1. CBS Sports: In the wake of Maryland‘s defection to the Big Ten, the main focus of speculation is what the ACC’s counterstroke will be. According to those in the know, the vote to pick a replacement for the departing Terps could happen as early as this week. The two leading candidates for replacement are Louisville and Connecticut. Both schools offer a few distinct advantages over the other. Louisville’s reasonable success in football is a big draw when football is the raison d’etre of realignment, while UConn’s academic profile more closely aligns with the Atlantic Coast Conference. A successful football program is a powerful draw, but considering that membership is decided by a vote of university presidents, the importance of academics as a deciding factor should not be overlooked.
2. NBC Sports: There are embarrassing losses and then there are embarrassing losses, and sadly, Boston College has not been a stranger to either variety in recent years. Sunday’s loss to Bryant University, a school enjoying its very first year as a full Division I member, falls into the latter category. BC is only 2-4 to start the season, although the Eagles have admittedly played a more challenging schedule than many of their conference peers. That said, a home loss to Bryant is a troubling sign.  Head Coach Tim O’Shea accidentally backhanded the Eagles with his postgame comments: “Five years ago, the biggest game on Bryant’s schedule was Bentley. Five years later, we’ve just beaten Boston College on the road. It’s a big deal.”
3. Testudo Times: A Maryland team that was decimated by defections found some extra depth in a recent win over Georgia Southern. The sterling play of freshman Charles Mitchell continued as he contributed a double-double off the bench with fellow freshman Shaquille Cleare adding a double-figure scoring effort. An additional double-figure scoring effort by transfer guard Logan Aronhalt — who went 4-4 from beyond the arc — demonstrated that the Terrapins have more firepower on the bench than expected. With Mark Turgeon happy to keep his starters on the bench while the reserves performed, it’s easy to wonder if the starting lineup may undergo some revisions over the course of the next few games.
4. Duke Basketball Report: The ACC / Big Ten Challenge kicks off Tuesday evening and this year, the event has a little extra spice. Between the still-open wound of Maryland leaving one conference for the other, the allure of a top-five showdown between Duke and Ohio State is appealing, as is a chance for a perplexing North Carolina team to take a shot at an increasingly vulnerable looking Indiana squad. After a 10-year run of victories, the ACC has lost the past three years. Say what you will about realignment, but it sure makes these interconference events feel a little more exciting.
5.  Basketball Prospectus: One more item on the topic of conference realignment: Why does it happen? Well, as Maryland so ably and honestly demonstrated: it’s the money. Using a clever analogy with pro sports, John Gasaway proposes a novel (or at least freshly recycled) idea on how to make conferences significantly more stable: revenue sharing across all of the major conferences. It’s an interesting thought, and one that merits some additional examination.

1. Billy Gillispie is long gone from Texas Tech, and it’s doubtful his name will ever arise again in Big 12 circles for as long as he’s alive. And yet he’s still having an enormous impact on our game, even as he sits at home without a head coaching job. As CBS’ Gary Parrish astutely points out, Gillispie is almost solely responsible for the new preseason tournament formats in college basketball. After his Kentucky team lost to Gardner-Webb in the regional site of the 2K Sports Classic at Rupp Arena, GWU advanced to Madison Square Garden and left thousands of UK fans scrambling to cancel flights and sell tickets. Since then, only the Preseason NIT Tip-Off has kept the old format– you know, the one where the team that actually wins advances to the Garden. Parrish interviewed Delaware coach Monte Ross about his team’s experience in the Garden after knocking off Virginia in Charlottesville, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who thinks his squad didn’t deserve to make the trip to NYC this year. Tickets and flights be damned.
2. Speaking of New York City and that NIT Tip-Off, there’s a biggie tonight at the Garden between Kansas State and Michigan. After dispatching a really good Delaware team with difficulty, the Wildcats get to throw down with a top five team on national television in perhaps the most historic venue in basketball. Tell us, guys. How do you feel? “We’re privileged to be playing in Madison Square Garden… We came here to prove a point, me and my teammates and our coaching staff. We’re just ready to play,” guard Angel Rodriguez told The Wichita Eagle. If Kansas State wins, it’ll be near impossible to leave this team out of the Top 25.
3. After Maryland and Rutgers announced their departures from the ACC to the Big Ten earlier this week, it started up the whole Realignment Apocalypse firestorm again. Kill us now. According to the Lawrence Journal-World, there’s some sort of rumor the Big Ten might now try to complete its conference by adding North Carolina and Kansas. That’s a rumor Bill Self laughed off immediately. “I don’t even think that’s worth discussing,” he told the paper, adding that the idea of North Carolina playing in a conference without Duke “makes no sense.” Which is hilarious, because Kansas and Missouri no longer play in the same conference either.
4. There’s no Marcus Smart or Le’Bryan Nash in this class, but Oklahoma State officially announced its 2013-14 recruiting class on Thursday. It ain’t bad. Headlined by four-star Detrick Mostella, Travis Ford signed four prospects with some size (relative to their positions) and promise to them. Mostella, a 6’3” combo guard with major potential, might be the centerpiece, but Jeffrey Carroll and Leyton Hammonds are both solid wings who might be able to make up for the expected loss of Smart and Nash (whenever that may be). Ford also added some much-needed size with 6’10” juco center Gary Gaskins.
5. This article’s a little old, and it’s the 800th story written about the tragic situation former Kansas forward Thomas Robinson faced, but it’s worth your time. Very well-written, and unique compared to some of the other pieces on Robinson. He may not play for the Jayhawks anymore, but as his NBA career begins to soar, it’s always nice to keep an eye on a guy like this.

1. Duke Basketball Report: If you’ve got some free time, Al Featherston has an exhaustive but interesting op-ed on Maryland‘s coming departure from the league. Featherston has a great perspective, and the piece comes at the move from a lot of different sides. It’s lengthy, but it’s worth the time.
2. NBC Sports: Ken Pomeroy tweeted during Duke‘s emphatic win against Minnesota that “Duke could be the best team in the country,” but Rob Dauster isn’t drinking the Blue Devil kool-aid just yet. Pomeroy’s reasoning makes sense: Duke held Minnesota to its least efficient outing of the year, while blistering the Golden Gophers for 1.23 points per possession. Dauster’s skepticism also makes sense, both because Duke shot 80% from beyond the arc and Minnesota’s Trevor Mbakwe didn’t look his dominant self. Still, if Duke makes it out of Atlantis unscathed, this team certainly deserves to be in that conversation.
3. Carolina Columns: North Carolina senator Thom Goolsby thinks there needs to be a criminal probe into the academic scandal at North Carolina. Goolsby sits on the state’s senate higher education committee. I’d be extremely surprised if there was a criminal probe before the results from the school’s internal audit are released. Regardless, it’s not a good look for North Carolina to be taking shots from a state senator and speaks to the severity of the case.
4. Run The Floor: Landry Nnoko had a huge block in Clemson‘s tough loss to Gonzaga. More important than that singular play was how close the Tigers managed to stay with a strong Gonzaga team deep into the second half. The game wasn’t pretty, but credit Brad Brownell and his team for coming out and hanging with a team many experts have as a Final Four sleeper for 30 minutes. That’s really promising for Clemson come conference play.
5. Providence Journal: If one more Big East school departs it’s possible that the remaining schools could vote to dissolve the conference. Specifically, Kevin McNamara theorizes, one more school’s departure would give basketball-only schools the super-majority needed to get rid of the conference completely. We’re still a long ways from such a drastic measure, but it’s definitely something to be aware of going forward.

1. Sporting News: Reading this convinced me that Brian Gregory may be exactly what Georgia Tech needs. He’s a very good salesman, which is crucial both for future recruiting and getting alumni and fans involved. The two go hand in hand as good recruiting leads to better teams which leads to more alumni support; likewise good alumni support leads to better facilities and more hype around the program and better recruiting. Give Gregory a couple more years and he’ll have Georgia Tech back in the conversation.
2. Washington Times: As more and more opinion pieces start to turn up regarding Maryland‘s move to the Big Ten, there are a couple of distinct themes: that the Terrapins made the no-brainer choice given the realignment climate, the athletic department spit in the face of tradition, or it was a necessary evil because of the department’s financial woes. This piece clearly falls on the side of the latter. More interesting are the demographics of groups on both sides: In general, current students and the athletic department seem to come down in the first camp, older alumni and fans of other ACC schools in the second camp, and a mixture of the two falling in the third camp. None of the other realignment moves have seemed nearly as polarizing amongst the fan base.
3. Indy Week: NC State has received a lot of hype this season — even after the ugly loss to Oklahoma State — but a lot of people don’t remember how the program faded to obscurity in the first place (at least as far as national titles are concerned). Through the 1970s and 1980s the Wolfpack were a top program in the ACC and the country, but the school forced Jim Valvano out in 1990 and the program never really recovered to that level under any of Les Robinson, Herb Sendek or Sidney Lowe.
4. Raleigh News & Observer: It should only be good news that Reggie Johnson is more motivated than ever, has lost weight, and is disciplined. But why are Miami and Johnson struggling to start the season? Johnson and frontcourt partner Kenny Kadji are off to very poor offensive starts. Kadji is turning the ball over far too much, and Johnson just can’t shoot with any accuracy. But in the long run both are proven commodities, and the Hurricanes should be much better than they’ve played so far.
5. Baltimore Sun: Kevin Coherd’s column about the Terrapins is cautiously optimistic, echoing Mark Turgeon‘s sentiments about his young team. It’s true this team is not a national contender just yet, but it could really rock the boat in the ACC if it can find some consistent offense. Alex Len already deserves any ACC Most Improved Awards we can find for him. Coaches like to spin things down a little at the beginning of the season to keep their teams as clean as possible, but Turgeon has a lot to look forward to this season.

EXTRA: DAILY RUMOR

Could the Big Ten be poaching another ACC (Carolina) blue blood as its 15th or 16th member?

1. With Maryland having already committed to play for the Big Ten, the announcement that Rutgers would be following them was merely a formality. Yesterday, Rutgers made it official that it would be leaving the Big East for the Big Ten and the riches of its upcoming college football contract. With both schools brushing aside exit fees that were in the not too distant past considered exorbitant it raises the question of how high these fees will have to get to become a legitimate deterrent to schools considering an exit from their conference. Clearly $50 million isn’t enough — so with the size of these television contracts continuing to grow, fees may need to approach $100 million to keep future schools from leaving.
2. Now that he has finished informing the nation on which candidate would be our president for the next four years, Nate Silver is back to deal with the important stuff — sports. Yesterday, Silver looked at the potential impact of Maryland and Rutgers entering the Big Ten. Utilizing Google search traffic data for the search term “college football,” Silver looked at 210 major media markets and determined that Rutgers may actually be a more valuable commodity than Maryland, but not by as much as many are claiming due to its location within the New York market. Our issue with this analysis, which we think we have mentioned in this space before, is that hardcore fans aren’t searching for such generic terms, but he at least makes the effort.
3. Penn State struggled through much of last season, but the Nittany Lions were usually worth checking out on occasion because of Tim Frazier, one of the most dynamic players in the Big Ten. This year promised to be a better one for PSU, but now that Frazier is done for the year after rupturing his Achilles tendon the Nittany Lions may be in for another long season. Frazier, a first-team All-Big Ten guard last season, plans to apply for a medical redshirt. While we didn’t expect much from Penn State this season, the injury is a tremendous setback for Frazier’s chances of playing professionally. We wish Frazier the best of luck in his rehab and look forward to seeing him back in a Nittany Lion uniform soon.
4. It took a while for the national college basketball writers assembled in Brooklyn last night to realize it, but the biggest news of the evening had nothing to do with #1 Indiana’s overtime win versus Georgetown (and, seriously, how many different Georgetown columns can this group write?). Rather, it had everything to do with a 5’10” sophomore named Jack Taylor from Division III Grinnell College in Iowa. Playing in a wild offensive system (unimaginatively called “The System”) developed by head coach David Arseneault, Taylor hoisted 108 shots on his way to an NCAA record 138-point evening, going 52-for-108 from the field including a ridiculous 27 threes (on 71 attempts). Let’s hope that this kid is ready for the whirlwind because he’s already been on Sportscenter and all of the morning and late night talk shows surely can’t be far behind.
5. On Monday, we mentioned how ridiculous it was that North Carolina was essentially getting a free pass from much of the media surrounding its growing academic scandal. It seems like someone was listening. The only thing is that it was not someone at the NCAA, but instead a North Carolina state senator who is calling for a criminal probe into the situation. While we think that this merits a formal inquiry at the state level, we doubt that there will ever be any criminal proceedings as a result of it. Still, given the apparent breadth and reach of this sham, we would not be opposed to seeing a few heads roll at what is supposed to be an institution of higher learning.

1. CBS Sports and USA Today: Surprising no one, conference realignment chatter dominated ACC press with Maryland‘s official announcement that it would accept the Big Ten’s invitation and join that league in 2014. But where should the ACC go from here? Matt Norlander argues that the league should embrace its basketball roots looking forward. Dan Wolken spoke with David Wilkins, chairman of Clemson’s Board of Trustees, who added, “I’d say that Clemson is very excited about our football program right now and we’d like to see a team added that adds to the football prowess of the ACC, but that’s a decision for the presidents to make based on a lot of factors.” Stability-wise, the conference needs to put football first or not expand at all. Basketball just doesn’t make enough money for conferences with the way the NCAA television deals are currently set up.
2. Sporting News: Mike DeCourcy is not impressed by Maryland’s decision. He makes a good point that despite why decisions are made (ahem, money), we’ll evaluate their success by how Maryland sports do in the Big Ten. The going theory has been that more money means more success, but DeCourcy makes an interesting point that Maryland is making itself into a geographic outlier. It’s true that in the age of chartered jets teams might not care as much about close road games, but parents and potential recruits do.
3. Tallahassee Democrat: Terrance Shannon loves coming off the bench so much that he went to Leonard Hamilton before the season to make sure he could still fill the Seminoles’ sixth man role. Luckily for Florida State, Shannon does well coming off the bench. The best asset he has is his motor, which makes him invaluable as a substitute by adding energy to the game. It’s rare that you see a college player who’s both motivated and willing to not start, which speaks to Shannon’s maturity and one reason why Hamilton’s program has been so successful the last few years.
4. Charlotte Observer: NC State got a harsh reality check from a good Oklahoma State team over the weekend. The game saw miserable performances out of veterans Lorenzo Brown and CJ Leslie. Joe Giglio damningly noted that Leslie looked like “old Leslie,” the immature and indecisive Leslie from his freshman year. Brown struggled on both ends of the floor, with his defense probably reflecting a general level of frustration.
5. SBNation: And one last shout-out to conference expansion. Jason Kirk lays out a very good argument for the ACC taking Louisville over Connecticut: (1) it gives Notre Dame a close geographic rival while making the conference footprint more contiguous; (2) it’s a much better football program with decent local recruiting; and (3) the Cardinal athletic department is just more profitable than Connecticut’s by a long shot. The only drawback is Louisville’s academics, but right now the ACC has a very strong academic brand and needs to buck up its football cachet, not the other way around.

1. The big news of the day happened off the court and likely behind closed doors in a room with paintings of men who have been dead for over 100 years as Maryland is headed to the Big Ten after its Board of Regents approved the move and Rutgers is expected to join suit later today. Obviously these moves are driven by football-generated television revenue, but it is unfortunate how this move will negatively affect some current college basketball rivalries, particularly Maryland-Duke. The decision to invite Rutgers, a school that has largely been irrelevant in revenue-generating sports, appears to be motivated by its proximity to New York City and the huge television market that comes with it. Our writers at the Big Ten microsite have already provided an overview of how these moves will affect the Big Ten, and the ACC microsite has chimed in as well, but for our part the loss of Maryland as a charter member of the ACC is one of the sadder stories of the entire conference realignment era and we wonder how Terps fans will take to their new conference.
2. Nobody with half a brain these days still thinks that schools give much, if any, consideration to their student-athletes, fans or sentiment to longstanding and traditional rivalries when making these purely financial decisions to chase the highest possible payout. This mindset is perfectly laid out by ESPN.com‘s Dana O’Neil, who with a scathing edge to her pen, writes: “The landscape is a storm-ravaged mess and the last idealistic fan has left the building, seeing this entire enterprise for the sausage-making caper it is. College sports are gaining money and losing credibility, the sham of amateurism and purity reserved merely for the athletes and their vow of poverty.” Pat Forde follows her with a missive describing how Maryland and Rutgers’ incompetence both on the fields of play and in the boardroom are virtually meaningless in modern realignment calculus. What does matter: “Location, location, location [near major media markets]. That’s what this latest round of conference realignment is about.” Both are absolutely correct, of course — in just the last year we’ve lost (or will lose) Missouri-Kansas, Syracuse-Georgetown, and now Duke-Maryland. All in the name of more dollars. At what point do those dollars level off when fans realize that Rutgers-Michigan or Maryland-Iowa simply doesn’t have quite the same passion and intensity surrounding it?
3. Wednesday’s game between Kentucky and Morehead State was supposed to be a nice homecoming for former Wildcat star Sean Woods (you may remember him as the guy who hit the shot before Laettner hit The Shot). It may not turn out to be so friendly, though, after a story was published in the Louisville Courier-Journal in which Woods criticized the current Wildcats for their sense of youthful entitlement. Perhaps as the result of some harsh local feedback, Woods backed off his earlier statements via his official Twitter account. We are guessing that Woods’ clarification will be enough for most Wildcat fans — his banner hangs in the Rupp Arena rafters, after all — but there will probably be a few of the less reasonable ones who use it as an excuse to create a minor scene on Wednesday night.
4. While the Hall of Fame Tip-Off Tournament has been able to bring in big name programs the past two years — Kentucky (2011) and Ohio State (2012) — it has failed to draw large crowds even when Big Blue Nation invaded Mohegan Sun last season with an absolutely loaded team. Now the organizers are trying to overcome that with a  2013 field that includes two powerhouses — North Carolina and Louisville — as well Richmond, Belmont, and a group of four local schools. Having been to the event once we would be surprised if even the presence of these two schools could make up for the odd atmosphere surrounding the arena and casino, but it should at least make for a better televised final. Along the same lines, the Maui Invitational announced its field for the 2014 tournament (two years from now), and it includes the following eight schools: Arizona, BYU, Missouri, Purdue, Pittsburgh, San Diego State, Kansas State, Chaminade. It’s not the strongest Maui event we’ve ever seen, but we’d expect at least three of those teams to rank in the Top 25 that season, perhaps more.
5. Speaking of the Garden Isle, we don’t typically discuss game results in this space, but on the 30th anniversary of Chaminade‘s historic upset over #1 Virginia in 1982, we thought it was too coincidental to fail to mention the Silverswords’ 86-73 victory over Texas on Monday night. Certainly there are failures in the comparison — first of all, Texas 2012 is not Virginia 1982. The Longhorns aren’t even ranked, and they are playing in Maui without their best player, Myck Kabongo, in the lineup. Secondly, the gap between Division I and Division II basketball isn’t what it was 30 years ago — better training methodologies and techniques at all levels of basketball have helped, but the regular gutting of high-D-I hoops by the NBA creates situations like at Texas where Rick Barnes faces a rebuild every couple of years (Ralph Sampson would have without question been one-and-one in today’s environment). Still, it’s pretty cool. Texas has by far the nation’s top athletic department budget (last check: over $150 million) and it’s unlikely that Chaminade even surpasses a cool million. Could the D-II darlings use a home court advantage to take down Illinois tonight — nobody knows the answer, but it’s stories like these that answers the question of why we watch the games.

Maryland is leaving the ACC to join the Big Ten along with Rutgers. Unsurprisingly the move sparked mixed opinions from all sides. Maryland’s move is the first time since South Carolina left in 1971 that a charter member of the ACC has joined another conference, which says a lot about the current state of college athletics. Objectively–at least in the long run — Maryland’s administration made the obvious decision. The Terrapin athletic department has financially struggled mightily the last few years, and the Big Ten offers significantly more television revenue than the ACC. The caveat is the ACC’s recently negotiated $50 million exit fee (which Maryland and Florida State opposed at the time), a fee so steep will decimate the athletic department’s short-term finances.

Thinking of Maryland In the Big Ten Doesn’t Feel Right, But It’s the New Reality (credit: SI.com)

Look for the ACC to really stick to its guns regarding the exit fee, but Maryland probably won’t pay the full penalty. Contracts require diligence in order to be enforced, and Maryland will probably argue that the massive exit fee is punitive — especially considering the fact that the school didn’t support the massive exit fee hike. That said, if other schools smell instability and see a way around the exit fee, the ACC could be in trouble. If Maryland is forced to pay the full exit fee, the only two feasible options are a massive capital campaign or some sort of assistance from a third party (including the Big Ten).

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It would be misleading and deceitful to imply that conference realignment is about anything other than money (though that hasn’t stopped conference commissioners and university presidents), or that basketball is at the forefront of presidents’ minds when moves are made. But regardless of the motives behind the seismic moves that have taken place across the college athletics landscape over the last handful of years, fans of all the involved schools and of all relevant sports must adjust to the changes. With the swiftly breaking news of Maryland and Rutgers set to join the Big Ten for the 2014-15 school year, here are a few of the basketball implications of the realignment and the likely 14-team Big Ten:

We can only hope Maryland joining the Big Ten will provide us with a few more classics like this game from the 2010 NCAA Tournament.

• Schedule Changes — With two more teams added to the mix, you can expect that the already-diluted conference basketball schedule will become even more so. As it stands now with 12 Big Ten teams, each school plays 18 conference games. That means each school plays four other conference schools only once, and seven teams twice. If the conference keeps an 18-game conference schedule, under the new 14-team format, each school would then play more fellow Big Ten schools only once and fewer teams twice. What that means: fewer rivalry games and marquee match-ups will be played on an even-keel home-and-home basis, also leaving room for an unbalanced conference schedule across the board. When that’s the case, regular season championships carry less value if teams don’t have a consistent conference slate from top to bottom.

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1. Raleigh News & Observer: After several months of beating his drum, Dan Kane finally found a whistleblower from the North Carolina athletic support staff. Mary Willingham is the first named source to come out and directly say that plagiarism was tolerated by the tutors and professors in many no-show classes at UNC. A witness has been the missing piece to this story, and Willingham’s criticism is damning to say the least. She alleges special treatment for revenue sport athletes, both in terms of admissions and questionable classes. Willingham’s comments will take some further dissection but do not look good for the school at first reading.
2. ESPN: The biggest news over the weekend was the bombshell dropped out of College Park when sources within the athletic department told ESPN that Maryland is far enough along in negotiations to join the Big Ten (along with Rutgers) and that an official announcement could come as soon as later today. This makes the ACC’s recent addition of Notre Dame even more important, though it could also spark additional expansion moves (does Connecticut become an ACC target?). By switching leagues, Maryland would likely see a significant boost in television profits in the long run, but the recently increased $50 million dollar ACC buyout could cripple an athletic department already in the red in the short term.
3. Washington Post (pro and con): Two Maryland legends spoke out for and against the Terps’ potential move to the Big Ten. Gary Williams is all for the move despite supporting the ACC throughout all the expansion rumors. It should be noted that Williams serves as assistant to the athletic director, so it may color his opinion a little (though Williams was never scared to speak his mind before this). He cited the increased television revenue and hinted at a lack of respect from the ACC (noting the conference tournament was only hosted in Washington, DC, once in his 22 years). Len Elmore on the other hand fought for tradition: “Anything that’s driven solely by dollars, it’ll turn out badly.” Elmore took some shots at Maryland’s president and athletic director for not having Maryland pride. Expect more from us here at the ACC microsite on the potential move today.
4. Wilmington Star News: NC State’s Debbie Yow earned herself an extension with increased supplemental compensation. Yow’s new deal runs through June 2017 and is a direct result of a successful coaching search (in hindsight at least) and the steady improvement that the Wolfpack’s athletic teams have seen under her tenure –most prominently, on the basketball court. Yow will continue making $354,000 a year with an extra $150,000 in supplemental earnings and an enhanced bonus structure going forward.
5. Hampton Roads Daily Press: David Teel sat down with John Swofford to talk all things ACC. The majority of the interview is covered in his excellent profile, which ran Sunday. But the extras are also worth reading, especially Swofford’s optimism on merging the Notre Dame and ACC football deals in the near future. He also talked briefly about working above Dean Smith at North Carolina and the ongoing scandal in Chapel Hill.