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

Looking Back

• Holiday Revival: Heading into the winter exam break, things looked pretty bad for the Ivies. The league had seven combined wins against the top 200 and nearly two times as many losses against teams outside that range. Then, Princeton grabbed a huge upset at home against top 50 Bucknell and a cascade of strong performances followed. Brown secured the Ivy League’s first win in a game broadcast by its new television partner, NBC Sports Network, by knocking off Providence, and Harvard followed with a road win at California. Even the performances in losses were impressive. Pennsylvania lost in overtime at Wagner before playing No. 17 Butler close. Yale led Iowa State for 30 minutes before falling by 10 points. Harvard led St. Mary’s for 39 minutes before losing by one. In its wins and losses, the Ivy League has shown some considerable improvement over the past two weeks.
• Welcome to Monte Carlo: With league play about to begin, it’s time to refresh the Ivy prediction model and simulate the upcoming campaign based on the quality of each team’s non-conference results. For those unfamiliar with the practice, using Pomeroy-style ratings to measure the quality of each Ivy team, a winning percentage for each league game can be generated, and thousands of seasons can be simulated to find the most common results:

1. Both Harvard and Princeton are expected to finish at 11-3.
2. Columbia clocks in two games behind at 9-5.
3. The rest of the league is a jumble with Cornell and Yale expected to go 6-8 and Penn and Brown expected to land at 5-9.
4. Dartmouth falls to the basement, two games back at 3-11.

• With ties allowed, the Crimson wins the title 58 percent of the time and Princeton 54 percent, while Columbia snags a share in seven percent of simulations. Without ties, Harvard wins 41 percent of solo titles, while Princeton grabs 37 percent and Columbia just three percent. An Ivy playoff for the NCAA bid is expected in 19 percent of simulations, so the league office might be actively shopping sites in March for a third straight season.

Mike Martin And The Bears Notched An Historic Upset Of Providence (AP)

• Signature Win: Since the 1989-90 season, Ivy teams not named Pennsylvania or Princeton have won just 25 non-conference games against top 100 opposition. Brown has been responsible for four of those notable victories, picking up its fourth last week with a thrilling 69-68 win over Providence, in which the Bears trailed by seven with under a minute to play. The win gave first-year coach Mike Martin his first signature win at the helm of a Division I team. Common threads abound, but the most interesting one is that all of Brown’s top 100 wins have had the Friars as the victim. The most recent one prior to this season occurred in 2006-07, when Craig Robinson, also in his rookie year coaching the Bears, navigated his squad to an ugly 51-41 victory. Robinson would take his team to the CBI Tournament the next year and would leave to take the Oregon State job after that season. Brown fans have to be hoping that Martin, who was a former standout guard for the Bears from 2001-04, will lead them down the former path without exploring the latter.

Reader’s Take

Power Rankings

1. Harvard (7-5) – Over the past 17 seasons, there have only been seven regularly used freshmen with a usage rate of 20 percent or greater to post an offensive rating of over 1.1 points per possession. The two most recent members of that lofty group were Amaker recruits Kyle Casey and Laurent Rivard and a third, Siyani Chambers, is currently on pace to join them. After a disastrous performance in the Crimson’s 67-62 victory over California, Chambers finished with 16 points and seven assists against St. Mary’s, nearly willing the team to a second-straight upset. Ultimately, some extremely poor execution down the stretch left Harvard on the losing end of a thrilling 70-69 nail-biter, but the Crimson and its freshman point guard have made it quite clear that the road to the Ivy title still runs through Boston. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Tonight’s Lede. Conference Play Rocks. Analyzing and prognosticating and laying out bold analytical claims about teams is a fun debate this time of year. Teams are assigned permanent labels. Players earn reputations, rightly or wrongly, that stick around far longer than they should. All of this is premature – the best advice in November and December is to reserve judgment. Because once conference play begins, teams’ identities shine through, and many of the perceptions and conclusions we make are rendered useless. Two of the best leagues in the country, the Big Ten and Big East, kicked off their conference slates Monday in grand fashion. And if you got a taste of Pittsburgh-Cincinnati, or Indiana-Iowa, or Michigan State-Minnesota, you can already infer the obvious: conference competition entails a whole new level of competitiveness and intensity. With that, it is now time to get into your first weekday of league play, with a hope that the rest of the reason brings the same if not more entertaining hoops action.

Your Watercooler Moment. Minnesota’s Good; Michigan State’s Almost There. We Knew That Already.

The Big Ten is a cluttered jumble of Tournament hopefuls and championship contenders.What Minnesota showed monday is that its nonconference work was no anomaly (photo credit: AP Photo).

For anyone who watched Minnesota and Michigan State play any portion of their nonconference schedules, this game was a perfect precursor for the type of gritty, hard-nosed, highly-competitive Big Ten showdowns that should play out in high frequency over the next two months. Minnesota’s win also confirmed what most already knew about the Gophers: this team is a serious threat to vie for the Big Ten crown. Loaded and Top-heavy as the Big Ten is this season, Tubby Smith’s team has it all: Andre Hollins is a heady lead guard with a wide arsenal of perimeter scoring skills. Trevor Mbakwe belongs in the NBA today. Rodney Williams is one of the two or three best pure athletes in college basketball. And Austin Hollins is a stingy on-ball defender who’s offensive game isn’t all that far behind. Put it all together, and what you get is Tubby Smith’s best team at Minnesota. The way both teams have looked so far this season, Michigan State taking the Gophers to the wire at the Barn is not an altogether bad outcome. The Spartans are still sorting out their frontcourt rotation, still trying to leverage all of Gary Harris’ creative intuition and still searching for the defense-and-rebounding identity that Tom Izzo’s teams gradually assume over the course of a season. Basically, the Gophers’ win confirmed most every empirical insight we had about both teams coming in. That’s comforting for my basketball brain, if anything.

Your Quick Hits…

• Hoosiers Flaunt Road Chops. The biggest skeptics of Indiana’s preseason No. 1 ranking were fairly unanimous on one perceived flaw: Indiana can’t win on the road. And you know what? They’re weren’t totally off their rockers. The Hoosiers did take their lumps last season when away from cushy Assembly Hall and the enormous home field advantage it awards them – particularly in Big Ten play, where they pulled out just three of nine road tests. There’s no telling how last year’s Indiana team would have responded to Monday’s road date at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, where a retooled and vastly improved Iowa squad gave the Hoosiers their best shot. In the end, Indiana’s immensely talented and deep roster overcame Iowa’s very best efforts, and that’s a huge relief if you’re an Indiana fan. If the Hoosiers can go into tough environments like Iowa and win the games they just weren’t ready for last season, there’s nothing standing in the way of a Big Ten regular season title. Read the rest of this entry »

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

The Weekend’s Lede. Commonwealth Rivalry Lives Up. It doesn’t get any bigger than Louisville-Kentucky. There are little rivalries that make for great shows of organic competitiveness and bitterness, but they have nothing on what took place Saturday at the KFC Yum! Center. Each year, no matter the disparities in talent or experience, these teams come to play in this rivalry game. The emotional baggage makes the Commonwealth clash an event in itself. When you get two Top 25 sides trading jabs, two coaches with well-established personal gripes – one of whom has navigated the delicate balance of a blue-to-red partisan conversion – there’s added drama to throw on top of the natural hatred. One side (Louisville) entered with more talent, experience and depth, but as is the case in most rivalry games, the final outcome was decided based on who could execute better in crunch time (and who could convert from the free throw line). Whatever your allegiance, or if your viewing interest was of the impartial variety, it’s hard to begrudge the sheer quality and entertainment factor of Saturday’s contest. Louisville-Kentucky was the massive event overshadowing the rest of the weekend, but there were a few other interesting games on tap. Time to wrap up the final weekend of non-conference play.

Your Watercooler Moment. Harrow Doesn’t Break Under Pressure.

Considering he was facing the most relentless ball-pressuring backcourt in the country, Harrow managed the big stage with unexpected poise (photo credit: Getty Images).

The biggest question mark looming over Kentucky’s slow start was the comfort and progression of point guard Ryan Harrow. No one ever said he was going to be Derrick Rose, or even Marquis Teague – the Calipari point guard dynasty is a tough standard to maintain – Harrow simply needs to operate at a level that allows the Wildcats to maximize the talents of Kyle Wiltjer, Alex Poythress and Archie Goodwin on the perimeter, and enable Nerlens Noel to capitalize on easy lobs and putbacks. Even that seemed like a pipe dream for Harrow following a mysterious four-game absence in November. He’s made huge strides over the past three weeks, and had his best game (23 points on 10-of-17 shooting) just over a week ago in an 82-54 win over Marshall. That was a small step. In Louisville, Harrow was walking into one of the best defensive backcourts statistically-speaking in NCAA history (its 80.0 adjusted defensive efficiency entering Saturday’s game ranks among the best marks in Ken Pomeroy’s database, dating back to 2003), and few believed he was ready to handle the type of pressure Russ Smith and Peyton Siva were going to throw at him. Harrow jumped into the biggest spotlight of his career and performed like a point guard of Calipari’s recent vintage. Not only did Harrow score 17 points and help spearhead a furious second-half rally, but he committed zero turnovers, found ways to ward off the active hands and smothering pressure of Siva and Smith, and commanded Kentucky’s offense with aplomb. The scoreboard reflects a Kentucky loss, a short-term disappointment. In the long term, if Harrow’s performance is a barometer for his development and maturation in Calipari’s system, Saturday was a huge win. With a capable point guard puppeteering the offense, the future is bright for Kentucky.

Also Worth Chatting About. Don’t Count Out UNC Yet.

The Tar Heels Looked locked-in defensively against the talented Rebels (photo credit: Getty Images).

If any team needed a statement win heading into conference play, it was North Carolina. Besides a puzzling loss at Texas (and even that, given the Longhorns’ defensive chops, is not a fatal misstep) The Tar Heels hadn’t exactly dropped the ball in non-conference play – they lost to two very good teams from the state of Indiana, one an offensive juggernaut (IU) and one a vaunted perfectionist (Butler) in the art of sizing up and beating down more talented opponents – but they hadn’t exactly looked like the ACC front-runner many expected them to be. The visiting UNLV Rebels offered a prime opportunity to hold court against a top-20-level outfit, and build some serious momentum for ACC play in the process. UNC’s stifling defense and balanced scoring overwhelmed the Rebels, who suffered a brutal five-minute field goal-less streak in the second half and received an uncharacteristically inefficient showing from freshman wunderkind Anthony Bennett (15 points on 6-of-16 shooting). Neither team was at full strength – Mike Moser played just 12 minutes in his return from an elbow injury, and Reggie Bullock was scratched with a concussion – but UNC seized its last big chance to make a splash before ACC play. And with a brutal six-game stretch featuring games against Virginia, Miami, Florida State, Maryland and NC State up next, the Tar Heels needed a momentum boost in the biggest way. The proud fans in Chapel Hill can breathe, for now, and feel better about this season not mimicking a 2009-10 campaign that saw the Tar Heels follow up the Hansborough-Lawson-Green-Ellington supergroup with an NIT appearance.

Your Quick Hits….

• Santa Clara Tests Duke. It is a fundamental truism of the 2012-13 college hoops season that Gonzaga will win the West Coast Conference. In fact, I’m willing to go ahead and bet the Zags will have created enough distance from other challengers by February 1 to have rendered the word “race” completely and utterly moot. The rest of the league is far less certain. St. Mary’s is the logical favorite to claim the No. 2 spot. Loyola Marymount is always a tough out. And you can never discount BYU and the daunting road trip that is Provo, Utah. Time to insert a new name in the conversation: Santa Clara. The Broncos went into Cameron Indoor Saturday night and put a scare into the No. 1 Blue Devils, their upset bid powered by 29 points from senior guard Kevin Foster. That’s the kind of confidence-building performance that pays dividends in conference play, when you can rest assured Santa Clara will ride into any road environment exuding confidence and poise.
• Ollie Gets First Win With New Job Title. Hours before Cincinnati’s Saturday night tipoff with visiting Washington, ESPN’s Andy Katz reported UConn had signed Kevin Ollie to a five-year contract extension, thus eliminating the interim tag and granting the long-term security most believed Ollie had earned after leading the Huskies to a 9-2 start and creating a smooth transitory bridge from Jim Calhoun’s fiery coaching style to a new era of UConn basketball. Losing your first game after receiving a big financial commitment from AD Warde Manuel would have been a bad look. The Huskies’ talented backcourt trio of Shabazz Napier, Omar Calhoun and Ryan Boatwright ensured their new coach had a win to back up his new job title, with each posting double-figure scoring totals in an eight-point victory over Washington. UConn may not have postseason motivations on its side, but what it does have, thanks to Saturday’s extension, is a huge incentive to help lay the foundation for Ollie’s tenure and a return to national relevance. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

The action was light during this past holiday week, but the Mountain West’s finest took advantage of the lull to thrust themselves into the spotlight with two exciting contests, a pair of one-point games against top 10 teams decided by last-second blocks. In the final of the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii, San Diego State fell just short against third-ranked Arizona, losing 68-67 when Xavier Thames’ potential winning shot was blocked by Arizona’s Nick Johnson as time expired. Two days later, New Mexico visited eighth-ranked Cincinnati and emerged with a hard-fought 55-54 victory that was sealed by a last-second block from sophomore Alex Kirk. What was most impressive about these hard-fought contests is how both teams showed that even if you take away some of their key weapons, they are deep and versatile enough to compete.

Alex Kirk Led a Tough New Mexico Performance Against Cincinnati (Getty Images)

The Lobos distinguished themselves not just with a victory, but the way they earned it. They are accustomed to racking up points at the free throw line, but reached the charity stripe at only a 20 percent rate, far below their season average and good enough for just six points. But they gritted out the win by patiently moving the ball against Cincy’s high-pressure halfcourt defense to find open shooters and cutters. Junior point guard Kendall Williams turned in a performance befitting of a team leader, stepping up to hit several big three-pointers and finishing the game with a team-high 16 points. But it was Kirk who set the tone with his lunch bucket performance, fearlessly hurling himself into battle against Cincinnati’s imposing frontline and surviving with 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting, seven rebounds, and three blocks, including a game-clinching rejection of a Sean Kilpatrick three-point shot.

The Aztecs, too, can be proud of the fight they showed in Honolulu despite coming up short. Leading scorer Jamaal Franklin was held to just nine points, his lowest output of the season.  But Franklin found other ways to contribute, pulling down eight rebounds and dishing out six assists. And San Diego State found other players to carry the scoring load. Chase Tapley, who had already poured in 46 points in the first two games of the tournament, dropped 19 against Arizona to push his season scoring average to 15.8 PPG. And the Aztecs showed how strong their defense is, holding the Wildcats to 37.3 percent shooting.

This Saturday, UNLV will have a chance to intensify this week’s spotlight on the Mountain West when they travel to North Carolina. In a year when the conference seems as deep as any in the country, the only lingering doubt heading into this past week was whether they had the heavyweights to compete with the nation’s best teams. But as the final week of non-conference play comes to a close, the conference’s top teams are leaving little doubt that they can.

Top Ten Rankings

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Looking Back

• Princeton’s Collapses – Ken Pomeroy just added another stellar feature to his site – an advanced stat box score for past games as well as the scoring by 10-minute increments that he labels “quarters.” The Tigers might not want to look at that latter piece of information, especially the numbers under Q4. In the four games prior to last night’s convincing win over Rider, Princeton was outscored 74-50 in the final 10 minutes of games and blew leads of eight (at Wagner), six (vs. Drexel) and 11 points (vs. Fordham). Throwing in the Northeastern game, where Princeton lead by 10 with 10 minutes to play, the Tigers could be looking at a completely different record if it could just salt away games in which it has big leads. That’s also the reason why it would be foolish to underestimate Princeton on the basis of its 4-6 mark to this point.
• Winner Winner – Harvard clawed back from eight points down early in the second half and three points behind with just five minutes to play, only to watch Boston University’s D.J. Irving hit a jumper with 19 seconds left to stake the Terriers to a one-point lead. Then came another chapter in a storybook rookie season for the Crimson’s Siyani Chambers. The 6’ point guard attacked the paint looking to set up a teammate for a good look, but came up empty and was forced almost to the short corner. The Boston University defenders went flying by, leaving Chambers all alone to nail a game-winning jumper. The basket gave Chambers 21 points on the night – the second time in three games he hit that mark. For a position that was supposed to be Harvard’s Achilles heel heading into the season, the former Minnesota Mr. Basketball has turned it into one of its strengths.
• Strength Against Strength – There are several ways to illustrate the split between the Ivy League’s top three teams and its bottom five squads. None may be more striking than the results against Power Six competition. In five games against Power Six opponents, Columbia, Harvard and Princeton are 2-3 with an average scoring margin of zero. The remaining five teams have an average scoring margin of -21 over eight games, and none of those contests finished within single digits. There are still six such games left to be played for the Ivies this year (five by the bottom five), so that stat is still subject to some change, but with over two-thirds of the contests already having been played, it’s unlikely the gap will close significantly.

Freshman guard Siyani Chambers Is Widening Eyes Throughout The Ivy. (Anthony Nesmith/CSM/AP)

Reader’s Take

Power Rankings

1. Harvard (5-4) – It’s not that the Crimson has necessarily overachieved, but rather that fellow favorites Columbia and Princeton have stumbled so badly at times that pushes Harvard back to the top spot. The Crimson is hardly without flaws, especially on the defensive end. Starting forwards Steve Moundou-Missi and Kenyatta Smith have struggled in all facets of the game, leaving Harvard to turn to a four-guard lineup with only 6’6” forward Jonah Travis anchoring the paint. Still, the Crimson has managed to be the league’s best defensive rebounding team and, while it is second-to-last in two-point field goal percentage allowed, it balances that out by refusing to put opponents on the free throw line. The efficiency in converting missed shots into stops and forcing turnovers has made Harvard an above-average defensive team. Combine that with the best offense in the league by over five points per 100 possessions, and it’s clear why the Crimson has slowly become the Ivy favorite. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Happy 12.12.12, everyone. By the time another one of these rolls around, the Big East will be dead and so will we. Fittingly, talk of a possible mass exodus of the league’s non-football contingent dominated yesterday’s college hoops community. In an interview Steve True of ESPN Wisconsin conducted with Marquette AD Larry Williams yesterday, Williams distilled the frustrations of the Catholic basketball schools with startling candor, which certainly doesn’t bode well for reconciliation. He identified August as a nebulous deadline for decision-making, and when asked whether Marquette would be in the Big East next year, responded, “The assumption is yes, but everything is on the table. Let me just put it that way. We’re evaluating everything.” Other highlights include Williams bluntly dismissing the A-10 as an inferior option, referring to Big East football as “second or third tier,” and relating Tulane to an ugly lamp in a remodeled conference (“Now that home has been sort of changed, and somebody came and put new furniture in, and boy, do we still fit here is what everyone is sort of thinking about”).
2. There had been some rumblings the other day that the non-football schools were disturbed by the highly public overtures football counterparts had made to the ACC before Louisville scored an invite. Emails obtained by the Cincinnati Enquirer among university leadership at Cincinnati revealed a highly orchestrated and urgent effort to court both the ACC and Big 12 during that audition period. The university president’s office sought guidance from a D.C. lobbying firm and tried to arrange campus visits for ACC presidents. Urban Meyer’s sister, a vice provost at the school, even enlisted the iconic coach to lobby the ACC on Cincinnati’s behalf, before he ultimately demurred.
3. Though Connecticut’s 57-49 win over Harvard last weekend doesn’t look particularly sexy on paper, Huskies fans were encouraged by the confident performance of sophomore forward DeAndre Daniels, who shot 9-of-12 and ended with 23 points. Despite huge expectations for the former 4/5-star recruit, Daniels was an enigma last season, averaging only three points and two rebounds in 12 minutes per contest; tentative in attacking the rim despite his superlative athleticism. Now, he’s focusing on fundamentals rather than dwelling on his limitations: “I understand my role better. I’m boxing out better, and I’m going to get the ball better. I have to do that because I’m not as big and strong as some of the [frontcourt] guys we’re going to face.”
4. Rutgers survived a scare from a 4-6 George Washington team at home last night, despite playing some of its best basketball of the season in the first 18 minutes. Mike Rice apparently persisted in applying his 2-2-1 press a little too long after the Colonials had deciphered it, forcing his team to plant their heels and endure a dogfight in the second half. Though not as decisive as Rutgers fans would have hoped, On The Banks calls the win “another game they would have lost last year. And, likely, the year before.” Considering we picked them to finish last in the conference this season, 6-2 in mid-December and two games ahead of Villanova in the loss column feels like solid progress.
5. As Jim Boeheim approaches his 900th win, The Juice Online meditates on whether his steely countenance would grace a college basketball Mount Rushmore of coaching greats. Sacrilegiously, the author argues that the Syracuse legend would be the seventh choice, behind Adolph Rupp, John Wooden, Coach K, Bobby Knight, Dean Smith, and –– brace yourselves –– Jim Calhoun. He also draws a compelling analogy between Boeheim and Karl Malone: “Much like Malone did, Boeheim puts up very good numbers every season (he has more 20-win seasons than any other coach) and much like Malone, there have been a lot of seasons…While Boeheim has consistently been very very good, he’s never really had a stretch where he established himself as truly dominant coach, just like Malone never established himself as a truly dominant player.”

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

Tonight’s Lede. You Probably Didn’t Watch Any Games Tonight. As much as I love college basketball, both as a fan and writer, I have no qualms conceding the obvious: There were few games on tonight’s schedule deserving of your (or my) precious Tuesday night TV viewing allotment. From top to bottom, and with the possible exception of a couple somewhat surprising results, the schedule was one of the worst we’ve seen all season. If you needed a night to get a leg up in the holiday shopping arms race, tonight couldn’t have presented a better opportunity. We saw this coming: finals week has never been kind to the college hoops schedule, and this year is no different. Even so, there were games that no doubt piqued the interest of select areas of the country, regionally-appealing tests deserving of at least a some national attention. Herein, I present you what could go down as the most boring ATB to date. Enjoy… if possible.

Your Watercooler Moment. The Holy War Rages On.

The Wildcats needed a signature win to reverse their recent slide (Photo credit: Getty Images).

In its last season before joining the (gulp) Big East, St. Joseph’s fumbled a prime opportunity to claim Big 5 bragging rights in the Holy War for the second year in a row. You can look at this result one of two ways. On the one hand, Villanova showed toughness and mettle against a hated city rival and grabbed its first respectable non-conference win since beating Purdue in overtime (if that qualifies) nearly four weeks ago at the 2K Sports Classic. Jay Wright’s team needed to prove its ability to rebound after a mostly tumultuous month. On the other hand, St. Joe’s was picked to finish first in the preseason media poll in an incredibly deep A-10, and another loss to pile on top of missed opportunities against Florida State and Creighton isn’t exactly validating that perception. The first school of thought seems to hold more weight, but I’d wager it’s a little bit of both. Phil Martelli’s team has certainly underwhelmed of late, and there’s no excuse for squandering a five-point lead with just over two minutes remaining (particularly against an offensively-challenged bunch like Villanova), but when you consider the stakes at hand – for one, Villanova’s Philadelphia-grounded pride; for another, the growing sense the Wildcats were falling behind in the race to become the city’s best team, and their need to rectify that mantra – it’s not a horrible loss by any stretch. What’s interesting about this particular game is that the next rendition could very well count as a conference game, only we’re yet to find out whether said conference will be the Atlantic 10 or the Big East. And no, I couldn’t avoid talking about conference realignment. Sorry!

Tonight’s Quick Hits…

• Trey Burke Should Be Resting More.It probably won’t surprise you to learn Michigan point guard Trey Burke had 19 points in a comfortable win over Binghamton at the Crisler Center. What may strike you as something of an oddity is that Burke’s 30 minutes of playing time were the fewest minutes he’s logged in a game all season. The Wolverines haven’t just won all of their games so far; they’ve made easy work of their opponents, resulting in a multitude of lopsided scores. It only seems logical that coach John Beilein would give his most important player ample rest time in these early blowouts as a preemptive stay-fresh device, because once the Wolverines hit Big Ten play and teams resort to physicality in their attempts to flummox the No. 3-ranked team in the nation, all those hits will add up, the fatigue will mount, and Burke just might feel the urge to retroactively curse his coach’s judgment. Or maybe Burke will continue to look like one of the best point guards in the country right on through conference play and into the NCAA Tournament without feeling the slightest bit of lethargy or sluggishness. Probably the latter. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Looking Back

• Forgetting November – After an opening month which saw Ivy teams go 19-32 and sink into the 30s in Conference RPI rank, the league has mounted a comeback during the first week of December. Ivy teams are 6-4 in their last 10 games, including three victories by minor underdogs (Princeton at Kent State, Harvard at Boston College, and Yale at Bryant). The momentum should help as the league enters another brutal stretch. Starting with the Crimson’s visit to Storrs tonight, league teams will be at least five-point underdogs in 27 out of the next 40 games. Included in those 40 games are 11 showdowns with Power Six schools, as well as a couple meetings with high-octane mid-majors Saint Mary’s and Bucknell. The league’s overall record should continue to suffer, but from a computer ranking perspective, respectable losses should keep the Ivies rising up the Conference RPI ranking ladder and stationary in the Pomeroy Ratings.
• Forever Young – The biggest storyline of the nascent 2012-13 season has been the quality play from the league’s freshman and sophomore classes. Those two cohorts have combined to use 54.5 percent of Ivy possessions thus far at a respectable 0.95 points per possession. The juniors and seniors have hardly been much better, as the former have used just 19.5 percent of league possessions at 0.97 points per possession with the latter sitting at 26.0 percent and 0.99 PPP. While relatively weak production from the upperclassmen doesn’t bode well for this year’s edition of the Ivy League, the rising stars in the freshman and sophomore classes should have the league back in the teens in conference ranking rather quickly.
• Team Ivy – If the Ivy League were to institute a conference challenge, it’s most logical opponent would be its geographic and philosophical neighbor, the Patriot League. It also happens to be the conference that Ivy teams schedule the most anyway with 19 meetings slated for this season. Only six have been played thus far with each side taking three. Given this year’s results, though, the Ivies might want to think about challenging the MAC, as they have gone a perfect 4-0 with just one more contest remaining. The league has racked up the most wins (five) against the America East conference but has dropped six games in that series. While this final record is rarely pretty, it is worth noting that, even in a down year, the Ivies are still a respectable 2-6 against Power Six competition.

Ian Hummer And The Tigers Have Stumbled Early, But Still Appear To Be In Good Shape With Conference Play Approaching.

Power Rankings

1. Princeton (3-4) – The win at Kent State last weekend finally showcased the Tigers team most expected to see coming into the season. Princeton yielded just 50 points to the Golden Flashes on 64 possessions, the Tigers’ third-straight game holding an opponent to 0.8 points per possession or fewer. This Princeton squad is a lot like the 2009-10 edition of the Tigers – an inconsistent and generally below average offense carried by its ability to clamp down and generate tons of stops on the other end. As usual Princeton’s offensive inconsistency derives from its reliance on the three-point shot, which it hasn’t shot well in the absence of graduated sharpshooter Douglas Davis, and its inability to get to the free throw line for a steady stream of points. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Tonight’s Lede. Jimmy V Classic A Warm Reminder of College Basketball’s Altruistic Impact. Of all the non-conference events peppering college basketball’s November/December calendar, there are few that go above and beyond to create something more than a touristy change-of-pace from the harsh fall climate. The Jimmy V Classic puts every specialized bracket, exempted field and tropical hosting site to shame. It has grown into one of my favorite moments of the season. Not only does it remind us that sports – trivial as they often seem – can help uplift those in dire need of assistance and services. It commemorates the life of one of college basketball’s legendary personalities, Jim Valvano. I make it a point to at least glaze over segments of Valvano’s famous 1993 ESPYs Speech every year, and I wholeheartedly recommend you join me in perusing his inspirational words. Four name-brand programs, including one pegged by many to make a run at the Final Four and another playing its first season without the generational coach who built a program from scratch, took the court Tuesday at Madison Square Garden. The action on the court was the main focus, but Valvano’s impact was not lost, nor will it ever be.

Your Watercooler Moment. You’re Not Dreaming: Baylor Lost To Northwestern… At Home.

The Wildcats got a huge road win to snap a two-game slide (Photo credit: Getty Images).

There was nothing about Northwestern’s trip to Baylor Tuesday night that sparked even the faintest sliver of hope in a Wildcats’ upset. The Bears were coming off a season-defining win at Kentucky, the first opponent to go into Rupp Arena and down the Wildcats since John Calipari took over in Lexington four years ago. Meanwhile, Northwestern was smarting after a dumbfounding home loss to UIC, which came on the heels of a total demolition at the hands of Maryland. These teams were heading in opposite directions. And that’s without getting into the roster minutiae, but it boils down to this: Baylor is bigger, faster, stronger and more talented than Northwestern could ever hope to be in its current construction. The Wildcats reversed their current misfortune by capturing what might go down as the biggest non-conference win of coach Bill Carmody’s tenure. The fatalistic cries of another NIT-destined campaign had amplified in recent weeks, but beating Baylor on the road could be just what the doctor ordered. Northwestern watched its first big non-conference test (Maryland) fall away without mounting but the slightest challenge to Alex Len and company. Baylor was the next, and remotely unfathomable, hurdle. Now the Wildcats get Butler and Stanford in Evanston before entering Big Ten competition. With almost any other team, the first impulse wouldn’t necessarily involve NCAA Tournament contingencies. With Northwestern, where fans live through a prism of tourney ignominy, it’s the only thing that matters.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Reader’s Take

Looking Back

• No Experience Necessary – For a league that doesn’t routinely grab players from the scouting services’ Top 100 lists, breakout freshmen are usually just lightly sprinkled around the league with only a few really contending for the title of Rookie of the Year. This year, however, the Ivies might need an All-Rookie Team. Harvard point guard Siyani Chambers has gotten the most publicity with back-to-back 14-point, seven-assist performances against Massachusetts and Manhattan, but he’s not the only Ivy freshman to impress. Yale’s Justin Sears has managed a workhorse-like 27 percent usage rate, while mustering an offensive rating above 100, and Brown rookie Rafael Maia has been a dominant interior presence for a team so badly in need of one. Cornell and Dartmouth have a pair of talented freshmen guards in Nolan Cressler and Alex Mitola, respectively, while Penn has two of its own in Tony Hicks and Jamal Lewis, who have played well aside from struggling to shooting the ball to start the season.
• Slip-Sliding – Sure, Yale blew a 24-point lead to Sacred Heart before losing in overtime, but that was about all Ivy fans could complain about after the first weekend, which saw the league go 7-1 with three road victories. Read the rest of this entry »