If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

Top 25 Games

• Providence 83, #6 Villanova 68: “Villanova evened their record for this, the longest road trip of this season, at 1-1 on Saturday with their 11 point win, 83-72, over Syracuse. Chances to conclude the road trip with another win were foiled as the Friars won a decisive, 83-68 victory over Villanova at the Dunkin Donuts Center in downtown Providence, RI. The Friars punched the Wildcats with a 6-0 run to start the game, then stretched that lead to nine, 34-25, going into halftime. Credit Providence for striking again early in the second half, taking a 7-4 run over the first four minutes that stretched the lead to 12, 41-29, before the ‘Cats could regroup for their own run. Villanova could get no closer than seven (43-50 at the 10:11 mark), and once repelled, could not stop the Friars from pushing their lead back out to double digits, where it largely remained through the end of the game. Villanova’s longest road trip for this season ended with on a 1-2 note.” (Villanova by the Numbers)
• #6 Texas 61, Oklahoma State 46: “Texas turned in another fantastic defensive performance, holding Oklahoma State to 32% shooting, as the Longhorns improved their record to 17-3, 5-0 in Big 12 play, with a 61-46 win over the Cowboys in Stillwater.  Tristan Thompson led the Horns with 14 points, and both Jordan Hamilton (12) and Dogus Balbay (10) scored in double digits.” (Burnt Orange Nation or Pistols Firing)
• #19 Minnesota 81, Northwestern 70: “Not many teams could survive losing two point guards capable of starting in the Big Ten in a matter of weeks. But Tubby Smith’s Gophers are surviving and thriving with Devoe Joseph opting to wear street clothes in Oregon and Al Nolen on the bench with a broken foot. How? Dominating the paint. On Wednesday night against Northwestern, the Gophers pounded the ball in the paint at every possible opportunity as Colton Iverson, Ralph Sampson III and Trevor Mbakwe helped the Gophers to a relatively easy win against the Wildcats.” (The Daily Gopher or From the Barn)
• #21 Georgetown 77, St. John’s 52: “That was quite satisfying. Georgetown defeated St. John’s 77-52 in the most impressive performance since Big East play started. Austin Freeman, Jason Clark, and Chris Wright each played spectacularly, and were supported by new super 6th man Hollis Thompson. Clark scored 16 points on 5-5 from the field, including 3-3 from three point land. Thompson, who has improved dramatically since the beginning of the year, came off the bench for the first time this year and scored 15 points, including a ferocious dunk and foul in the first half. Georgetown looked like a completely different team than the one that lost three straight games in early January. Nate Lubick started alongside Clark, Freeman, Wright and Julian Vaughn for the first time this season. The defensive intensity exhibited tonight was far superior to anything we’ve seen in a while. The Hoyas outrebounded St. John’s 39-28, and made 26 baskets on 21 assists” (Casual Hoya)

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Duke fans the world over have spent most of the holiday season wishing for Santa to bring superstar point guard Kyrie Irving a healthy toe, looking for any sign in the stars that such a gift is forthcoming.  The reason, of course, is that the nation’s #1 team instantly becomes numero uno with a giant bullet if Irving can return to the court with a completely healthy appendage (is a toe an appendage?).  Instead of being the mere favorite to cut the nets down again in March, the Devils become the Goliath.  So you’ll forgive our Durham friends if they’re feeling a little anxious about the continuing status of limbo, which, like many of us wont to the supernatural,  may cause them to find meaning in things that probably don’t really have much. 

The Most Tracked Toe in America... Moved.

It’s a little bit like walking into that 8th-grade party and seeing your crush — the most perfect girl you can ever imagine —  across the room looking in your direction.  Your heart leaps into your throat beating a thousand times per minute; you suddenly feel as if the thermostat in the room skyrocketed; and, if you could climb under a napkin to avert the knowing, mocking, relentless gaze of Your Chosen One, you would.  But that rush is incredible.  What does it mean?  Was she looking for you to come into the party?  Was she staring at the wall behind you?  Does she even know that you’re alive?

Such is the situation that was exhibited on Sunday night with Kyrie Irving (and his toe safely secured in a walking boot) on the bench during Duke’s game versus Miami (FL).  When the FSN camera gazed longingly at Irving’s foot, Duke fans were sent into a maniacal frenzy.  Behold, the toe MOVED…  what does it all mean?!?!?!  (h/t Duke Hoop Blog) 

We’re no doctor, having only played one before on this site, but the uneducated guess here is that movement of the toe is not necessarily indicative of whether it’s healthy.  We once blew out a couple of knees with a highlight-reel dunk (think Baron Davis at UCLA), but even after the pain subsided and our feet were hanging onto our legs by a shoestring otherwise known as an ACL, we could still move our legs. 

As for real, actual medical advice, Irving is expected to see his doctors this week for an updated status report.  We’ll all stay tuned to that one.

For the past two years we’ve taken a look at what NCAA basketball would be like if the powers that be decided to adopt the antediluvian BCS system. In 2009 it would have yielded a championship game between UNC and Louisville along with several other less desirable match-ups. In 2010 it would have led to a championship game between Kansas and Kentucky, which could have been an interesting match-up, but both teams showed severe flaws that led to their elimination well short of the final Monday night game in April.

This season we decided that we would expand things a bit by offering our RTC/BCS college basketball rankings using a formula similar to what they use to determine the BCS rankings in college football on a weekly basis. As the season progresses, you can see how certain teams rise from relative obscurity and into the BCS picture while other teams fall from prestigious BCS games down to what would be the equivalent of pre-New Year’s Day games. With conference play about to start we thought that this would be the ideal time to start looking at the potential match-ups.

We kept the same basic rules as we used in previous years:

1. We are following the BCS Football guidelines as closely as possible, but we replaced the Notre Dame rule with the Duke rule since they both have sketchy TV contracts (Notre Dame with NBC and Duke with ESPN).
2. The AP and ESPN/USA Today polls are used as the human polls and ESPN.com’s InsiderRPI, KenPom.com, and Sagarin’s ratings as the computer polls. We are not including six computer rankings and dropping the highest and lowest like they do in the BCS because frankly we are not familiar with six reputable computer ranking systems. If you know of any other computer rankings leave a comment below and we might include them in the next installment of our rankings.
3. We used the traditional BCS calculations for determining each team’s score weighing the two human polls and the combined computer poll average as 1/3 of a team’s total score each.

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Hello, Donnie. Get ready to see head coach Donnie Jones and his Knights of Central Florida in the next Top 25 that comes out in about 48 hours. They knocked off Miami (FL) earlier, 84-78, and are now 10-0. Understandably, your attention may immediately gravitate to Marcus Jordan (15.9 PPG, 2.1 RPG, 3.4 APG), given his famous papa, and he was outstanding tonight with 23 points. The name you also need to know is Keith Clanton (16.7 PPG, 8.8 RPG, 1.7 BPG), their star 6’8 sophomore forward. They’ll next put that undefeated record on the line at Massachusetts on Wednesday.

Save somethin’ for the second half (of the season), big fella. There’s not much else to say about Jared Sullinger, but it’s still fun talking about how ridiculously good he is. South Carolina isn’t exactly long, and they looked like a team feeling the effects of a post-finals week, pre-holiday road trip — they shot terribly (38.3% FG, 42.9% FT), didn’t take care of the ball (15 turnovers) and their defense in transition was non-existent — but 30/19 for the Ohio State big fella is still an outstanding performance. And when he’s hitting halftime buzzer-beating spinning jumpers off glass from near the hash marks, you know what kind of day you’re in for.

An Early Christmas? Perhaps a little post-finals malaise from Illinois? You might drop a clanger of a game every once in a while and get away with it, but 18-55 (32.7%) from the field and 4-17 (23.7%) from beyond the three-point arc wasn’t going to get the Illini by Illinois-Chicago today. The Flames (now 5-7) forced some late Illinois turnovers and UIC’s Darrin Williams took advantage of every late scoring chance he had in helping his team pull off the upset, but the story here was how the Flames removed Illinois’ bigs from the equation. The Illini starting front line had a combined 13 points on 5-16 shooting, and they only got five more points from big guys off the bench.

Making a Point. North Carolina will take the next step forward when Kendall Marshall eats up more of Larry Drew II’s minutes. Drew plays twice as much as Marshall on the average but Marshall has shown to be a better distributor of the basketball, is great at getting into the lane and finding an open teammate, and is a little more comfortable getting physical than Drew appears to be. What do you think, Tar Heel fans? Would you be comfortable with Marshall seeing more time at Drew’s expense? Despite Harrison Barnes’ clutch three to tie it at 76 (his first three of the game and only UNC’s third) Texas just stunned the Heels in Greensboro on Cory Joseph’s stick in the final seconds.

Orange Bawl. From here, Kansas State has officially removed itself from consideration as one of the elite teams in the nation that could conceivably contend for a national title. We probably gave them longer than most people, actually. Losing to Florida in the Gators’ home state (this was an Orange Bowl Classic affair) is no crime, but that the Wildcats can be goaded into some of the shots they took tonight (15-55 or 27.3% FG, and 3-19 or 15.8% from three) shows that they aren’t ready to be considered among the big boys at this time.

Matt Patton is an RTC contributor.

Everyone has a first memory as a fan.  Mine came in 1997, the day before my seventh birthday.  I’m sure I went to college basketball games before this, but none of them stand out.  I was in first grade, headed to the ACC Tournament championship game.  The game was between N.C. State and North Carolina.  The Wolfpack were the electric underdogs, if you can call a team that runs a modified Princeton offense electric.  They were the eighth seed in a nine-team conference, having put away Georgia Tech, Maryland and top seeded Duke in the process. 

How Cool is This? (photo credit: SI.com)

My most vivid memories from the game were Ramses and Mr. Wuf (the mascots) getting into a fight ending with a one-horned sheep and a victorious wolf; N.C. State losing the game; and my younger brother switching his allegiances to the Tar Heels for the rest of the day much to the chagrin of my parents.   A surprisingly thick head of hair topped Herb Sendek’s head, as he led a team of overachievers to the conference championship game in his first year of coaching.  But the real history was held by the man coaching the Tar Heels.  I’m embarrassed to say this, but until yesterday I never knew that was Dean Smith’s last ACC game.  I had no idea. 

This game, along with dozens of “full-length, classic Tournament and regular season men’s basketball games from all 12 ACC member institutions,” is now available online at the ACC Vault.  You’ve likely seen the NCAA Vault (another must-visit site for any college hoops fan), and the ACC and Raycom Sports have followed suit.  The site features games from 1983 through the present with some really cool features that make the viewing process more user-friendly.  I’ll list some highlights for each school after the jump, but seriously, how cool is this?

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1. For those of you who, like us, are into such things, Ken Pomeroy added the player ratings to his website late last night.  Some of the more interesting findings after one month of the season?  Arizona’s Derrick Williams and UConn’s Kemba Walker have the two highest offensive ratings in the nation, Miami’s Reggie Johnson has been the best offensive rebounder in the country, and St. Mary’s guard Steve Holt is the nation’s best pickpocket.  Steve Holt! You can spend hours fiddling around on there learning the hidden secrets of the game, secure in the knowledge that Pomeroy’s work has made the college basketball world a slightly better place.
2. From the you-don’t-see-this-every-day department, College of Charleston announced on Monday that the school had signed top-50 recruit Adjehi Baru, a 6’9 forward who spurned offers from several ACC schools including North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia Tech.  Needless to say, Baru represents the highest-rated recruit ever signed by the school.  The SoCon occasionally puts players into the NBA (most notably, Stephen Curry), but rarely are those players considered elite recruits coming out of high school.  Tremendous get for CofC head coach Bobby Cremins.
3. Seth Davis takes a look at some of the intricacies of calling a foul when a player swings his elbows around, and even though he warned us, we came out of it more confused that we were before we started.  One of the more interesting nuggets of the article, though, is that it appears that the use of the block/charge semi-circle underneath the basket in select preseason tournaments was a rousing success.  We’ve been asking for that thing for years (familiarly called the “Battier zone”), and with that sort of a commendation it may be well on its way.
4. Some injury news…  Duke’s Kyrie Irving will likely not play in Wednesday’s game at home against Bradley as a result of a toe injury that they’re hopeful will not become a serious problem.  They clearly want to be careful with him, but with games against the Braves, St. Louis, Elon and UNC-Greensboro between now and the new year, they can afford to take their time with him.  In less important-to-his-team news, Baylor will lose freshman guard Stargell Love for up to two months as a result of a stress fracture in his left foot.  He was playing about sixteen minutes per game, but with AJ Walton and LaceDarius Dunn manning most of the backcourt minutes, the Bears should be alright in his absence (assuming no further injuries).
5. We hate doing these, but long-time Marquette Warrior Hank Raymonds passed away on Monday after a battle with cancer.  Raymonds was not nearly as well-known nationally as his boss Al McGuire, but he was an integral part of the Marquette program as the masterful x & o tactician/assistant behind the charismatic McGuire.  After the 1977 national title and McGuire’s retirement, Raymonds took over the program as head coach and athletic director, and led the Warriors to a 126-50 (.716) record in six seasons, including five NCAA Tournament appearances and a Sweet Sixteen in 1979.  In reading through the comments in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s story on Raymonds, it’s easy to see just how beloved this man was in the Marquette community.  RIP, Hank.

PUT. THAT COFFEE. DOWN.

For the third year in a row, ESPN is bringing us what we consider one of the great television events on the sports television calendar, the 24 Hours of Hoops Marathon. That means that for the third year in a row, I’ll be live-blogging the whole thing from start to finish — and this year, we’re climbing this hoops blogger’s Everest without supplemental oxygen. That is to say…I’m going caffeine-free. More importantly, here is the schedule of games for this year’s marathon (all times Eastern):

• 12:00 midnight — Miami (FL) at Memphis (ESPN)
• 2:00 am — St. John’s at St. Mary’s (ESPN)
• 4:00 am — Central Michigan at Hawaii (ESPN)
• 6:00 am — Stony Brook at Monmouth (ESPN)
• 8:00 am — Robert Morris at Kent State (ESPN)
• 10:00 am — Northeastern at Southern Illinois (ESPN)
• 12 noon — Oral Roberts at Tulsa (ESPN)
• 2:00 pm — La Salle at Baylor (ESPN)
• 4:00 pm — Virginia Tech at Kansas State (ESPN)
• 5:30 pm — Marist at Villanova (ESPNU)
• 6:00 pm — Ohio State at Florida (ESPN)
• 7:30 pm — Miami (OH) at Duke (ESPNU)
• 8:00 pm — Butler at Louisville (ESPN)
• 9:30 pm — Belmont at Tennessee (ESPNU)
• 10:00 pm — South Carolina at Michigan State (ESPN)
• 11:00 pm — San Diego State at Gonzaga (ESPN2)
• 11:30 pm — Pacific at UCLA (ESPNU)

The first attempt at this resulted in some hallucinations and arrhythmias as the hour got late (I had been up for 16 hours before starting the live blog) and I required a few caffeine-laden beverages. Last year, we had a technical glitch that kept us on our toes, but the live blog survived. This time, to raise the standard yet again, I’ll be sans caffeine. I know that without a webcam (we’re not that kind of site) you have no reason to believe that I’m not pounding sodas and cappuccinos and Five Hour Energy drinks by the blender-full. Since I believe RTC is the only site that’s done this all three years, well…you’ll just have to trust me. After two years, I think our relationship is in that kind of place. I hope you’ll join us right here (the live blog will continue in this post) a few minutes before midnight. Now, for my pre-live-blog meal. How’s a little turkey and wine sound?

11:47 PM Monday — Here we go. The high-def at the RTC Southern Compound is rockin’. We’ve checked the router and the internet connection to the building (which bit us in zee buttocks last year), and it appears solid. The football game is all but over (as it has been since halftime). Let’s go.

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1. Now that Halloween is over and done with (best costume we saw this weekend? definitely the couple who dressed up as the scene in American Gothic; well, that, or the random yet very sexy squirrel we saw walking around), we can officially say that we’ve moved into the college basketball season.  November 1 is a sort-of de facto calendar line where many slightly-more-casual fans around the country wake up and realize, “shoot, we have a game next week.”  We’ve been coming strong throughout the month of October with our season preview materials, and we still have a few more up our sleeves this week, but man we’re definitely ready for some game action.  Next Monday night cannot come quickly enough.
2. Is the most hated man in professional basketball actually helping the South Florida schools, particularly Miami (FL), with their recruiting?  This article by Fanhouse suggests that LeBron James may be, although there’s been no direct evidence of it yet.  There was considerable buzz when King James went over to Coral Gables to play pickup ball on campus back in August, and the revered superstar (among South Floridians at least) showed up in no fewer than four photos in the team’s 2010-11 media guide this year.  Whether it will work for Frank Haith’s program remains to be seen, but there’s no question that the Hurricanes, looking for any possible advantage in a league full of heavyweights, are trying to leverage it.
3. In a move we’re having trouble figuring out, the Pac-10 announced that it would be combining its men’s and women’s postseason tournaments in coming years, beginning in 2011 at the Staples Center.  Although our initial thought drifted toward some absurd hybrid of the three-ball competition at NBA All-Star Weekend, we immediately wondered how merging the semifinal and final rounds of the tournament into a single venue would actually increase fan interest?  Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott has done a solid job at marketing his oft-staid league in his six months on the job, but we’re not sure he realizes that putting a gimmicky thing together like this could actually disincentivize fans who are only interested in one sport (men’s), not the other (women’s).  In other news, the World Series, facing flagging television ratings as result of the Yankees or Red Sox not being involved this year, is looking into tagging along its Game Five tonight with Monday Night Football’s matchup between the Colts and Texans.
4. There have been some open doubting Thomases around here with respect to the AP/Coaches poll rankings that UNC has received in the past week (#8/#9).  And with good reason — the Heels simply weren’t very good last year, and they lost their top three returning scorers.  Does the addition of super-frosh Harrison Barnes mean that suddenly Roy Williams’ team is not just better, but top 10 good?  Seth Davis spent some time in Chapel Hill last week watching practice and he came away from the experience believing that the Heels will indeed be as good as Barnes makes them.  Honestly, we’re thinking a fair comparison might be the Kevin Durant Texas team of 2006-07 — Durant was amazing, but that team was simply way too young and inexperienced to do much in March (they lost to USC in the Second Round).
5. Some exhibition nonsense for your consideration over the weekend: #9 Florida 92, Florida Tech 58 (Kenny Boynton had 24 pts on 10-15 FG); #17 Butler 90, Florida Southern 70 (Matt Howard had 19/7); Louisville 83, Northern Kentucky 66 (UL opened its new KFC/Yum Center with newly-eligible Gorgui Dieng’s 14/11); Pittsburgh 104, Northwood 62 (Ashton Gibbs had 25 pts).  It seems like every year some ranked team ends up losing one of these games — wonder who it will be this year?

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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It’s October.  The leaves are starting to turn colors.  Halloween candy is already in the stores.  There have been a few nights where you may have even turned on the heat.  Midnight Madness is imminent and RTC is full bore into the 2010-11 Season Preview materials headfirst.  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.

Deep South Region (GA, FL, AL, MS, LA)

• Chris Warren – Sr, G – Ole Miss. Returning from a torn ACL he suffered just 12 games into his sophomore season in 2008-09, Ole Miss’ Chris Warren had some folks concerned after his first game back last season when he played only 27 minutes, scored just nine points, and struggled with a 3-11 shooting night against Arkansas-Little Rock. Six days later, though, he and his fellow Rebels cruised down to the Puerto Rico Tip-Off in San Juan, where Warren scored 16, 27 and 24 points, respectively, in wins against Indiana and Kansas State and a loss in the final to Villanova. He averaged just under 32 minutes over those three contests and shot a combined 23-45, and, perhaps more importantly, put to bed any remaining fears about the status of that knee. Warren would go on to start all 35 games last year, average 32.9 MPG (tops on his team) and put up only two other single-digit scoring efforts for the whole season. His 17.2 PPG from last season means he’s the second-leading returning scorer in the SEC, trailing only Georgia’s Trey Thompkins by half of a point. When you hear numbers like this, it’s easy to forget that the guy’s doing all this as a 5’10 point guard, another testament to his toughness. Despite his role at the point, ignoring his outside shot isn’t recommended, either; he finished 14th in the nation with 3.4 threes per game, and led the SEC in three-point shooting in league games at 43.8%. Warren’s achievements earned him an all-SEC second team slot last year and we’re certain to see him on the Bob Cousy Award nominee list (again), and wouldn’t be surprised to see him as a finalist. If Mississippi is to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in nine years, head coach Andy Kennedy will need that kind of final season from his floor leader.

You May Not Yet Know Thompkins, But You Will

• Trey Thompkins – Jr, F – Georgia. After toiling behind Florida and Kentucky for years in the SEC, Mark Fox has the Bulldogs poised for a resurgence. While many Georgia fans are focused on the recruitment of Kentavious Caldwell and Julian Royal this year, Thompkins along with Travis Leslie (below) could lead the Bulldogs back to the NCAA Tournament. After an exceptional sophomore season where he averaged 17.7 PPG and 8.3 RPG and briefly considered leaving Athens to enter the NBA Draft, Thompkins has a legitimate chance at being a 20/10 player this year, which is something that only Artsiom Parakhouski and Omar Samhan did last year and neither Radford nor St. Mary’s play in the SEC. Most NBA Draft experts already had Thompkins pegged as a borderline first round pick after last season and he should only improve on that as he continues to refine his game. With his combination of a solid outside game to match a developing inside game Thompkins has more than made up for his primary weakness—his relative lack of explosiveness—to become one of the top power forwards in the country. Unfortunately that was hidden from most of the country as the Bulldogs were buried on regional coverage as they managed a meager five SEC wins last season. If Leslie learns to translate some of that athleticism into a more complete overall game and Fox is able to get production out of freshman Marcus Thornton and transfer Gerald Robinson, the Bulldogs could be in the second tier of SEC teams this year just being UF and UK, but still in the spotlight enough that we get to see much more of Thompkins. Although you will probably see more of Leslie on ESPN’s highlight reel-laden recaps on television, if you look at the box score you will end up seeing that it is more likely that Thompkins did the majority of the hard work. Now that Patrick Patterson and DeMarcus Cousins have left Kentucky, Thompkins should be the top inside player in the SEC (at least until the NCAA figures out what to do with Enes Kanter) and has a chance to contend for SEC Player of the Year.

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