Rush The Court

Rob Dauster from Ballin is a Habit reports in from the Big East Tournament on some of the big news this afternoon…

A couple quick notes here from the press room chatter:

• Arinze Onuaku looks like he is going to be fine. He took a spill with about three minutes to go as Syracuse was trying to come back against Georgetown and had to be carried off the court. According to his doctor, however, it looks like the injury is just a strain and he should be ready go by the start of the NCAA Tournament.  “I think he’ll be back, unless something bad happens tomorrow. I’ve seen him worse,” Syracuse doctor Irving Raphael said after the game. “We’re hoping it’s just a strain, but tomorrow we’ll get an MRI. It’s already scheduled.”  Onuaku left on crutches.
• The other story that has been floating around is in regards to St. John’s head coach Norm Roberts. NY Post writer Lenn Robbins filed a story this morning claiming that a source told him that Roberts was going to be fired.  But as of now, that seems to be just the rumor that is circulating as nothing official as been announced. I’ve said it numerous times, but my personal opinion is that they should give Roberts at least one more year. He’s bringing back 10 seniors and only loses Anthony Mason, Jr., from the rotation. His kids play hard and stay out of trouble. In this day and age, that’s saying something.

1. Robbie Hummel aftermath.  Obviously, Purdue losing Hummel to a season-ending ACL injury will get a lot of attention.  Here’s what some of the big names are writing about it – Gary Parrish, Jeff Goodman, Mike DeCourcy, Andy Glockner.  Everyone agrees that this is a situation that Purdue will not be able to overcome.  One thing’s for sure, though — America may have found its team to root for in the postseason this year.
2. You gotta give it up for ESPN’s Jeannine Edwards going on John Calipari’s show and getting into a friendly banter about last year’s odd situation with former UK coach Billy Gillispie, well-chronicled on this very site.
3. Expect this to enable a lot of snarky dialogue today in the blogosphere: FIU head coach Isiah Thomas was ejected from his team’s game against Middle Tennessee State last night (a loss, 74-71).   Thomas ran onto the court to protest a call and was thrown out for his behavior.  FIU is now 7-23 on the season and 4-13 in the Sun Belt Conference, in case you were wondering (and we know you were).
4. Missouri’s Justin Safford joined Robbie Hummel with torn ACL injuries this week, but oddly, MU officials are leaving open the possibility of Safford returning to the team this season.  The junior starting forward tore the ligament in the Tigers’ blowout win over Colorado on Wednesday night, and he was averaging 9/4 in twenty minutes per game this year.
5. Syracuse is expecting to set a new on-campus record for attendance at the Carrier Dome on Saturday night for their battle with Villanova.  34,616 tickets have been sold, nearly a thousand more than the previous record crowd in 2006 for Gerry McNamara’s last home game.

Hummel’s Knee Buckles — Did Purdue’s Season? #3 Purdue 59, Minnesota 58.  Thirteen minutes into this game, Purdue star forward Robbie Hummel drove to his right into the paint, stopped, and squared his shoulders to the rim.  Simultaneously, his right leg slipped a little causing his knee to buckle and give out from underneath him.  It wasn’t a gruesome injury, but it was certainly forboding.  People say they hate to speculate about someone’s injury, but they proceed to do it anyway, so we’ll avoid those niceties here.  It looked like and his reaction certainly belied what we believe was an ACL injury in his knee:  The inability to initially put weight on the knee; the severe pain immediately after the fact, yet the ability to stay on the bench for the remainder of the game; the crutches; the need for an MRI as soon as possible.  We really hope we’re wrong about this, but as someone who has had a couple of these tears ourselves, we sorta think we know it when we see it.  If Hummel is out for the rest of the season (and Gary Parrish reports that there’s not much optimism to the contrary coming out of the Boilermaker camp), then despite the heart and grit and skill we saw on display tonight at Minnesota, a phenomenal season will without question reach a premature conclusion.  There is absolutely no way that Purdue can go to the Final Four without Hummel in the lineup.  It’s not as if he’s a dominant player in the mold of Kenyon Martin (broken leg in 2000) or Derek Anderson (torn ACL in 1997), but he’s an extremely important piece of what Purdue does, and there simply isn’t enough time (or elite talent) to re-craft a plan for life post-Hummel.   As a microcosm of this unfortunate truth, look at what happened tonight.  Purdue was leading 26-14 when Hummel got hurt.  After his injury the Boilermakers scored two more FGs in the next twelve minutes of action.  Obviously, Matt Painter will have time to adjust his game plan in coming days and the recent emergence of Keaton Grant (10/5/4 assts) doesn’t hurt, but Hummel is such a multifaceted piece of the Purdue attack that someone like him cannot just be plugged in overnight.  The aforementioned Grant was huge down the stretch tonight, and we expect that more will be asked from the talented duo of E’Twaun Moore (11/3) and JaJuan Johnson (14/10), but it’s going to take some really good luck in the form of tomorrow’s diagnosis for Purdue to have a chance to fulfill its lofty goals this season.

Let's All Hope For the Word "Sprain" for Hummel (AP/J. Wheeler)

No Harangody, No Problem.  Notre Dame 68, #16 Pittsburgh 53. The Irish came off the schneid in a big way tonight even with its star Luke Harangody still sitting on the bench with a knee bruise injury.  The high-scoring offense slowed down its attack, finding that running down the shot clock resulted in better looks from three, of which the Irish nailed 10-18 this evening.  Pitt, on the other hand, was never able to find the mark from deep, going 4-18 from three and even getting killed on the boards (-10), unusual for a Jamie Dixon-coached team.  Perhaps the Panthers were a little worn out from playing and beating WVU, Marquette and Villanova in their last three games, but it was to ND’s benefit as the Irish took control early and never relented.  Mike Brey’s team still has significant work to do before we start talking about NCAA again, but this was a big step in the right direction.

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1. This is leftover from the weekend detritus, but Matt Doherty made an ass of himself at SMU’s game versus Memphis on Saturday (a 13-pt loss to the Tigers) when he engaged in name-calling with some fans behind the Mustang bench.  Look, it was funny when he called out the Duke cheerleaders to his own team in the huddle, but woofing it up with fans over the quality of their school and so on is just pathetic.
2. It’s been that kind of a year at UCLA.  Reeves Nelson needed to undergo eye surgery on his retina, which was slightly torn during an injury he suffered last week at Washington State where he landed face-first after a dunk.  His timetable for return is uncertain, but his doctor said that he could be back in action as soon as this coming weekend.
3. Northern State’s Don Meyer announced his retirement effective at the end of this season.  He has won 922 games over the course of a 37-year head coaching career in both the NAIA and NCAA Division II.  His NSU teams twice made the D2 regional finals, and his NAIA teams at Lipscomb twice made the national semifinals before bowing out.
4. Even mired in a disastrous 1-11 Big 12 season, Doc Sadler’s job at Nebraska appears safe.  Ahh yes, the beauty of coaching basketball at a football school: Low expectations.  Keep cashing those $800k checks, Doc.
5. We made reference to this on last night’s ATB, but what would something like this cost Butler next year in the League?  $25k?  $50k?

1. The twitterati was abuzz yesterday with the discovery of UNC forward Ed Davis’ name and photo as a client on a sports agent’s website.  The site is down now, but  Sports Agent Blog captured a screenshot and PTA Sports Management has given a statement to reporters that suggests there may have been some contact with the player at some point in time, but that this whole thing was a “mistake.”   Color us extremely cynical, but we think we all know what happened here.  And when we find out next month that Davis is submitting his name to the NBA Draft, it’ll make sense.  But one quick retort before it even gets started…  if Davis signs with another agent, it doesn’t at all prove that there were no illegal contacts here.  All it proves is that Davis has enough sense to fire an agent who could be so ridiculously stupid as to put his name and face on their website before he’s formally made the decision.
2. UCLA’s James Keefe will have shoulder surgery and will miss the rest of the season, effectively rendering the senior’s career over.  He only averaged 2/2 throughout the course of his career, but Howland was enamored with his defense and toughness, so he played in 111 games in his Bruin tenure.
3. Seth Davis gives us his weekly mailbag, and he devotes more than a third of it to questions about the ACC.  We have to agree that one thing that really ticks us off about modern-day conferences is the loss of round-robin schedules, but that’s unfortunately true for every major conference except the Pac-10 (oops, we said major conferences, didn’t we) these days.
4. Answer: USC’s hearing in front of the NCAA Infractions Committee that took place yesterday.  Question: things that are more pleasant than what Tiger Woods will do in front of the world later this morning.
5. Gregg Marshall of Wichita State can get a little testy at times, and this video where he attacks local reporter Bob Lutz for putting “negativity” in the minds of some Shocker fans is a joy to watch.  The video is below, and you can read Lutz’s original article here and his retort here.  Justified?

1. Knowing what we know about NC State, this idea to use a real wolf as the team mascot will not end well.  Then again, maybe the wolf can “escape” and devour Sidney Lowe during a rampage — that might make some of their fans happy.
2. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan pulled no punches in his address to the NCAA yesterday, stating that college basketball is tainted by ‘renegade’ coaches and that the one-and-done rule is essentially an academic sham.
3. The hits keep coming for DePaul.  Just days after firing their coach Jerry Wainwright, the Blue Demons lost their best player Mac Koshwal 2-4 weeks with a foot injury.
4. Luke Winn is back with his power rankings in the best read of the week, as usual.  It’s a little scary that we remember those LJ/Augmon t-shirts from the days when the high fade was still rockin like Marley Marl and De La Soul.
5. OJ Mayo continues to hide behind his agent when it comes to substantive answers while maintaining that he loves USC and would have never done anything inappropriate like, oh, maybe take money to attend the school.  Look, we know he’s not legally obligated to say a word, but just once we’d like to see an athlete come out in his prime and say, “yeah, I did all that stuff and more.  So what?”  Maybe by thumbing his nose at the NCAA, it’ll help embarrass the organization into re-assessing how they do business.

This has been buzzing around for 24 hours, but it’s now been confirmed by Jeff Goodman that Ohio State superstar and November NPOY favorite Evan Turner will return to the court this evening in the Buckeyes’ home game against Indiana.  It was a little bizarre how everyone in Hoops Nation seemed to forget about Turner as soon as he broke several vertebrae in his back in a nasty fall versus Eastern Michigan.  We wrote in this space a month ago that Ohio State would be lucky to go .500 while he was out (expecting him to be on the mend until early February), and they’ve gone 3-3, losing all of their away games.  After tonight’s game against IU, the Buckeyes face games at Minnesota and Purdue, with a home game against Wisconsin.  OSU needs Turner back on the floor, and in a big way.  Even if he’s not 100% tonight or this weekend, his presence will go a long way toward keeping his team focused and calm.  This is great news for the Buckeyes, and even better news for college basketball. 

1. Cal’s hustle and glue guy Jorge Gutierrez will be out of both Bear games this week (vs. UCLA and USC) with a sprained right knee that he suffered in a game against Stanford over the weekend.  Along the same lines, UCLA’s Jerime Anderson will be benched in the Cal game for missing a rehab session, meaning that Tyler Honeycutt will get the first start of his career.
2. Former Wolverine and current Domino’s Pizza CEO David Brandon will take over as the new Michigan AD.  We know there’s a joke here somewhere.
3. The first Korean to ever earn a D1 basketball scholarship, Maryland’s Jin Soo Choi, is returning to his home country to pursue basketball opportunities there.
4. Kalin Lucas is prepping for MSU’s game with Wisconsin by calling the Badgers a “dirty” team.  Should be fun tonight in East Lansing.
5. Were the self-imposed penalties that USC placed on its basketball program too light?  CNNSI’s George Dohrmann thinks so.

1. Great, great news about Texas A&M’s Derrick Roland about his broken leg suffered in A&M’s game at Washington two nights ago.  His surgery was successful and he will likely head home today or tomorrow for Christmas, and even better, according to the surgeon, he should be able to play basketball again at some point in the future.
2. Jeff Goodman is one national writer who agrees with our assessment that Texas should be the #1 team in the polls right now.  The fact is that they’ve just got a better resume than Kansas at this point in the season AND they’ve looked better in doing it.
3. Luke!  Go ahead, put Texas #1 in this week’s power rankings.  We know you want to.  C’mon, man, everybody’s doing it.
4. Talk about being a tough critic – Seton Hall’s Herb Pope called his own team a “fraud” because they have a loss to Temple on their record.  Guess we’ll find out just how fraudulent the Pirates are this Saturday when they host West Virginia, won’t we?
5. Here’s your holiday treat.  Lost Letterman listed the top ten most despised players in CBB history, and while there are always quibbles with lists like these, we love that they did their homework to show video evidence of Art Heyman (Duke) and Corky Taylor (Minnesota).  Here’s Part II (#10-#6) and Part I (#5-#1).  Btw, there’s absolutely no doubt about #1, and anyone who disagrees didn’t live through it.

Heading into an interesting Saturday of games, we’ve got a few dollops of knowledge that will help you navigate things.  Keep in mind we’ll be doing our first weekend Boom Goes the Dynamite this afternoon, in addition to RTC Lives for Butler vs. Ohio State and the Wooden Classic this afternoon…

1. UNC’s Marcus Ginyard will be held out of today’s game against Presbyterian with pain in his foot.  A UNC doctor was quick to say that this pain was unrelated to last year’s stress fracture that Ginyard suffered, but it is in the same foot.  This is a ‘precautionary’ measure to keep Ginyard from fracturing the foot.  UNC undoubtedly won’t need the defensive dynamo today, but against #2 Texas next Saturday?  Yeah, probably want him in the lineup then.
2. Some Comings and Goings.  Wake Forest junior guard Konner Tucker is leaving the school after seven games (he was  JuCo transfer), and St. Mary’s fifth-year senior guard Wayne Hunter is out for the rest of the season after tearing his ACL in a game this week against Utah State.  In terms of relative importance, the Hunter loss is much more significant, as he was averaging 12/3 for the season and was one of the best perimeter defenders for the Gaels.  Tucker was only averaging 2.2 PPG in just over five minutes per contest.
3. LeBron a fan of John Wall?  Who isn’t?
4. Unless Notre Dame is interested, and they’re not, the only way this makes sense is if the Big Ten can poach another major conference football power.  Missouri?  Kentucky?  West Virginia?  Pittsburgh?  Louisville?  It’s fun to speculate about this, but from a hoops perspective we’d hate to see the Big East change at the top (you can send the bottom quarter to the A10 or America East for all we care).
5. Want to get ready for today’s games — Seth Davis, Gary Parrish and Jeff Goodman give us a pretty good rundown of what to watch this weekend.

1. Rutgers inside force Gregory Echinique will miss approximately a month due to eye surgery to correct a pre-existing condition recently.  Which begs the question – if it was pre-existing, why not have the surgery during the offseason?  Did it become aggravated?  The 6′9 forward is averaging 13/8/2 blks on the season, and the Scarlet Knights will undoubtedly miss his presence in upcoming games against beefy frontlines at North Carolina, Cincinnati and West Virginia.
2. This is rich.  Binghamton continues to pay coaching disaster Kevin Broadus his full $230k yearly salary while interim coach Mark Macon draws one-quarter as much money for, you know, actually coaching the remaining players on the team.  At least Macon is getting a raise, although the amount of the increase was not disclosed by the university.  As for Broadus, the “job” he’s earning six-figures for right now is to assist SUNY with their investigation into the Binghamton athletic department.  What does that mean exactly?  Get coffee?  Make copies?  Do both at the same time?
3. Luke Winn probably knocked this article about the first Irianian player in D1 basketball out in fifteen minutes while surfing his blackberry iPhone and eating a bran muffin, which should probably tell you something about the talent he has for research and writing.  It would take us three straight weeks just to pen the first paragraph.
4. Memphis filed an appeal against the NCAA’s decision to vacate its 2008 season based on the Derrick Rose SAT scandal, even with the distinct possibility that the school could face a harsher punishment than currently imposed if they did so.  We’re not really keen on the NCAA Committee on Infractions using this heavyhanded method of leverage to try to force schools to swallow their initial decision just because they said so.  Memphis correctly argued that this creates a “chilling effect” for schools that wish to use their legal right to appeal, and even cited language from a 2001 case against UNLV to that effect.  We’re starting to wonder if someone at the NCAA lost a lot of money on Memphis that season, because this is taking the appearance of vindictiveness.
5. Jumping back to Tuesday’s discussion on Expansion 96, Andy Katz weighed in yesterday on his blog.  He noted that recently deceased NCAA President Myles Brand was steadfastly opposed to expansion along with several of the other traditionalists, and we’re wondering if the power vacuum in Brand’s absence hasn’t created a bit of a money grab among some of the dissenters within the NCAA heirarchy.  Let’s hope tradition wins out, or at worst, the option that Katz describes (four play-in games, pushing the Tourney up to 68 teams) is the preferred result if things must change.

1. In case you missed it amidst all the football over the weekend, leading NPOY candidate Evan Turner broke two vertebrae in his back when he fell on a dunk attempt and will miss up to eight weeks as he recovers from this injury.  This is unquestionably a huge blow to Ohio State’s Big Ten and national chances this season, as it’s always uncertain how someone will respond both physically and mentally to such a blow.
2. Georgia Tech sophomore guard Iman Shumpert will miss 3-6 weeks because of surgery on his right knee related to a meniscus tear.  Tech, at 6-1 is off to its best start since 2006, and Shumpert’s 8/5 APG is a big part of that.  Other than a home date against Florida State on 12/20, the schedule is fairly light for the Jackets until after the new year, when road trips to Charlotte, Georgia and a home game against Duke await.   Hopefully Shumpert will be back in action before then.
3. Did you catch John Wall over the weekend?  Two plays in particular in the first half seemed to represent just how sicknasty this guy can be.  One resulted in a crossover step-through for a full-speed dunk; the other resulted in a ridiculous reverse layup on the break that only he knows how he got to roll in.  Mike DeCourcy called it the collegiate version of the famous Dr. J dunk, while Jeff Goodman believes that the only reason the second half was close was because Wall cramped up for a while.  Fair points, both.  We’d still like to know the real reason(s) why Roy Williams never offered Wall a scholly, though.
4. Southern Miss head coach Larry Eustachy, not a fan of Rick Stansbury, eh?
5. South Florida reported to the St. Petersburg Times on Friday that they have no record of inquiry from the NCAA, which disputes a previous report by Fanhouse that the NCAA has opened an investigation into the school based on illegal benefits given to Gus Gilchrist and open practices run by assistant coach Terrelle Woody.

1. It turns out that the layup-line injury to Texas guard Varez Ward suffered Tuesday night was indeed as bad as it looked.  He will miss the entire season with a ruptured quadriceps, and surgery is scheduled for next week.  It’s a tough break for Rick Barnes’ team, but the good news is that he’s loaded in the backcourt with J’Covan Brown, Avery Bradley and Dogus Balbay all currently vying for minutes, and Jai Lucas becoming eligible at semester’s end.   Texas will be fine.
2. Bob Huggins announced on Wednesday that his star forward Devin Ebanks will make his debut in Thursday’s first round game at the 76 Classic against Long Beach State.  The world may never know what ‘personal issues’ struck Ebanks over the last week, but we hope that whatever it was it’s settled.
3. On a related note, UCLA forward Nikola Dragovic has also been reinstated to play in Thursday’s 76 Classic by head coach Ben Howland, but he is not expected to start in James Keefe’s place just yet.
4. Jeff Goodman totally one-upped us on our recent tour de basketball by ending up in San Juan, PR, but he shares with us ten things he learned on this road trip.   Major disagreement on one point, though.  We didn’t find Evan Turner to be all that inconsistent in NYC last week — after all, he had 49/25/10 assts in two games on 18-28 shooting.  We did have 14 turnovers, however, so we assume that’s what Goodman is referring to here.  Sure, he may struggle as a point guard at times, especially in terms of decisionmaking, but we’re really not seeing him having many struggles in terms of a player — his average game on a given night is still better than all but about ten players in the country, in our humble opinion.  And when he’s dialed in, we’re not sure there’s anyone better.
5. One of our favorite annual columns from Seth Davis is when he predicts the top ten breakout sophomores for the upcoming season.  Last year he was right on the money with several, including superstars Jeff Teague, Kalin Lucas and Chris Wright.  This year’s column has a couple of interesting choices (Larry Drew II and Tony Woods come to mind), and we’re wondering how nobody among UCLA’s sophomore corps can be on the list, but it makes for interesting debate and discussion.

Finally, have a Happy Thanksgiving of Hoops, everyone!

1. Minnesota freshman Royce White might be looking to plead out of his legal problems arising out of an incident with a security guard at the Mall of America.  What this means for his future with Tubby Smith’s team?  Status unclear.
2. These comments were never going to end well for Mississippi State junior forward Kodi Augustus.  The repentant player will miss Thursday’s game against SE Louisiana and Saturday’s game against Bethune-Cookman.  Surely MSU will be ok.
3. Purdue’s incumbent point guard, Lewis Jackson, who was already suspended for a variety of reasons, injured his foot last week and had surgery to repair the problem today.  He’s officially listed as out indefinitely but Boiled Sports believes it will be for a month or more.
4. Your Big West Championship is moving across Anaheim from the Convention Center to the Honda Center.  Get your tickets now.
5. Isiah Thomas got his first collegiate win at FIU last night.  Yes, it was against NAIA school Florida Memorial, and yes it was only by six points (88-82), but a win is a win, and as Isiah said afterwards, “you start wondering if you’re ever going to win a game. I told the guys at halftime, ‘I don’t care how we win. I just want to win the game, go home, rub my dog, wake up in the morning and see the sun.”  Mmm-hmmmmmm.

Tennessee Loses Another Player.  This time it wasn’t under horrifically scary conditions, but senior guard Josh Tabb, who was already on indefinite suspension by Bruce Pearl, left the program to spend time with his ill mother.  He only played 17 MPG last season, but he was fairly effective providing backcourt depth to Bobby Maze and Scotty Hopson, averaging 3/2/2 and shooting a high percentage from the floor (51%/42%).  It’s looking more and more like UT will be playing five 6′7 guys at certain points of the season.  UT: the Golden State Warriors of college basketball. 

Stanford As Well.  Sophomore guard Jeremy Green, an all-Pac-10 freshman last season, was suspended indefinitely by Coach Johnny Dawkins for violation of unspecified team rules. In relatively limited action last year, Green averaged 6/2 and shot 46% from three-point range, but he was expected to become a major contributor this season as the young Cardinal begins rebuilding.  This comes on the heels of more bad news last week, when 6′8 freshman forward Andy Brown was lost for the season to a knee injury.  Assuming we don’t see Green back in uniform this season, it could be shaping up as a long year in Palo Alto for Dawkins in his second year there. 

Nimrod Will Play.  Billy Donovan received good news from the NCAA this week, as the governing body cleared point guard and soon-to-be-opposing-fan-favorite Nimrod Tishman to play this season at Florida.  The 6′5 Israeli freshman was a late pickup for the Gators after Nick Calathes bolted for the pros, but according to Donovan, he may not see much court action this season, as Erving Walker, Kenny Boynton and Ray Shipman are currently ahead of him on the depth chart. 

Uncertainty About John Wall.  The John Wall Circus continues in Lexington, as Coach John Calipari stated during last night’s post-scrimmage press conference that Wall “has been cleared in every way” even though the UK president, Lee Todd, is on record this week stating that the school and NCAA are investigating his association with Brian Clifton, his AAU coach who was also a certified agent at the time.  Worst case is Wall pays back a little bit of money and misses 10% of UK’s games (Nov. 13 – Morehead State; Nov. 16 – Miami (OH); Nov 19 – Sam Houston State).  Not a huge deal, although we’re pretty excited around here to see the guy play. 

UCLA and Washington Can’t Even Hold Full Practices.  But for different reasons.  At UCLA, five players (Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson, James Keefe, Brendan Lane and Mike Moser) all have had minor injuries that are holding them out of practice.  None are serious enough to worry about, but is this a sign of bad luck or Howland toughening up his troops in Westwood?  At UW, seven players, including Quincy Pondexter and Venoy Overton, have been out sick with the flu so far this very young season.   

Breakable in the Big East.  St. John’s star Anthony Mason, Jr., has re-aggravated a hamstring injury that he originally suffered while on a Labor Day trip  to Canada, and will miss the next 4-6 weeks, possibly missing their first 3-4 games.  The  wing player sat all but three games last season after tearing a tendon in his foot, and is expected to play a big role in the Red Storm’s plans for this season.  UConn guard Jerome Dyson  suffered a less-serious contusion on his left knee over the weekend, the same knee that he tore the ACL in last February.  He should be fine, according to Jim Calhoun. 

Let’s play hard but be careful out there, huh?

Ed. Note: for our Midnight Madness wrapup post, click here.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our first Boom Goes The Dynamite of the new season.  And now, we can say those words — “new season.”  For tonight is the final hurdle in that long lull of the off-season that we have to cross.  Maybe it’s inappropriately named, but who cares?  Tonight is Midnight Madness across the country.  Schools all over the place have got the festivities going, the first official games are less than a month away, and we can finally say that the new season is here.

ESPN-U’s broadcast is minutes away from starting.  I’m John Stevens, one of the editors here at Rush The Court, and I’ll be live-blogging the whole way with RTMSF, our founder and guru, behind the scenes watching message boards, Twitter accounts, and getting texts and video from all over, and we’ll put up everything we get.  So settle in, enjoy the coverage, and let us know your opinions as always.  Keep hitting that refresh button, and we hope you enjoy it.  Most of all — welcome.  It’s finally here.

9:01pm:  Here are some tweets RTMSF has already procured from various sources:

Mike Davis, Illinois

IlliniBalla24… @BuckWildBill33:  Three point contest tonight, i’m looking to go 15 for 15 <—- I like ur confidence but I like @dkeller23 for a bill lls

Abdul Gaddy, Washington

gaddy0uw…Midnight madness tonight! Everybody come support

Jim Boylen, Utah

JimBoylen…Talking to the media for a few minutes before practice starts. We’re going to hit the ground running!

Tom Crean, Indiana

TomCrean…http://twitpic.com/lr6zu – The first four in line for Hoosier Hysteria

Gary Williams, Maryland

MDCoachWilliams…MARYLAND MADNESS IS HERE!!!! Come out to the Comcast Center and check out all the action.

9:12:  Evidently the University of Kentucky had recording artist Drake at the festivities.  No report on Ashley Judd’s whereabouts.

9:16:  Right now, just lots of talk by Katz, Gallindo, and Branch.  Mostly about North Carolina.  Keep in mind, in the race for all-time wins, UNC is only 4 behind Kentucky, and the two face off on December 5th.  Might be REALLY important.

9:20:  Nice UNC picture:

9:24: And here’s Drake from Kentucky:

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Tennessee’s Emmanuel Negedu underwent surgery today to have a cardiac defibrillator placed inside his chest to monitor his heart and track any irregularities in its beat.  This means he is assuredly out of the lineup for the 2009-10 season, and in all likelihood, his basketball career has ended.

But he has his life.  And for what must have seemed like an eternity to people at the scene last Monday, he didn’t have that.  After a weightlifting session, Negedu challenged UT guard Bobby Maze to a sprint on the indoor football field at the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center on campus.  After he won the race, he suddenly fell over when his heart inexplicably stopped beating.  Teammate Scotty Hopson sprinted back to the training room, found trainer Chad Newman, who, along with director of sports medicine Jason McVeigh, shocked Negedu’s heart back to life.

He spent the last week undergoing tests both in Knoxville and the Cleveland Clinic, and the apparent schedule of treatment included today’s surgery.  After Negedu gets used to the idea that the procedure will help him remain alive, we’re sure that he’ll learn to appreciate this choice even though it may mean his basketball life as a player is over.  He wasn’t a major contributor to the UT team last season, but he showed a good amount of promise, and not having roundball in his life will undoubtedly be difficult for him.  Negedu  has had an eight-day period unlike that many 20-year olds will ever face, so we hope that his family and support network will be there for him when he’s trying to figure out what to do with a significant amount of additional free time on his hands.  The good news is that Tennessee will allow him to remain on scholarship to finish his degree, and we commend the university for that.  If he’s interested in remaining in basketball in some capacity, we’d love to see him near the UT bench as a student assistant of some sort.

Sidenote: what’s with UT and the serious health issues lately?  Two seasons ago, all-american Chris Lofton was playing with cancer and now Negedu has a heart attack at age 20?  ACLs and other minor sports-related injuries (i.e., Melvin Goins, today) make sense, but these are serious issues.

Every year around the few weeks prior to formal practice you start to see these types of reports of players getting injured during workouts.  You hate to see it, but at least in most of these situations, the player knows that the year is lost and can start thinking about a full year of recovery rather than trying to rush it.  Case in point:

Notre Dame Loses Scott Martin

Bad news out of South Bend today – Scott Martin, a 6-8, 219 lb. junior guard who was expected to start for the Irish in 2009-10, will miss the entire season due to a torn ACL in his left knee.  Before transferring to Notre Dame, Martin averaged 8.5 points in his freshman year at Purdue, where he played 21.9 minutes per game.  Those numbers would have been helpful for Mike Brey’s team this year, as Martin seems to be in the same build as Ryan Ayers, a 6-7, 210 lb. guard who scored 11.1 ppg in 2008-09, his senior season.  The injury occurred during preseason workouts yesterday, and an MRI earlier today confirmed the ACL tear.

It remains to be seen who will fill in now that Martin’s Fighting Irish debut will be delayed another year. Besides Luke Harangody, no one on the team grabbed five rebounds a game last year, and now Brey will be forced to fill in with a smaller player (6-3 Ben Hansbrough, also in his first year after a transfer from Mississippi St.) or someone with little to no experience. While none of the incoming freshmen at Notre Dame garnered more than three stars from Rivals.com and Scout.com, they may see the floor more than expected. The Irish were already entering the season with questions as to how they would replace Kyle McAlarney, who was second on the team in scoring (15.0 ppg) and first in offensive efficiency. Undoubtedly, Mike Brey expected Scott Martin to help answer some of those questions.

Emmanuel Negedu Medical Update

It was a very quiet weekend in college hoopsland, which is a good thing, because the RTC staff is working madly behind the scenes to get things together for the upcoming season.  You guys realize that we’re seven weeks to the day away from the first game, right (Nov. 9 – FIU @ UNC in the CvC)?

• Jeff Goodman wrote a post on his blog last week that asked the question of which teams in 09-10 could be categorized as the deepest in college basketball.  He concluded that Big 12 stalwarts Kansas and Texas along with Kentucky are all bursting at the seams with nasty talent.  We have no dispute with him there – you’d have to be blind to state otherwise.  But after thinking about it a bit, we were left with the so-what question.  Having 10-12 players at your disposal doesn’t mean a whole lot unless you’re willing to use them, and we wondered what Self, Barnes and Calipari’s coaching history could tell us about just how important that depth will be for them this season.  Thanks to KenPom’s site, we did a quick analysis of how these coaches used their benches over the last three years (data was only available from 2007-09).  As you can see in the table below, the two Big 12 coaches are much more likely to ride their starters over the course of a season than Calipari will.  But none of them will often be accused of leading the way in bench usage.  Of course, if we had players like Kevin Durant, Brandon Rush, Derrick Rose and so forth at our disposal, we’d probably be hesitant to bring in their backup also.
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• Luke Winn broke down his top ten nonconference schedules last week (among the good teams), and we really don’t have much else to say about his analysis, which is spot-on as usual.  Calling out Big East teams Pitt and Syracuse was great, especially since we all know that they’ll use the excuse of being young this year (true), even though they always pull this never-leave-home stuff in the preconference slate (also true).  We also noticed another oddity in Winn’s “Major Generosity” section, where he points out that UNC, Georgetown and Michigan St. will visit such titans as Charleston, Savannah St. and The Citadel, respectively, this season.  Strangely enough, these three homestanding schools are within about a two-hour drive of each other.  A weird confluence of luck , friendships and payback games means that the Low Country will be privileged to host three of the best teams in the nation on their turf within a six-week period starting November 21.  If you live around there, get your tickets now – this will probably never happen again!  Oh, and back at ya, Luke.
• Quick Hits.  Bilal Batley: yeah, this was it.  The Jewish Jordan: retires at 27.  Greg Monroe: ready to forget about last season.  Gene Iba: one more season for Hank’s nephew.  Freshmen in 09-10: seems eminently reasonable.  Arkansas Gangbang: someone will be punished for something.  The New Myles Brand:  Michael Adams?  Junior Cadougan:  Marquette’s presumed starting PG out for the season.  Truck Bryant: was there ever a question?  Josh Tabb:  Tennessee guard suspended indefinitely.