I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will kick off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences. Follow him on Twitter @IRenkoHoops.

It was a wild week for the TO26’s best teams, as seven of the teams ranked in our top ten — including our top five — all suffered losses. With Gonzaga, Creighton, VCU, Butler, and UNLV all going down, who has a rightful claim on the number one ranking?  Does New Mexico slide all the way from 6th to 1st after their win over Colorado State?

Not quite.  Yes, Gonzaga lost to Butler in a game played without Rotnei Clarke, Butler’s leading scorer. But it was in a hostile road environment, and even under those conditions, Gonzaga had a victory in hand with just a few seconds left on the clock. And on Thursday, the Zags followed up the loss with a 20-point drubbing of conference rival BYU. So Mark Few’s men will continue to hold the top spot in our rankings. But all of the action elsewhere will produce a substantial reshuffling. Without further ado, on the substantially revised Top 10, our weekly Honor Roll, and a few games to keep an eye on as the week unfolds.

Top Ten

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Ray Floriani is the RTC correspondent for the MAAC.

Top Storylines

• Canisius Surprises. Not a big surprise given the pool of talent here, a good bit better than a lot of people anticipated, and the coaching of Jim Baron. A win over ‘Little Three’ rival St. Bonaventure was particularly sweet for Baron, a former Bonnie player and coach.
• St. Peter’s also merits a note. A preseason pick at the bottom of the league, the Peacocks have wins at Rutgers, Cornell and a home conquest of Central Connecticiut. A loss to Binghamton doesn’t damper the early enthusiasm in Jersey City.
• Manhattan Winless. At Louisville and at Harvard. Not an easy way for anyone to open up its season. In the long run these tests should be a benefit for Steve Masiello’s Jaspers.

Reader’s Take

Player of the Week: Lamont Jones– The Iona senior guard averaged 30.5 points over the first two games in the Virgin Islands Paradise Jam. He set a tournament record 40 points in the Gaels’ overtime loss to Quinnipiac.

Momo Jones Is Off To A Running Start. (Iona Athletics)

Rookie of the Week: Tyler Hubbard– The Loyola redshirt freshman guard came off the bench to spark the Greyhounds’ Hall of Fame Classic championship in Springfield. He scored a career-high 17 points in a win over UMBC.

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Ray Floriani is the RTC correspondent for the MAAC.

Top Storylines

The Redshirts: We are not talking about individual players but a program. In the latter part of the summer, Loyola announced its intention to exit the MAAC for the Patriot League. The Greyhounds captured the postseason title this past March. Coach Jimmy Patsos has another very strong group on hand. The interesting thing is how will the last run through the MAAC affect Loyola’s play. The guess here is not too much. Caution is needed however as the MAAC contingents would love nothing to upset the Greyhounds as a ‘going away present.’

How Will Jimmy Patsos Handle the Last Go-Round the MAAC? (AP)

Master Builder: When Canisius hired Jim Baron last spring they not only got a veteran coach with a proven track record, but the Buffalo-based school hired a coach who rebuilt situations at three different schools. First was St. Francis (PA). Next, his alma mater, St. Bonaventure, and most recently, Rhode Island. Baron brought St. Francis and St. Bonaventure to the NCAA Tournament in his careers there. He also had a few NITs under his tutelage but couldn’t get on the board during Selection Sunday while at URI. Make no mistake, though, Baron knows Canisius’ status and what needs to be done to succeed there. Word here says he goes ‘four for four’ in reclamation projects.

Must-See: A few of the notable matchups in the MAAC include…. On January 27, Iona hosts Loyola and visits the Greyhounds on March 1. The latter game could decide the regular season champion and have a strong bearing on final conference seeds for the postseason tournament. A few other notable games:

• November 11 – Manhattan at Louisville – Steve Masiello ducks no one and heads south to face a powerful Louisville team and his former boss (mentor), Rick Pitino.
• November 22 – Marist vs. West Virginia in the MAAC sponsored Old Spice Classic in Orlando. The field also includes the likes of Clemson, Davidson, Gonzaga, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt.
• January 6 ^– Iona hosts Manhattan, and more than rivalry bragging rights are at stake.
• January 25 – Loyola visits Manhattan, another huge midseason contest.

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While Big East basketball is always a spectacle, this conference season has even more added juice with the impending departures of Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and (eventually) Notre Dame.  However, before we get to conference games, the Big East is involved in some really intriguing non-conference games this season. Big East teams will be playing all over the United States, Germany, and on a few aircraft carriers. Let’s take a look at the best that the Big East has to offer in the non-conference slate this season.

Syracuse and San Diego State tip off the season on the deck of the USS Midway this Sunday (AP)

25. Pittsburgh v. Oakland, November 17, 7 PM

The Panthers have a rather light non-conference slate this season, but don’t expect them to look past the Golden Grizzlies. Oakland has a history of playing tough schedules, and won’t be intimidated by the Zoo. Oakland is coming off of a bit of a down year in 2011-12 when they finished 20-16 (11-7), but made the NCAA Tournament in both 2009-10, when they were knocked out in the first round by Pittsburgh, and 2010-11.

24. DePaul @ Auburn, November 30, 9 PM

Look for DePaul to try to do the conference proud when they head down to take on the Auburn Tigers as part of the SEC-Big East Challenge. This DePaul squad should be better than it has been in years past, returning dynamic forward Cleveland Melvin and dangerous guard Brandon Young.  Auburn is coming off of a poor 15-16 season, and could be ripe for a big non-conference road win for the Blue Demons.

23. Rutgers v. Iona, Madison Square Garden, December 8, 9:30 PM

One of these New York metropolitan-area teams is coming off of a great season that ended in a heartbreaking NCAA tournament loss to BYU. The other is continually striving to build its program, and aspires to have such success.  It almost seems backwards that Iona is the more accomplished team at the moment, but isn’t that what makes college basketball so great? A big performance by the Scarlet Knights at the Garden could go a long way in setting the tone for a run at a tournament berth in the Big East.

22. St. John’s v. Detroit, November 13, 2 PM

The Johnnies tip off their season against a very dangerous Detroit squad led by superstar Ray McCallum. St. John’s has a number of impressive young players themselves, and head coach Steve Lavin will return to the sideline after battling cancer last season. While many look forward to what should be a fun match-up between McCallum and D’Angelo Harrison, the St. John’s star was recently benched in the team’s final exhibition for disciplinary reasons. If Lavin continues to have issues with his top guard, it could prove very problematic for the Red Storm next week.

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And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. Enjoy!

#14 – Where Comeback Tuesday Night Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

1. You know you’re doing something right in a lawsuit if the defendant’s attorneys start attacking the plaintiff’s ringleader long before the discovery phase ends. According to this report from The Birmingham News, the NCAA and its licensees maneuvered hard against marketing guru Sonny Vaccaro in an attempt to discredit him prior to a ruling by a federal court in California about whether the so-called Ed O’Bannon likeness case will become a class action suit. It’s no secret that Vaccaro has encouraged ex-players who feel wronged by the perpetual and ongoing usage of their faces and likenesses to join the suit, but the NCAA questioned whether his financial motives were too inextricably tied to the players to render him prejudicial. The NCAA had requested voluminous records of his communications for years, but ultimately, the two sides agreed that Vaccaro would turn over “custodial records from Vaccaro’s three organizations, communications with the plaintiffs, camp/tournament documents using players’ likeness, and payment records to or from players.” The court plans on making a decision on the class action later this fall, and without question that ruling could have a monumental impact on the future financial solvency of the NCAA.
2. Thursday was an assistant coach kind of weekday as a number of high-profile schools announced comings and goings among their coaching support staff. Kentucky, a school whose media relations department must work a ridiculous amount of overtime, announced that former Wildcat center Marquis Estill will join the team as an undergraduate student assistant while he finishes his degree. Estill left school early in 2003, after receiving all-SEC honors after his junior season. Meanwhile, across the continent in Seattle, Washington announced that it was adding former Arizona State assistant Lamont Smith to its staff as a top recruiter mere days after adding another new assistant, former D-II head coach Brad Jackson (Western Washington). The key word in the previous sentence is former, as Arizona State lost not only Smith but also Scott Pera, who is leaving the desert to coach closer to his home at Pennsylvania. As Herb Sendek said about the twin departures this week, “the timing isn’t ideal.” More on ASU in a post later today.
3. Much has been made recently about the Big East’s 60-day window to negotiate a new television deal with ESPN that begins on September 1, but it isn’t the only conference looking forward to making waves with a brand new broadcasting deal. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told media on Wednesday that the league expects to sign a 13-year deal with FOX and ABC/ESPN worth $2.6 billion and will provide “unprecedented” exposure in a much more “widely distributed” manner. Or, in other words, what everyone else says about these deals. From a financial perspective, if this deal turns out to be true, a distribution of over a quarter-bill to each of the 10 member institutions doesn’t sound very bad after all. As Bowlsby suggests, perhaps 10 schools is the right number after all — leagues have been pushing each other out of the way to expand, but maybe they should start thinking about strategic contraction instead?
4. One school not reaping the tens of millions of dollars that the schools located nearby it are is Creighton, but that isn’t stopping the hot mid-major basketball school from investing in its future while things are going well on the court. Plans were announced earlier this week that the school will build the Fighting McDermotts a brand spanking new 35,000 square-foot practice facility to match what some of its MVC peers have already done. Perhaps more importantly, the school seeks to match what a certain Big Ten school an hour to the southwest is doing — even though Creighton is clearly the more successful basketball program than Nebraska, the spectre of all those BTN dollars at NU certainly keeps the Joneses over in Omaha looking over at their neighbor’s lawn. With possibly two more years of Doug McDermott as a Bluejay, this practice facility could be the recruiting carrot that Creighton needs to bridge its current and pending success with a strong recruiting future.
5. Last summer the story of Lamont “Momo” Jones‘ transfer from Arizona back home to Iona was a hot topic. The question of how it would ultimately impact both schools was a common refrain, and as it turned out, it was his new school that played in March Madness (losing to BYU in the First Four), while his old school was shipped to the NIT (losing to Bucknell). Jones enjoyed his best season statistically in 2011-12, going for 16/3/3 APG while shooting a career-high 46% from the field. More importantly to the rising senior, though, he spent what he characterizes as the best of year of his life near his family — especially his ailing grandmother in the Bronx — and even became a first-time father of a boy, Jace’, in May. With all the negative stories surrounding college basketball these days, this piece by Dan Greene is one that will send you into the weekend with a smile on your face.

While most relish the onset of Summer, college basketball junkies do not. Most of the news surrounding the sport is recruiting rumors and commitments or injuries and transfer news. In order to help keep folks up-to-date on what their teams are doing during the summer, we put together these summer capsules for each team in the conference. Next up is Seton Hall.

1. Is it possible that assistant Shaheen Holloway hasn’t used up all of his eligibility yet?

Jordan Theodore Is Gone And He Left Behind A Gaping Hole At Point Guard (US Presswire)

We are joking, although I wouldn’t put it past an ambitious Pirates’ fan to at least do a little digging into the matter given the looming issue at point guard for the program. Say what you want about the importance of Herb Pope, but there should be no argument that senior point guard Jordan Theodore was the team’s most important player last season. He was one of the best point guards in the conference and now he is gone, leaving behind lots and lots of questions for Holloway and coach Kevin Willard to find the answers for. Texas-transfer Sterling Gibbs would have helped answer some of those questions, but his appeal to play right away was denied. Sean Grennan also might have helped with depth, but he transferred to Fairfield to find easier playing time, and now the program will have to rely on the duo of Freddie Wilson and incoming freshman Tom Maayan to run the offense. Wilson is the most experienced, if you count averaging eight minutes per game last season as a freshman as experience. Maayan is a good pass-first guard, but he is coming off ACL surgery and may need time to get acclimated. The Pirates’ coaching staff has been staying upbeat and saying all the right things about the position this summer, but it’s hardly a secret that that is an area of concern for the team that needs to be fixed right away, otherwise this young Pirates team is going to stop before they get started.

2. Transfers are going to be the key to the Pirates’ success

When you lose your team’s top two players to graduation you need to do something to plug that gaping hole, and luckily for Willard and his staff, they didn’t have to look too far considering that two candidates were already on the roster and another wasn’t far away. Transfers Brian Oliver and Gene Teague  sat out last season due to NCAA rules and Kyle Smyth earned the graduate exemption to play right away, so all three are ready to go this season and you better believe Willard will deploy them immediately. Oliver is a New Jersey native who came to the Pirates by way of Georgia Tech and he is quite the chucker (attempting at least 4.5 three-pointers per game in both seasons for the Yellow Jackets), but if he can shoot consistently he should be a dangerous offensive weapon for the Pirates. Another New Jersey native, Teague is a wide-bodied Southern Illinois transfer who should slide right into the spot left vacant by Pope. He is a decent offensive post threat and is a capable rebounder. If he can be more careful with the basketball he should prove to be a reliable big man in the conference. Smyth left Iona as the school’s most lethal shooter and despite the logjam at shooting guard, the senior should find playing time because of his long-range prowess. All three of these players will play meaningful minutes because Willard doesn’t really have a choice, and if they can contribute during those minutes, the Pirates will at least be a pesky opponent.

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1. We hate to start out the week’s Morning Five on a somber note, but when an incoming recruit or any player is murdered we have to lead with it. On Thursday, Iona recruit Michael Haynes was killed while apparently trying to break up a fight over a stolen necklace near his home in Chicago. Haynes, who was a prep school star in Chicago, had worked his way through the junior college ranks and was just weeks away from realizing his dream of playing Division I basketball. Initial reports indicated that Haynes might be able to make it because he appeared fairly strong immediately after the shooting, but he died in the operating room shortly afterwards. We have not heard anything about funeral arrangements for Haynes, but given some of the players he played against there should be some prominent names present.
2. The biggest surprise of the weekend for us came out of Orlando where the Magic announced that  former Kansas star Jacque Vaughn would be their next head coach. To be honest, we had lost track of Vaughn’s whereabouts over the past few seasons, but apparently he had been serving as an assistant for the San Antonio Spurs. The choice is a curious one in the sense that the Magic could be a playoff team (depending on the whims of Dwight Howard) and Vaughn has no head coaching experience. We like seeing teams hire coaches who are not the same retreads, but we can see how some individuals like Shaquille O’Neal might not be fans of the move. Vaughn’s first order of business should be figuring out what to do with Howard who has been holding the franchise hostage for quite sometime. Only after he does that can he think of moving forward.
3. Jeff Goodman got the #SCOOP on who Gonzaga‘s newest coach-in-waiting and while it is interesting at some level we wonder if the title really means anything. Goodman reports that assistant Tommy Lloyd has been given the designation to follow-up Mark Few in Spokane. The issue is that Few has not even turned 50 yet and Lloyd is the third coach-in-waiting at the school after the other two decided they had waited long enough and took head coaching jobs at other schools. The position on the Gonzaga sideline is no doubt among the most coveted in the country especially for coaches who are not established enough to get a position with a blue-blood program, but we don’t see any movement coming any time soon there.
4. For our part we don’t particularly care for the culture associated with the AAU scene, but when we heard that the legendary Sonny Vaccaro had returned to Las Vegas we were intrigued. Vaccaro, the man who has been credited with making the summer basketball scene what it is today (for better or for worse), had not been on the scene since the summer of 2006, but returned to film scenes for his upcoming 30 for 30 documentary. The documentaries in the series that we have seen appear to be fairly balanced so we will be interested to see how they deal with Vaccaro’s creation and the effects of the world that he helped create as well as his (hopefully candid) comments on it although we suspect that he will place the blame for the unseemly aspects of it on other people.
5. Divorces are rarely amicable and often the people hurt the most by them are the children particularly when issues of child custody are raised. In that vein, when a Syracuse fan was looking through the division of custody based on holidays he felt that it was unequal so he inserted a clause that would allow him to have visitation rights for his kids if the Orange were playing for the national championship on the first Monday night in April. The request might be made fun of in some circles, but compared to some of the other requests we have heard of in these cases it seems fairly benign and sweet even if it is a bit quixotic as it has only happened three times and not since 2003.

The NBA Draft is scheduled for Thursday, June 28, in New York City. As we have done for the last several years, RTC’s team of writers (including Andrew Murawa, Kevin Doyle, Evan Jacoby, Matt Patton, and Danny Spewak) will provide comprehensive breakdowns of each of the 35 collegians most likely to hear his name called by David Stern in the first round on draft night. We’ll generally work backwards, so for the next week or two we’ll present you with players who are projected near the end of the first round, and we’ll work our way up into the lottery as June progresses. As an added bonus, we’ll also bring you a scouting take from NBADraft.net’s Aran Smith at the bottom of each player evaluation.

Player Name:  Scott Machado 

School:  Iona

Height/Weight: 6’1 “, 180 lbs. 

NBA Position: Point Guard 

Projected Draft Range: Early to Mid-Second Round

Machado Was One of the Best Mid-Major Players in America Last Season (AP)

Overview:  If Kevin Willard has one regret in leaving Iona to take the head coaching job at Seton Hall, it is that he only had the opportunity to coach Scott Machado for two years. While Willard set the foundation for success at Iona and for Machado, his successor Tim Cluess enabled him to run rampant in his up-tempo offensive system. Predicated on a heady point guard who sees the floor exceptionally well, Machado flourished. Everyone remembers the monumental collapse Iona suffered against BYU in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament, but lest we forget the 15 points and 10 assists Machado also had against the Cougars. In his first true game on the national stage, Machado comported himself wonderfully. (Tim Cluess’ defensive coaching abilities? Not so much.) As a junior, Machado averaged 7.6 APG — nearly doubling his total from his sophomore season — and then as a senior he led the nation in assists with 10 per game. For his first three seasons, Machado was seen primarily as a solid distributor with inconsistent scoring ability. Although he averaged 12.5 and 13.2 PPG in his sophomore and junior years, respectively, his shooting percentages hovered right around 40% from the floor and 30% from beyond the arc. The strides Machado made with his shot during his senior year — 50% from the field, 40% from three, and 81% from the stripe — will no doubt pay dividends come draft day. More than anything, Machado is seemingly always in total control on offense and when handling the basketball. Poor decisions and ill-advised shots are rare occurrences, and when judging a point guard, these are two of the best attributes one can possess. Machado will carry on the tradition of strong point guards to come out of New York City — Queens, specifically — and the first to hail from Iona since Steve Burtt, Sr.

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The First Round Lede. Debate all you want about the structure of the new NCAA Tournament (since last year) – the First Four format is the new norm, and it must be appreciated because of the momentum it can give to the teams that win these play-in games. Of course, last year VCU began its run to the Final Four from the First Four. Over the past two nights, we saw a couple of really interesting games and a couple of blowouts. We’ll analyze the best moments for you here, as well as preview what’s next to come for the four winners. Here’s your First Round wrap-up…

Your Watercooler Moment. BYU Mounts An Enormous Second Half Comeback

Noah Hartsock Brought Intensity to BYU's Second Half Comeback (AP Photo/S. Peterson)

At the 4:00 mark of the first half of their game against Iona, the BYU Cougars trailed 55-31. Not a single soul watching this game on Tuesday night was thinking about a BYU comeback, and even the announcing crew on truTV was discussing how Iona could pose a serious threat to Marquette in the next round. But Dave Rose was not having it; the BYU coach made the necessary adjustments that included putting his defense into a 2-3 zone that it had hardly used during the season. The result was a complete shift in momentum, and the Cougars continued to convert on the offensive end while holding the Gaels to nothing offensively. Just 16 minutes later, at the 8:00 mark of the second half, Iona’s lead had vanished. BYU controlled the game from there and pulled away with a 78-72 victory, a seemingly impossible result after watching the events of the first half. The upperclassmen forward combo of Noah Hartsock and Brandon Davies was terrific, combining for 41 points and 20 rebounds against the undersized Iona front line. The Cougars will take this momentum into Friday night when they take on Marquette in the Round of 64.

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