Colonial – Ryan Restivo of SienaSaintsBlog  (READ MORE)

William & Mary is on a Roll. The Tribe have won ten straight, a new school record, and won 48-47 at Hofstra on a Kendrix Brown three point play to continue their historic season.  William & Mary is 2-0 in the CAA for the first time since 1997-98.  The Tribe have not started this well since 1948-49 when they started 14-2.  More impressively, the Tribe never gave up the lead at Maryland after the 4:44 mark in the first half in a convincing 83-77 win in College Park.  After dropping their first two games to Connecticut by nine and Harvard in triple-overtime, the Tribe have racked up impressive statement wins over Richmond, Wake Forest and Maryland.  According to Kenpom.com, their Offensive efficiency is tops in the nation (124.2).

Missouri Valley – Patrick Marshall of White & Blue Review  (READ MORE)

Northern Iowa mowing down the Valley — Those that don’t consider Northern Iowa the class of the Valley need to have their head examined (including myself, before now).  The Panthers are on an 11-game winning streak after following a tough road win against Creighton in Omaha with victories against Evansville and Missouri State to race out to a 3-0 conference record in the first week.

SEC – Paul Jordan of Wildcat Blue Blog  (READ MORE)

The big story in the SEC this week was the arrest and indefinite suspension of four Tennessee basketball players — Tyler Smith, Melvin Goins, Cameron Tatum and Brian Williams.  The group was arrested on a myriad of drug and weapon charges.  Some of the charges were felonies, and given the recent problems with UT’s football program, it is hard to imagine any scenario in which the players may step back on the court this season.

ACC – Steve Moore  (READ MORE)

After splitting the top spot last week with rival UNC, the Blue Devils sit atop this week’s rankings all by themselves. No, it wasn’t the win over Long Beach State or the 59-point demolition of Penn. Duke pretty much dismantled highly regarded Clemson Sunday night, posting a 21-point win that was never even remotely that close.  Jon Scheyer is scoring more than enough for Duke, and Kyle Singler and the Devils’ frontcourt proved it could handle a seasoned big man like Trevor Booker. An impressive win, to say the very least.

Big Ten – Jason Prziborowski  (READ MORE)

Big 10 Madness has begun – Conference play started this past week in the Big Ten, and they didn’t disappoint. Indiana loses Maurice Creek, their top scorer and player, and then they upset Michigan at home. Michigan, not to be outdone, gets revenge for what their football team couldn’t do against OSU. Wisconsin, not wanting to miss out, blows out both OSU and PSU. Surprisingly, only Michigan and Minnesota have at least a win and a loss. Everyone else either hasn’t lost, or hasn’t won.

Shamelessly cribbing from the very clever NBA catch phrase, we here at RTC will present to you the Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball as we gear up toward the start of the season about three weeks 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.

#17- Where Conference Tournament Finals Happen

Justin Glover is the RTC correspondent for the Southern Conference. Click here for all of our 2009-10 Season Preview materials.

Predicted Order of Finish:

North Division

1. Western Carolina (13-5 SoCon) 22-11 overall
2. Samford (11-7 SoCon) 16-15 overall
3. Applachian State (9-9 SoCon) 17-14 overall
4. Chattanooga (8-10 SoCon) 15-17 overall
5. Elon (7-11 SoCon) 16-16 overall
6. UNC-Greensboro (2-16 SoCon)  4-26 overall

South Division

1. College of Charleston (15-3 SoCon)  24-9 overall
2. Davidson (11-7 SoCon) 19-14 overall
3. Citadel (10-8 SoCon) 17-15 overall
4. Wofford (8-10 SoCon) 16-17 overall
5. Georgia Southern (6-12 SoCon) 11-20 overall
6. Furman (5-13 SoCon) 10-21 overall

All-Conference Team:

• Andrew Goudelock (G) – College of Charleston (Jr.) – 16.7 ppg
• Cameron Wells (G) – The Citadel (Jr.) – 15.6 ppg
• Harouna Mutombo (F) – Western Carolina (So.) – 14.4 ppg
• Bryan Friday (F) – Samford (Sr.) – 12.5 ppg
• Noah Dahlman (C) – Wofford (Jr.) – 17.8 ppg

6th Man. Jake Robinson – Western Carolina (Sr) – Led the team in three pointers made (60) and attempted (167), coming off the bench in 19 games.

Impact Newcomer. Rashad Wright – College of Charleston – Intimidating presence inside with his 6’9″ frame, averaged 10.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and four blocks a game at South Kent High School last season will look to contribute to a team that is lacking in size.

What You Need to Know. Although this conference lacks the star power of a certain recently departed, diminutive guard from Davidson, the conference is not devoid of talent as witnessed by the fact that the aforementioned guard didn’t even make the NCAA tournament last year. While the Wildcats will certainly fall off this year, don’t be surprised to see the second most famous basketball personality in the league last year (Bobby Cremins) getting plenty of airtime in March.

Predicted Champion: College of Charleston (NCAA Seed: #15) – Made it to the SoCon Championship game last season after a Cinderella type run knocking off the favorite in Davidson on their way to the finals. They have always been an athletic team that uses stellar guard play to offset lack of size inside. With the starting back court of Tony White Jr., who scored 31 points in the SoCon finals game against Chattanooga, and junior all-conference candidate Andrew Goudelock who led the team in points per game and three pointers. CofC should be the team to beat in the Southern Conference this season with close to 75% of its scoring coming back from a team that made the finals in the conference tournament.

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Just one more ticket punched today, but rest assured no high major team will want to see Missouri Valley champion Northern Iowa in their first game. Here’s your brief introduction as now five invitees have accepted the NCAA’s bids.

#5 – Northern Iowa (23-10, 14-4 MVC). UNI won the regular season championship and took care of business this weekend at Arch Madness, winning tight ones over Indiana St. and Illinois St. (in OT) to get the automatic bid.  In today’s game, we kept expecting Illinois St. to put UNI away behind the shooting of Osiris Eldridge and Champ Oguchi; but UNI stayed poised and made the correct plays down the stretch to secure the third win over ISU this season.

Projected Seed: #12

Something to Remember: UNI likes to slow the pace down to a crawl.  They don’t turn the ball over, they hit their FTs (75%) and they don’t make many mistakes.  Look for a possible upset if they play an undisciplined team that gets frustrated with ball-control teams.

Stay tuned – four more tickets will be punched tomorrow – CAA, MAAC, SoCon, WCC.  RTC Live will be reporting live from the WCC Finals.

Game of the Night. Penn St. 64, Illinois 63. It was nice to see a team turn the tables on Illinois after they had pulled off a furious comeback win in the last five minutes against Northwestern.  PSU was down ten pts with five minutes remaining, but the Lions stormed back and when Talor Battle’s feathery soft leaner dropped through with 0.3 remaining on the clock, the “white house” of fans went wild and quickly RTC’d the court.  Now, THAT is how you RTC, friends!  Quick, no hesitation, straight to the middle of the floor.  Immediate bedlam.  We have two clips here – the first will show the tv version of the winning shot by Battle (scroll ahead to the 6:00 mark); the second is a user-generated clip of the RTC.  Enjoy.  (btw, PSU is IN if they win at Iowa this weekend)

The Rest of Tonight’s Key Games.

• UCLA 79, Oregon St. 54. The Bruins kept their Pac-10 title hopes alive with a blowout win over Oregon St. tonight.  If they beat Oregon this weekend and Washington loses to Wazzu, then they’ll both be tied at 12-6, where the Bruins would presumably win the tiebreaker.  What’s up with Josh Shipp’s line tonight?  27 pts, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 blocks, 0 steals, 0 turnovers, 0 fouls, 1 block.  He really didn’t do anything other than shoot tonight, did he?
• Villanova 97, Providence 80. Villanova picked up its second strong win of the week as it continues to make its case for the coveted double-bye in the Big East Tournament.  Scottie Reynolds had 23/4/4 stls as Nova finished off a perfect home slate.  Providence has a #69 RPI but finished at 10-8 in the Big East – what to do with the Friars?
• USC 80, Oregon 66.  USC shot 59% behind Demar DeRozan’s 19 pts and Taj Gibson’s 18 pts as the long nightmare continues for Ernie Kent’s Oregon team.  USC is a classic bubble team, sporting a mid-40s RPI and what will likely be a 9-9 Pac-10 record come Saturday night.
• California 83, Arizona 77.  Arizona really didn’t need to lose another home game, but they’ve fallen apart the last two weeks.  Tonight’s loss to Cal was their fourth in a row, and they absolutely need to get the game against Stanford this weekend to turn this around.  Cal’s Jerome Randle had eight threes on his way to 31 pts.
• Temple 68, St. Joseph’s 59.  This Big Five matchup had A10 ramifications as Temple moved into a two-way tie for the #3 seed in the conference (tied with Dayton), as well as kept their bubble chances alive.
• Tennessee 86, South Carolina 70. Tough home loss for SC, while Tennessee captured the top seed in the East Divison of the SEC behind Tyler Smith’s 22/6/7 assts.  The Vols are coming on lately, having won at Florida and SC in their last two games.
• Stanford 74, Arizona St. 64. ASU is slumping lately, having lost their last three games.  James Harden had 22, but was only 2-10 from three, and it doesn’t appear if either of the Arizona teams have much interest in playing deep into March at this point.

QnD Conf Tourney Update.  Tomorrow the America East, CAA, MAAC, SoCon and WCC begin.  Here’s what happened tonight.

A-Sun. The two higher seeds, #3 Belmont and #4 Lipscomb advanced, meaning the top four seeds will be in the semis starting tomorrow.

Big South. VMI will play Radford (the top two seeds) on Saturday for possibly the first NCAA automatic bid this year.

MVC. Indiana St. and Wichita St. advanced to the quarters.

NEC. The top three seeds (Robt. Morris, Mt. St. Mary’s, Sacred Heart) + Quinnipiac advanced to the semis on Sunday.

Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the MVC and Big 12 Conferences.  He will be reporting from the MVC Tournament this weekend in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Missouri Valley Conference finished regular season play this last week with Northern Iowa and Creighton sharing the MVC regular season crown.  Due to the complicated tie-breaker formula, Northern Iowa received the 1-seed for the MVC Tournament and Creighton the 2nd.   My preseason predictions weren’t exactly what happened, but like the whole bizarre Valley season usually is, the middle was all muddled up.   No one expected Northern Iowa to be as good as they were in conference play and at the same time, it wasn’t expected to see Southern Illinois take such a nosedive so fast in the past two seasons.

The MVC released their postseason awards on Tuesday with Booker Woodfox from Creighton getting the Larry Bird MVC Player of the Year honors.  Woodfox leads the nation in 3-point shooting at 50.9% and averaged almost 16 points a game.  Champ Oguchi from Illinois St. received the Newcomer of the Year award.  I’m a little surprised that Bryan Mullins won the Defensive Player of the Year honors when he missed almost the whole last half of the conference season.  Maybe it is a lifetime award or something.

This Thursday night starts what is affectionately known as Arch Madness.  I will be down in St. Louis covering things for Rush The Court with a planned RTC Live for at least one game each day starting Friday and other daily updates.  I will also have all-access to the postgame news conferences and other media information.  If you have things you want me to check out or have questions for the coaches or players – but I won’t be the guy that got kicked out of the Creighton game last weekend—then be sure to ask.

Let’s take a look at the matchups starting on Thursday:
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We all know that the calendar turned to March a little over 36 hrs ago, but did you know that we’re already on the verge of conference tournament season?  ESPN’s ballyhooed Championship Week doesn’t start for another seven days, but some of the smaller conferences are ready to tip it off and crown a champion.  Immediately, as in…  Tomorrow. 

Yes, the Big South, OVC and Horizon are all playing elimination games within the next 24 hours, and we’re quite sure that you weren’t aware of that.  The Patriot League begins Wednesday, and there will be ten other conferences that will start their tournament extravaganzas this week, with five of those finishing before Saturday is through.  In order to keep up with it all, we produced this schedule for our own internal use that might as well be made public for you guys also. 

Also keep in mind that RTC Live will be attending the festivities this week in St. Louis, Richmond and Las Vegas for the MVC, CAA and WCC Tournaments, respectively.  Should be a blast at all three of those high mids.

Current Records and my standings (Conference Record)(Last Week Rank)

1. Creighton (23-6)(12-4) (2)
2. Northern Iowa (18-10) (12-4)(1)
3. Illinois St. (22-6) (11-5)(3)
4. Bradley (16-12) (9-7) (4)
5. Evansville (16-11) (7-9) (5)
6. Drake (17-12) (7-9) (7)
7. Wichita St. (14-14) (7-9) (6)
8. Indiana St. (9-19) (6-10) (8)
9. Southern Illinois (11-17) (6-10) (9)
10. Missouri St. (11-17) (3-13) (10)

BRACKETBUSTERS

This weekend all 10 teams took part in the annual ESPN Bracketbusters event. Though the league went 7-3 in its games, 2 of the top three teams in the league suffered losses. The MAAC was not friendly to the Valley as Illinois St. lost to Niagara and Northern Iowa continued its slide losing to Siena. However, Creighton scored a nice win against George Mason to get talk going about a possible at-large berth.

BATTLE FOR THE TITLE

The battle for the Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship has come down to the final week. 3 teams are still in the race and anything could happen this week as Creighton, Northern Iowa and Illinois St. battle it out. There are several scenarios that could have any of the three win the conference outright or even end in a 3-way tie. The MVC tournament could be really interesting.

Speaking of the Missouri Valley Tournament, I will be down in St. Louis as a fan, but also covering for Rush the Court the goings on in the Tournament from press row. This should be a lot of fun.

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Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.

Current Records and My Standings (Conference Record)(Last Week Rank)

1. Northern Iowa (18-8) (12-3)(1)
2. Creighton (21-6)(11-4) (2)
3. Illinois St. (21-5) (10-5)(3)
4. Bradley (14-12) (8-7) (4)
5. Evansville (15-10) (7-8) (5)
6. Wichita St. (13-13) (7-8) (8)
7. Drake (15-12) (6-9) (6)
8. Indiana St. (7-19) (5-10) (10)
9. Southern Illinois (11-15) (6-9) (7)
10. Missouri St. (10-16) (3-12) (9)

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Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.

Current Records and My Standings (Conference Record)(Last Week Rank)

1. Northern Iowa (17-7) (11-2)(1)
2. Creighton (19-6)(9-4) (2)
3. Illinois St. (19-5) (8-5)(3)
4. Bradley (13-11) (7-6) (4)
5. Evansville (15-8) (7-6) (5)
6. Drake (15-10) (6-7) (6)
7. Southern Illinois (11-13) (6-7) (7)
8. Wichita St. (11-13) (5-8) (8)
9. Missouri St. (10-14) (3-10) (9)
10. Indiana St. (5-19) (3-10) (10)

The Missouri Valley Conference is part of the ESPNU Bracketbusters event (February 21st) once again this season and received 4 games on one of the ESPN family of networks:

• Illinois State at Niagara (2/20)
• Miami (OH) at Evansville
• Northern Iowa at Siena
• George Mason at Creighton

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