Rutgers went 15-16 (5-13 in conference play), earning the No. 11 seed in the Big East Tournament, where they blew out DePaul before losing to Notre Dame in the second round. Mike Rice declined an invitation to the CBI, marking the seventh consecutive year Rutgers did not appear in any postseason tournament. Subsequently, an ESPN exposé involving footage of Rice abusing players in team practices got him fired and got AD Tim Pernetti shoved out the door, disgracing his athletic department in the process. New Jersey’s governor even called Rice an “animal” and said he should have been fired in November; not exactly ideal publicity heading into the offseason.

Preseason Expectations

We had pegged Rutgers #15, dead last in our preseason Big East rankings, based on poor frontcourt depth, lack of senior leadership and uncertain expectations for transfer big man Wally Judge. Big East coaches ranked the Scarlet Knights #11 in the preseason.

Eli Carter is not walking through that door for Eddie Jordan (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

The Good

When Eli Carter (14.9 PPG, 86.4 FT%) suffered a season-ending injury in February, his team actually developed a more cohesive offensive identity in his absence. Wally Judge (7.1 PPG, 5.4 RPG) in particular benefited from the opportunity to adopt a more assertive role; he showcased his abilities with a 20-and-10 performance (shooting 9-of-9 from the field) against DePaul in the Big East Tournament. And Mike Rice finally got fired -– does that count? Seriously, a clean slate is most obvious silver lining for Scarlet Knights fans after the former Robert Morris coach won 16 Big East games in three seasons. New head coach Eddie Jordan, who took Rutgers to its 1976 Final Four before embarking on an NBA coaching career, rekindles a nostalgic connection with the program’s heyday, and comes from a professional environment that doesn’t tolerate player mistreatment.

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Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish each week throughout the season. In this piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…. a final game that was so good, so full of quality and runs and drama, that you literally sat in your seat and wondered if it could sustain itself for 40 minutes. The answer was yes, and anyone who wasn’t on the edge of their seat for most of Monday night doesn’t have a pulse. That game was everything we could have hoped for – after an NCAA Tournament that included both upsets and duds to go alongside some raggedy play, this was a title game deserving of the name. What a way to end the year.

I LOVED…. being vindicated in my disgust for Doug Gottlieb. Just take a few quick seconds in case you missed him making a fool of himself on national television (ahem, I mean bigger fool than usual).

I LOVED…. Russdiculousness. You have to give it to Russ Smith – he carried his Louisville team all the way to the Final Four, all the way to the title game with a torrid stretch of scoring, and once he got there he flat-out refused to become a different player. With a lead down the stretch, Russ fouled on the perimeter, dribbled into traffic, took a three-pointer with a new shot clock and 2:30 left, threw crazy passes into the stands and generally tried to give the championship trophy away. But hey, he wouldn’t be Russ if he weren’t a little nutty, and the Cardinals wouldn’t be holding that trophy if he wasn’t on their side.

Russdiculous Lived Up to His Name

I LOVED…. a shootout. It didn’t get any better than that first-half step-off from 22 feet by Spike Albrecht and Luke Hancock. Spike’s might have been more unexpected, but Hancock’s was pure guts in the face of a double-digit deficit with the season on the line. It made for some incredible runs in the first 20 minutes, and it got even better when Albrecht made a cybermove on Kate Upton.

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1. If you though the Rutgers fiasco was  nearing an end you would be wrong. Honestly, we could do an entire Morning Five just on every story that is going on with this case. On Friday, Tim Pernetti‘s letter of resignation was posted on the school’s official site and outside of the usual apology Pernetti claims that he tried to fire Mike Rice, but was stopped by the school. Obviously the school is refuting that, but as The New York Times illustrates the decision on Rice involved more than just Pernetti. Meanwhile, the people back at Robert Morris, Rice’s former employer, will reportedly look into his treatment of players during his time there as new allegations come out that Rice exhibited similar behavior while at Robert Morris. As for the next coach at Rutgers that remains up in the air as Danny Hurley, who was identified as a favorite for the job, appears to be staying at Rhode Island.  The current rumor is that Rutgers is targeting Ben Howland (they might want to read George Dohrmann’s article on Howland’s time at UCLA first) and Howland is interested. Oh, and Eric Murdock (the “good guy” in the entire mess)? He is being investigated by the FBI for possible attempts to extort Rutgers.
2. We would not be shocked if several players transferred from Rutgers in light of what has come to light (and even more what has not been revealed), but we are at a loss for what is going on at Tulane where four players including the team’s top two scorers were granted transfers last week and two more are in the process of doing so. Now the team is in flux and the administration has to be asking serious questions about what is going on with the program. Losing four players is bad enough, but now the program must enter damage control mode to prevent other players from transferring and perhaps more importantly keep recruits interested in coming there. The strange thing about this is that the team had a decent season going 20-15 overall and we haven’t heard any rumblings of improper conduct at the school. Still when half of a team transfers you begin to ask questions.
3. The other big off-court story of last week was the accusation against Ed Rush that he offered officials incentives to call a technical foul on Arizona coach Sean Miller. As we noted in Friday’s Morning Five, Rush stepped down from his post and on Saturday he tried to explain his actions (also available as the full transcript). Rush’s answers are about what you would expect from somebody who said something really dumb whether or not it was a joke. In the end Rush’s problem probably was not the joke, it was his reputation for targeting certain players and teams that made his incentive/joke such a hot button topic.
4. It may not be quite as nasty as the Rutgers story, which is much more fresh, but the fight between Miami and the NCAA is one of the nastier disagreements between the NCAA and a member institution that we can remember. On Friday, The Miami Herald released Miami’s request to the NCAA asking that it drop the case against the school based on a number of procedural errors (cover letter and full request here). The NCAA responded with its own 42-page letter to Miami saying that Miami is attempting to “deflect attention from the significant allegations that remain in the case”. This may be true, but the NCAA has screwed this case up so much that those allegations/acts are overshadowed by the incompetence of the governing body. The NCAA likes to pretend it has legal authority compelling individuals to testify, but doesn’t want the responsibility of acting like anything more than a kangaroo court.
5. The NCAA has been taking a lot of criticism from almost every angle, but as Dan Wetzel points out they hit a home run with their idea to bring the Division II and III Championship games to the Final Four. We have seen several amazing finishes over the years from those games, but very few of them live and never in person as the events tend to get relatively few fans as they try to compete with the Division I Championship for fans and that will clearly never work if they are looking for big numbers. So this year the NCAA decided to bring the fans to those games and as an added bonus made the tickets free. With the games being played on the Sunday between the Final Four game days it should continue to bring in quite a few fans exposing them to players and programs that they otherwise would never have seen play in person.

1. Pitt coach Jamie Dixon and point guard Tray Woodall made some sympathetic comments about the Panthers’ former assistant, Mike Rice. Dixon was careful not to defend Rice’s actions but became visibly emotional as he called the disgraced coach “a good friend” and “a good person.” Woodall, who said Rice was the reason he came to Pitt in the first place, defended his former coach unequivocally. “They are going at my man Mike Rice too hard,” Woodall tweeted, contending he was “not the only coach to put his hands on a player, or talk the way he did.” If Woodall’s comment was in earnest and there are other college basketball coaches behaving like Rice, we can only hope they’re exposed and swiftly purged from the coaching ranks.
2. Saturday’s Syracuse-Michigan game represents an elite point guard match-up between Michael Carter-Williams and Trey Burke: It’s only the second meeting of two players with season averages of 12 points and six assists per game to take place in the Final Four since officials began tracking dimes in 1983. The first such meeting? UNC’s Raymond Felton versus Illinois’ Deron Williams in the 2005 National Championship game. ESPN’s stat divination personnel tells us (predictably) that Burke holds an advantage on offense –– particularly in running the pick-and-roll –– while MCW is more productive on defense. Surprisingly, advanced stats reveal that Burke is a very competent on-ball defender, holding opposing players to 36% shooting and 0.75 points per play, while his Syracuse counterpart yields 32% and 0.79 points in on-ball situations. MCW’s overall defensive efficiency of 0.87 points per possession is second only to Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart among power conference point guards.
3. C.L. Brown points that out Russ Smith is putting together a potentially historic individual NCAA Tournament effort. His 13 steals already place him at the top of that category in his program’s history, and he’s gaining ground in a number of record book stats both at Louisville and nationally. Through four games, Smith has averaged 26 points per game, shot 54% from the field, and hit 80% of his 40 free throw attempts. Extrapolating through two more games, Smith is on pace to finish ninth all-time in NCAA Tournament history in total points (156); second in steals (19); and, fourth in free throws made (48).
4. Jim Boeheim says Rick Pitino should have been inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame last year. The Hall will announce its 2013 inductees on Monday, and Boeheim told the press assembled in Atlanta Thursday that “[Pitino’s] got better credentials than probably 80 percent of the coaches in there.” Pitino bestowed his own sound bite upon the media when he jokingly predicted that his mentor’s thriftiness would ensure he’s coaching for quite a while longer. “He’s just a cheap guy… and he’s going to coach until he’s 90 and hoard away every penny he’s ever made.” On the topic of his own retirement, Boeheim said he’s stopped making predictions: “People really used to get excited when I said [I would retire soon] because [if] we didn’t go to the Final Four that year, they didn’t want me back. But now the majority still probably wants me back next year — right now. After Saturday, who knows?”
5. Rob Dauster points out that Boeheim had a hand in developing the careers of both Pitino and Michigan’s John Beilein. The Boeheim-Pitino connection is well documented, but the Louisville coach yesterday noted in a more obscure anecdote that Boeheim brought him to central New York as an assistant coach in part because he wanted a man-to-man defensive mind on staff. Ironically, it was Pitino who got the most out of the experience, learning the aggressive 2-3 zone that would become a trademark of his best Louisville teams some 30 years later. Beilein also revealed that Boeheim had been a huge advocate of his while the Wolverines coach was slowly moving up the coaching ranks. “He assisted me a great deal in actually getting my first Division I job,” Beilein noted, referencing an influential call the Syracuse coach put in to Canisius in 1992 on his behalf after Beilein had been passed over by several opportunities to graduate from Division II coaching.

1. If you need a timeline for how the whole Mike Rice fiasco went down Don Van Natta Jr. has a excellent story on it and honestly every side of it seems dirty. In addition to the allegation that Eric Murdoch demanded nearly $1 million–nearly 14 times his annual salary–for his termination after missing a camp hosted by Rice the article also points out that Rutgers Athletic Director Tim Pernetti was likely working out the details on Rutgers move to the Big Ten when the video evidence came across his desk, which probably played a role in his light punishment of Rice at the time. We are sure that more heads will roll as this story unfolds with the most recent one being assistant coach Jimmy Martelli–son of St. Joseph’s coach Phil Martelli, who had his own off-court issues with a former player (see the Todd O’Brien saga)–who resigned for what has been described as similar behavior. Finally, as if you needed any more reason to shake your head at how Rutgers handled this situation Rice will receive a $100,000 parting gift/bonus for having completed the 2012-13 season, which he would not have received if he had been fired when the Pernetti first saw the now infamous tape.
2. We are not quite sure what to make of Mark Emmert‘s bizarre press conference yesterday [“full” edited transcript here] other that perhaps he was trying to show everybody that incompetence and egoism is not just limited to the administrations of the member institutions, but is also present within their governing body. At this point we do not understand the motivation for the NCAA to keep someone who has presided over repeated failures to even finish what should have been easy cases and managed to act so rashly that many people feel that they were too hard on a school that covered up years of ongoing pedophilia. Replacing Emmert will not fix all of the NCAA’s problems, but it would be a nice place to start.
3. It took the Pac-12 a little longer than Rutgers to come to its senses after being publicly outed, but Pac-12 Coordinator of Men’s Basketball Officiating Ed Rush resigned yesterday in response to reports that he offered gifts to officials if they would give Arizona coach Sean Miller a technical foul in a game that they did call a questionable technical foul (Miller’s only one of the season) that may have changed the outcome of the game. As we pointed out earlier in the week there was no way that Rush could keep his job and his resignation is nothing more than the conference offering him a way to save face. The problem for the conference is that this will remain an issue as fans, coaches, and players will continue to believe that some officials have a personal vendetta against them and now they have some evidence that it does happen.
4. This weekend when the announcers try to sell you on some heartwarming story about a family having to pay their way to watch their son play in the Final Four you can soak it up, but remember that it might not be true. Since 1999 the NCAA has had a Division I Student Assistance Fund that allows schools to “assist student-athletes with special financial needs” that are supposed to be academic, but can also be used for clothing and last year Ohio State and Kentucky used it to help bring the families of players to the Final Four. During the 2010-11 academic/athletic year, the NCAA reports that it paid out $66.1 million. As the article points out these funds have been used for a variety of sometimes strange things, but perhaps the more surprising thing is that many families do not know about it and many schools do not use it to help out the families and players (ok, maybe the last part is not that surprising).
5. Even if you are not a fan of advanced metrics you should be able to appreciate Shane Ryan’s in-depth piece analyzing how many key stats were created and the story behind the individuals who helped create them. Before we read this piece we had no idea how the fragmented recording statistics had been as recently as the Wooden era and should raise questions about any stats that you hear about that predate “The World’s Greatest Stats Crew”. We also wonder if there was nearly as much opposition to the way that they recorded statistics as we see from today’s old guard towards new advanced metrics.

1. ESPN: With ACC play officially over, you can expect more of these pieces to pop up. Here’s a cool one from JA Adande (though Grant Hill probably contributed just as much) on talking to Hill about his career. Something younger fans might be surprised by is that Hill owned 29 (!!!) triple-doubles during his first five NBA seasons (and none since) before his career-defining injury took hold, which until recently was good for second most among active players. Hill is a guy that, should he want to be, could become a great coach. But there’s something about him that makes you think he’d probably be pretty good at whatever he ends up doing.
2. Tar Heel Blog: USA Today released its annual coaching salary spreadsheet, but Brian Barbour noticed an oddity with Roy Williams‘ pay: North Carolina’s coach was listed at a remarkably cheap $1.7 million dollars a year (significantly under other top-tier coaches) despite other estimates of Williams’ salary being north of a couple million per year. This begs the question as to exactly where the data comes from and whether it takes into account the many sources of income coaches have. For instance, I expect Mike Krzyzewski‘s jaw-dropping $7.2 million figure includes everything. The figure reported for Williams may not include all of his extra income (bonuses, speaking engagements, basketball camps, Nike deals, etc.). But all told, North Carolina is getting a phenomenal deal with Williams. Per dollar as reported here, you couldn’t find a more accomplished coach in the country.
3. Testudo Times: If you’re looking to catch up on Maryland hoops, this is a good round-up of links mostly covering the loss to Iowa but also talking about the future of Terrapins basketball. Maryland is a really interesting team going forward and it’s really unfortunate it won’t be in the ACC down the stretch of the careers of Seth Allen, Shaquille Cleare and Charles Mitchell. I think all four will be three- or four-year guys, and the group represents a phenomenal base for Mark Turgeon to build this program.
4. State of the U: Speaking of looks towards the future, here’s a really optimistic take on Miami going forward. I agree completely that Shane Larkin‘s return is absolutely critical, but I think Miami will really struggle to get an at-large bid unless Tonye Jekiri just explodes this offseason (I think he’s a couple of years away though). Larkin is a really interesting take. His situation is very similar to Trey Burke’s last offseason, as an undersized point guard oozing with skill. The only difference — which, granted, is a huge difference — is that instead of a top-10 or top-five team coming back, Miami loses almost everything from this year’s team. I lean towards Larkin leaving Coral Gables, but if he gets specific criticism back from the official NBA Draft board there’s a good chance he’ll return.
5. Raleigh News & Observer: NC State fans can back away from the ledge. TJ Warren will be back for his sophomore season to show off his skills as the number one scoring option on the team. Warren might have been the highest drafted of the Wolfpack players entering the draft had he gone, but he has the potential to break into the lottery if he has another year of high-efficiency numbers (with more teams focusing on him). Now the Wolfpack can move on towards filling out the rest of their roster instead of trying to keep everyone home.

EXTRA: This is a phenomenal take on the complexity of Mike Rice‘s “situation.” And the complexity doesn’t begin with Rice, it’s coaches who use similar tactics. Expect more on this later.

VIDEO EXTRA: In what’s becoming an annual tradition, Draft Express gave North Carolina and Duke McDonald’s All-American signees a place to vent some trash talk.

1. After a disappointing single season in Pittsburgh, Jamie Dixon says 6’5″ shooting guard Trey Ziegler is transferring again in hopes of finding “a chance to be more involved” in his final year of eligibility. Ziegler failed to replicate the production he’d demonstrated in two seasons playing for his father at Central Michigan, registering career lows in almost every major statistical category. Ziergler probably wasn’t going to thrive at Pitt next year, but with only six scholarship players returning, he would have provided much needed depth and experience in the backcourt off the bench. Cardiac Hill notes Ziegler is the sixth player to transfer from Pitt in two years.
2. Less than two weeks after insisting he would return for his sophomore year, Pitt center Steven Adams reversed course Tuesday and announced he would declare for the NBA Draft. Adams’ draft projection fell from top five in the preseason to mid-to-late first round after his production (7.2 PPG, 6.3 RPG) failed to reflect his athletic, punishing 7’0 frame. Even before an underwhelming freshman campaign,  Jamie Dixon had evidently alluded to a “four-year plan” Adams had envisioned for himself, which included getting his master’s degree at Pitt. But Adams is one of 18 children, and Dixon implied the wish to provide for his family outweighed Adams’ ambitions in school: “It’s tough, I think he really loved it here. He loved his teammates… I know what he was saying but I also know what his family was saying at the same time.” With Dante Taylor graduating and Marcus Gilbert transferring, Talib Zanna is the only real frontcourt presence Dixon returns next year.
3. On the topic of reversing coarse, Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti fired Mike Rice less than 24 hours after publicly defending his basketball coach on ESPN. Pernetti was contrite in a statement on Rice’s release: “Dismissal and corrective action were debated in December and I thought it was in the best interest of everyone to rehabilitate [Rice], but I was wrong.” The loose end here is confusion over the involvement of President Robert Barchi, who distanced himself from the scandal yesterday when a spokesperson reiterated that Barchi hadn’t seen the damning practice footage until Tuesday. The problem? Pernetti had initially implied to ESPN that the president was aware of the tapes’ content in December and signed off on his efforts to “rehabilitate” Rice. Don’t be surprised to see Barchi throw Pernetti under the bus and weather the storm. Meanwhile, Adam Zagoria reports that Bob Knight is a long-shot candidate to replace Rice. Which is so unconscionable that it must be a late April Fool’s joke.
4. USA Today and Forbes have updated the usual financial stats on program revenues and coaching salaries, and Sean Keeley at TNIAAM points out that Syracuse is getting a seriously good deal with Jim Boeheim. The Orange coach ranks number 17th (on a list that omits several more highly paid coaches), raking in $1.9 million per year in base salary. That’s less than Big East peer coaches JTIII ($2.2 million), Jay Wright ($2.3 million), and Rick Pitino ($4.8 million). Looking at Forbes’ comparison of basketball program revenues in the Final Four, Keeley observes that while Boeheim and John Beilein earn about the same salary, Michigan basketball earns just over a third ($9.9 million) what Boeheim’s program makes ($26 million).
5. Yesterday the leftovers of the Big East were finally named the American Athletic Conference. The UConn Blog is pleased with the inoffensive title, which lends itself to the edgier AmeriCon abbreviation and should, if nothing else, put a stop to the geography jokes everyone suffered through last year. “It’s fine. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not worse, and on the scale of UConn‘s conference realignment news, that makes this a resounding victory.”

1. It took at least four months longer than it should have, but Rutgers finally fired Mike Rice yesterday. The obvious reason for the dismissal is the (justified) public outrage towards Rice’s behavior even as the school’s administration and in particular Athletic Director Tim Pernetti tried to save face and justify their attempt to rehabilitate Rice. Of course, we don’t believe that for a second and Pernetti’s explanation is nothing more than trying to explain away the fact that if these tapes had not been released publicly Rice would still be the coach at Rutgers. As the New Jersey legislature is clearly aware something more needs to be done. Whether or not that happens when powerful people meet in back rooms remains to be seen, but we cannot imagine that Pernetti will be able to keep his job after this. because  As for the actual job opening, which seems to be a distant secondary issue here, it appears that Rutgers is targeting Danny Hurley to be its next coach. We are assuming that the Rutgers administration will look at Hurley’s previous work turning Wagner into a 25-5 team instead of the 8-21 season his Rhode Island team had this season. Or at least the fact that he does not have a record of using homophobic slurs and hurling basketballs at his players.
2. If you want an idea of how fickle coaching loyalty can be we would direct you to Miami radio where yesterday morning Richard Pitino was on talking about his Florida International program then a few hours later he was being announced as the next coach at Minnesota. Pitino, who spent just one season at FIU where he led the school to an 18-14 record and an appearance in the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game after shocking Middle Tennessee State, still has another five years left on his contract and reportedly will have to pay a $250,000 buyout, which should be pretty easy for him to pull together with the likely multi-million dollar contract headed his way. We aren’t quite sold on the hire despite Pitino’s season (singular) of (relative) success. Obviously his last name carries a lot of weight and he probably has a reference list that includes nearly every major coach in the country, but it is a big leap from the Sun Belt to Big Ten in one season.
3. You can call Marshall Henderson a lot of things and you can be certain that most of the negative things have been said by opposing SEC fan bases during Ole Miss’ road games, but you cannot say that he is not entertaining. His “Letter to Rebel Nation” is not nearly as entertaining as the infamous Auburn GIF, but it is interesting to see him be somewhat contrite and introspective. For a player with Henderson’s background it is somewhat surprising to see that he is able to think so deeply about his game and behavior and shows a depth of maturity that we never expected him to exhibit at such a young age. Ok, who are we kidding? That was obviously written by the athletic department with Henderson contributing the “Hotty Toddy” and his name. Have you seen his Twitter account?
4. This season’s final power rankings from Luke Winn are a little lighter than usual, but that is probably because he only has four teams to rank. Of course, Winn still manages to pack a lot of useful information into a limited amount of space. Unlike his usual sixteen team rankings Winn is not afforded much space to build up themes like he usually does, but he does provide an interesting look at how Nik Stauskas might fare against the Syracuse zone defense and how he would be best served positioning himself around the three-point arc. The other great nugget this week is his look at each team’s offensive efficiency coming out of timeouts, which might come into play this weekend. Or it might not if the Final Four is similar to the competitiveness of many of the games we have seen in the 2013 NCAA Tournament.
5. If you are looking for this year’s big NBA Draft story, you might want to stop watching the men’s basketball tournament and turn your eyes to the women’s tournament and Britney Griner. What’s that? Her team already lost? Well that hasn’t stopped Mark Cuban from offering yet another plea for attention as he has come out and said that he would consider drafting Griner in the second round of this year’s NBA Draft. We are not here to disparage Griner or her game, which is one of the most dominant we have seen in women’s basketball, but she would get ripped apart in men’s college basketball much less the NBA. If Cuban or another owner wants to give her a shot in training camp that is his choice (and money), but using a draft pick would be a waste of a potentially valuable commodity and something even someone like Cuban, who is a very intelligent businessman while still craving s the spotlight, would not be dumb enough to do.

In a move that everyone seems to agree probably should have happened back in December, Rutgers finally fired basketball coach Mike Rice for everything from demeaning his players with gay slurs to winging basketballs at their heads. The school’s announcement bases the decision on recently revealed information, which is really just PR-speak for “that damning video we have already seen that has finally been broadcast to a national audience,” and after watching the video multiple times, it is hard to believe that the Rutgers athletic department had previously let Rice off with a short suspension and fine in December.

No One Will Be Sad To See Mike Rice Go

When the suspension was announced in December and athletic director Tim Pernetti explained that it was because of a pattern of abusive behavior from Rice, it shouldn’t have surprised many who have observed him patrolling the sidelines. The Pittsburgh native and former Robert Morris head coach quickly developed a reputation based on his fiery coaching style and general hotheadedness but those traits were usually cleverly disguised as “energy,” “passion,” and “competitiveness.” Just look at what some of the sport’s most recognizable names had to say about Rice after Rutgers hired him away from Robert Morris (Bill Raftery’s remarks about Rice understanding “what the kids need after the game and during the week” are especially unfortunate in light of recent events). There were definitely some raised eyebrows when the stories of Rice’s abusive behavior and basketball-throwing tendencies started to leak, but it wasn’t until people actually saw the video that the outrage became a dull roar.

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1. In a swift and cataclysmic turn of events, Mike Rice went from temperamental curmudgeon to persona non grata over the course of yesterday afternoon, after ESPN released compromising video of the Rutgers practices that had earned Rice a suspension earlier this season. The video confirmed initial local reports that Rice had hurled basketballs at players in his first two seasons. More disturbingly, it also depicted Rice routinely putting his hands on athletes and hurling abusive, bigoted slurs in a way that appeared to create a thoroughly humiliating environment for Rutgers players. Athletic Director Tim Pernetti came to his coach’s defense after the video’s release, performing rhetorical somersaults in media interviews and remaining noncommittal on any future disciplinary actions against Rice. But based on the public outcry condemning Rice yesterday, casting his lot with Rice might have sealed Permetti’s fate as well rather than eased criticism of the third-year coach.
2. In terms of potential incoming Big East transfers, UConn may be on the short list of destinations for NC State freshman combo guard Rodney Purvis. With Shabazz Napier and possibly Ryan Boatright out of the picture in 2014-15, Purvis could provide an explosive replacement by the time he’s eligible, and for that reason Dom Amore at the Hartford Courant says he “could be an ideal fit.” Amore also cautions that UConn’s staff, still smarting from NCAA sanctions, would closely scrutinize the academic issues that rendered Purvis ineligible at NC State for a time.
3. Eric Crawford of WDRB (Louisville, KY) argues Russ Smith deserved to place better than the third team in the AP’s All-America recognitions. He says the notion of electing All-Americans before the NCAA Tournament begins is incongruous with a “sport that weights everything by its 68-team final exam.” Crawford points out that Smith averaged 26 points per game as he led his team to the Final Four, while first-teamers Otto Porter and Gonzaga’s Kelly Olynyk were bounced in the first weekend. The Louisville guard is also on pace to score the most points in an NCAA Tournament since Glen Rice notched 184 in 1989, and already tied the event’s single-game steals record (eight) on the other end of the floor. More than anything, Smith’s example offers an indictment of opinion polls that don’t reward postseason performance.
4. UConn’s athletic department confirmed in a press release yesterday that the Huskies would kick off the 2013-14 season against Maryland in the Barclays Center on November 8. Kevin Ollie emphasized that his team’s three New York City natives were particularly excited, as are UConn fans and alumni both in the city and within Metro North’s service footprint. Between opening in Barclays and participating in the Y2K Sports Classic in Madison Square Garden two weeks later, UConn will enjoy tremendous exposure in the Big Apple, which should help offset the demise of the Big East Tournament in the short term. The ability to sell these kinds of marquee non-conference homecoming games will be a huge asset on the recruiting trail as well. Ollie also let slip a comment about “expecting” his top six scorers to return, which perhaps indicates Ollie believes First-Team All-Big East guard Shabazz Napier will forgo the NBA draft.
5. Departing Seton Hall guard Aaron Cosby has narrowed his transfer prospects down to Missouri and Illinois, and will reportedly settle on a home for his final two years of eligibility this month. The 6’2″ Kentucky native, who averaged 12.6 PPG and shot 40% from beyond the arc, had chosen Kevin Willard’s program over an offer from Indiana. But Seton Hall’s struggles seemed to play a role in Cosby’s decision to transfer, as he cites a desire to play for “Top 25 NCAA Tourney caliber teams” like the Tigers and Illini. And that’s the real red flag for Willard, as out of state kids like Cosby and Aquille Carr have been integral to his rebuilding efforts.