1. It’s going to be a very important summer for Iowa, a team that has the potential to be one of the best teams in the conference if the Hawkeyes can shore up their defense. Fran McCaffery‘s group had as much scoring potential with a young core of players as anyone in the Big Ten, but the worst scoring defense in the conference kept them in the middle of the pack last season. The growth of  Eric May (coming off a back injury) and Melsahn Basabe (a member of the Big Ten All-Freshman team two seasons ago) will be crucial to the team’s success.
2. Nebraska needs all the help it can get in the difficult Big Ten under newly-hired coach Tim Miles, and its seems to have gotten a boost with the transfer of Terran Petteway. Formerly of Texas Tech, the 6’6″, 185-pounder is the third player to join the program in the last month after Deverell Biggs (first-team junior college All-American) and Sergej Vucetic (a 7’0″, 235-pound center and native of Serbia) joined the mix. Miles told the Omaha World Herald that Petteway is a “very dynamic player.”
3. Michigan got Trey Burke back for at least another season, so now John Beilein is looking for ways to bench him. Beilein tried to get Burke as many breathers as he could last year, but really couldn’t afford to do it as much as he would have liked. He says he’s going to give it another shot this season, and is willing to give freshmen considerable minutes in order to do so.
4. With all four participating schools at the forefront of the college basketball scene, the Crossroads Classic basketball event in Indiana has been extended through 2014. The event includes Indiana, Purdue, Butler and Notre Dame and takes place in mid-December at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Butler beat Purdue and Indiana beat Notre Dame in last year’s event. Indiana, figured to be one of the top teams in the country this year, will play Butler this upcoming season, while the Boilers will meet the Irish.
5. Good news: The television network that allows all of us to catch practically every Big Ten basketball game is doing well, which means more of the status quo moving forward. According to a report from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,  the Big Ten Network enjoyed $242 million in revenue for 2011 (figure courtesy SNL Kagan). That accounts for a 46% growth since the network’s first full year in 2008, and it means that the league is in a catbird seat when it comes to conference revenues.

1. With the ongoing changes to the landscape of college athletics it is often difficult to remember who is headed where and which conferences have ended up as the winners and losers in realignment. As usual, Luke Winn has proposed a solution by looking at how each conference’s overall strength has changed with the moves using data from KenPom. We can already see a certain segment of our readers beginning to twitch with that last sentence. As you would expect the biggest loser out of the major conferences is the Big East. Of course, there will be certain segments (probably the same ones that were already twitching) that will continue to believe that the overall strength of the conferences will not change even with all the movement.
2. Speaking of the Big East, do you remember that conference tournament that was held at Madison Square Garden and was one of the highlights of March? Yeah, not so much any more. Despite getting significantly weaker, there are some individuals in the Big East who are looking to expand its conference tournament to 18 teams. Outside of the logistical nightmare of trying to hold the Big East Tournament over six days in Madison Square Garden there is the even bigger nightmare of watching what could be the early-round play-in games for a significantly weakened conference. As it is some of the early-round games are sparsely attended by fans of schools who know their teams are mediocre at best. Can you imagine what it would look like with the worst Big East teams in those same spots? Yeah, we don’t want to either.
3. After a disastrous past few season Binghamton will be looking to head in a different direction as they are set to name Rider coach Tommy Dempsey as their next head coach. Dempsey, who grew up near Binghmaton, compiled a 119-105 record in seven seasons at Rider, which would be a big step up from the 23-70 that Mark Macon posted in three seasons at Binghamton including 2-29 last season. It is worth noting that despite his respectable overall record Dempsey has never taken Rider to the NCAA Tournament and last season his team had its fewest wins (13) since he took over since he took over as interim coach.
4. After last season’s Crosstown Shootout brawl, which we detailed from the scene, pundits from across the country weighed in on how the administrations from the two schools should handle the rivalry going forward. Yesterday, they revealed one part of their reaction–moving the game to a neutral site–and judging from the response we have heard the public does not appear to be buying into the move. Personally, we don’t understand this move. Outside of the symbolism of playing on a neutral court it seems like a pointless action since the same players will be on the court regardless of where they are and the same fans will be in the stands. If people want to act like idiots, they will do so regardless of which arena they are playing in.
5. We may not be fans of the decision to make the Crosstown Shootout a neutral site rivalry, but we are fans of the Crossroads Classic, which is held in the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The Classic, which was started last year to pair the premier programs in the state of Indiana–Butler, Indiana, Notre Dame, and Purdue–against each other, has been extended for at least two more years. As we have stated before we are big fans of these type of match-ups and advocated for more in our Big Four State Tournament series last year. For some states like North Carolina where the premier programs are all located in the same conference it is not a major issues, but there are plenty of other states, which we identified where it would be a big boost to all the teams involved and more importantly would generate more interest in college basketball.

Let’s not be fooled by the Matt Gatens Show we all witnessed  at the end of the season. (Though, give credit where credit is due — he was fantastic.) This is a talented young club that is on the rise and has the potential to give some conference teams fits in the near future, given their fast-paced style of basketball in the rough-and-tumble Big Ten. But as good as this team was on the offensive end (third in the conference) it was even more dismal on the defensive end (last place). That discrepancy must improve for Iowa to have a shot at becoming a contender in the conference. Let’s take a look back at the year that was:

Matt Gatens was one of the Big Ten's best players down the stretch. (Andy Lyons, Getty Images)

• In a nutshell: Fran McCaffery‘s run-and-gun style of offense is really starting to take shape in Iowa City, where the Hawkeyes averaged 73 PPG, third only behind Ohio State and Indiana. It helped that the Hawkeyes led the conference in steals, but the wins didn’t add up in spite of the offense due to the dismal defense (allowing 72.5 PPG). Gatens, who worked his way onto the All-Big Ten Third Team thanks to his team-best 15.7 PPG and late-season spurt, did all he could. He got some help from promising sophomores Melsahn Basabe and Roy Devyn Marble, who are sure to be key pieces in the future.
• Overachievement: The Big Ten had absolutely no shortage of impact freshmen (see Trey Burke, Cody Zeller, Branden Dawson, et al) but Aaron White was a somewhat unexpected yet consistent force for Iowa. He averaged 10.4 points and 5.5 rebounds per game as a newcomer and, in a few more years, could definitely show Big Ten Player of the Year-type talent. He was rated by Rivals as just a three-star recruit out of high school, but showed his big-game mettle by scoring 47 points in Iowa’s two NIT games. Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter.

With the announcement of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge schedule for next season, fans now have some important dates to circle on their calendars. The 14^th annual competition between power conference heavyweights will take place on November 27 and 28 with all games televised on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU. Eight of the teams in competition are currently slotted in the RTC preseason Top 25, and there are several enticing matchups between big-time teams. Given that it’s mid-May, it’s far too early to break down the individual strategic matchups, but we’ll give you the best games to look forward to, and why. The Big Ten has won three consecutive challenges after the ACC was victorious in the first 10. Here’s what the 2012 ACC/Big Ten Challenge presents us.

Last Season, Aaron Craft and Ohio State Punked Duke in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge (Getty Images/J. Robbins)

Prestige and Intrigue, North Carolina at Indiana (Nov. 27) – Two of the top five or six programs in college basketball history square off in the headline event of this challenge, and it’s going to be one of the biggest games of the non-conference season. North Carolina loses its four top players from last season, but don’t count out the Tar Heels next year. James Michael McAdoo returns along with a bevy of talented perimeter players in Reggie Bullock, Dexter Strickland, Marcus Paige, and Leslie McDonald. However, UNC has the task of playing in Bloomington against a Hoosiers squad that might be the top team in the country next season. With a lineup full of talented scorers and the experience of last season’s spotlight, Indiana will be a title contender and a strong favorite in this game. The battle between Cody Zeller and McAdoo inside is a matchup of perhaps the two most talented low post prospects in the country.

The Best of the Bunch, NC State at Michigan (Nov. 27) – While UNC at IU presents the greatest national intrigue, a game on the same night presents a better overall matchup. When NC State hits the floor at Michigan, we’ll be seeing two likely Top 10 teams meet with experienced talent. Lorenzo Brown against Trey Burke pits two of the nation’s best point guards going at it, with two different styles at the position. Tim Hardaway, Jr., and C.J. Leslie are each talented juniors for their respective teams that flirted with the NBA but are back to lead their contenders. Throw in strong recruiting classes for each squad and we’ve got a doozy. Lucky for the Big Ten, they once again have the home court advantage in this one.

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1. Next year’s ACC/Big Ten Challenge will be highlighted by three big matchups: North Carolina at Indiana, North Carolina State at Michigan, and Ohio State at Duke. There will also be three other games featuring solid teams: Minnesota at Florida State, Virginia at Wisconsin, and Michigan State at Miami. Given how down the ACC should be next year it is a pretty solid set of top-level games. The other games? They will be borderline unwatchable. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your opinion of tacky t-shirts), Tyler Zeller will not be playing, which means we will be spared countless shots of the Zeller family wearing those atrocious shirts with half of one logo on one side and half of another logo on the other side. Now they can just show their support for Cody Zeller instead of tormenting us with commentators talking about their split loyalties. Actually the commentators will probably still do that.
2. With all the talk of power moves and money being the driving force behind conference realignment it is somewhat amusing that the biggest winner of the chaos (at least for basketball) may end up being the Atlantic 10. Yesterday, reports surfaced that Virginia Commonwealth intended to move to the Atlantic 10 joining Butler as new members of the conference that lost Temple and Charlotte. This apparently was news to the CAA as the commissioner of the conference said that VCU has not made the CAA aware of its intention to do leave for the Atlantic 10. If the move does go through it will be interesting to see how the Atlantic 10 adapts to the loss of two major media markets while gaining two of the premier basketball programs in the country (mid-major or otherwise). Meanwhile, Old Dominion announced that it would explore a potential conference membership change although it did not indicate that it had an open offers to change conferences. Theoretically, VCU moving to the Atlantic 10 would close the door to a spot for Old Dominion, but with all the movement we have been seeing surely there will be an opening somewhere in the not too distant future.
3. We recently linked to a piece by Andy Glockner looking at the coaching carousel from a big picture view. Now we have his CBS counterparts–Jeff Goodman and Gary Parrish–analyzing each move on a team-by-team basis. One thing that we found amusing was that two writers (particularly Parrish) who have had no qualms ripping others including their colleagues (Poll Attacks, anyone?) were effusive in their praise of almost all of the new hires. The two exceptions: Trent Johnson to TCU, which was described as “a strange hire”, and possibly Ray Harper to Western Kentucky. Other than that it is basically all “good”, “great”, or some variation on that.
4. Like many people making a major decision, Florida State president Eric Barton uses a pro/con list to guide his decision-making. Unlike most people Barton isn’t trying to decide on something like what kind of car to buy. Instead, Barton’s pro/con list is about whether the school should stay in the ACC or move to another conference like the Big 12. As you can see the con list is literally quite a bit longer than the pro list, but the school may have 2.9 million more reasons per year to add to the pro list. If the school does make the move, which we still have a hard time seeing, it would create a fairly significant change in the ACC and likely start another wave of conference realignment moves.
5. After a brief hiatus since his last post (nearly two weeks) Luke Winn is back taking a look at three-point defense. Building on the work of Ken Pomeroy that we linked to in February, Winn examines the efficacy of teams that limit the number of three-point attempts and those that essentially invite their opponents to take shots from beyond the arc. For those of you who tend to get overwhelmed by advanced metrics it is a fairly intuitive piece that analyzes teams looking at the percentage of shots their opponents take that are short two-point attempts, long two-point attempts, and three-point attempts. While many successful teams take vastly different approaches to come to a successful result on defense, the degree to which they do so can be staggering. Having said that although we usually agree with Winn’s work we do have some qualms with his assertion that teams are essentially playing the lottery by allowing opponents to take three-point attempts increasing the likelihood of an upset. The anecdotal evidence can be spun to be compelling, but there are enough stories of good teams getting hot from three against better teams and still not winning (like Wisconsin against Syracuse this year) that we are not quite willing to accept the theory even if we agree with it on a theoretical level.

1. The biggest news to release on Wednesday was that the ACC has renegotiated its television rights deal with ESPN in light of the fact that it has added two additional members. The twin poaching of Pittsburgh and Syracuse from the Big East last year will result in a 32.9% increased annual payout for each school — from an average of $12.9M to $17.1M — proving that the new reality of cable channels willing to pay exorbitant amounts for college sports isn’t drying up anytime soon. The total amount ESPN paid for the rights to ACC football and basketball through 2026-27 is $3.6 billion, ensuring that Dookie V. will remain in his catbird seat at Cameron Indoor Stadium for the rest of his life.
2. Realignment has allowed the ACC and the Big 12 (reportedly) to re-negotiate their television deals in their favor this week, so it’s unsurprising that further positioning is already under way. Chip Brown at Orangebloods.com floated a scenario yesterday that suggests the ACC’s Florida State could find a better deal over in the Big 12 ($19M per year), a conference that might also allow the Seminoles to develop its own Longhorn-style network (worth another estimated $5M per year). Very little would surprise us at this point, and the dollars talk — for the better part of two decades, FSU has seemed a strange fit in the basketball-centric ACC, so a jump to the Big 12 with no invitation to the SEC forthcoming seems just as reasonable as anything else. Maybe they could go west as a package deal: According to Andy Katz’s report from the new Big East commissioner’s conference call on Wednesday, Louisville has informed the other schools in its league that they’re gone at the first decent offer (presumably from the Big 12 or ACC). We’re sure there will be no shortage of this chatter for the next, oh, four months.
3. Open and notorious solicitation of a school wanting to join a new conference isn’t confined only to the power leagues, of course. Oakland University (located in metro Detroit, not northern California) is hoping for consideration to replace Butler in the Horizon League when the Fighting Brad Stevenses move on to the Atlantic 10 after next season. A decade ago local rival Detroit, not wanting to share geographic space within the same league, managed to keep Oakland out — whether they’ll be able to turn down a program out of the Summit League that has made the NCAA Tournament three times in the last eight years remains to be seen. But it appears to be a natural fit if Detroit can find a way to play nice.
4. With the coaching carousel winding down (only three jobs open currently), Jeff Goodman rates some of the notable coaching hires of this offseason. Although he doesn’t give actual grades to the decisions thus far, it’s interesting that he writes that the Larry Brown hire at SMU is the one where he’s “Not sold… yet.” In reading through this list, though, perhaps the most striking thing in a year where there have been 43 coaching openings so far, is that brand-name jobs have quite simply not been available. Which was the best opening — Virginia Tech? Kansas State? It has definitely not been a good year for aspiring young coaches to trade up — at least, not yet.
5. It wasn’t a 1500-word missive to make his case for ‘nontraditional’ scheduling for a ‘nontraditional’ yet tradition-rich program, but Indiana’s Tom Crean on Wednesday gave his side of the story in the Great Scheduling Debate involving Kentucky and IU’s terminated home-and-home series. Crean basically argues that Indiana is already playing several neutral site games with the Crossroads Classic in Indianapolis and whichever exempt tournament that it is invited to in a given season (e.g., next year’s Legends Classic), so it doesn’t make sense for the Hoosiers to play yet another neutral site game with Kentucky. He also reminds everyone that it was the Wildcats, not the Hoosiers (both under different head coaches at the time, who moved the game back on campus in the mid-2000s after a 15-year run at neutral venues. As we argued on Tuesday, though, the notion that teams should play as many as a quarter of its pre-NCAA schedule in neutral venues seems a bit ridiculous to us, but we’re mostly bitter about the loss of one of the best regional rivalries in college basketball, so don’t mind us.

1. Plenty of Big Ten programs have undergone change in the last few months, and that includes Tubby Smith’s program at Minnesota. The most important news is that Trevor Mbakwe will return for another season, giving the Gophers a shot at finishing near the top of the conference standings next season. They’ll return some good young talent, and with a new athletic director at the helm, this group could finally be ready for a break-through. Amelia Rayno helps to catch us up.
2. Indiana is such a hot spot now that it’s become a game of musical chairs to find open scholarships. Matt Roth seems to be the odd man out at the moment, though he still remains hopeful that something will open up for his fifth season with the Hoosiers. As Terry Hutchens points out, Roth is eligible for another season as a medical redshirt, but a scholarship would have to become available on a roster that is already over-committed by one player. His other option is to walk on and pay out-of-state tuition.
3. It looks like Michigan State‘s modus operandi of scheduling some of the top non-conference opponents in the country will continue yet again for Tom Izzo’s group. It was announced recently that the Spartans will host Texas at Breslin Center this upcoming season.  The Spartans, who have played Rick Barnes’ team semi-regularly over the last decade or so, already also have Kansas on the schedule as part of the Champions Classic in Atlanta on November 13.
4. There’s no area more important to Illinois recruiting than Chicago, so there may not be an assistant coach more valuable to John Groce’s staff than Isaac Chew. Per this Chicago Tribune story, Chew has become Groce’s go-to man in the Windy City. The Chicago native has quickly risen through the ranks at Murray State and Missouri, and now has the opportunity to make his mark — and help Groce do so, as well — in Champaign.
5. Wisconsin and coach Bo Ryan received some unwanted attention this spring with the news surrounding Jarrod Uthoff and his desire to transfer elsewhere. The issue was finally resolved, but not until after the program’s image took a significant public relations hit. The Journal Sentinel‘s Jeff Potrykus recognizes that fact, but still believes Ryan and the program can recover quickly from the incident.

By now, you’ve heard that two of college basketball’s traditional powerhouses have decided to end their annual tradition of playing each other. Kentucky and Indiana have combined for 13 national championships, are two of the strongest and historic programs in basketball history, and could easily both be ranked in the top five to begin next season. Last year they played in two classic games that included some of the best moments of the entire season. Yet, at the height of the rivalry in many years, the schools could not come to an agreement on how to continue their games. While fans on both sides continue to voice their displeasure (synopsis: IU says “convenient”; UK says “trust in Cal”) , the Kentucky coach has now explained his side of the story. Feeling emboldened by his newly-minted national championship, John Calipari wrote an extended blog post over the weekend about his scheduling needs and why they contradict with the purpose of the UK-IU rivalry. While Calipari should be praised for his direct communication with fans and refreshing transparency, his actual argument doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. He states that his primary focus is to best prepare his team for the NCAA Tournament, but in his new “nontraditional” approach he’s stripping his players of valuable competition and fans of exciting matchups to look forward to. Calipari stresses that UK is a players-first program, but the agenda that he’s pushing doesn’t actually seem more beneficial for the players, and it’s not good for college basketball fans, either.

Coach Calipari Directed a Message to UK Fans About Kentucky's Scheduling Tactics (ESPN Photo)

Calipari’s post reinforces the idea that his scheduling desires are motivated by what’s best for his team during each individual season. He says that Kentucky is “going through things that no other program in the history of college basketball has gone through. No other program is losing five or six players a year.” While this is technically true, it’s not logical to give up long-term scheduling deals with other schools just because his team will look different every year. The fact that his team does in fact look different each season (presumably filled with blue-chippers as long as he’s around) would instead lead us to believe that he needs to challenge his teams right away in order to prepare the Wildcats for the rigors of March. Kentucky may still have won the title last season if it hadn’t played a challenging non-conference schedule, but early games against Kansas (neutral), Louisville (home), North Carolina (home), and Indiana (road) seemed to help speed up the learning curve of his precocious freshmen.

No head coach, including Calipari, wants to lose non-conference games. Losing those games can severely impact the RPI, which – as flawed of a measure as we all know it to be – is still the underlying metric that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee uses to compare and contrast teams. For years fans around the country (with UK fans especially vocal) have decried the “Coach K Method” of scheduling, questioning why Duke rarely challenges itself in the non-conference season to play true road games in an opponent’s building. There’s truth to the criticism – outside of the ACC/Big Ten mandate, Duke might play one other “road” game each season, usually confined to the Duke-friendly alumni corridor of the Mid-Atlantic from DC (Georgetown) through Philadelphia (Temple) to New York (St. John’s). These look like hostile road trips on paper, but plenty of Duke fans who live nearby scoop up tickets to support the Blue Devils, making those games more neutral than you might think. Duke then fills the rest of its non-conference schedule with other neutral site games against teams it should beat and home games against solid mid-majors like Belmont and Davidson, earning wins and good RPI juice in the process.

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1. In just the last three days, the Atlantic 10 has added Butler, the Mountain West has eviscerated the WAC with its additions of San Jose State and Utah State, and now Conference USA has finished it off as a major conference by grabbing Louisiana Tech to go along with the A-10’s Charlotte and the Sun Belt’s North Texas and FIU. There will be a quiz on all of these moves in mid-August. What does this mean from a college basketball perspective? Probably not much. Neither Charlotte nor Louisiana Tech have been relevant in a long time, and although North Texas made the NCAA Tournament in 2007 and 2010, winning in the Sun Belt is less challenging than it will be dealing with UTEP, Tulsa, Southern Miss, and UAB in a revamped Conference USA.
2. A little under two years ago we touched on an ESPN story about a high school basketball player named Jerry Joseph who may have actually been a 22-year old named Guerdwich Montimere. It was a bizarre story at the time, and it got only weirder as ultimately Joseph/Montimere was convicted and sent to prison for sexual assault on an underage high school student and tampering with government records. In a recent column for ESPN’s Outside the Lines, Wright Thompson attempted to connect all the dots of the saga in a meaningful way, putting a story behind the story of a wayward young man who no doubt got lost in the hype and fame of being the big man on campus. Great read.
3. Illinois fans caught a glimpse into the mind of one of their incoming transfers when Sam McLaurin, a senior at Coastal Carolina who will take advantage of the one-year graduate school exception, announced (via Twitter, of course) “F— it im going to Illinois #illinination” on Thursday afternoon. McLaurin, a 6’10” power forward who averaged 10/8 last season, will provide some additional frontcourt depth in the wake of Meyers Leonard’s departure to the NBA. He later apologized for his choice of words (“Hey everyone sorry about my language last night. I was just extremely excited to be apart of #illinination”), but we doubt anyone from Waukegan to Carbondale will care much so long as he can bring his numbers every night next season.
4. In one of the stupider bits of news to come out of our game this offseason (and there are plenty of candidates), Kentucky and Indiana have apparently decided to not renew its annual rivalry that dates back a half-century. The crux of the issue appears to be that UK wanted to move the series back to a rotating neutral site arrangement (likely splitting time between Indianapolis and Louisville, as it did from 1991-2005), while IU insisted on keeping the home-and-home series that had been in effect for the last seven years (and, of course, prior to 1991). If you read the tea leaves, and Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart suggests as much, it was John Calipari not “thrilled about going back to Bloomington” that appears to be driving this ridiculous decision. Look — we understand that a national championship coach typically gets what he wants when he wants it, but as Andy Glockner argues very well in this piece, that doesn’t mean that he’s right for wanting it. College basketball loses when rivalries like these end, and this is especially true now that IU under Tom Crean appears to finally be coming back around. Fix it.
5. What’s this, a MAY version of Luke Winn‘s Power Rankings? That’s right, now that the NBA Draft deadline has passed and we have a better sense of where the top recruits are headed next season, Winn put together a list of 16 teams that mimics the RTC Top 25 (released Tuesday) at the very top, but has some significant differences with respect to where we ranked schools such as Syracuse, Michigan State, and Arizona. As always, you’ll learn quite a few things that you didn’t already know about people, places and things surrounding the game, so make sure to check it out before you head into the weekend.

It’s never too early for these, right? We all love the debates, projecting who is too high or too low, and taking a closer look at the upcoming college hoops season — six months goes by quickly, promise. In quickly looking at the Top 25, one would surmise that having five of a team’s top players forgo the remainder of their college careers in favor of the NBA Draft would absolutely kill that team’s prospects for the upcoming season, but that is simply not the case for Kentucky. Last year’s National Champions check in at #2 in the Top 25, proving that John Calipari doesn’t rebuild, he reloads. It would not behoove us to let Kentucky steal the storyline, however, as Tom Crean’s Indiana Hoosiers are the top dog in what looks to be a banner upcoming year. In what was arguably the most exciting and high-flying game of last year’s Tournament, the Hoosiers fell to Kentucky in the Sweet Sixteen, but have nearly all the pieces back. Just two years ago this was a 12-20 team with no postseason experience, and now they are the top team in the land — according to our group of experts, at least. What a tremendous job Tom Crean has done. The usual Quick ‘n Dirty after the jump…

Whether it is through an exceptional recruiting class, or an impressive finish to the 2011-12 season coupled with a strong nucleus returning, the following five teams surged upward—and for good reason:

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