Utah Valley’s opening weekend road trip to Kentucky and Duke — dubbed the “toughest 24 hours in college basketball” — started out with a bang for Mark Pope’s upstart program: The Wolverines stormed out to a nine-point halftime lead in Rupp Arena, led by as many 12, and stayed within single digits for much of the second half. Big Blue eventually came back and won, of course, but not before a speechless crowd — and a stunned coach — took notice: “This team, Utah Valley, they’re going to win their share of games now. They’re big… they have got a couple guys that are out that can shoot… they’re legit,” John Calipari said afterward. And he’s absolutely right. Existing on the fringe of the national discussion, Utah Valley is perhaps the perfect embodiment of the WAC’s collection of top contenders this season: a nascent program fortified with impact transfers that’s built to surprise in non-conference play.

Oregon grad transfer Casey Benson should help Grand Canyon’s title hopes. (Grand Canyon University Athletics)

Believe it or not, the Wolverines were not picked to win (or even finish second) in the league this year. That distinction belongs to none other than Grand Canyon, which is off to a 3-0 start in its first season of NCAA Tournament eligibility. After winning a combined 49 games since 2015-16, the Lopes return Preseason WAC Player of the Year Joshua Braun and several other key contributors from last season’s unit. As if that were not enough, head coach Dan Majerle (with an assist from a certain member of the coaching staff) lured Oregon graduate transfer Casey Benson, a veteran point guard who logged 21 minutes in the Ducks’ Final Four loss to North Carolina last March. Through three games, Braun (20.0 PPG) and Benson (10.0 PPG) have been awesome, and Grand Canyon — a for-profit university with an impossibly raucous home crowd — looks every bit the favorite pundits thought it would be. Even if the Lopes don’t upend St. John’s in their semi-home tilt on December 5, don’t be surprised if Majerle’s group gives Illinois loads of trouble just before the New Year.

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When the Ivy League tipped off last Friday night, it was official: Conference play was underway everywhere, in power conferences and low majors alike. While only a handful of games in March will ultimately matter for those teams in leagues without legitimate at-large candidates, the regular season will still define the favorites to win automatic tournament bids in the smaller conferences. Some leagues have a clearly defined top dog, while others have a handful of teams battling for that status. Either way, if you like March chaos, there are low major teams out there you should absolutely be rooting for to hold serve and earn their way into the field. Here are a few of the team you should be getting familiar with now — whether because of star players, a proven core of seniors, or a collection of “red line” upsets against Power Five schools.

With the dynamic Dallas Moore at the helm, North Florida is in good shape. (AP)

• America East – You probably already know about Jameel Warney, the unquestioned Stony Brook leader, but the rest of Seawolves also have a nice veteran core around Warney (30th in the nation in experience per KenPom). Stony Brook has also been close to scoring a signature victory for the league, leading much of the way at Vanderbilt in November before succumbing in overtime. Unbelievably, the Seawolves have either won the regular season title and/or been in the conference tournament final for six straight seasons, but they are still seeking the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance. Albany has been the most frequent tormentor, and the Great Danes have matched Stony Brook’s 3-0 start to league play so far this season. Looking for pole position in the America East? The two teams’ first meeting is next Friday on Long Island.
• Atlantic Sun – You probably heard about Ben Simmons’ destruction of North Florida, but did you know the Ospreys had two players (Dallas Moore and Beau Beech) score 31 apiece that night? As a team UNF hit NINETEEN threes against LSU; on the season they’ve connected on 43.4% of their triples, good for 8th in the country. They scorched Illinois in a 12-point season opening victory and legitimately own one of the best offenses in all of college basketball. They lost in a play-in game last March, but a return trip to the Dance may include a spot in the field of 64 for the Ospreys and their dangerous offense.

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Throughout the season, the Other 26 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, including team, player, coach and whatever else strikes our fancy in that week’s edition.

O26 Team of the Week

St. Francis (PA). After going 7-6 down the stretch last season and winning 10-plus games for the first time since 2011, St. Francis (PA) entered this season with more optimism and higher expectations than it has had in a while. Not only were the Red Flash picked fourth in the NEC preseason poll, but they even received a first-place vote – major respect for a program that hadn’t finished in the upper half of the league for a full decade. After picking up road wins at Duquesne and Rutgers this week, however, it appears that respect was well-warranted – and maybe even insufficient.

St. Francis (PA) is our O26 Team of the Week. (Jim O’Connor-USA TODAY Sports)

In both victories, SFU got the job done with defense, rebounding and strong efforts from forwards Earl Brown and Ronnie Drinnon. On Wednesday, Rob Krimmel’s bunch held the Dukes’ usually-proficient offense to just 52 points on a season-low 0.83 PPP, crushing the home team on the offensive glass – despite entering the night as the worst offensive rebounding team in the NEC – and maintaining a comfortable lead for all 40 minutes. Brown led the Red Flash with 16 points in the triumph while Drinnon grabbed 15 rebounds, a pair of solid outings that still couldn’t match what they accomplished on Saturday. As if man-handling an A-10 team was just another day at the office, SFU then headed to Rutgers, fell behind by 16 points, came out of the locker room unfazed, and used a 27-11 second-half run to beat the Scarlet Knights, 73-68, over the weekend. Brown’s 23 points and Drinnon’s 16 boards again paced Krimmel’s team, and the win – SFU’s first over a Big Ten school other than Penn State – turned heads across college basketball. Now 6-4 and nearing the KenPom top-150, the Red Flash are starting to look more like ‘NEC favorites’ than merely ‘NEC contenders.’

Honorable Mentions: Quinnipiac (2-0: vs. Lehigh, vs. Oregon State); American (2-0: at LaSalle, vs. Mount St. Mary’s); St. Francis (PA); VCU (2-0: at Belmont, at Cincinnati), Cal Poly (2-1: at San Francisco, vs. Northeastern (N), vs. Gonzaga (N-loss)) Read the rest of this entry »

The news that Royce Woolridge had decided to spend his final year of eligibility at Grand Canyon University may be a bigger deal than you think. The Phoenix-area native is returning home to play for Dan Majerle at the first for-profit university to call Division I home. Yes, Thunder Dan Majerle. In its inaugural Division I season in the reconfigured WAC, the former Phoenix Suns star and assistant coach guided the Antelopes to a surprising 15-15 (10-6 WAC) record, good for third in the conference (after being picked to finish last in the preseason). The Antelopes will lose four rotation players to graduation, including their top two scorers, but adding Woolridge is another small step forward for what one day turn out to be a major story in college basketball.

Dan Majerle is trying to build a winner at for-profit Grand Canyon (azcentral.com).

The former Washington State and Kansas guard is a high major player (7.4 PPG, 2.3 APG), and an even more important get for Majerle because he was a two-time high school All-Arizona selection at Phoenix Sunnyslope. The Antelopes’ top returning player, Jerome Garrison (37.8 MPG, 16.5 PPG, 20.5 PER), was also a Phoenix prep standout. Having these two local products to generate good will with area high school coaches and players could be a boon for future recruiting. It’s not as if Majerle lacks for local notoriety; current high schoolers may not remember NBA Jam or Thunder Dan’s playing days, but his list of All-Star appearances and NBA coaching chops should be attention-grabbers. Still, when Garrison was initially recruited by Grand Canyon, he’d never heard of the school that is located in his own backyard. “Nobody knew about Grand Canyon,” Garrison told USA Today. “Nobody knew anything going on at Grand Canyon. All you heard about was [Arizona State] and [Arizona] here.” Having players like he and Woolridge in the fold could allow Majerle to capitalize on what he already brings to the table.

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A Pac-12 adaption of Every Day Should Be Saturday’s Hatin’ Steve Spurrier character. 

Larry Krystowiak (Credit: The Grizzoulian)

• It’s just not hoops season until Washington loses to a Big West team by 14 at home. Thanks, UC Irvine.
• Who doesn’t love the new foul rules? Two and a half hour games. Fifty fouls. This game is about flow, kids.
• Oregon’s at it again, guys.
• I’ve got more important things to do at 7:00 AM than watch a Quinnipiac–La Salle game. Slackers.
• Is there a coach with more job security than Craig Robinson after losing to a lower-level MEAC team? Is there a coach other than Craig Robinson taking his team to the White House this week? The answer is in there somewhere, folks.
• Robert Morris will look to continue its dominance of Kentucky on Sunday in Lexington. LOL.
• How many more times does Stanford have to give up 100 points before Johnny Dawkins is fired?
• Grand Canyon has opened its season at 0-2. Stockholders ain’t gonna be pleased.
• Gary Payton II has committed to Oregon State. They call him “The Mitten.” That’s not a joke. Really.
• Yeah, we lead the nation in points scored. Play someone other than Evergreen State, you say? Haters gonna hate.
• The Marshall Henderson show is back. Once a Ute, always a Ute, is what I say.
• Colorado has found the key to student attendance – bacon. No word on how USC’s free Ferrari promotion is working out.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

In a letter signed by league presidents and directed to the NCAA’s Executive Cmmittee on July 10, the Pac-12 voiced its unanimous opposition to the Division I promotion of Grand Canyon University, the first for-profit institution to, in essence, enter the college sports big leagues. The presidents laid out their opinion in clear, unmistakable, vehement tones. They want Grand Canyon out of Division I because Grand Canyon isn’t like other Division I schools. “Our major concern is how athletics fit within academic missions of for-profit universities,” read the letter. The presidents’ concerns are not unfounded – Grand Canyon is on the vanguard of for-profit schools entering Division I (the school began its transition process from Division II on July 1, and will be eligible for the NCAA Tournament as a member of the decaying WAC conference in 2017-18; Grand Canyon does not have a football team.) Anytime something new breaks into the college sports lexicon – or any major field of interest, really – there are going to be questions. There’ll be detractors, too, and the Pac-12 is leading this particular faction with a determined conviction to block Grand Canyon’s move. There’s no going back now.

Division I’s first for-profit institution has incited protest from Pac 12 schools (Credit: ShermanReport.com)

I just have one question: Did all of the Pac-12’s presidents just sleep through the past three years of conference realignment? Because it almost seems that way. I mean, how else can you rationalize a group of D-I presidents who, in the wake of almost three years of non-stop financially-driven realignment, openly question whether a program is doing something in the service of its own “academic mission?” What did the recent realignment frenzy tell us, if not that schools have absolutely zero regard for their “academic missions” or decades-old rivalries or cultural fit or geographic common sense or anything else not related to a program’s bottom line, when making major decisions about their place in the college sports landscape? Did the constantly shifting allegiances, the explicitly discussed dollars-fueled realignment moves, the near-implosion of a Big Six conference, not say anything about the incentives of major college sports programs? Money, bundled in TV contracts and broadcast rights deals, was the wind blowing conference realignment’s sails, and while the league-hopping drama may have reached a temporary stasis, the whole ordeal left a distinct impression about the way modern college sports are governed. The motivation is clear: Get money now and deal with everything else later.

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For the past 3 months, much of the college basketball world has speculated about how Lon Kruger and the UNLV administration would punish Tre’Von Willis following his arrest on a charge of domestic violence stemming from an incident where he allegedly strangled a woman on June 29th. Earlier today Willis reached a plea agreement with local law enforcement authorities where he could face the following penalties:

• Suspended 90-day jail sentence
• 100 hours of community service
• $340 fine
• 6 months of domestic violence counseling
• No contact with his accuser
• Suspended at least 3 games

While the punishment sounds serious it is unlikely that Willis will have to do much other than pay a relatively small fine, do some community service (probably show up at a few basketball clinics), and try not to break the law until the end of the season. If he does get into trouble with the law, Willis could be forced to serve the rest of the suspended 90-day sentence (assuming he has probably only spent one day in jail at the time of his arrest).

Willis Appears to Have Gotten Off Easy

For his part Willis released the following statement, where he said:

I want to apologize to my family, the university, my coaches, my teammates and to the community of Las Vegas. I feel awful and embarrassed. I used extremely poor judgment, made a mistake and take responsibility for what happened. I will work hard to earn back the trust and support of the fans and those close to me.

Now for the part that most of you are interested: his suspension from the Rebels. In a statement to the media, Kruger said:

Tre’Von made a mistake and feels horrible about it. He let a lot of people down. With any mistake there are consequences and he is accepting responsibility for what he did. In addition to the legal-system penalties, he is also being penalized by the program to address the mistakes he made and will miss at least the first 10 percent of his senior season.

Although the media and UNLV’s official site are reporting that this means that Willis will miss at least three games if we are being technically correct (and since UNLV is an institution of higher learning they should be ok with basic math), the Rebels play 32 regular season games (counting the 2 exhibition games, which should count since they are counting it in his suspension), so Willis should miss more than three games (or at least four if Kruger isn’t trying to pull a Rex Ryan / Braylon Edwards suspension). According to UNLV’s schedule, the three games that Willis is scheduled are two exhibition games (against Grand Canyon and Washburn — yeah, we never heard of them either) and one regular season game (against UC-Riverside), all of which are at home. If UNLV is following Kruger’s statement to the letter (or number) they should also suspend Willis for their next game, which they play at home against Southeastern Louisiana. This would mean that Kruger would technically be able to bring his star guard back in time for the Rebels’ game against Wisconsin (surely a coincidence). The match-up of two potential top 25 teams would certainly be intriguing and making that the first game back for Willis would give Kruger and the Rebels a built-in excuse to lobby the NCAA Selection Committee in March to give them a break because the team would be readjusting to playing with Willis in case the Rebels lose to the Badgers at the Thomas & Mack Center. This isn’t to say that Kruger is trying to a Bobby Bowden by announcing  a delayed suspension that would allow his players to play against a tough team first and then suspend them for a subsequent game against a cupcake, but it is interesting to say the least.