1. The Fanhouse 2010-11 All-America Team features Kyle Singler (Duke), Jacob Pullen (Kansas State), Jimmer Fredette (BYU), Marcus Morris (Kansas) and JaJuan Johnson (Purdue).  To each their own, but we think it’s a mistake to leave off Harrison Barnes (UNC) given what we know about the talent of star freshmen these days (to be fair to Fanhouse, he was on their third team).  Also, we know that Morris is a great player only scratching the surface of his potential, but is he the second-best forward in the country behind Singler?  We just can’t get behind that one yet.
2. Right, Leonard Hamilton, because your research about a preseason poll taken in 1975 is equally valid to one taken in 2010, with the crush of media and year-round coverage of the sport, not to mention the ability to watch nearly every high-major game on television (or at least streaming video).  Look, there are problems with some voters in preseason polls failing to do their homework — Lord knows that much is true — but if anything, the ACC traditionally gets too much credit based on the accomplishments of Duke and UNC  in most years.  The ACC has had a grand total of FIVE Sweet Sixteen teams in the last four NCAA Tournaments.  Five (compare with…  B12 = 9; BE = 14; B10 = 8; P10 = 8 ; SEC = 6).  Wanna know how many of those teams were not named Duke or North Carolina?  Zero.  Once upon a time, the ACC was a lock to have a minimum of two Sweet Sixteen teams every single year; and often other schools such as Maryland, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, NC State, etc, were getting there.  In fact, longtime ACC fans know that the league made its name  in the 70s, 80s and 90s for having quality depth beyond Duke and UNC.  Do you see a Sweet Sixteen team in this league other than Duke (or Carolina if you drink the kool-aid that they’re going to be significantly better)?  The league is down; it’s been down for a while, and it remains down.  Until some of the other ten schools start proving it in March, we don’t want to hear a peep from Hamilton and his coaching brethren in the ACC.
3. Louisville finally received some good news regarding a player’s eligibility when the NCAA cleared 6’10 center Gorgui Dieng yesterday.  The freshman originally from Senegal with a 7’4 wingspan will provide some much-needed depth in the frontcourt for Pitino’s squad behind Terrence Jennings and Jared Swopshire.  He was a top fifty recruit according to Rivals, and although very raw, he could eventually become an interior defensive force for Louisville in the same way that Samaki Walker once was.
4. Some comings and goings — you already know about Memphis’ Jelan Kendrick, who at this point may or may not ever suit up for the Memphis Tigers…  but Michigan State’s NCAA Second Round hero Korie Lucious should be back in a Spartan uniform, only not at the start of the season.  Tom Izzo still isn’t sure what Lucious’ exact punishment will be for his drunk driving arrest in August, but he said on Monday it would involve a suspension of between two to four games.  Including exhibition contests, this could result in Lucious possibly missing games that count against Eastern Michigan and South Carolina at the Breslin Center — we think the Spartans will be ok.  He would be back in any case to make the trip to the Maui Invitational during Thanksgiving week.  Also, Duquesne’s starting point guard, Eric Evans, will miss at least two months with a broken right foot.  This is a major blow to a Dukes program (returning A-10 POY candidate Damian Saunders) who had designs on making a run into the top five teams in the Atlantic 10 this year.  It’s still possible, but Evans will have to hit the ground running just after the new year.
5. Former Vanderbilt head coach Roy Skinner passed away yesterday in Nashville; he was 80 years old.  Most people today probably don’t know anything about Skinner as he last coached in 1976, but the man partially responsible for turning Vandy’s Memorial Gymnasium into “Memorial Magic” (he won 82% of his home games during his career there) was also the first SEC basketball coach to break the color barrier.  How has this story not gotten more play over the years?  Skinner recruited Perry Wallace, the first black basketball player in the SEC, from across town in Nashville in 1966.  Wallace went on to become an all-SEC player for the Commodores and later went to Columbia Law School and a law professor at American University.  If that’s not a success story that Skinner should be lauded for, then we haven’t heard one.  RIP, Roy.

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.

Upper Midwest Region (MI, WI, MN, IA, NE, SD, ND)

• Kalin Lucas – Sr, G – Michigan State.  Few elite players and certainly no other senior elite players will enter this season as more of an unknown quantity than Kalin Lucas. Coming off a solid junior season where he averaged 14.8 points and 4.0 assists per game, Lucas and the Spartans were poised for yet another run at the Final Four before a torn Achilles tendon in the second round against Maryland supposedly ended those hopes along with the possibility that Lucas might declare for the 2010 NBA Draft, already lacking in depth at the point guard position. We all know what happened instead (MSU rallied to yet another Final Four even without their starting point guard).  All indications point to Lucas having recovered from the untimely injury to near 100%, but we can’t help but wonder if his explosiveness, which already was a concern for NBA teams, might be compromised. Lucas is certainly fast enough when he gets going in the open court, but his first step has never been at the level of the other elite point guards he has been compared to and a potential reluctance to push off that torn left Achilles tendon may hinder that more. Despite the questions, Tom Izzo is certainly happy to have Lucas and his all-around skills and intangibles back in East Lansing—there are very few All-American point guards in BCS conferences that stick around for their senior season—and if Michigan State is going to make a push to yet another Final Four it will be Lucas who will again be the driving force. Having lost the enigmatic but explosive Raymar Morgan and equally enigmatic but troublesome Chris Allen, Izzo will expect Lucas to carry an increased offensive load while still distributing the ball to wings Durrell Summers and Draymond Green along with the talented Delvon Roe, who has yet to fulfill the promise he showed coming out of high school. If Lucas is able to meet those expectations, he could have a senior season much like one of his Spartan predecessors (Mateen Cleaves) that results in the Spartans cutting down the nets in Houston next April.

Lucas Returns For a Last Final Four Shot

• Blake Hoffarber – Sr, G – Minnesota. Here’s the thing about Blake Hoffarber: he’s probably not the best player on this Minnesota team, maybe not even the third or fourth best player, but he is absolutely critical to their success, perhaps the most important player on the team in that regard. Guys like Al Nolen and Devoe Joseph, Ralph Sampson, III, and Colton Iverson, are all probably more talented and more complete players than Hoffarber, but last year’s Golden Gopher results tell the tale of a team that succeeded when Hoffarber succeeded and failed when he failed. In the 15 games in which Hoffarber scored ten or more points last season, Minnesota went 13-2; in the remaining 20 games when he scored less than ten, they were 8-12. The lesson is simple: Hoffarber needs to score for this team to be successful. And given that Hoffarber’s offensive game is almost entirely predicated on hitting spot-up threes, maybe the true impact player here should be Joseph or Nolen, getting Hoffarber good looks on drive-and-dish. Or maybe it should be Sampson and Iverson for sucking in defenders in the post or kicking out offensive rebounds that eventually find their way into Hoffarber’s hands. But the point remains, Hoffarber needs to get and hit threes for the Gophers to be successful. His offensive numbers tell the story well, as last season Hoffarber was the most efficient offensive player in the nation, but only used 14% of all Gopher possessions when he was in the game. He scored a total of 351 points last season, 255 of which came from behind the arc (at an impressive 46% clip, leading to an effective field goal percentage of 67.3%, good for fourth in the nation). Of the remaining 96 points, 28 came from the line, meaning he scored just 34 hoops inside the arc, less than one point per game. Basically, Hoffarber is the very essence of a pure shooter – you really don’t need to worry about him going around anybody and the only open looks he’ll create for teammates is when he draws defenders to him at the line and rotates the ball around the arc. Sure, he contributes a handful of rebounds a game and rarely turns the ball over, he passes pretty well and is a decent if unspectacular defender, but when it comes right down to it, he’s “just a shooter” – one of the best in the nation upon whom the Golden Gophers’ chances depend, but in the end, still “just a shooter.”

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1. Thursday was a big day in the recruiting world, as three top prospects in the Class of 2011 made their commitments public with the result that two Big 12 schools not named Kansas and Texas will also be bringing elite talent onto their campuses.  The #4 player in that class according to Rivals, LeBryan Nash, committed to Oklahoma State, while the #5 player, Quincy Miller, and his teammate and #43 player, Deuce Bello, committed to Baylor.  Nash and Miller are program-changing forwards, while Bello is a ridiculously athletic shooting guard.  As an aside, Scott Drew is absolutely getting it done on the recruiting trail — Miller represents the third top ten player to commit to the Bears in the last two years (Perry Jones arrives this year; seven-footer Isaiah Austin will arrive in 2012), and he’s beating out the likes of grizzled veteran recruiters such as Rick Pitino for these kids.  When you also consider that Baylor had to rekindle an entire program from the ashes of the Dave Bliss debacle merely seven years ago, seeing this kind of talent commit to play ball in Waco is nothing short of extraordinary.
2. The preseason USA Today/Coaches poll came out on Thursday, and as expected, Duke was at the top with 29 of the 31 first-place votes.  Michigan State was second and received the other two first-place votes.  Kansas State, Pittsburgh and Ohio State rounded out the top five.  For a little historical perspective, last year’s Final Four teams were ranked #2 (Michigan State), #8 (Duke), #9 (West Virginia) and #10 (Butler) in the preseason.
3. Could the summer evaluation/recruiting period become a thing of the past?  According to a report released Thursday, the Conference Commissioners Association voted last month to recommend abolition of the summer period.  The NCAA’s Board of Directors will make the final decision on this, but many coaches are already harping on the proposal as a disaster in the making.  In an email sent to coaches from NABC president Tom Izzo, he noted that it will become much more difficult and costly to evaluate prospects individually rather than in the summer camp group setting, and that the cancerous influence of agents, runners and other hangers-on during the summer will only become more powerful without the coaches and NCAA around to lend an air of propriety.
4. Scary news from the DC area that former Georgetown star guard Charles Smith was shot twice in the chest on Thursday and was taken to the hospital in critical condition.  Smith was the Big East POY in 1989 and played on the 1988 bronze-medal US Olympic team, the last US international basketball team comprised solely of collegians.  The suspect who shot Smith is still at large, but we certainly hope that Smith comes through this ok and his assailant is brought to justice.
5. The Atlantic 10 media made their predictions yesterday in NYC, with Temple receiving the burden of expectations to win the conference while Xavier, Richmond and Dayton fell in line behind the Owls.  The preseason all-A10 first team consists of Lavoy Allen (Temple), Kevin Anderson (Richmond), Andrew Nicholson (St. Bonaventure), Damian Saunders (Duquesne) and Chris Wright (Dayton).

1. It was an eventful weekend across the college basketball landscape as programs began officially practicing on Friday night with spirited Midnight Madness celebrations ranging from Duke’s banner unfurling to Michigan State’s astronaut theme to Pepperdine’s For Whom the (Keion) Bell Tolls…  in case you were busy with football and/or the MLB playoffs this weekend, be sure to check out our BGTD: Midnight Madness Edition from Friday night as well as our postmortem of highlights we posted on Sunday.  And believe it or not, we’re only twenty-one days from game action, folks.
2. Like everyone else, we were extremely sad to hear that Purdue’s Robbie Hummel had once again ruptured his ACL, an injury that will leave him on the shelf this season.  You can really feel the pain in Jeff Goodman’s article over the weekend where he discusses just how unfair it is that a great kid such as Hummel seems to have such crappy luck.  For Purdue fans, this is also devastating — the Boilermakers rallied after Hummel’s late February injury last year to sneak into the Sweet Sixteen, but even with the experience of playing without him and E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson returning, we just can’t see a Final Four run in this squad.  Hummel will have one more year to play college basketball in 2011-12, but he’ll return to a team gutted by the graduation of those two stars and although hope springs eternal, we have a feeling that these couple of years will ultimately represent unfortunate missed opportunities for Matt Painter and his program.
3. Speaking of Goodman, here’s his preseason Top 25 (keep in mind Purdue at #2 was prior to Hummel’s injury); here’s Mike DeCourcy’s at Sporting News; and here’s Gary Parrish’s over at CBS Sports.
4. Seth Davis checks in with his 10 Burning Questions to start the new season, a great read as usual.  Unfortunately, we already know the answer to the second half of #2, but he brings up a good point about Duke managing to duck much of the ubiquitous hatred last season largely because most pundits (and the public) didn’t start taking the Blue Devils seriously as a title contender until the very end of the season.
5. Friday was Midnight Madness at most places, but it was also the date of UConn and Jim Calhoun’s hearing in Indy with the NCAA Infractions Committee.  Calhoun reported that the meeting took thirteen hours, but he provided no additional details as to its substance (although a 13-hour meeting is no joke).  The NCAA is expected to make a ruling on this issue by December.  Let’s hope for Husky fans that their season is generally going well by then; otherwise, it could be a particularly cold winter in Storrs.

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.

#21- Where Great Decisions Happen

1. One of the best UConn traditions is called the Husky Run, a 5k amble through the streets of Storrs where the coaches and players “kick off” the basketball season with a spirited jog.  Jim Calhoun has been doing these since he was back in Boston at Northeastern in the 70s, but he was compelled to miss this year’s event for the first time as a result of preparations for Friday’s hearing in Indianapolis in front of the NCAA Infractions Committee.  Friday’s “First Night” event — the UConn version of Midnight Madness — will certainly be muted without Calhoun in attendance, not to mention the ugly specter of possible further NCAA sanctions  hanging over everyone’s head in attendance.
2. Earlier this week Luke Winn gave us his top sixteen backcourts, led of course by the ridiculously deep and talented Blue Devils.  So who has the best frontcourt for the 2010-11 season?  Would you believe the scintillating group at Purdue led by JaJuan Johnson, Robbie Hummel and Patrick Bade?  You should.  Duke comes in at #2, UNC at #3, and Kansas State at #4.  Five schools other than Duke ended up on both of his lists, which should give you a pretty good sense as to who the top contenders for the title will be this season:  Purdue (#1 frontcourt, #12 backcourt); Kansas (#5, #6); Syracuse (#7, #10); Ohio State (#9, #9); Michigan State (#15, #2).
3. TSN’s Chris Littmann put together an interesting list of the top five Twitter All-Americans for the 2010-11 season.  If you don’t have the following players on your feed, get them on there now… Mizzou’s Kim English (@englishscope24), Washington’s Isaiah Thomas (@isaiah_thomas2), Duke’s Nolan Smith (@ndotsmitty), Illinois’ Mike Davis (@illiniballa24), and Texas A&M’s Dash Harris (@dash5harris).  Personally, we can’t wait to see what Thomas has to say leading up to Maui and a potential game against Kentucky next month.
4. Hubris, arrogance, mere stupidity — or all three?  Gary Parrish has long harped on the tendency for coaches to repeatedly and egregiously get busted for texting recruits when they’re not supposed to be doing so, but it doesn’t seem to stop their madness.  We can only suppose that these are some of the same guys who, after looking up a bunch of porn on the work computer, think that by simply deleting the search history means they won’t get caught.  You mean pressing “clear history” doesn’t get rid of it?  Huh?
5. We mentioned this situation in a Morning Five last week, but the schizz hit the fan publicly today when St. Louis’ two stars, Willie Reed and Kwamain Mitchell, were noticeably absent from Photo Day on Wednesday.  The reason is that neither is currently enrolled in the school as a result of a year-long suspension meted by the university’s student court for an as-yet undetermined violation of student conduct (later changed to two months on appeal).  Bryan Burwell spoke to Reed’s father about the suspensions, and although details on the specific allegations are sketchy, the father alleges fairly serious concerns about rights to due process and railroading if what he suggests is true.  Michigan State fans would do well to look at this situation with a certain degree of interest, as there are two unnamed players on their campus possibly facing similar inquiries.

1. Unfortunately, there will be more and more of this over the next few weeks as players get back to full practice sessions.  Penn State forward Sasa Borovnjak injured his knee last week during a workout and will have to miss the 2010-11 season due to a torn ACL.  This leaves head coach Ed DeChellis with only two returning players taller than 6’8, a proposition fraught with pitfalls in the rough-and-tumble Big Ten.
2. Mike DeCourcy brings up the legal doctrine of respondent superior in a roundabout way in describing how the NCAA might evaluate UConn’s (and Jim Calhoun’s) defenses to over $14,000 in impermissible benefits.  His quote: “your program, your problem” rings true, and we wonder if we’re starting to look at a potentially ugly situation where the longtime coach who essentially built the program from scratch doesn’t know when it’s time to move on for the betterment and long-term stability of said program.
3. Luke Winn ranks his top sixteen backcourts for the upcoming 2010-11 season.  Duke is quite obviously #1, with Michigan State, Georgetown and Villanova coming next in order.  Sounds about right.
4. Fanhouse does a nice prognosticative (?) roundup of the major preseason publications that are already on the newsstands, finding that there’s (as always) a good deal of groupthink involved.  Not necessarily a bad thing, as last year’s Final Four teams were all ranked in the preseason top eleven of the AP poll, but we’re partial to publications that take a bit of a chance, and Blue Ribbon’s pick of Ohio State to get to the Four behind Jon Diebler, David Lighty, William Buford and Jared Sullinger is what we’re talking about.
5. This is a good read from Steve Irvine at The Birmingham News about UAB’s Aaron Johnson, the Blazers’ senior leader and point guard who has experienced more than his share of ups and downs growing up in a tough Chicago neighborhood with eleven (!!!) brothers and sisters.  He’s set to graduate next spring and already has his sights on giving back to his family if he’s fortunate enough to find a professional paycheck somewhere down the line.  The 5’9 wisp of a player who averaged 10/5 APG last season will have trouble finding steady work stateside, but with his work ethic and perseverence we figure he’ll find that paycheck eventually.  Stories like this get us every time, so we’re definitely rooting for the kid.

1. Players are doing individual workouts and getting a good amount of fullcourt run on their own time as they ramp up to the start of practice next weekend, so injuries are inevitable.  A couple of notable ones reported yesterday include St. Peter’s star forward Wesley Jenkins, who is suffering from a partial tear of his ACL, and Michigan State freshman Russell Byrd, who has a stress fracture in his foot.  MSU will be fine without their youngster in the lineup, but St. Peter’s is a team expected to contend in the MAAC this season, so potentially losing Jenkins and his 14/5 averages from 2009-10 could seriously hurt the long-term fortunes of the Peacocks.
2. Better to be injured than dismissed from the program, we suppose.  UNC’s Will Graves, a player who seems to have been in Tar Heel blue since Matt Doherty was hanging out at Top of the Hill, has been kicked off the team for failing to comply with team rules.  The 6’6 redshirt senior was supposed to be UNC’s top returning scorer (9.8 PPG) and three-point shooter (73 treys last year), but Roy Williams is going to have to find offense elsewhere now.  That Harrison Barnes kid better be pretty good, or it’s progressively looking like another rough season in Chapel Hill.
3. A little nepotism never hurts, especially when your brother is a successful basketball coach and you’re looking to get back into the game.  Oral Roberts head coach Scott Sutton has hired his big brother Sean as an advisor, er, “executive advisor to the coaching staff,” which essentially means help out where you can but stay the hell outta my way.  The position is a voluntary one, which means that Sean can advise the coaches but he cannot interrelate with the players.  Of course Sean is coming off an ugly addiction to painkillers that resulted in several felony charges for which he pled guilty, but if he can keep his nose clean the next six months while assisting his brother, we’re sure that a college somewhere out there will be willing to take another chance on him.
4. Luke Winn’s transparency with how he picked his 53-player Naismith Award ballot last week shows a remarkably similar process as to how we here at RTC went through the country to pick our sixty Impact Players for 2010-11.  What’s that saying? — great minds…  although we’re going to definitely take some heat in coming weeks for a few of our omissions.  No doubt about it.
5. There were a couple of big commitments yesterday in the recruiting world.  Tony Wroten, a 6’4 point guard from Seattle ranked in the top 30 on Rivals.com, signed with his hometown school Washington over Louisville, UConn, Villanova and Seattle.  Down the I-5 a piece, new head coach Dana Altman got a huge recruiting coup for Oregon by grabbing 6’4 shooting guard and #22-rated Jabari Brown out of Oakland over Arizona State, Washington, Georgia Tech and UConn.  Brown specifically stated that the Nike affiliation and the new facilities drew him to Eugene.  There are now only seventeen uncommitted players in the top 50 of the class of 2011.

1. Has anyone else noticed that the little countdown clock above is down to seven days and change until Midnight Madness hits?  Yeah, thought so.  One of the problems with MM (inasmuch as there can be a problem with something so completely awesome) is that many of the events around the country have become, well, rather boring.  The Maryland blog Testudo Times took the Terps’ 2009 version to task for lacking any forethought or originality whatsoever, and have offered a list of improvements that many other schools should also consider utilizing next week.  The best idea we know of, though, isn’t on there — which is to lose all the 7 pm “family-friendly” start times in favor of actually holding the events at 12:00 midnight.  Back in the mid-90s, ESPN would start with several eastern schools at the witching hour and move west hour-by-hour showing highlights from each event across the country, much as the news channels do on New Year’s Eve.  It was fantastic, especially if you attended one of the early ones then got to go home and watch the rest.  The crowds were raucous and it was compelling viewing for every college basketball fan across the nation.  Nowadays… less so (but still awesome).
2. In an effort to consistently apply game rules across the 32 different conferences and 347 teams in college basketball, the NCAA has established an LLC to put all of the officials under one platform.  The mission of the new corporation will be “to increase the pool of officials; standardize messaging; more consistently apply playing rules, points of emphasis and mechanics; and remove “entry barriers” to those who are interested in becoming basketball officials.”  Hey, if it means that a Big Ten slugfest is called the same way as a Pac-10 roadrace, we’re all for it.
3. Get ‘er Dunn?  On Tuesday news broke that Baylor star LaceDarius Dunn had been indefinitely suspended due to a domestic violence incident in August involving his girlfriend for which he was also arrested by Waco police.  Yesterday, said girlfriend Lacharlesla Edwards went on the record stating that what occurred (a punch) was actually an accident and that she has no interest in pressing charges or cooperating with police on the matter.  The local DA will still have the discretion to pursue the charges if he thinks he has the evidence to do so — it’s simply tough luck for Dunn that he doesn’t live in Ingham County, Michigan.
4. Speaking of our favorite District Attorney in the Wolverine State, the Michigan Messenger continues to come correct with its cage-rattling about sexual assault allegations involving two players on the Michigan State basketball team.  After last week’s police report was released by the paper, the DA publicly provided transcripts of interviews with one of the alleged assailants and the victim to justify its decision to not bring charges against the two.  The Messenger responded by showing the documents to three experts in the field of criminal law — “a former Ingham County prosecutor, a defense attorney and a nationally recognized expert in sexual assault investigation and prosecution.”  Interestingly, the prosecutor said he would hesitate to bring the case, while the other two experts had trouble understanding why, at a minimum, further investigation would not be warranted.  Great stuff.
5. Amen and pass the ammo we say in response to Gary Parrish’s article yesterday that explains just how tired he is of all the offseason negativity that goes on in the game today.  We don’t really believe that there’s any more bad behavior than there ever was, but it seems as if two things have happened in recent years to make it seem worse.  First, the media has changed, for better or worse.  Through no small part of people and sites like us here at RTC, there’s always another story or angle to dig up and talk about — trust us, we know, as this very feature thrives and depends on that very precept.  That endless chase for stories forces everyone, including the so-called mainstream media of which Parrish is a part, to up their games and talk about the next piece of news, no matter how relatively trivial (social networking makes this even more real-time in nature).  Second, the NCAA has gotten more serious about enforcement, and that means that high school players are increasingly being scrutinized for their associations with agents and other unsavories both before and after their enrollment as a freshman player; and, schools are finding that they need to run a much tighter ship because the days of only a few NCAA gumshoes covering the entire nation are gone.  Ten years ago a story like LaceDarius Dunn’s probably wouldn’t have gotten much run outside of Texas and the various Big 12 outlets; nowadays it’s a major story on every national site covering college basketball.  The landscape has most definitely changed.