1. As you know from last week’s news, Baylor guard LaceDarius Dunn was arrested for felony assault charges against his girlfriend, Lacharlesla Edwards, even though she later came out to say that she would not cooperate with authorities if they move forward with prosecuting him.  The university then made the next logical move to suspend Dunn from classes, as they typically do with any student charged with a felony.  As Gary Parrish wrote on Friday, no matter what blunt force Edwards (and her dad) say made impact with her jaw, it may not be enough to shield Dunn from legal redress and Baylor from losing out on what could have been another tremendous season.  One Texas columnist, however, doesn’t believe that Baylor will have the stones to make the correct decision here — pointing out that UNLV’s Tre’Von Willis  faces a mere three-game suspension for allegedly choking a woman last summer.  An interesting wrinkle in the Dunn situation is that ultimately the school president will have to make the call on whether he ever sees time in a green/gold uniform again… and who is the new Baylor president?  None other than Ken Starr, the former independent counsel/investigator of President Bill Clinton who uncovered the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and someone certainly no stranger to controversy or afraid of making unpopular decisions.
2. You may have missed the news on Friday afternoon, but UConn announced its self-imposed sanctions relating to the Josh Nochimson/Nate Miles scandal from a couple of years ago, and the general consensus around the web is that a two-year probation involving a loss of one scholarship each year will not satisfy the NCAA.  UConn choosing to stand behind its two-time national championship coach is unsurprising given the stakes, but ESPN.com’s Dana O’Neil gets to the heart of the matter in her scathing characterization of Calhoun as simply another modern-day Sgt. Schulz (that’s a Hogan’s Heroes reference for our younger readers).
3. Pac-10 Commish Larry Scott says that a decision about how the league plans to divide into two divisions should be forthcoming very soon (perhaps by the end of this month).  The question of whether to divide the four California schools up (Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC) or keep them together has created considerable wrangling as both the top traditional basketball and football draws reside in Los Angeles.  There’s also the issue as to whether a division format would work in basketball as the SEC has utilized for the last two decades; or whether a model like the ACC where basketball comprises a single twelve-team league would work better.
4. That didn’t take long.  Kentucky head coach John Calipari is already making attempts to temper expectations about the 2010-11 version of his Wildcats.  He’d better, as even if UK manages to get lottery pick Enes Kanter eligible, the losses of John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and the guy everyone forgets, Patrick Patterson, will be more than the additions of Brandon Knight, Doron Lamb and company can make up for.
5. The common adage is that Times Square in Manhattan is the crossroads of the world, and that very well may be true; but the people who started that phrase certainly weren’t talking about the Manhattan (Kansas) that Frank Martin currently resides in.  Thanks to some new direct flights out of the small Kansas airport that connects central Kansas to Dallas and Chicago, the K-State coaches can finally overcome the perception that their Manhattan is just short of impossible to get to.  In the past, coaches typically had to drive two hours east to get to the Kansas City airport, but now they can fly their recruits directly into Manhattan, which makes for a huge recruiting advantage especially when you don’t have to endure the ignominy of driving them right past Lawrence (home of KU) on the way there.

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

Big 12 Preseason Coaches Poll

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

Around The Big 12:

• One Foot Out The Door: The big news in the Big 12 is that it’s no longer the Big 12.  This season will be the final season with the Big 12 as we know it.  Nebraska departs for the Big Ten and Colorado will eventually make the jump to the Pac-10, either in 2011 or 2012.  Either way, the transformation in the conference has major implications as far as basketball is concerned, as the unbalanced schedule that has existed since the league’s inception goes away, and a new 18-game conference slate could become the norm.  In an ideal world, no more excuses – everybody plays everybody at home and on the road from here on out.
• New Coaches: Two teams in the conference will have new head coaches in 2010. Colorado lost Jeff Bzdelik to Wake Forest and his self-described dream job.  The timing couldn’t have been worse for Colorado, as the program seemed to be gaining some traction, and any time there is a lack of stability, it can hurt a program.  In terms of the hire itself, Tad Boyle from Northern Colorado doesn’t necessarily have the name recognition, but he was able to keep all the current pieces in place for Colorado and in the short term, that’s very important.  Things at Iowa State didn’t necessarily shake out quite as well.  The Cyclones are bringing back “The Mayor,” Fred Hoiberg, who has an extremely limited coaching resume, but tremendous amount of clout with the Iowa State faithful.  The program lost the top two players from a year ago and then some.  With the new start and a fresh face on the bench, it’s a full-blown rebuilding job awaiting an Ames legend.
• Diaper Dandies: The Big 12 has made a name for itself as a league that can reload. This year is no exception; around the league, a host of high-profile recruits join various programs, ensuring the viability of the league as a basketball power for the future.  Perry Jones at Baylor, Josh Selby at Kansas, Tony Mitchell at Missouri and both Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph at Texas join each respective program as big-time national recruits. The only problem right now is that both Tiger and Jayhawk fans are awaiting eligibility news related to their blue chip talents.
• An I-70 Battle: Three teams situated on or very close to Interstate 70 look poised to battle for the conference title.  In years past, the gripe from the Big 12 South has always been the competitively unbalanced schedule and the built-in advantage that it provided Kansas in winning the conference.  In 2010, three North teams in Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri all appear to be legitimate contenders for the conference crown.  Mike Anderson and Frank Martin have done a tremendous job in recruiting players to their respective programs, developing talent and getting the buy-in that it takes to step onto the national stage.  Both appear to be inching ever closer to Bill Self and the Jayhawks and the three-way “rivalry” will no doubt play a major role in who wins the Big 12.

With or without Josh Selby, Kansas is ready to defend its string of six consecutive regular season conference titles.

Power Rankings:

1. Kansas: When you lose three starters, the common belief is that you will take a step back.  With Kansas however, the cupboard is far from bare.  The Jayhawks were easily one of the deepest teams in the country a year ago and while losing Sherron Collins, Xavier Henry and Cole Aldrich certainly isn’t an easy pill to swallow, Kansas returns a Big 12 POY candidate in Marcus Morris, depth and talent at every position, and they add one of the top recruits in the country in McDonald’s All-American Josh Selby, who as of this writing, has yet to be cleared to play. Two players who could prove critical to success in 2010 are Markieff Morris and Tyshawn Taylor. Both have enjoyed success off and on in their careers thus far, but neither has found the consistency or leadership on the court that’s necessary to be viewed as a leader.  With the turnover in the program, the opportunity is there for one or both to make that leap.
2. Kansas State: The Wildcats return a good amount of talent from their Elite Eight team of a year ago.  Jacob Pullen and Curtis Kelly could easily represent the best inside-outside combination in the league. But the biggest reason to not doubt Kansas State is their coach, Frank Martin. A hire that was highly criticized when it was made, Martin’s move to the head job in Manhattan has proven to be a great one. His teams play an extremely hard, tough, physical brand of basketball, and as a coach, he’s found a way to put together a team that buys into that style.  The biggest question mark will be finding a way to replace Denis Clemente, arguably the most athletic player in the Big 12 a year ago.  Martin will look to sophomores Rodney McGruder and Wally Judge to step up and provide support for the Wildcats as they battle for the conference title
3. Missouri: Mike Anderson has stocked up on quality depth and added the top recruiting class in the conference to boot.  While the eligibility of blue-chip talent Tony Mitchell remains a question mark, the Tigers have made another major addition on the interior in the top ranked junior college forward, Ricardo Ratliffe. The biggest thing the Tigers will have to replace is leadership.  The departures of seniors J.T. Tiller, Keith Ramsey and Zaire Taylor aren’t major blows in terms of production, but they are in terms of leadership.  All three were part of the initial transition from the Quin Snyder era to Anderson and all three were in the top four in minutes played a year ago.  The talent in Columbia is there for a Big 12 run, the question is who will lead them? Read the rest of this entry »

1. Nothing is ever easy with this guy, who now may hold the honor for the longest short consultancy in the history of professional basketball.  Isiah Thomas announced on Wednesday that he would rescind his new contract with the New York Knicks, largely to avoid the conflict of interest inherent in coaching collegiate players while working for an NBA franchise.  Getting bored yet, Isiah?
2. You may not be able to see LeBron James there anymore on a regular basis, but you can still see the MAC Tournament at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena.  The league announced yesterday that the tourney will be held there through 2017.  MAC faithful are no strangers to the venue, as the league has already held its marquee event there since 2000.  For a look at how the MAC looks heading into the 2010-11 season, check out our Summer School post on the league from this week.
3. The UNC reclamation project began last night in Nassau, Bahamas, as Roy Williams’ team played its first of a two-game set in the Caribbean paradise.  The early return on #1 recruit Harrison Barnes — 21/8 on 8-15 shooting in 29 minutes of action.  He also fouled out of the game, so that’s something to watch in the coming months.
4. Former Arkansas star Scotty Thurman joins his fellow Hawg All-American Corliss Williamson in taking up the coaching reins this summer.  Thurman is joining John Pelphrey’s staff at Arkansas just months after Williamson became the spanking-new head coach at Central Arkansas.  If either of those  nascent coaches can instill the all-out effort and tenacity in their kids that they both played with as Razorbacks, expect both to be very successful in this next step of their careers.
5. Kansas State’s Frank Martin got philosophical yesterday during a motivational speech for Wichita-area teachers when talking about whether kids have changed from previous generations.  His essential take:  kids haven’t changed, but the expectations from adults for them has.  Check out the entire clip below…

So apparently Anthony Davis has been in the news. . . Outside of that fiasco there was also a bit of other news on the recruiting circuit.

• Rakeem Christmas, widely considered the top center in this year’s class, has committed to Syracuse where fans are already salivating of having such a talented big man in Jim Boeheim‘s famed zone defense. Christmas might end up being a replacement for Fab Melo who could be yet another one-and-done.
• Despite being saddled by sanctions from the Lute Olson Kevin O’Neill era Arizona is making a strong push at picking up Nick Johnson, a top 10 combo guard, and it seems like the Wildcats are targeting several other guards this year.
• Tom Izzo may have lost Chris Allen this week, but he picked up another solid perimeter player in Branden Dawson who committed to Michigan State just a day after Allen was dismissed from the Spartans’ squad.
• Tom Crean‘s Indiana teams haven’t turned things around on the court yet, but it appears that he is making headway on the recruiting trail with B.J. Young, a point guard who lists the Hoosiers as his top choice and would be Crean’s highest rated recruit, and Cody Zeller, who lists the Hoosiers among his top three, but some local recruiting experts say that we shouldn’t sleep on Butler as a potential destination for Zeller.
• Frank Martin is using his Miami connections again as he received a commitment from Adrian Diaz, a 7-foot (205 pound!) center from Miami, to Kansas State before Diaz even visited Manhattan.

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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.

With all the talk about the coming 96-team tournament, many in the sports media have forgotten that there is already another ridiculous major college sport championship in place: the BCS. We took you through this process in a post last year, but it’s worth going over again as the blogosphere is ablaze with opinions on changing our beloved NCAA Tournament.

Here are the basic ground rules:

1. We are following the BCS Football guidelines as closely as possible. Obviously there are some differences. A college basketball team is expected to win more than 9 games (we kept a cut-off at a 75% winning percentage). We replaced the Notre Dame rule with the Duke rule since they both have sketchy TV contracts (Notre Dame with NBC and Duke with ESPN).
2. I used the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls as the human polls and ESPN.com’s InsiderRPI, KenPom.com, and Sagarin’s ratings as the computer polls. The computer polls include data from the NCAA Tournament, but as you will see it didn’t affect the results that significantly.
3. We used the traditional BCS calculations for determining each team’s score weighing the two human polls and the combined computer poll average as 1/3 of a team’s total score each.

Here are the results:

We will let you digest that for a minute and will provide more information/analysis and the BCS Bowls after the jump.

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Over the next two days, RTC will break down the regional semifinal games using our best analytical efforts to understand these teams, the matchups and their individual strengths and weaknesses.  Our hope is that you’ll let us know in the comments where you agree, disagree or otherwise think we’ve lost our collective minds.  Here are Thursday night’s games from the East and West Regionals.

7:07 pm – #1 Syracuse vs. #5 Butler  (West Region)

We’re starting to worry about this Arinze Onuaku situation.  Sooner or later, Jim Boeheim’s team is going to need the 11 points, five rebounds and general defensive anchor support on the front line that the 6’9, 260-pound big man provides.  Rick Jackson is a serviceable replacement, but the fact that Onuaku reportedly hasn’t even suited up in practice since his injury against Georgetown on March 11 is cause for alarm.  Even if Syracuse survives to advance to next weekend’s Final Four, how productive could he possibly be?  So far, Syracuse hasn’t shown a need for him yet.  The Orange ran over Vermont and Gonzaga without breathing all that hard thanks to the superb play of Wesley Johnson and friends, but there will be a team in the very near future where they’ll need more than Jackson alone can provide.

That team will not be playing SU in the Sweet Sixteen, however.  Butler is an excellent team and Brad Stevens has gotten players other than Gordon Hayward and Matt Howard to step up this season, most notably Shelvin Mack who went 9-12 from long range in the San Jose pod against UTEP and Murray State.  Syracuse is not UTEP or Murray, though, and the wide-open looks that Mack was getting in those games will no longer be as readily available thanks to the length and quickness of the Orange’s perimeter defenders.  Furthermore, Butler center Matt Howard has enough trouble staying out of foul trouble against Horizon League teams; it’s not realistic to think that he’ll be able to play 30+ effective minutes against Jackson, Johnson and Kris Joseph inside.  The main problem we foresee is that Butler is not a very good offensive team in general — when Hayward and Mack aren’t firing on all cylinders, the Bulldogs have trouble scoring points.  Add that to the fact they’ll be facing one of the best offensive teams in America, and you have a situation where numerous things need to go exactly right for Butler to get this win tonight.  Even without Onuaku on the floor for another game, we just don’t see Butler finding enough offense to win this game.

The Skinny: The last time the Bulldogs made it this deep into the NCAAs, they ran into a long, athletic team by the name of Florida in 2007.  They played the defending and future national champions as closely as they were played in that tournament thanks to their control of the tempo, strong defense and  attention to detail, but it still wasn’t enough because the Florida offensive attack was simply too good.  We think the same thing will happen in this game.  Syracuse has too many weapons for the Butler defense to key in on all of them, and even if they catch SU on an off night, where will the Butler points come from?

7:27 pm – #2 West Virginia vs. #11 Washington  (East Region)

Most prognosticators felt that Washington had Sweet 16 talent coming into this season. Lorenzo Romar was returning reigning Pac-10 Freshman of the Year Isaiah Thomas, defensive stalwart Venoy Overton and a forward named Quincy Pondexter ripe for a breakout season. While Pondexter’s prediction panned out, guard play was shaky, road wins were hard to come by, and the Huskies found themselves on the NCAA bubble with seven losses in a weak Pac-10. A conference tournament win punched their ticket, though, and the Huskies have taken advantage of the opportunity, erasing a double-digit second half lead to beat Marquette and wiping the floor with Mountain West champion New Mexico. Their toughest test yet will come Thursday against Big East Tournament champion West Virginia. Washington needs to produce a near carbon copy of their performance against New Mexico. In other words, they need to play a near-perfect game. Thomas must keep his head on straight and continue to make outside jumpers. Overton must frustrate Da’Sean Butler, Elston Turner must continue to produce offensively and Pondexter must out-duel Devin Ebanks.

For West Virginia, Washington seems like a favorable matchup. They may have preferred Joe Mazzulla guarding Isaiah Thomas more than the sidelined Darryl Bryant anyway. Mazzulla is the superior defender and Bryant has been woeful shooting-wise the last three weeks. They also match up well with the length of Washington. Bob Huggins can throw a lineup out on the floor of players 6’6 or above with huge wingspans, meaning the long WVU defense could fluster Pondexter and force him into difficult shots. One possible negative to the Bryant injury is that it increases the likelihood that the Mountaineer offense will become too reliant on Butler to bail them out. He’s done it time and time again this season and in postseason tournament play. Does he have more magic up his sleeve?

The Skinny: West Virginia has a plethora of defenders that can frustrate Pondexter and they boast the best late-game scorer in the nation in Butler. That combination should prove enough to take care of Washington in fairly methodical fashion. Avoiding their typical slow start would be prudent.

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My goodness, how fun is this?

Meet Katie and Christie, two of the cockiest KU fans in the throng. Pretty easy to see why.

Was it raining in Kansas City yesterday?  You’d never know it.  Even with temperatures in the mid-40s and a light drizzle falling, the Power and Light District was still filled with college hoop lovers to the point where you could barely navigate through it.  The Kansas fans are still greatest in number and noise-making ability, but the Kansas State fans have been slowly creeping up to rival the Jayhawk supporters in both categories.

I don’t have to tell you about how many great teams there are in the Big 12 and the high quality of basketball that the conference has given us all year, but how fitting is it that for the final, we have Sunflower Showdown III?  Frank Martin said that Saturday’s game will have “the greatest atmosphere for any one game this year.”  Couldn’t agree more, coach.

Some notes from the games and the day in general:

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After last night’s win over Baylor, Kansas State’s Jacob Pullen was asked about how special it was to get a third shot at Kansas in Saturday’s Big 12 Tournament championship.  He responded with, “We just want to win the Big 12 Tournament,” conceding later that his team felt like they “lost the regular season title at Kansas,” but claimed that the Wildcats needed no added incentive to get pumped up for a Big 12 title game.  We admire Mr. Pullen’s diplomacy, but this is the game just about everybody wanted — the two best teams in the best conference.  Ridiculous rivals.  National title contenders.  Frank Martin predicted that this would be the best atmosphere of any college basketball game this season, and we think he’s right.  Kansas has started slow in its two Big 12 Tournament games, taking a half to get warmed up.  Kansas State has played Final Four-level basketball in their two games, and turned in one of the best performances by any team in any single game this year in their defeat of Baylor last night.  Who’s ready for Sunflower Showdown III?  We sure are, and we’re honored to be courtside for it with a championship edition of RTC Live.  The game’s on at 6 PM ET on ESPN, and we hope you’ll check us out while you’re watching.  See you there!

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