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.

#10 – Where Box Out=NCAA Happens

Now that most recruits have made their oral commitments we should start to see the news of commitments start to die down at least in terms of the sheer volume, but that doesn’t mean that a big name won’t commit to a school (still a handful of top 25 guys available) or someone won’t decommit/commit to another school.

• Quincy Miller, widely consider the last of the superstars in this class, and Deuce Bello, widely considered the most athletic player in this class, both committed to play at Baylor. If Scott Drew can get his players to stay a few years (and the looming NBA lockout could help), he could have a team that features Perry Jones, Miller, Bello, and Isaiah Austin in a few years, which would be one of the most feared line-ups in the nation.
  

  Miller is the last big chip in this year's class

• While Miller and Bello stole the headlines for biggest coup of the weekend, LeBryan Nash certainly takes the prize for most effective use of a prop (see below) when he committed to play for Oklahoma State.
• Fans of Arizona State are starting to worry about Jahii Carson, who previously committed to play for Oregon State, as he is already starting to waver in his commitment to the Sun Devils even citing a freshman wearing his favorite number.
• Speaking of decommitments. . .Tony Wroten, everybody’s favorite Tweeter, started a minor Internet firestorm when he tweeted asking whether Kentucky commit Kyle Wiltjer had decommited. Wiltjer has not responded, but we haven’t heard any reports to suggest he has not remained committed to the Wildcats.
• Shane Larkin, son of Cincinnati Reds all-star Barry Larkin and a crosstown rival of Austin Rivers, committed to play for Oliver Purnell at DePaul. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

#13 – Where #1 Goes Down Happens

Zach Hayes is an RTC editor, contributor and bracketologist.

As the pre-Midnight Madness polls trickled out last Friday, it became glaringly obvious to us that consensus was more the exception than the rule. Aside from Duke at the top, teams like Butler and Kentucky somewhere in the middle and a precipitous decline for Purdue following Robbie Hummel re-tearing his ACL, agreement was about as prevalent as a British parliament session. Examining polls from a handful of websites that compiled a top 25 to prepare for the start of practice — ESPN’s Andy Katz, TSN’s Mike DeCourcy, CBS’ Gary Parrish, Fox’s Jeff Goodman and yours truly here at RTC — we found five teams with a noticeable amount of dissent attached to their name in the preseason. Let’s examine those schools and break down what they need to do to match optimistic projections and how they can avoid sinking to the depths of other predictions.

Team #1: Syracuse (Preseason Rankings: #7, #10, #13, #19, #20)

Overrated at #7 if: the Orange are unable to replace the leadership, chemistry and production provided by fifth year seniors Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku and fourth year junior Wes Johnson. At times last season, Syracuse was a well-oiled machine on both ends of the floor. Players embraced their roles offensively and Jim Boeheim had the perfect roster at his disposal to stymie opponents with his patented 2-3 zone. The jury’s still out on whether Kris Joseph will be able to step into Johnson’s shoes and replace that versatility on the wing. Scoop Jardine was that sparkplug off the bench last season — will he be able to channel that effort for 35 minutes per night rather than 21.3 MPG? As many accolades as Fab Melo and Dion Waiters achieved in the high school ranks, depending on freshmen can be risky business. Asking them to drop just three spots in the polls after losing that considerable amount of production seems unreasonable and unrealistic.

When Boeheim Speaks, We Should Listen (TSN/B. Leverone)

Underrated at #20 if: Remember last summer when Boeheim hyped up that transfer from Iowa State named Wes Johnson? He’s been doing the same with Fab Melo, telling SI.com’s Seth Davis that his seven-foot freshman will be “a strong contender for national rookie of the year.” Plus, let’s face it: storied, winning programs like Syracuse prefer to reload than rebuild. Last October, we were wondering how the Orange would replace Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf and Paul Harris (in hindsight, that looks foolish, but it was true at the time). Why should we believe any differently this time around? NBA scouts have tabbed Joseph as a future lottery pick, Jardine and Brandon Triche shot well enough in 2009-10 to believe they can pick up Rautins’ slack, and Melo is an immediate upgrade offensively over Onuaku. In a conference that lost personnel across the board, Boeheim has a shot to put together back-to-back Big East title squads.

Team #2: Missouri (Preseason Rankings: #8, #12, #13, #16, #16)

Overrated at #8 if: Missouri’s returning talent isn’t that good in the first place. The Tigers return their top three scorers from a season ago, but it’s not as though Missouri lit the world on fire in 2009-10: they lost games to Oral Roberts, Oklahoma and Nebraska before garnering a #10 seed in the NCAA Tournament. There’s also concern about the Tigers frontcourt — Laurence Bowers, Ricardo Ratcliffe, Justin Safford and Steve Moore –– regarding their ability to contain the behemoths that face them in the Big 12. Any team that takes care of the basketball, keeps the action in the halfcourt and boasts legitimate scoring big men can negate Mike Anderson’s chaotic full-court press and take the Tigers out of their comfort zone. The prized recruit of Anderson’s class, 6’8 power forward Tony Mitchell out of Texas, is dealing with eligibility concerns and hopes to join Missouri in time for the bulk of Big 12 play, but that proposition is in serious jeopardy.

Underrated at #16 if: people underestimate the ability of Anderson to get the most out of his team. He’s positively giddy about the prospects of this year’s roster. There’s scoring punch on the outside with Kim English and Marcus Denmon, a dynamic point guard duo with Mike Dixon and Paul Pressey and plenty of candidates to thrust themselves into stardom in the frontcourt, especially Ratcliffe, the ultra-talent top junior college recruit. The Tigers full-court press keeps them in any game against any opponent if they’re able to force turnovers and impose their will. Anderson has the speed, versatility and athleticism to pressure opponents into oblivion. English is a phenomenal scorer and potential all-conference performer. If he develops more of a well-rounded game and improves efficiency, Anderson also boasts a go-to scorer when the Tigers need a clutch bucket.

Team #3: North Carolina (Preseason Rankings: #6, #9, #12, #14, #14)

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We’re now formally into the dog days of practice around the country, which means that we’re under three weeks away from the first games of the season in the 2kSports Coaches vs. Cancer Classic (beginning Nov. 8 at Pitt, Texas, Maryland and Illinois).  Our excitement is tempered somewhat by the fact that it’s still almost 80 degrees outside and it certainly doesn’t feel like the start of the season should be so close.  Yet it is.  Speaking of places that are hot, one entity that never sleeps on college basketball especially when there’s money to be made, is Las Vegas.  The sports books offer futures lines pretty much year-round, and although there’s only limited conclusions that should be drawn when analyzing these odds, keep in mind that the desert oasis didn’t arise from sand because they were in the business of losing money.  More often than not, they have a keen general awareness of the teams to hold and the teams to fold heading into the season.

Below are the current odds listed on The Greek as of Tuesday, October 19.  Some brief analysis follows the list.

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1. Binghamton University announced that the NCAA found no major and only two secondary violations as a result of its investigation into the basketball program.   The two minor violations related to an assistant coach providing impermissible travel to members of the team.  How the school got around a purported email uncovered by the NYT discussing “cash payments and academic fraud,” we’re not sure; but apparently the NCAA was satisfied with what it found (or didn’t find).  Former head coach Kevin Broadus has been on administrative leave for a year as all this played out — Mark Macon took the reins in 2009-10 and led the team to a 13-18 (8-8 Am East) season — but we’d be highly, highly shocked and awed if he got his old job back.
2. Former Michigan team captain CJ Lee (2007-09) might be taking after former Dookie Reggie Love by finding a role in politics after graduation.  The guard who topped out at 16.5 minutes per game during his senior season when Michigan went to the second round of the NCAA Tournament is highlighted in a television spot supporting Michigan gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder (R) that debuted last week (see ad here).  According to Nate Silver’s aggregate model, Snyder has a 95% chance of winning the position, which means we’ll probably see Lee moving to Lansing sometime this winter.
3. Former Wake Forest center Tony Woods appears to be set for a transfer to Louisville.  He would begin taking classes there in January and would expect to become eligible to play at the semester break of the 2011-12 season.  Woods of course has to first complete 100 hours of community service in Winston-Salem as a result of a guilty plea to assault for pushing his girlfriend and seriously injuring her during a dispute last month.  All we can say is that we hope Woods has learned his lesson here, and we’ll never feel the need to speak of him again except for his performance on the court.
4. Virginia’s Sammy Zeglinski, one of the best three-point shooters in the ACC last season, has injured his knee and will be out for an undetermined amount of time.  He’s set to have surgery to deal with what is being characterized as “cartilage work” today and the school won’t know the length of his rehabilitation until after the procedure is completed.  Here’s wishing the guard and Virginia fans good fortune on that surgery.
5. The SEC media picked Florida to win the conference yesterday, garnering eight of the 16 first-place votes cast.  We’re not so sure.  Sure, the Gators return all five starters and bring in a nice recruiting class, but lest we forget that those same five players lost thirteen games in 2009-10 including five of six down the stretch.  KenPom rated UF as the #45 team in America last year mostly due to a suspect defense, and we’re not convinced that another year in Gainesville automatically means that the Gators are ready to crash the top ten (as many publications and pundits are picking).  Granted, the rest of the SEC East also has question marks.  Kentucky and Tennessee took significant personnel losses, and the up-and-coming Georgia Bulldogs are in the same spot as Florida, just worse (Georgia won five SEC games last year).  Vandy is picked fifth and we can’t figure out how a team that won 24 games (including 12 SEC wins) and brings back a  talented duo like Jeffery Taylor and John Jenkins is getting no love whatsoever.  As for the SEC West, we agree with the media that Mississippi State with Dee Bost and Renardo Sidney eligible should run away with that division.  Of course, this is the same media who last year picked Kevin Stallings over John Calipari  for SEC Coach of the Year — all due respect to the season Vandy put together, but give us a break. As for this year’s individual awards, Georgia’s Trey Thompkins received 18 of the 20 first-place votes for preseason SEC POY.  Vanderbilt’s Taylor, Kentucky’s Brandon Knight, Georgia’s Travis Leslie and Ole Miss’ Chris Warren rounded out the first team.

For the second October in a row, we’re bringing you our RTC Impact Players series.  The braintrust has gone back and forth on this and we’ve finally settled on a group of sixty players throughout ten geographic regions of the country (five starters plus a sixth man) to represent the who and where of players you should be watching this season.  Seriously, if you haven’t seen every one of these players ball at least once by the end of February, then you need to figure out a way to get a better television package.  As always in a subjective analysis such as this, some of our decisions were difficult; many others were quite easy.  What we can say without reservation is that there is great talent in every corner of this nation of ours, and we’ll do our best to excavate it over the next five weeks in this series that will publish on Mondays and Thursdays.  Each time, we’ll also provide a list of some of the near-misses as well as the players we considered in each region, but as always, we welcome you guys, our faithful and very knowledgeable readers, to critique us in the comments.

You can find all previous RTC 2010-11 Impact Players posts here.

Mid-South Region (KY, TN, MO, AR)

• Brandon Knight – Fr, G – Kentucky. What on earth could Brandon Knight do to live up to what has preceded him? It’s not just that he’s been stood for membership along the Caliparian Derrick Rose-Tyreke Evans-John Wall axis, or that he’ll immediately be expected to live up to the ridiculous standard entailed by that little club. Yeah, that’s hard enough, but there’s something more. Last year’s Kentucky team wasn’t just about five first-round draft picks and an Elite Eight run. It wasn’t about the actual on-court achievements of Messrs. Wall, Cousins, Patterson, Bledsoe, and Calipari. It was what the season symbolized, a pronouncement that, after two years of weirdness under Billy Gillispie, Kentucky had returned to prominence in a major way, wasn’t likely to go anywhere for a very long time, and that deep tournament runs with big bad recruits were to be the norm once again. That’s quite a show to follow. Brandon Knight says he’s up for the challenge, and he might be right. Don’t let the 32.5 PPG average as a prep senior in Ft. Lauderdale fool you. Even though Calipari cautions people against comparing last year’s Wildcats to this year’s, since Knight has yet to play a single second of college basketball, something has to be used as a reference point right now. That said, Knight shares Wall’s second-most important attribute as a collegian, which is the ability to provide whatever’s needed. Scoring? Not a problem. Less emphasis on points and more on distribution? Consider it done. Help on the glass? Let’s do it. Defensive leadership? Fine. Another similar aspect is that while Wall was a genius at getting to the rim, taking contact, and finishing, Knight has this gift as well and will gladly take whatever’s waiting on him in terms of body blows, but he’s also likely to pull up at the edge of the lane to shoot his mid-range jumper or slip a pass to an open teammate before defenders know what happened. Finally, as for the most important thing Knight has in common with Wall? That’d be the commitment in the classroom. You might as well just go ahead and fill in the bubbles on Knight’s APR sheets. He arrives from high school riding a 4.3 GPA, which we’ll assume is based on an accelerated/AP scoring system. Unless that 4.3 is based on some screwy 9.0 scale from Florida that we don’t know about, anybody looking for an offseason scandal here is wasting their time.

Brandon Knight Will Take the Reins From Wall at UK

• Will Barton – Fr, G – Memphis. Considered by many to be the top shooting guard in this year’s freshman class, Will Barton has already taken a rather interesting path on his way to Midnight Madness. First there was concern over whether he would be academically eligible for the coming season, which he ultimately overcame. Then there was his Twitter guarantee that the Tigers were going to win the national title, which upon questioning he defended by simply saying, “What was I suppose [sic] 2 [sic] say?” Now that Memphis appears to have gotten past all of the headaches (hopefully) it is time for Josh Pastner and Tiger fans to enjoy Barton’s many gifts. If they’re expecting another Derrick Rose they are going to be disappointed because Barton’s game is quite different from the one-and-done Tiger star — who technically never played at Memphis according to the NCAA — as Rose was more of a distributor whose athleticism and physical skills made him a legitimate scoring threat, whereas Barton is primarily a scorer who also distributes because of his athleticism and physical skills. Barton also lacks many of the complementary pieces that Rose had around him so don’t expect a repeat of the 2007-08 season for the Tigers, but Barton could lead them further than you would otherwise expect for a team that was weaker than recent Memphis teams even before the departure of Elliot Williams. Although Barton does not have range of some of the premier scorers of recent vintage like J.J. Redick or Stephen Curry, he does possess a solid outside shot, which he combines with a mid-range game that very few players at any level have, and an ability to get to the basket. What could potentially set him apart from  the likes of Redick and Curry is Barton’s ability to rebound and play defense. With that combination of skills and his potential for improvement (he is rail-thin right now, listed at 6’6” and 170 pounds coming out of high school) Barton could be the best player at Memphis since Rose and if he sticks around for a few years his name could be mentioned alongside Keith Lee, Elliot Perry  and Anfernee Hardaway as one of the all-time greats there.

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You may have heard that a little thing called Midnight Madness went down Friday night in packed gyms across the college basketball landscape.  From Duke to Kentucky to Marquette to Kansas to Gonzaga to even little ol’ Cal Tech (ok, they celebrated Thursday, but give ’em a break, they’ve lost 300 conference games in a row), fans filed into arenas to celebrate the return of roundball.   Despite the fact that we remain on the record that MM has lost its uniqueness over the years and could stand to get back to its roots, we’ll admit that even the over-produced pyrotechnic-style monstrosities we saw on the tube enabled a few pangs of excitement in our tummy.  How can it not?  After all, bad college basketball is still college basketball, and from the perspective that the Madness is a celebration of the sport, we’re completely on board with that.

Make sure that you check out our Boom Goes the Dynamite from Friday night where we commented on all the goings-on where we could find them in real time.  Today’s postmortem will share some of the biggest highlights we noted from the evening.  If you think we missed something major, send us a tip at rushthecourt@yahoo.com or tweet at us @rushthecourt.

Duke

Duke’s Countdown to Craziness was, as expected, a celebration of the 2010 national champions, replete with the unfurling of Coach K’s fourth national championship banner and a collection of hardware at center court (starting at the 1:15 mark).

Those championship rings are HUGE!  We much prefer seeing Nolan Smith this way instead of the creepy-as-hell video he did at last year’s CTC.

Kansas State

As we referred to last night, Jacob Pullen has only trimmed the beloved beard, not shaved it, so major meltdown averted there.  As if he wasn’t already one of our favorite players in the country, Pullen further endeared himself to us by running around in the scrimmage with his jogging pants still on.  He looked like a cross between Barack Obama and somebody’s uncle out there; that is, until he started draining 28-footers with ease.  The other big news of the night was the announcement that the school will be building a new $20M practice facility, showing that the Wildcats have no designs on losing their hoops momentum of recent years.

This clip is from the introduction at Madness in Manhattan, and it features the cast of ABC comedy Modern Family all wearing Kansas State gear around the set and studio lot — Eric Stonestreet (“Cameron”) is a K-State alum.  Apologies for the smallness of the video, but if you try, you can just make out Ty Burrell’s (“Phil”) cap which says “Screw KU” on it.  Not to mention that there’s a Sofia Vergara (“Gloria”) in a t-shirt sighting at the 2:07 mark, which means we’re going to have to put John Stevens back on his calming pills.

Michigan State

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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.

#19- Where The Next D-Rose/Tyreke/Wall Happens

And here it is.

Look at that beautiful clock in the top right corner. We’ve been watching that thing tick and tick for almost 200 days, and now…such beautiful stillness. All zeroes.

The only thing that can match this feeling is the beginning of the NCAA Tournament, and even though that’s five months away, the days between this moment and that one will pass like a dream. So let’s enjoy this one tonight. Gyms and arenas are packed across the nation tonight to celebrate the First Official Day of Practice. We’re already checking out some local broadcasts, live streams, Twitter feeds, and live blogs, and the ESPN-U broadcast with their (we like this term) “whip-around” coverage is mere minutes away. Every one of the RTC Compounds (Western, Southern, and Eastern) are locked in and rocking. We have our satellite feeds. We have our Blue Ribbon Yearbooks beside us. We’re ready.

Join us here at 8:45 pm ET (about 15 minutes from now) and start hitting that refresh button for updated comments, and, as always, we encourage you to give us your thoughts via the comments section and Twitter. WELCOME!

8:45 PM — So many programs kicked off their festivities at 7 pm or 8 pm ET, so the first order of business is to try and get you some links up to some of the various happenings:

Dan Wolken, columnist for the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, is live blogging Memphis Madness on his live blog (we actually love the “Wolken In Memphis” title).

Kentucky’s official site is streaming live here at UKAthletics.com.

More on the way…

8:51 — Kentucky’s Enes Kanter, a big wrestling fan, entered to the music formerly used to introduce The Undertaker. He cannot practice tonight, unfortunately for all of us, since just about everyone wants to get a look at this guy. But that was one heck of an entrance.

9:01 — ESPN-U’s broadcast is underway. That aurora borealis background is kind of cool, eh? By the way, if you have such access, Maryland Madness is also live on TV on Comcast MidAtlantic.

9:08 — Wow. From Duke, Jay Williams and Lou Canellis are covered in sweat. Not surprising, considering it’s Cameron Indoor, but it can’t be fun sitting there under hot lights in a sweltering building while wearing a suit. Actually, it’s the Madness, so it’s fun no matter what. But hopefully they have designated toweler-offers (read: interns) standing just out of the shot.

9:12 — Evidently Duke’s Seth Curry took a nasty elbow to the eye and was pretty much spurting blood. This is awful, but hopefully it’s not as bad as the initial shock, and we’ll provide more details as available.

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