1. Twelve points doesn’t seem like a particularly crazy total, but in a 58-53 defensive deadlock in a bustling Carrier Dome against a Syracuse team desperate to get back in the win column, Luke Hancock‘s four three-pointers were key to Louisville‘s big Saturday win. As Adam Himmelsbach writes, three of Hancock’s treys came in the final nine minutes of the game, the final one breaking a 48-all tie and giving the Cardinals the momentum to ride to the victory. While Louisville struggled against Syracuse’s zone for much of the game, Hancock brought a three-point threat to the floor which the Cardinals had lacked for much of the game, and he hit big shot after big shot down the stretch.
2. While there aren’t too many optimists in Central New York right now, one important person is keeping faith that the Orange can right the ship come tournament time: Jim Boeheim. After the loss to Louisville, Boeheim discussed the recent three game slide, and his team’s prospects going forward: “I like what we can be… We’ve lost to three ranked teams. We haven’t played very good. We haven’t shot very good and we could’ve won two of the three. If we were getting beat by 15 or 20 points, I’d be worried. I’d be very worried. But we’re right there.’’ Syracuse has a brief reprieve from their brutal season-ending stretch with a game against DePaul before heading down to Washington for their last Big East regular season game, a fitting match-up with Georgetown.
3. The Marquette–Notre Dame rivalry is another that may be lost after conference realignment rears its head. The Golden Eagles can count another victory over the Irish after a comfortable eight point win this weekend. Without Jack Cooley, Notre Dame had no answer for Marquette bigs Chris Otule and Davante Gardner. Chicago Sun-Times writer Dan McGrath suggests that the nature of this rivalry added a lot of weight to this game, especially for Marquette: “Notre Dame’s perceived haughtiness over a higher national profile and stronger academic reputation can stir resentment in the most level-headed Marquette types. So a victory over the Irish in anything is cause for celebration on a campus that embraces celebrating as part of the culture.”
4. The winner of the Big East’s regular season is usually a good bet for a number one seed in the NCAA tournament, and this year it is looking more and more like Georgetown will hold on to win that crown. However, many projections haven’t included Georgetown on the top line of their brackets. The Hoyas have moved into the top five in the polls and they’re winners of 11 straight games going back to a now-inexplicable loss to USF, not to mention that they have one of the nation’s best players in Otto Porter. With the top few teams losing seemingly every week, it shouldn’t shock anyone that a consistent winner like Georgetown could be staring at a top seed at this point, as crazy at that may have sounded just a few weeks ago.
5. After a gutty 20-point, five-rebound, three-assist game that helped propel Cincinnati over UConn, Mick Cronin heaped plenty of praise on guard Sean Kilpatrick: “Mental toughness and work ethic is the hardest thing to find in recruiting, and you really don’t know until you get a guy in practice. I knew during his redshirt year the way that guy attacked practice every day with the life and the energy he had.” Cronin also went out of his way to mention Kilpatrick among Bearcat greats like Kenyon Martin and Steve Logan. Kilpatrick has carried Cincinnati with 17.7 points per game, and was especially key during stretches mid-season when Cashmere Wright and JaQuon Parker struggled to give the Bearcats strong secondary scoring options.

1.  Just when you thought the conference realignment mumbo jumbo couldn’t get more confusing, news broke yesterday that the Catholic 7 will be starting their own league next season and they will be calling themselves the Big East conference. From what I can tell, the old Big East, now built around football, will be selling its name to the Catholic 7 and renaming itself something different. Meanwhile the Catholic 7 gets to keep a conference name that is synonymous with excellent basketball and plans to add Xavier, Butler, and probably Creighton as it establishes itself as a basketball-first conference. The move is being spearheaded by the Fox Sports Network which has promised the schools from the Catholic 7 a lucrative TV deal and is helping grease the wheels for their impending exit. Ignoring the ridiculousness of a television network being the driving factor in conference realignment (hardly a new idea) the best part of this news is that for once, we will have a basketball-first conference.
2. The NCAA tried its best to make sure that St. John’s forward Orlando Sanchez never played a single game for the Red Storm, but in the end, the school and the talented big man won their appeal, on their fourth try. Sanchez has sat out the entire season while waiting for the NCAA to sort out his eligibility issues that stem from his time with a club team in the Dominican Republic. The NCAA denied his appeal three times and the Red Storm were actually forced to bring in seasoned litigators and threaten to go to federal court and now finally Sanchez is free to play…next season anyway. The news is great for coach Steve Lavin and his club. Sanchez will be 25 when he suits up next season and has impressed scouts with his size, versatility, and athleticism. The Johnnies have been sorely lacking an offensive threat on the interior and if they can put Sanchez on the floor with shot-blocking phenom Chris Obekpa, the Johnnies could be a dangerously balanced team next season.
3. Not everything about UConn‘s double overtime loss to Georgetown on Wednesday was disheartening as mercurial sophomore forward DeAndre Daniels had his best game as a collegiate, finishing with 25 points and 10 rebounds for his first double-double. Daniels’ impressive performance was probably one part excitement for fans who have been waiting for the uber-talented underclassmen to live up to his hype as a recruit, and one part frustration as it is somewhat puzzling as to why Daniels hasn’t been able to have more games like this. The fact that a player of Daniels’ size and athleticism has just one double-double is somewhat absurd and only serves to highlight what a streaky player he has been this season. But assuming Daniels returns to school next season alongside the rest of his team, and assuming he continues to improve and get better, the Huskies could be a very dangerous team next season.
4. The Pittsburgh Panthers are likely headed back to the NCAA Tournament this season after a one-season hiatus. But while it is a nice accomplishment and one that the team and coach Jamie Dixon should be proud of, the program has set the bar so high in the past decade, that the new questions about what it will take for Pitt to have serious success in the NCAA Tournament have already started to arise. Somehow, for all of their success and talent, the Panthers never made the Final Four under Ben Howland or Jamie Dixon, and they have made the Elite Eight just once. Most programs would take 11 tournament appearances in the last 12 seasons and boast about it for years, but Panthers’ fans expect more and Dixon expects more as well. Dixon really only has himself to blame for helping set the bar so high, but the program’s shortcomings in the NCAA Tournament are troublesome and rather glaring. They have never beat a higher seed? That is shocking given how good some of Dixon’s teams have been. This season will be another interesting case study because as much as advanced metrics love the Panthers and as much talent as they have on their roster, they have been inconsistent this season and they need to make sure that occasional complacency doesn’t spill over into the NCAA Tournament.
5. At this point I feel like Bud Poliquin is just trolling the rest of us with his column. One day after a jumbled and meandering column about Jim Boeheim‘s decorum in press, Poliquin was back, republishing a column from 1989 that centers around Boeheim getting a little bit combative in a press conference and proves Poliquin was just as difficult to follow then as he is today. The man is an institution at the Syracuse Post-Standard and an excellent columnist, especially when it comes to Syracuse basketball, but the column from March of ’89, just like the column from the other day, doesn’t really make much of a point and contains so much flowery language and prose that it is very difficult to follow along. So let me try to synthesize what the previous two columns have been about: Jim Boeheim, coach of the Syracuse basketball team, can occasionally get a bit snarky with reporters when he doesn’t like their questions, and he has been doing this for years.

1. Everyone remembers the last two days when I was saying that UConn was going to come to play Wednesday right? Okay so maybe I wasn’t going out on a very big limb with that prediction, but the Huskies sure made me look good last night when they took highly ranked Georgetown to double overtime before losing a game they probably should have won in agonizing fashion. Yes, Otto Porter deserves some big-time credit for his late-game heroics and his general excellence at the game of basketball, but the Huskies’ perimeter defense for most of the second half was atrocious and their offensive possessions down the stretch were not great either. UConn deserves credit for continuing to play inspired basketball without a postseason to look forward to, and Georgetown has the look of a No. 1 seed after taking a tough conference opponent’s best shot on the road and still coming out with a win. The Hoyas are hardly a finished product and if some team can figure out how to stop or even slow down Porter, John Thompson III‘s bunch will be in big trouble. But, in case you didn’t notice, Porter is pretty difficult to stop and when the backcourt duo of D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera and Markel Starks get going, opposing teams don’t have a lot of success. It is way too early to say Georgetown has the inside shot at a No. 1 seed because an early exit in the Big East Tournament can dash those hopes quickly, but they are definitely in the conversation as of right now.
2. Notre Dame is still clinging to hope at winning the Big East regular season crown and one of the ways to improve their chances would be to get the services of senior forward Scott Martin back sometime soon. Martin has returned to practice after battling knee issues for much of the season but the Fighting Irish still have no idea when he will return to the court or if he will be able to return at all. Coach Mike Brey gave Martin’s comeback a 50-50 shot and it seems like the best the team and Martin can hope for is that the pain won’t be a major issue and Martin can play limited minutes. Even in limited minutes, Martin’s basketball IQ, floor-spacing ability, and improved long-range shooting would be a boon for a Fighting Irish team trying to find some consistency. And on a more personal note, it would be just awful for Martin if his sixth-year of eligibility and his last shot at the NCAA Tournament were wasted because of recurring knee problems. The quotes Martin gave to Jeff Goodman are, unfortunately, rather sad, and positive thinking alone won’t resurrect Martin’s career. My guess is that Brey and the team will find a way to get Martin on the court, even for a minute, on Senior Night next Tuesday but I wouldn’t expect him to make a large impact on the rest of team’s season.
3. Until I got a chance to read this article, I had forgotten that Miami‘s star point guard Shane Larkin was at one point supposed to be playing for DePaul and coach Oliver Purnell. Even Purnell was willing to wonder what life might have been with a budding star like Larkin running the show, but alas, the Blue Demons don’t have Larkin, who has gone on to bigger and better things, while the Blue Demons have continued to slump. The story is a good one, especially because it is penned by a Virginian-Pilot reporter who was familiar with Purnell from the coach’s time at Old Dominion. The jist is that Purnell came to Chicago with the reputation of a program fixer, something DePaul was in desperate need of, and things have not gone according to plan. Aside from Cleveland Melvin and Brandon Young, the team is devoid of true Big East-caliber talent and the Blue Demons’ offense is so putrid at times that watching them play can be difficult. We have used this space before to wonder whether Purnell will get the axe at the end of this season, but I think at this point, the school is willing to let him have one more year to show some serious improvement before they kick him to the curb. Of course that extra season might have just as much to do with the fact that DePaul still owes Purnell a lot of money and they would like to try and recoup something of value from that investment. It’s hard to root against Purnell, who seems like such a nice guy, but Purnell’s coaching track record is not spotless, and unless he can turn things around out of the gate next season, the school may not even wait a full season to dump him.
4. Hard to disagree with Cincinnati head honcho Mick Cronin‘s decision to make practice after the team’s blowout loss to Notre Dame light and fun. Nothing has been fun about the last few weeks for Cincinnati as they have watched themselves go from conference title contenders to bubble watchers in just six games and so Cronin’s decision to give the guys an “emotional break” seems like exactly what the doctor ordered for the team as they get ready to play UConn on Saturday. Of course that emotional break won’t help the Bearcats learn how to score, something they have not done a lot of in recent weeks. The game against the Huskies will be at home, and UConn is coming off their emotionally draining loss last night to Georgetown, so maybe the stars have aligned for Cincinnati to get back on track, or maybe the gritty Huskies will find a way to get up for this game as well and they will sink Cincinnati even lower. Maybe now, after their break, the team can relax, take some of the pressure off of themselves, and just play hard-nosed basketball. They better, because although they are safely in the tournament for now, the way they have played in the last six games, anything can happen before Selection Sunday.
5. It is somewhat hard to follow Bud Poliquin‘s meandering, comma-filled article about Jim Boeheim‘s testy press conference after the team’s loss to Marquette but I think what the veteran columnist is trying to say is that people shouldn’t make a big deal of the fact that Boeheim got a bit snippy in a press conference because it happens all the time. Poliquin has a point. There are plenty of us who haven’t even been on Earth long enough to remember Boeheim’s first years at Syracuse and even we know that the legend likes to get combative and short when he doesn’t like the questions being asked. All of that said, Boeheim has been making plenty of news with his off-the-court remarks this season, and scolding a student reporter, or any reporter for that much, for asking pertinent questions about X’s and O’s and coaching decisions is a bit ridiculous. The questions that Boeheim didn’t like weren’t meant to question his coaching ability, they were questions that were being asked so they could get answers from the guy in the room with all of the coaching experience and ability. A question about why Boeheim didn’t use DaJuan Coleman against the Golden Eagles isn’t meant to criticize Boeheim’s decision-making, it is to learn more about his decision-making process. So yeah, let’s not make a big deal of the fact that Jim Boeheim got snarky in front of a microphone again, but only if Boeheim will agree to stop making innocent questions about a game such a big deal as well.

Brian Otskey is an RTC columnist. Every Tuesday during the regular season he’ll be giving his 10 thoughts on the previous week’s action. You can find him on Twitter @botskey

1. Much has been made about the decline in scoring in college basketball over the last decade. These days, it is very common to see games played in the 60s, 50s or even 40s in some instances. It is true that scoring has decreased substantially over the last 10 years and the numbers bear it out. In the 2002-03 season, 172 teams averaged at least 70.0 PPG. That number has steadily declined, falling to 145 five seasons ago and 111 this year. With the advent of advanced statistics, one in particular stands out. Ten years ago, 123 teams averaged an adjusted tempo of 70.0 possessions per game. That was cut in half by 2007-08 (62 teams) and the number has continued to decline even since then. This season, only 28 of America’s 347 Division I teams play at that pace or greater. Why is this happening? Pace is certainly a factor but there are other issues at play here. With the proliferation of television coverage and video based scouting programs such as Synergy Sports Technology, scouting and video material is more available than ever. Head coaches and their staffs know everything about an opponent and that makes a huge difference for a lot of teams on the defensive end. A lot of teams run the same sets and it’s simply easier to prepare when you see the same thing over and over again. The elephant in the room, however, is the talent level in college basketball. Most of us probably wouldn’t like to admit it but the talent level has noticeably dipped in our sport over the last decade. I’m not talking about a once in 20 years type of player like Kevin Durant but the overall depth of talent in the game. There’s a reason a lot of people are saying this year’s NBA Draft class could be the weakest ever. That’s because it is. Until college basketball gets a much-needed infusion of talent, low scoring games will remain the norm.
2. A lot of people would like to see the so-called “one-and-done” rule fade to black and that got me thinking about some much-needed rule changes in college basketball. I’m not going to discuss the one-and-done here, I’m talking about changes that need to be made during the actual games. If I had the power, the first thing I’d do is shorten the shot clock to 30 seconds. Five seconds may not sound like a lot but since there are roughly 66 to 67 possessions in an average Division I game, that would translate into another 10 possessions per game. Immediately you’d see an increase in scoring which makes the game more attractive to fans. One thing that annoys me is the amount of timeouts and stoppages in the game. There are already four mandated media timeouts every half and each team gets a total of five timeouts per game. In an era when coaches rarely leave timeouts on the table, there are 18 different timeouts in a typical college game, an average of one every two minutes and 13 seconds. It hurts the flow of a game in a big way and my proposal would be to reduce the number of timeouts to three per team and no extras in overtime. The end of every college basketball game these days seems to include a multitude of timeouts, fouls and official reviews. Officials reviewing plays has helped many sports get calls right, including college basketball. However, officials are abusing the monitor more than ever before. A big reason why is the NCAA rule change a few years ago regarding flagrant fouls and elbows thrown. I get why this rule was implemented (player safety) but there is no evidence this rule acts as a deterrent. Players have been taught from a young age to clear space with your elbows when being pressured by a defender. Now, a loose elbow can be deemed a flagrant foul even if there was no intent to injure by the offending player. This has to change. I have absolutely no problem with calling a flagrant foul for a malicious elbow or other physical contact. But calling a flagrant for an innocent or accidental elbow is wrong and is another thing that contributes to college games that lack an entertaining flow. A couple other changes I’d make include not resetting the 10-second count in the backcourt after a timeout, not being able to inbound the ball into the backcourt (it’s a bailout move for a team without a quality inbounds play) and starting the 1-and-1 bonus at nine fouls instead of seven. What are your thoughts on some of these proposals?
   

   Tubby Smith has Minnesota pointed in the right direction

3. This time of year, bubble talk dominates the discussion. My way of looking at bubble teams is simple: Did you beat quality opponents and what have you done away from home? This approach is one Jay Bilas mentions on television every year, something I wholeheartedly agree with. I remember years ago when Bilas went on ESPN and said something like, “Bubble teams have all proven they can lose. The question is, who did you beat and where did you beat them?” Truer words have never been spoken. You can’t dismiss all losses but when we’re talking about bubble teams, we’re usually looking at teams that have lost anywhere from 9 to 12 games, sometimes more. When I look at this year’s group of bubble teams, a few stand out. Minnesota is only 7-8 in Big Ten play but has multiple quality wins over Memphis (neutral), Illinois (away), Wisconsin (home), Michigan State (home) and last night’s massive upset of Indiana at the Barn on its resume. All of that trumps Minnesota’s loss to Northwestern and should get the Golden Gophers into the Big Dance.  Staying in the Big Ten, Illinois is in the same boat and I believe the Illini have done enough to warrant a bid at this point. Villanova is an interesting team. The Wildcats have a high number of losses (11) but wins at Connecticut and home versus Louisville and Syracuse have them in the NCAA discussion. I think Villanova is an NCAA-worthy team but the Wildcats need to do more to earn a bid because a pair of bad losses on their resume hurt the cause. Teams like St. Mary’s are harder to quantify. The Gaels have just one top 50 win (home vs. Creighton) on their resume and a pair of bad losses to Pacific and Georgia Tech. When a team wins a number of games against poor competition as St. Mary’s has, it’s very hard to determine if they’re NCAA-worthy. I think the Gaels are, but their resume leaves a lot to be desired. Beating Gonzaga in the WCC Tournament would prove to everyone that they deserve a spot. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Jim Boeheim was saying things in front of a microphone again and, after a tough road loss to Marquette in which his team led for the better part of the game, he was entertaining as always. He was cranky with reporters and didn’t seem to like a few of the questions that were tossed his way. He had good reason for his attitude, too, as Jeff Goodman points out. The Orange have been erratic as of late and they don’t look like a team that is ready to challenge for a spot in the Final Four, so Boeheim isn’t necessarily keen on fielding questions about his team’s abilities and his coaching decisions. Of course Boeheim can get cranky with reporters all he wants but if Syracuse doesn’t find some outside shooting and consistent effort for 40 minutes, it will be the team and their chances for postseason success that will start to become the issue.
2. Goodman clearly came correct in the last two days because his other story out of the Marquette and Syracuse tilt was also an excellent one. This one focused on how Marquette is tired of hearing about how hard they play, which struck a chord, because just yesterday I mentioned how the Golden Eagles owed much of their success to how hard they play. The fact of the matter is that Marquette doesn’t have NBA talent on its roster aside from perhaps Vander Blue, and they have wildly overachieved this season in a ruggedly competitive conference without their best two players and leading scorers from last season. They don’t have the talent to be this good, so they make up for it with heady play and excellent depth at multiple positions… oh, and how hard they play. Goodman makes sure to rightly give coach Buzz Williams much of the credit for the sustained success and the way the Golden Eagles play is really just an extension of the way Williams coaches — with intensity, competitiveness, and grit.
3. Williams isn’t the only coach who deserves a fair amount of credit for helping his team overachieve this season. Georgetown has been another conference success story this season behind star player Otto Porter and a slew of useful role players who can step up in big moments, but a primary reason for their success has been the coaching job of John Thompson III. The Hoyas didn’t win pretty early in the season, but they won often, and when second-leading scorer Greg Whittington was suspended, the team was supposed to struggle but instead has gone 11-1. The lineup tinkering has worked, young players have developed on schedule, and the Hoyas are playing some of their best basketball of the season with a big assist from the man in charge of making all those things work.
4. I said it yesterday and I will say it again, UConn is going to come to play tonight when they get a visit from Georgetown for what will be the biggest remaining game on their season. Huskies’ coach Kevin Ollie is yet another coach helping his team overachieve and he has done a masterful job keeping his team focused and motivated. Of course the players deserve some credit for the team’s success this season as well, and if they can’t get fired up to try and upset a Top 10 team, then they shouldn’t be playing this sport. The Hoyas will not be able to afford to come out flat, because Gampel Pavilion will be rocking and if the Huskies start fast and the Hoyas struggle to keep up, the team and the fans in the arena will quickly smell blood in the water.
5. The best part about the Big East this season has been how evenly matched the top six teams are. At this juncture in the season, there are plenty of teams still mathematically alive in the hunt for the regular season title and one of those is Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish were a trendy pick to compete for the title this season because of their returning experience and despite some rough patches earlier in the season, they find themselves right in the thick of the race with just a couple games left. Now, their chances at winning the regular season title are quite slim, but that doesn’t mean the team isn’t committed to winning out and doing their best to keep the pressure on the teams above them.

1. As expected, more details have emerged in the Jim Boeheim-Andy Katz “feud”, which came to a head last night when Boeheim called Katz an idiot and refused to answer his questions at the presser that followed Syracuse’s loss at Connecticut.  What was originally assumed by many to be an issue with Katz sharing some information about James Southerland’s academic issues now seems to be more about last year’s Bernie Fine fiasco.  Let’s hear from Boeheim: “It’s really simple. I went to New York last year to play in the (NIT Pre-Season Tip-Off) Tournament in November and he (Katz) asked if he could interview me about the tournament. And I said, ‘Yeah, but I can’t talk about the (Bernie Fine) investigation.’ We got in the room and he put me on camera — there were several witnesses there — and he asked me what I’d told him I couldn’t answer. I kept telling him, ‘I can’t answer that.’ And he asked me, like, 10 times on camera. He never took the camera off me. Two or three people in the room were so disgusted they walked out of the room. The producer came over and apologized afterward. And I told Katz right then and there, ‘Don’t talk to me. Do not try to talk to me again.'” Katz issued a response following the Syracuse.com article: “There was no deal. I don’t cut deals. He might have thought there was a deal, but I have never, ever made a deal… The reason I did that is because with guys like Jim Boeheim, John Calipari, Jim Calhoun they’ll, say there’s a certain subject they don’t want to talk about and then they’ll talk about it. If I asked it one too many times, fine, criticize me. I was just trying to see if he’d answer the question.”
2. On the brighter side for Syracuse fans… err, maybe not so much after Wednesday night in Hartford… Michael Carter-Williams continues to grab headlines for his play.  Mike DeCourcy of  Sporting News went into depth with MCW about his high-risk, high-reward play this season, and how his scant playing time last season has helped in his maturation process.  Carter-Williams, like Dion Waiters before him, is a fiery competitor, and is has gotten the best of him in games before, including one instance last season when he snapped at Jim Boeheim after being taken out of a game: “Definitely, there were a couple of times when it got the better of me and I lashed out at Coach. Those were mistakes I made. Coach told me if I wasn’t yelling at him, he wouldn’t know what to expect from me. I was a McDonald’s All-American and I wasn’t playing … he knew I wanted to be out there.”  Carter-Williams’ play has been up and down this Big East season, but few deny his talent, and the fact that if Syracuse has a chance at making a final four run this season, it will be in large part due to MCW’s play.
3.  College basketball is wide open this season, and the Big East is no different. It seems like half of the league is still in contention for the conference crown, and no one knows what will happen once the Big East tournament kicks off at Madison Square Garden. UConn was never supposed to be in the discussion this season.  After being handed a full post-season ban due to APR issues, and losing a number of talented players from their NCAA tournament team last season, UConn was largely an afterthought in the league.  However, with the win over Syracuse, the Huskies sit just a game out of first place in the conference, and the team may be especially dangerous, as a regular season Big East title is all that they can play for this year.
4. Cincinnati’s offensive woes have been well-documented, especially since Cashmere Wright’s injury in January.  Sean Kilpatrick has been a one man show for the Bearcats, and that hasn’t been a winning formula.  In their recent win over Villanova, Cincinnati was able to find offense from another source: JaQuon Parker.  Parker averages 10.9 points per game for Cincy, but had been in a bit of a scoring drought before breaking out with 19 points against the Wildcats.  The significance of his contribution was not lost on Mick Cronin: “He’s got to stay aggressive and I’ve got to help him with that. Put him in situations to where he can be aggressive and he’s thinking offense.  He’s thinking attack. For us to win, he’s got to play that way. For us to be a high-level team, he’s got to be a double-figure guy.”
5. The ballad of Todd Mayo at Marquette has hit frequent rough notes, but he is a rare talent that could become a major asset for Buzz Williams’ squad if kept in check.  Mayo spent the early part of this season on academic suspension, and he has had his playing time cut at points since his return for what many expect is disciplinary reasons.  When Mayo does suit up, he is a dangerous offensive weapon, averaging over 17.5 points per 40 minutes played.  The trouble is, for every double digit game he tallies, he only plays five minutes in another.  There are rumblings that Mayo may not be long for Marquette, but while he is still on the team, they can certainly use him in their race for the top of the Big East.

1. It appears that our #DausterForUSC campaign may have hit a stumbling block as Tommy Amaker has emerged as the top candidate for the coaching vacancy at USC. On the surface the USC job may seem more glamorous than coaching at Harvard with its significantly higher ceiling, but there is something to be said about being able to coach with reasonable expectations, which are not found across the country. In the end, what may end up keeping Amaker in Allston is his wife, who is a clinical psychologist at a Harvard-affiliated hospital. We are guessing that she could find a similar position in Southern California, but we are not sure how easy it is to work a basketball-psychology department package deal with various schools.
2. It seems like more and more of the news surrounding college basketball and college sports in general are based around what happens in a court instead of on a court. The latest example–New Jersey legalizing sports betting at casinos and horse tracks–is thankfully one that will not make a significant impact on the on-court product, but may have a bigger impact on the landscape of American sports than many of the conference realignment court cases that we have talked about over the past few years. At the heart of the matter is the constitutionality of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) of 1992, which only allows four states (Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware) to offer legal sports gambling. We have discussed our thoughts on this case before (we think New Jersey should and will win), but with arguments in the case starting yesterday we could get our answer relatively soon. Or not since some legal analysts point out that given the high stakes the loser will probably appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which might not hear the case until 2015. Of course, this is not so much of a New Jersey issue as a national issue because you know as soon as one more state is allowed to have sports gambling the other 45 states will quickly follow suit.
3. Over the years the number of high school all-star games has grown, but for many college basketball fans the only one that holds any real weight is the McDonald’s All-American Game. Yesterday, the rosters for this year’s game were announced and as you would expect Big Blue Nation is well-represented. Outside of the heavy Kentucky flavor of the event we are also looking forward to the possibility of Andrew Wiggins matching up against Jabari Parker. We don’t follow the recruiting scene that closely any more, but it seems like they hit all of the major recruits this year so we cannot point to anybody who was snubbed. Julius Randle is the only possibility we can think of, but he has had injury issues.
4. With the regular season winding down there is plenty of talk about awards and honors, but they are mostly focused on the players. We would usually support a Coach of the Year discussion as Seth Davis has in this week’s Hoop Thoughts, but in our opinion Jim Larranaga is the only choice right now. We guess a late season tailspin by the Hurricanes could make the race close, but with the way that Larranaga has energized the Coral Gables campus and turned a borderline top-25 team in the preseason into a legitimate national title contender in the middle of March. As Seth notes there are many worth candidates, but this year they are all battling for #2.
5. The Jim Boeheim-Andy Katz saga appears to have some shelf life as new details surrounding their feud have come out and appear to center around a 2011 interview where Boeheim claims Katz attempted to badger him with Bernie Fine questions even after Katz told him that he would not ask questions about Fine. For his part Katz denies this. Despite both parties coming out apparently citing this as the inflection point in their relationship others have speculated that the dislike is related to what were supposed to be off-the-record comment from Boeheim regarding James Southerland’s eligibility. One of the interesting, but not surprising aspects of this feud has been how many reporters came out saying that Boeheim owed Katz an apology. We are not sure we would go that far, but this should make for the most awkward halftime interviews since Billy Gillispie and Jeannine Edwards were crossing paths.

Last night was the latest episode of one of my favorite reality TV shows, right up there with “Rick Pitino Making Jokes,” the always popular and unpredictable show, “Jim Boeheim In Front Of A Microphone Saying Things.” You thought 24 seasons of  The Simpsons was a lot, well “Jim Boeheim In Front Of A Microphone Saying Things” is now in its 37th season and amazingly it still does not lack for high-quality original content. I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t truly understand the appeal of the show until around 2008 when the show aired the now-infamous episode in which Boeheim casually beat the ever-loving crap out of a malfunctioning microphone following a win against Long Beach State. After that I was hooked.

The show can make you laugh like the episode with the microphone, or it can make you cringe, like last season’s episode in which some felt Boeheim should have lost his job for insinuating that two men who had accused one of his assistant coaches of molesting them were only looking for money. Plenty have kept wondering whether the show will ever go off the air, but if this season, one which I have been watching devotedly, is any indication, “Jim Boeheim In Front Of A Microphone Saying Things” still has plenty of gas left in the tank. This season got off to a slow start as the Orange won a lot and didn’t encounter much adversity, but it started to pick up in December when the 900th career coaching victory episode took a surprise twist and ended with Boeheim publicly airing his unsolicited stance on gun control, and who could forget last week’s laugher when our ever-so-candid protagonist explained that he doesn’t read things on the Internet because he doesn’t “want to throw up everyday.”

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1. Syracuse and UConn played for the final time as Big East rivals at the XL Center in Hartford on Wednesday night.  It wasn’t the prettiest game in the world, and after an incredibly poor offensive performance by the Orange, UConn captured a 66-58 win. However, the postgame headlines weren’t about the end of a major college basketball rivalry or another hiccup by a top 10 Syracuse squad. Rather, in true Jim Boeheim-ian fashion, a press conference has become the most notable part of what was otherwise a historic night. Earlier in the evening, ESPN’s Andy Katz reported that he had learned that James Southerland’s academic issues, for which the forward missed six games, stemmed from two paragraphs in a term paper. What seemed like an interesting scoop at the time turned into a major issue when Boeheim refused to answer Katz’s questions after the game, calling him “an idiot” and “disloyal.” If Katz, who has had solid access to the Syracuse program in the past, reported on something that was supposed to be off the record, then Boeheim has a gripe. The Auburn Citizen‘s Ben Meyers has a great take on the situation; while he believes that the situation set Boeheim off, the Syracuse head coach used the issue to take attention off of his team’s bad play, a technique that he has successfully used in the past.
2. The play in the Big East this season has been relatively sloppy and unbecoming of what has been arguably the greatest basketball conference in the country. Grantland‘s Charles P. Pierce relates this, specifically Monday night’s ugly Georgetown-Marquette match-up, to the overall state of the Big East: “As the game was a perfect fractal view of the season, the season, of course, is a perfect fractal view of what’s going on in college basketball, generally. The sport has lost its logic. It has lapsed into incoherence, and nowhere more obviously than in the Big East, once the premier conference in the country, and now a listing hulk that everyone expects to be demolished and sold for parts in the very near future.” Pierce goes on to describe the conference’s break-up, which he blames on the “heroin of college sports,” football, and waxes poetic on the league which we all love. It’s a great read for Big East fans.
3. Russ Smith has certainly earned his “Russdiculous” nickname this season, for better and for worse. In a post on the Louisville site “Card Game”, Charlie Springer contends that Smith hasn’t yet proven that he is “comfortable as a teammate,” and that his occasional moments of basketball greatness are often countered when the guard goes rogue and makes poor decisions. The Cards haven’t gotten some of the production that they expected out of a number of their players, including Peyton Siva, who many expected to take a jump to stardom. Smith, eccentric play and all, is one of the Cardinals who has actually exceeded expectations, so much so that he’s won a few games by himself this year. Rick Pitino needs to find a way to bottle that energy and ability in order to keep the talented junior from blowing his own team’s season up.
4. Once upon a time, Pat Forde called Rutgers–Seton Hall one of the hottest rivalries in the country. This was just a few years ago, so it’s unclear what time period Forde was describing, but I’ll take his word for it. However, today the battle for New Jersey is dying, and not because of conference realignment or the other normal factors. It’s being killed by apathy. Under 5,000 people filled the RAC for the 2013 edition of this showdown, and by the sound of Steve Politi’s article on the subject, those who were there didn’t seem surprised by the proceedings. Rutgers squeaked out a 57-55 victory over its intrastate rivals in a game between two teams destined for mediocrity. Seton Hall last made the NCAA tournament in 2006; Rutgers, 1991. New Jersey has seen some bad basketball over the years, and interest in the sport just isn’t there to the point where the two fan bases can overcome all those lean years.
5. It remains to be seen who the Catholic Seven look to recruit when they break off and form their own league, but one hot name is Xavier, and current athletic director Mike Bobinski (who, incidentally, is leaving the school for the Georgia Tech job) recently stated that if the C7 looks his school’s way, it will have to at least listen. Xavier is a Jesuit school in Cincinnati, a metropolitan area the C7 loses when the Big East with the hometown Bearcats, and they have a very good basketball history. The Musketeers certainly seem to be a very solid fit for the burgeoning conference.

1. Our fears from yesterday’s Morning Five were realized as an MRI revealed that Nerlens Noel had torn the ACL in his left knee and would miss the remainder of the season. According to the school’s press release they expect he will undergo surgery on his left knee within the next two to three weeks with an expected recovery of six to eight months, but as we all know much of that depends on how the surgery and rehabilitation go. Outside of the obvious impact on Kentucky (hello, bubble), this is a big blow to the young center who was a potential #1 overall pick in this year’s NBA Draft. The injury has also led several individuals to question the “one-and-done” rule suggesting that if it had not been in place Noel would at least have had a multimillion dollar contract in place. It has also led a few individuals to speculate that Noel might come back for another year since this hurts his Draft stock although many sources indicate that Noel will still be a top-5 pick. We will table both discussions for another day (the latter is ridiculous) and just wish Noel the best in his recovery.
2. This week’s edition of Luke Winn’s power rankings are less GIF heavy than some previous versions, but as usual it packs a ton of information including an interesting analysis of team free throws rates at home and on the road. And it isn’t Duke that leads in disparity (ok, I guess you can argue that Duke gets calls both at home on the road). Outside of that perhaps the most interesting thing in this week’s column is that Winn questions the findings of the Ken Pomeroy analysis of late game situations that we linked to in yesterday’s Morning Five. As usual we tend to agree with Winn here although this “nerd on nerd” makes us wonder which side those on different sides of the analytic aisle will take.
3. We normally find court case involving college sports extremely boring, but the case involving Dominic Hardie, who along with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is suing the NCAA challenging a rule that bars felons from coaching NCAA-sanctioned events, is somewhat intriguing partly because we never knew such a rule existed. Hardie and his team are claiming that the rule violates the Civil Rights Act and unfairly discriminates against minorities. [Ed. Note: We will leave the sociopolitical implications to others who want to open that can of worms.] Hardie was trying to coach in a NCAA-certified basketball tournament, but was not allowed to after a 2011 rule change barred all individuals previously convicted of felonies, which is a change from previous policy that only barred individuals convicted of violent felonies within the past seven years. The interesting part of this is just how far this would go since depending on the jurisdiction charges such as assault, fraud, and perjury could be felonies. Given the amount of trouble some coaches have been finding themselves in lately there could be some that would be barred although we aren’t sure if this rule pertains just to the youth events or also actual NCAA games.
   
4. It must be something in the Connecticut media room that brings out the vitriol in some coaches as last night Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim called ESPN’s Andy Katz an “idiot” and “disloyal” (more details including a brief transcript of the interaction and some background).  Outside of his team’s ugly loss we are not sure what set off Boeheim (there has been some speculation that it was related to some columns or information that Katz had released, but it should make for some interesting interactions between the two of them going forward. To be fair to Katz, he is not the first media member that Boeheim has feuded with; he is just the most well-known national media member that has felt Boeheim’s wrath.
5. It wasn’t that long ago that we called out Andy Glockner for how stingy he was with handing out “Locks” for the NCAA Tournament, but looking at this week’s Bracket Watch we have to agree with him. When you look through the list the most jarring examples are in the Atlantic 10 and Missouri Valley Conference where he doesn’t have a single lock. A week ago we would have said he was crazy, but after some recent results we have to agree with him here. Having said that we think that there are more than a few of his “Should Be In” teams that are probably more like “Locks” at this point.