• Although most people have been talking about the growth of international basketball and its impact on the NBA, we never really saw much of an effect on NCAA basketball other than seeing proven college players get passed over by unproven international talents. Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, anybody? No, we are not talking to you David Kahn! Well, now we are finally starting to see some of the effects. Everybody who reads this site is familiar with the work of Enes Kanter who will play for Kentucky next year (pending a final decision by the NCAA), but it does not stop there as this is a growing trend. Last week Seton Hall received a commitment from center Aaron Geramipoor, who hails from England. [Ed. Note: We're really trying hard not to make any Bobby Gonzalez-Harrod's jokes.] Now, Rutgers, Kentucky, and Maryland have expressed interest in 6’6″ wing Daddy Ugbede from Nigeria (cue up the “Who’s your Daddy?” t-shirts and chants in the student section). Ugbede will enroll in a prep school in Washington, DC, but it is clear that college coaches (and high school coaches for that matter) are starting to look more closely at talent from overseas.
• In May, Georgia head coach Mark Fox surprised many fans by landing Marcus Thornton, which was considered a minor coup given the fact that Texas and Georgia Tech were both offering him a scholarship. This weekend, Fox landed the best recruit to come to Athens in many years when he received a verbal commitment from Kentavious Caldwell, a shooting guard who is ranked as one of the top 5 at his position and top 15 players in this year’s senior class overall by every recruiting service.
• Last week, Marshall Plumlee, the #5 center in this year’s rising senior class, committed to attend Duke following in the footsteps on his brothers, Miles and Mason Plumlee, raising the possibility that all three could play together at Duke next year if Mason (a potential lottery pick in the 2011 NBA Draft) decides to return to Durham for his junior season. Not to be outdone by Coach K, Roy Williams has extended a scholarship offer to Plumlee’s AAU teammate Cody Zeller, the younger brother of Tyler. Cody, who is the #4 power forward in this year’s rising senior class, has not committed to a school yet and has a pretty big list of potential schools according to local newspapers, but we have heard that UNC and a pair of in-state schools (Butler and Indiana) are in the lead right now.

• By now many of you have heard of Anthony Davis who is blowing up on the AAU summer circuit this year. We will have a lot more on him tomorrow, but until then you can check out some YouTube highlights of Davis.
• Davis may have taken all the headlines during the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League, but it was Duke-bound consensus top 5 shooting guard/small forward Michael Gbinije (19 points and 5 rebounds) who led his team to victory with undecided point guard James Robinson adding 24 points. Gbinije ended up winning MVP of the tournament thanks to his offensive output and solid defense against Florida-bound Bradley Beal (#2 rated SG in the class) and undecided Ben McLemore (a top 10 SF/SG) in the finals.

Ed. Note: The conference call actually took place on Monday, but I had an ophthalmologist appointment and I’m pretty sure that they used just about the entire bottle of eye drops to dilate my eyes so I’m just starting to see straight again. The below entries are my some of the key points the coaches made, but are not direct quotes. If you want to listen to the coaches speak directly, click on the link next to their name.

Anthony Grant (Alabama) – Audio
- Defense: Last year their defense gave them a chance to be in every game that they played, but they had to have that solid defense because their offense was not always there.
- Returning players: Senario Hillman one of elite athletes in the SEC and can guard multiple positions. He will need to improve shot selection and decision-making, but is making strides. JaMychal Green adds size and strength to the frontcourt, which is as good as any team in the SEC. Should improve with an extra year of experience. Tony Mitchell had a very good freshman year and being named to SEC All-Freshman team was an accomplishment. Grant is looking for the players to make a jump between their first and second year in the Alabama program.

Tony Barbee (Auburn) – Audio / Key Quotes
- Lack of Experience: Starting over is exciting because you get to mold a new group of players. It will be hard to judge what he has until he sees the team together in the Fall.
- Plan: Focus on defense because they could be “offensively challenged” because they don’t know what they have outside of Frankie Sullivan. Given their lack of size on the inside they might have to focus on their offense around the 3-point line.

John Pelphrey (Arkansas) – Audio
- Frontcourt: They have Marshawn Powell on the inside, but will need to develop more on the inside to help support him.
- APR: We’re all working very hard. We want to see these young men improve in the classroom and on the court. He isn’t sure statistics over the short-term can adequately reflect the academic performance of a program, but is open to more long-term measures.
- Andre Clark: Aware of the transfer to TCU and does talk with players who have transferred if they contact him about an issue.

Billy Donovan (Florida) – Audio
- Backcourt: Didn’t know what to expect coming into last season having lost Nick Calathes. Irving Walker played his freshman year at 2 guard spot. Kenny Boynton came in with huge reputation out of high school, but you’re never sure with them making the jump. Limited depth in the backcourt meant those two played more minutes than they probably should have, which meant they couldn’t do some of the stuff they would have otherwise done such as press. Coming into this year with the experience should be helpful for those two coming into this season. Still some issues with depth in the backcourt this year although they are adding freshmen Scottie Wilbekin and Casey Prather to the backcourt.
- Alex Tyus: First UF player to put his name in the NBA Draft and return to UF. It was Alex’s decision. He worked out with a couple of NBA teams and listened to what NBA had to say about where he might go. No pressure from UF to come back. Donovan feels that process is only going to help the Gators going forward.
- Patric Young: Very physical and aggressive player, but needs some work on the inside. In the near term he will bring energy and a great rebounding presence to the Gators.

Mark Fox (Georgia) – Audio
- Marcus Thornton: Really big boost after picking him up following his release from his letter of intent from Clemson. Gives Georgia a lot of options because of his versatility.
- Trey Thompkins: Had discussion with family and got info from NBA. Felt it wasn’t appropriate. Only would be able to work out for 1 or 2 days due to final exams and the new NBA Draft withdrawal deadlines.
- Turnovers: Feels they will take better care of the ball and they should also be able to create more turnovers on the defensive end, which should create more easy baskets.

John Calipari (Kentucky) – Audio / Transcript (Part 1/Part 2)
- This past week he went to Haiti, where his “Hoops for Haiti” telethon helped raise $1.5M. Even though they money is helping there is still long way to go. Then there was the NBA Draft, which was also emotional, but from a different perspective. He enjoyed being with the 5 families of the 5 players and helping to create hope for them and their families. As for his much discussed quote, he is standing by it because he was not talking about the past, but talking about the future. He met with Chris Douglas-Roberts on the night before this press conference and he echoed the comments. The NBA Draft was a 2-hour infomercial, which will have effects for at least the next 5 years, and it will be the players who it was aimed at who will win Kentucky championships in the future.
- Future Draft Picks: He feels that Darius Miller and DeAndre Liggins could be in that position next year. Josh Harrelson has improved a lot too and could be a major force next year, which fans were not able to see because he spent last year stuck behind two 1st round picks.
- Last season’s accomplishments: Even though they lost in the Elite 8 to West Virginia he was proud of the team’s accomplishments as only one Kentucky team won more games in a season (1948).
- Incoming freshman: Brandon  Knight will enter school with almost one year worth of academic credits. Doron Lamb and Stacey Poole will add depth to the guard position. Lamb can play the 1 or 2 spot and they might play a pair of point guards similar to what they did this year with John Wall and Eric Bledsoe. That’s one of the best things about dribble-drive: position doesn’t matter since all four perimeter players are the same.
- Frontcourt: They lost three frontcourt players and are bringing in a couple to replace them, but they will not be that deep. They will rely on Eloy Vargas and Enes Kanter to step up, but there might be times where the Wildcats play 4 guards and a single big man, which means they may press more. At this point it is just conjecture without having seen them play together.

Trent Johnson (LSU) – Audio / Key Quotes
- This year will be a completely different team as they are brininging in five freshman and a transfer. He doesn’t think moving from the West Coast (Stanford) to the East Coast was that big of an adjustment especially for recruiting.
- Bo Spencer: He’s in summer school and is not a member of the team at this moment, but Johnson did not elaborate on the possibility of him returning to the team.

Andy Kennedy (Mississippi) – Audio
- Nick Williams out of Indiana practiced with the team last year could make an immediate impact. He is a big wing player who brings a physical and mental toughness that will be welcome. He can play any of about three positions. He is most comfortable off the ball, but can score in a variety of ways.
- Dundrecous Nelson and Demarco Cox could also contribute as they are physical ready coming out of high school, but he will need to see if the rest of their game is ready for the transition.

Rick Stansbury (Mississippi State) – Audio
- Losing impact players like Jarvis Varnado and Barry Stewart will be difficult to overcome, but given time he thinks they can overcome it this season. Loss of Varnado hurts them defensively, but they were a good defensive team before he was there and they can still be one after he has left. He does not think they will shoot as many three-pointers this season. He thinks the inside game could become a bigger presence. There are a lot of personnel and injury questions for the team heading into the season.
- Phil Turner: He does not want to discuss it. He says both sides have made their statements and he will not talk about it any further.
- Dee Bost appealing to get his eligibility back: Stansbury has zero control over the situation. He says the reporter knows more about it than he does. He says this is a first time situation so they are all waiting to hear about Bost’s eligibility.
- Renardo Sidney: It will be relatively easy (compared to the prior two problems) integrating Sidney into the team after his nine game suspension.

Darrin Horn (South Carolina) – Audio
- Losing Devan Downey is difficult and it is not something you can do with one player and it is not something that they will try to do. Already dealt with loss of Dominique Archie will not be a big change because he only played 5 games last year so they had to deal with the transition last season. Ramon Galloway showed some flashes last season and they will need to develop that into more consistent output this season.
- Defense: Last year they abandonned what they wanted to do because of personnel issues.
- Freshman: He expects them to have an impact this year. He thinks that all of them can play right away.

Tony Jones (Tennessee) – Audio
- They never explained why he was talking instead of Bruce Pearl.
- Tobais Harris is McDonald’s All-American who is a solid kid, great student, and obviously a great player. Jones feel that he can do it all–shoot, make plays for others, and rebounds along with having a great basketball IQ.
- Florida and Kentucky will be the favorites, but hopefully at the end the Volunteeers will be right there.

Kevin Stallings (Vanderbilt) – Audio
- Feels that he has some returning players who can alleviate the loss at point guard (Jermaine Beal) and in the post (A.J. Ogilvy). He thinks that Brad Tinsley is a very capable point guard who has played the 2 guard while he has been at Vanderbilt and Festus Ezeli can help on the inside.
- Jeffery Taylor: He would not be surprised if this was Taylor’s last season at Vanderbilt because of the interest from NBA scouts and he agrees with the praise from those scouts.
- Reseeding: The team enjoys being in “the toughest division in college basketball”.
- One-and-Done: Originally thoguht it was going to be a good thing, but he no longer feels that way. He says he wants a few modifications although he did not specify what those specifications were.

1. Coach K is showing no signs of slowing down as he prepares for his summer stint leading the US Men’s National Team again.  The FIBA World Championships take place in Turkey in mid-September, and the team will be chosen from a pool of 27 players next month.  We’re guessing that the names might include the following: Kobe, LeBron, Dwight, Melo and Kevin.  As for Duke, even though K has to replace three starters, his team next year is probably more talented.
2. In this report, Big 12 coaches talk about their feelings as it appeared their league was going to dismantle last month as a result of the almighty football dollar.  Mark Turgeon and Frank Martin’s comments about how NCAA Tournament revenue finances the rest of the NCAA’s championships is the salient point here.  The NCAA needs to figure a way to get in front of the next round of massive expansion or face the ugly specter of eventually getting crowded out completely.
3. Former Memphis guard Roburt Sallie, a player who averaged just under six PPG yet famously dropped ten threes and 35 total points in the 2009 NCAA first round against Cal State Northridge, is transferring to Louisville for his senior season.  If he finishes his undergraduate degree this summer, as expected, he will be eligible to play immediately for Rick Pitino’s team.  His 11/4 averages and 44% three-point shooting will help UL immediately, a team reeling from losing its top four scorers from last year.
4. If you had to guess the game with the largest online viewing in history (subject to change annually, we’re sure), would you choose the US-Algeria World Cup game (during work hours on a Thursday morning) or… Florida-BYU from last year’s NCAA Tournament (incidentally, also on a Thursday during work hours).  Each game had over 1.1M online viewers, but the hoops game had slightly more.
5. Speaking of World Cup, this is great.  We have a rule around here that any and all Freddy Brown (Georgetown ’84) references will make it onto the site in some capacity, so we couldn’t resist when a comparison was made between Mexico’s Ricardo Osorio’s boneheaded pass to blow the game on Sunday and Brown’s gift to North Carolina’s James Worthy some twenty-eight years ago.

1. Santa Clara head coach Kerry Keating is requesting that his fellow coaches go “hands-free” this summer (not texting and driving) in light of a recent accident where a young girl was killed on her bicycle by such a driver.  This is something we can get on board with, and we hope that other coaches (and readers) will take it to note.  If you must text, do it while the light is red.
2. Is the Big 12 sticking at ten for the time being, or will they look at adding someone like, say, Houston?  Texas legislators are pushing for this addition, and with the unbelievable power that the state’s flagship university now holds over the conference, we’d never say never.  But honestly, we’re not really seeing this as a realistic possibility.  UT wants all that Big 12 money for themselves.
3. As for the Mountain West, they’re sticking at nine for now after adding Boise State but losing Utah in the past two weeks.  Even with the loss of Utah, this league has really started to separate itself as the top mid-major league (if you can even call it that) in both football and basketball.
4. Bill Russell and KC Jones aren’t walking through that door.  No, this isn’t a reference to the Boston Celtics but rather the San Francisco Dons, who found themselves with a two-year probation that will not include a postseason ban.  The issue was that several athletes spent their scholarship money on non-required textbooks and school supplies.  And… we’re not sure what the problem is.
5. This article is an interesting look-back at the decision Billy Donovan made three years ago to stay at Florida instead of leaving for the Orlando Magic, but it hasn’t all been peaches and cream in Gainesville, while the Magic have become one of the better teams in the NBA (predictable three years ago given the Dwight Howard factor).  Many folks have Florida with all five starters returning as a top 10-15 squad next season, but this particular college-to-pro situation might have actually worked out.

This SEC Cheerleader is a Fan of Slive's Idea

The driving force for this is the current perception that the SEC East is the varsity squad to the SEC West’s JV group.  Last season, with Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt leading the way, the SEC East went 27-9 (.750) against the other division, and those same three teams represented three-quarters of the semifinal round in the SEC Tournament.  In the past four seasons, thirteen of the eighteen SEC teams to make the NCAA Tournament came from the East, and all four SEC participants in the 2010 NCAA Tourney were from that division.  So long as coaches such as John Calipari (or whoever is at Kentucky), Bruce Pearl and Billy Donovan are in the same division, it’s difficult to argue that this is a cyclical thing where the SEC West will eventually rise to equal or better standing that its eastern counterparts.  The last true powerhouse program in the West was Nolan Richardson’s Arkansas teams of the early to mid-90s, with the other five programs since making short-term claims but none truly rising to seize the mantle.  For what it’s worth, it should also be noted that the twelve-team ACC and Big 12 conferences have successfully utilized the no-division basketball/two-division football formats for some time now and it seems to work well enough for them. 

Maybe we’re becoming overly cynical and paranoid in our old age, but we wonder if this talk belies something else going on with the conference realignment debate and is actually a pre-emptive maneuver by the SEC brass to prepare for expansion of some sort.  Consider that if the SEC raids the ACC and/or Big 12, as described in options here, what defines a school as eastern or western may suddenly shift a couple hundred miles on the map.  By removing the divisions in basketball and testing possibilities with respect to scheduling and so forth, the SEC would be in better organizational position to accept its new members if or when that ever comes to pass.  If you’re Florida State fan or Texas fan hoping that the call comes from the SEC someday, this seemingly small initiative could actually signal much greater changes down the line. 

1. Some transfer news from the weekend…  Two of the bigger names in college basketball from a celebrity perspective are leaving their respective schools.  Guard Jeff Jordan (MJ’s son, in case you hadn’t heard) is leaving Illinois for his senior season a mere year after he quit the team and returned the first time.  We’re not sure what exactly the deal is with the somewhat indecisive Jordan, but the word is that he’s looking for more PT than the fourteen minutes per game he received last year for the Illini.  The other big transfer name belongs to Percy Miller, aka Lil Romeo, the hip-hop star who presumably sold a lot more albums than he scored points (5) in his two-year USC Trojan career.  The subject of one of RTC’s first-ever posts (#3 actually), it’s not clear whether he will try to continue playing college basketball elsewhere or give it up completely.
2. Moving to players that actually matter at this level, former Washington guard Elston Turner will re-surface at Texas A&M beginning in 2011-12 and LSU star guard Bo Spencer will be ineligible for the fall semester next season as a result of academic problems.  Turner will have two years of eligibility in College Station, while Spencer will have an opportunity to return to his team next winter if he can get his books in order.
3. The final notable piece of news with players leaving is that Florida’s Nimrod Tishman is leaving the Gator program after only one year in Gainesville.  He is returning to Israel to play professionally, causing mass lamentations throughout the SEC fanbases from Fayetteville to Columbia.
4. Is the one-year renewable scholarship a bigger problem than we, or anyone, knows?  If you buy USA Today’s report that over 20% of athletes on the 65 NCAA teams leave the program in a given year, it just might be.  We’d never really given it much thought other than when a new coach comes into town and runs everyone off (see: Calipari, John), but maybe we should start paying attention to this a little more.
5. We always thought something didn’t smell quite right with the universally-liked and respected Tyler Smith being caught with a firearm in a rental car on New Year’s Day.  Smith finally came out and said that he purchased the gun based on death threats that he was receiving about his three-year old son.  He didn’t go into details as to whom was making the threats or why they would be making them, but he’s now back in Tennessee after playing professionally in Turkey for a few months and waiting to see if his name is called next month in the NBA Draft.

Going from 65 to 68 means four first-round games. Our committee, when we meet in May, will look at some models on how to bracket that. For example, you can have two afternoon and two night games in Dayton, or two games at two different sites.  But the big question to be decided by the committee is which teams should play those play-in games, and how the winners will be seeded into the field.  Speaking individually, I would look at the last eight, and rewarding the AQs [automatic qualifiers].  Those would be highly competitive first games. But those are things we have to look at in May.

Additionally, Greg Shaheen, the NCAA Senior Executive VP who got lit up by the media in the week leading up to the Final Four, said during a radio interview with Doug Gottlieb recently that all options are on the table with respect to logistics but one of the primary considerations of the committee in structuring the new games will be to remove some of the stigma from them.  A noble endeavor, indeed.

How to Avoid the Dreaded Stigma?

With the hope that reasonable minds ultimately will prevail, here are our thoughts on the matter.

Who Plays In It?

This is the part most fans care about, and with good reason — they want to know whether as standard practice they can continue to ignore PiG Tuesday.  As it currently stands, roughly 99.9% of America* fails to so much as recognize that there is a Tuesday night game ostensibly involving NCAA Tournament opponents.  Only the truly anal among us wait until Wednesday to fill out our bracket on the ridiculous off chance that the winner of the PiG is the “right” matchup to give its corresponding #1 team trouble (and you know who you are).  So let’s cut right to it.  For the last ten seasons, there have been only four groups of people who care about this game.

* unscientific sampling of the three guys walking around the office hallway

1. #16A’s fans, players and families.
2. #16B’s fans, players and families.
3. Overly nervous fans of the corresponding #1 seed waiting on an opponent for Friday’s #1/#16 game.
4. The good citizens of Dayton, Ohio, who keep attending this thing year after year.

Just about six weeks ago, we saw this played out in real time as the “Opening Round” of the NCAA Tournament between Arkansas-Pine Bluff-Winthrop competed directly with the first round of the NIT and several interesting matchups that included UConn-Northeastern, UNC-William & Mary, Texas Tech-Seton Hall and NC State-South Florida.  From that night’s ESPN coverage to the trending Twitter topics and later to the Nielsen ratings, it was painfully clear that on this mid-March evening, the NIT games were the preferred matchups for college hoops fans.  As anyone working at 700 West Washington Street in Indianapolis is surely aware, that should NEVER happen.  Even on its worst night, for an NCAA Tournament game to be overshadowed by another basketball-related sporting event in March should be an impossible achievement, and yet on that particular evening it was not.

This NIT Contest, Not the NCAA Game, Was the Featured Event of the Night

And therein lies the problem.  Most people, even hardcore college hoops fans like us, don’t consider the Tuesday night PiG to be a legitimate part of the NCAA Tournament.  It involves the two worst-rated teams in the field, which means nobody knows anything about them; and it has zero impact on our brackets, which means there’s no corresponding reason to care to learn about them either.  So the question for the NCAA becomes: how do you legitimize it?  How do you remove that stigma that Shaheen mentioned as problematic?  How do you make people care about the (now) four play-in games on Tuesday so that random NIT games involving struggling national powers don’t take priority over NCAA games on the sports page?  Here are the two viable alternatives as we see them.

Status Quo (x4)

Keeping things as they are now where the #16s play the ’other’ #16s (or possibly #17s in the new scheme) wouldn’t seem to do much to enhance the legitimacy of the PiGs, but there is precedent for this.  From 1978 to 1985, the NCAA Tournament doubled in size from 32 to 64 teams (can you imagine the outcry in today’s environment??).  There were several fits and starts along the way as it expanded a little more almost every year in-between, but suffice it to say that in 1983, the NCAA invited 52 teams to the ball with the final eight automatic qualifiers slotted as #12 seeds into four play-in games (or the “preliminary round” as they called it then).  In 1984, there were five play-in games with an additional #11 seed added to the mix.  In both of these years, all of the play-in games were played on the Tuesday prior to the first round games, and the teams were sent to PiG sites of Philadelphia’s Palestra or Dayton’s UD Arena depending on relative proximity to the school(s) involved.  The winners advanced to play #5 seeds in the true “first round,” with the one exception of the #11 seed (Northeastern) in 1984 who played a #6 seed in that round.

In that era, the NCAA Tournament was still in the process of becoming the huge event that it has now become, and we doubt that there was as much consideration given to how to best market and promote the play-in games other than to get them over with and move on to the main event.  As we outline below, we believe such thinking today by the NCAA would be shortsighted, but if the organization decides to move in the direction of simply expanding the existing model from one game involving two #16 seeds to four games, then we should anticipate a #1 seed becoming a first round upset victim within the next 5-10 years.  The reason for this is simple: if we assume that the expansion of the NCAA Tournament by three teams will allow three more at-large bids each year (probably on the #11-#13 seed lines), then three schools who were once on the #15-seed line prone to causing occasional problems for their respective #2 seeds (four Ws in the last twenty years) will now get a shot to take down a #1 seed instead.  The difference in the quality of the lower #16s versus the higher #15s can be significant, and often there is little to no difference between a low #1 and a high #2.  2010 was a great example of that.

Depending on your perspective, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Northern Iowa’s major upset over #1 Kansas in the second round created an astonishing amount of buzz for this year’s Tournament and helped it reach its highest interest level from casual fans in a number of years.  You’d have to believe that a #16 seed taking out a #1 seed in similar fashion could also be beneficial in that regard.  But by and large, a decision to make all the #16 seeds play in the four PiGs would still render the opening Tuesday of the Tournament meaningless to most fans.  Any potential positive effect would be put off until the first round games on Friday against the #1 seeds, and it’s unlikely that casual fans would understand the distinction anyway (“they all suck” is something we hear a lot).  Simply adding three more games to the “round” won’t inspire people to pay more attention to those games; if anything, it may in fact serve as an annoying reminder that the NCAA expanded the Tournament.  Therefore, if legitimacy of these four games is an outcome that the NCAA wants, expanding the status quo four times doesn’t get them there any more than it did in the mid-1980s.  Fans will just have more games to not care about.

The Alternative: BubbleBuster Tuesday

For the ten or so days leading up to Selection Sunday, all we talk about are two things.  Who the four #1 seeds will be, and how the bubble will shake out.  Generally, the teams that end up slotted in the #3-#10 slots are all but forgotten during this period as the bubble accounts for enough chatter to fill up the airwaves throughout early March.  This diarrhea of the mouth about an irregularly-shaped globule of transparent sheen reaches its natural crescendo on Selection Sunday in the hours leading up to the big unveiling, where Resume A vs. Resume B takes on a life of its own and everyone from Greg Gumbel to the family dog has a definite opinion on who is in and who is out.  And then as soon as the brackets are trotted out, most of the discussion stops.  Sure, there are always a couple of gadflies who won’t stop screaming about an omission or two, but for the most part everyone else moves on to analyzing #5/#12 matchups and forgets about the few teams that were left on the outside looking in.

Capitalize on All This Buzz

Imagine, instead, if we kept that dialogue going.  Rather than immediately jumping into Thursday and Friday first round game analysis, we keep the buzz percolating on the airwaves and ether about the very teams that we’ve spent the last two weeks talking about?  In 2010, it would have been teams like Florida, Minnesota, UTEP, Utah State, Arizona State, Illinois, Virginia Tech and Mississippi State.  For serious and casual fans alike, everyone would already be acutely aware of the strengths and weaknesses of these schools, and if the NCAA slots these eight teams into the BubbleBuster games on Tuesday, suddenly you have an eminently marketable day of games where everyone will already be intellectually and emotionally invested.  So you thought all along that the Hokies were better than their resume showed?  Great — they’ll have a chance to prove it against Minnesota.  You believe Utah State had a weak schedule and bears no resemblance to a Tourney team?  Wonderful — a loss against Arizona State would confirm your sentiment.  How phenomenal would this set of games be to all lovers of March Madness?

Although buzz and fan interest alone is a great reason for creating a BubbleBuster day of games, there are other compelling reasons beyond that one.  Surprisingly, it may even be in the participating schools’ best financial interest to lobby for this alternative.  The reason?  Starting in 2008, the schools that were slotted into the PiG were each given a full NCAA Tournament financial share as if they were part of the “real” Tournament, and additionally, the winner was given another full share for advancing to the next game!  This means that whoever plays in the four PiGs and wins to advance to the field of 64 is in better financial position than a higher seed who goes one-and-done in their only game (e.g., a #8 seed who loses to the #9 seed).  Whenever there are dollars involved, BCS schools tend to get what they want, and if schools like the above eight think they have a better shot to get an ‘easy’ win in a relatively down year, expect them to put forth maximum efforts to keep that opportunity away from the little guys.

As for legitimacy and destigmatization, BubbleBuster games would have an instant impact.  Four winner-take-all games between teams everyone has gotten to know in recent weeks for the right to join the ‘real’ bracket?  Sign us up, please.  Given the limited number of games at the same time here (max: 2) and the general excitement that reaching finality on some of these inclusion arguments would inspire, it’s reasonable to believe that these games would outperform some of the first and second round matchups of the ensuing weekend in terms of national intrigue.  Are you more likely to watch Florida-Virginia Tech or Duke-Arkansas-Pine Bluff?  Exactly.  Furthermore, as it is now, by Wednesday morning of NCAA Tourney week everyone has tired of the bracket analysis and is ready for some real games.  A solution that plays four nationally interesting games on Tuesday night serves to whet the appetite and increases the attention of fans who are growing impatient for Thursday afternoon’s openers.  The one catch to this plan is how to handle the ubiquitous brackets, but we’ll discuss that below.

Dealing With 4 Little PiGs is Tough

How to Structure It?

The When & Where

Given travel time and the fact that NCAA Tournament teams will necessarily come from every part of the country, we think that the NCAA has to stick with Tuesday as the only plausible day for these four play-in games.  If the NCAA stays with the eight worst auto-qualifiers as the entrants, then those teams are going to have plenty of time (and rest) to get to their game sites, whether Dayton and/or elsewhere.  This could prove a little more difficult with the BubbleBuster option and teams who may have played games in conference tournaments up to and including Selection Sunday, but a Tuesday/Friday/Sunday track can be made reasonable in nearly all scenarios. Let’s break down the three primary possibilities.

• Quadrupleheader in Dayton.  Dayton has been a tremendous host of the PiG for the past ten seasons (and Shaheen recognized that with Gottlieb), and the NCAA isn’t about to give up on an annual sellout there.  The question is whether they want to have four games there in the standard first/second round format (two early and two late) or try to duplicate that success in another anchor venue.  The benefits are that Dayton is centrally located for 80% of teams, has a long history of experience in putting on this event and the local fans have proven that they will attend no matter who is playing.  The drawbacks are that two games would have to be played in the afternoon, potentially cutting into ticket sales and TV ratings, and there could be some major travel disadvantages for teams that have to fly from the western third of the US and then back again within a span of three days.
• Tuesday Night Doubleheaders (Dayton & Western Site).  This is similar to what the NCAA Tournament did with its “preliminary round” games in 1983 and 1984 with half of the games in Philadelphia and the other half in Dayton.  The setup could easily mimic what the regional semifinal round currently looks like, with games beginning at 7pm ET and staggered so that there’s a good chance for viewers to see all four endings during the evening.  The prevailing question is where the NCAA would put the new site and whether it would be anchored in perpetuity like Dayton or if it might be rotated in the future among several interested cities.  The best-case scenario envisions a second site in a western time zone city that loves its basketball and will support this event annually.  We’re thinking that EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City or The Pit in Albuquerque would be great choices.  This way both halves of the country would be covered with a relatively easy flight to the site and the NCAA could make efforts to slot the western teams and the eastern teams appropriately (we don’t have hard evidence of this, but it appears the NCAA tried to do this during the 1983 and 1984 tournaments).  Given the precedent and the commonsense components of this option, we’d be surprised if they choose something else.
• Tuesday & Wednesday Games at First Round Sites.  A third but less likely option is simply that the NCAA would open the first round sites two days in advance and play an opening round game at those venues.  This would cut down considerably on travel for every team, as the winning teams would already be where their next two rounds of games were scheduled.  It would mimic what we’ve seen in some conference tournaments in recent years where there’s only one opening round game to start things off (the Pac-10 Tournament, for example, utilized such a game this year).  But with first round venues changing every year, and the promise of a quadrupleheader and a doubleheader in coming days, will fans in those cities care to schlep out for a single game on Tuesday or Wednesday night?  We suppose it ultimately depends on the matchups (see the legitimacy argument above), but we think that this strategy opens itself up to being the game to skip unless there are some other intriguing factors at play.  The NCAA should want to see a packed arena full of fans and excitement for these opening round games, and we’re unconvinced that playing a single game at the venue two days prior to the rest of the games will furnish that desired result.

The Pit Could be the Dayton of the West

The How

The next decision that must be made is where to slot the teams into the field of 64.  Obviously, if the NCAA decides to stick with the status quo by replicating what they already do with the existing PiG, then the four winners are easily slotted opposite the four #1 seeds.  Very facile, but also very boring.  The more difficult question is how to handle eight at-large teams in the play-in games should the NCAA decide to go that route.  We see two options here.

• Standard Slotting.  The easy way is to simply decide on a seed-line (for example, #12) and put the four winners into those spots opposite the #5 seeds.  The problem with this strategy is painfully obvious: the last eight at-large teams are not all #12 seeds.  Some, such as Florida and Minnesota in the 2010 Tournament, were higher seeds (#10 and #11, respectively), while others such as Virginia Tech or Mississippi State likely would have been lower (#13s or #14s).  Some years the pool of final eight at-larges could draw from as high as the #9-seed line or as low as the #14-seed line.  Is it fair for a standard #5 seed to potentially have to face a #12 seed that could be over- or underseeded by two or even three seed lines (depending on the given pool) simply for the sake of symmetry?
• Selective Slotting.  A second option would be to make best efforts to slot the play-in games according to the seed of the favorite.  Assuming a standard S-curve among the last eight at-large teams in 2010, this would have meant that #10 Florida would have matched up with #13/#14 Virginia Tech in its opening round game with the winner moving on to face the #7 seed, BYU.  #12 UTEP would have played another #12, Arizona State, for the honor of facing #5 Butler in the first round.  And so on.  This setup would require a bit more work for the committee each year, but it would ultimately be much fairer than a fallacious situation where all the last at-large entrants are treated as equals.  The problem here is that if the lower-seeded team wins its first round game (for example, Virginia Tech in the above scenario), then the Hokies would play an ‘easier’ team to get to the second round (#7 BYU) than if they’d been put into the #5/#12 matchup.  Does that matter?  After all, upsets happen in every round that create asymmetrical matchups.  Only the NCAA knows.  Normally we’d say that this will make things more complicated than need be, but the NCAA Selection Committee has actually managed the somewhat-insane pod system well enough over the last decade for us to be inclined to believe that they could handle this as well.

Most Importantly: The Bracket

One area of concern that the NCAA will clearly consider in private while never copping to it publicly is how the PiGs will impact the bracket games, by which we mean office bracket pools, and the like.  For casual fans who drive much of the television ratings and buzz surrounding the Tournament, filling out and tracking a bracket online or in an office pool is what connects them to the games.  If the committee ultimately decides that four play-in game winners will slot opposite #1 seeds, then our guess is that most bracket games will continue to ignore those four contests the same way they do now.  This would be the simplest solution, but as we’ve described above, not necessarily the best.  The difficulty will be if the NCAA decides instead to go with the BubbleBuster idea where the PiGs would involve recognizable teams that have realistic shots of defeating their first round opponents and beyond.  How do you handle bracketing those games, and will the bracket competitions take those into account or not?

How Will We Modify the Bracket?

The best answer we can come up with is that the games will by necessity have to include the four PiGs now.  If we assume that it’ll include eight at-larges and the games will begin at approximately 7pm on Tuesday evening, fans will have just over 48 hours (and two full office days) to fill out their brackets.  This is almost half of what they had before (~90 hours), but we just cannot fathom that the games would presume the #10-#13 seeds would always lose in the first round.  Through three decades of NCAA Tourney experience, we all know better than that.  One possible compromise position would be to make the four PiGs ‘bonus’ games — if you get your picks in on time with those games filled out, you can earn up to a certain number of bonus points with each winner.  If not, you can still wait until Thursday morning to submit your bracket for the field of 64 using standard scoring systems.

No matter the case, any new bracket game is going to be more complicated than before.  How will it fit on a standard 8″x11″ sheet of paper?  Either the limited white space where companies like to put their ads will need to be utilized more effectively, or maybe the convention will simply become circling the PiG winner on the appropriate seed line prior to writing in your remaining picks.  Necessity is the mother of invention, so someone much more creative than us will figure out a way to make this work, and eventually all the lemmings will follow.  Even holdouts like our crotchety mainstay, the Kiff, who sometimes still refers to Louie and Big John (think mid-80s Big East) as if they were still on the sidelines.

Will Wilbekin Play in Gainesville in 2010?

The move would require approval by the NCAA over SAT scores, but according to Wilbekin’s high school coach, he is ready for the challenge.  The 6’2 guard is not only smart enough, but this wouldn’t be the first time Wilbekin has played above his age group.  According to the Orlando Sentinel, Wilbekin was playing for his high school basketball team as a middle school student.  He also played for Nike’s under-16 Florida team against players two years his elder.  Fortunately for the junior, he is a perimeter player and won’t have to go up against more physically mature players in the post.

Insiders have compared the 17-year-old to Andre Dawkins, but the current Duke freshman’s case is different.  Dawkins was technically a HS junior when he bolted for Duke, but he had actually completed four years of high school before going to college.  Dawkins went to a public school for one year before transferring to Atlantic Shores Christian School, a private academy, for three more.  His first season was not ideal, but much of that was out of his control.  The first half of the season was promising, as he actually saw a decent amount of playing time and scored in double figures in six games.  However, after his sister tragically died in a car accident and the ACC season started, Dawkins’ minutes and  production decreased drastically.  Nevertheless, Dawkins proved that leaving early could work, especially considering that his best performances came in the first few weeks of his career.  If Florida starts out the season against some weaker non-conference opponents like Duke, it may be just enough to give Wilbekin some confidence heading into SEC play.

Early entrance like this is already a common practice in college football, but those recruits often enroll for just the spring semester to get some spring practice repetitions.  Louisville’s Amobi Okoye even had success as a 16-year old in college football, but the two sports are hardly comparable when there only five players on a court and the ball is shared more often among the players on the court.  It is a lot of pressure to put on a 17-year old, but Wilbekin is embracing the challenge.  Florida needs more good news like this to get back to the elite status that the Gators enjoyed five years ago.

Rosario can fill it up, and he'll fit in well at UF. (W. Perlman/Star-Ledger)

Rosario was a highly regarded high school star at the legendary St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, listed as the ninth-ranked shooting guard in the nation as a high school senior and a four-star recruit overall. That promise was definitely realized in his freshman year at Rutgers in 2008-09 as Rosario contributed 16.2 PPG and 3.5 RPG.  But he really came to our attention last summer during the FIBA Under-19 World Championships in Auckland, New Zealand.  Rosario averaged 24.0 PPG playing for the team from Puerto Rico, and while his team finished a respectable fifth place out of 16 teams, Rosario was one of the stars of the tournament.  A game-tough, gritty guard with a knack for scoring, he displayed that knack all over the French U19 team, lighting them up for 54 points and leading PR to a come-from-behind one point victory in that game.  His average of 24.0 PPG led the tournament (which was won by the USA, by the way).

Rosario will fit in well at Florida.  Billy Donovan doesn’t have a quick trigger when it comes to yanking players after they take a bad shot, and Rosario occasionally can put up a questionable one.  Consider, though, that Rosario was asked to carry a lot of the load in the impotent Rutgers offense last season, and his 16.7 PPG last year made him the Knights’ leading scorer, over four points higher than second place Gregory Echenique.  Given a year to gain his bearings in Gainesville, practice with the likes of Kenny Boynton and Erving Walker, and learn Donovan’s way of doing things, Rosario could give Donovan one of the top backcourts in the game in 2011-12.

]]> http://rushthecourt.net/2010/04/19/mike-rosario-will-fit-in-well-at-florida/feed/ 1 http://rushthecourt.net/2010/04/18/the-effect-of-a-potential-nba-lockout-on-ncaa-basketball/ http://rushthecourt.net/2010/04/18/the-effect-of-a-potential-nba-lockout-on-ncaa-basketball/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:15:13 +0000 nvr1983 http://rushthecourt.net/?p=21334 Since Gordon Hayward‘s half-court heave bounced off the rim in Indianapolis just two weeks ago there has been a spate of early entries. While it is not shocking to see a number of underclassmen enter the NBA Draft before they are probably ready to leave the college ranks, the sheer number of early entries is surprising. As Chad Ford recently pointed out, all 18 of the top-rated prospects on ESPN’s “Big Board” have declared for the first time [Ed. Note: Patrick Patterson has not officially declared, but signs are pointing towards an announcement this week] and all of them still have eligibility left to come back to college (Jan Vesely and Donatas Motiejunas are international players who could have gone to college, but the fact that they opted to enter the draft is not the least bit surprising). Is this just a random occurrence (I mean some year had to have the most underclassman ever declare) or is there something more behind it? It’s true that many of these guys could come back for an extra year or two (or three in some cases), but we have a sneaking suspicion that most of them will keep their names in the draft especially since nearly two-thirds of that group has already signed with an agent or is expected to in the near future.

The big question for college basketball fans is what caused this mass exodus from campuses across America. College life certainly has not gotten any tougher for these athletes (and that’s for a guy who averaged 2.7 PPG so you can imagine what kind of perks an All-American gets) and while next season’s NBA salary cap is higher than it was expected to be, it is still $1.6 million less than this season’s salary cap. The real reason behind the exodus may have less to do with the college game than a rumor that has been gaining steam over the past six months — there might be a NBA lockout after the 2010-11 season. We would normally dismiss this as purely speculative message board talk, but there have been numerous major media outlets that have published articles recently about the possibility of a lockout:

• Veteran Players Believe NBA Lockout More Likely Than Not
• Expect an NBA Lockout in 2011
• Preparing for worst, union stresses solidarity as labor unrest looms
• NBA aims to crush union in labor battle
• Proposed CBA would limit LeBron deal
• Talk of guns and a lockout in 2011 has the NBA seeing red
• NBA lockout looming in 2011
• Welcome to the No Benjamins Association

At this point all of this could just be idle speculation although with the numerous prominent media voices chiming in on it the possibility of a NBA lockout has to be considered. Even though many of these players will have NBA careers that will exceed a decade we can understand their apprehension at having to wait two more years (coming back to college for one year followed by a potential NBA lockout season) before getting an NBA contract. On top of that, there is a good chance that a lockout would result in a significant restructuring of contracts in a way that would not be favorable to the players. Billy Hunter can posture all he wants about the strength and unity of the players, but the owners have much bigger bankrolls than the players do to live off of during a lockout (see Antoine Walker‘s case for a little background on the financial sensibilities of some NBA players) and they also have streams of income coming in from sources outside of basketball. We would not be surprised to see the owners force the players to accept contracts that are more like what NFL players have to deal with — guaranteed up to a certain point with bonuses up front, but the owners having the opportunity to cut the cord at the first sign of a drop-off in a player’s ability.

Now that we have gone through the bad news there is an upside to this story for college basketball fans — the NBA lockout could keep this year’s group of incoming recruits on campus for an extra year as many of them would opt for another year of seasoning on campus under the watchful eye of some of the world’s greatest basketball minds and all the perks that come with being big man on campus (see the Ray Shipman link above for more details and he left Florida despite all that). The alternative may be a year spent in limbo waiting to see if they will play in the NBA or spending a year abroad, which I doubt they will do after hearing what Josh Childress, Brandon Jennings, and Jeremy Tyler had to put up with overseas.

Although the looming lockout and the current exodus of underclassman might hurt the college game in the short term, if the lockout actually happens it might be the best thing to happen to the college game in years. As college basketball fans, we knew we were going to lose the John Walls and Wesley Johnsons of the college basketball world to the NBA regardless of whether or not there was going to be a lockout, but we might have been able to keep the Daniel Ortons, Xavier Henrys, and Gordon Haywards for another year. Instead we might end up with an extra year of Brandon Knight, Harrison Barnes, Jared Sullinger, Josh Selby and company. I think that is a trade that most college basketball fans would take and that’s not even factoring in the possibility that David Stern might bully the Players Union into requiring future players to spend two years in college (or two years after his high school class graduates) before entering into the NBA. While that may be a stretch, one can dream, right?

UK fans might be seeing Brandon Knight in Lexington for 2 years

You may have heard  in recent days that Kentucky’s John Calipari has been filling up on the tasty nougat that has risen to the top of the Class of 2010 high school basketball recruiting lists.  Five-star prospect Brandon Knight followed an impressive chorus line of 1-and-done Calipari point guards (D. Rose, T. Evans, J. Wall) by committing to the Wildcats on Wednesday, and Doron Lamb,  another five-star combo guard ranked in the top 25, committed today.  Turkish stud Enes Kanter committed last week, and there are rumors that others, including versatile top 15 forwards Terrance Jones and CJ Leslie, could be next.  All this, and we haven’t even mentioned yet that Michael Gilchrist, the consensus top player in the Class of 2011, has already verballed to go to Kentucky after next season.

Knight is a Great Talent, But Will He Take UK to the Final Four?

The point here is as clear as Ben Roethlisberger’s analgesic salves – high school prospects with dreams of NBA riches a year from now view John Calipari as the pied piper of the NBA Draft.  Follow him down the primrose path, and you will end up playing in the League one year later.  John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton are the trailblazers here.  With all four projected as first rounders in June, the hype of Calipari’s flute-playing squares nicely with reality.  And Kentucky’s regal basketball program is the beneficiary.

Or is it?

We’re big believers that there are external benefits to programs who recruit and enroll 1-and-done players beyond wins, losses and NCAA Tournament success.  In fact, every year we do exactly such an evaluation that includes criteria beyond that scope.  For example, it is our view that the Texas program is still benefitting today from its one year of Kevin Durant on campus in 2007 even though UT only made the second round of the Tournament that season.  The same goes with Michael Beasley at Kansas State in 2008.  Call it the Jordan Effect.  Even if the players who are later inspired to follow Durant and Beasley to those campuses aren’t as good as those two were, there is a significant residual ‘coolness’ effect in recruiting those younger players who can help sustain the quality of the program over time.  To put it in terms of Kentucky, a 12-year old right now may spend the next few years idolizing John Wall in the NBA, and when it comes time for him to make his school choice in five years, the Wildcats and Calipari would have already have an inherent advantage over other schools.

With that said, we know what Kentucky fans hope to get from all of these 1-and-done types, and it’s not just a bunch of springtime recruiting victories.  Eventually it needs to translate to wins, most specifically those in March and April as Winn alludes to in his article.  The question then that we analyze here is whether a focus on recruiting 1-and-doners will get a team to that goal.  The available evidence we have, using admittedly a very small sample size, says that it will not.

Take a look at the table below, which lists all sixteen Final Four teams from the 1-and-done era (2007-10).

The first thing to note is that of the sixteen Final Four teams since David Stern enacted the 1-and-done rule for the high school Class of 2006, the rule change hasn’t had much of an impact on the final weekend of college basketball.  In fact, of the 32 1-and-doners ( projecting nine in 2010) in the past four seasons, there have only been five such players in the Final Four.  Three of them — Greg Oden, Mike Conley and Daequan Cook — were on the same Buckeye team in 2007.  The other two — Memphis’ Derrick Rose and UCLA’s Kevin Love — made the final weekend in 2008.  There have been none since.  It’s not that the list of one-year players isn’t strong; we’ve already mentioned Durant, Beasley, the UK players and can add OJ Mayo, Tyreke Evans, Eric Gordon and many others to the mix, but they generally haven’t been able to carry their teams through to the Four.

Oden & Company's OSU Team Was the Exception, Not the Rule

The other thing to note is that in each of the Final Fours in the 1-and-done era of college basketball, the most experienced team left standing (we’re talking juniors and seniors) has won the championship.  How is this possible?  Haven’t we been conditioned to expect that the team with the best talent will win the title, and that the ‘best talent’ is already in the NBA by their junior and senior seasons?  Shouldn’t it naturally follow that teams with great young talent should be doing better than this?  What we’re seeing here may have been a more reasonable proposition in the years leading up to 2007, when nearly all of the elite talent (in the form of Dwight Howard, Shaun Livingston, Lebron James, etc.) was bypassing college and going straight to the professional ranks.  But now?  This is admittedly a bit of a surprise.

Yet there’s no mistaking it.  Florida started four juniors and a senior.  Kansas? — two seniors,  two juniors and a sophomore.  UNC? — two seniors and three juniors.  This year’s Duke team started three seniors and two juniors.  There have been no freshman starters of any kind on a championship team since Josh Boone for UConn in 2004, and he became a three-year player.  (note: Marvin Williams was a 1-and-doner on the 2005 UNC title team, but he didn’t start for Roy Williams).  Don’t get us wrong here.  In terms of NBA Draft picks, there was plenty of talent on each of those title teams, but it was experienced talent — talent that for one reason or another had taken a little longer to get to an elite, draftable level.  Several lottery picks such as Al Horford and Brandon Rush and Ty Lawson were players for whom the NBA was always on their horizon but because of some perceived or actual deficiency hadn’t been able to put it all together just yet.

He Knows He Needs Experience Too

And this is where we bring it back to Calipari and Kentucky.  The available evidence suggests that Calipari is going to have to figure out a way to keep some of the nasty talent he’s recruiting on campus a little longer than one season so that the players can become familiar enough with each other to push on through to a Final Four and championship.  His Memphis team in 2008 was a foul shot away from winning it all, but keep in mind that even that team started a senior and three juniors alongside the wunderkind Rose.  This isn’t lost on the coach, who spent much of 2009-10 naysaying how good his team was becuase he knew that they had a tendency to take possessions off, and the only thing that could cure that inefficiency was experience.  He’s also gone on record stating that he’d love to have his 1-and-done players for at least two years, with the inference being that when great talent is mixed with a little seasoning and experience, an Elite Eight team can easily become a national champion.  It remains to be seen whether Calipari will get his wish with an NBA rule change, but UK fans should take heed of the lessons of this year and the previous three before making Final Four reservations in Houston just yet.

1. Yesterday was the first day of the national spring signing period, and there were a couple of mid-major surprises (Butler Effect or just pater familias?) in addition to everyone else in America signing with John Calipari.  Ok, we’re (partially) kidding on the last part, but Cat fans should get used to a revolving door in Lexington for as long as the 1-and-done rule is still in effect.  Here are the updated Scout.com class rankings — UNC and Memphis both have three 3-star players coming in next season.
2. Andy Katz introduces us to the 2011 NCAA Tournament Committee chairman, Ohio State AD Gene Smith.  The most interesting part — like seemingly everyone else outside NCAA HQ, he’d prefer that the Tourney stay at 65 teams as well.
3. A couple of interesting lists here.  First, five players who helped and five players who hurt their stock during the NCAA Tournament, as described by an NBA scout.  This one is five players who should be sticking around for another year, although none of them will be.
4. Zagsblog is reporting that Rutgers transfer candidate Mike Rosario will visit Florida on Friday.  This would be a solid get for Billy Donovan’s club for the 2011-12 season.
5. Joe Lunardi has his new 2010-11 Bracketology out, and you’ll note that it assumes a 96-team field.  Enjoy those #12-#21 matchups.

John Calipari has a major rebuilding task ahead of him in the 2010-11 season, as his five best players are leaving the program for the bluer waters of the NBA Draft.  In a move that shocked absolutely no one, John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Patrick Patterson, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton all declared today, leaving UK with just a handful of returning scholarship players heading into next season.  According to KSR, however, P-Pat has yet to file his papers although he would undoubtedly become a top fifteen pick when he does so.  If all five of these guys stay in this year’s draft, it’s likely that each of them would be selected in the top twenty, a first in the history of the event.  This begs the question, of course, whether we should be impressed by so many draft-worthy players on a single team; or by the curious fact that five top twenty picks couldn’t even make it to the Final Four despite an embarrassment of talent at its disposal.

Ohio State’s National POY Evan Turner also declared that he will enter the draft today, and as the presumed #2 overall pick he is making a good decision.  The multi-talented point forward has a chance to become an outstanding perimeter player at the next level, and we’re very happy that his year turned out the way it did after a horrific fall in December threatened to derail his season and (potentially) career.  Some other names that threw their hats into the ring today were: Kansas’ Xavier Henry, who is expected to fall into the #8-#20 range, Xavier’s Jordan Crawford (late 1st/early 2d round), Cincinnati’s Lance Stephenson (late 1st/early 2d round), Marshall’s Hassan Whiteside (late lottery pick), Oklahoma’s Willie Warren (early 2d round), Dayton’s Chris Wright (mid 2d round), Texas’ Avery Bradley (late 1st round), and Florida’s Alex Tyus (undrafted).  Stephenson is the most interesting case study in why we should never listen to players during the season with respect to this stuff, as he clearly stated earlier this season that his return to Cincinnati for a sophomore campaign was ‘definite.’   He’s already signed with an agent, so that sophomore season will have to occur elsewhere.  Can we just say this again for the record?  Please, please David Stern — negotiate a two-year rule for players after their HS class graduates or none at all.

Moving to coaching news, the surprise of the day was the abrupt dismissal of Wake Forest’s Dino Gaudio by the school on Wednesday.  Gaudio was 61-31 in three seasons at the school, but what sealed his fate were his 1-5 postseason record that included two epic collapses down the stretch of the last two years.  It’s unlikely Wake AD Ron Wellman would make this move without a serious candidate in mind, so we should expect to see this position filled in a matter of days.  In more pleasant news, Cornell’s Steve Donahue accepted the job at Boston College, which makes a lot of sense given his northeastern pedigree, and the Rutgers job may be opening up as soon as Thursday if Fred Hill is canned as a result of his bizarre insubordination in the form of attending a baseball game (JR Inman must be ecstatic!).

Few college basketball fans are born with their love for the game. For most aficionados, at some point on the way from infancy to college hoops fan, there is a moment. A single play, shot, player, game, or event at which point they say to themselves, “I will always have this in my life.” Because it is the time of the season that carries the most gravitas, these things often happen in March. We asked some of our friends and correspondents: what was the thing that turned you into a lifelong college basketball fan? What was your…March Moment?

Our final installment for this year has a pair of remembrances that remind us how just being part of the magic of the NCAA Tournament is something for which to be thankful. RTC correspondents Kraig Williams and Russell Burnett recount being in the crowd (and eventually on the floor) to see their teams earn automatic invites to the NCAA Tournament.  Butler may be a 5-seed but they’re still a so-called “mid-major,” and this is obviously the biggest storyline of this year’s Final Four.  These stories from Messrs. Williams and Burnett amplify how great Butler’s achievement is, and goes to show that if you think every single mid-major program in the nation doesn’t take pride in and hope from the Bulldogs’ presence in Indy this weekend, you’d better think again:

KW: I’ve always been a big college basketball fan, and fondly remember the days of filling out a bracket before I even knew how to pronounce some of the schools’ names. Growing up in Utah, I remember watching Keith Van Horn carry Utah to a championship game; I jumped on the band wagons of Duke in ’01 and Syracuse in ’03 to win bracket pools among my friends and slowly college basketball seeped into my blood. It wasn’t until last season that I had my ultimate March Moment.

As a student at Utah State University, we survived the adjustment from the Big West to the WAC only to surfer heartbreaks in the conference tournament year after year. Last season though, things were different. It was clear the Aggies were head-and-shoulders above the rest of the conference. Utah State steamrolled through Fresno State, somehow survived New Mexico State in the semi finals, and then came the dream matchup with Nevada on their home floor. Sitting outside the arena a couple hours before they would even let us in, it became apparent that this would be our night. Utah State students had the Nevada crowd nearly outnumbered, and when we got into the stadium it became clear that we would have the better team. Utah State jumped out to a 21-4 lead and the party began in the student section. After years of following the Aggies, and watching them come oh-so-close so many times, we were finally going to have a conference tournament banner to hang in The Spectrum. The clock ticked down, we shouted the “winning team, losing team” chant, and then we rushed the court in Reno like our lives depended on it. We spent the next hour or so just standing on the court, talking to the players, taking photos with the trophy, and watching our guys cut down the nets. That’s a feeling I’ll never forget, knowing that we weren’t going to be sweating bullets at home waiting to see if the selection committee would be nice enough to send us to the dance.

The story didn’t end with some Cinderella Final Four or Sweet 16 run. Marquette proved to be too much in the first round of the NCAA tournament and we were sent packing, just another one of the 32 teams that didn’t make it past the first round of play, but it didn’t matter. Just making it there had been an accomplishment that I would never trade for anything. So I urge any student reading this that may be on the fence about making the road trip to your conference tournament to just do it. You’ll never have a better time than singing Queen’s “We Are the Champions” on the court with all your friends, while watching your team cut down the nets.

RB: A little more than 25 years ago Akeem Olajuwon was blocking everything the opponent threw up toward the basket and dunking anytime he was within 10 feet of it. Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Alvin Franklin, Michael Young and Benny Anders played for the Houston Cougars and put on a show the media dubbed Phi Slamma Jamma.

We all know what happened when UH faced Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State Wolfpack in the championship game that year — Derek Whittenburg’s errant shot was corraled by Lorenzo Charles who jammed it home as Olajuwon watched in disbelief. What many people don’t know about that game is that when Charles dunked the ball, a 13-year-old boy in Lake Jackson, Texas jumped to his feet and knocked off two blades from the ceiling fan in the living room  — much to the chagrin of his parents.

SHSU may have gone down to UF in the first round in 2003...but they were there. (AP)

20 years later, my parents came to understand my basketball addiction a little better. We sat in the stands in Huntsville, Texas and watched my alma mater, Sam Houston State University, hit a game-winning three-pointer against Stephen F. Austin to earn a berth in the field of 64 for the first time in school history.

I can only say that what happened next might have been an out-of-body experience, but after I blacked out I looked around and realized that I was in the middle of the Johnson Coliseum court jumping up and down with the student body after rushing the court. I was 33 years old hoisting players on my shoulders and slapping high-fives with 18-year-old students.

Few college basketball fans are born with their love for the game. For most aficionados, at some point on the way from infancy to college hoops fan, there is a moment. A single play, shot, player, game, or event at which point they say to themselves, “I will always have this in my life.” Because it is the time of the season that carries the most gravitas, these things often happen in March. We asked some of our friends and correspondents: what was the thing that turned you into a lifelong college basketball fan? What was your…March Moment? We’ll be posting some of their answers for the rest of the month.

In this submission, correspondent Steve Coulter tells a tale of a very rare occasion on which he changed allegiances from the team he loved to a team that went on a tournament run that we’ll still all be talking about decades from now:

In my short lifetime there have been many memories from to the three glorious weeks referred to as March Madness.

There was Valparaiso’s miracle run to the Sweet 16 when I was only seven. I can still remember watching highlights of the Bryce Drew game with my dad later that day. There was #15 Hampton’s huge upset of #2 Iowa State when I was only ten. I stayed up that night with my brother, but as the game wore on into the night we both found ourselves sound asleep and kicking ourselves the next morning while watching ESPN. More recently there was Davidson’s Elite 8 run in 2008. Stephen Curry proved to be the littlest giant ever to step onto the hardwood in March, destroying the title hopes of teams such as Gonzaga, Georgetown, and Wisconsin. They almost conquered Kansas, the team that eventually won the tournament, losing 59-57 in a game for the ages.

All of these have been great and there have been many more excellent games, moments, and stories in my 19 years, but I am a sucker for the underdog and March Madness is where David always has a chance to conquer Goliath. And no true underdog team has ever pushed against all odds and had so much success in the NCAA tournament in my lifetime or anybody else’s than No. 11 seeded George Mason, who in 2006 shocked the entire basketball world by becoming the most unlikely Final Four team in all of history.

The Patriots proved to be as courageous as their team name was, upsetting every team they played and proving the analysts wrong consistently. Although other outsiders have cut down the nets, Mason’s run was so remarkable to me, because they had me cheering against my own home state, and favorite team, the University of Connecticut. Never in my life had I cheered against one of my teams to lose, but on this special occasion I was nearly voiceless at the end of the thrilling upset.

Goliath, #1 seeded UConn, had been stunningly slayed by a team that had been doubted ever since the beginning and was drastically over matched, yet when the game ended the score read, George Mason 86, UConn 84. As an at-large team, George Mason’s stay in the 2006 tournament was supposed to be short-lived. Almost everyone I knew had No. 6 Michigan State beating them. I know I did.

When they beat the Spartans, I didn’t even bother to turn on the game between #3 seeded North Carolina, the team that had won in 2005, and no-name George Mason. I got a call with around three minutes in the left of the game from a friend, who told me that a No. 11 team was threatening to ruin everyone’s brackets and keep on dancing. After the back-to-back upsets, there was no way I thought the Patriots could advance further, but this time I made sure to watch just to make sure.

I was mistaken again as they beat another mid-major, the Wichita State Shockers, by eight points.

Then came the Sunday afternoon matchup against the Huskies, the team I had watched win two national titles and who I had been rooting hard for all tournament long to win another title. When it started, though, I was neutral. I still was at halftime. By the time it was through I was bleeding green and yellow.

I remember watching the Final Four game against Florida the following week with my friends mocking me for rooting so hard for a team that didn’t stand a chance. They didn’t understand that I, like the Patriots, did not want to see the clock hit midnight and did not want to stop dancing; it had been a great tournament and to see Florida go to the national championship was something I did not want to see. Of course the Gators defeated Cinderella, but at that point it didn’t matter. The Patriots had cemented their legacy into March Madness folklore, to be passed down from generation to generation.

I just hope to see something like it again in the next 19 years, but for now I can live with the memory.