Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC contributor.  In this piece he’ll spend each week reviewing the five things he loved and hated about the previous week of college basketball.

The Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…..SILENT NIGHT!! Come on, what’s not to love about this hilarious marketing scheme where the entire crowd at Taylor University stays silent until 10 points have been scored. Palm Sunday anyone?

Creative Fans For the Win, Alex...

I LOVED…..an honest coach. This week it was Arizona’s Sean Miller, who said his Wildcats were nothing more than “frightened” kittens against the big, bad Jimmer Fredette in BYU’s rout over UA. On a similar free-flowing note, Craig Robinson of Oregon State sounded off on what he doesn’t like about the college game. Here’s to coaches who tell it like it is.

I LOVED…..that the incredible winning streak of the UConn women has us talking about John Wooden’s UCLA teams. Say what you will about how the two dynasties compare (no comment), but I soak up every bit of Bruins history I can when the mainstream media starts talking Alcindor and Walton. We’ll never see anything like it again.

I LOVED…..the worldwide effort to save Kyrie Irving’s toe. Not everyone loves the Cameron Crazies, but that’s pretty humorous.

I LOVED…..the shockers. Not that we expect anything less from our beloved college basketball, but no one saw Tennessee losing two games to mid-majors – the second to a team that had just kicked off its leading scorer. And then a downtrodden Gonzaga goes to Texas and beats a Baylor team we were just starting to hype. As usual, no logic needed.

The Five Things I Hated This Week

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1. It is still a few days before Christmas, but quite a few coaches got early Christmas presents in the form of players making long-awaited debuts. The most notable of these debuts was that of Josh Selby, who more than lived up to the hype as he was the best player on the court in Lawrence on Saturday and hit the go-ahead 3-pointer with 26 seconds left to propel Kansas to a hard-fought victory over USC. While Selby justifiably received the majority of the hype he wasn’t the only notable player making a debut as Jio Fontan was making his debut for the Trojans. Unfortunately for the Trojans Fontan did not has as auspicious of a debut as he stepped on the sideline after catching an inbounds pass following Selby’s 3, which eventually led to the Jayhawks hanging on for a victory. The other notable debut over the weekend was that of Renardo Sidney, who managed to score 12 points in a losing effort for Mississippi State against Virginia Tech.
2. Tonight Duke will play Elon in a game that probably doesn’t mean much to the average college basketball fan, but it will hold a special meaning for Coach K as he will going for win #879, which would tie Dean Smith for 2nd all-time win list. Everyone can appreciate the meaning as how it relates to the Duke-UNC rivalry, but it will also mean something for Krzyzewski on a more personal level after he spent more than a decade trying to emulate Smith to make Duke into a program comparable to UNC.
3. While we are on the topic of Coach K, The Fayetteville Observer has an excellent 3-part series on him analyzing him from all points of view. It is definitely worth your time even if we will all be getting bombarded with about a million pieces on him as he approaches Bob Knight‘s all-time wins record.
4. Earlier this season Len Elmore chimed in saying that he thought that Bruce Pearl should be fired and now Jay Bilas has voiced his opinion and he agrees with the Elmore’s take (Insider only, sorry). So now we know where ESPN’s basketball/legal department stands on Bruce Pearl. We can only hope that someone brings this up when Pearl is being interviewed by Elmore and/or Bilas, but we doubt that the executives at ESPN will let that happen. One more thing about the Bilas column: This is the first time we have ever seen the term “Chillax” on a major website.
5. We are a men’s college basketball site, but we would be remiss if we did not congratulate the UConn women for their 88th consecutive victory tying the record set by John Wooden‘s UCLA team. The Huskies will be going for #89 on Tuesday night at home against FSU.

1. Have you heard a little something about a 24-hour hoops extravaganza that might be starting at Midnight ET tonight over on ESPN?  Yeah, us too.  Well, for the third year in a row (as in, 1… 2… 3…), our very own John Stevens will be Boom Goes the Dynamiting (that’s a form of live-blogging for the newbies) the proceedings from reasonable start to ridiculous finish.  Just as he did in 2009.  Just as he did in 2008.  Now we’ve caught wind that there are some other bloggers out there who have a half a mind to try to replicate what John has already perfected in years past.  Good for them.  The standard has been set exceptionally high, so we’re interested to see how they stack up.
2. The biggest non-game related news of the weekend came out of the Memphis camp, as the Tigers’ Jelan Kendrick was dismissed from the program.  Dan Wolken has been all over this story with reports of Kendrick’s antics releasing at seemingly an hourly basis.  As he put it, there was no single incident that led to  dissolution of the hoops marriage, but there were a series of insubordinate acts, clashes with teammates, outright lies and other distractions that finally reached a breaking point for the coaching staff.  6’7 burger boys don’t grow on trees, though, and we fully expect that Kendrick has already received a dozen offers from other schools around the nation, attitude be damned.  One note pointed out by Wolken in last night’s tweets — Memphis is unlikely to release Kendrick to another CUSA school (read: Tim Floyd’s UTEP), but we’re guessing there are several SEC and Big 12 schools willing to at least take a look.
3. You just never know when you  might be in danger of an injury, as new UConn assistant coach Kevin Ollie learned last week when an elastic band he was using for stretching purposes snapped back and hit him in the eye.  The eye started filling with blood and he subsequently was ordered by his doctor to bed rest, causing him to miss the Huskies’ season opener against Stony Brook on Friday night.  UConn travels to Maui next weekend, but Ollie may have to miss that trip as well due to the possibility of stressing the injury through changes in air pressure.  Ollie, one of our favorite Huskies of all-time, has certainly had a crazy start to his coaching career, so we wish him a speedy and successful recovery.
4. You may have noticed that preseason Big-12 first teamer Curtis Kelly was held out of K-State’s first game on Friday night against James Madison and the Wildcats’ front line struggled as a result (2/5 from Wally Judge and Freddy Asprilla).  Jeff Goodman reported that KSU head coach Frank Martin is unhappy with the leadership (or lack thereof) that Kelly has shown over the last two weeks in practice, so he probably won’t play in Tuesday night’s game against a much more talented Virginia Tech team either.
5. Section 103B, Row 2, Seat 1.  That was the location of a certain Wizard of Westwood for the last three-and-a-half decades at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion when he called upon his old school to watch a game, a frequent occurrence up until the last year of his life.  That seat was kept empty in honor of  John Wooden for Friday night’s game when the Bruins easily defeated Cal State Northridge, 83-50.  Frankly, UCLA brass should bronze over that chair and  keep it vacant for as long as the building is standing.

Shamelessly cribbing from the clever NBA catch phrase, we here at RTC will present you with the 2010-11 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball as we ramp up to the start of the season a little over a month from now.  We’ll be bringing you players to watch for this season and moments to remember from last season, courtesy of the series of dump trucks, wires and effluvia known as YouTube.  If you want to have some fun while killing time, we encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons.  Enjoy.

#2 – Where We’ll Miss You, Wizard Happens

1. For some strange reason, the preseason all-SEC first team has nine players on it and Kentucky’s Brandon Knight is not a member.  Here’s your list, as voted on by the coaches: Dee Bost (Mississippi State); JaMychal Green (Alabama); Scotty Hopson (Tennessee); Travis Leslie (Georgia); Chandler Parsons (Florida); Marshawn Powell (Arkansas); Jeffery Taylor (Vanderbilt); Trey Thompkins (Georgia); Chris Warren (Ole Miss).  We won’t list the second team, but it had another eight players on it, amounting to a total of seventeen all-SEC preseason players.  Is it really so hard, SEC brass, to do three five-person teams?  Who is the genius who thought of this and why does it continue to happen?
2. Pitt junior forward Nasir Robinson had surgery on Wednesday for a torn meniscus in his right knee after injuring it in practice on Monday of this week.  There was no long-term damage and the prognosis is that Robinson will be back in action in the next three to six weeks.  He was a full-time starter last season in his role as a mop-up man to the tune of 7/6 per game.  The best case scenario is that he would be back in the Panther lineup against Maryland at MSG in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic on November 18.  Luckily for Jamie Dixon, he has plenty of frontcourt depth (Gary McGhee, Dante Taylor) to lean on in the interim.
3. Things just got a lot tougher for new Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, as his star player Matt Gatens injured his left hand and had surgery on Wednesday to repair a torn tendon.  His layoff is currently indeterminate in length, but goodness, the Hawkeyes, coming off a 10-22 (4-14 B10) disaster last season, surely could have used some better news going into the start of the year.
4. It appears that current WAC members Nevada and Fresno State will not bail from the conference in 2011 to go to the Mountain West as they’ve repeatedly threatened to do — it will instead happen in 2012.  A teleconference has been announced for today and the WAC is expected to declare that the feuding parties have come to an agreement where they will pay reduced walkaway fees in exchange for sticking around an additional year.  We’re actually kind of excited to see some of the clever signage that students at some of the remaining WAC schools might come up with this year and next when the Wolf Pack and Bulldogs visit town.
5. We mentioned that this would ultimately happen in a M5 over the summer, and it’s now come to fruition — John Wooden’s den is now on permanent display at the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame, just a few paces away from the House that Wooden Built, Pauley Pavilion.  This is something that we’re most definitely planning on visiting the next time were down in LA.  When we do, expect a full report on the place.

1. It’s been approximately 190 days since we last saw collegians take the floor in their uniforms, but as you surely noted above on our countdown clock, we’re almost down to all zeros.  Tonight is Midnight Madness or whatever people are calling it these days, but the primary concern to everyone reading this site is that COLLEGE HOOPS IS BACK, baby.  For a guide to many of the major events that will be scattered throughout the country tonight and in future weeks, here’s our post outlining the when and where.  ESPNU will be showing the proceedings tonight starting at 9pm ET at several of the schools on the list including Duke, Kentucky, Gonzaga, Memphis and Kansas State, so lock yourselves in this evening and get ready for another great season ahead.
2. Good work if you can get it…  Former legendary Purdue head coach Gene Keady will join Steve Lavin’s new staff at St. John’s in the role of grandfatherly advisor/executive assistant.  Lavin was an assistant under Keady at Purdue from 1988-91, during which time the Boilermakers went to the NCAA Tournament twice (Keady went back fourteen more times at Purdue).  For some reason we love seeing these kinds of situations when the student brings back his mentor.
3. Wake Forest’s Tony Woods, the 6’10 junior center who was relieved of his duties as a player for the Demon Deacons, isn’t suffering for suitors as to his next stop.  Jeff Goodman reports that Louisville, Kentucky, WVU, Georgetown, Auburn, Xavier, Cincinnati and others have expressed interest in bringing on the talented but heretofore underachieving player.  We’re all for second chances around here, but there’s clearly no honor among thieves — lots of young people make “mistakes,” but how many of them kick and fracture the spine of the mother of his infant?  Good things seem to find those who have pro size and can occasionally rebound and score a few points, eh?
4. In what we cannot even possibly begin to describe as anything other than awkwardly hilarious, Ole Miss students, faculty and alumni on Thursday voted that their new mascot should be the Rebel Black Bear, earning 62% of the vote to beat out the Hotty Toddy and the Land Shark.  Colonel Reb has been officially retired, but does anyone else find the use of skin/fur color to describe a cartoonish bear inspired by William Faulkner as something better left to schools without such a violent and ugly racial history?  Just sayin…
5. Yesterday was  John Wooden’s 100th birthday, and although the Wizard of Westwood wasn’t with us to celebrate it, the UCLA family and his own relatives held their own parties to honor his legacy.  We’ve said this before, but we think it would be a fantastic commemoration of the man and his contributions to the game of basketball if the entire 2010-11 season was dedicated to Coach Wooden — the NCAA and its media partners could easily make this happen, so they should.

Wooden's New Portrait Was Unveiled at UCLA on Thursday (LA Daily News/H. Gutknecht)

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Athletic Club announced its preseason list of the 50 candidates for the Wooden Award. Among those listed are names of players with whom we are all familiar, like Kyle Singler, Kalin Lucas, and Robbie Hummel, but there are also many lesser-known but still talented players like Nikola Vucevic and Kawhi Leonard (feel free to yell “East Coast bias!” in the comments). Even though this is one of about a thousand Player of the Year awards it holds a special place for most college basketball aficionados because of its namesake, the late John Wooden, and especially the year after his death. Established in 1976, The Wooden Award has been awarded to an individual after a 26-member panel — I’m sure our invite is lost in the snail mail or got caught in a spam filter — narrows down the list of candidates down to 20 players and then lets 1,000 voters (seriously, where’s our invite?) pick the ten All-Americans and the Player of the Year (last year Evan Turner took home the hardware). Looking back through past winners provides you with a veritable “Who’s Who” of college basketball in the past quarter century and includes luminaries like Phil Ford, Larry Bird, Ralph Sampson (twice), Michael Jordan, David Robinson, Danny Manning, Larry Johnson, Christian Laettner, Tim Duncan, Elton Brand, Shane Battier, Jason Williams, Jameer Nelson, Kevin Durant, and Tyler Hansbrough.

2010 Wooden Award Winner

One of the big caveats for the early season list is that it does not include freshman or transfers. Now, the latter usually do not factor into these awards with the exception of Larry Johnson and Wesley Johnson, who picked up a few votes last year, but the former (like Durant and Michael Beasley) are beginning to play a growing role in this and other awards. We do have a few issues with the list, which you will see more of over the next few weeks as we unveil our “Impact Players” by region. For today we will just focus on our favorites and some notable freshman who were left off the list, but we expect to be in the running for the actual award later this season. We will leave off the non-freshman omissions because frankly we do not expect any of them to factor into the final ballots.

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1. Put.  The.  Phones.  Down.  UT-Chattanooga was placed on two years probation by the NCAA for “major” violations that AGAIN included a situation where the head coach John Shulman was busily texting recruits during a no-contact period.  The Mocs will not suffer a postseason ban as a result of these violations, but we simply cannot understand why coaches continue to fall victim to such an easily traceable mistake.  Every husband in the entire world knows that you don’t text or call your mistress using the phone that your wife can access — yet coaches seem oblivious to this codified man-law, so time and time again we see problems arise in this area.  Gary Parrish discussed this last week, but coaches have proven to be slow on the uptick here.  Get some burners, fellas — hell, use Skype — just stop this nonsense already.
2. Speaking of Parrish, his latest article captures John Wooden’s mantra of “don’t mistake activity for achievement” really well.  Too many coaches waste too much time trying to recruit prospects that they never had a shot with to begin with.  To continue with the analogies, it’s like the guy who sadly yet consistently shoots for 9s when everyone in the bar knows that he should be focusing on the 6s.  Finishing second or third in recruiting is like hearing the click with five more bullets in the barrel — you end up in the same place regardless.
3. Scathing.  That’s how we’d describe the latest piece by Fanhouse’s Ray Holloman about the Bruce Pearl/Tennessee recruiting violations that were exposed last week.  Better than any other article we’ve seen written on this situation, Holloman perfectly exposes the true underlying motives of the “executive officers of a multi-million dollar athletic program.”  The lesson here, and we sorta already knew it: treat these guys like politicians or CEOs by assuming that everything that comes out of their mouths is a half-truth or outright lie.  Start there, and then figure out the rest.
4. We rarely mention women’s college basketball here but this was too bizarre to ignore.  UNC-Wilmington head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke (this is not a joke) apologized for a punishment that her assistant Johnetta Hayes put junior guard Julia Finlay through during practice on Monday.  Apparently Hayes forced Finlay to ‘log roll’ up and down the court at least twelve times in a row during a half-hour period as a penalty for getting booted from practice last week.  She’s suffering from plantar fasciitis, so incredulously, Hayes believed this would be an appropriate punishment in place of the normal sprints a player gets as punishment.  Finlay vomited several times during the “puke-and-roll”, and we’re pretty certain that a little piece of America died as a result of this story.
5. “Dumb Catholic boys.”  Oh, Bob Knight, always making friends.  Just days after enjoying his roast in Hammond, Indiana, Knight took shots at both the NCAA and Notre Dame during a speaking engagement at the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana yesterday.  In reference to whether Notre Dame should join the Big Ten, Knight ripped the ND brass, suggesting that being in the Big East in all sports other than football hurts their recruiting.  Surely this will come up at some point during Gameday with Digger Phelps this coming season, although we think we already know how this ends, right?  Do we even need to say it?

Rush The Court is back with another edition of One on One: An Interview Series, which we hope to publish weekly on Friday mornings throughout the year. If you have any specific interview requests or want us to interview you, shoot us an email at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

It used to be that the first thing that people thought when they saw Butler head coach Brad Stevens was something along the lines of, “He’s a head coach? How old is he?” That changed on April 5th. By saying things changed for him after the title-game loss to Duke, we’re not saying that Stevens looks any older. We’re saying that now people will think of him primarily as one of the best coaches in our game instead of just a young-looking basketball coach, though Stevens would be the first to deflect such praise. When you talk with Brad Stevens (whose three teams have produced three perfect academic ratings, by the way), you are immediately aware of what seems to be an innate professionalism, and the fact that this man is much more comfortable talking about his team than himself, making sure that any incoming credit goes to everyone, not just him. Most of all, though, you recognize his absolutely inflexible belief in the abstract concept known as The Butler Way, that it’s, in fact, the best way for him to grow as a coach and for his players to function as the best team possible. RTC’s John Stevens (no relation) spoke with Coach Stevens earlier this week.

Rush The Court: Coach, as the current guardian of it, in your own words, what is “The Butler Way?”

Brad Stevens: You know, I don’t think it has anything to do with basketball, technically, first of all. I think it’s just about embracing a culture of (hopefully) unselfishness and accountability, and that doing the right things will lead to the results you ultimately want from a statistical and measurable standpoint. The definition we have online is probably the best it gets. Right when you go to ButlerSports.com, it pops up. But that’s the bottom line. If you’re going to define it, that’s as good as it gets. I think it’s a really hard thing to define, and it’s more about feeling and seeing that you’re moving in a positive direction.

After Only Three Seasons as Head Coach at Butler, In Our Opinion Stevens Is Already Part of the Coaching Elite.

RTC: Last year was in so many ways a dream season, and even though you didn’t quite achieve the ultimate goal for which you set out, it was obviously a phenomenal run. Was there any particular aspect of your squad’s play that showed up as the year progressed that even you hadn’t expected, something that pleasantly surprised even you, as coach?

BS: No particular individual did, and not really from a team standpoint, either, from how we were playing. I think from a results standpoint the thing that stood out to me, the thing I thought was the best accomplishment of the year was going undefeated in the league. I’ve never been a part of that and never dreamed that I would be, and I know how hard it is to do. You know, like everybody else, I’m listening to talk shows and everybody’s talking about Boise State’s schedule and everything else, and I’ve been in those shoes from the standpoint of…boy, the pressure that they play with in their league AND the fact that, everybody they’re playing against, that’s their super bowl. You can’t quantify that. That should add points to their strength of schedule. So I think that that’s something I’ll look back at fondly from last year. Obviously you’re excited about the run to the final game. But is it better to beat five really good teams that don’t know much about you, or is it better to beat every team on your league schedule twice, teams that know you inside and out? For me, it was the latter.

RTC: The Horizon League seems to be adding better recruits each season, players who are then developed over several years by their coaches; it seems the quality of that particular conference has improved each year over the past few…

BS: I think that’s the case. I agree with you that it’s getting better, but at the same time I think it’s been really good all along. When we do what we’ve done in the tournament, and when other teams win games here or there I think that always helps the perception [of the conference].

RTC: How long did it take you to get over the championship game, the Duke game?

BS: I’ll never get over it! I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that, I wish I could. I think obviously that you always move on, but it’s a hard pill to swallow.

Stevens' Bulldogs Held Their First Five NCAA Tourney Opponents (Including Syracuse, Kansas State, and Michigan State) to Under 60 Points. Duke Scored 61.

RTC: I remember that the Sports Science guys broke it down and found that, looking at where it hit the backboard, the last shot by Gordon Hayward would have gone in but for a mere 2.5 inches. I assumed you’d still be seeing that shot in your sleep.

BS: (Laughs) There’s no doubt, I see it in my sleep. But, that’s part of it. We were so fortunate to be there in a lot of ways.

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1. We’d already heard rumors about the NCAA sniffing into Tennessee’s recruitment of Kansas point guard Josh Selby, and it now appears that there is some fire behind the smoke.  According to several reports, the NCAA is investigating allegations of excessive phone calls and the use of unauthorized phones by UT staff, which could potentially land the Vol program in just as much hot water as its current football team faces.  Is it just us, or could it be that the long-awaited cleansing of college basketball’s seamy side appears to be taking hold?  We know that the NCAA has hired a considerable amount of new personnel for basketball investigations in recent years…could those investments actually begin paying off soon?
2. Speaking of NCAA brass, ever wonder what top NCAA execs make for running the governing body of the sport?  The Chronicle of Higher Education revealed the top fourteen NCAA earners in 2009, a group who collectively made over $6M during that time period.  Given the huge dollars that the NCAA brings in (through television rights for the NCAA Tournament and ticket sales for its championships, mostly), we don’t have a problem with these salaries, but we have two additional thoughts on this matter: 1) let’s keep investing that money to catch and punish the wrongdoers in the sport; and 2) where and to whom do we send our application?
3. John R. Wooden Drive will be dedicated on Saturday afternoon to commemorate the legend’s nearly-100 years of teaching basketball and touching lives.  But it won’t be located in Westwood, and in fact, not even in the city of Los Angeles at all.  Rather, Purdue University — Wooden’s alma mater, where he was a three-time all-American and NPOY in 1932 — will be doing the honors.  This is great to see.  In fact, we’d be the top blogging evangelist if the NCAA decided to dedicate the entire 2011 regular season and/or NCAA Tournament to the Wizard of Westwood (hint, hint).  His legacy deserves it.
4. Tough news from WVU yesterday, as incoming freshman Darrious Curry was determined too medically risky to play basketball anymore.  The 6’7 forward’s issue was not disclosed, but all indications point toward a heart condition.  You hate to see this, but you hate even more to see the scary alternative.
5. The FIBA world championships are moving into the semifinal round, and Team USA is set to play Lithuania on Saturday with a medal (at least a bronze) on the line.  Luke Winn takes a look at the NCAA players who have been involved in the WCs and determines that only Rice’s Arsalan Kazemi (Iran) has had a summer to remember, averaging 12/7/3 SPG for his team.  A few of the other notables involved in this year’s tournament are Gonzaga’s Elias Harris (Germany), Robert Sacre (Canada) and Cal’s Max Zhang (China).