1. SI.com’s latest NCAA Tournament bracket projection is a welcome sight for SEC basketball fans. Four teams make the cut, including Kentucky (#1 seed), Arkansas (#7), LSU (#9) and Georgia (#10). There were times this year that when just getting two bids looked like a real possibility, so four bids (sad as it may be) right now looks very nice. The danger is that the non-Kentucky selections are far from locks and consecutive losses could easily knock any of those teams on to the wrong side of the bubble. The flip side is that with other teams like Texas A&M and Tennessee still within shouting distance of the bubble, five teams (gasp) doesn’t seem completely out of the question either. All joking aside, if the league were to get five bids it would be a nice step forward from the last two three-bid years, and confirm what we’ve been saying on this site all year: Even though it doesn’t show up in the rankings and Florida is down, the depth of the conference is in fact improving.
2. There are a number of reasons why Florida has struggled this year, but transfers are not one of them. Billy Donovan recently defended the number of transfers on his current roster when asked if the Gators would be better off with more four-year players. “The transfers have been the ones that have really made sense for us because we know what we’re getting in terms of the kind of kids they are,” Donovan told the Gainesville Sun. Alex Murphy and Jon Horford are truly unique cases since both players had a brother who previously starred for Florida, but over-reliance on transfers can bite a program despite Fred Hoiberg’s seemingly endless pool of redemption stories at Iowa State. Just look at Missouri, which is largely in the situation it is now in because Frank Haith didn’t bring enough high school players into the program. But Florida doesn’t fall into that category because Dorian Finney-Smith and Eli Carter both brought three years of eligibility with them to Gainesville, and the Gators have plenty of potential four-year players in contributing roles – like Chris Chiozza, Kasey Hill and Devin Robinson.
3. Marshall Henderson’s graduation left a big hole in the Ole Miss program. The Rebels lost a lot of scoring, and a lot of must-see-TV. But at least in terms of production, Andy Kennedy has replaced the void left by Henderson quicker than anyone would’ve thought with Stefan Moody. “Everyone in this league was going to be excited when Marshall Henderson left because you didn’t feel like they could get a guy who could shoot it as well as him,” Georgia coach Mark Fox told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. “But lo and behold they’ve done it as well added an element of athleticism to the position.” With comparable usage rates, Moody (23.7 PER, 55.7% true shooting, 48.6% effective field goal) is exceeding Henderson’s (19.5 PER, 52.5% true shooting, 48.6% effective field goal) offensive output from last year, and adds more athleticism to the team. Considering Moody hasn’t made headlines for the wrong reasons, the Rebels have clearly upgraded at the off guard position.
4. Texas A&M is in the midst of its longest conference (Big 12 and SEC) winning streak since 2011, and Billy Kennedy thinks his team’s maturity is a big reason why. “We start three juniors and two seniors and they’ve all played high-level Division I basketball. Their consistency and maturity is why we’re enjoying some success.” Yesterday we pointed out that the Aggies’ influx of new players could mean they are yet to hit their peak. But the two most important players from that group, Jalen Jones and Danuel House, have high major experience, which has helped create that consistency. They’ve also pushed senior starters Jordan Green and Kourtney Roberson into complementary roles, which suits both players very well and makes for a strong all-around team.
5. At 7-12, Missouri is smack dab in the middle of a rebuilding year, but Kim Anderson has not relaxed his rotations and played guys just to play them. “It’s not like if you’re in a high school situation where like seventh grade basketball gets to play because that’s what the superintendent says. It’s not like that. You’ve got to play — the guys that are playing the best get to play more,” he told the Columbia Tribune. One notable omission has been freshman Jakeenan Gant, who has lost his starting spot and played just 14 minutes in the last two games. The 2013-14 Georgia Mr. Basketball has not developed as expected, or at least in the way his 13 point debut against Xavier suggested he might. Still, it is important for Anderson to establish a culture even if it means one of his more talented freshmen sitting on the bench.

1. The Louisville Courier-Journal’s Tim Sullivan writes that John Calipari’s biggest challenge this season might be instilling enough doubt in his team so that they don’t completely buy the hype. There’s no doubt Cal needs to latch on to any struggle he can to keep the Wildcats on their toes, but I don’t think he’s going at it alone. A good part of the team was around for last year’s six conference losses. Willie Cauley-Stein was around for that and the epic disappointment that was 2012-13. These players may have confidence, but I doubt they have short memories, and Cal should have support keeping the team focused.
2. Uttering the word “Clemson” around this microsite is risky business. Legend has it if you say the word three times Brad Brownell will appear and ruin the dreams of your favorite SEC squad. The Tigers have, after all, already beaten Arkansas, LSU and Auburn while losing to Winthrop, Gardner-Webb and Rutgers. South Carolina gets its shot at its arch rival tonight, and the importance of the game isn’t lost on Frank Martin. “Any time you play those kind of games, you’re playing for your school, first and foremost,” Martin told GoGamecocks.com. “But you’re also representing your conference. And we take pride in that.” The Gamecocks have a good chance to end the SEC’s Clemson skid as they looked good demolishing Oklahoma State almost two weeks ago. Duane Notice has also stepped up his game in a big way, scoring 47 points in his last two games.
3. The sun probably hasn’t set on Alabama’s tournament chances, but the Tide need to get on a roll to (no pun intended) to truly get in the discussion. The folks at Roll Bama Roll suggest that more of the offensive game plan should involve Michael Kessens, and the numbers certainly back that up. He’s posted the best effective field goal percentage on the team, and looks comfortable with the ball anywhere on the floor. It’ll be interesting to see how Anthony Grant divides up minutes between Kessens and fellow sophomore Shannon Hale the rest of the way, especially since Hale is shooting three’s at a worse rate than last year.
4. Jakeenan Gant’s debut was a bright spot in what has been a difficult opening season for Kim Anderson at Missouri. The freshman finally gained eligibility and was able to take the court in the Tigers loss to Xavier, scoring 13 points on 4-of-8 shooting. This was a surprise to his coach. “I really didn’t expect that much from him just because he hadn’t really been playing with the first group of guys,” Anderson told the Columbia Missourian. “But I was really pleased with the way he came in.” This year will largely be about the development of Gant, Jonathan Williams and Teki Gill-Caesar. The Tigers looked good for portions of the Xavier game, and can build on this with a rivalry game against Illinois tomorrow.
5. Until last night the only Division I team that Arkansas State, with an RPI of 339 and KenPom rating of 192, had beaten was Central Arkansas. Then they went to Starkville and beat Mississippi State. This was a truly damaging defeat. “Even beyond that, we’ve got to start giving a return on the investment. I think the administration; everybody’s invested in this program. We have to start giving a return on that investment,” Rick Ray told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. In a league with no shortage of bad losses this season, this may have been the worst. As Ray said, it’s frustrating because you would have thought the program would be above this type of result at this point in his tenure. Maybe it was a bad outing, but the Bulldogs are mired in a four game losing streak and need to start building some positive momentum or questions about Ray’s job security may begin to surface.

1. Prior to Friday, this season had already been disappointing for Florida State, but things got worse on Friday as they announced that Aaron Thomas, the team’s leading scorer this season at 14.8 points per game, had been declared ineligible for the rest of the season. The exact reason for the decision has not been disclosed, but according to reports it is not due to academic reasons and it was made by the school not the NCAA. Thomas’ absence will put even more of an onus on Xavier Rathan-Mayes, who sat out last season as a partial qualifier. In reality, the season is probably over for the Seminoles who are 4-5 after losing their ACC opener at Notre Dame on Saturday.
2. Missouri‘s season has not gone much better than Florida State’s so far, but at least they moved in the right direction this weekend as they added highly-touted JaKeenan Gant. Gant, a 6’8″ freshman power forward, was Mr. Basketball in Georgia in 2013 before transferring to a high school in Missouri for his senior year of high school. Gant, who sat out nine games while the school looked into reports that he had received impermissible benefits, was a four-star recruit rated #52 overall in last year’s graduating class. Although the Tigers lost in his first game back, he made quite an impact scoring 13 points in 15 minutes coming off the bench in a 74-58 loss to Xavier.
3. Continuing the trend of teams off to poor starts, Memphis will be without guard Markel Crawford for at least four games after he injured his left knee in Saturday’s loss to Oklahoma State. While Crawford’s mother initially said it was “a torn ligament”, Josh Pastner says it is a “sprained knee”. If Crawford, who is averaging 5.5 points in 21.8 minutes per game this season, returns from injury as expected, his first game back would be the team’s AAC opener against Houston on New Year’s Eve. While Memphis might have enough depth on the perimeter to handle Crawford’s absence, they have much bigger issues as Saturday night’s loss dropped them to 3-4 against what has admittedly been a decent schedule, but one where they have not been close in their losses.
4. There were also a couple of notable transfers from the weekend. Duke announced that sophomore forward Semi Ojeleye will be transferring. Ojeleye, who has 2.5 years of eligibility left, would typically be considered a highly-touted prospect, but at Duke he was the only member of the regular rotation (10.5 minutes per game) who was not a McDonald’s All-American. Having said that he was a borderline top 25 recruit coming out of high school so despite his meager production (3 points and 2.3 rebounds per game this season) we would expect to see him at a top-tier program in a year. Tennessee sophomore forward Dominic Woodson announced that he will be transferring citing a desire to join a program that is a better fit and one where he can play a bigger role. The 6’10” forward, who averaged 3.5 points and 2 rebounds in 12 minutes per game, has only been in Knoxville after transferring from Memphis this summer. Losing Woodson will hurt a Volunteer team that already had issues with depth on the inside. As for Woodson, we have no idea where he will end up. Obviously, there is a market for 6’10”, 280-pound players, but with Woodson’s background–initially committing to Baylor before going to Memphis where he was suspended and now leaving Tennessee–we aren’t sure how many suitors he will have.
5. One of the more interesting trends in college sports (and sports in general) is the recent trend for people to prefer to stay home rather than go to games. There are many factors driving this with the primary one in our eyes being convenience (not having to drive to a game, deal with traffic or lines, and being able to sit on your own couch) as well as the ability to switch between games and having a great view particularly with high-definition televisions. The one thing that you definitely miss is the atmosphere at games (particularly big games) and that is what schools are counting on with their attempt to sell “experiences”. These experiences range from a few hundred dollars and stuff like playing golf with a non-revenue sport coach to several thousand dollars with sideline access and exclusive pre-/post-game access. As the article notes, these auctions are not that well publicized so they probably aren’t bringing as much money as they could. We will be interested to see if schools go to this well more as they face revenue issues.

The SEC microsite will preview each of the league teams over the next week, continuing today with Missouri.

Missouri Tigers

Strengths. A fresh start with a familiar face. Frank Haith produced three draft picks over the last two years (Phil Pressey, Alex Oriakhi, Jordan Clarkson), two first team All-SEC players (Pressey, Jabari Brown), and two second team All-SEC players (Clarkson, Laurence Bowers). But all this talent resulted in only one NCAA tournament appearance: an uninspiring second round loss to Colorado State in 2012-13. Missouri never seemed to play up to its potential after a magical first season under Haith, and the defense often looked disjointed. His three-year tenure was also marked with fallout from the Miami NCAA investigation. It’s not that Haith did a bad job in Columbia, it’s just that the program didn’t seem to be trending in the right direction and the fanbase wasn’t exactly crushed when he left for Tulsa after last season. Enter Kim Anderson, the former Missouri player who spent 11 years as an assistant coach under Norm Stewart, and is coming off a 12-year stint at Central Missouri that culminated in a Division II national championship. It might take time for Anderson to readjust to the Division I level, but his hire has created excitement among the fanbase, and along with six newcomers on the court, provides Missouri with a fresh start.

Jonathan Williams is looking to take a big step forward in his sophomore season. (columbiamissourian.com)

Weaknesses. Scoring. Two numbers highlighted by the Columbia Tribune’s Steve Walentik speak for themselves: the Tigers are replacing 78 percent of their scoring from last season and Jonathan Williams is their leading returning scorer at just 5.8 points per game. To be fair, there weren’t a lot of scoring opportunities for players other than Clarkson, Brown, and Earnest Ross last year. Still, points will have to come from somewhere. Williams and Wes Clark should improve on their freshmen seasons, and Baylor transfer Deuce Bello has a chance to play a big role in the backcourt. The same can be said for Hawaii graduate transfer Keith Shamburger, but he figures to be more of a distributor than scorer. Freshman forward and late signee Montaque “Teki” Gill-Caesar has picked up rave reviews over the summer, and Jakeenan Gant and Namon Wright are top-100 Haith recruits that Anderson was able to hang on to. Despite the upside there are a lot of offensive question marks. Williams and Clark didn’t show the potential to be primary scoring threats in their first years, and Bello was just a role player during his two seasons in Waco. The other three players are just freshmen, and as a whole it doesn’t seem like there is much three-point shooting ability on the roster. Read the rest of this entry »

1. For the past few years we have been speculating as to when many of the legendary coaches in college basketball would retire, but there is another college basketball legend–Dick Vitale–who we should be talking about in a similar way. Vitale, who turned 75 in June, reached an agreement with with ESPN that will extend his contract through 2017. We all know that Vitale has become a polarizing figure with some fan bases, but we have a hard time faulting someone who is so passionate about the sport we all love and is even more passionate about raising money for cancer research. We are sure that there are some of you who have grown tired of Vitale and his “act”, but remember there is no bigger ambassador for the sport.
2. Butler announced that head coach Brandon Miller would be taking an indefinite medical leave of absence for an undisclosed reason. Last season, Miller had the unenviable task of replacing Brad Stevens with a depleted squad and it showed with a first-year record of 14-17 overall and 4-14 in the Big East. We aren’t sure what the exact reasons are for Miller’s leave of absence, but according to Jeff Goodman they might be stress-related as many of Miller’s friends have been unable to contact him for months and Goodman says that he would not be surprised if Miller did not return. Whatever Miller’s ailment may be we wish him the best of health in his recovery from whatever is bothering him. Chris Holtmann, who previously spent three seasons as head coach at Gardner-Webb before coming to Butler, will serve as the interim head coach during Miller’s leave.
3. Cameron Biedscheid‘s stay at Missouri was a short one as the school announced that the Notre Dame transfer is leaving the school “to attend to personal matters”. The school did not go into details as to what those personal matters were, but said that Biedscheid, who would be have eligible to play in the spring semester, “will no longer be a member of our basketball program” indicating that this will not just be a temporary break. Even though Biedscheid’s production as a freshman at Notre Dame– 6.2 points in 17.4 minutes per game–was modest he was a highly touted prospect and would have been expected to pick up a lot of the scoring the Tigers lost when Jordan Clarkson, Jabari Brown, and Earnest Ross left. Now the Tigers are left in an even more difficult spot and Biedscheid will have some tough decisions ahead as he will not be eligible to play in Division I until the 2015-16 season. To make things even worse for Missouri, Johnathan Williams III, a power forward who averaged 5.8 points per game last season, will miss time after suffering a torn meniscus during an individual workout.
4. With those losses the announcement that Missouri had reinstated freshmen Jakeenan Gant and D’Angelo Allen certainly seems a little suspicious. The pair had been suspended last month after they were arrested on suspicion of third-degree assault when Gant’s wallet was found at the site of an assault. Gant was considered a coup for Kim Anderson as he was the state’s 2014 Mr. Basketball who committed to Frank Haith and stayed even after Haith left. Allen committed to Missouri the week after Anderson was hired so they are both pretty significant freshmen at least on a symbolic level.  We aren’t exactly sure how they magically managed to do enough to impress the staff that they had turned things around the same time the team lost two key pieces, but we have our suspicions.
5. Long Beach State‘s aspirations of competing for the Big West title this year took a hit when head coach Dan Monson announced that starting guard A.J. Spencer would miss the 2014-15 season after suffering a torn ACL in his left knee during a pickup game last week. Spencer’s injury was reported last week by a local newspaper, but was not confirmed by Monson until this week. Spencer averaged 9.1 points and 3.2 rebounds per game last season while starting 28 of 32 games. Monson will try to fill Spencer’s spot by committee, but with Long Beach State’s challenging non-conference slate it could be a rough start to the season.