1. We have heard of package deals before (we even wrote about it in the early days of the site), but the decision by Memphis to hire Keelon Lawson as an assistant is unique even by those standards. Now Lawson is not just some random guy off the street as he played college basketball and led a Tennessee high school team to a state title so you could make the case that he was a legitimate hire albeit a rather unusual one as his credentials are not particularly noteworthy. The thing about him that is noteworthy is that he is the father of four elite recruits. The oldest of those recruits is K. J., a top-50 recruit in the class of 2015, who has already committed to play at Memphis. The others are reportedly even better with Dedric (class of 2016) being a top-10 player and two much younger ones–Chandler (class of 2019) and Jonathan (a sixth-grader)–being considered even better. The fact that the official Memphis release linked above does not mention any of them (even K. J., who already committed) is amusing to say the least. It will be quite a bit of time before Chandler much less Jonathan is making official college visits to it will be interesting to see how this relationship between Keelon and Josh Pastner evolves.
2. The announcement that John Adams, the NCAA supervisor of officials, will be retiring after the 2015 Final Four might not strike some as particularly noteworthy, but it is to us. Outside of issues regarding when players can enter the NBA Draft and those regarding amateurism we things have been more hotly debated than recent rule changes. Adams is not directly responsible for creating these new rules, but his job is to make sure that they are uniformly enforced throughout college basketball and works with conferences, who are then in touch with their officials, to try to improve on certain areas where enforcement is less than ideal. Adams has caught a lot of heat over the years for the way that certain rules are enforced, but overall we think he has done a good job and whomever is selected to follow him has big shoes to fill.
3. Yesterday, attorneys in Rhode Island announced that they will not be pressing charges in the sexual assault case at Providence that led to the dismissal of Brandon Austin and Rodney Bullock after a grand jury determined their was insufficient evidence to move forward in the case. The case stemmed from a report of sexual assault in November 2013 in which a female student accused the two players of sexually assaulting her. Austin as you might remember transferred to Oregon where he was involved in another sexual assault case that led to his dismissal there. He is now enrolled at a community college in Kansas. Bullock stayed at Providence and is expected to play for the team this season.
4. On Wednesday, Maryland announced its 2014 Hall of Fame class, which was headlined by Len Bias. While all the others that were honored are very accomplished (ok, we have never heard of anybody else on that list), Bias stands out for several reasons. The most obvious of which is the way that he died. Some people like John Feinstein feel that the way that Bias died should mean that he is excluded from the Hall of Fame. While this leaves a somber note on Bias’ legacy, that alone should not keep him out. Obviously people will have their own views on morality and drug use, but excluding Bias keeps out a significant part of the history of Maryland basketball, which seems myopic. How the school decides to handle Bias’ legacy is another issue, but one that the school should address and not try to sweep under the rug.
5. One of the nice things about the offseason is that it allows people to work on stuff that they otherwise wouldn’t have time to get to. For some people that means non-basketball things. For Ken Pomeroy, it means even more in-depth situation analysis. His latest task is dissecting the decision on whether a team should foul when tied late in a game. This installment is just an initial look at the data with Pomeroy promising to get more complex in his analysis in the next installment. This probably won’t catch on as much as the “foul up 3” debate, but it is still an interesting one.

Ken Pomeroy has an interesting post on his website concerning the early effect of the enforcement of new rules regarding contact by the defender. He acknowledges that the sample size is very small, but he basically compared all the Division I games last weekend with a similar number of games to start last season. Scoring is up by about 4.5 points per team while tempo has only increased by about one possession per team. Therefore almost all of the scoring increase is because of an increase in fouls called, which has resulted in nearly nine more free throw attempts per game. With the number of possessions and field goal attempts remaining steady, the tradeoff has come in fewer turnovers, specifically those caused by steals. Overall, it appears that officials are calling fouls for defensive contact that last year resulted in steals.

Karl Hess and Other Officials are Working with Players on New Rules (Photo: flickr.com)

Many coaches have expressed concerns with the new rules, mostly regarding consistent enforcement. That is a reasonable worry since college basketball has no organized governance structure over officials during the regular season, with assignments made by individual conferences. There is, however, a national element with respect to the NCAA Tournament. Those officiating assignments are made by NCAA director of men’s basketball officiating, John Adams, who sounds like a supporter of the new rules. On Monday’s ESPN College Basketball Podcast, Tom Izzo and Bill Self both expressed concerns with how officials will call fouls. There was even a suggestion that the NCAA might want to make an example of the new officiating style by calling the Champions Classic games closely and putting all the stars on the bench with foul trouble. Last night’s games totaled 46 and 53 fouls, respectively, a high number (the season average thus far is 42) but not completely off kilter. And really only Michigan State’s Adreian Payne spent much of crunch time in foul trouble (Duke’s Jabari Parker fouled out late, but Kansas had already surged ahead at that point). John Calipari had a different take, basically echoing what Jay Bilas has been saying: “If you don’t want fouls to be called on you, then just don’t foul.” Sounds simple enough.

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Kevin Doyle is the RTC correspondent for the Patriot League. You can find him on Twitter at @KLDoyle11

Top Storylines

• C.J. And Moose: You’ve read about them all summer, and will continue to do so even more during the season. C.J. McCollum and Mike Muscala have developed into household names in the college basketball community on a national scale, not just in the charming land of mid-major basketball. McCollum has garnered more press, understandably, due to Lehigh’s victory against Duke in the NCAA Tournament. His decision to test the waters of the NBA Draft — he smartly did not hire an agent — gave him the opportunity to return to Lehigh. Muscala has earned his fair share of press as well, being named as a Top 100 player by CBS Sports and a Mid-Major All American by NBC Sports’ College Basketball Talk.
• A Two-Bid league? An ambitious thought to be sure, but a possibility, albeit a small one. Prior to delving into what has to break right for either Bucknell or Lehigh to garner an at-large berth, let’s take a look at Bucknell’s 2005-06 resume: RPI of 42, 2-3 versus the RPI top 50 with wins over Syracuse and St. Joseph’s, 23rd-ranked non-conference schedule, and the only loss that could be considered a “bad loss” was to Santa Clara, which had an RPI of 184. The Bison went on to defeat Holy Cross in the Patriot League championship, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, but what if Bucknell had lost? With their resume, they would have almost assuredly earned an at-large bid. Fast forward seven years, and one has to wonder if a similar scenario may play out. Could Lehigh or Bucknell earn an at-large bid? It’s more likely that Bucknell would, considering the Bison’s non-conference schedule is better than Lehigh’s and there are more opportunities to pick up resume-building wins, but one thing is certain: It is possible for a Patriot League team to earn an at-large bid. The notion that it all comes down to “three games in March,” while the case most years, may not be the case in 2012-13.

C.J. McCollum (left) and Mike Muscala are two of the many reasons why the Patriot League is one to watch this season.

• Reed, Paulsen Moving Up? Doctor Brett Reed (side note: Reed received his PhD from Wayne State University in Instructional Technology) and Dave Paulsen have proven to be exceptional recruiters and developers of talent, and the results on the court speak for themselves. Complete conjecture, but it seems they both are on the inside track to move up in the coaching world, especially with their respective star players graduating in the spring of 2013. Reed, a native of Waterford, Michigan, was rumored to have been a candidate for the Central Michigan job (Keno Davis is now the head man for the Chippewas) along with other MAC jobs, while Paulsen was speculated to be a candidate for the Dayton job in 2011. Paulsen, however, was awarded with a five-year extension to his contract last year, so it looks like he will remain in Lewisburg for the foreseeable future. Paulsen has won everywhere he has coached: St. Lawrence, Le Moyne, Williams, and now Bucknell. Reed is one of the brighter young basketball minds in the coaching ranks, and in my mind the smoothest and most eloquent speaker in the game.
• Pivotal Season for Brown, Holy Cross: Although Holy Cross head coach Milan Brown has a less than stellar mark of 23-35 record in his first two years at the helm, he nearly doubled his win total from year one to two (8-21 in 2010-11, 15-14 in 2011-12). As such, it is imperative that he builds upon the success the Crusaders had during conference play last year — Holy Cross won its final six games of the regular season — and continue this upward trend. Brown has made it known he wishes to push the ball up the floor on offense whenever the opportunity presents itself, and to instill a high-pressure man-to-man defense. With two recruiting classes now under his belt, Holy Cross should be more apt in implementing Brown’s offensive and defensive systems. Despite those two recruiting classes on campus, it will be slightly more difficult to build on the success as R.J. Evans elected to use his final year of eligibility at Connecticut. (Hard to blame Evans for his decision as he hails from the Nutmeg State and watched the Huskies win two national titles growing up.)   Read the rest of this entry »

After another weekend of scintillating and shocking NCAA Tournament results, it’s time to check back in with our various correspondents who were in Anaheim, San Antonio, New Orleans and Newark reporting on the games this weekend.

Location: New Orleans, LA
Round: Regional Final
Teams: Florida, Butler
Date: 26 March 2011
Correspondent: John Stevens

To read all the diaries throughout the NCAA Tournament, click here.

There are only two possible options, and either one makes Brad Stevens look like a genius.

Here’s the situation. There are nine and a half minutes left in the Butler/Florida game and the Gators are starting to separate themselves a little. The Butler faithful — many of whom comprise the entire section behind the Bulldogs’ bench and have stood far more than they’ve sat in their seats during the game — haven’t been up for a while, and they’re starting to squirm in those chairs because they can feel it getting out of hand. So naturally, if you’re Brad Stevens, this is the time you saunter down to the end of the bench and put in — who else? — a kid who had scored a grand total of 29 points all season, had only played in 19 of the team’s games, and who averaged less than half an assist. If the sarcasm isn’t coming through, here, what we really mean to say is…are you kidding with this? And yet, what did Crishawn Hopkins do when Stevens tapped him with this most improbable of opportunities? Hit a cutting Matt Howard down the middle for a beautiful assist — immediately contributing more than twice his average in that category — and then hit a huge three, raising his yearly scoring output to 32 points. Sure, he committed a turnover moments later, and he was subbed out, but he changed everything. He provided that lift that comes when a kid who you never expected to come through ends up playing well; when that happens, the crowd gets back into the game and teammates who play the majority of minutes start playing with higher confidence. So, hands up, who predicted Crishawn Hopkins would turn out to be one of the most important players of the NCAA Tournament? When Hopkins sat down after being subbed out, he received a pretty loud ovation from the crowd. In fact, there was only one other player in this region who enjoyed a similar applause when he was removed from his game. It was Jimmer Fredette ending his career.

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1. It’s not every day you wake up to a Twitter argument about John Wall’s grades (Eric Bledsoe’s were notably not discussed), but that’s what happened to Mike DeCourcy yesterday after writing the following tweet before bed Tuesday night:  Tsnmike: So all the people squawking about one-and-dones not going to class in spring — how does that reconcile with John Wall on SEC honor roll? DeCourcy was attacked on several fronts but the most compelling line of inquiry was whether Wall academically represents the ‘typical’ one-and-doner.  Those guys get up way too early for us to have joined the conversation in real time, but our uneducated sense is that Wall is an exception and the one-and-doners are probably no different than any other athlete who decides to leave school early.
2. The best piece on Dean Smith’s current condition that we have seen is by Joe Posnanski over at SI.  The piece about Brian Reese potentially blowing a trip to the Final Four by not following Smith’s precise orders is phenomenal.  Read it.
3. While we’re discussing Tobacco Road legends, we should mention this article by Dan Wiederer who discusses all the Duke fingerprints that are on the US national teams this summer.  A great point by Coach K when he notes that many of the top high school prospects chose to play for the national teams rather than AAU ball, a development that will undoubtedly mature their games in ways they could not imagine on the summer circuit.
4. Former Seton Hall head coach Bobby Gonzalez pleaded not guilty to the charge that he shoplifted a $1,395 Ralph Lauren bag from the Mall at Short Hills in Essex County, New Jersey.  We’d like to say that at least he has good taste, but, uh, well…
5. Andy Katz reports that the NCAA’s top official, John Adams, has spent much of the last month meeting with the four Final Four head coaches and listening to feedback as to how to improve his teams of zebras.  We think Katz hits on the correct point in his piece when he points out that Adams only has limited control of officials, more specifically only during the NCAA Tournament.  If any real change is to occur, he needs to get the leagues on board with it so that a foul in the Big Ten is the same thing as one in the ACC.

1. Thoughts and prayers from the RTC family to Samford head coach Jimmy Tillette, who collapsed on the bench Saturday during a game versus UNC-Greensboro.  He was in the process of being airlifted to UAB Hospital in Birmingham Sunday afternoon, and was in stable condition, so that’s good to hear.
2. You may have heard about this on Saturday, but Michigan’s Manny Harris was held out of the Wolverines’ game against Purdue by John Beilein for “unsportsmanlike conduct” during a practice last week.  Of course, Michigan got rung up by the Boilermakers without Harris in the lineup on Saturday, but what did he do?  Word out of Ann Arbor is that he may be held out of the Michigan State rivalry game on Tuesday night as well, which suggests a fairly serious offense (beyond throwing a wayward elbow, per a UM message board).  For what it’s worth, Fab Fiver Jimmy King says that he doesn’t know the specifics, but that Harris needs “to understand that the coach is the man and ultimately you’re the player so you can’t go against the coach regardless if you feel you’re right.”  That sounds fairly specific to us, and suggests a lot Harris did something more than throw a ‘bow.
3. Tyshawn Taylor got himself into more Facebook hot water last week after posting that he wanted to transfer out of Kansas last Wednesday night (if anyone has a screenshot of this, send it to us).  His FB account was deleted soon thereafter, and Bill Self spent part of his Friday press conference refusing to talk about it.  Whatever the case, Taylor put up numbers of 7/5 in thirteen minutes of action against Iowa State on Saturday.
4. So what’s wrong with North Carolina?  BP says it comes down to their three-point shooting and defense.  The three-point shooting is understandable, as Will Graves appears to be the only reliable threat from distance, but the defense is a little perplexing given all the size and length there is on that team.  Maybe Roy should consider actually slowing the game down a bit to utilize his interior strength?
5. That rule about the invisible charge-restriction area under the basket?  The NCAA Coordinator of Officiating, John Adams, thinks it’s working fine.  We absolutely agree that the Shane Battier Rule is a great thing for the game, but we’re not still not clear on why we can’t just put a dotted line down there to make it clearer where the zone starts and ends.