Rush The Court

Wild Saturday.  Obviously, there’s a million things to talk about this weekend, but this special ATB Saturday edition will focus exclusively on the thirteen conference tournaments that were going on across the country today.  In our usual weekend edition on Sunday night, we’ll discuss all the other games from the bigger conferences who are still finishing up regular season action, including the upsets of #1 Syracuse, #5 Kansas State and so forth.  Bear with us, as we’ll be back tomorrow.

Conference Tourneys.  The ‘expanded’ NCAA Tourney continued today with another 35 teams eliminated on this glorious Saturday of hoops across the nation.

Murray Wins 30 Games For the First Time in OVC History (M. Dann)

• Ohio Valley.  Murray State pulled away late from the #2 seed, Morehead State, to win its eighth conference championship in the last sixteen years.  The Racers also reached the 30-win mark for the first time in school and OVC history en route to its fourteenth NCAA Tournament bid.  In an ugly, defensive-oriented game, it was Isaiah Canaan who came off the bench for the Racers to provide offensive punch (16/5), but it was his block on a breakaway dunk attempt (called a foul) that electrified the crowd and made the ESPN top 10 plays tonight.  Murray will be a nightmare of a matchup for the team that draws them in the first round of the NCAAs this year.
• Big South.  #3 Winthrop pulled off the upset at top seed Coastal Carolina in their building tonight, winning 64-53 behind a strong second half and a suffocating defense that held CCU’s best player, Joseph Harris, to a mere three points on 1-6 shooting.  This is Winthrop’s fifth Big South title in the last six years, an amazing feat considering that the original architect of the program, Gregg Marshall has since moved on to Wichita State (playing for its own bid tomorrow).  The Eagles are probably looking at a #16 seed this year.
• Atlantic Sun.  East Tennessee State won its second consecutive A-Sun Tournament tonight, this time as a #5 seed.  The Bucs’ pressure defense forced sixteen Mercer turnovers and held their two stars, James Florence and Danny Emerson, to nearly half their typical offensive output.  Justin Tubbs had 18/3 for the winning team, This clearly isn’t a vintage ETSU team, but Murray Bartow has them back in the Dance for the third time in his career there, where they’re likely looking at a #16 seed again.
• Missouri Valley.  At Arch Madness, the top two seeds advanced today with #1 Northern Iowa shutting down everything #5 Bradley tried to do on offense today, and #2 Wichita State surviving a close one against Illinois State.  Of course, UNI is already secure in an NCAA Tournament bid, but they’re attempting to win back-to-back MVC titles, while Wichita will not be invited unless they earn the auto-bid tomorrow.  The two teams split home-and-home this year, and you’d have to believe that the Shockers will bring everything they’ve got tomorrow afternoon.  RTC Live will be there covering the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Big Red Freshness Lasts Right Through It. Cornell 95, Brown 76.  It probably took a little longer than the nervous Big Red faithful hoped to put away the pesky Brown Bears tonight, but in the end, it was simply a formality because Cornell players were so narrowly focused on winning their third straight Ivy League title and NCAA bid that there was no way they were going to lose this game tonight.  How focused were they?  Try a season-best 57% shooting and an utterly ridonkulous 20-30 from deep tonight.  At one point during the conflagration of shot-making by the Big Red, they hit eight treys in a row en route to an 11-13 first half.  But it was the second half where Cornell exhibited its dominance, using a 14-4 run early to take control of the game and ensure another title coming to Ithaca this season.  All five starters reached double figures, but it was lesser-known forward Jon Jaques who took the scoring honors with 20/7 tonight (including six threes).  In all, four players had four or more threes, which we figure has to be some kind of a record for versatile and voluminous shooting!  Cornell will now wait to see where their NCAA seed lies, but the smart money is on a #12 seed when the brackets are released.  Anyone up for a #12/#5 upset this year?

Will 3d Time Be the Charm For Cornell? (Ithaca Journal/G. Ertl)

RTC Live.

• Wichita State 73, Missouri State 63.  On Quarterfinal Friday in St. Louis, top seed Northern Iowa defeated Drake, Bradley upset Creighton and Illinois State won the nightcap. And in the game you followed here on RTC Live, Wichita State held off Missouri State, 73-63. A close, hard-fought and well-played game, the Shockers were paced by Garrett Stutz, whose play in the paint helped them overcome hot outside shooting of the Bears. Stutz finished with 19 points and 6 rebounds, and converted on back-to-back possessions during a key stretch of the second half to help them pull away. The Shockers advance to play the Redbirds of Illinois State tomorrow afternoon here in St. Louis.

Conference Tourneys.  Eight conference tourneys tonight, and a ridiculous thirteen tomorrow.  Let’s see what was interesting…

• Ohio Valley.  The top two teams — Murray State and Morehead State — both advanced tonight to the finals on Saturday.  Murray has put together a phenomenal 29-win season, so it’d be a shame to see them miss out on the NCAAs, but Morehead is the only OVC team to have beaten the Racers this year.  It was Morehead tonight, though, not Murray, who had the comfortable win in the semis.  Should be a great one on Saturday for the auto-bid.
• Atlantic Sun.  #6 seed Mercer continues to use its home court advantage to knock off higher-seeded teams with tonight’s victory over #2 Jacksonville.  #5 East Tennessee State was able to get by #8 Kennesaw State whom had knocked off top seed Belmont last night.  So it’ll be Mercer vs. ETSU for the automatic bid.  The Bucs will be playing in their third A-Sun title game in four years, and will be looking to win back-t0-back NCAA bids despite having not finished first in the regular season in either of the last two years.
• Horizon.  In the Horizon second round tonight, #7 Detroit continues to turn heads with another upset win behind Eli Holman’s dub-dub (16/11), while #4 Milwaukee earned the pleasure of facing #1 Butler in the semifinals on Saturday by defeating #5 Cleveland State.  The Titans will play #2 Wright State in the other semifinal — neither of the top two seeds have played yet in this tournament, while Detroit has already played two games and Milwaukee one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Feeling Title-y.  There were three conference championships won tonight around the nation, and you can count the number of people on one hand who had these three picks back in November.

• #7 Ohio State 73, Illinois 57.  Evan Turner put in his usual work (16/12/5 assts) for the Buckeyes and Jon Diebler rained seven threes as OSU pulled away in the second half to win at least a share of the Big 10 regular season title.  Both Purdue and Michigan State will need to win both of their remaining games this week to tie the Buckeyes at the top of the standings, but regardless, OSU will be the top seed in next week’s Big 10 Tournament.  If you’re looking for a darkhorse Final Four candidate, look no further than this Buckeye team with NPOY Turner leading the charge.  We heard that they RTC’d tonight in Columbus to celebrate the championship, but we’ve yet to have visual confirmation of this.

Who Had OSU as Big Ten Champs in November? (AP/T. Gilliam)

• #1 Syracuse 85, St. John’s 66.  Newly-minted #1 Syracuse put five players into double figures in an easy win that captured the Big East regular season title outright tonight.  The Orange were led by Arinze Onuaku’s 21/8 as the senior played in front of his mother for the first time in his career.  SU will now travel to Louisville for a Saturday matchup against one of the two teams that has beaten them this year, while the presumably-motivated Cards will be playing for their postseason lives as they simultaneously close down Freedom Hall.  Will Jim Boeheim’s kids have the focus needed to overcome the expected Cardinal surge with their top seed in the Big East Tournament already sewn up?
• #21 UTEP 80, Marshall 76.  The Miners clinched the CUSA regular season title with a strong second half showing led by star Randy Culpepper, who poured in 22 of his 31 points after the break.  UTEP has now won thirteen in a row and they’re doing it with great defense and balanced scoring from the aforementioned Culpepper and big men Derrick Caracter (14/9 on the year) and Arnett Moultrie (10/7 on the year).  Marshall’s Hassan Whiteside threw up another ridiculous line (20/14/6 blks), but it wasn’t enough for the Herd, who now drop to 10-5 in the conference.  UTEP is ranked #50 in the RPI, but you’d have to believe a strong showing in next week’s CUSA Tourney will get them in.

Teams That Helped Themselves.  There were a lot more teams that seemed more interested in hurting themselves than helping themselves this evening.

• Clemson.  The Tigers guaranteed themselves a winning ACC record with tonight’s win over Georgia Tech, in so doing also likely cemented a spot in the NCAA Tournament.  With a win on Saturday at Wake Forest, Clemson will also earn a first-round bye into the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament next week.
• Marquette.  The Golden Eagles were already in the NCAA Tournament, but their win tonight solidifies things and also gives MU a shot at the prestigious double-bye in the Big East Tourney next week.  Now at 11-6 in conference, they need Pitt to lose twice this week, but at worst with this win Marquette will end up with the #5 seed.
• Missouri.  Mizzou played with fire in allowing its game with Iowa State to go into overtime, but Zaire Taylor’s driving two at the buzzer gave them the escape they needed to make a claim on third place in the Big 12 standings.  Taylor essentially won the game for the Tigers, with three clutch shots in key situations.  They’ll have an opportunity to make some noise on Saturday when they host Kansas in Columbia.

Teams That Hurt Themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know why we don’t need NCAA Tournament expansion to 96 teams?  The are a lot of other good reasons, but the simplest reason is that we already have it.  In fact, about 300 of the 347 Division I teams have an opportunity starting tonight to ‘play their way into’ the NCAA Tournament.  It’s easy — survive and advance.  As long as you win, you’re still alive.  And if you win three or four games in (mostly) consecutive days, you’ll see Greg Gumbel reading your name off the Big Board on Selection Sunday.  Keep winning beyond that and suddenly you’re channeling NC State circa 1983.

Tickling or Madness?

There will be thirty conference tournaments played from coast to coast (and all points in-between) in the coming days, with the Big South, Ohio Valley and Horizon all starting postseason action tonight.  The Atlantic Sun and Patriot will get going tomorrow, and by Saturday night, we’ll have already crowned the first three automatic bids.  Twenty-seven more (plus the Ivy) will be decided over the course of the following week of play.  It seems like a lot to keep up with (and it is), which is why we’ve come up with an internal tracking matrix (below) that we’re happy to share with everyone.

During our nightly ATBs, we’ll be keeping you updated as well, but here’s the high-level view of the world.  Strap in folks, because March is here!

Only one more of these after this week, and then unlike our football counterparts, they become completely irrelevant.  Analysis after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a new week and we’re back with a new Top 25 poll.  The usual analysis after the jump…

Note that this week Rob Dauster of BiaH is filling in for one or usual pollsters. 

Read the rest of this entry »

A good discussion on twitter today about how to rank the top four (all one-loss) teams.  Here’s our version, with analysis after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend’s Villanova loss created the only substantive movement in the RTC Top 25 this week, but we weren’t rating the Wildcats as high as everyone else anyway, so the market on Jay Wright’s team appears to have been corrected.  Analysis after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

The Top 10 is still fairly static after five weeks of polling, but we’re seeing all kinds of movement in and out at the bottom of the poll on a week-to-week basis.  Analysis after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of movement in this week’s poll, as nearly every team of consequence played in some kind of holiday tournament last week.  Analysis follows the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the favorite days of the year for us at RTC is when the preseason polls are announced.  Maybe it takes us back to our days growing up and anticipating the start of the season, but somehow, it just seems to make everything official.  Granted, media has changed a LOT since those days, and we spend more time nitpicking and disagreeing with these polls than we used to, but it’s still a cool harbinger that the season is just around the corner, so enjoy. 

Our QnD analysis follows the polls.

QnD Analysis.

• It’s clear the media thinks a little more highly of John Calipari’s Kentucky team and a little less than Roy Williams’ UNC team than the coaches do.  UK got 82.5% as many votes as Kansas in the coaches’ poll, while garnering 85.1% in the AP; meanwhile, UNC earned 84.8% in the coaches’ vs. 81.9% in the AP.  This is probably a good example that shows how coaches think versus how the media thinks.  It’s our view that coaches do not respect John Calipari as much as they probably should, so he gets dinged a little despite having A-list talent while Roy Williams gets a bump despite losing four starters.  On the other side, the media sees the players that Calipari has at his disposal this year and they get all googly-eyed thinking about it, so they tend to rate Kentucky higher than UNC, somewhat ignoring the history that Roy Williams has in getting teams to come together.  It’s a very subtle point, but we think a clear one.   
• The team with the biggest disparity between polls, Minnesota, also illustrates this point beautifully.   Coaches rank Tubby Smith’s team #18 (19.5%) in the nation based on Smith’s reputation for overachieving; the media, however, doesn’t see as much talent on the court as some of the other teams around Minnesota, so while recognizing Tubby’s ability to get the most from his players, they rate the Gophers lower at #25 (10.6%). 
• Louisville is also a strange case here.  The coaches rate the Cardinals quite a bit lower than the media does (#23, 15.9% vs. #19, 20.6%), and you wonder if they sense that all the bad news has taken a toll on the UL program and will manifest itself as a weaker team this year. 
• Nice to see Butler getting nearly top-ten love as the best mid, but they’re going to have to earn that ranking very early in their schedule, with games at Northwestern, at Evansville, vs. Ohio St. and Xavier at home, plus neutral site games in the loaded 76 Classic in Anaheim and against Georgetown in MSG. 
• In the ORV, Maryland will probably hover around the 20-30 zone all season, but what is going on with the coaches giving 22 votes to USC?!?!?  At first, we thought it was an abbreviation for “South Carolina” until we saw the other SC down at the bottom with a ridiculous one vote.  They do realize that Tim Floyd and OJ Mayo are no longer there, right?
• No major qualms with the rest of it, although UCLA right now is a reach for the top 30 (too many unknowns) and Vanderbilt is going to be better than several teams in the top 25 this year. 
• Conference Breakdown (Coaches, AP):  ACC (4, 4), A10 (1, 1), Big East (6, 5), Big 12 (3, 3), Big 10 (5, 6), Horizon (1, 1), Pac-10 (2, 2), SEC (3, 3).
• Final thought – the RTC Preseason Top 25 will release on Opening Night (Monday, Nov. 9), so keep an eye out for that. 

What say you, readers?

We’re back with the second annual review of how the major conferences are doing after one weekend of the NCAA Tournament.  As we all are aware, the Dance eliminates the pretenders – that means you, Wake and Washington – so that the teams with legitimate chops remain standing.  Chalk has predominantly ruled this tournament so far, but that doesn’t keep us from evaluating which conferences are performing better or worse than expectations.   We review the conferences with multiple bids below…

Big East  (7 bids, 5 remaining, 11-2 record)

The Big East was the most powerful conference all year and they are proving it in the postseason.  West Virginia was the only first round loser, and Marquette was outlasted by a tough-as-nails Missouri team in the second round.  All other Big East teams advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, setting a new record for the total number from one conference (5).  What’s more is that each of these teams are F4-caliber; there isn’t a single Cinderella in the group.  It wouldn’t surprise us if this league managed to get 75% of the F4 entrants this year, and we fully expect all five to play into the national quarterfinals.

Verdict:  A.  The Big East’s expected # of wins for the tournament is 16.2, and there’s a solid chance that the league will bust through twenty wins this season in setting another new record.

Big 12  (6 bids, 3 remaining, 9-3 record)

For the second consecutive year, the Big 12 had another great first round (6-0), culminating in their three best teams making it to the Sweet Sixteen.  The league hasn’t had an upset yet, and the three losing teams – Texas, Oklahoma St., and Texas A&M, acquitted themselves nicely in five of their six games (lone exception: TAMU vs. UConn).  Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma all have tough but winnable games if they play well, and the Big 12 should reasonably expect to see one of them playing into next weekend.  For a “down” year in the league, this is a great performance.

Verdict: A.  The Big 12 already has nine wins against an expected performance of 10.57 wins, which basically means they’re doing really well so far.

Atlantic 10  (3 bids, 1 remaining, 3-2 record)

The A10 got three teams into the Dance and made the most of its opportunity, winning two first round games (one an upset with #11 Dayton over #6 WVU), and sending Xavier to yet another Sweet Sixteen.  We don’t feel that XU has much of a chance to advance the league’s banner further against Pitt, but never count out a Sean Miller team.  Xaviercruised to the Sweets against two good teams.

Verdict: A-.  The league was expected to win 2.52 games and they’ve already won three, so anything beyond that is gravy.  How pathetic is it that the A10 is outperforming the SEC by a country mile?

Horizon (2 bids, 0 remaining, 1-2 record)

The Horizon had a chance to make some serious noise in this Tournament, but typically-solid Butler couldn’t hold up its end of the bargain when it lost to #8 LSU (who was probably underseeded).  However, Cleveland St. so far has had the upset of the Dance with its throttling of #4 Wake Forest, so we’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Read the rest of this entry »

TBL, BIAH, CHJ and RTC have a little bet going where we both will choose the 34 at-large teams with the blog picking the most right getting access to the other’s vast collection of “cinema verite.”  Faces will be obscured to protect the innocent enterprising.  So here goes…

*we’re also sick of using the word “bubble,” so we’re starting a new one – the Globule.  Until further notice, that’s our word.

At-Large Teams

The Globule aka Enjoy the NIT, Fellas: Providence, San Diego St., Dayton, Boston College

A10 (1)

Xavier

ACC (5)

UNC, Wake Forest, Florida St., Clemson, Maryland

Big 12 (5)

Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma St.

Big East (6)

Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Villanova, Marquette, West Virginia

Big Ten (6)

Michigan St., Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Purdue/Ohio St.

Horizon (1)

Butler

Missouri Valley (1)

Creighton

Mountain West (1)

BYU

Pac-10 (5)

Washington, UCLA, Arizona St., California, Arizona

SEC (2)

LSU, Tennessee

WCC (1)

St. Mary’s

We all know that the calendar turned to March a little over 36 hrs ago, but did you know that we’re already on the verge of conference tournament season?  ESPN’s ballyhooed Championship Week doesn’t start for another seven days, but some of the smaller conferences are ready to tip it off and crown a champion.  Immediately, as in…  Tomorrow. 

Yes, the Big South, OVC and Horizon are all playing elimination games within the next 24 hours, and we’re quite sure that you weren’t aware of that.  The Patriot League begins Wednesday, and there will be ten other conferences that will start their tournament extravaganzas this week, with five of those finishing before Saturday is through.  In order to keep up with it all, we produced this schedule for our own internal use that might as well be made public for you guys also. 

Also keep in mind that RTC Live will be attending the festivities this week in St. Louis, Richmond and Las Vegas for the MVC, CAA and WCC Tournaments, respectively.  Should be a blast at all three of those high mids.

Here we go (through Mon. night’s games)…

Read the rest of this entry »

You may recall last week that we looked at how the power conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac-10, SEC) were doing halfway through the non-conference schedule this year.  We generally concluded that the ACC and Big East are currently at the top of the heap, and the SEC in particular should be booted out of the group.

What Mid-Majors Play For

But what about the mid-majors?  As important as the non-conference slate is for the BCS schools in terms of seeding and whether five or six teams are invited to the Big Dance, it’s even more important to the mid-majors who are fighting for simply a second or third bid and assuredly will see their conference RPIs drop once conference season begins.  So today we take a look at evaluating the mid-majors’ performance thus far, keeping in mind the dual criteria for success that we established last week – considerable success against your peers and domination of your subordinates.  We’ll add a third criterion for these mid-majors, which is a reasonable showing against your superiors (the power conference schools) as well.  So let’s take a look at the W/L numbers thus far (through 12.11.08):

It seems clear to us right off the bat that the Mountain West (ranked #7 by both Sagarin and Pomeroy) has the best overall profile thus far.  While it has struggled with its BCS record (.214), its measure in that category is only significantly worse than two conferences – the A10 (.355) and the WCC (.411) – in that regard.  But the MWC has absolutely dominated its peer conferences (.704) and its underlings (.900) as if it were a power onference-lite (watch yourselves, SEC).  It’s overall non-conference record is also outstanding for a mid-major, at 49-22 (.690), bettering its peers by a considerable margin (#2 - Missouri Valley - .583).

For the next best mid-major conference, we’re split between the Missouri Valley, Atlantic 10 and Conference  USA.  The A10 has a solid 11-20 (.355) record against the big boys, whereas the MVC (.176) and CUSA (.263) do not, but the MVC has performed significantly better against its peers (.583 vs. .357/.500, respectively).  All three conferences have pretty well owned their subordinates this year.  So how to distinguish the three?  Let’s go with the top-heavy theory.  According to Sagarin, the A10 has six teams in the top 100, the MVC has five, and CUSA has four.  Good enough for us.

There’s a pretty clear delineation between these top four mid-majors and the others – WCC, Horizon, MAC, WAC, Colonial, but we’re not going to try to distinguish from among this group because it’s largely too close to call based on the above data.  As it currently stands, it will be a struggle for any of these five conferences to put a second team into the NCAA Tournament this year (St. Mary’s needs to keep that in mind).  Nevertheless, we do want to point out a few interesting observations that we had along the way.

• The MAC is 0-16 against power conference schools.  You’re not going to be a mid-major very long playing like that.  The Colonial is barely any better.
• The WCC is a respectable 7-10 against the power conferences, but lays an egg against the low-majors (9-12).  We have to believe this shows just how top-heavy this conference is (w/ Gonzaga and St. Mary’s).
• The Horizon needs to play more games against D1 opponents – we can’t believe they’ve only played 12 games against the low majors (6-6).

We’ll check back in on this when we get to the end of the non-conference schedule, because at that point with few exceptions, conference positions are relatively static.

For those of your who haven’t been spending as much time on Rush the Court the past few months as you should (looking at myself in the mirror), we thought we would offer you a quick guide to what we have been working on over the past few months.

General Overview: Some top quality writing/prognosticating to get you in the spirit for the run from today until the early morning hours of April 7th, 2009.
- Finally, It’s Here: New RTC feature columnist John Stevens offers his thoughts about the upcoming season.
- A Little Preseason Bracketology: RTC co-editor (Do we even have titles?) rtmsf does his best Joe Lunardi impression and makes a surprising pick for his national champion. I’m smelling an attempt to make the RTC preseason bracketology championship the new Madden cover.
- Vegas Odds – Preseason Check-In: For the degenerate gamblers out there, RTC co-founder rtmsf offers an analysis of the Las Vegas odds for the 2009 NCAA champions for pure academic purposes. . .
- Preseason Polls Released: The surprisingly employed (I’m running out of titles here) rtmsf analyzes the AP and Coaches polls going into the season with a deeper look at unanimous #1 UNC’s early schedule.
- ESPN Full Court: 562 Games of Gooey, Delicious Goodness*: Once again, rtmsf comes through with the entire ESPN Full Court schedule with a Steve Nash-style assist from Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball.

Big Early Season News: While there are several big stories going into this season, there were 2 major stories that have come out recently that you should know about before you start watching games.
- Tyler Hansbrough Out Indefinitely: Who? Oh yeah, that guy. Everybody’s favorite for national POY and NBA Draft Day snub (get ready for the annual Dick Vitale rant) Psycho T will be out for a while, but we think the Tar Heels will be ok by March.
- Jai Lucas Leaving Florida: In a story that isn’t getting nearly the attention that the Psycho T story has (for good reason), Billy Donovan has lost last season’s starting point guard on the eve of the new season. While it appears that Lucas was probably heading towards a role as a backup point guard on the Gators, the timing of this announcement is surprising. It will be interesting to see what the Gators will do if freshman guard Erving Walker struggles in adjusting to SEC basketball.

Conference Primers: As part of our attempt to make a new-and-improved RTC, we hired the finest journalists in America to make our site more all-inclusive of the little people in the college basketball landscape. To that end we put together 31 conference previews (31 automatic bids to the Big Dance means 31 previews from RTC) with the help of the aforementioned correspondents.
- ACC
- America East
- Atlantic 10
- Atlantic Sun
- Big 12
- Big East
- Big Sky
- Big South
- Big Ten
- Big West
- Colonial
- Conference USA
- Horizon
- Ivy League
- MAAC
- MAC
- MEAC
- Missouri Valley
- Mountain West
- Northeast
- Ohio Valley Conference
- Pac-10
- Patriot League
- SEC
- Southern
- Southland
- Summit
- Sun Belt
- SWAC
- WAC
- West Coast Conference

As the season progresses, we will have more features and content including updates from all 31 conferences. We hope all of you are looking forward to the new season as much as we are and even if your team looks like it will struggle to make it to the NIT, remember the words of Kevin Garnett, who incidentally didn’t play a minute of college basketball (that’s another post), “Anything is possible!”

We’ve made it through eighteen of our thirty-one season conference primers so far, and our correspondents continue to top each other with their breadth of knowledge and coverage of the one-bid leagues.  So we want to thank them and once again highlight their fantastic work over the past few weeks by anchoring their primers in one post here, so that you (and we) can easily access them.  Going forward, we’ll primarily be dealing with the traditional multiple-bid conferences or conferences that should expect to see multiple bids this season.  Conference #13 will go up tonight, and we’ll be counting down to tipoff on Nov. 10, when the #1 conference primer will be unveiled. 

• #31 – SWAC  (JC of HBCUSportsBlog)
• #30 – MEAC  (JC of HBCUSportsBlog)
• #29 – Atlantic Sun  (Andrew Baker)
• #28 – Ohio Valley  (Ron Harris)
• #27 – America East  (Corey Johns)
• #26 – Northeast (Ray Floriani of College Chalk Talk)
• #25 – Ivy  (Marty Leon)
• #24 – Big Sky  (Jordan Freemeyer)
• #23 – Patriot  (Marty Leon)
• #22 – Big South  (Mark Bryant of Big South SHOUT)
• #21 – Big West  (Ryan ZumMallen of LBSports)
• #20 – Southland  (RTC)
• #19 – Summit  (Ryan Pravato of College Fast Break)
• #18 – Sun Belt  (Rick Henderson of The Owl’s Nest)
• #17 – MAAC  (Ray Floriani of College Chalk Talk)
• #16 – Southern  (Andrew Baker)
• #15 – MAC  (Greg Miller of WPSD Local 6)
• #14 – Horizon  (Damon Lewis of Horizon League Network)

Also, keep in mind that our correspondents will continue to bring RTC comprehensive coverage of each league throughout the season.  Each of the above leagues will have an update post every two weeks, beginning in mid/late November. 

We’re less than 48 hrs from the quasi-official start of practice (at least at Kentucky, Illinois and a few others)… 

• The Class of 2009 will definitely be keeping an eye on Brandon Jennings’ experience in Europe this year.
• So we can have D2 games on tv, but getting some good mid-majors on the ESPN Full Court package is damn near impossible?
• The Big West signed a new deal with ESPN, but unless you get the U, you’re pretty much out of luck.  Note to ESPN – put ESPNU games on the Full Court Package this year!  Find a way to watch Fullerton’s Josh Akognon anyway this year – trust us.
• STF pegs Purdue and Oklahoma as its breakthrough teams in 2008-09, and Baylor and Tennessee as its tipping-point teams.
• Talent = Title Contender.  Thanks, Gary.  This was a fun idea, but we don’t really trust DraftExpress for evaluating NBA talent that far out, do you?
• The Big 12 coaches like Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas/Baylor in that order.  Over in the Horizon League, Butler is picked fifh?!?!
• Tom Crean to NCAA on further penalties:  Enough is Enough!  Meanwhile, Kyle Taber goes on record stating that Indiana will no-way, no-how, finish last in the B10 this year.
• One jewel from Goodman’s blog – wait, Georgetown recruited a white kid?
• Insert Rick Pitino isn’t walking through that door joke here. 
• Speculation on where the top prospects in the Class of 2009 will end up.
• Dickie V. should stay away from MLB Playoffs predictions.   
• We must say, as an unabashed fan of God Shammgod, this is completely awesome.
• One man’s take on the top NCAA program of all-time.

What a week. So we’re a little late on this week’s blogpoll, among several other things, but we’re slowly getting caught up and feel that this week’s poll is the first one that accurately captures how teams are playing several weeks into the season. We’ve had a chance to watch most of the teams in the poll ourselves, and our illustrious blogging brethren have ostensibly done likewise. So here’s Week 3 (blogger ballots located here)…

Note: blogpoll does not include 11/27-28 games.

Justifying Our Ballot. We still rank UCLA #1 and UNC #2 ahead of overall #1 Memphis simply based on the fact that we believe UCLA and UNC have beaten better teams than Memphis thus far. Memphis looked solid in CvC wins versus Oklahoma and UConn, but those teams are probably mid-conference finishers this year. UCLA has a marquee win (w/o Darren Collison) against #13 Michigan St., a team that is better than we thought; and UNC has solid wins over likely NCAA teams Davidson, Old Dominion and #20 BYU (w/o Ty Lawson). Memphis will have an opportunity this weekend to improve its standing in our eyes with a win vs. #25 USC. Like everyone else, we raised #9 Texas A&M and #6 Duke on the strength of their wins in the PNIT and Maui, respectively, and #8 Texas got a nod into the top ten by virtue of its destruction of #12 Tennessee. In the lower reaches of the top 25, we still refuse to vote for #18 Clemson despite their win at Mississippi St. We’ve been down this road before with them, and if the Tigers are 14-0 going into the game vs. UNC on January 6, then we’ll consider it. We also left BYU, Miami (FL), and USC off of our ballot, figuring that Stanford, Ohio St., Wisconsin and Baylor had put together better resumes to this point. After the ACC/Big 10 meetings the last two nights, we’re really questioning our sanity on those two midwestern teams above.

Uncertainty. We’re still seeing blogger indecisiveness when it comes to Indiana and Michigan St., but some new additions at the low range of the top 25 populate our list this week. Here are the top five most uncertain teams (remember, a high std dev means greater variation in blogger rankings of that team):

• Indiana (std dev = 6.43; range = 10 to nr)
• Pittsburgh (6.39; 8 to nr)
• Clemson (5.74; 11 to nr)
• BYU (5.44; 13 to nr)
• Michigan St. (4.83; 8 to 21)

The top seven teams in the blogpoll are also the top seven lowest standard deviation this week.

Conference Call.

• Big East – 5
• ACC & Pac-10 - 4
• Big 12 - 3
• Big 10 – 2
• Atlantic 10 , CUSA, Horizon, MVC, Mtn West, SEC, WCC – 1

Wow, the SEC is really struggling right now, with only one team ranked (Tennessee) and that squad getting its doors blown off by Texas last week. The ACC only has four ranked teams, but leads all conferences with 6 of the 31 remaining unbeaten teams in D1. Impressive that half of that league is still flawless. Other BCS unbeatens: (Big East & Big 12 – 4 each; Pac-10 – 3; SEC – 1; Big 10 – 0).