I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will kick off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences. Follow him on Twitter @IRenkoHoops.

After a 17-point win at St. Mary’s on Thursday night pushed Gonzaga’s record to 24-2 and cleared its biggest hurdle to a regular season record tainted with just two losses, some are wondering whether this is the best team that Mark Few has put together in his 14 years at the helm. It’s a fair question, given the way they’re playing. But the best ever? Sure, not since Adam Morrison was dragged off the court after a heartbreaking loss to UCLA ended his college career, have the Zags had a player with the combination of star power, All-American credentials, and curious hairstyle that Kelly Olynyk has brought this year. And, true, moreso than the Morrison-led team of 2006, this squad is a well-balanced offensive machine, with a multitude of frontcourt and backcourt options. They proved that on Thursday, when Kevin Pangos and Gary Bell, who have deferred most of the scoring load this year to Olynyk and Elias Harris, dropped a combined 38 points on St. Mary’s.

This Gonzaga Team is Good, But Not Mark Few’s Best … Yet (James Snook / USA TODAY Sports)

But Few’s best team ever? They have a ways to go before they can claim such an honor. Take, for example, the 2004 team, which also dropped just two contests heading into the NCAA Tournament.  That squad was led by All-American senior guard Blake Stepp, and like Olynyk, he had lots of help. Junior Ronny Turiaf, sophomore Morrison, and senior Cory Violette shared the scoring load, with all four players averaging in double-digits. They coasted through league play undefeated, never winning a game by less than double digits, and ended the season on a 20-game win streak en route to a 2 seed in the Tournament, Gonzaga’s best ever. Their two pre-Tournament losses were to St. Joe’s and Stanford, both of which went on to earn 1 seeds that year. By contrast, this year’s Gonzaga team lost to Illinois, a bubble team, at home by 11 points.

Of course, this year’s squad could prove itself a superior to the 2004 team — or any team that Few has coached — if it can get past the Sweet Sixteen. Since Gonzaga burst onto the college hoops scene 14 years ago with a Cinderella run to the Elite Eight, they’ve yet to get reach the brink of a Final Four, much less a Final Four itself. The ballyhooed ’04 squad was upset by 10th-seeded Nevada in the second round, the ’05 team squandered a 3 seed with a second round loss to Texas Tech, and the ’06 Zags memorably collapsed against UCLA in the Sweet Sixteen (a game to which one cannot refer without remarking that it was perhaps the finest moment of Gus Johnson’s illustrious career). This Gonzaga team stacks up well with those predecessors, but unless it breaks through to the second game of the second weekend, it won’t prove to be their clear superior.

What’s undisputed, however, is that the Zags have been dominant enough to remain at the top of this year’s Top 10.  On to that, our Honor Roll, and this week’s games to watch  . . .

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Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @mrjames2006 and @ivybball.

Looking Back

• One For The Record Book – While Yale’s 69-65 victory over Princeton sent shock waves throughout the league, the score itself obscured the myriad storylines, ranging from interesting to bizarre, hidden beyond a cursory glance. The Tigers saw their 21-game Ivy home winning streak come to an end – a run which extended all the way back to the 2009-10 season. The victory helped push the Bulldogs into a tie for third in the league and put Yale back on pace to finish in the Ivy’s upper division for the 13th consecutive season. Also, it marked just the seventh time in the Academic Index era (dating back to 1980) that a team pulled off the back-to-back sweep of Pennsylvania and Princeton on the road. The game itself was very strange, as both teams posted effective field goal percentages over 60% and each offense rebounded over half of its missed shots.
• High Octane – After spending most of the non-conference slate struggling mightily to score the basketball, the eight Ivies have experienced a veritable explosion on the offensive end during league play. Every team has seen its offensive efficiency rise, as the 14-Game Tournament has seen Ivy teams score an average of six points more per 100 possessions than they did during the non-conference slate. True-shooting percentage has risen substantially in league play as teams have started getting to the line more and converting a greater percentage of their three-point shots. Dropping threes is a great equalizer for an underdog, and sure enough, the league’s two biggest upsets to this point (Yale over Princeton and Columbia over Harvard) have seen the favorites succumb to a barrage of trifectas from their opponents.
  

  The Tigers continue to roll, but an unbalanced schedule has Princeton playing seven of its final nine on the road.

Power Rankings  

1. Princeton (11-8, 4-1) – While the Tigers look like the most complete Ivy team and have the added benefit of experience going for them, one thing to keep in mind is that the Tigers haven’t played a road game since January 5th and have yet to venture away from Jadwin in league play. With seven of its final nine on the road, Princeton is about to find out just how tough it is out there, starting with its trip to Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend. Over the same timeframe that the Tigers won 21 straight games at Jadwin Gym, they went just 9-7 on the road, losing at five different Ivy venues. Princeton’s home-road splits this season have been pretty much dead even, so there’s no reason to expect any drop off as the Tigers leave New Jersey, and all it would take is one road sweep to make Princeton the prohibitive favorite. Read the rest of this entry »

1. We will start off this Morning Five by talking about football or more specifically the lack of football for the rest of the college football season. We won’t try to claim that we don’t enjoy football from time to time although we still don’t quite understand America’s obsession with it. Anyways now that football season is officially over we hope the media can shift its focus to basketball as quickly as possible. So if you have friends who are huge football fans and only care about college basketball for the NCAA Tournament try to get them in on some conference basketball because they will quickly learn their is more to college basketball than the NCAA Tournament.
2. One of the subtle changes that will be occurring with conference realignment is the potential movement of conference tournaments from their familiar locations to more functional ones given the new geography of various conferences. In our eyes the two biggest sites are Madison Square Garden and Greensboro Coliseum. Given the disintegration of the Big East it would appear that Madison Square Garden should be opening up and it appears that the ACC is interested in moving the ACC Tournament to the New York City area. It could be a while before that happens as the deadline for bids for the 2016-21 ACC Tournaments already passed with the current bids coming from Atlanta, Charlotte, Greensboro, Tampa, and Washington D.C. Of course, the powers that be could decide to reopen the bidding if they really wanted to get to New York City so it is something to keep an eye on in the future.
3. Over the years we have heard a lot of questionable thing about the various basketball academies, but those criticisms are usually focused on lackluster or non-existent academics. In the case of CCSE Preparatory Academy in Roseville, California the allegations are much more concerning as at least four students are alleging that they were subjected to corporal punishment by the school’s president Francis Ngissah, who was arrested and released on $100,000 bail. The students, who pay $10,000 per year for tuition and another $5,000 per year for boarding, but as the link notes there are several questionable aspects about the school not the least of which is its 24 year-old president, who claims he graduated from Harvard, but Harvard couldn’t verify his attendance which the school’s spokesman explains by saying that Ngissah attended Harvard under another name, but refuses to release that name. At this point all we can say is that we continue to question whether the supposed need for these training academies is worth all of the shady activity at them given how lightly regulated they are.
4. Speaking of students who actually attended Harvard the scandal the rocked the school and took away any chance of its basketball team being a player on the national stage this season appears to be winding down. According to the school, more than half of the approximately 125 students (approximately 1% of the total undegraduate student body) were required to withdraw from the school for an unspecified period of time. Approximately another quarter received disciplinary probation while the other students did not receive any further punishment. We have not heard which group Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry fell into, but would assume that the punishment would not extend beyond this academic year so t hey should probably be able to return to the team next season.
5. While the Manti Te’o circus may have opened up the public’s eyes to the world of catfishing it appears that some programs were aware of it and tried to teach its players how to avoid it. According to some reports Michigan may have engaged in catfishing some of its football players. While some individuals are trying to avoid using the term “catfish” when they describe what happened to their players it appears that they did end up catfishing the players. Our favorite part of the story is a quote attributed to Brady Hoke who describes the female who was used to lure in the football players in this way: “she was hot, now; a very, very nice looking young lady”.

I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will kick off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences. Follow him on Twitter @IRenkoHoops.

When you hear the word “Niagara” you’re not likely to think of basketball. But in the shadow of one of the world’s natural wonders, something is percolating on the hardwood. After a thrilling 93-90 overtime win over Iona that included a rally from a late 15-point deficit and a buzzer-beating three-pointer to win the game, Niagara sits atop the MAAC standings at 10-1. A win over Loyola today would cap a tremendous week for the Purple Eagles, giving them a perfect 3-0 record against the next three teams in the standings — Iona, Loyola, and Canisius — over the past seven days.

Juan’ya Green Capped Niagara’s Thrilling Win Over Iona With a Last-Second Three-Pointer in Overtime (James P. McCoy / Buffalo News)

Last year, Niagara finished 14-19, the first time in head coach Joe Mihalich’s 10-year tenure that he suffered consecutive losing seasons. Mihalich had taken the Purple Eagles to the NCAA Tournament in 2005 and 2007 and to the NIT in 2004 and 2009, but the team had fallen behind the pack in the MAAC in the three years since. The seeds of a resurgence were planted during last year’s losing campaign, as a host of young players started to find their footing in Division 1 college hoops. Having lost no one to graduation, Niagara was predicted to finish fifth in the MAAC in the preseason coaches’ poll. That seemed a fair, perhaps optimistic, assessment, but the clear light of hindsight makes a mockery of it.

What accounts for the turnaround? Mostly the maturation of Niagara’s all-sophomore backcourt: Juan’ya Green, Antoine Mason, and Ameen Tanksley. Last year, the trio showed that they had talent. This year, they’re showing that they can channel it into efficient offense.  Green is actually averaging fewer points (16.5) than he did as a freshman (17.6), but that’s in part because he’s managed to corral his considerable talents and become a more effective facilitator. Coming out of high school, Green was known for his prodigious scoring ability, but questions lingered about his ability to create for his teammates. He’s answering those questions this year, increasing his assists (5.2 per game) and decreasing his turnovers (2.8 per game). With Green deferring more to his teammates, Mason, the son of former NBA player Anthony Mason, has stepped into the role of lead scorer. He’s upped his per-game average from 15.1 to a team-leading 18.7, but more importantly, he’s become a much more efficient scorer.  He’s increased his field goal percentage from 38.2 to 44.6. He now shoots almost 80 percent from the free throw line, after shooting less than 65 percent last year, a significant development because of his knack for getting to the charity stripe. Tanksley, for his part, has also boosted his field goal percentage, from 38.6 to 45.7 and upped his scoring average into double-digits.

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Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @mrjames2006 and @ivybball.

Looking Back

• The 14-Game Tournament — College basketball’s most unique conference schedule gets underway in earnest this weekend, as the eight members of the Ivy League begin six weeks of Friday/Saturday back-to-back games for the right to represent the league in the NCAA Tournament. No conference tournament, no second chances. The only rare appearances for the league during Championship Week occur when the regular season title is shared, in which case no tiebreakers are applied and the two or more teams proceed directly to a neutral site playoff. The last one of those happened following the 2011 season, when a Douglas Davis jumper at the buzzer sent Princeton past Harvard into the NCAA Tournament. Currently, the odds of playoff this season sit around 20 percent and would most likely be a repeat of that 2011 duel.
• Odds Aren’t — The last travel partner weekend was supposed to be a snoozer as each of the three contests had favorites of between 5.5 and 16.5 points. No one told the teams involved, apparently, as two of the three contests went into overtime and another wasn’t decided until a missed three at the buzzer. The favorites are still 5-2 in the early going, meaning that the race has gone pretty much to plan thus far. If the results from last weekend are any indication, however, the next six weekends should provide plenty of surprising moments while the league likely ends up either of the expected favorites, Harvard or Princeton, taking home the title.

Can Freshman Phenom Siyani Chambers And Harvard Head Coach Tommy Amaker Turn The Crimson Into Tournament Darlings? (Joe Murphy/Getty)

Power Rankings

1. Princeton (8-7, 1-0 Ivy) – Two massively important records for Tigers fans to keep in mind are 2-5 and 6-2. Those are Princeton’s marks when Ian Hummer uses over and under 35 percent of his team’s possessions, respectively. Hummer is everywhere on the offensive end, taking tons of shots, drawing many fouls and even leading the entire Ivy League in assist rate. As a whole, though, the Tigers are far more effective when the 6’7″ senior is doing a lot, but not too much. The new, improved Princeton squad of the last month has thrived on ball movement to find any of the myriad three-point shooters that can knock down open looks. When the offense is running smoothly and efficiently, it becomes very difficult for one player to use more than a third of the team’s possessions, which likely means that Princeton’s title hopes rest on Hummer doing less, not more. Read the rest of this entry »

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

The Weekend’s Lede. Parity Rocks Conference PlayThe theme of this college basketball season isn’t going away. There are no dominant teams. From Indiana to Duke to Louisville, or whoever else inherits the top spot in the rankings this season, their stay won’t be a long one. But what we’re seeing this season is about more than big-time upsets. Not every surprising result is a top-five stunner. It’s the parity in conference play that makes pegging conference frontrunners and Final Four contenders so adventurous. The insanity continued over the weekend, and frankly, I don’t envision it stopping any time soon. This – hotly-tested games, minimal gaps between the best and worst of each league, contested conference races, no clear favorites – is college basketball at its finest. It comes at you from so many different angles, so many different time zones, so many different TV channels. It gives you unranked Villanova knocking off two top-five teams in a week, and UCLA losing to the little-brother Arizona school two days after beating big brother, and Marshall Plumlee and Alex Len engaging in mid-game dunk warfare. And then, just when you’ve seen enough, it brings you another healthy heaping throughout the week. Before we get there, the weekend brought us plenty to dissect and deliberate. Time to dive in.

Your Watercooler Moment. Villanova Strikes Again.

Two top-five upsets highlighted an excellent week for the Wildcats (Photo credit: Getty Images).

There is no rational explanation for why Villanova was able to take down not just one but both of the Big East’s best teams this week. The Wildcats are still worlds away from the perimeter-oriented teams that fared so well under Jay Wright over the past decade. But they got those wins, and now Villanova’s season is headed in an entirely different direction. A week ago, the Wildcats were licking their wounds after dropping consecutive games against Pittsburgh and at Providence. The first was predictable and totally understandable; the second one hurt. It hurt not just because you’d rather not lose to a talented but young Providence team on the road under any circumstance, but because the rigorous two-game stretch that loomed left the possibility for a sustained losing streak. That rigor, in hindsight, was ‘Nova’s upset gold. And the weirdest part: Louisville and Syracuse, both ranked in the top-six in Kenpom’s defensive efficiency rankings entering Saturday, are about as upset-proof as tom-five teams come this season. Sure, the Cardinals’ offense betrays them from time to time, and when the bad, turnover-proned, wacky Russ Smith overwhelms the All American-level star we’ve seen in large stretches this season, Rick Pitino’s team can lose. And yes, the Orange have their warts, especially without their best shooter, James Southerland. But that baseline defensive commonality buffers against bad shooting nights, against 25-point games from Darrun Hilliard and poor late-game foul management. Seeing one of these teams go down in Philadelphia would have been run of the mill stuff for this season. But two, both lorded over by hall of fame coaches with decades of upset-avoiding wisdom at their disposal? Can’t say I saw this coming.

Also Worth Chatting About.  Bruins Still Maturing.

As the season rolls on, the Bruins will continue to get better (Photo credit: AP Photo).

Swinging through a late-week road trip bookended with games at the two Arizona schools without a loss was a pipedream from the start. UCLA is an explosive offensive team, flush with talented freshmen and a handful of valuable role players, plus a much-improved defense. It is not the best team in the Pac-12; at least not yet. By season’s end, Ben Howland’s team is the odds-on favorite to own that title, but the Bruins have a few tweaks to make before they reach their peak. They won the more important of the two games, beating Arizona Saturday in relatively comfortable fashion, and that’s the biggest takeaway from this brutal two-game stretch. UCLA, like its Pac 12 challengers (Oregon, Arizona), is not experienced or balanced enough to stroll through conference play without a few hiccups along the way. Besides, Arizona State is quietly playing some excellent hoops on both ends of late; the Sun Devils entered Saturday making exactly half of their two-point shots, tops in the Pac 12. If Jordan Bachynski is going to give you 22 points and 15 rebounds, Carrick Felix adds 23 and 11, and David Wear can’t hold his side of the bargain (five points on 2-for-12 shooting), competing – much less winning – is a dubious goal.

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1. The question of whether states other than Nevada will allow legalized sports gambling reached a key decision point on Tuesday as the US Department of Justice intervened in a case brought by the NCAA and the four major professional leagues against New Jersey disputing a 1992 law that prohibits betting on sports. The Garden State passed a law last year (signed by Governor Chris Christie) that would allow sports gambling in its casinos and race tracks statewide, but the MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL along with the NCAA, citing “significant harm” to their leagues, filed suit against the state questioning its constitutionality under federal law. Tuesday’s decision by the federal government to intervene on the side of the plaintiffs gives additional weight to the side that supports the ban. Although not unprecedented, it’s somewhat unlikely that the DOJ would stake its reputation in federal court on a case where it stands to come out on the losing side of the matter. As a result, if you live in New Jersey and are hankering for a legal method to place a wager on future Big East Tournament games involving league stalwarts South Florida and East Carolina, you may want to go ahead and book those annual March trips to Las Vegas for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t appear that you will have the option in New Jersey.
2. Harvard has been kind of under the radar this season after being the team du jour last season and part of that reason is because of the loss of Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry, who withdrew for school a year after they were implicated in a wide-reaching cheating scandal. We had not heard what the two were doing as they waited to return to school next year, but The New York Times was able to catch up with them. Both of them returned to their hometown with Casey working for a nonprofit group and Curry selling life insurance. It will be interesting to see how the two adjust to rejoining a Harvard team that they were expected to lead this season, but has grown to play without them.
3. We have reached the point of the season where John Gasaway publishes his weekly Tuesday Truths. Last week was technically the first week he did it, but there was so little data that I didn’t think it was worth linking to. For those of you who are not familiar with the column it looks at the difference in a team’s offensive and defensive points per possession to calculate an efficiency margin (more details here). In this week’s edition, Gasaway goes through the conference’s per his usual routine taking particular interest in Florida‘s dominance of the SEC. We will be completely honest that while we find the numbers interesting and somewhat enlightening we don’t find it to be quite the revelation that many of our colleagues seem to think the Tuesday Truths are.
4. For a different type of weekly recap, Pat Forde offers his Forde Minutes, which is similar to his Forde Yard Dash that he writes when he is covering college football. While this lacks the number-crunching of Gasaway’s Tuesday Truths, it offers an equally comprehensive look at what is happening in college basketball. Of course, since it relies more on words than numbers it has to work off a central theme and this week’s theme is Brad Stevens and his emotional reaction (or lack of) following Butler’s thrilling win on Saturday night. Forde also offers an all-encompassing look at the player of the year and freshman of the year of races as well as who is hot and who is not.
5. At the beginning of the season college basketball writers obsessed over the triangle of basketball power between Indiana, Louisville, and Kentucky. While that area may still be the strongest in the country (substituting Butler for Kentucky at the present time), Matt Norlander feels that the designation of best basketball state should go to the state of Kansas. In addition to boasting the always solid Jayhawks, the state also has two other potential powers in Kansas State and Wichita State. As Norlander points out part of the state’s strength is its impressive win percentage which is bolstered by only have three Division I teams in the state. As you can imagine there are a few states which have not taken too kindly to this analysis and you can see a sampling of their thoughts in the comment section.

I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will kick off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences. Follow him on Twitter @IRenkoHoops.

After a one-week hiatus, we are back and just in time for a veritable orgy of great college hoops matchups today.  Yes, there is Louisville v. Syracuse, Florida v. Missouri, Oregon v. UCLA, and Ohio State v. Michigan State.  But things get no less interesting as you move down to the mid-major level, where several compelling matchups featuring conference contenders will unfold.  Before we get to the Top 10, let’s take a look at what’s on tap today:

• Gonzaga at Butler — The nation’s two Cinderella darlings will square off at the storied Hinkle Fieldhouse in a made-for-TV (yes, ESPN College Gameday will be in the house) contest.  It will be the final game of Gonzaga’s non-conference schedule and, arguably, its toughest.  The loss of Rotnei Clarke to a frightening neck injury will take some of the luster off of this matchup, as Butler will be playing without their leading scorer.  The task will be no easier on the other end of the Court, as the Bulldogs will have to contend with a potent Gonzaga frontcourt, led by 7-footer Kelly Olynyk, who has emerged into a bona fide All-American candidate.  But as we all know, being the underdog suits Brad Stevens just fine.
• Creighton at Wichita State — Doug McDermott has wowed the nation over the past week with a pair of 30-point games, and between his dominance and Creighton’s three-point shooting, the Bluejays’ offense has become quite difficult to stop.  But if there’s a team in the MVC who can do it, it’s Wichita State.  The Shockers have the best defense in the league, which will have the added boost of a raucous home crowd for this premier matchup.  The Shockers’ strong, quick guards will challenge Creighton at the other end, and Cleanthony Early might prove a tough matchup for McDermott.  Carl Hall is also back in the lineup for the Shockers, so both teams will be at full strength.

Siyani Chambers Is Having An Outstanding Freshman Year (Anthony Nesmith/CSM/Cal Sport Media/AP Images)

• Harvard at Memphis — With Conference USA muddling through a down year, this could be be Memphis’ toughest opponent of the 2013 calendar year.  The Crimson have turned in a quality season despite the unexpected one-year withdrawals of senior leaders Brandyn Curry and Kyle Casey due to an academic cheating scandal.  Much of the credit for that goes to freshman point guard Siyani Chambers, who is fifth in the country in minutes per game.  Tommy Amaker has put a great deal of faith in the young man, but he has rewarded him with a 31% assist rate, 50% three-point shooting average, and 88% FT shooting average.  Chambers will lock horns with Joe Jackson, who has steadied himself this season to become a reliable scorer and team leader.  The senior point guard has hit double-digits in points in 12 straight games, the longest mark of his college career.
• Western Illinois at North Dakota State — North Dakota State has been one of the great underreported stories of the season, rolling up a 16-3 record and supplanting South Dakota State as the Summit League’s favorite.  But Western Illinois has also creeped to the top of the league standings, just a game behind NDSU at 6-1.  The Leathernecks are led by an inside-out combo of big man Terrell Parks (13.9 ppg, 9.4 rbg) and do-everything senior guard Ceola Clark.  Clark is an excellent defender, and he’ll need to be at his best to help stop a North Dakota State that is a well-oiled, methodical, efficient machine.  Marshall Bjorkland, the Bison’s 6-8 junior, is arguably the most efficient scorer in the country.  He leads the nation in effective FG percentage (72.4%) and is fourth in true shooting percentage (71.2%).
• Utah State at Denver — Louisiana Tech remains at the top of the WAC standings after holding off Idaho on Thursday night, but these two squads are just one loss behind them.  So tonight’s game has a lot riding on it.  Expect a low-scoring contest between two of the lowest tempo teams in the country.  Royce O’Neale and Chris Udofia lead Denver’s Princeton offense, which wears down opponents with movement and relies heavily on the three-point shot.  Utah State will look to Preston Medlin, who leads the team with 16.3 points per game, and center Jarred Shaw who gets lots of touches in Stew Morrill’s offense. 
• College of Charleston at Davidson — Charleston will have a chance to move into a tie atop the Southern Conference South standings with a win at Davidson.  They’ll be led by their backcourt combo of Andrew Lawrence and Anthony Stitt, while their hosts will rely more heavily on their frontcourt tandem of De’Mon Brooks and Jake Cohen.  Davidson can fall in love with the three-point shot to their detriment.  They’re better when they get the ball to the versatile Brooks and Cohen.  Getting the ball in the basket won’t be easy against Charleston, which has a pretty good defense anchored in the middle by Adjehi Baru.
• Belmont v. Tennessee State — You would think that this game between the OVC’s two undefeated teams would lose its luster with the absence of Tennessee State’s star big man, Robert Covington, except for one thing — they’ve won every one of their six OVC games without him.  Covington went down with a torn meniscus in a December 18 trip to Middle Tennessee State that the Tigers went on to lose by 38 points.  At that point, they were 5-7 on the season but they’ve reeled off seven straight since and now sit atop the OVC East standings.   But they may need more than the Ewing Effect when they travel across town to face off with Belmont.  The switch from the A-Sun to the OVC hasn’t dimmed the Bruins’ ability to dominate their conference competition.

So there it is, a day-long feast for the glutton who craves mid-major hoops.  We move on, now, to the updated Top 10 rankings, our weekly (starting this week) Honor Roll, and a few more games to keep an eye on as the week unfolds.

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Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @mrjames2006 and @ivybball.

Looking Back

Conference Rivalries – The Ivy League closed strong in its battles against neighboring leagues, closing out the Patriot League with Cornell’s win at American and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference with Brown’s home victory against Niagara. Throw in the Mid-American Conference, which the Ivies defeated four games to one, and the league managed to win the season series against Pomeroy’s 14th, 15th and 17th-ranked conferences. The Ancient Eight didn’t fare as well against some leagues ranked far behind it, though. Ivies combined to go 3-8 against Pomeroy’s No. 24 Northeast Conference and 7-10 against the No. 23 America East Conference.

Top Non-Conference Players By Position – With just three Division I games remaining for the Ivy League this season, it’s time to take a look back and honor the players who have impressed the most during the first half of the 2012-2013 campaign.

Ian Hummer and Siyani Chambers Go To Battle For Their Respective Teams.

• Guard – Siyani Chambers, Harvard – The Crimson had 40 full minutes to replace at the point guard position, and Chambers alone has replaced 94 percent of those with All-Ivy caliber output. His true shooting percentage is 63rd nationally with an assist rate that places 103rd. He’s adept at driving to the hoop, but has hit half of his 54 attempts from three. The only knock on the freshman is his propensity to get sped up by swarming defenses, leading to turnovers and poor shots.
• Guard – Brian Barbour, Columbia – When there’s nothing surprising about a great player’s stat line, that’s a good thing, and through the first 14 games of the year, Barbour has been exactly the player everyone expected. The senior point guard has only turned the ball over on 14 percent of his possessions, while boasting the 71st best assist rate in the country. Barbour still can’t shoot the ball well, but he’s made up for it by continuing to get to the line a lot and converting at an 89 percent clip when there.
• Swingman – Wesley Saunders, Harvard – He has developed just enough of a jump shot to keep opposing defenses honest, which has allowed him to gash opponents off the dribble and bully his way to the free throw line.  Saunders’ offensive rating ranks 62nd nationally among players with at least 24 percent usage rates, but the 6’5″ sophomore is also the Crimson’s best perimeter stopper. He is a true two-way player that is one of the favorites for Ivy Player of the Year.
• Forward – Ian Hummer, Princeton – Speaking of favorites for Ivy Player of the Year, Hummer has to be the first player mentioned in the debate. He does everything for the Tigers, as noted by his usage rate which is 11th highest in the country. He has the team’s highest two-point shooting percentage, assist rate, defensive rebounding rate, fouls drawn rate and block rate. He is Princeton, and whether the Tigers win or lose the Ivy title will be solely based on how Hummer performs down the stretch.
• Forward – Fran Dougherty, Pennsylvania – Prior to coming down with mononucleosis, Dougherty was in the discussion with Saunders and Hummer for Ivy Player of the Year. He was the star on a seemingly rudderless Quakers team. Poor free throw shooting had always held him back, but he boosted his percentage to 71 percent this season, finally allowing him to penalize opponents for sending him to the line. It’s unclear how much more time Dougherty will miss, but this Pennsylvania team has looked absolutely lost without him.

Power Rankings

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Seven Sweet Scoops  is the newest and hottest column by Chad Lykins, the RTC recruiting analyst. Every Friday he will discuss the seven top stories from the week in the wide world of recruiting, involving offers, which  prospect visited where, recent updates regarding school lists, and more chatter from the recruiting scene. You can also check out more of his work at RTC with his weekly column  “Who’s Got Next?”, as well as his work dedicated solely to Duke Basketball at  Duke Hoop Blog. You can also follow Chad at his Twitter account  @CLykinsBlog  for up-to-date breaking news from the high school and college hoops scene.

 Note:  ESPN Recruiting  used for all player rankings.

1. Roy Williams Sees Andrew Wiggins For Third Time

If you’re a fan of North Carolina, you have to be extremely impressed with the amount of attention head coach Roy Williams is showing the No. 1 player in the class of 2013, Andrew Wiggins, as of late. On Thursday, Williams was in Huntington, West Virginia, to watch Wiggins for the third time this season. The recruiting efforts have essentially paid off for the Tar Heels for now, as Wiggins is expected to take a trip to Chapel Hill at the conclusion of his senior season at Huntington Prep (West Virginia). Including North Carolina, who has signed three top-100 prospects from the class of 2013 in Isaiah Hicks, Kennedy Meeks, and Nate Britt, the 6’8” small forward is also considering Florida State, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio State, and Syracuse. He has also already taken his first official visit to Florida State and has plans to also visit Kansas and Kentucky at season’s end.

North Carolina will receive an official visit in the spring from Andrew Wiggins

2. Junior Leron Black Backs Out of Baylor Commitment

For a number of underclassmen, the recruiting process can prove to be exciting for those that feel desired by a number of specific programs, thus leading to a quick and abrupt decision without carefully examining each and every option. Such was the case for Leron Black, the No. 11 overall ranked prospect in the class of 2014, who gave a verbal pledge to Baylor back in September after taking an unofficial visit to the school. On Wednesday, Black announced his intention to re-open his recruitment, citing that he made a rushed decision. John Martin of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal was the first to break the news. Shortly after backing out of his Baylor commitment, the 6’7” small forward out of White Station High School (Tennessee) had already heard from Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Louisville, Memphis, Missouri, North Carolina State, Ohio State, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt. Baylor will still remain in the mix; however, the odds will not be in their favor to re-establish a commitment. This time around, Black will be much more patient and disciplined prior to making his final decision, as he will be one of the most highly sought-after juniors in the class due to his great athleticism and ability to finish around the rim. Read the rest of this entry »