If you are interested in participating, send your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com as we will be updating these posts throughout the day.

News

• Wally Judge Visiting Maryland, May be Leaning to Rutgers: The former Kansas State forward is a Terrapin target, but he may end up in New Jersey. (Testudo Times)
  
• Video, notes from Pitino’s press conference: Some key points from Rick Pitino’s conference yesterday. (Card Chronicle)

Analysis

• Are Brandon Knight and Terrence Jones NBA Ready?: “Charles Barkley apparently opined yesterday that he didn’t think Brandon Knight or Terrence Jones were ready for the NBA. In fact, Barkley described both Knight and Jones as “not even close.” I think that in an absolute sense, Barkley is exactly right.” (A Sea of Blue)
  
• Could/Should Selby have gone to the NBA Development League instead?: Looking at the pros and cons of a touchy subject in college basketball circles. (Rock Chalk Talk)
• The Point Guard Conundrum and What Can We Learn From the 2010-11 Gopher Backcourt: Reflecting on Minnesota’s problems this season and how they can address them next season. (The Daily Gopher)

For weeks there has been speculation that Harrison Barnes was thinking seriously about returning to UNC for his sophomore season so his announcement today that he was in fact returning should not come as a major surprise in the way that the announcement by Perry Jones shocked the basketball world, but it is still remarkable. Going back less than six months Barnes was the talk of the college basketball world as the first freshman preseason All-American and the consensus #1 pick in the NBA Draft. At the time it was a foregone conclusion that Barnes would spend a single season in Chapel Hill before taking heading to the team that won the NBA Draft Lottery. In between that period a funny thing happened that just might help save college basketball.

Barnes turned down NBA riches for another year in Chapel Hill

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John Templon is the RTC correspondent for the Big Ten conference. We will be publishing a series of conference report cards over the next week for conferences that got multiple NCAA bids to recap the conference, grade the teams, and look at the future for the conference.

Conference Recap

• Coming into the season, the Big Ten was considered the best conference in America. Michigan State was expected to be in the Final Four again and Purdue, Ohio State, and Illinois were expected to be among the nation’s elite. Then the season started and the conference slipped a bit. The Big Ten didn’t live up to its lofty billing, with the exception of Ohio State, which sat at #1 in the polls for a large part of the season. Of course, Robbie Hummel’s knee injury didn’t help Purdue. Illinois wilted under the weight of too much talent and not enough leadership, whereas Michigan State just never seemed to find its footing against a difficult schedule.
• As conference play went on, all the teams beat up on each other, creating a mess in the middle and leading to four teams (Michigan, Illinois, Michigan State and Penn State) receiving seeds between 8-10 in the NCAA Tournament. The conference went 2-2 in those games. But the disappointment in the NCAA Tournament came from the top seeds that failed to live up to expectations. Ohio State, the #1 overall seed, was dispatched by Kentucky in the Sweet 16 in Newark. Then again, that was better than Purdue managed to do, as the Boilermakers fell to VCU in Chicago. Wisconsin made it to New Orleans, but Brad Stevens outcoached Bo Ryan and the Badgers lost to a lower-seeded team once again.
• Those losses meant the Big Ten finished a season of much promise with zero teams in the Elite Eight. Much like the conference’s well-publicized bowl game problems, the postseason left a sour taste after many teams played good basketball during the regular season.

The postseason was a struggle for everyone in the Big Ten, even Final Four regular Tom Izzo and his Spartans, which had to make a late run to even crack the field.

Team-by-Team Grades

A’s:

• Michigan (A): Before the season the Wolverines were expected to compete with Iowa and Indiana to avoid the basement in the Big Ten standings. By the end of it, they were scaring #1 seed Duke in the third round of the NCAA Tournament. It was a remarkable job by JohnBeilein to get a young team ready to play. Darius Morris was the engine of the turnaround. The sophomore point guard scored 15.0 points per game and dished out 6.7 assists per game while leading a team composed of mostly freshman and sophomores. Tim HardawayJr., a freshman, was the team’s only other double-digit scorer at 13.9 points per game. Michigan didn’t have a single senior on its roster this season and, with two more talented backcourt recruits in CarltonBrundidge and TreyBurke coming in, it appears to be ready to be a big player in the conference moving forward although they are still waiting on Morris to officially decide on whether he will enter the NBA Draft.
• Ohio State (A-): The Buckeyes didn’t get it done in the NCAA Tournament, but they were the #1 team in the polls for most of the season and had the best freshman in the country in Jared Sullinger. The loss to Kentucky certainly put a damper on the season. Still, Ohio State went 34-3 with its only two regular season losses being at Purdue and Wisconsin in conference play. David Lighty, DallasLauderdale, and JonDiebler all graduate, but if Sullinger is serious about sticking around the Buckeyes will be a national title favorite again next season. Especially considering they have two McDonald’s All-Americans in point guard ShannonScott and center AmirWilliams coming in along with small forwards SamThompson and LaQuintonRoss. It’s Thad Matta’s typical reload instead of rebuild plan.
• Penn State (A-): Qualifying for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade makes the Nittany Lions’ season a success. Even though they lost to in-state rival Temple in the second round, 66-64, it was a thrilling game to end a satisfying season that included victories over Wisconsin (twice), Illinois, and Michigan State (twice). Oh, and a loss to Maine. Talor Battle finally got his chance to go to the NCAA Tournament and finished his career with 2,213 points, 624 rebounds, and 517 assists. He’ll certainly be missed next season along with frontcourt veterans David Jackson and JeffBrooks. Thus, Penn State has some size coming in with two 6’11 centers in PatAckerman and PeterAlexis, but the program is probably due for a bit of a backslide.

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If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We are talking a slightly different approach to this post today due to the nature of the NCAA Tournament, but we will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

East Regional

• #1 Ohio State vs #16 UT-San Antonio: Eleven Warriors = Game Preview and Region Preview
• #2 UNC vs #15 Long Island: Carolina March = Region Preview
• #3 Syracuse vs #14 Indiana State: Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician = Game Preview, Region Preview, and Are Syracuse fans the most tournament obsessed?
• #4 Kentucky vs #13 Princeton: A Sea of Blue = Region Preview and Are the Wildcats peaking now?
• #6 Xavier vs #11 Marquette: Cracked Sidewalks = Game Preview
• #8 George Mason vs #9 Villanova: GMU Hoops = Game Preview

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1. Every year the announcement of the NCAA Tournament field gets athletic directors across the country to puff their chests out and tell the secretary to be ready for the alumni/boosters to being calling in with their checkbooks open. And every year the following day another announcement (one detailing the academic performance of those teams) makes those same athletic directors slouch their shoulders and tell their secretary to tell the administration that they are in meetings all day and won’t be available to speak to them at this time. The latest report indicates that basketball players across the board are doing marginally better in terms of graduating, but the gap between Caucasian and African-American student-athlete graduation rates is widening. The relative graduation rates of different schools will undoubtedly become message board fodder, but the atrocious graduation rates at many schools (particularly for African-American players is appalling).
2. Over the past 36 hours there has been a lot of talk about teams being snubbed, but one team that has notably been left out of the discussion is Harvard. While there have been a few readers on our site who have been quite vocal in their support for the Crimson today they have largely gone unrecognized except for one national/local (ok, a hated local) writer who is beating the drum for Harvard as being worthy of an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
3. We will be releasing our All-American teams in the near future, but to get a sneak peak of what our voting might look like check out the results of the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) voting where we are a member. It is hard to argue with any of the selections, but is surprising and refreshing to see Kenneth Faried honored as a 2nd team All-American despite playing in a lower-profile conference.
4. With all the movement along the coaching carousel there are inevitably rumors about coaches at relatively big-name schools moving to even bigger name schools. One of the most prominent figures has been Tubby Smith who was rumored to be in the running for the recently open Arkansas position. However, it seems like Smith is not interested in becoming the Razorbacks head coach at least according to his statement from his local radio show yesterday as intends to return to Minnesota next season.
5. One of my favorite aspects of the NCAA Tournament is when non-college basketball fans try to show off their college basketball knowledge. (I’m really trying not to come off as a snob here. I would love to have more people be serious college basketball fans.) In recent years this has been altered slightly by people trying to break out sophisticated statistical analysis to find the key to unlocking a perfect bracket. We at RTC love statistical analysis so when The New York Times tried its hand at picking the bracket we were interested until we saw the result, which was essentially all chalk except for six “upsets” (three #9s beating #8s, two #10s beating #7s, one #11 beating a #6, and one #3 beating a #2).

Around this time of year we like to yield the soapbox to representatives of bubble teams and give them the opportunity to explain to the hooping nation why their team should be granted admission into the NCAA Tournament. We encourage them to be as irrational and nonpartisan as they want. As always, feel free to tell us how you think they did in the comments section. If you’d like to make the case for your school, send us an e-mail at JStevRTC@gmail.com and we’ll hear your preliminary arguments.

Joe Stapleton of The Michigan Daily now makes the case for the Michigan Wolverines.

So, this is an interesting place we Wolverines find ourselves. In January, Michigan lost to Minnesota at home — badly — after dropping two ugly road losses in a row against Indiana and Northwestern. It appeared the team was dead in the water. It seemed this season would go how the majority of Wolverine nation thought it would from the beginning, given the team’s youth and inexperience: not very well. The idea that they would win their next game — Michigan State in East Lansing — was laughable.

Then they did it. They downed the Spartans and absolutely took off. After beating Michigan State at the Breslin Center, the Wolverines won eight of their last 11 games (their only losses being at Ohio State, at Illinois and Wisconsin at home) to enter the Big Ten Tournament as one of the hottest teams in the field.

Do Beilein's Boys Deserve a Spot?

And as it stands now, the Big Ten Tournament appears to offer them a golden chance to make the NCAA Tournament field of 68. After poring over projections from Crashing the Dance, Bracketology 101, Joe Lunardi and all the rest, it appears there is a consensus: if Michigan would have lost its first-round game to Illinois, it still would have been 50-50 (bordering on unlikely) that the Wolverines made the Tournament. If they beat the Illini, they’re in. They beat the Illini.

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Throughout conference tournament weekend, we’re going to pop in with some BGTD-style analysis at least twice a day.

• Kemba’s Childress Moment.  He may not win the NPOY award due to a bit of a slump in the middle of the season, but there is no other player in America who we’d rather have with the ball in his hands and the clock winding down.  Like the former Wake Forest assassin, Randolph Childress, Kemba Walker has built a reputation this season for making the big shot down the stretch, and his double-crossover move into a step-back jumper that found the bottom of the net was a thing of beauty.  Somewhere Pitt’s Gary McGhee is still trying to figure out how to untangle his legs after getting twisted and turned into a spinning mess of fall-down — Fran Fraschilla’s call that Walker “has a mismatch” is comedic in just how prophetic he was.  UConn has now won three in a row in the Big East Tournament so you start to wonder about fatigue, but if anybody has the stones and wherewithal to do something crazy like win five games in five days, it would be Walker.

• Pitt’s Presumptive #1 Seed.  The great thing about the Big East Tournament is that there are so many good teams beyond the first round that when a top team loses, as Pitt did today, it’s considered a “good” loss and will only marginally impact that team’s NCAA seeding.  As the regular season champions of the toughest and deepest conference in America, Jamie Dixon’s Panthers probably could have lost to South Florida or DePaul and still been a strong favorite for a #1 seed, but it says here that the Selection Committee is unlikely to hold a loss to UConn, a name program with a NPOY candidate, against it.  Pitt will still be a top seed come Sunday evening.
• Miami’s Absurd Comeback. It was overlooked because the game involves two teams that are going nowhere this postseason, but the Miami comeback against Virginia this afternoon was one of the best we’ve ever seen.  With 42.5 seconds remaining, the Canes were down 53-43 before hitting a Durand Scott three-pointer.  Two missed Wahoo FTs led to another Miami three, which was followed up by two consecutive steals and layups to tie the game at 53-all with 13.9 seconds left.  To those of you at home, that’s a 10-0 run in a mere 28.6 seconds, a remarkable achievement.  UM actually stole the ball again with under a second to go and had a shot at the buzzer to win, but it was off.  Capitalizing on their momentum, though, they took care of the Cavaliers in overtime and will move on to face UNC on Friday.
• Fabulous Melo.  Has Jim Boeheim been holding his freshman center back all season so as to unleash him on an unsuspecting Big East Tournament in March?  Doubtful, of course, but there’s no question that Boeheim’s usage of the big man is now paying dividends.  After a ten-point game against DePaul on Wednesday, Melo came back with a 12-pointer today, including two gigantic layups down the stretch that effectively won the game for his team.  His point total and minutes (22) are both career highs, and he’s yet to miss a field goal attempt in two games in the postseason (10-10).  This is a big if, as freshman bigs are notoriously inconsistent, but if Melo can continue to play substantial minutes and make these kinds of contributions, Syracuse suddenly vaults from a top twenty team to a top ten caliber team.  Let’s see how he handles UConn on Friday.
• Kansas Sleepwalks But Escapes.  Speaking of presumptive #1 seeds, KU acted like they were already settled in for Selection Sunday today, as they sleepwalked through a game that they probably should have lost this afternoon in Kansas City.  Had Marcus Morris’ long three at the end of the shot clock not found the bottom, we think the Jayhawks would have been upset today.  Travis Ford agreed, saying that the shot was the biggest of the game, even bigger than the terrible 30-footer that his team attempted to win the game at the buzzer (rather than driving the ball to the hole).  For KU fans intent on getting back to the Final Four and winning another title, though, today had to have been reminiscent of last year’s Northern Iowa debacle; a game where for all intents and purposes it appeared that the Jayhawks simply weren’t mentally into it.  Bill Self better get his team’s attention or another meltdown might be imminent.
• BYU Appears Shaky.Against a team that in TCU that only won a single Mountain West regular season game this year, we’d have liked to see BYU shake off some of the residual tentativeness from losing its big man, Brandon Davies, to the Mormon code.  Didn’t happen.  In fact, TCU hung around until the final few minutes as The Jimmer had trouble finding his shot, going only 7-21 from the field.  Maybe it was some of the same first-game doldrums that Kansas experienced today against an inferior opponent, or maybe this is a serious signal that the Cougars are not going to be able to recover from the loss of Davies.  We know this much — BYU will need to bring  a much better game to play tomorrow against New Mexico or Colorado State.
• Minnesota’s Train Wreck of a Season.  With today’s Gopher loss to Northwestern, Minnesota’s train wreck of a second half of the season mercifully came to an end.  The team that had beaten UNC, West Virginia and Purdue earlier this season finished up by losing ten of its last eleven games, essentially becoming a shell of its former self when point guard Al Nolen went down with a broken foot in late January.  With Tubby Smith’s seemingly endless cattle call of injuries, suspensions and transfers over the last few years, we’re starting to wonder if he’ll ever put together the kind of sustained success that the Golden Gopher program expected when they hired him out of Kentucky a few years ago.  How bad is it?  This year is only the third in eighteen seasons that a Smith-coached team did not win at least one conference tournament game.  Ouch.
• DJ Kennedy’s Knee.  Hate, hate, hate to see this.  In a play somewhat reminiscent of Da’Sean Butler’s injury against Duke in the Final Four last season, St. John’s guard DJ Kennedy crumpled down in pain after twisting his knee on an early drive in today’s game against Syracuse.  At this point, the injury is described as a “serious knee injury,” but the lingering sense surrounding this is that Kennedy might be out for the rest of his senior season.  If so, Steve Lavin would be without one of his best players and team leaders in the NCAA Tournament, a real shame considering how far he and his team have come this year.
• And Then There’s This.  From the Big East Tournament…

• Bubbling Up.  Memphis, after hanging on against Southern Miss…  Colorado, after knocking out Kansas State… USC, after ripping apart Cal… BC, by virtue of taking care of business against Wake Forest…  Georgia, ditto against Auburn…  Michigan State, outlasting Iowa (anyone surprised?)…
• Bubble Popping.  UAB, after dropping a terrible overtime game against East Carolina…

Games #183-184. The Big Ten Tournament gets underway in Indy and RTC Live will be there courtside for all of the best action.

RTC rolls into Indianapolis for the Big Ten Tournament and the bracket wastes no time in diving into the realm of bubble ramifications. 9-seed Minnesota needs to win a couple of games at the very least, and they’ll kick this event off against 8th-seeded Northwestern, with the winner getting the privilege of facing #1 Ohio State tomorrow at noon. Half an hour after the 8 vs 9 game concludes, we’ll have #7 Michigan State vs #10 Iowa as the Spartans try to pad that win total enough to impress the Selection Committee. Will that Tom Izzo post-season magic suddenly appear? Marquette likely played its way into the field of 68 last night by beating West Virginia, and that makes every single game vital; MSU and Minnesota can’t expect to drop first-round games and still bet let into the Dance, a fact of which we’re sure they’re well aware. It all starts at 2:30 PM ET. Two games, one RTC Live window! That’s a good deal at any time of year, so we hope to see you there.

John Templon is the RTC correspondent for the Big Ten. With action set to tip from Indianapolis on Thursday, get set for the postseason with RTC’s regular season wrap-up and postseason outlook.

Postseason Preview

The Big Ten Tournament should prove to be quite the entertaining tournament. With so many teams on the bubble, every game is going to have a do-or-die atmosphere to it. Three of the four quarterfinal games, excluding the one in which Ohio State is playing, could propel teams to NCAA Tournament at-large bids. Another important matchup to watch is Northwestern vs. Minnesota in Round 1 – where they’ll probably be playing for an NIT berth.

• Cold Teams: Minnesota, Illinois, and Indiana
• Is Battle Ready For last Stand?: The Nittany Lions’ Talor Battle will try to finally make the NCAA Tournament. Can he shoot Penn State off the bubble and into the field?
• Is Nolen Healthy?: Al Nolen hasn’t played January 22 against Michigan, but he could return this week. Would it be enough to get the Gophers rolling?
• Can Anyone Stop Ohio State?: The Buckeyes look like a juggernaut, and this isn’t the time to be putting big decisions in the hands of the selection committee. In order to feel comfortable about its #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, OSU probably needs to win the Big Ten’s first. Northwestern played them close at Welsh-Ryan Arena – is a big upset in the making?
• Will Izzo’s Tournament Touch Get Going?: Of the teams playing in the first round, Michigan State seems like the most likely candidate to reach the tournament finals. It seems like Tom Izzo just has a knack for this kind of thing by now.
• Is The Next Generation Ready?: There are nine seniors on the three All-Big Ten teams selected by the coaches, and just one freshman. Are players like Ohio State’s Aaron Craft, Illinois’ Jereme Richmond, Northwestern’s JerShon Cobb and Michigan’s Tim Hardaway Jr. ready to play significant crunch time roles? Or will they wilt under the bright lights in Indianapolis?

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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

• #15 St. John’s 65, Rutgers 63: “St. John’s rode a controversial end to move into the next round of the Big East Tournament, defeating Rutgers 65-63 in a game filled with poor shooting. But the game will be marked by its controversial ending.” (Rumble in the Garden)
• #18 UConn 79, Georgetown 62: “What is left to say? Georgetown fans knew this team was heavily reliant on Chris Wright, media members and statisticians knew it as well. Clearly, after our fourth straight defeat without Wright, both the Georgetown players and coaches know it even better than the rest of us. Connecticut beat the Hoyas 79-62 in a game that was never really in question. Kemba Walker scored 28 points to lead the Huskies, who also got plenty of help from Jeremy Lamb, Shabazz Napier and Jamaal Coombs-McDaniel. Jason Clark and Austin Freeman led the Hoyas with 23 and 20 points respectively, but it wasn’t nearly enough, as the Hoyas were outhustled, outmanned, and outclassed in Madison Square Garden.” (Casual Hoya)

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