Welcome back to another edition of the RTC Podcast, hosted each week by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114). In this week’s show, the guys get to work talking about the first couple weeks of conference play and whether road losses to ranked teams are issues in any meaningful way (hint: usually not). We cover that and more as we slowly turn the corner into the midseason and start heading for the down slope to March. The full rundown is below, and make sure to subscribe to the pod on iTunes so that you’ll have it as soon as it releases each week.

• 0:00-9:26 – West Virginia Knocks off #1
• 9:26-15:10 – Virginia Bounces Back vs. Miami
• 15:10-24:42 – Maryland, Duke, Iowa State Fall on the Road
• 24:42-31:23 Surprising Teams Early in Conference Play
• 31:23-36:31 – Dave Rice Fired
• 36:31-42:05 – Missouri Sanctions
• 42:05-43:45 – Thursday Preview

As July leads into August, here are some tasty bits of knowledge for the summer heat…

• Richmond’s top player Dan Geriot is expected to miss the 08-09 season with a knee injury.  Auburn’s best player, Josh Dollard, was simply kicked off the team for not getting his sh!t together.
• Guess we know how Texas A&M-Corpus Christi made the Tourney two years ago. 
• Thuggins, summertime, scofflaws.  Any questions?
• It appears as if Illinois’ Jamar Smith violated the terms of his probation by drinking alcohol; he’ll learn his fate at a Sept. 17 hearing.  In other news, a 21-year old ball player recently had sex with a woman. 
• Memphis could be in some hot water over an improper phone call made by the FedEx CEO to one of his employees (who also happens to be the mother of the #2 rated PG in the class of 2009, Abdul Gaddy). 
• Baylor????  No, really, Baylor????
• Gregg Doyel says he’ll bury the hatchet with Coach K if he brings home the gold medal next month.  The most interesting part of this piece is the story about Coach K torpedoing Doyel’s book deal in 1999.   
• Yes, UK Fans are insane.  We mean that in a good way, of course.
• Andy Katz takes a look at the Wake Forest program one year after the untimely death of head coach Skip Prosser.
• We thought this article by Dana O’Neil about coaches working themselves too hard in light of Prosser’s heart attack was going to suck, but we really enjoyed it.  Coaches whine and complain about the summer circuit, but they really love it (poor headline, ESPN). 
• Jeff Goodman breaks down his top ten prospects from the summer camps in Vegas.
• Gary Parrish gives an interesting insight into how programs game the summer recruiting circuit by not hiring assistant coaches until after they’ve developed good relationships with top prospects (sidenote: why did Arizona fire Miles Simon – that guy won them a championship!).  He follow that up with another article on how coaches get creative but ethically suspect in getting recruits onto campus in a legal manner.

A little Friday the 13th juice to go with you gin this weekend…

• Will it be a house of horrors in Seattle today for Indiana?  IU is meeting with the NCAA (and Kelvin Sanctions) in a hearing to ascertain just how screwed the program is going to be in the wake of phonegate.  Considering Tom Crean only has one scholarship player returning, the Hoosiers are already screwed.  The Indy Star is liveblogging from the proceedings today…
• Maybe Indiana should have hired this guy – The Fixer – to help with today’s proceedings.  Oh, wait, Kelvin already did…
• Florida’s Marreese Speights supposedly announced he was leaving Florida yesterday, but a report surfacing today suggests that he’s still on the fence about it. 
• Arizona’s Chase Budinger is still thinking about whether to return next year, but he is apparently a strong lean toward going into the draft – he has until Monday (June 16) to make a final decision.
• There are twenty players still thinking about the draft decision before Monday’s deadline, and Gary Parrish decided to help them out with their decisions. 
• Memphis guard and exquisite standardized test-taker Doneal Mack is leaving the program due to playing time issues.  Um, doesn’t Mack realize that most of the Tiger starters are gone?
• More draft coverage – apparently Michael Beasley is having trouble shaking off his perception of being the class clown; and DeAndre Jordan is having issues with his mental toughness being as soft as charmin. 
• The contract terms of former LSU coach John Brady’s agreement with Arkansas St. came out yesterday.  There’s no mention of whether the deal includes a fully-paid membership to the local houses of burlesque. 

No, not Annual Percentage Rate for all you creditworthy folks.  We’re talking about the Academic Progress Report (APR) for men’s basketball (who is regularly the lowest rated sport in D1).  Today the NCAA released the numbers that track athletes’ success (2003-07) in the classroom through retention, eligibility and graduation, and it appears that things are going to get a little dicey for some name-brand programs over the next twelve months. 

The APR has two classes of penalty – immediate and historic.  Immediate penalties are levied when a program is below the cutoff score of 925 (approximating a 60% graduation rate), and one of their players withdraws from the institution, does not return the following fall term and would not have otherwise been eligible to compete during the regular academic term following his departure.   This year, Kansas St., Purdue, Seton Hall, South Carolina, Tennessee and USC were the BCS programs subject to a one-scholarship loss due to this penalty (see Table A below).  K-State, Purdue, UT and USC are particularly on notice, as each of these programs could lose as many as two scholarships next year should their APRs not improve. 

Historic penalties are levied upon programs that have trouble consistently reaching a threshold of 900 on the APR metric.  The sanctions associated with these penalties are far more severe, and can ultimately result in reduced practice time, banishment from postseason play and restricted membership in Division 1 athletics.  This year among the BCS programs, only Colorado and USC were placed on public notice that their historical profile is lagging.  Should their poor APR scores (<900) continue another year, then the Buffs and Trojans could face a scholarship and/or practice time reduction in the 2009-10 season.  As an example of what not to do, the basketball programs at New Mexico St., Centenary and East Carolina are already one year away from facing a postseason ban based on three consecutive years of failing scores on the APR.  While Colorado doesn’t seem to care much about hoops, USC, with its high-profile coach and the sparking new Galen Center, certainly wants to avoid this fate if it can (note: OJ Mayo and Davon Jefferson’s early exits will not help the Trojans’ APR in 2008-09). 

Table B below shows some of the other notable non-BCS basketball programs and how they fared on this year’s APR.  Memphis, who is already on the cusp of the threshold, could end up getting slammed by this season’s exodus.

We also thought it might be somewhat informative to see how the BCS conferences do individually.  See Table C below.  The ACC is clearly doing the best of the big six conferences, with only Clemson and Maryland under the 925 cutoff (neither are below the 900 threshold).  The SEC, while managing to avoid last place, has seven teams under the 925 mark this year (58.3% of its teams).  The Big East has five, but that only represents 31.3% of its members.  As far as we can tell, there isn’t much of  a correlation with our 2007 Athlademic Ratings from last summer.   

The NCAA appears to be holding fast on its promise to hold schools accountable for keeping its athletes eligible.  AAZone’s Josh Centor, for one, thinks that the APR is working.

For the skeptics who believe the penalties are soft, look at the 26 teams that have entered the historical phase of the structure this year. Those programs have failed to change their behavior and will face restricted scholarships, recruiting and practice time. If the academic performance of those teams doesn’t get better, the penalties will become more severe. Next year, postseason bans will be in the mix and along with the scholarship reductions, those penalties are as strong as the ones doled out for major infractions cases.

It’s going to be interesting to see how these programs that are already on the cusp of sanctions respond to these challenges.   

Update:  Seth Emerson reports that critics of the APR system are wondering if there’s any teeth to it at all, citing the fact that 69.3% of institutions that were eligible to be penalized were given waivers this year.  Our favorite exception – let’s call it the South Carolina St. Rule – allows a waiver if a team’s APR is above that of the general student body.  Yeah, we’d agree that if a team is outperforming the rest of the students, then either the whole school needs to be shuttered; or, the APR is rendered rather meaningless. 

Some news flotsam and jetsam we’ve accumulated this week…

• It was an expensive week for Ohio State paying its head coaches, as Thad Matta got a $500k raise (to $2.5M per annum) and contract extension through 2016.
• Tennessee forward Duke Crews has been suspended indefinitely for violating team rules. How long is “indefintely?”
• We mentioned it briefly above, but it deserves its own note. Former Hawg PG Corey Beck was shot Sunday morning during a robbery attempt – he is listed in good condition.
• Free Shoes University is embroiled in another cheating scandal – the question is which sports are involved?
• Porsches, Polo & Ponies. SMU basketball avoids NCAA sanctions – wait, SMU still has a basketball program? Oh, right. Matt Doherty. So the answer is no.
• Plissken at the Buzzer gives a thorough and interesting breakdown of Memphis’ schedule (following up on Andy Katz’s top 10 last week) and how that will affect the Tigers’ NCAA seed next March.
• Melo is giving back to Syracuse, as Jim Juli Boeheim convinced him to fork over $3M toward a new practice facility for the Orange.
• Injury Report – Louisville freshman Clarence Holloway will miss the entire season after open heart surgery (!!), and NC State’s PG Javier Gonzalez will miss the next twelve weeks with a shooting thumb injury.
• BC’s success in the ACC on the gridiron and hardwood have increased its applications from traditionally ACC country.
• Construda still loves Luke Recker, oh these many years later…
• We guess Shawn Stockton isn’t as good as his uncle John.
• According to Jeff Goodman, 2008 #1 player Greg Monroe has narrowed his list to LSU, Kansas, Duke and Georgetown. Although Gary Parrish disputes this in a meandering article about Monroe’s eight finalists.
• Speaking of Parrish and Goodman, the former riffs on Bama’s point guard situation after losing Ronald Steele, and the latter notes that Bruce Pearl is in search of outside shooters and Arizona is looking at possible successors for Lute Olson.
• It’s NEVER too early for a projected field of 65.
• MascotLove: College Hoops Heaven takes a look at the top 15 mascots.