Brian Otskey is the Big East correspondent for RTC and a regular contributor. You can find him @botskey on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

While BracketBusters is always solid, the overall slate over the next few days is full of good, but not great, games. Still, tune in to these games as conference races head down the stretch and the NCAA Tournament field begins to take shape.

#13 St. Mary’s at #24 Murray State – 6:00 PM EST Saturday on ESPN (****)

• Since losing to Tennessee State, Murray State has rebounded with two wins over Austin Peay and Southeast Missouri State. On Saturday night the Racers will get their chance to show the nation they are for real. Playing at home in front of a juiced up crowd on national television, there is no excuse for Murray State to come out anything less than fired up. The three point line is this team’s best friend on both ends of the floor and it will be important against St. Mary’s. Murray State shoots 41% from deep (#8 nationally) and defends the arc very well. Against a St. Mary’s team that ranks a putrid #305 against the triple, that’s a huge advantage for the Racers at home. Steve Prohm should do everything in his power to ensure Isaiah Canaan (47.3%) and Donte Poole(39.3%) get quality shots from the arc against the porous Gaels’ defense. Defensively, the Racers must lock down the arc as they usually do. St. Mary’s shoots a lot of threes and while they don’t make a great percentage they do get just a shade under 30% of their total points from the arc.
  

  Isaiah Canaan And Company Could Have A Big Day From Behind The Arc Against St. Mary's Average 3-Point Defense (Getty)

• St. Mary’s has lost two of its last three games after starting the season 22-2. The Gaels are still a likely NCAA Tournament team, but a win here would ensure their place in the field of 68 for sure. In order to win on the road in a tough environment against a good team, St. Mary’s must use its edge on the offensive glass, make threes and get to the foul line. With strong rebounders like Rob Jones and Brad Waldow, St. Mary’s has a clear size edge over Murray State. Only Ivan Aska and Ed Daniel see significant minutes for the Racers inside, two of only three players on the roster who are at least 6’7” tall. While the Gaels have a huge edge inside, they’re going to have to overcome Murray State’s strong perimeter defense. Matthew Dellavedova and Clint Steindl are going to have to hit threes for Randy Bennett’s team to come out on top. Thirdly, St. Mary’s should look to take advantage of a Murray State defense that ranks in the bottom half of Division I in defensive free throw rate. The Gaels get to the line fairly well and make 71.9% of their free throws. It’s so important to control tempo and keep the crowd out of the game and getting to the charity stripe while controlling the boards definitely helps in achieving that goal.
• This should be a very close game but the edge has to go to the home team. St. Mary’s is struggling a bit right now and Murray State seems to have righted the ship since suffering its first loss. One concern for the Racers is their turnovers (14 per game). If Murray State controls the ball, plays well on the perimeter and gets to the free throw line at its usual clip, this will be the Racers’ game to lose.

Ray Floriani is the RTC correspondent for the MAAC and NEC conferences.

Reader’s Take 

Leading Off

• Iona avenged a tough defeat in New Rochelle by knocking off Manhattan on their home floor, 85-73. The consensus around the league is that the two teams is will meet again later on down the road. In likelihood, the pair could very well tip it off in March at Springfield with a whole lot at stake.
• In the meantime, don’t discount Loyola, who keeps on winning and is playing some outstanding defense.

Individual Standouts

• Player of the Week: Lamont “Momo” Jones, Iona, Jr., G  – Averaged 30.5 points and five rebounds as the Gaels swept their two conference games. Jones shot 59.5% from the field and scored a Hynes Center record 43 points against Canisius.
• Rookie of the Week:  Chavaughn Lewis, Marist, 6’7”  Fr.  G/F – Recently inserted into the starting lineup, Lewis averaged 13 points for the two games the past week. The freshman swingman proved versatile as well by averaging 3.5 rebounds and 3.0 assists to compliment his scoring.

Momo Jones Had A Huge Week For Iona (Iona Athletics)

Standings

Team, MAAC record, overall record:

Team Rundown

1. Iona – Knocked off Canisius before earning a huge decision at Manhattan. Lamont Jones erupted for 43 points in the win over Canisius. Jones was 16 of 23 from the field (7 of 12 from three). Gaels enjoyed a 140 offensive efficiency rating in that contest. At Manhattan, the OE was another gaudy 123 for Iona. Four players were in double figures, led by Mike Glover’s 19 points.
2. Loyola – Defeated Rider before winning at St. Peter’s to increase their win streak to six games. Outstanding defense has been the key during the winning streak. Rider was held to a 73 offensive efficiency. Erik Etherly scored 15 points and Shane Walker added 12 boards for Loyola. Against St. Peter’s, balance was a key as Roberton Olson led with 19 points while Etherley added 15 and Walker 14. Read the rest of this entry »

Zach Hayes is an editor, contributor and bracketologist for Rush the Court.

Did you think last year’s NCAA Tournament was chaotic? That was nothing.

That’s right, the tournament that saw two out of eleven Big East teams reach the Sweet Sixteen, #10-seed Florida State face #11-seed VCU in a regional semifinal and two mid-majors provide the undercard on Final Four Saturday could pale in comparison to what we’ll witness in 2012. Never before have the perceived top teams in the nation been more flawed. Never before has the soft underbelly of every power conference been more susceptible. Never before have the upper echelon mid-major schools been as viable and competitive. It’s a distribution of wealth that would make Bernie Sanders blush.

Which Mid-Majors Have the Best Shot to Celebrate Like This?

By the time we reach New Orleans, the cream may rise to the crop. A Final Four consisting of Kentucky, Ohio State, North Carolina and Syracuse wouldn’t stun me. It’s during the first weekend where a handful of non-BCS schools could knock off inadequate power-conference at-large teams. Don’t say you weren’t prepared.

Who are the mid-majors (a designation that excludes the Atlantic 10, Conference USA or Mountain West) most likely to crash the party? Here’s a good place to start:

1. Saint Mary’s: The Gaels performed an offensive clinic best saved for instructional videos in a difficult road environment at BYU on Saturday. After watching that display (and two prior destructions to both BYU and Gonzaga on their home floor) it comes as no surprise that St. Mary’s assists on nearly 62% of made field goals. Their offensive assault is led by face-of-the-program Matthew Dellavedova, who plays almost 92% of the teams’ minutes, ranks in the country’s top 50 in assist rate and provides another shooting threat. What gives the Gaels the sustainability to win multiple games in the Tournament is dominance inside the arc. Randy Bennett’s team shoots 55% and holds opponents to 44% despite employing just two regular rotation players taller than 6’7”.
2. Creighton: We know all about Doug McDermott’s All-America caliber season: an unfathomable 65% from two and 50% from three to match his 23.5 points per game. Now he only needs a sexier name to reach Jimmer-like cult status. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a one-man rodeo. What’s carried the Bluejays to a 10-1 record in the Valley is a formidable supporting cast with all of the ingredients for a deep March push: an athletic big man in Greg Echenique who can hold his own against power-conference frontlines, a heady senior point guard in Antoine Young with a more than 2:1 assist to turnover ratio, stat sheet stuffer Grant Gibbs and two rangy shooters in Jahenns Manigat and Ethan Wragge. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Seth Davis is back with his annual Jigsaw Man column. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept, Seth adopts the persona of “The Jigsaw Man” to pick out players who if they switched teams would fill significant voids and does so while speaking in the third person. He tries to avoid picking out obvious targets like Anthony Davis who would make any team better even if they didn’t have a deficiency at that position. We are not sure if we are just getting cranky in our old age, but it seems like Seth is cheating a bit with some of his picks. Stealing players like Terrell Stoglin (the leading scorer in the ACC), Scott Machado (maybe the best point guard in the country), and Mike Moser (a potential All-American and a long-time crush of Andy Glockner and Ryan Greene) seems to be too easy. Obviously, adding the best point guard in the nation would make Duke a better team. So if you are reading this Seth Jigsaw Man (and we know that you are), step it up a little bit next year. Pick someone like Alex Oriakhi who is wasting away on the bench, but could and should be a double-double guy in the right situation instead of picking a potential All-American who is the best player on a top 10 team like Moser.
2. Whenever we hear someone talk about how unsavory recruiting is for top football recruits we hear someone else talk about how it is worse in basketball. We now have found at least one example where it is not. According to some media reports, one five-star football recruit who chose to attend Alabama over LSU was influenced by a promise that the former would give the recruit’s girlfriend a job. Interestingly, according to the NCAA bylaws, this appears to only be an infraction if it was committed for a basketball recruit, but for a football recruit apparently is it ok. The NCAA never ceases to amaze us.
3. Last week, the National Coordinator of basketball officials in Division I, John Adams, posted a memo urging officials to pay a closer attention to sportsmanship and call technical fouls on coaches and players who violate this principle. After the officiating over the weekend, Adams decided that he needed to respond to the criticism of officials. While he did not discuss the atrocious officiating in Philadelphia or the missed goaltending call in upstate New York, Adams did discuss the role of officials in dealing with unsportsmanlike acts. Adams essentially believes that the controversial sportsmanship fouls were correct and hopes that these moves will help rebuild college basketball’s image after a rough past few months. While legislating the trash talking more effectively may reduce some of the unseemly incidents we have seen, we would also like to see Adams work on improving the officiating of all areas of the game.
4. With his team on its way to a second straight solid season and a potential NCAA Tournament bid that it did not get last year, Iona coach Tim Cluess was given a contract extension through the 2016-17 season. Cluess, who came to the school without any prior Division I head coaching experience, is actually in the last guaranteed year of his initial contract. Thanks to a 25-win season to start his coaching career and what appears to be an even better second season, Cluess has a well-deserved contract extension, which should only help him with recruiting although we cannot imagine that any recruit thought Cluess was in jeopardy of losing his job.
5. His team is currently on the wrong side of the bubble, but that did not stop VCU coach Shaka Smart from making a bold proclamation that the “the best programs in the state are in the CAA. It’s really not even close.” When you look at the numbers over the past ten years, the three programs he is referring to (VCU, George Mason, and Old Dominion) have put up much better numbers (detailed in the article) than the the ACC programs (Virginia and Virginia Tech). So technically Smart is correct even if he does come off as untactful, but it is more amusing to hear new George Mason coach Paul Hewitt talk about this when he guided another ACC program (Georgia Tech) right into the ground.

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.

The now-annual Bracket Buster weekend is a great late-season non-conference bounty, especially for mid-major hoops fans.  This year’s matchups will be announced on Monday, and today we take a look at the top five games we hope to see scheduled.  That, plus a look back and a look forward, after the updated top 15.

Top Five Potential Bracketbuster Matchups

This year, there are 22 Bracketbuster squads in the RPI top 100, with 13 slated to play home games and nine set to hit the road. This creates a slight discrepancy between the strength of the home teams and the road teams, which is magnified when you consider that the breakdown is 12 to six among teams in the top 85.  Nonetheless, there are some great potential matchups.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ray Floriani is the RTC correspondent for the MAAC and NEC conferences. The records listed are up to date, but the analysis is just through Wednesday’s games.

Reader’s Take 

Leading Off

A sobering, down to earth thought and time of reflection. Marist College cancelled last Sunday’s game with Fairfield and Monday’s Women’s contest against St. Peter’s. This came following a tragic fire in Poughkeepsie, NY that took the lives of three people, two of them Marist students. In a statement MAAC Commissioner Rich Ensor said, “the MAAC member schools share in the grief of the Marist community and offers its condolences to the families of the students who died or were injured in this tragic fire.” Ensor also noted rescheduling of the games will be done later as the conference consults with the involved schools. Our thoughts and prayers are with those victims and their families as well.

The Week That Was

Player of the Week: Scott Machado, Iona, 6’1″, Sr., G – Posted an 11-point, 15-assist, 9-rebound effort in the win over Rider. Machado narrowly missed being Iona’s second triple-double performer in school history. Machado had only two turnovers in that win.

Iona's Scott Machado Has Been On Fire Lately

Rookie of the Week: Antoine Mason, Niagara, 6’3″, Fr., G – Averaged 20.5 points, 5 rebounds and 2.5 assists in a 1-1 week for Niagara. Mason has led Niagara in scoring the last three games. The highlight,  a 22 point effort in the victory over rival Canisius.  Read the rest of this entry »

1. There was quite a bit of news on the injury front yesterday. Louisville‘s Rakeem Buckles may have garnered the biggest headlines nationally as he appears to have one-upped Robbie Hummel as the most injury-ridden player in high-major college basketball. Just a few months after coming back from a torn ACL in his right knee that kept him out for nine months, Buckles tore the ACL in his left knee and is expected to be out the rest of this season and next season. (Yes, next season too.) For a team that has already been decimated by injuries, the loss of Buckles again and to such a significant injury must be a crushing blow. Rick Pitino will have his work cut out for him keeping this team together and getting anywhere near preseason expectations.
2. Coming to Memphis as a McDonald’s All-American Adonis Thomas was saddled with significant expectations some of which he brought upon himself by pulling stunts like using a national television broadcast to announce his final list of schools. Now it appears his freshman campaign will come to a premature close due to an ankle injury as he will undergo what is expected to be season-ending surgery on his left ankle. Thomas, who was one of the most athletic freshmen in the country, has been erratic at times this season, but is still the team’s third leading scorer at 9.7 points per game and provided them with a versatile all-court weapon that they may miss as the season progresses.
3. Buckles and Thomas may be bigger names, but the season-ending injury to Jenniro Bush due to a ruptured Achilles tendon will have a bigger impact on his team than that of the other two players. Bush, who leads Jackson State in scoring at 15.5 points per game, was the SWAC preseason player of the year. While the Tigers have struggled this year (4-14 overall and 2-4 in the SWAC), Bush has still managed to put up solid numbers albeit on high-volume shooting on a team where only two other players average more than five points per game. With Bush out, the Tigers, who would have been a long shot even with him, are all but eliminated from contention for the conference’s automatic bid.
4. The Wooden Award announced its list of 25 midseason candidates yesterday. We are assuming that the GPA requirement did not knock out any candidates and even if it did the list actually appears to be pretty solid to us. You can argue that a few other players like Michael Glover should have been included, but it would be a little bit too much to expect them to have two Iona players on the list of 25 finalists, and we would have expected Tu Holloway to be on there a few weeks ago before that little incident in Cincinnati. Other than that we have to give them credit for including four players from high-major conferences not counting UNLV and Memphis who are really high-major programs playing in weaker conferences.
5. Yesterday we provided you with a link to the methodology behind the Value Added statistic that Basketball Prospectus was going to unveil and as promised today we have their version of a Value Added statistic. As Drew Cannon notes this year’s results look “insane”. While some of you are going to immediately dismiss this statistic (and we were too when we first saw this year’s list), it is worth remembering that it is early in the season and sometimes you might need to tweak the formula a little bit. Cannon discusses the results a little bit and tries to rationalize them, but for now we will keep an eye on this and see how the rankings evolve as the season progresses.

Ray Floriani is the RTC correspondent for the MAAC and NEC conferences. The records listed are up to date, but the analysis is just through Wednesday’s games.

Reader’s Take 

The Week That Was

• The conference slate is already one quarter in the books. Throw away those predictions. At this juncture Iona is the team to beat. Inside play (Mike Glover), an excellent lead guard (Scott Machado), the go-to scorer (Lamont Jones), and perimeter threat (Kyle Smyth) all add up for the Gaels. Not to mention, the man on the bench, Tim Cluess, who knows his X’s and O’s, thank you.
• Loyola, Fairfield, and Manhattan stay within striking distance. Slowly, Rider has got things straightened out and is much improved after an awful start. Regardless, the Gaels lead the pack. And will be tough to reel in.

Player of the Week

• Mike Glover, 6’7″, Sr., F, Iona – Averaged 20 points, six rebounds and three blocks the last three games (all victories) for the Gaels. Shot 64.7% from the field and 80% from the line. Enjoyed a 31-point outburst in the win at Marist.

Rookie of the Week

• Evan Hymes, 5’8″, Fr., G, Siena – Averaged 15.7 points and 4.1 assists as the Saints captured two of their last three games. Led Siena with 22 points in a loss to Iona at Madison Square Garden. Ran the team extremely well, logging the full 40 minutes in both wins over Fairfield and Niagara.

Mike Glover Had A Big Week (AP)

Standings

Team, MAAC record, overall record

Power Rankings

1. Iona: Won three straight sweeping their two conference games the past week. Iona knocked off Niagara, 73-61, behind Mike Glover’s 19 points and seven rebounds. The Gaels then traveled to Marist, scoring a  100-76 victory. Offensive efficiency was a gaudy 127.0. Glover again was the leader with 31 points and seven boards. Kyle Smyth added 17 points on 5 of 8 shooting from three. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Kids seem to love texting these days. Almost every time I see someone college age or younger they seem to be texting someone on their phone. I am not sure why they have so much to say, but they seem to need to tell somebody something. Of course, most of them realize that there are sometimes where it is not appropriate to be sending texts. Marshall‘s Justin Coleman does not appear to be one of those people as the freshman guard was suspended indefinitely for using his cell phone to text during a loss to Belmont on Sunday. Coleman, who was a top 50 recruit and had an offer to go to Louisville before failing to qualify academically, was averaging 6.2 points and 2.9 rebounds per game on a very solid Marshall team. While using a texting seems like a very minor offense doing so during a game is so idiotic that we have no idea how long Coleman will be suspended for before he is let back on the team.
2. Missouri may have improved to 14-0 last night, but their shrinking roster has to be of some concern to their fans as they lost Kadeem Green yesterday when the redshirt freshman announced that he would be transferring. While the Tigers appear to be firing on all cylinders although against an admittedly weak schedule it has to be concerning that they now only have seven scholarship players and only two of those players are taller than 6’6″. We have been impressed by what the Tigers have done so far, but with their lack of size and depth we cannot imagine that their torrid shooting (#1 in the nation in effective field goal percentage at 59.6% at the time this was posted) will keep up and suspect that those shortcomings may rear their ugly head at an inopportune time later in the season.
3. Yesterday, we brought you an annual stock report from Seth Davis where he rated teams based on buy, sell, and hold ratings. That was followed up by column from his colleague Luke Winn revising some of the predictions that Winn had made back in October. Winn touches on everything from the surprising/disappointing teams, players  living up to or falling short of expectations, and overall conference strength. While it lacks the fancy graphs and volume of advanced statistical analysis we usually see from Winn it is a solid accompaniment to the Davis stock report from the day before.
4. Have you ever really hated an opposing player? All of us have had at least one experience where we grew to hate a rival player. However, most of us do not go to the lengths that Iona point guard Scott Machado did growing up. In a profile in The Wall Street Journal, Machado discusses his hatred of Michael Jordan, who tortured Machado’s favorite NBA team the New York Knicks. He grew to despise Jordan so much that Machado, born Michael Scott Machado, told people to stop calling him Michael, Mike, or any variation of it. In addition to that amusing anecdote, the piece also discusses Machado’s growth as a player and how his experience playing for Brazil in the World University Games this past summer helped raise his game to another level.
5. One of the ongoing debates in the college basketball world is the place of advanced statistics versus going by what you see on the court. As we have said before in this space, we like to adopt a hybrid approach where we combine the two. Kevin Pelton of  Basketball Prospectus appears to feel the same way and explains his thought process Venn diagrams to show the intersection of scouting, individual stats, and plus-minus stats. The first two categories are probably what you would consider traditional scouting categories while the third would presumably fall under the sabermetric category although it is used so frequently and is so basic in its original form that some would almost consider it antiquated. Using various college and NBA examples, Pelton argues that while we should consider all three areas we also need to consider context adjusting for sample size and at times we need to weigh some categories as relatively more or less important than other categories. We think that this something that all but the most ardent traditional or advanced sabermetric practitioner can agree upon.