wisconsin and Michigan take part in marquee match-ups against Big East opponents and wo more B1G teams face challenging mid-majors on Saturday. Here are the four games to watch involving Big Ten teams this weekend.

1. Georgetown vs. Wisconsin (Friday, 5:00 PM ET, ESPN). Oddly enough, this game isn’t part of the slate of Gavitt Tipoff Games but instead a part of the 2K Classic event taking place in Madison Square Garden over the weekend. It’s also a rematch of a classic from last season, when the Hoyas — behind a 29-point effort from D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera — nearly upset the second-ranked Badgers in the Battle 4 Atlantis. These teams look to be more evenly matched this year, with Smith-Rivera perhaps looking to finish what he started a year ago in the Bahamas. Both squads have already suffered unexpected home losses to teams they have no business losing to (Wisconsin to Western Illinois; Georgetown to Radford), so the loser here will find itself in an early hole in its pursuit of a bid to the NCAA Tournament.
2. Xavier at Michigan (Friday, 9:00 PM ET, BTN).  The Wolverines will host the Musketeers tonight in the final game of the Gavitt Tipoff Games. Caris Levert‘s team has looked resurgent in its first two outings, beating its two opponents by a combined 54 points in an effort to erase memories of an injury-plagued and disappointing 2014-15 season. Michigan will face its first real test when Trevon Bluiett’s Musketeers invade the Crisler Center. It’ll be a mismatch of styles — the Wolverines are a quintessential jump-shooting team while Xavier thrives off attacks of the rim and getting to the free throw line —  so whichever team sets the tone early will earn a distinct advantage. Read the rest of this entry »

The continuation of Kansas’ offensive struggles from last year have been a huge lightning rod for discussion, and it looks like they’ll continue for at least another few weeks. News released this morning that Bill Self had suspended forward Brannen Greene for the next six games because of conduct detrimental to the team.

Brannen Greene suspended six games for conduct detrimental to the team, Self says. Not going to Maui.

— Rustin Dodd (@rustindodd) November 20, 2015

This isn’t the first time Greene has found himself in trouble off the court. In July 2013, he was cited by Lawrence police for leaving the scene of a car accident, an incident for which team discipline was handled internally. Last March, he was held out for the final game of the regular season against Oklahoma, with Self citing “irresponsibility” as the culprit.

The length of Greene’s current suspension means that he will miss three games in addition to the Jayhawks’ three contests next week at the Maui Invitational. The opponents for those games will be Loyola (MD), Harvard and Holy Cross, with all three tilts taking place in Lawrence. Greene’s return is currently pegged for December 12, when the Jayhawks are scheduled to face Oregon State in Kansas City.

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Kenny Ocker (@kennyocker) is a national columnist.

Former Southeastern Louisiana assistant coach Larry Cordaro was given a unique opportunity: Build your own college basketball program, from scratch, in your home state. In his first season anywhere as a head coach in 2014-15, he took the debutant LSU-Alexandria Generals to a 23-4 NAIA record, including Red River Athletic Conference regular season and tournament titles. This year, Cordaro’s team has won five of its first six games, including road wins at NCAA Division I schools Southeastern Louisiana, 82-68, and at Northwestern State, 99-97.

We took the time to talk with Cordaro this week about what it was like to beat his former school, the process of building a basketball program from scratch, and how life is different in the NAIA. This Q&A has been edited for clarity and brevity. Unlike the 5’5″ Cordaro, it is not particularly short.

Your page on the school website talks about how you want to build recognition for your fledgling program – what better way to do that than two wins over in-state Division I opponents?

Two Southland teams, we were able to go on the road and compete against and were fortunate to come out on top. It was our night both of those nights and hopefully the college basketball fans and people that keep up are recognizing what we’ve done, because our players put in a lot of time and they deserve the recognition.

When you go into these games against Division I opponents, what are you telling your players?

Just to play hard, to play together. We don’t get these opportunities too often. A lot of NAIA schools don’t get Division I schools to schedule them, but because of some relationships here in the state of Louisiana, we’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to fundraise for our program and just to really battle test our team. We feel like if we can play with Southland teams, Division I, then for sure we can hopefully compete and win a conference championship in the Red River. Last year, we were 0-5 versus the five Division I schools, and came close in three of them. Those games prepared us for the season moving forward. It’s just like the lower Division I schools going and playing against the high-majors – it prepares them that way for when they get in their leagues. You want to play better competition whenever you can. Read the rest of this entry »

Part of what makes college basketball both exciting and maddening is that each year we have to throw out the previous year’s assumptions and start from scratch. If that wasn’t apparent before this season started, it became painfully obvious when mighty Wisconsin, last year’s national runner-up, lost to Western Illinois, the worst team in last year’s Summit Conference. But perhaps it is the case that we don’t erase the previous year from our memory at the beginning of each season as much as we should. The Badgers, despite retaining just three of the eight players who earned meaningful minutes and bringing in zero top 100 recruits, were still ranked 17th in the preseason polls. In fact, 13 of last year’s Sweet Sixteen teams started the season in the USA Today Preseason Top 25. Can the success of all of these programs be so stable? Or are we perhaps suffering from recency bias, where we tend to overvalue teams that have recently succeeded, even if the personnel structures of those teams have drastically changed?

In order to answer this question, I checked the preseason and postseason USA Today Coaches’ Polls (with postseason being taken after the conclusion of the NCAA Tournament), and checked how many Sweet Sixteen teams from the previous season were in each poll. If we are overvaluing Sweet Sixteen teams, then there would consistently be more teams from the previous year’s Sweet Sixteen in the preseason poll than in the postseason poll, which would indicate that Sweet Sixteen teams have dropped out due to poor performance.

This is exactly what has happened. Going back seven years, the number of previous year’s Sweet Sixteen teams has always been greater in the preseason poll than in the postseason poll. Of 112 possible Sweet Sixteen teams to choose from in those seven years, 77 have appeared in the preseason poll and just 61 have appeared in the postseason poll. A difference of proportions test reveals that these two numbers are significantly different from each other at the 95 percent confidence level, which, in layman’s terms, means that this trend is too strong to write off as pure coincidence.

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Welcome to Rush the Court’s first ever edition of Levy’s B1G Layup Line, a weekly column set to give you all the water cooler material you need for all things Big Ten basketball. If you’re reading this, congratulations – you’re losing your virginity to this column, and so am I. We’re now linked together forever as eskimo brothers; if we’re going to embark on this season-long journey together, we may as well check ourselves into the EBDBBnB and enjoy it.

Before we do that, though, let’s break in the 2016 season by recapping what was a very interesting first week in the Big Ten.

REPORT CARD

A: Denzel Valentine

I could make this all about Michigan State’s incredible come-from-behind victory against a rock-solid Kansas team poised to win its 12th straight Big 12 title. But I won’t. Reason being: Denzel Valentine is a freak of nature. The captain of both a veteran Spartans’ team and the “How is He Still In College?” team made history on Tuesday night in front of 50+ NBA executives and scouts at the United Center, becoming the fourth player in Michigan State history to post a triple-double (Magic Johnson – 8; Draymond Green – 3; Charlie Bell – 1) with an absurd 29/12/12 stat line and earning himself a postgame phone call from Magic Johnson. Valentine scored or assisted on 22 straight points in the second half to dig his team out of an 11-point hole and give Sparty a permanent lead. Without him, Michigan State loses by over 20. You don’t usually see the best individual performance of the season happen in mid-November, but this very well may have been it.

B: Caleb Swanigan

Speaking of Michigan State, their favorite non-Spartan had himself a weeeek. He recorded a double-double in each of his first two collegiate games (12.5 points, 12.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game), earning his first Freshman of the Week honor in as many tries. With two massive seven-foot centers and no big to stretch the floor last season, Swanigan was the key missing variable to solving Purdue’s frontcourt equation. Now that AJ Hammons is back, it’s absolutely terrifying to think about what that frontcourt is capable of doing.

C: Maryland Terrapins

You’d be hard pressed to find a basketball fan out there who didn’t think Maryland was a top-five team nationally heading into the season. What those people need to be reminded of is that 60.0 percent of this team’s starting five is brand new (Rasheed Sulaimon; Robert Carter; Diamond Stone). It will take more than a week for Mark Turgeon to mold the clay and allow his team time to develop chemistry and learn to play together. It was no surprise to see Maryland struggle to put away a gritty Georgetown team in a game where Melo Trimble did not score until about five minutes left in the first half. And after all that talk about Maryland’s top notch frontcourt, it was the Terps’ small-ball lineup (Jake Layman at the four; Carter at the five) – the method that led to their 28 wins last season – that won out. Sure, a win’s a win. But this thing will take a little time. Patience, people.

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What last season’s iteration of Duke basketball made us forget, this season’s version reminded us quite vividly during the Blue Devils’ loss to Kentucky at the Champions Classic — which is that the adjustment from high school to high-level college basketball isn’t all that easy. After a pair of tune-up tilts in Durham last week, Duke took the floor in Chicago boasting the most discussed player in the country in Grayson Allen along with the nation’s top-rated crop of incoming rookies. After a sound humbling at the hands of the hungry Wildcats, what they left with were a bunch of question marks and a better appreciation of the special nature of last year’s special freshman class.

Tyus Jones, Justise Winslow, Jahlil Okafor and Allen made up the Duke’s incoming class of 2014, and while the the holdover sophomore initially struggled to adjust, the others seamlessly transitioned to the college game. In last year’s Champions Classic win against eventual Final Four participant Michigan State, the trio had their handprints all over a 10-point victory. Jones played with the poise of a point guard well beyond his years, scoring 17 points and committing no turnovers in his 31 minutes of action. Okafor showed the dominant form that would define his only season at Duke, making eight of his 10 attempts from the field. And Winslow proved to be a whirling dervish of controlled aggression, scoring 15 points of his own and grabbing six boards in a team-high 36 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

Half-empty stadiums, passive fans, and disheveled teams. All of these are commonly found in college hoops in November, and all steadily reverse as the season progresses. Why is it the case that November basketball brings all these out? These games count the same towards the record as the games in February, often providing prime chances for key non-conference wins. It’s a strange time for both fans and players. The former are overlooking many of these games, either writing them off as wins or being simply indifferent towards the outcome. The latter are inexperienced and unable to achieve an optimal degree of chemistry on the floor.

Which brings us to Exhibit A: Georgetown. How disappointing was a double overtime loss to Radford? Well, very. The poor play of D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera and his surrounding cast of sophomores left much to be desired in the loss to the Highlanders. Somehow though, just days later they gave #3 Maryland everything they wanted in the Comcast Center. Despite ultimately falling short, the positives were numerous. Seldom used senior Bradley Hayes has played out of his mind thus far, displaying very impressive footwork and shot-making ability in the post. Sophomore Isaac Copeland, who may see as many minutes as Smith-Rivera this season, will eventually find ways to be more assertive on offense given his greater degree of responsibility. Freshman Marcus Derrickson shined against the Terps, and it looks as if he will have a chance to provide the Hoyas with a much needed three-point threat. Like last season, it may only be a matter of time before things start clicking for John Thompson III‘s squad. Read the rest of this entry »

Three Pac-12 teams participated in very competitive contests in ESPN‘s Tip-Off Marathon earlier this week, each coming away with very good wins for their programs. Below let’s take a quick look at the biggest takeaways from those three performances.

Utah – Before we dig into what Monday night’s win over San Diego State means for the Utes, let’s compare that game to last year’s and see what it might mean for the whole sport. You might remember that last year the Utes and Aztecs battled to a 53-49 final in a game that only a mother could love. This year, even though both teams are transitioning with brand new point guards, the two teams combined for 53 more points. Sure, there were 14 more free throws attempted in this game (a total of 57 were attempted), but we’re already seeing an uptick in possessions per game and, as players adjust to the new whistles, we should continue to see greater flow. The rules still aren’t perfect, but all things considered, it seems like we’ve taken an incremental step in the right direction.

As for the Utes, despite losing do-everything guard Delon Wright, this team is so loaded with talent and skill that this year’s edition may be even better than last year’s Sweet Sixteen team. You know about Jakob Poeltl already, and he’s continued to be spectacular (just see above), to the tune of 20.5 points, 11.5 boards and 2.5 blocks per game as well as 70 percent shooting from the field. Plus the seven-footer who shot 43 percent from the charity stripe last year has improved to a 62 percent marksman in the early going — this will be big. Then there’s senior Jordan Loveridge, who looks poised to have the type of year we’ve been waiting on from him since his promising freshman year, averaging 22.5 PPG and knocking in 10 threes already.

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After last night’s 79-73 loss to Michigan State at the Champions Classic, Kansas head coach Bill Self lamented his team’s inability to score inside the paint–a staple of Self’s high-low offensive scheme. The Jayhawks astonishingly made just 13 of their 33 layups: “The one thing, in order for us to win big consistently, is we’ve got to be able to score with our back to the basket some,” Self told the media after the game. It’s not the first time he has raised this concern. After nearly every loss last season either Self or one of his players made reference to the team’s inability to play through the team’s bigs and score on the inside.

There’s a cliche for situations like this. The one about insanity being defined as doing the same things over and over and over again, and expecting different results. But nobody likes cliches. They’re overused — a less-than-nuanced way of dealing with a problem. Yet cliches are often accurate, which is really what makes us uncomfortable with them. We don’t want to be perceived as insane, so we dismiss the cliche as irrelevant, overused, or simple. For Self and Kansas, their overwheleming drive to pound the ball into the paint is quite possibly the definition of insanity.

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