As good as the games were last week with many upsets and teams taking the country by storm—looking at you UNLV, Harvard, Creighton, and St. Louis—this week has the potential to be even better with eight games pitting Top 25 teams against each other. A scary thought considering the strong dosage of hoops we saw over the Thanksgiving holiday. The big shocker of the week came in Vegas as UNLV knocked North Carolina off their pedestal. As a result, Kentucky was a unanimous #1, but will be challenged by UNC later this week. Not to be outdone by the Rebels are Harvard and St. Louis who posted several impressive wins and have climbed into the poll as well. QnD after the jump…

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1. Tomahawk Nation: The ACC is suddenly looking very shaky outside of the Triangle after the Seminoles played one of the ugliest games in recent memory and were upset by the Harvard Crimson at the Battle 4 Atlantis. To be clear, Harvard is a very good, experienced team that many predict to be dance-crashers come March. But that’s no excuse for the offensive ineptitude that took place, especially in the first half. The Seminoles didn’t score for the first eleven minutes (at all). The half ended with a score of 14-14 (tied for the lowest scoring half of the shot clock era). The second half was only marginally better with the Seminoles only scoring two points in the first seven minutes. As per usual, Florida State‘s defense was terrific; but the offense was anemic. The silver lining is the Seminoles get a shot at the defending national champions in the third-place game.
2. Green Bay Press Gazette: For Tony Bennett, it’s like father, like son. Bennett’s coaching style is very similar to his father’s grind-it-out, defense-first days at Wisconsin (where his system has been slightly modified by current coach Bo Ryan). Virginia is starting a series against Bennett’s alma mater, Wisconsin-Green Bay this year. Bennett has several reasons for playing his former team, including wanting “to show his appreciation for those who have supported him and his family going back to the late 1980s, when he moved town from Stevens Point.” Many media members are on the Bennett bandwagon, picking his Cavaliers to finish fourth in the ACC.
3. Raleigh News & Observer: Kendall Marshall hasn’t just gotten the love from national analysts for his playmaking abilities, he’s gotten it from his teammates too. He’s got a ludicrous 51 assists (and only eight turnovers) in the Tar Heels’ last four games. Roy Williams mentioned Marshall’s defensive questions and outside shooting woes “as if he didn’t want the success going to Marshall’s head.” The bottom line is Marshall has been terrific through the first few games of the season. It will be quite the match-up at point guard against Wisconsin in the ACC/Big 10 Challenge, as Jordan Taylor is probably the best point guard in the country.
4. SBNation: SBNation breaks down Duke‘s NBA prospects starting with Austin Rivers and Mason Plumlee, who are both potential lottery picks. Rivers’ best-case comparison, according to Jonathan Tjarks, is Monta Ellis. I see the comparison (tallish, scoring combo guards), though I think Rivers may end up a better defender by the time he leaves Duke. Plumlee’s best case is Amir Johnson. Interestingly, Tjarks lists Seth Curry ahead of Ryan Kelly.
5. Bleacher Report: I never link Bleacher Report here, but this inanity needs to be pointed out. The article is why Roy Williams is better than Mike Krzyzewski. The logic behind the thesis tells it all:
   

   Raw Data: In the eight years since joining the Tar Heels as their head coach, Williams has won two championships, appeared in three Final Fours and won five ACC seasonal championships.

   Projection: Through eight years, Williams is on pace to win eight national championships, appear in 12 Final Fours and win 20 ACC seasonal championships by his 32nd year.

   Well then… by that logic, Bill Guthridge might be the best coach in North Carolina history (he had two Final Fours in three total years of coaching). Team-oriented blogs generally show significantly more impartiality. I also don’t agree that the original assumption that the best two coaches in college basketball are Williams and Krzyzewski (Jim Calhoun, Tom Izzo, Rick Pitino and Bill Self deserve to be in that conversation as well). Don’t get me wrong: Roy Williams is a great coach. He’s got a chance to win a third national title in the last seven years. But his resume is on a different tier than Coach K’s for the time being.

EXTRA: The Bernie Fine case at Syracuse just got more interesting. The US Secret Service has now joined the investigation of the Syracuse assistant coach. The Secret Service’s involvement probably means there’s a new side of the investigation, as it wouldn’t be involved in a federal child molestation case.

Let me know if you have any questions…

Brian Otskey is the Big East correspondent for RTC and a regular contributor. You can find him @botskey on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

Preseason tournaments continue to roll on with the NIT Season Tip-Off championship as well as semifinal action at the Old Spice and 76 Classic along with the Battle 4 Atlantis. Although we don’t know the championship matchups in those tournaments, be sure to check out the finals at Atlantis on Saturday and the Old Spice and 76 Classic on Sunday for those TBD games.

Minnesota vs. Indiana State (at Orlando, Florida) – 12:00 PM EST on ESPN (**)

Trevor Mbakwe Is a Beast Inside

•  The Golden Gophers escaped an upset-minded DePaul team on Thursday afternoon behind another double-double from Trevor Mbakwe, his fourth in five games. Against an Indiana State team that is better than DePaul, Minnesota must assert itself inside, protect the ball and defend better. Tubby Smith’s team has a huge height advantage over the Sycamores, especially with swingman Rodney Williams standing at 6’7”. The potential is there for Williams to have a huge game given his size and athleticism. Indiana State can rotate taller players in off its bench but Minnesota has more than enough talent in the paint to play well. However, the Gophers can’t afford 17 turnovers and a 1-9 night from three point range again as they did against DePaul.
• The major concern for Greg Lansing has to be rebounding the basketball against a team with lots of strength and size up front. Indiana State was out-rebounded and out-shot by Texas Tech but forced 18 Red Raider turnovers and got to the foul line 31 times. The Sycamores shoot 78% from the stripe and must use that to their advantage against a Minnesota team with an awful defensive free throw rate (#249). With sophomore point guard Jake Odum breaking down the defense and finding open players, that shouldn’t be a big problem given Minnesota’s propensity to foul. Indiana State shoots 37.1% from three point land as a unit with Jordan Printy taking the majority of those shots and converting 38.5% of the time. ISU must make threes because it is not going to have an easy time scoring inside against Minnesota’s size.
• For the Sycamores to pull the upset, we feel they have to play a zone. Going to a zone is risky when your team has trouble rebounding to begin with but it may be their best bet. If Indiana State can pack its defense in the paint and limit the Gophers inside, that’ll force the Minnesota guards to jack up deep shots, something they’re not particularly good at. Playing a zone also minimizes foul trouble, a huge issue with only three major contributors over 6’8” on the Indiana State roster. It sounds simple but this game should come down to whichever team can execute its game plan better: inside scoring for Minnesota and three pointers plus solid interior defense for Indiana State.

#19 Florida State vs. Harvard (at Atlantis Paradise Island, Bahamas) – 4:30 PM EST on Versus (***)

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1. We hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and got to indulge in turkey or whatever food you prefer while spending time with friends and/or family. There was not much off-the-court news yesterday so instead of our traditional recap where we avoid discussing the games directly we are going to provide general overviews of the games that have already happened and the ones that are on tap.
2. Praise continues to pour in for the Duke–Kansas game, which may have been the best November college basketball game in the past few years. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst (aka LeBron’s personal biographer) called it “a candidate for one of the best regular season games of the year” and we would agree with his assessment. While neither team is close to the true upper echelon of college basketball (the UNCs, UConns, and Kentuckys of the world) they are definitely Sweet Sixteen teams at least and possibly Elite Eight level teams when they work out a few kinks (of course, they could also get upset during the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament). If you missed the game because you were either at/watching another game, traveling, working, or spending time with family and you find yourself with some free time today, we highly recommend that you watch a replay of it if it is on your DVR or through ESPN3.com.
3. The best teams playing yesterday were all playing at the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament in Nassau, Bahamas where the three best teams (Connecticut, Florida State, and Harvard) all won their opening games relatively easily while Central Florida used a late run to beat College of Charleston. As a reward for their hard-fought win the Knights, who are without star A.J. Rompza for another month, will get to play the defending national champions who are still adjusting to the post-Kemba era and will be without the services of Ryan Boatright, who will be sitting out his sixth and final game against UCF, and perhaps Alex Oriakhi after this Twitter mishap. The other semifinal pits a very good Harvard team against the Seminoles, who feature one of the top defenses in the country. The first game should be a relatively easy victory for the Huskies, but the second game might be the best college basketball game being played tomorrow.
4. The FSU-Harvard game might be the best game tomorrow, but we would suggest you keep an eye on the Preseason NIT finals that pits Syracuse against Stanford. The Orange come in as the heavy favorites, but we think the game could end up being a lot more competitive than many people think because we don’t think that the Orange are as good as many pundits have been saying they are (basically a better version of the Vanderbilt story) and the Cardinal are better than anybody outside of Palo Alto expected. Neither team has beaten a top-tier team yet, but Stanford has the most impressive victory this season of the two teams with its 15-point victory against Oklahoma State that was not as close as the final score indicates. Another thing to watch for in this game is what is going on with the Syracuse backcourt where a mini-controversy is brewing between Scoop Jardine, the incumbent, and Dion Waiters, the challenger who played in place of Jardine in the Orange’s last game.
5. With no end in sight for the NBA lockout many professionals have headed to interesting locations to keep their skills sharp while waiting for the business/labor negotiations to be resolved allowing them to return to their NBA teams. Most players who have chosen to play in games are doing so in summer/very advanced recreational leagues, exhibition games for charity, or in Europe. Former Ohio State center Byron (B.J.) Mullens has taken a less traditional approach as he is working on his game in prison. We know what you are thinking and the answer is not that Mullens is incarcerated. Instead, Mullens has chosen to go to prisons to talk to the inmates about making better choices in their lives and to get in some solid games, which he has been doing this since he was in high school. We would be interested to hear if any of the inmates that Mullens has encountered or mentored are out of prison now and cite him as an influence.

Unfortunately shoddy wireless means I can’t get a screenshot, but the elation at the end of the Maui championship game between Duke and Kansas came through the TV. Even Coach K was jumping up and down after Tyler Thornton hit the biggest shot of his life. Twice. Austin Rivers was as active as any of the Duke players on the bench (save Marshall Plumlee, whose level of enthusiasm is insane). It’s clear Duke isn’t a dominant team by any meaning of the word, but it’s a really fun team to watch. And the Blue Devils, as always, know how to win.

1. Washington Post – Cavaliers Journal: Virginia is a defensive team this year. Or at least it is without senior Sammy Zeglinski, whose playing time is currently limited by a nagging ankle injury. And Tony Bennett sounds OK with that. He pointed out that the team is “a possession by possession team,” which probably explains why the Cavaliers savor each possession so much (there are only four slower teams in D-I). One has to expect the Cavaliers’ outside shooting will come around eventually, but until then they’ll have to continue relying on their defense.
2. Indy Week: Since 1945 only two coaches, Press Maravich and Les Robinson, were older than Mark Gottfried (who’s only 47) when they took the head coaching job at NC State. The article also provides a nice introduction to the individual roles, many of which have changed since Gottfried arrived, of each major contributor on the team. The final line is still the biggest question that remains:
   

   While Wolfpack partisans still loudly applaud Gottfried’s name during pregame introductions, all honeymoons come to an end. Ultimately, the question is whether Gottfried is the next big thing… or just next.

3. ESPN: Florida State takes to the Bahamas this week for the Battle 4 Atlantis where the Seminoles will start out with UMass, an undefeated team that just throttled Boston College on the road. To be fair, the Minutemen were picked twelfth in the A-10 before the season started. Should Florida State win that game, it will probably face mid-major upstart Harvard in the second round and defending national champion Connecticut in the championship game. This is a pretty good primer for the tournament, which has plenty of interesting storylines and will be Florida State’s first true test this season.
4. Duke Basketball Report: One of the biggest questions facing Duke is who will run the point. Duke Basketball Report has a fairly exhaustive article looking at the history of the point guard position and its use in both Roy Williams’ and Mike Krzyzewski’s offenses. Essentially, the conclusion is that Duke’s backcourt needs to share the responsibilities of a point guard, rather than putting everything on one player. I think the article under-appreciates Quinn Cook’s point guard abilities; then again, I don’t think Cook will be the main option at point until at least conference play and, more likely, next season.
5. iSportsWeb: North Carolina 2013 commit Isiah Hicks is already struggling with eligibility issues. It sounds like there are some missing records from his old school district. If the records are just missing from his previous school district. But if there are red flags at the high school level, there will definitely be red flags at the collegiate level. [In more upbeat North Carolina news, the Tar Heels are slashing prices on tickets to men’s games against Evansville and Nicholls State by 40% for Black Friday.]

EXTRA: Per The Daily Telegraph, several gentleman’s club owners have gotten together in hopes of taking advantage of the NBA lockout and starting a topless basketball league. So far there are 23 teams including ones in Minnesota (may I suggest the Minnesota Bimbowolves for a team name?), Miami and New York. I’ll be sticking with college basketball, but the title of this article was too good to let go unnoticed.

North Carolina still sits atop the rankings, but they have a partner with them this week as Kentucky has slipped into the top spot as well. The Wildcats were impressive in posting wins against Kansas, Penn State, and Old Dominion to move to 4-0 on the young season. On the whole, very little change in the Top 10 other than Pittsburgh predictably dropping out after their loss to upstart Long Beach State. The Quick ‘n Dirty after the jump…

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RTC Live moves out west for an interesting matchup between the best team in the Ivy League and a team who has already scalped local behemoth UCLA this season. Will the Lions prove they’re more than a one-trick pony this season; join us to find out tonight, after the jump.

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1. Just when the circus around Penn State was starting to calm down a little bit the college sports world appears to have an eerily similar situation at Syracuse. The basics of the story are that Bobby Davis, a former ball boy at Syracuse who is now 39 years old, has accused Syracuse assistant coach Bernie Fine of molesting him for more than a dozen years. It should be noted that even the strongest report of sexual abuse that we have heard out of Syracuse pale in comparison to the extent to the accusations and crimes that are now widely accepted as having happened at Penn State. Fine, who has become a fixture at Syracuse as an assistant to Jim Boeheim since Boeheim took over as head coach in 1976, has been placed on administrative leave by the school and has not commented on the accusations yet. However, Boeheim has strongly denied the accusations over the phone and in a press release issued by school. While we disagree with the tone of Boeheim’s statement (particularly the one over the phone) it should be pointed out that the local Syracuse newspaper is reporting that it looked into these claims in 2005 and could not verify any of the claims that Davis made including ones that other boys had experienced something similar as all of the people they contacted reportedly denied those claims. However, given the emotional nature that these cases can take we would caution anyone who might jump to conclusions quickly.
2. We don’t link to rankings very often because we realize that in general they are just educated guesses at best, but very few people do them like Luke Winn. Winn, who consistently puts out some of the best content you will find, came out with his latest power rankings yesterday. We won’t even bother getting into the rankings because they are irrelevant as we already mentioned, but there is a ton of interesting statistical information and even a few amusing photos that make it worth reading every week.
3. By now you have undoubtedly heard about the story of Arizona‘s Kevin Parrom and like rankings we normally would not link to a human interest story on Parrom because many of the details have already been published, but like Luke Winn with ranking posts few people do human interest stories like Dana O’Neil and her piece on Parrom is a great example of that. O’Neil actually does not talk to Kevin much for the article (at least for what is used in the article) and instead goes to those who are very close to him to get a good look at what he has had to endure over the past few months and what keeps him playing despite all that he has been through.
4. We cannot remember many top-tier teams that have had to deal with as many significant injuries as early in the season as Louisville has had to deal with this year. The latest to join the walking wounded is Peyton Siva, who sprained his ankle during a practice on Monday and is listed as “day-to-day”. In the long run, it looks like this should not be a significant setback for Louisville, but could be an issue on Saturday when they take on Butler at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Louisville should have enough to beat a Bulldog team that is not very good right now, but Siva’s injury may make them susceptible to Butler’s guards, who have been solid so far this year.
5. Tuesday night was a historic night in college basketball as Mike Krzyzewski became the all-time wins leader for men’s Division I basketball. After the press conference, Krzyzewski went into a small room close to the court where he addressed a large group of former Duke players who had come to the game to support him in addition to a group of players who played for him on the US Olympic team. One player who was not there, but played for Krzyzewski although not in a Duke uniform was Michael Jordan, who we had always assumed had been targeted by Krzyzewski early in his career at Duke. Recruiting information from the early 1980s is sparse, but a letter appeared online yesterday that appears to have been sent from Krzyzewski to Jordan (h/t Lost Letterman for the find) after Jordan told the new Duke coach that he was not interested in playing for Duke. The letter’s content is fairly generic, but it is amusing to read now and consider what might have been if Jordan had decided to play for the other team on Tobacco Road. While we were looking this up, we noticed that Jordan’s childhood home had been sold in 1998 for $37,500 (ignore the ridiculous Zillow estimate and we are assuming there was a shift in zip code boundaries because the 28405 and 28411 zip codes are next to each other) and found it humorous that you could own the house that Jordan grew up in and the backyard court that he waged his legendary battles with his brother Larry for less than half of what you would pay for for a 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card. For that price, we are surprised that some loaded foreign businessman has not bought the house and transported the entire house and yard to his or her home country as a very unique collectible.

[ed. note — for some reason, this scheduled post did not publish this morning; for that oversight, we apologize.]

1. Tar Heel Fan Blog: In honor of tomorrow and the inaugural Carrier Classic, Tar Heel Fan Blog has Top Gun quotes applied to the North Carolina basketball team. These are absolutely hilarious. I was going to quote my favorites and realized that almost all of them count. Well here’s a shot anyway.
   

   John Henson blocks a shot: “Negative Ghost Rider the pattern in full.” (h/t: @SamWalkerOBX)
   A player attempts to make a play, fails, and turns the ball over [Author’s Note: this is also called “The Plumlee Post Move”]: “Son, your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash”
   Roy [Williams] puts Blue Steel in the game: “Too close for missiles, switching to guns.” (h/t @tarbender2)

   The moral of this story is that Twitter memes are awesome (and ACC Basketball starts tomorrow).

2. Grantland – ESPN: Mark Titus (Club Trillion) gives his ACC preview with a nice dose of subjectivity. He joined the Bernard James bandwagon, which I’ve been driving since this offseason. I have a few disagreements though. The first is that Harrison Barnes is underrated by casual college basketball fans. Maybe it’s because I live in ACC country, but casual ACC fans do not underrate Barnes. Most acknowledge his slow start last year, but he’s one of the top two choices to win National Player of the Year (with a player in Jared Sullinger who was much more consistent)! My other qualm was putting Duke as the most overrated team. I agree Duke is overrated nationally (the “most” is a stretch, but since only Duke and North Carolina are ranked from the ACC…), but this is an ACC preview. You could believe Duke is overrated if you think Florida State will take second place, but otherwise you’d think Duke is correctly rated. Regardless, it’s a fun article.
3. Raleigh News and Observer: Caulton Tudor thinks NC State can be the third best team in the ACC. No not this year, but consistently. I’ll hesitantly agree with him, but one thing beat writers often struggle with is tempering expectations for the teams they cover. It’s human nature to see the positive spins and start to empathize with people you see every day. But this article really undercuts both the recent success of Florida State (the clear third best team in the league the last couple of years) and the fact that the league’s relative slump is probably cyclical. Not to mention the fact that Syracuse and Pittsburgh are joining, which isn’t going to make the ACC any easier. All that said, I agree that a 9-7 ACC record is a perfectly reasonable goal for NC State this season.
4. Washington Times: It’s been going under the radar recently, but Maryland‘s athletic department is in serious financial trouble. So much trouble in fact that the Terrapins have reportedly decided to cut both men’s and women’s varsity swimming and water polo to help rein in the costs. Currently, Maryland has 27 varsity teams, which is good for third in the ACC behind North Carolina and Boston College, but the Terps are not alone in getting rid of its swimming programs: just in the ACC, Clemson is also currently “phasing out” its swimming programs.
5. Fox Sports Carolinas: Andrew Jones joins the band of reporters who are cautiously optimistic about Seth Curry‘s second shot at taking over the point guard position at Duke this year. An interesting point is that Mike Krzyzewski “insists that his team really doesn’t have a point guard, that once the ball gets in motion on offense the players just play. The Devils run a motion offense, do a lot of read and reacting, which stems from the motion, and sometimes run set plays.” That could be true, but it’s tough to run an effective offense without someone who can handle the ball and make plays when the game is on the line. Will that be Curry?

EXTRA: Covers.com released the Caesar’s over/under of conference wins for some of the top basketball teams in the country. Duke and North Carolina are the only two ACC teams to make the list. The casino places the line for the Tar Heels at 14.5, meaning the Tar Heels can only lose one game (I’d take the under; North Carolina wasn’t a juggernaut last year and the Heels should be beatable this year). Duke’s line is listed at 13, which seems very high as well. Maybe Duke will get things together, but based on the team’s exhibition struggles, the Blue Devils will drop at least three games in conference play. Other highlights include Ohio State set at 15 (the Buckeyes play 18 conference games), and Harvard set at 12.5 (the Ivy League has a 14-game schedule).

Kevin Doyle is an RTC contributor and the Patriot League correspondent. You can find him on twitter @KLDoyle11

Today is one of five days throughout the year when I roll out of bed in the morning and I can’t help but look into the mirror with a devilish looking grin. Today, of course, marks the beginning of the college basketball season. It is hard to believe that it has been seven months since that defensive slugfest between Connecticut and Butler in the National Championship game, but we can now return home from school/work and flip on the tube to have some college hoops brighten our evening. As for the other four days you may be wondering about. Well, they seem trivial right now, but here they are anyways: 1) BCS Title Game, 2) Super Bowl Sunday, 3) That Thursday in mid-March that commences the NCAA Basketball Tournament, 4) Sunday at the Masters.

O26 Celebrations Such As This One Warm My Heart (AP)

One caveat to my favorite sports days of the year that I must include: Any day when David overtakes Goliath in the NCAA Tournament is a favorite day of mine, and I am sure it is of others as well. America’s love of the “little guy” come March leads me into the focal point of this preview: an Introduction— or a refresher for others — to The Other 26 article that details life outside of the six BCS/power conferences. For those who are already familiar with the weekly article, please bear with me.

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