1. Checking in on the latest conference re-re-realignment talk from Utah, the current word is that BYU is still intent on going independent in football but is looking more and more like a candidate to move to the WCC in basketball and all other sports.  Yes, you read that right.  The West Coast Conference, the tightly-knit eight-team conference of tiny private religious institutions that max out at nearly 9,000 students (Loyola Marymount and San Francisco, whereas BYU at 33,000 students is nearly four times that enrollment) and has remained at eight teams for three decades.  Andy Katz makes the case that this move makes sense in basketball, and we can’t really argue with his logic, except for one little thing — you know what makes more sense?  Staying in the Mountain West, where, with recent additions of Nevada and Fresno State to go with San Diego State, UNLV and New Mexico, the league is on the verge of overtaking the Pac-10 for hoops superiority out west.  We should know something very soon — the deadline for BYU to leave the Mountain West is Wednesday.
2. Getting back to the conference that BYU originally threatened to move to prior to its implosion, the WAC, feeling jilted and unloved after Nevada and Fresno State’s unceremonious dumping earlier this month, is threatening to sue the two schools if each refuses to pay a disputed $5M exit fee each by the October 25 deadline.  Furthermore, the WAC says that they have the contractual right to not release the two renegades until after the 2011-12 academic year, an interesting assertion given that Fresno and Nevada’s stated positions are that they’re leaving next summer.  This is going to get more interesting before it dies down, because there’s no question that this particular tussle has gotten personal among key players at some of these schools.
3. There’ll be a boatload of these player profiles coming out in the next two months, but it just means that the season is slowly approaching.  Here are a few from the last few days: Texas’ Jordan Hamilton, Mizzou’s Kim English, Purdue’s E’Twaun Moore, and Louisville’s Preston Knowles.
4. Jeff Jacobs, a UConn columnist at the Hartford Courant, suggests that Ater Majok’s presumed leaving of the program has nothing to do with impending sanctions that may have involved his recruitment, as we wrote could be possible yesterday.  But in the same paragraph, he also says that there have been “whispers” in the program involving Majok, so we’re not sure what to believe here.  UConn is expected to announce its response to the NCAA’s allegations later this week.
5. Austin Rivers is the #1 prospect in the Class of 2011, according to Rivals, and he showed the skill that he possesses in a recent summer league game where he crossed over and scored on #1 pick John Wall, followed by ripping him clean on defense on the other end.  One blogger makes a reasonable case as to why Rivers will end up playing for Coach K at Duke in the fall of 2011.

It was easy to overlook on a Friday afternoon filled with various comings and goings, but the Hartford Courant reported that several sources expect UConn center Ater Majok to head to Australia to play professionally in coming weeks, ending a collegiate career that was long on hype but short — very short, in fact — on production.  The well-traveled player who entered UConn in the fall of 2008 projected as the next great Husky big man will leave Storrs having scored a grand total of 59 points and secured 80 rebounds in less than one season of action.  According to the piece, Majok hasn’t yet formally made the decision to leave, but head coach Jim Calhoun certainly hinted at the possibility:

“We’re talking to Ater about his future, yeah,” Calhoun said. “That’s all I can say. … He hasn’t made any decision yet, but he could certainly go back and play in the Australian professional league. Nothing’s been determined yet, but there’s a chance that kind of thing could happen.”

Majok Was a Major Disappointment in Storrs

You undoubtedly know Majok’s story — the family that fled war-torn Sudan to land in Egypt; the questions about his NCAA eligibility resulting in a one-year layoff in 2008-09; the declaration and subsequent withdrawal from the 2009 NBA Draft; and the far less than stellar rookie season last year.  But the timing on this news is weird.  UConn begins fall semester classes today, and all indications over the summer were that Majok was ready for his sophomore campaign (as a 23-year old) as a member of the Huskies.  Yet on Thursday night last week, the big man tweeted that “life can take unexpected turns” and Calhoun followed it up on Friday with his quotes discussing Majok’s possible departure.

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1. Yes, USC is expensive (almost $50k per year).  Ex-Dookie, ex-Wildcat Taylor King found that out the hard way when he realized just how much his family would need to pay out-of-pocket to transfer to Southern Cal for one more year of eligibility in 2011-12.   Instead, he’ll play at NAIA Concordia in nearby Irvine, perhaps a much nicer locale but not exactly on the standard tour of most NBA scouts.  We wish him well, nevertheless.
2. “All indications are that the [BYU] Cougars will remain in the MWC,” according to the Denver Post.  There has been no formal word yet, and BYU officially has until next week (Sept. 1) to decide whether it’s coming or going in the league, but with the WAC blowing up after the Cougs’ initial inquiry, the decision comes down ultimately to whether the LDS elders think that BYU football can sustain itself as an independent.  It would be a bold move, but not one without some credibility; still, it says here that BYU (for now) sticks with the Mountain West.
3. Matt Snyder has an interesting piece at Fanhouse ripping the John Beilein hire at Michigan after a dismal performance in Belgium (they play basketball there?) that he thinks portends a miserable hoops season in Ann Arbor.  He’s probably right about the dismal upcoming season, but we’re not ready to give up on Beilein as a head coach.  His WVU teams in the later years in Morgantown played a style of basketball that was very difficult to prepare for, but it took him several years to develop such hidden jewels as Kevin Pittsnogle and Mike Gansey in order to get to that point.  Given that Michigan had gone over a decade (!!!) between NCAA Tournaments prior to Beilein’s 2009 second round appearance, we’re willing to let him have more time to build his program.  As for UM fans — we’re not as sure.
4. Morehead State was placed on a two-year probation by the NCAA yesterday, but the sanctions will affect scholarships and not impact postseason play for the school.  This is a good thing, as the Eagles return one of the better mid-major players in America in senior Kenneth Faried, a 6’8 forward who won the Ohio Valley Conference POY and DPOY awards last year while dropping 17/13 per night en route to 25 double-doubles.  If Murray State drops the ball in the OVC, Morehead will likely be there in 2010-11 to pick up the slack, and we hate to see when great players are punished for something they had no involvement in.
5. Yes, even 7 am isn’t too early for the west coasters to roll out of bed on Saturday mornings to check in with College Gameday this coming season.  As our very own Zach Hayes broke down the 2010-11 Gameday slate, it’s good to know that the weekly festivities will begin an hour earlier on ESPNU at 10 am ET before heading over to the big daddy channel (ESPN) at 11 am.  Then, as ZH said, fourteen straight hours of the manna known as winter hoops.  Prepare yourselves: it’s coming sooner than you think.

1. Former Oklahoma State head coach Sean Sutton pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors in Stillwater, Oklahoma, as a result of his February arrest for possession of painkillers without a prescription.  Sutton recently spent 115 days in a rehab program in Sundance, Utah, and will face no jail time for his three-year probation period so long as he stays clean, pays a $2,850 fine and performs 100 hours of community service.  In an interview prior to the hearing last week, Sutton stated that the down time in the two years since he was forced out at OSU contributed to his addiction: “Idle time is no good for anybody.”   Texas head coach Rick Barnes, for one, doesn’t think Sutton’s coaching days are over.  Of course, his father, 800-game winner Eddie Sutton, has had his own demons with alcohol addiction over the years.  Let’s hope both Suttons have put those days behind them.
2. Kentucky fans filled a tiny gymnasium in Windsor, Ontario, on Sunday night, as John Calipari’s 2010-11 team played the first of a three-game set in Canada to break in the many new faces wearing Wildcat blue next season.  We mentioned UNC freshman Harrison Barnes blowing up in the Bahamas last week; well, Kentucky point guard Brandon Knight made sure that we remembered his prodigious talents as well.  Knight’s line:  31 pts, 9 rebs, 4 assts with ZERO turnovers in 29 minutes of action.  Let the hero-worship begin.
3. Connecticut requested and received an additional two weeks to respond to the eight NCAA alleged rules violations meted out by the governing body in May.  The new deadline will be September 3, which means that the compliance folks in Storrs may actually get to enjoy Labor Day weekend.  The Hartford Courant interviewed several experts to give readers a sense as to how the school may respond.   The general consensus is that UConn should show that it takes the charges seriously and can police itself; anything short of that may give the NCAA cause to bring the hammer down.
4. Ohio State center Zisis Sarikopoulos is reportedly on the verge of signing a professional contract with a team in his native Greece, which could impact Thad Matta’s inside depth next season.  Sarikopoulos was expected to provide spot minutes for returnee Dallas Lauderdale and incoming stud Jared Sullinger, but OSU may be without that option in a matter of days if this is true.
5. Memphis is heading to the Bahamas this week, but three of their newcomers won’t be making the trip as a result of eligiblity issues with the NCAA.  According to Dan Wolken at the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, the trio of Will Barton, Hippolyte Tsafack and Chris Crawford still have to be cleared by the NCAA before they will be allowed to play.  Barton is appealing the NCAA’s denial of his eligibility, while Tsafack and Crawford are still waiting to hear on their initial review.   In an unrelated personal issue, Jelan Kendrick is also not making the trip because he needed to head home to Atlanta.  Not a good way to start the season for Josh Pastner’s crew.

As we mentioned in today’s Morning 5, Dana O’Neil’s enlightening piece exposing the raw perceptions that coaches have on their peers in the world of college basketball and the sport in general is fascinating stuff.  It’s obvious that she knew it too, as the bulk of the article was filled with direct quotes from anonymous high-major coaches telling the truth as they saw it.  There is a lot of meat to this article — numerous raise-your-eyebrow statements that had us questioning and hopeful for more.  So we thought it might be interesting to cherry-pick the nine quotes that we thought were the most compelling and do what we do (make inappropriate comments and wildly speculate about things).  Enjoy.

Dana O'Neil Sheds Light on Unseen Areas of the Game

Regarding fraternity among coaches:

“It’s sad,” another coach said. “I grew up in this game with an idea of what I thought it was or what I thought it should be. Now I see it’s not like that at all. You have low- to mid-major guys aspiring to move up who will do anything to get there and you have guys who, once they get used to a certain lifestyle, will do whatever it takes to keep it.  There’s less of a brotherhood here than there is in football and that bothers me,” another added. “We have more guys stabbing each other in the back or using you guys [the media] to go after their agenda. That’s a big problem.”

We found this quote somewhat surprising in that we figured that competition among football coaches would be even more intense given the structure of their system, where the pyramid is extremely top-heavy and the small schools have virtually no chance to get there. 

On gender roles:

Along with the coach who called the women, “the gestapettes,” another said, “If the NCAA was serious, they’d hire someone who knew what they were doing, not these women out here trying to get a husband.”

Sexist caveman coaches, for the win!  Dana must have especially enjoyed hearing those quotes as the only nationally-focused female college basketball writer of note in the industry.  Ridiculous, and we’d happily buy her a Cosmo if she would tell us who these cretins were (see what we did there?). 

On recruiting to name-brand schools:

Here’s what I think happens a lot — a team loses a kid to someone else and all of a sudden that someone else is cheating. Every time North Carolina loses a kid, someone else is cheating. It’s like there’s so much arrogance with them; they can’t believe someone would rather go somewhere else, so the other team has to be cheating.

We hear this from fans of the major schools (like UNC) all the time.  Seriously – ALL the time.  But it was enlightening to hear it coming from the coaching ranks as well.  We guess nobody is excused from the tendency to blame extraneous factors when things go wrong.  Not even coaches. 

On expense accounts:

One of my players [who left early for the draft] was working out with another top-five draft pick.  They got to talking and my kid said something about not having money or whatever on campus. The other kid said, ‘My coach set up expense accounts all over town for me. Yours didn’t?”

We discussed this one on the M5 and in the comments.  If we assume that the coach in question was talking about the most recent NBA Draft (fresh on his mind), then we’re talking about four schools here — Kentucky, Ohio State, Syracuse or Georgia Tech.  One commenter pointed out that DeMarcus Cousins and Derrick Favors worked out together in New Jersey before the draft.  Connecting a few dots together, we can make some further assumptions about which school was setting up expense accounts and which school wasn’t.  Or, we could just admit that this is nothing more than rumor and means absolutely nothing. 

Regarding phone call violations: 

I get a kick out of the phone calls. Who gets caught with that anymore? It’s a joke. They’re out there catching the guy with the one phone. How about the guy with two and three bat phones?

This quote really makes the UConn assistant coaches and Kelvin Sampson look stupid, right?  Even low-level drug dealers and amateur terrorists  know that you should use burners for any illicit calls. 

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1. The biggest news yesterday came when the NCAA announced that UConn athletic director Jeff Hathaway has been tabbed to take over as the chairman of the Men’s D1 Basketball Committee for the 2011-12 season.  He will succeed the current chairman, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, next summer.  This is a peculiar choice given the timing that UConn is currently facing eight major recruiting violations in its men’s basketball program (including a failure to monitor charge, and if you believe this report, a possible 2-3 year probation) and rumors that Hathaway has been considering a move to Maryland, his alma mater.  According to the NCAA, if Hathaway takes the Maryland job, this chairmanship will not follow him.
2. Ask any middle-aged Duke fan if they remember the name Todd Leary, and without question you’ll get a knowing glance.  In the 1992 Final Four en route to Coach K’s back-to-back titles, Indiana’s Leary gave Blue Devil fans heart palpitations as he single-handedly brought Bob Knight’s Indiana team back from nine down in the final two minutes with three long-balls from all over the court.  Well, from that illustrious moment to this one — Leary pleaded guilty to fraud relating to a mortgage company scheme late last week in Ft. Wayne, and he is on the hook for $300,000 in restitution as well as possible prison time.  Nice.
3. Did you see Gary Parrish’s summer all-americans?  With three Big 12 players on his first team, it’s going to be another fantastic season in the nation’s heartland.
4. This is an interesting post from Bylaw Blog (“the unofficial blog of NCAA compliance” — awesome!) that suggests that the NCAA Infractions folks may be reaching a critical mass of knowledge in both football and basketball (about how “the system” actually works) to begin focusing on and targeting the volume cheaters.  We can only hope…
5. What do Rick Barnes (Big 12), Jeff Bzdelik (ACC), Fran McCaffery (Big Ten), Buzz Williams (Big East), Rick Stansbury (SEC) and Kevin O’Neill (Pac-10) have in common?  These six coaches in the BCS leagues tend to play their starters more than any other coach in that league, according to statistics compiled by Dan Hanner over at YABB in his typically stellar analysis.   (ed. note — Bzdelik’s and McCaffery’s numbers were of course from previous schools)

1. In case you haven’t heard, the Big 12 is now a ten-team conference and Texas will earn more money than God for the woodshedding that it pulled on the rest of its conference peers on Monday.  Seriously, we’re a fan of keeping this conference together, but we don’t want to hear any whining from the Missouris and Kansas States of the world when they see the dollar differential that they’re receiving versus the Horns AND THEIR OWN PRIVATE TV NETWORK on an annual basis.  Our man on the matter Andrew Murawa once again puts it all into perspective for us in a coherent, logical fashion.
2. No news is good news for Michigan State on the Tom Izzo front, as he had nothing to say when questioned by a camper about his plans at his summer basketball camp on Monday.  If the report that Izzo and LeBron James have yet to speak is true, though, this might seem to indicate that James is noncommittal about his plans for next season and clarity on that front is unlikely to factor into Izzo’s final decision.
3. Speaking of Izzo, assuming he ultimately leaves Michigan State for the Cavs, how much revenue could that end up costing the university on an annual basis?  This article takes a shot at trying to piece that together.
4. We missed this news late last week as a result of the USC sanctions and the conference realignment madness, but it’s worth noting that Portland State was banned from 2011 postseason play because of a very poor APR (Academic Progress Rate) score.  Its 865 score from the academic years 2005-09 is far below the national average of 940 — is it coincidental that the Vikings’ two best seasons (Big Sky champs) were in 2007-08 and 2008-09?
5. Luke Winn visited CP3’s summer camp that features many top college stars, including UNC’s Harrison Barnes, Duke’s Seth Curry and Washington Isaiah Thomas.  The story about how Thomas and the other UW players were completely fooled by former recruit Terrence Jones’ decision to go to Kentucky over Washington at the last minute was very interesting — Thomas suggested that the Wildcats better watch out in November in Maui if the two teams face each other.

1. Fall guys?  Two UConn assistant coaches resigned last night in light of an announcement that UConn will make later this morning (10am) about its findings with respect to the Nate Miles scandal from two seasons ago.  Pat Sellers and Beau Archibald will undoubtedly be implicated as possible violators in that press conference, which will outline the allegations that the program is facing as a result of Miles’ recruitment.  This will be very interesting to observe, as UConn just handed Jim Calhoun a contract extension a few weeks ago, and it wouldn’t make sense they would have done so unless they believe that his hands are clean here.
2. One of UCLA’s leading returnees, Malcolm Lee, will have arthroscopic surgery soon to repair cartilage in his right knee.  He is expected to be out for 4-6 weeks and it should not impact his play for next season.  Ben Howland’s team has suffered numerous injuries, transfers and the like in the last calendar year, so the news that Lee will be back better than ever for 2010-11 has to be welcome to UCLA fans.
3. In light of the Kansas ticket office scandal, as expected, no other major program in America has any problems whatsoever with their ticket policies.  In other news,  BP has this thing under control.
4. Sometimes it pays to get nailed with a scandal or two under your belt.  Just ask Kelvin Sampson.
5. Andy Glockner gives us a list of the players we should be watching outside the BCS programs next season.  It’s a great list, and he definitely nails it in starting with San Diego State’s uber-talented Kawhi Leonard.

1. Vegas Watch aggregates seven pre-preseason top 25s, including yours truly’s.  Duke is a clear #1, but Michigan State at #2 and a lot of teams with serious question marks (K-State, Villanova, Pitt, Gonzaga) populate the rest of the top ten.  We had Butler (#8) and Georgetown (#10) in our top ten, but few others did.  Thanks for doing this, VW.
2. More transfer news — a while back we suggested that the Wear Twins (David and Travis) would end up at UCLA, and that was confirmed yesterday with the announcement that the SoCal-raised pair will be heading to Westwood.  They’ll have three years of eligibility remaining, beginning in the 2011-12 season.  All we want to know is where was Stanford on this one (remember the Collins and Lopez twins)?  Meanwhile, UNC filled one of their open inside positions with Alabama transfer Justin Knox, who has already graduated and will be eligible to play next season for Roy Williams.  This is a substantial coup for UNC in that they were facing a season with few experienced bigs (only the rail-thin John Henson and Tyler Zeller return inside), and this addition will help bridge the gap until Williams can bring in some help.
3. Finishing in the top four spots of the Big East regular season will not hold as much meaning as it did the last two years, as conference officials yesterday voted to do away with the double-bye system in the Big East Tournament.  In the new format, MSG’s Tuesday and Wednesday sessions will feature first round games using a traditional 1/16, 2/15, etc., format.  For some reason, we’re less excited about this change.
4. Gregg Doyel thinks that Oklahoma basketball might deserve the death penalty, but taking his typically grumpy stance (we love it, btw), he doesn’t think that much of anything will come to pass.
5. Duke’s national championship team has plans to visit the White House tomorrow.  No word on whether Coach K will give President Obama some beef over picking against his Devils in the regionals.

It’s the weekend and it’s late April, so news is a bit slow around here, but this is just funny.

The below screenshot represents a FAKE John Calipari Facebook post directed at new UK recruit Marquis Teague.  His response, however, is authentic.  The hilarious part is how he acknowledges and responds to faux-Calipari’s representations about keeping things quiet for the sake of their mutual impropriety.

Opposing fans of unnamed schools are already all OVER this…  it’s meaningless in the grand scheme, but still kinda amusing.