Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the America East Conference and Patriot League.

2009-10 Patriot League (Conference, Overall)

1. Lafayette  (0-0, 4-1)
2. Army (0-0, 3-1)
3. Lehigh (0-0, 3-2)
4. Bucknell (0-0, 3-3)
5. Navy (0-0, 2-3)
6. Colgate (0-0, 0-4)
7. Holy Cross (0-0, 0-5)
8. American (0-0, 0-6)

Team of the week: Lafayette (4-1) – W 81-72 vs. Wagner, L 81-70 at Sacred Heart, W 88-77 at St. Francis (PA), W 69-52 at NJIT, W 86-82 vs. Hartford

Player of the week: Jared Mintz– Jr. Lafayette 18.6 ppg, 7.2 rpg, 68.8% FG, 1.0 spg

Thoughts on the AE.

Three teams are still looking for their first victory on the season, while one team has came out and surprised us all with their start by matching their non-conference win total from last year already. The top scorer in the league finally found his shooting touch last game and the preseason pick is looking like a mistake.

The surprise team so far this season is Lafayette. The Leopards have won four out of their first five, with their only blemish on the record an eleven-point loss at Sacred Heart. Offensively they look great. They are shooting over fifty percent from the field, and over forty percent from three-point range. When a team shoots as good as that it’s hard to beat them. The key to this team so far has been big man Jared Mintz. Mintz is averaging over 18 points on almost 69 percent shooting from the field. He has led the team in scoring and rebounding for four of the five games. This has opened up the floor for the shooters. Lafayette has three major contributors shooting over 44 percent from three-point range. Against Hartford, six players scored in double figures. Mintz led the way with 18 points, but it was the three-point shooting that helped Lafayette jump out to a big lead. Five different players hit a three-ball for the Leopards within the first ten minutes of the game. Lafayette was up by as many as 22 before allowing Hartford back into the game in the second half. If the Leopards keep it up they will be a hard out all year.

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John Templon is the RTC correspondent for the Horizon League.

Current Standings:

1. Butler (3-0)
2. Detroit (3-1)
3. Loyola (3-1)
4. Wright State (3-1)
5. Green Bay (4-2)
6. Milwaukee (4-2)
7. Youngstown State (3-2)
8. Cleveland State (3-3)
9. UIC (1-2)
10. Valparaiso (1-2)

Top Storylines:

• Horizon League regular season:  the regular season for the Horizon League kicks off on the first weekend of December.
• Close calls, not breakthroughs:  no Horizon League team — besides Butler — has managed to knock off a power conference team.  The Bulldogs’ only power conference victory was over Northwestern and even Butler has a loss to Minnesota on Thanksgiving.
• Youth will be served:  there are a lot of young Horizon League teams leading to a variety of results thus far.

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Zach Hayes is RTC’s resident bracketologist.  He’ll regularly be out-scooping, out-thinking and out-shining Lunardi over the course of the season.

Last Four In: Florida State, Creighton, Xavier, Florida

Last Four Out: Texas A&M, Notre Dame, San Diego State, Wisconsin

Next Four Out: Miami (FL), Missouri, Illinois State, Utah State

Multiple bids per conference: Big East (8), ACC (7), SEC (7), Big Ten (6), Big 12 (5), Pac-10 (3), Atlantic 10 (2), Conference USA (2), Missouri Valley (2).

Automatic bids: Boston University, Dayton, North Carolina, Jacksonville, West Virginia, Kansas, Weber State, Radford, Purdue, Long Beach State, Old Dominion, Tulsa, Butler, Cornell, Siena, Morgan State, Akron, Northern Iowa, BYU, Mount St. Mary’s, Morehead State, California, Holy Cross, Kentucky, College of Charleston, Sam Houston State, Oakland, Western Kentucky, Jackson State, Nevada, Gonzaga.

Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Patriot League and America East Conference.  Click here for all of our 2009-10 Season Preview materials..

Predicted Order of Finish:

1. Holy Cross  (11-3)
2. Lehigh  (10-4)
3. Army  (9-5)
4. Navy  (7-7)
5. Bucknell  (6-8)
6. Colgate  (6-8)
7. Lafayette  (4-10)
8. American  (3-11)

All-Conference Team:

• Marquis Hall (G), Sr., Lehigh
• R.J Evans (G), Soph., Holy Cross
• Andrew Keister (F), Jr.,  Holy Cross
• Zahir Carrington (F), Sr., Lehigh
• Patrick Behan (F/C), Jr., Bucknell

6th Man. Chris Harris (G), Sr., Navy

Impact Newcomer. Jeff Holton (F), Fr., American

What You Need to Know. American’s dominance it seems will come to an end this year after back-to-back Patriot League championships.  The “American” have seven freshman on the 2009-10 team, and the current team has zero combined starts between them, so they will experience a steep learning curve. With the most well known coach in the PL gone (Ralph Willard at Holy Cross), we will have to see if Sean Kearney can carry the torch with a squad full of talented returning players in Worcester.  With his experience coaching at this level, I am willing to bet he can, which is why they are my pick for the conference champions.  As a whole, the entire league returns more talent this year than any year in recent memory.

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Holy Cross is set to announce its replacement for Ralph Willard today, naming Sean Kearney, a current assistant coach on Mike Brey’s Notre Dame staff, as the new head coach at the school.  Willard left his highly successful post there in June to become an assistant for Rick Pitino’s Louisville squad, and he’ll be replaced by, in an odd coincidence, another former Pitino assistant (Providence ’87).  Kearney will find that the cupboard at the premier job in the Patriot League is far from bare, as four starters return for a team expected to compete for a conference title next season.  Seems like a good hire, as Mike Brey said, for Kearney to go from a private, academically-oriented Catholic school like ND to another like HC makes sense and is a “good fit.”

Ok, we’re going to put our tin foil hat on here for a few minutes.  It’s summer, and nobody is reading this anyway.  But we’re really having trouble understanding the news today that Holy Cross head coach Ralph Willard (and longtime Pitino buddy) will leave his successful, self-made program in Worcester, Mass. to become an assistant coach at Louisville.

Read that again: assistant coach at Louisville.

To open our conspiracy theory, let’s consider all the reasons that Willard shouldn’t have so much as considered this job, much less taken it.

• Willard’s been a head coach for the last 19 years, first at Western Kentucky, then at Pitt, and spending the last decade at Holy Cross.
• Holy Cross is Willard’s alma mater (Class of 1967), and he’s turned down other head coaching opportunities at higher profile places to stay there.
• Willard is arguably HC’s best coach ever.  In ten seasons he’s taken the Crusaders to four NCAA Tournaments as Patriot League champions, won 20+ games five times, and has gone 192-117 (.621) in his career there.  It’s safe to say that he could have held on to this job as long as he wanted it.
• It wouldn’t be unfathomable to believe that his salary, even at a Patriot League school, was higher than what Louisville can afford to pay its top assistant.  At worst, we’d expect the two to be comparable.

So in the spirit of 9/11 was Saddam’s Bush’s Israel’s doing paranoids everywhere, we have to wonder what the hell is going on here?

Then we started thinking… a lot has gone on at Louisville in the past few months.  To recap:

• After losing to underdog Michigan St. in the E8, stars Earl Clark and Terrence Williams are off to the NBA.
• Rick Pitino’s son, Richard, perplexingly left Louisville for another assistant job on Billy Donovan’s staff at Florida.
• The Karen Sypher situation.
• Rumors that Pitino was interested in the Sacramento Kings job.

Throw that in with the persistent rumors of a nameless medical condition dogging Pitino, and it wouldn’t be outside a reasonable realm of possibility for us to think that Ralph Willard has been promised something to become Pitino’s insurance policy.  What if Pitino’s legal battles, familial problems and/or medical issues require him to take a leave of absence for a bit, similar to what Lute Olson did at Arizona?  Wouldn’t it make sense to have a friend he’s known and trusted for 40+ years ready to move in at the helm if necessary?  Or what if Pitino is once again feeling his well-documented propensity for wanderlust, and although he wasn’t interested in taking the Kings job this spring, he would be interested in other more high-profile NBA/college jobs should they open up?  In that situation, he could essentially pull a Dean Smith/Bill Guthridge and leave the Louisville post to his top guy.

Or this could all be nonsense, chalked up to people sometimes doing irrational things, and we’re completely off base in our analysis.  You’ll excuse us as we now go watch the Apollo 11 space landing in Arizona from the comfort of our alien-built spaceship in Area 51 while riffing some fresh beats with 2Pac and Biggie.

Welcome back to the weekend edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite. First off I’d like to commend rtmsf for his strong work on yesterday’s BGtD. You guys really have no idea how exhausting it is doing a full day’s worth of this is and he managed to do it with only a short break although it almost caused me to give up working on the site after being forced to endure the American–Holy Cross game yesterday. As he outlined in his After the Buzzer post last night/this morning, there are 12 conference championship games today. For the sake of maintaining our sanity and having enough energy in the tank for our huge March Madness preview, we’ll be taking multiple shifts but we promise to coordinate it so you won’t miss anything during our handoffs.

6:00 AM: Yes. That’s actually the time I’m starting this thanks to a “short nap” that ended up going from 9 PM to 5 AM. Obviously my posts will be infrequent in the early morning hours, but I’ll be passing along some news and links to you before the games start at 11 AM. The New York Times has been stepping it up with their college sports blog “The Quad” recently and has an interesting post on Louisville‘s Terrence Williams and his pre-game ritual of the giving himself a pep talk during the national anthem. Before anybody thinks this might be a Chris Jackson Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf situation, it should be noted that Williams actually stands during the anthem and is supposedly talking about family members that he has lost and asking that everyone on the court avoids injuries. Of course, we can’t verify this, but if we have any lip-readers in our vast legion of RTC readers, we would love hear your take on this particularly if you have seen this is in person.

7:00 AM: Before I head out for a few minutes to take care of some errands like stocking up on groceries for the coming storm where I probably won’t leave my apartment for 3 weeks. I thought I would pass along one of my favorite things we are doing at RTC right now. We enlisted the help of our correspondents and got them to send us their favorite March memories. We narrowed down the submissions to the 16 best entries and are counting down to #1, which will be revealed on Wednesday (the day before the tournament starts). I’d encourage you to check out the entries we have so far and keep on coming back throughout the day to see what they selected as their favorite March memories and then chime in with your memories on those moments.

8:45 AM: Ok. False alarm on that grocery run. Apparently Costco doesn’t open until 9:30 so after this post I’ll be on a short break. So today’s RTC East breakfast is brought to you by Flour Bakery and consists of their Bobby Flay-slaying “Sticky Buns” and a twice-baked brioche. Here’s a quick run-down of the games (title game in red–there’s a lot of red) that I will be focusing on today:

Early Games

• UMBC vs. Binghamton at 11 AM on ESPN2 for the America East title
• Memphis vs. #3 Tulsa at 11:35 AM on CBS for the Conference USA title

Afternoon Games

• Mississippi State vs. #16 LSU at 1 PM on ESPN2 and Raycom in the SEC semifinals
• #6 Michigan State vs. Ohio State at 1:30 PM on CBS in the Big 10 semifinals
• #1 UNC vs. #22 FSU at 1:30 PM on ESPN and Raycom in the ACC semifinals
• Tennessee vs. Auburn at 3 PM on ESPN2 and Raycom in the SEC semifinals
• Maryland vs. #8 Duke at 3:30 PM on ESPN and Raycom in the ACC semifinals
• #25 Illinois vs. #24 Purdue at 4 PM on CBS in the Big 10 semifinals

Evening Games

• #23 Arizona State vs. USC at 6 PM on CBS for the Pac-10 title
• Baylor vs. #15 Missouri at 6 PM on ESPN for the Big 12 title
• Temple vs. Duquesne at 6 PM on ESPN2 for the Atlantic 10 title

Late Night Games

• San Diego State vs. Utah at 7 PM on Versus for the Moutain West title
• Morgan State vs. Norfolk State at 7 PM on ESPNU for the MEAC title (Periodic score updates for this one)
  
• Buffalo vs. Akron at 8 PM on ESPN2 for the MAC title
• #5 Louisville vs. #20 Syracuse at 9 PM on ESPN for the Big East title
• Jackson State vs. Alabama State at 9 PM on ESPNU for the SWAC title (Periodic score updates for this one)
• Utah State vs. Nevada at 10 PM on ESPN2 for the WAC title
• Cal State-Northridge vs. Pacific at 11:59 PM on ESPN2 for the Big West title (This one is questionable)

10:55 AM: Ok. I’m back from my extended Costco run and have enough food to last me through the week. A quick summary on the early games. In the America East, Binghamton is a 5-6 point favorite (depending on your gambling establishment of choice). Honestly, I’m surprised that they aren’t bigger favorites since they come in at 22-8 while UMBC comes in 15-16 and the game is at Binghamton. It could be interesting though as they split the season series in the regular season with Binghamton winning the last game of the regular season at home against UMBC 71-51. I’m guessing the America East commissioner is rooting for UMBC to avoid the embarrassment of the CBS announcers having to explain why the conference’s regular season leading scorer (D.J Rivera) was left off the all-conference team. In Conference USA, Memphis is a 14-point favorite against Tulsa. Memphis might be playing for a #1 seed even with their ridiculously easy schedule. We’re hoping this game is more like the first time they met (a 55-54 Memphis win) rather the last time they met (a 63-37 Memphis win). I have a sneaking suspicion that it is going to be more like the latter, but we’ll be following it anyways to get a last look at Memphis before CBS’s new Billy Packer rips the NCAA selection committee for putting them over a Big East team.

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Hello hoops fans, and welcome to our first weekday version of your favorite semi-live journal, Boom Goes the Dynamite.  We’re still feeling the effects of that six-overtime Goliath of a game last night, but we’re caffeinated and ready to rock with you all day while we move through what is traditionally the best day of the conference tournament weekend.  It’ll be hard to top what we saw yesterday, though.  Here are a few of the games you should be tracking; as you can see, today is an absolute blockbuster:

• ACC – UNC vs. Virginia Tech – Noon, Maryland vs. Wake Forest – 7pm, Duke vs. BC, 9:30pm
• Patriot – American vs. Holy Cross – 4:45pm
• Big 10 – Michigan St. vs. Minnesota – Noon, Illinois vs. Michigan – 6:30pm, Purdue vs. Penn St. – 9pm
• Big East – Louisville vs. Villanova – 7pm, Syracuse vs. West Virginia – 9pm
• Big 12 – Baylor vs. Texas – 7pm, Oklahoma St. vs. Missouri – 9:30pm
• Mountain West – San Diego St. vs. BYU – 9pm
• Pac-10 – Arizona St. vs. Washington – 9pm, USC vs. UCLA – 11:30pm
• SEC – Florida vs. Auburn – 9:45pm

Another couple of PSAs before we get started.  Be sure to check the site throughout the weekend, as we’ll be doing these BGTDs each day, in addition to a revised bracketology on both Saturday and Sunday, all leading to a liveblogging of the Selection Show on Sunday.  We’ll also be putting up the information for RTC’s Second Annual Bracket Challenge later this afternoon.

12:20 pm. Let’s get started here.  UNC looks flat so far against Virginia Tech, and they should, given that Ty Lawson is over on the bench sitting next to Roy Williams.  He is dressed, though, so it wouldn’t surprise us if his Big Toe makes an appearance.  That crafty Roy – always using the element of surprise.  Or something like that.

12:27 pm.  Over at the Big Ten, Minnesota is leading Michigan State 22-20 in a high-scoring game.  Yes, we said high-scoring and Big Ten in the same sentence.  Wow, ESPN is already re-showing the Syracuse-UConn game on ESPN Classic.  Tivo time.  If these two games get worthless, we’re definitely moving back over there.

12:33 pm. They’re really hyping that game from last night – looks like they’re going to show the whole thing on ESPNU at 3pm.  Getting back to business here, Virginia Tech looks poised right now, playing like a team that wants to keep playing in March should be playing.  Carolina looks a little flat, but the question will be whether they can still make a patented run with Lawson sitting.

12:42 pm. Most of the ACC people are annoyed with the conference tournament being in Atlanta this year, but we think it’s refreshing that it’s not in the same old tired venue of Greensboro or Charlotte again.  The home-state advantage that Carolina gets in those two building is ridiculous.  Speaking of advantage, it looked like UNC was about to make a run until Va Tech came down and hit two consecutive threes.  Ed Davis is going to be a player someday.  He has really nice touch around the rim, and his per-40 rebounding average is in the 15 rpg territory!

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Marty Leon is the RTC correspondent for the Patriot League. 

Patrtiot League Playoff Preview

#1 American vs #8 Lafayette – Lafayette took American to overtime last week at home. American is 21-7 overall and 13-1 in league play. This is their second year in a row as #1 seed. They won 11 road games, tied for tops in the country. Like all Patriot games this will be a battle, and anything could happen but most likely will not.

#2 Holy Cross vs # 7 Bucknell – Holy Cross smoked Lehigh by 15 to end the season and are playoff sharp. Bucknell has overachieved all year but just had a tough 17 point loss to Army.  Ralph Willard’s team will march on, right into a title game with American.

#3 Navy vs #6 Colgate – This veteran Navy squad has a legit shot at a title run. Kaleno Kena had 23 as the midshipmen just beat Colgate to end the season.  Colgate too young, Navy too experienced.

#4 Army vs. #5 Lehigh – We thought Lehigh would have a better year.  They will not go to West Point and beat a determined Army team on their home turf.  Kudos to Jim Crews for a great year and the #4 seed.

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It’s BracketBuster Saturday, and we’re back with another compelling edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite.  We don’t know how it is where you live today, but it’s rainy and chilly here at the RTC Western Compound, which means it’s a great day for huddling up on the couch, firing up the three tvs, ordering up some pie and watching hoops all day.   There are some pretty strong games on the slate today, starting with Butler v. Davidson early and finishing with BYU v. UNLV late.  Settle in and feel free to make your own observations in the comments section.

12:08pm. Oh no, Steph Curry’s mom is NOT at the Davidson game today!!!!  Who will the cameras show in the crowd?!?!!?  Oh yeah, Dell’s there.  Ok.  Whew.

12:10pm. Wonder how ESPN decides who gets to host these games?  Seems like a pretty big decision considering Butler and Davidson are so tough at home, and the loser could drop a seed line or two based on this game.  Curry doesn’t like quite as quick as normal so far – the ankle is probably a little tender.

12:17pm. Our new uber-intern sent over some interesting news today – looks like Patrick Patterson might go for Kentucky today against Tennesee (coming up at 1pm), and surprise of all surprises, the NCAA is investigating USC with respect to recruiting Daniel Hackett.   His dad is the strength and conditioning coach at USC (which is legal, btw).

12:30pm. There are a couple of other BB games that started at 11am, and the most interesting one is Northeastern at Wright St., which is on ESPN2.  NE is leading by six right now, while CAA sibling ODU is crushing Liberty and Seth Curry.

12:46pm. How many games this year have we watched Davidson only to hear some announcer talking about Steph Curry having an “off” game.  It would be nice if he’d just come out and blow up one of these nationally-televised games.   As it now stands, he’s 1-10 and 0-6 from three.

12:50pm. Interesting stat from Brad Nessler there – that if Curry continued his 30 ppg pace for another season-plus at Davidson, he could conceivably catch Pete Maravich’s all-time scoring total record.  Of course, Pistol Pete did it in three years, but that would be a phenomenal record to approach.  We’ll see if we can figure the math and get back on that.

12:52pm. Early afternoon bubble watch.  Miami is smoking BC in S. Florida at halftime (up 12) and ND is also up 12 at halftime on Providence.  These are both pretty much must-wins, although Notre Dame needs it a little more than Miami.

12:57pm. Somehow three of the top four CAA teams drew road games in the BracketBusters event.  So far, the CAA looks good.  VCU only lost by one at Nevada last night, and Northeastern is finishing off Wright St.  ODU already won, and it’ll be very interesting to see what George Mason can do at Creighton later this evening.

1:02pm. Wow, Doug Gottlieb just eviscerated Jay Williams as to why Georgetown was going to make the tournament.  He must have thought he was back on that motorcycle there.  No inside presence?  Except the best freshman big in the country, Greg Monroe.  We get his point about frontcourt depth, but we’re with Gottlieb here – we think Georgetown makes a run to get to 9-9 in the Big East.

1:06pm. We’ve got some 1pm games starting here, incl. Bruce Pearl’s orange blazer at Kentucky (speaking of bubbles), Buffalo at Vermont on the deuce, and the second half of ND-Providence on ESPN FC.  Oh, and did we mention Gus Johnson is in Lexington today.  Oh yes.

1:11pm. Thanks CBS for showing me a graphic telling me that UK is on a 5-0 run in the last 3:20…  or, to start the game.  Brilliant.

1:18pm. Ok, here’s the deal on Curry catching Maravich.  Curry had 2414 coming into today.  Maravich ended with 3667 pts.  If we assume eight more games this year (three regular season; three SoCon Tourney; two NCAA Tourney), and 35 games next year, that’s 42 games.  He’d have to average 29.84 over that stretch to pass him.  Since he’s averaging 29.0 already this season, this is eminently possible should he stick around another season.  That would be fairly cool to track next season – let’s hope he returns.

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