Zach Hayes is an editor, contributor and bracketologist for Rush the Court.

In April of 2009, Sean Miller accepted the head coaching position at the University of Arizona. During the 29 months since that hiring, one can make a realistic argument that Sean Miller has done the best job of any coach in America.

Miller took over a team that finished a lackluster 17-19 in Pac-10 play in the previous two years under Kevin O’Neill and Russ Pennell, had their expected roster gutted following the coaching switch and was mired in a program malaise that hadn’t lingered around the McKale Center since Lute Olson first took the job in the mid-1980s. In just two years time, Miller’s launched Arizona into unexpected heights so soon and so dramatically: a full-on pasting of Duke in last year’s Sweet 16, the grooming of the #2 overall pick in the NBA Draft and an incredible haul of blue chip prospects headed to Tucson to keep the fire burning into the future.

The program has reached a point where, despite the losses of their superstar forward Derrick Williams and point guard Lamont Jones, Arizona is favored to claim the Pac-12 crown in 2011-12 over the likes of UCLA, California and Washington. That speaks to the depth that Miller has assembled at Arizona not too long after the losses of Chase Budinger and Jordan Hill left the program facing a rebuilding project too steep for the likes of John Calipari, Jamie Dixon, Mark Few and even Tim Floyd to take on.

With apologies to Brad Stevens, there’s not a coach I’d rather have leading my program into the next decade than Miller.

Sean Miller has revived a stagnant Arizona program

Team Outlook: Although the loss of Williams is mammoth, a player so efficient last season he nearly caused Ken Pomeroy’s head to explode, there’s a nice blend of veterans and talented freshman to expect only a minimal drop in offensive production. Junior Solomon Hill provided a preview to the Arizona faithful of his potential during a 16/8 on 7-12 FG performance against Texas in last year’s second round and has the versatility to play either forward spot at 6’6. Kyle Fogg should be shooting 2,000 jumpers per day over the offseason after shooting 37% from the field as a junior, especially because he could be their most frequent gunner in 2011-12. Kevin Parrom finished in the top-50 in offensive rating among role players as a sophomore and is one of the most underrated swingmen in the nation. Jordin Mayes finished second in the conference in three-point shooting at 45% as a freshman and really came on strong in March. Freshman Josiah Turner could start at the point from day one after Jones’ transferred to Iona over the offseason. Whether this team can blend on the floor with a rookie floor general and sans Williams are legitimate concerns.

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Zach Hayes is an editor, contributor and bracketologist for Rush the Court.

Recruiting rankings are a tricky science. For every Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley and Tyreke Evans that rightfully hold fort among the upper echelons of nearly every recruiting publication, there’s a Gerald Green, B.J. Mullens or Lance Stephenson that fades into the abyss rather than catapults into the spotlight. Scouts spend countless hours on the recruiting trail and still whiff just as often as they discover the next diamond in the rough. When rankings, lists, stars or other overly effusive praise is heaped upon immature 16 or 17-year olds, throwing caution to the wind is usually a good strategy.

If the recruiting gurus have it right this time around, then the incoming class debuting at Kentucky this fall may be the best of John Calipari’s coaching career.

No, Marquis Teague has not directed his first half-court set. Anthony Davis hasn’t dunked over SEC-caliber big men. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist hasn’t defended an explosive scorer on the wing, nor has Kyle Wiltjer had to fight for a rebound against 270-pound centers. But there’s a reason why the most respected in the recruiting world have these four incoming freshmen all placed in the top three at their respective positions, and surely we’re going to see those reasons sooner than later on Rupp Arena’s hallowed hardwood.

Throw in another future lottery pick in Terrence Jones, the purest of pure shooters in Doron Lamb, a do-everything senior starter on the wing in Darius Miller and a coach that patches together top-10 defensive teams year in and year out despite absurd turnover, and there’s plenty of reasons why most have Kentucky one line under North Carolina as the 2011-12 season approaches.

Of course, it’s only a ranking, a number, a list. What really counts begins in November.

Darius Miller and Eloy Vargas represent the lone seniors for Kentucky

Team Outlook: Kentucky is loaded with talent and, unlike last season, blessed with depth. Whereas Josh Harrellson, not exactly a model for prime conditioning, had to play upwards of 35 minutes per game deep into Kentucky’s run to the Final Four a season ago, Calipari has the luxury of shuffling Davis, backup center Eloy Vargas and even the 6’9 Wiltjer at the center position. Davis’ upside is nearly unlimited, drawing Kevin Garnett comparisons because of his versatility, mid-range capabilities and rebounding instincts. Calipari also has a plethora of capable wings at his disposal. Kidd-Gilchrist is the most complete incoming freshman in the country and the sophomore Jones is a future top-ten pick who showed glimpses of stardom before fading in the second half of his debut season. Doron Lamb shot a remarkable 49% from three despite the consensus that freshmen struggle to make shots and he’s almost an afterthought given the incoming freshmen and Jones’ return. The real test will be whether rookie Marquis Teague can continue Calipari’s point guard assembly line. There may be headaches and learning moments early, but given Calipari’s track record, Teague should prove himself more than capable.

Non-Conference Schedule Rank: 8. Possibly engrained in his line of thinking from days at UMass and Memphis where non-conference duels often provided stiffer tests than in January and February, Calipari has always scheduled aggressively and this season is no different. It’s a perfect storm for a predominantly young Kentucky squad with both North Carolina and Louisville, two teams most consider top-10 outfits, traveling to Rupp. Their SEC/Big East Challenge opponent is also at home against a likely-overwhelmed St. John’s team. The possible road/neutral tests: Kansas in NYC, Old Dominion in Connecticut and a true road game at Indiana. Although the Hoosiers appear to be making slow strides back to relevance on the floor and major leaps on the recruiting trail, I suspect Kentucky will dispatch the upstart Hoosiers in similar fashion to their contest two seasons ago.

Cupcake City: Major props should be extended to Calipari for testing his team regardless of their youth, but, like any other coach from a blue-blood program, buy games are part of the equation. Out of the schedules I’ve seen thus far, the order of Kentucky’s slate is the most appealing from a strategic standpoint (unlike, say, Michigan State, who opens with some teams named North Carolina and Duke). Kentucky welcomes Marist as a warmup for Kansas. They mix in Radford and Portland before St. John’s, UNC and Indiana. They take their foot off the gas to avoid burnout before the intensity that Louisville provides. It’s precisely how I’d structure my schedule as a coach of an elite program with sky-high expectations.

Toughest Early Season Test: It’s the game of the century. Okay, maybe that’s ridiculous hyperbole, but barring an unforeseen upset, Kentucky will welcome North Carolina to Lexington for a possible national title preview that will feature as many as nine first-round draft picks, two coaching celebrities that manage the most recognizable programs in the nation and a national TV audience on CBS. Keep an eye on how the wily veteran Miller handles the daunting task of defending Harrison Barnes and if Davis can hold his own down low against Carolina’s length.

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1. The NCAA has been getting a lot of criticism lately. Ok, they always get a lot of criticism. Despite what some people thinks sometimes the NCAA gets things right. The case of Lionel Gomis is one example of that. Gomis, who is starting his freshman year at Siena, grew up in Senegal moving from house to house after his mother died when he was 14 and unable to go to school for two years due to financial hardship before he was brought to the US as sports development program enrolling in a school in the United States. Gomis was able to overcome his rough beginnings and receive a scholarship at Siena. However, a NCAA rule that was recently adopted that stated a student-athlete had to complete his or her core curriculum in a five-year period.  Due to the two years that Gomis was not in school in Senegal he failed to meet these requirements so the NCAA said that he would have his eligibility reduced by three years (two years for the time he was not in school in Senegal and one year when he came to the United States and had to be reclassified due to his limited English proficiency). If the decision was upheld, Gomis would have only been able to play one year of college basketball. However, the NCAA ruled yesterday that Gomis would get two years of eligibility back for the time he missed in Senegal although they were sticking with their earlier ruling regarding his reclassification so as of right now he would not be eligible to play until next season. Siena is appealing that part of the ruling, but it looks like the NCAA may have gotten one right (at least partially)
2. Last week, Billy Donovan welcomed Erik Murphy back to the Florida basketball team without having to miss any playing time after his involvement in an incident in April where he was arrested with two others (Cody Larson and team manager Josh Adel) for breaking into a car outside a bar after getting into an argument with staff about a lost wallet. Larson’s status is a little less certain as he was previously arrested for sharing hydrocodone pills (his account of the story). Larson appears to have gotten a bit of good news as he has avoided any jail time for now after accepting a plea agreement of 200 hours of community service, submitting to a substance abuse evaluation and potential treatment, paying the victim $240 and writing him a letter of apology, paying $200 for costs related to the case, serving one year of supervised probation, and not consuming any alcohol or other controlled substances during that year. The next step is whether or not the agreement will affect his previous case in South Dakota. If a court there decides that it does, Larson may face additional penalties including potential jail time as a condition of his suspended sentence in his home state. Neither UF nor Donovan have released a statement on Larson yet.
3. Yesterday, we mentioned that the proposal to name the court after Gary Williams at the Comcast Center was facing significant resistance. It looks like it wasn’t that significant as Maryland announced yesterday that it was going to name the court after Williams. We all know what Williams has accomplished and his resume at Maryland stacks up well with any ACC coach of recent vintage outside of Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith, and Roy Williams. Even though naming the court after Williams will cost the school the potential revenue for naming rights for the court it does open up a myriad of advertising opportunities for antiperspirant deodorant.
4. Normally, the hiring of a Division II coach without a major track record or a history of scandal wouldn’t merit an inclusion in our exclusive Morning Five. However, when the coach is Mark Prosser, the son of the late Skip Prosser, it qualifies. Yesterday, Prosser was named head coach of Brevard College after working as an assistant at Wofford since 2008. For Prosser, who had spent five years as an assistant at Bucknell before going to Wofford, this will be his first college head coaching position. Prosser has a tough task ahead of him as Brevard went 13-14 last year and only his predecessor, Mike Jones, had spent more than four seasons as a head coach at the school.
5. USC guard Jio Fontan underwent ACL surgery yesterday at a Los Angeles orthopedic center that deemed “successful” although we are not that certain about a claim this early well before many complications can occur. For his part, Fontan appeared upbeat heading into surgery and looking forward to rehab as he sent this tweet prior to his surgery and apparently responding to well-wishers after his surgery via his Twitter account. We wish Fontan the best in his rehab and hope to finally see him playing in a Trojan uniform in the near future.

1. Yesterday, while most of the nation’s attention was focused on New York City and the variety of ceremonies honoring those who lost their lives in the horrific events of September 11, 2001, another tragedy occurred in the city. Early yesterday morning, Tayshana Murphy, one of the top female prep players in the country, was shot and killed in the hallway of her apartment building in what was believed to be a case of mistaken identity. Unfortunately, this one happens much more frequently in this country and often goes unnoticed. Our condolences go out to Murphy’s family and friends along with anybody else who has lost a loved one in a sadly “everyday” tragedy.
2. This year’s Carrier Classic featuring Michigan State and North Carolina is one of the premier games of the season even if the Spartans are not expected to be as solid as we normally expect of a Tom Izzo-coached team. Of course, this leads to the inevitable question of who will be playing in the game next season. Although the match-up has not been announced, Morale Entertainment Foundation, who is putting on the game, has announced that Connecticut would be one of the participants. The potential opponents for the Huskies next season are Kansas, Illinois, Florida, Arizona, and Texas. We doubt that this game alone will be enough to convince Jim Calhoun to coach another season if he was not already planning on it, but it would be an interesting environment for a new head coach to try to direct his team in if Calhoun does step down at the end of this season.
3. We briefly touched on Duke‘s decision to induct Mike Krzyzewski and Bobby Hurley into the school’s Hall of Fame last week when Krzyzewski stated that Hurley’s 3-pointer against UNLV in the 1991 national semifinals was the biggest shot in school history. They were formally enshrined during a ceremony on Friday night along with three other Duke athletes.  We don’t have much to add here other than to ask the question: what took so long? On some level I can understand not wanting to induct an active coach into the Hall of Fame, but once you name the court after him I think that argument is moot. As for Hurley, he is the second of the championship-era Duke basketball players to be inducted with the first being Christian Laettner (an obvious selection who also has the perfect portrait that encapsulates everything about him right down to the sneer). We expect that there will be a couple more Blue Devils from their run of championships joining these three in the next few years.
4. One of the more amusing topics in college sports over the past few weeks has been the ongoing discussion about team uniforms, the fashion statements they make, and whether they can attract a coveted player to come to a school that he or she might otherwise not be inclined to do so. The football uniforms from Oregon sparked this discussion before the start of the football season and the uniforms (or whatever you call them) that Maryland unveiled in their season opener last week created a Twitter frenzy. Still, we didn’t think that the uniforms could make a big difference until we read an interview from highly coveted prospect Archie Goodwin that appeared to suggest he ruled out Baylor because he did not like their colors or their shoes. The person who wrote the article has updated it to lash out at a few site that he felt unfairly criticized Goodwin for this comment and there were other reasons listed for his dismissal of Baylor. While we won’t go so far as to say that aesthetics were the singular reason that Goodwin crossed Baylor off his list it is interesting that it is enough of a factor that he would even mention it and might be something that college coaches take into consideration the next time the school’s athletic director unveils a new uniform for the team to wear.
5. Finally, what would a Morning Five be without a comment on the ongoing ridiculousness that is conference expansion? Today’s submission comes from a little different perspective–the conferences trying to prevent teams from leaving via financial penalties. In this case, the ACC is reportedly looking to increase its penalty buyout to $13 million from the previous figure of $10 million. Honestly with the size of the TV contracts being thrown around that extra $3 million is more symbolic than anything else especially if an ACC school would be looking to join, say, the SEC. We are not sure if there is a realistic way to limit schools from switching conferences (having a school “sit out” a year from conference play would never be politically feasible), but some administration has to come up with a way or stop with the pettiness against programs that decide to switch conferences.

If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

General News

• Jim Boeheim: ‘The Ideal Conference Has 10 Teams’: The Syracuse legend opines on conference expansion. (Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician)
• Decision on Kevin Ware expected by tomorrow: “A handful of folks, including those at Scout Focus, are reporting that freshman guard Kevin Ware is expected to receive a decision from the NCAA about his eligibility by tomorrow” (Card Chronicle)
• Villanova 2011-12 Schedule Released: A look at Villanova’s schedule this season. (VU Hoops)
• Jon Rothstein Interviews Kevin Stallings: Going through the interview as it was posted on Twitter. (Anchor of Gold)
• Erik Murphy Cleared To Return To Florida Basketball By Billy Donovan: “Erik Murphy will play for Florida basketball this fall. That’s the news out of Billy Donovan today, who issued this statement on the player who was arrested for an incident at a St. Augustine bar this spring.” (Alligator Army)

According to the Gainesville Sun, earlier today Florida head coach Billy Donovan announced that junior forward Erik Murphy had been reinstated to the basketball team. Along with teammate Cody Larson and a team manager, Murphy was arrested back on April 12 because the young men felt the need to try and break into a car in St. Augustine. After pleading the charges down, Murphy paid some cash, did his community service, and completed a substance abuse evaluation program, according the the linked article. Murphy is also not allowed to partake of alcohol or any other controlled substance for the next ten months. The completion of the assigned legal punishments facilitated Murphy’s reinstatement to the team, according to Donovan.

Murphy Is Back, Having Fulfilled All His Legal Obligations

Because this is indeed the off-season and we’re several weeks away from the official start of team practices, one wonders how much team activity Murphy actually missed in serving the suspension from his squad. Nevertheless, if you’re a head coach, you have to do that sort of thing no matter the time of year. We’ll give credit to Murphy for completing his obligations without pushing the envelope on the beginning of practices in October and before individual workouts really heat up. Even considering the team’s Elite Eight showing last year, Gator fans expect nothing less in the upcoming, so we’re sure Murphy (4.3 PPG, 2.3 RPG in an average 10.7 MPG last season) is glad to have this behind him so he can concentrate on the obligations that come with being the only returning UF player taller than 6’9”. And yes, because his name is Erik Murphy, you’d probably expect an update on Vince, Drama, Ari and Turtle, as well, but because Entourage has been floundering for some time, we’ll let this opportunity for a joke pass without further comment.

If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

General News

• McDonald’s Rehab Expected To Take 7-8 Months: Leslie McDonald is expected to miss the entire season recovering from his ACL injury. (Tar Heel Fan)
• Bruce Pearl hired by grocery company: “The wait is over, Bruce Pearl has a job. Pearl accepted a position with H.T. Hackney Co., a Knoxville-based wholesale grocery company that provides products to stores. The company does not have a basketball team; Pearl will be the vice president of marketing.” (Kentucky Sports Radio)
• Memphis Still Bitter About Calipari?: “According to Dan Wolken (former Memphis Tigers beat writer) ‘word is that the new Penny Hardaway Athletic Hall of Fame, which opened today on Memphis’ campus, includes no photos of John Calipari.'” (Kentucky Sports Radio)

1. Isaiah Armwood, who announced that he was leaving Villanova last week, has decided that he will be moving on to George Washington. Armwood, who played at nearby Montrose Christian, should help bolster the frontcourt for a team that has fallen off significantly in the past four seasons after making the NCAA Tournament three consecutive years. Although his contributions to the stat sheet in the past (2.5 points and 3.6 rebounds per game last season) are marginal he was named captain of this year’s team so he should help with the “intangibles” that the team has probably been missing.
2. It seems like we are always dealing with these conference realignment rumors, but yesterday was a fairly interesting day for the Big 12 as Texas A&M officially told the conference that it was exploring its conference options and Southern Methodist declared its interest in joining the conference. Honestly, from the Big 12’s point of view this would be a pretty significant downgrade unless SMU returns to its “Pony Excess” glory, but realistically as long as the conference has Texas (and maybe Oklahoma) the rest of the conference probably doesn’t matter financially. We know that Kansas runs the conference in basketball, but they are essentially irrelevant in the conference in football with the exception of a few seasons under Mark Mangino.
3. It appears that Bruce Pearl has already started his PR/spin tour after receiving a three-year show cause penalty from the NCAA. According to Pearl the NCAA is using him as an example and called the sanctions a “very, very heavy price for the mistakes that we’ve made” while criticizing the NCAA’s rulebook for being too onerous. Later in the day, Pearl went on The Doug Gottlieb Show for what turned out to be a fairly insightful interview in which he appeared to throw his assistants under the bus for the infamous photo of him illegally meeting Aaron Craft andJosh Selby. While at some level I understand Pearl’s need to frame this a certain way if he hopes to get back into college basketball I sort of wish he could just own up to what he did without having to cloak it in a handful of qualifiers.
4. ESPN released the schedule for its Tip-Off Marathon, which is scheduled for November 15th. We will have more on the line-up later, but ESPN appears to have put together a fairly impressive line-up yet again. Obviously this year they are helped by the Champions Classic that features Duke against Michigan State and Kentucky versus Kansas, but Florida at Ohio State may be the best game on the docket. The other intriguing games are Belmont at Memphis and what will probably be George Mason at Virginia Tech. Outside of that the games aren’t particularly noteworthy, but at this point in the year we would take just about anything that we can get.
5. When we first heard the story of DePaul assistant coach Billy Garrett, who reportedly came back from a trip with the team to Europe to find his house had been burglarized we were shocked. Among the items that were reportedly stolen were some family memorabilia including mementos from his father William, the first African-American player in the Big 10, and shockingly an oxygen tank used by Garrett’s son, who suffers from a form of sickle cell disease. Now news has come out suggesting that the case may be a disagreement between Garrett and his landlord. We aren’t sure which direction this story is going, but we assume that it is going to get very messy.

Every July, college basketball fans obsess over the July recruiting period where summer AAU legends are made and scholarships are won or lost. While most of the buzz this summer was over the superstars (particularly Shabazz Muhammad and class of 2013 recruit Nerlens Noel), the more interesting action was happening further down the ranking list. While ESPN’s decision to move Muhammad above Andre Drummond in their new rankings is interesting at some level, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean much. For the purposes of recruiting and scholarship offers, it is the guys that won’t be getting headlines on the front of ESPN.com or trending on Twitter who are more useful to look at. To that end, we took a look at the pre- and post-July recruiting rankings for the class of 2012 from ESPN.com and Scout.com to see which players were climbing up the ranking list and which ones were plummeting.

Shabazz and Drummond May Have Dominated the Headlines, But We Aren't as Interested in Them

To do this, we looked at where certain players were ranked before the July recruiting period and where they were ranked afterwards. The obvious caveat here is that rankings are subjective and some fans have accused scouts of a form of confirmation bias where they tend to rank players higher if they are recruited by certain schools (particularly Duke in basketball and Notre Dame in football) than if they were  being recruited by similarly powerful programs, but not the de facto face of the sport. Still, it seems reasonable to think that two independent scouts ranking players would be fairly reliable (assuming Dave Telep and Evan Daniels aren’t cheating off each other).

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Throughout the summer RTC contributors Zach Hayes and Brian Otskey will discuss the hot topics — or whatever comes to mind — around each major conference in college basketball.  This week, they tackle the SEC.  For the entire summer series focusing on each of the six power conferences, click here.

Brian: While football dominates the conversation when it comes to the SEC, most basketball fans know there is some quality hoops played in this league as well. The 2011-12 version of SEC basketball is no exception as three teams (Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Florida) should be top 25 mainstays while a fourth (Alabama) has the potential to make quite a bit of noise in its own right and crack the rankings. New coaches begin major rebuilding projects at Arkansas and Tennessee while LSU and Auburn should improve from disastrous seasons. There’s a renewed sense of optimism at Mississippi State but Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina have to start over after losing key contributors from last year. The SEC looks to be a very strong league at the top but full of intrigue from #1 to #12.

The Overall Top Four SEC Teams Will Receive SEC Tourney Byes Next Season

Perhaps the biggest news this offseason was the decision to scrap the East/West divisional format and rank the teams 1 through 12. In my opinion, this is the best setup and will result in better balance throughout the conference. However, the SEC athletic directors did not change the scheduling format for this coming year at their spring meetings back in early June. If it were up to me, I would have done away with the divisions and changed the schedule at the same time. What we will have this year is akin to what the Big 12 used for years before losing two of its members. While that isn’t the end of the world, it’s a bigger deal in the SEC. The three strongest teams resided in what was the East division while many of the weaker programs competed in the SEC West. With the scheduling format remaining the same for one more year, Alabama looks to be the biggest beneficiary. The Crimson Tide will play 10 games against Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi and Mississippi State while seeing Florida, Kentucky and Vanderbilt only once. While some of the West schools should be a bit better than they were, none will come close to matching what the top three East clubs bring to the table. Alabama went 12-4 in conference play last year and that would have been good enough for second place in the new setup. Does anyone really think Alabama was the second best team in the conference last season? I have nothing against Alabama but that simply wasn’t the case. I just don’t see why the conference ADs made this knee-jerk decision to dump the divisions without changing the schedule. Waiting one year and working it all out would have been the better approach. The East teams will benefit from playing each other twice (better RPI) but I’d like to see the league go to an 18-game schedule eventually. The rumblings about a true round-robin 22-game slate sound nice, but 22 conference games seems like too much to me. I’d label that as good in theory but unrealistic in a 12-team league.

My pick to win the league is Kentucky. John Calipari brings in his best recruiting class ever with four 5-star players heading to Lexington. With returnees Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb, Darius Miller and Eloy Vargas on board, UK is primed for a monster season. I expect Marquis Teague to take the reins at the point fairly easily while Anthony Davis and Kyle Wiltjer headline the front court. Kentucky also has the luxury of the versatile Jones who, with added strength and quickness, can expand his game even further. He’s got an incredible shooting touch for a man of his size but I’m more interested to see how much better he gets in the paint with Davis now by his side to relieve some of the pressure. Despite all of this, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist may be Calipari’s best recruit. This kid is the type of player that scouts drool over, able to slash and take it inside or step out and knock down a mid-range shot. He needs to work on his shooting from behind the arc but Kidd-Gilchrist is an incredible athlete who will contribute right away on the defensive end as well as on the glass. Kidd-Gilchrist will bring a strong work ethic and commitment towards getting better to Kentucky and the Wildcats will reap the benefits all season long. I expect Kentucky to be one of the few national championship contenders despite all of their youth.

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