The Lede.  Thankfully We Decide Our Champions on the Court.  And we don’t use awful naming conventions when doing it.  Imagine if the First Four was actually called the Toys “R” Us First Four, or the Final Four became the Batesville Casket Company Final Four?  That’s essentially what we’re looking at with some of these absurd bowl names — our favorites: the Beef “O” Brady Bowl and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.  Maybe the two bowls should morph together and then they’d have the whole eating thing figured out.  On to more serious issues, though.  For seemingly the fourteenth consecutive year, the BCS national title game featuring Auburn and Oregon is not without controversy, as there are three unbeaten teams left standing with only two spots available.  Perhaps you’re of the opinion that a school like TCU (12-0), with its weak schedule and lack of gridiron pedigree, is not worthy of playing in that sports’ marquee event.  To this we say: neither was Butler.  Yet somehow the small college from the north side of Indianapolis that didn’t belong there found itself capable of beating two of basketball’s best coaches (Jim Boeheim and Tom Izzo) and come within a hair of beating its best (Mike Krzyzewski).  It’s an absurd system that if used in basketball would guarantee that Duke would have won at least ten “mythical” national titles in the last twenty years, while robbing us of the magic of schools like George Mason and Butler along the way.  Critics of the system correctly point out that FBS college football is the only NCAA sport that does not have a playoff system to determine its champion, but it’s also the only American sport that becomes less interesting as the season progresses.  The single most exciting time is kickoff weekend, when anything seems possible.  Enjoy your BBVA Compass Bowl featuring a 2-6 SEC team, folks — we’ll be over here watching games that actually build up to something.

This Weekend’s Marquee Games.  For additional analysis on the major games from Saturday check out our Instant Analyses from Saturday (part 1, part 2, part 3).

Zeller Was Great Against UK on Saturday (AP/G. Broome)

• Over 4,000 Wins in Chapel Hill. But it was the embattled Tar Heels of North Carolina who added win #2009 on this day, as Tyler Zeller reminded us how good he can be when he asserts himself (27/11/5 blks).  In a wrinkle we’ve never seen before, Zeller fouled out the entire Kentucky frontline with his play inside; his length (along with teammate John Henson’s) frustrated UK star forward Terrence Jones for the first time all season (3-17 FG for nine points).  The Carolina guard play still left something to be desired, shooting 6-24 from the field and totaling 21 points, but this is a known commodity — Carolina’s rise and fall this season will generally rest on how well their big men play each night out.  We came away from this game thinking that we were viewing two flawed teams — Kentucky on the inside, and UNC on the perimeter — but that Kentucky, despite losing the game, has the greater upside.
• National Title Rematch. Butler proved for more than a half that it wasn’t going to quietly skulk away into the night after its run to the national championship game and a shaky start to this season.  As our correspondent Matt Patton wrote from the game: “First off, Butler can play: people have been down on the Bulldogs after they were blown out by Louisville and upset by Evansville, but they showed that they still have some star power and one of the smartest coaches in the game in Brad Stevens.  I thought Stevens really kept Duke on their heels the first half, giving the Blue Devils fits with a triangle and two zone and expertly controlling the tempo during the first half.  Butler also showcased some impressive depth, outscoring Duke’s talented bench 33-13 (a large amount of that credit goes to Shawn Vanzant, who had a spectacular second half).  If the Bulldogs take care of the ball like they did today and keep their stars on the court (i.e. minimize fouls and injuries), they can still surprise some people come March.”  We don’t disagree at all.  Butler isn’t a top ten team, but they will always play legitimate defense, and once they get their sea legs under them, nobody will want to face the Bulldogs (again) next Spring.
• Battle of Seattle.  We haven’t been as high as many others have been on Gonzaga this year, and any injury to Elias Harris notwithstanding, the reason was fully on display Saturday in the Battle of Seattle game against Illinois: the Zags don’t defend.  Illinois has never traditionally been a high-octane offense under Bruce Weber, but against a Gonzaga defense that would rather reach than move, Illinois repeatedly picked Mark Few’s team apart for wide-open threes (12-23) and dunks.  Giving up twelve treys is a problem against any team, and this is the second time this season that the Zags have done so in a loss (Kansas State was the other).  This definitely appears to be Weber’s best Illini squad since the 2005 national runner-up, and it helps in that Illinois has six players capable of putting up double figures any given night.  The maturation of Brandon Paul in particular from a gunner incapable of taking a good shot in the flow of the offense (33% last year) to a disciplined shooter (52% this year) has been a pleasure to watch.  This Illinois team is capable of big things this year.

SoCal Upsets. The most surprising upsets of the weekend came at the very end of it, as the two biggest Los Angeles programs made news in one way or another.  First, UCLA, coming off a loss against top-five Kansas on Thursday night that universally slammed the officials for bailing the Jayhawks out, must have still been feeling the effects.  They allowed Montana (without Anthony Johnson, mind you) to come into Pauley Pavilion and shoot 52% in a 66-57 victory that must have UCLA fans scratching their heads perplexed.  The two stars of the Kansas game, Tyler Honeycutt and Joshua Smith, combined for 4-20 shooting and 15 total points.  Meanwhile, on the other side of town, USC, a team who had already racked up bad losses against Rider, Bradley, TCU and Nebraska, managed to completely flummox the young Texas Longhorns for an easy 73-56 victory.  If you saw either one of these results coming, then you’re well beyond the scope of this site.  Unbelievable.

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Kevin Doyle is an RTC contributor.  For an introduction to this series, please click here.

Introduction

Maybe Not the Pac-10, But Some Good Ball Out West

A common phrase that is often thrown around by all sports fans—not just college hoop junkies—is that of “East Coast bias.” This concept has morphed into such a phenomenon in the world of sports that it has developed its own Wikipedia page. To copy verbatim the definition from Wikipedia (gosh, I love this site): “East Coast bias is an expression referring to the alleged tendency for sportswriters in the United States to give greater weight and credibility to teams on the East Coast of the United States.” I consider myself an objective viewer of college basketball — and sports in general — but even if there was a degree of “East Coast bias” in me while ranking, discussing and analyzing the teams that comprise the Other 26, the performance of several teams out West are simply impossible to ignore. Watching the relentless defensive pressure of UNLV, the unselfish play of St. Mary’s, the potent offense of BYU, and the shooting ability of San Diego State is a thing of beauty. Among many of the Other 26 teams, three teams in particular are worth paying very close attention to the rest of the year: SDSU, BYU, and UNLV. These are veteran-laden teams with superior coaches who simply know how to win — the perfect recipe for a successful run during March.

What team impressed the most?

It would be easy to declare that the Central Florida Black Knights were far and away the most impressive team of the past week. After all, they defeated a ranked Florida team who had only one loss (Ohio State) entering the game and figure to be a top team in the SEC this year. While the victory against the Gators was certainly impressive — it was, in fact, the first win against Florida in the history of the program — I would argue that UNLV’s performance this past week was more impressive. The Runnin’ Rebels coasted through the 76 Classic Tournament (against formidable competition, mind you) as they defeated Murray State and Virginia Tech both by double digits. Following these wins, one may expect UNLV to come out flat against Illinois State after having traveled across the country, but they took it to the Redbirds right from the tap en route to an 82-51 victory. What makes this UNLV team all the more scary is that Tre’Von Willis, arguably the best player on the squad, is not even playing up to his full potential after being suspended for the first two games. Once Willis finds his stride, UNLV becomes an even better team. Look out.

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The Lede.  Big Ten Goes Back-to-Back.  Maybe the plan is for the Big Ten to win eight more ACC/Big Ten Challenges in a row so as to tie up the all-time record (now 10-2 ACC), but thanks to a strong Tuesday performance where the league went 4-1 against the ACC, the Big Ten did just enough tonight (2-3) to once again crow about basketball dominance for the next 363 days.  Well, sorta.  As much as we enjoy the concept behind these conference challenges (and this one is clearly the best one), they don’t truly mean much in terms of assessing the relative strength of the conferences.  As we mentioned last night, the Big Ten is much stronger than the ACC in its top half, and that’s the half that truly matters when discussing this game we call college basketball.  We’re not sure if anyone outside of Iowa City or Winston-Salem cares much if Wake Forest is marginally better than Iowa, but most of the nation cares whether Duke is better than Michigan State  (they are) or Virginia Tech is better than Purdue (they’re not).  If we were ranking the top ten teams by combining both leagues, it would go something like this:  1) Duke; 2) Ohio State; 3) Michigan State; 4) Illinois; 5) Minnesota; 6) Purdue; 7) Wisconsin; 8) Virginia Tech; 9) Northwestern; 10) Maryland/FSU (?).  At the level where the checks are signed, the Big Ten is by far the better league and we’ll stand by that assertion throughout the season.

Irving's Skills Belie His Youth (credit: Herald-Sun)

Your Watercooler Moment.  Just How Good Is Kyrie Irving? A common refrain during and after tonight’s Duke victory over Michigan State, 84-79, was that Blue Devil point guard Kyrie Irving was not only the best player on the floor — with 31 pts, 6 rebs, 4 assts, 2 stls and 2 blks — but he might just be the freshman who should have been chosen as preseason first-team All-American and NPOY candidate (instead of the popular pick eight miles down the road, Harrison Barnes).  It’s hard to argue with that assessment right now.  In two games matched up against elite senior All-America point guards (Kansas State’s Jacob Pullen and Michigan State’s Kalin Lucas), Irving has out-everythinged his more experienced peers.  During parts of the game tonight, he simply made his defenders look like they were standing in quicksand as he hesitated and stepped-through the lane for numerous clever finishes.  When the MSU defense laid off of him, he calmly sank a couple of threes.  When they double-teamed him, he consistently made the right pass to the open man.  And this isn’t just one game, either.  On the season, he’s averaging 17/4/6 assts , carries a 2.5:1 assist/turnover ratio and he’s in the spectacular 50/40/80+ zone as a matter of shooting percentages (52%/44%/88%).  Oh, and he appears to be the best player on the #1 team in America — there’s that too.  It’s early, and there’s a point guard named Kemba and a couple of other freshmen named Terrence and Jared who we think are playing just as well or better as the Dookie getting all the love tonight, but without question Irving makes Duke a fantastically dangerous team in ways that they never were with Jon Scheyer running things last year.  If the Devils can figure out the big man situation and defend a little better (allowing 49%/53% against MSU is a little disconcerting), they have a chance to become an epic team (but not good enough to run the table, see below).

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Here’s what we had in store for your Tuesday… as always, check the above box for the latest check-ins.

• ACC
• Mountain West

Here’s wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving with a couple of conference check-ins from Wednesday to tide you over…

• Atlantic 10
• Mountain West

1. Evan Daniels has over 10,000 Twitter followers. Dave Telep has almost 11,000. This should surprise nobody. The Louisville Courier-Journal takes a look at how the reportage of college basketball recruiting is getting to be just as big a national sports obsession, and is getting to be just as competitive, as the race to sign the recruits themselves. Interesting fellows, those chaps. We thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Mr. Telep a few weeks ago, and our own informers and operatives tell us that not only is Daniels a platinum mine of recruiting information, but that he can’t go anywhere without legions of female followers running after him. We can neither confirm nor deny that Daniels started that rumor himself.
2. According to the Lansing State Journal, the season is over. In an article yesterday, it bullet-pointed every game on Michigan State’s schedule and provided a short description on how each will play out. Shockingly, the Journal predicts the Spartans will finish the season on a 14-game winning streak that includes clinching the Big Ten regular season title on Michigan’s floor, a Big Ten Tournament title, and another national championship for Tom Izzo. Fun stuff, here — especially when their prognostications get to NCAA Tournament time. And especially if you’re an MSU fan.
3. Conference realignment continues. Andy Katz reported yesterday that Denver, Texas State, and Texas-San Antonio are headed for the WAC for the 2012-13 season. They’ll replace Boise State, Fresno State, and Nevada who left for the Mountain West. Again, a lot of this seems to be motivated by something called football, so we’ll do some investigative reporting to find out exactly what that is. If we ever knew, we forgot after October 15th.
4. The first day of the hoops signing period didn’t yield any massive surprises, but some schools at or near the top of the overall recruiting rankings heard from each (or most) of the prospects who verbally committed to them earlier, and good things seem to come in fours. John Calipari discusses the four letters Kentucky received; Illinois also received a quartet of goodness yesterday; Virginia Tech saw ink from its foursome of top-100 signees; and here are four great write-ups on four prospects St. John’s officially signed yesterday, with one more likely to come tomorrow.
5. West Virginia fans are steppin’ up. Correction: make that have been stepping up. On the strength of last year’s Final Four appearance, Mountaineer faithful have set a season-ticket sales record for the sixth straight year. Pretty impressive by itself, but more so when you factor in the still-limping economy, and that these babies aren’t exactly going for chicken feed. Hold on, here — two straight perfect graduation scores, a Final Four, a top-25 recruiting class…we’re going to have to try to get over to Morgantown. Sounds like these are good days to be an ‘Eer.

[Ed. note: we don’t know if he’s a Mountaineers fan, but #5 is humbly dedicated to Frank Woodruff Buckles of Charles Town, West Virginia. Currently 109 years old, he is the United States’ last living veteran from World War I. RTC extends its heartfelt gratitude on this day to all the military veterans who have served our country, whether it was yesterday or 92 years ago.]

1. For some strange reason, the preseason all-SEC first team has nine players on it and Kentucky’s Brandon Knight is not a member.  Here’s your list, as voted on by the coaches: Dee Bost (Mississippi State); JaMychal Green (Alabama); Scotty Hopson (Tennessee); Travis Leslie (Georgia); Chandler Parsons (Florida); Marshawn Powell (Arkansas); Jeffery Taylor (Vanderbilt); Trey Thompkins (Georgia); Chris Warren (Ole Miss).  We won’t list the second team, but it had another eight players on it, amounting to a total of seventeen all-SEC preseason players.  Is it really so hard, SEC brass, to do three five-person teams?  Who is the genius who thought of this and why does it continue to happen?
2. Pitt junior forward Nasir Robinson had surgery on Wednesday for a torn meniscus in his right knee after injuring it in practice on Monday of this week.  There was no long-term damage and the prognosis is that Robinson will be back in action in the next three to six weeks.  He was a full-time starter last season in his role as a mop-up man to the tune of 7/6 per game.  The best case scenario is that he would be back in the Panther lineup against Maryland at MSG in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic on November 18.  Luckily for Jamie Dixon, he has plenty of frontcourt depth (Gary McGhee, Dante Taylor) to lean on in the interim.
3. Things just got a lot tougher for new Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, as his star player Matt Gatens injured his left hand and had surgery on Wednesday to repair a torn tendon.  His layoff is currently indeterminate in length, but goodness, the Hawkeyes, coming off a 10-22 (4-14 B10) disaster last season, surely could have used some better news going into the start of the year.
4. It appears that current WAC members Nevada and Fresno State will not bail from the conference in 2011 to go to the Mountain West as they’ve repeatedly threatened to do — it will instead happen in 2012.  A teleconference has been announced for today and the WAC is expected to declare that the feuding parties have come to an agreement where they will pay reduced walkaway fees in exchange for sticking around an additional year.  We’re actually kind of excited to see some of the clever signage that students at some of the remaining WAC schools might come up with this year and next when the Wolf Pack and Bulldogs visit town.
5. We mentioned that this would ultimately happen in a M5 over the summer, and it’s now come to fruition — John Wooden’s den is now on permanent display at the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame, just a few paces away from the House that Wooden Built, Pauley Pavilion.  This is something that we’re most definitely planning on visiting the next time were down in LA.  When we do, expect a full report on the place.

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Mountain West Conferences and an occasional contributor.

The standoff between the Western Athletic Conference and the Mountain West Conference over Fresno State and Nevada has come to the next logical stopping point: a lawsuit, perhaps just the first in a string. WAC commissioner Karl Benson confirmed today in a conference call that last week the league filed suit against Fresno  and Nevada in an effort to prevent the schools from joining the MWC for the 2011-12 athletic seasons. Benson and the WAC contend that WAC bylaws require a school to give notice to the conference by July 1 if it plans to leave the conference in the next two years. Both schools accepted the MWC’s offer of membership on July 18 of this year. However, there is a discrepancy between the conference bylaws and the WAC Code Book which claims that the deadline to withdraw from the conference is instead September 1. The MWC is included in the suit in an attempt to prevent the conference from adding either school to its 2011-12 scheduling. All parties named in the suit have 30 days to respond after which the Jefferson County District Court in Colorado will likely issue a ruling within another month.

Fresno & Nevada Are Gone, But at What Cost?

According to Benson during today’s teleconference, “the WAC is simply seeking to protect its interests and insure that all member institutions are protected from a potential and threatened violation of the bylaws. Such inappropriate action would make it impossible for member institutions to schedule athletic events and thereby would adversely affect the WAC, the WAC member institutions and the student-athletes.” Benson specifically cites the difficulty the remaining WAC institutions would have in filling out its 2011 football schedule, the potential impact on the conference’s bowl agreements, the negative effect on its existing television contract and the impact on the WAC basketball tournament as areas that would be damaged by Fresno State and Nevada leaving after this coming season.

For Fresno State and Nevada’s part, they still seem determined to leave the conference after this season in order to play in the MWC in 2011-12. If they were to remain in the WAC for an additional year, they would forfeit their shares of any postseason money earned by the conference because of their lame duck status. They’ll lean heavily on the discrepancy between the conference bylaws and the WAC Code Book in an effort to bolster their claim that they are allowed to leave the conference without penalty after the 2010-11 season.  The MWC being included in the suit seems more of a scattershot inclusion, a hail mary attempt to prevent the conference from making any scheduling plans involving the two schools, although the likelihood of the MWC having to play by the WAC bylaws seems untenable at best.

A completely separate issue still remains: the possibility that Fresno State and Nevada will each owe a $5 million buyout fee for their decisions to leave the WAC. Both schools were given 60 days notice that payment was due and when that deadline expires on October 18, another lawsuit featuring liquidated damages is likely.  With actual games being played on the field and with college basketball practice just a month away, this courtroom drama rightly takes a backseat to more athletic competitions, but this should remain an interesting story throughout the fall as we learn the fate of the WAC, Fresno State and Nevada. In the end, this likely gets settled out of court between the three main parties with some compromise agreement likely allowing the two schools to head to the MWC in 2011-12 while paying somewhere south of the $5 million buyout.

1. Remember the Anthony Davis for sale flap a month ago?  Predictably, the threats of lawsuits by the Davis family and Kentucky have died down, but the speculation has not.  On a radio program Tuesday, college basketball writer Gregg Doyel said that he believes that the Chicago Sun-Times “deep throat” source for the allegation that Davis was bought for $200k came from Illinois head coach Bruce Weber.  Here’s the key quote, at the 19:42 mark: “If anybody is behind this, Weber is behind this, because he doesn’t lose very well. And, he unfortunately loses recruits left and right.  Nobody loses more recruits than Bruce Weber. That ought to be on his coat of arms — Bruce Weber: Losing recruits like a son of a gun.”  Wow.
2. It became official yesterday when UConn announced it, but Ater Majok is heading to Australia to begin a professional career, effective immediately.  We discussed the likelihood of this earlier in the week, openly wondering if his departure has anything to do with the expected response on Thursday or Friday from the university over eight NCAA allegations.  For now, we’ll just have to speculate and read between the lines, but hopefully in the next few days we’ll have more with which to address his departure.
3. Gary Parrish writes about the BYU move to the WCC (in basketball), and how the little league that could on the Pacific coast may have done more to elevate its profile than any other conference in Realignment Summer.  Yahoo’s Jason King and ourselves can’t disagree — as our correspondent Mike Vernetti wrote yesterday, WCC Commish Jamie Zaninovich may have pulled off the biggest coup we’ve seen in this game in quite some time.  Meanwhile, the WAC wonders what to do with itself after BYU effectively threw the venerable conference to the wolves.
4. Mizzou took a huge hit yesterday when it was reported that top fifteen incoming recruit Tony Mitchell will not be eligible to play for at least the fall semester, although it’s currently unclear what he needs to do to become eligible for the spring.  So far Missouri hasn’t yet confirmed the information, but according to several sources, Mitchell has missed the deadline to enroll at Missouri this semester.  Jeff Goodman reported yesterday that Mizzou is hopeful that Mitchell will attend a juco for the fall semester in an effort to become eligible.
5. Tennessee’s SwiperBoy (aka junior forward Renaldo Woolridge) is back with another UT-related rap song, just in time for the “FootVols” kickoff this coming weekend against UT-Martin in Neyland Stadium.  Not that they’d be listening anyway, but SEC fans from Columbia to Fayetteville probably envision their own personal hell as an endless loop of this song, which uses “Rocky Top” as its sample in the background.  There’s nothing too abrasive in the lyrics (if you can’t bear the audio version, here’s a transcript), but SwiperBoy manages to take a shot at the departed Lane Kiffin (“we drivin in a new Lane… 4get the last 1”) — with his third football-related song in the last two years, at least we can say he knows where the bread is buttered in Knoxville.  Here’s the video:

1. Obviously, the big news of yesterday was BYU’s decision to join the WCC in basketball (and all other sports except football).  It makes sense on a number of levels (religious school, kill the WAC, etc.), but we have to admit that you typically don’t see a school ‘trade down’ in relative strength like this.  But the lure of football independence was just too much for the Cougars to resist, and although we’ll miss BYU in the Mountain West, we’re excited to see if the addition of the LDS school will help bring the WCC to the top of the mid-major heap in hoops.  Our Mountain West and WCC correspondents examined both sides of the move, while Jeff Goodman caught up with the person currently residing in the WCC most impacted by BYU’s entry, Gonzaga’s Mark Few.
2. Former Duke all-american point guard Bobby Hurley is doing his best to contribute to the collective schadenfreude that the nation feels when members of Coach K’s first two championship teams lose their shirts.  Not long ago we learned that two starters on the 1991 and 1992 title teams, Christian Laettner and Brian Davis, were facing massive debt problems as a result of their failed company, Blue Devil Ventures.  This week Hurley’s horse farm, named Devil Eleven Farm and located in Ocala, Florida, was foreclosed upon after he stopped making payments on the 140-acre property in the spring of 2009.  Clearly both of these situations likely have something to do with the nationwide recession that began in late 2007, but we know some Kentucky and UNC fans somewhere out there who are very much enjoying this news.
3. Ex-Michigan State star and 1979 national champion Jay Vincent was arraigned yesterday on charges of defrauding investors of $2 million in an internet scam that convinced people to pay him to become home inspectors, where he pleaded not guilty.  Court records, however, show that a plea bargain may already be in the works.  He has until the end of the month to change his plea.
4. High School Hoop profiles one of the most well-known but not really behind-the-scenes players in the collegiate game: Worldwide Wes.  There’s not a lot of new information here, but it’s interesting to hear some of the top recruits in the class of 2011 talk about the influence (or lack thereof) of WWW on their recruitments.
5. St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin was a strong recruiter during his time at UCLA in the late 90s and early 2000s, as he put ten players into the NBA Draft during his seven years in Westwood.  So it should come as no surprise that he’s hit the ground running by earning a commitment from his first big name at SJU.  Maurice Harkless, a 6’7 forward from Queens who originally committed to UConn but later re-opened his commitment, could be a transformative recruit for Lavin’s new program.  If city kids start considering the Johnnies as a viable destination along with the standard regional powers such as UConn, Syracuse, Villanova and a few others, suddenly New York City might have its own college team again.