Six games this weekend in the Big Ten, and tonight features two of the conference leaders.  Let’s get to it.

Purdue @ #11 Michigan, 6 PM, BTN

Michigan's Senior Night against Purdue will be a big game for Zach Novak and Stu Douglass (US Presswire)

• The Boilermakers need a win over a ranked opponent really bad.  Like, really, REALLY bad.  That’s because Purdue is 1-5 against teams in the RPI Top 25 and 4-7 against the Top 50.  A win would obviously help those stats out, and possibly put an end to the bubble talk surrounding the Boilermakers’ chances for an invite to the NCAA Tournament.  Robbie Hummel is doing his part, shooting 50% from the field and averaging 24.8 PPG over his last four contests. He also dropped a stat line of 16 points, five boards, and six assists the last time these two teams met, and will be expected to lead again.  Matt Painter will have to devise a plan to slow down the smoking-hot Wolverines, who have won five of their last six and have yet to lose at home this season.  It will be an emotional Senior Night in Ann Arbor, as fan favorites Zach Novak and Stu Douglass will be honored.  Douglass hasn’t missed a game in his Michigan career, while Novak was named the program’s first Academic All-American since 1984.

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Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. 

What is and what isn’t against the NCAA law these days? The line between a ‘good deed’ and a ‘violation’ has become so thin that not even the original lawmakers are able to easily distinguish the difference. And coaches in fierce competition for recruits? Forget about it. There are so many minor rules about extensive contact that it is impossible to police every one of them. That’s why the NCAA is finally working to create a slimmer and more efficient rulebook to make it easier for all parties to follow the rules. We certainly love the thought of trimming down the book, but it will not be an easy task.

The NCAA Rulebook is Far Too Complex to Consistently Enforce

“It’s very complicated to take a 400-plus-page rule book and shrink it down to something sensible, but we’re going to do it,” said NCAA President Mark Emmert last month. The most meaningful idea changes being discussed include making all transfers eligible to play immediately during the next semester rather than having to sit out a full year at their new school. The transfer rule has been noted as unfair for players, considering that coaches are allowed to bolt from school to school whenever they see more money or a better opportunity, but student-athletes need a waiver signed by the school and are required to sit out a full year before they can even join a new team. Another idea being discussed is to allow coaches to talk publicly about unsigned recruits since Twitter and other social media have made it so difficult to track everything being mentioned publicly. It’s unclear if public discussion would even have an influence on recruits’ decisions.

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It was a year ago today that Michigan basketball fans knew they had something special in Tim Hardaway Jr. The Wolverines were on the ropes at Penn State, trailing by 10 with 8:15 to go in the second half, and staring a crippling NCAA Tournament-hopes loss right in the face. Then Hardaway erupted, scoring all 13 of his points in the second half, hitting several big three-pointers down the stretch, and establishing himself as a player who was not afraid of the moment — a true freshman who had as much natural talent and potential as anyone else on the team, and a bright future once he improved his consistency.

Tim Hardaway Jr has had significant ups and downs so far this year

Fast forward 365 days and you see the same talented player with the same knack for scoring the basketball, but this season of Big Ten play has been rollercoaster for Hardaway Jr. He started off the 2011-12 season by announcing himself in a big way at the Maui Invitational, scoring 21 points in a win against Memphis, 19 in a loss to Duke, and 20 in a victory over UCLA. He was also a topic of conversation in all three of those games by ESPN’s broadcasting crew, and his performance seemed to validate that he was about to embark on a highly successful sophomore season and possibly become an early-entry candidate for the NBA Draft. Then, in Michigan’s next game at Virginia, Hardaway was held to five points, and the perplexing disappearance of his shot became a theme for Michigan fans to follow throughout the course of the season thus far.

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1. The biggest news of Thursday related to a player who is still a year away from actual collegiate game action. Mitch McGary, a 6’10” power forward who has been desscribed as “Tyler Hansbrough on Red Bull,” committed to Michigan on Thursday. RSCI has him rated as the #3 overall prospect in the Class of 2012, and his range is between #2 and #5, so it’s not like there’s much disagreement on the ridiculous talent of this guy. An Indiana native, he’s certainly someone that not only his other two finalists — Duke and Florida — would have liked to have nailed down, but the fact that John Beilein’s Michigan program was capable of invading Hoosier territory to grab an elite talent like McGary is demonstrative. IU won’t be truly ‘back’ until prep players like McGary are theirs to lose, and at least one national writer is sold on UM as a program on the verge of greatness again.
2. Tough news on Thursday from Virginia Tech, as hard-luck case JT Thompson reportedly tore his ACL for a second time in two seasons this week. Granted, last year it was his right ACL and this year it was his left, but the point remains the same: Instead of a comeback recovery season for Thompson as a fifth-year senior, he’s faced with another long year of rehabilitation and recovery as we head into the season. Thompson’s injury doesn’t necessarily put the Hokies into a precarious position with respect to the bubble, but as usual for the team from Blacksburg, it doesn’t help either. Then again, it wouldn’t be a Seth Greenberg team unless it was 18-12 and sitting on the bubble on Selection Sunday, so although we wish Thompson all the best on his recovery, we can’t say that we’re surprised.
3. One week after announcing an optional initiative that will allow major conferences an opportunity to provide $2,000 per student-athlete to ‘fill the gap’ between the cost of a full scholarship and its incidentals, NCAA president Mark Emmert was quick to say on Thursday that such a stipend was not “pay for play.” No matter where you fall on this issue, we think that everyone can agree that opening up this Pandora’s box is equitable in name only — the power conferences are those who ultimately stand to benefit. Imagine if everyone in America were offered a fantastic deal of a brand new Maserati well below list price of only $50,000! Well… you see the point.
4. Speaking of Emmert’s organization, it wouldn’t be the NCAA without preseason suspensions and Mississippi State is once again on the wrong end of a major delay in one of its key players actually suiting up. The good news for Rick Stansbury is that MSU appears to have Renardo Sidney and Arnett Moultrie ready to hit the floor this season, but they will do so without the backup support of Kristers Zeidaks, a Latvian forward whom he would have liked to have had on his bench. Zeidaks will essentially suffer the Deniz Kilicli rule in that he must sit out a substantial number of games before the NCAA will deem him eligible. In this case, Zeidaks will miss the entire upcoming season and the first 11 games of the 2012-13 season if he ever desires to play college basketball. The issue is that he competed against a professional club team in Europe and must apparently pay his penance with the NCAA for doing so.
5. Truth. Spoken. Alexander Wolff’s article this week on the complete irrelevance of college basketball on decision-making among the taskmasters of collegiate sports is both sickening and enlightening at the same time. Nearly twenty years ago, Wolff followed up the greatest college basketball game ever played with perhaps the greatest college basketball article ever written, “The Shot Heard Round the World.” What the piece lacked in titular form — much like the game itself (most people do not realize that Duke was a HEAVY favorite over Rick Pitino’s Wildcats that evening in Philadelphia) — it made up for in tone and reverence. There is no such reverence in an era where regal programs such as Kansas, St. John’s and Georgetown are thrown to the wolves for the sake of football dollars. While Wolff clearly reminisces about a bygone era where Jayhawks, Johnnies and Hoyas mattered, he also recognizes that, in some ways, the college hoops overlords brought this on themselves. Read it for yourselves.

Some afternoons, we’re going to do our best to point you to the developing stories and thoughtful writing from all over the ACC that has turned up during the course of the day.  So without further ado, here’s your Afternoon Delight.

What's More delightful Than Wake Forest's Muggsy Bogues Playing Defense Against Maryland's Chris Gatlin? Nothing (Courtesy of @si_vault)

• Charles P. Pierce at Grantland joins the fray with a gleeful and thoughtful evisceration of the NCAA. It’s the must-read piece of the day, but there are a number of excellent places that are joining voices in a chorus of criticism. In particular, I appreciated this Inside Higher Ed piece that includes Duke’s own Shane Battier weighing in on the bizarre experience of being a college athlete.
• A few ACC coaches also sat down to talk the last couple of days. At a charity event for the Cal Ripken, Sr., Foundation, current and past Maryland coaches Mark Turgeon and Gary Williams, as well as Villanova coach Jay Wright, participated in  a roundtable style-talk that included topics like the challenges of recruiting in Baltimore and their thoughts on conference realignment. There were no earth-shattering revelations here, but it’s interesting to learn what these guys had to say. In a really thorough interview, Boston College blog Around the Res has also been posting the transcript of an interview with Eagles head coach, Steve Donahue. The first two installments of the chat, touching on interesting topics like the team’s conditioning efforts and plans to integrate more post play, have already been posted with more to come.
• College Park nervously awaits the word on the eligibility of Alex Len, the promising 7’0″ Ukranian center who could be a big help to a shorthanded Maryland team. Jeff Barker of the Baltimore Sun published a tantalizing report that Len should be declared eligible to practice today, though he will probably face a suspension of some number of games. So far, there has been no official confirmation that Len has been cleared, but understandably folks are eager for the news. Len’s eligibility is in doubt because of a number of games he played with BC Dnipro, a professional team overseas (similar to Deniz Kilicli’s situation at West Virginia). So while we wait for more news about Len, here is a totally bizarre clip of the cheerleaders for BC Dnipro dancing.

1. Last night was supposed to be the start of the NBA’s 2011-12 season, but because of that lockout thing, doors were shuttered and the lights were off at the nation’s largest multi-purpose arenas. You know how we could tell? In the span of 30 minutes during last night’s Sportscenter, we saw not one, not two, but THREE separate highlight packages involving Top 25 teams playing in games of exhibition nonsense.  Yes, the WWL is just as starved for live hoops as we are, and they’re willing to show it in the form of exhibition nonsense.  For those of you wondering, the three teams involved were Syracuse, Kansas, and Arizona. All three won handily.
2. If this really had been the NBA’s debut evening, none of those games would have been on anyone’s radar in Bristol, but it begs the question whether NBA fans will make room for college basketball during their winter of discontent. In a piece assessing the possibility, Dana O’Neil argues that the impact on attendance was virtually nil when the league was last locked out in the 1998-99 season . While true, she doesn’t address the likeliest area where NBA-turned-temporary-college fans would see any increase: television ratings. Interest in a sport can take many forms, but from our view, John Q. NBA is more likely to start watching marquee college matchups in November and December than he is to travel through the cold to catch a garbage game at Local State U. Whereas in previous years he may have been busy watching the Lakers vs. the Nuggets on his flat screen the week of Thanksgiving, he might instead this year be satisfied watching Duke vs. Michigan in Maui.
3. Grantland is back this week with what they’re calling their Preseason All-America awards (shameless plug: our preseason AAs went live yesterday). Their writer, Jay Caspian Kang, seems to have a sufficient grasp of the sport and its key players (even if he runs a little UNCentric), but we need to put in a call to Gary Parrish this morning, because Kang did the unthinkable in choosing the Carolina floor general, Kendall Marshall, for a spot on the 1st team over the more heralded star of the Tar Heels, Harrison Barnes (2d team). If you want to get technical about it, he actually chose four players — Marshall, Jeremy Lamb (Connecticut), Anthony Davis (Kentucky), and John Jenkins (Vanderbilt) — over the smooth-as-silk Barnes (Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger is the only true post on his first team). Again, it doesn’t bother us all that much — if someone had left Shaq off the 1992 or Duncan off the 1997 teams, we’d be more outraged — but it is peculiar given what he writes about Barnes as someone lacking in “elite-level skills.” Worth watching…
4. It’s not every day that a Congressman makes news for trashing the NCAA (that’s usually left to the likes of people like us), but Illinois representative Bobby Rush (D-IL) went on record Tuesday at a congressional forum of college sports in comparing the NCAA to “Al Capone and the Mafia.” The 64-year old who represents the largest majority-minority district in the House of Representatives (the South Side of Chicago) also holds the distinction as the only elected official to have defeated Barack Obama in an election (the Democratic primary for his seat in 2000). He infamously said at the time that the now-president “went to Harvard and became an educated fool,” and it’s clear that the irascible politician has not learned to better hold his tongue from controversial statements in the intervening decade. The context of his comments related to injuries sustained by athletes while playing college sports and his anger with how the NCAA handles its medical hardship cases.
5. He’s baaaaaack. Luke Winn‘s first edition of the Power Rankings is back, just in time for you to enjoy over your morning latte. Winn once told us that he sometimes spends upwards of 20 hours on these articles, which we all know is a complete and utter lie (he has most of it in his head already). Still, his weekly PR is something that you need to spend some time with, so put your office phone ringer on mute, close out any instant messages you have going, and get to work figuring out what he’s talking about when he refers to such elusive yet fascinating concepts as possession poundage or Marcus Camby with a unibrow. When you’re done with that, spend the next half hour trying to come up with a name for his Thomas Robinson comparison at #12 — we have one name in mind ourselves, but aren’t sure about its validity. You?

To be honest, on average, the graduation rates for men’s college basketball players have  increased everywhere. To be completely honest, the graduation rates for student-athletes as a whole have improved. Still, let’s take a minute and appreciate how this trend holds up in the Atlantic Coast Conference: All in all, basketball players are graduating at better rates that they once did in the ACC, and at a rate that’s better than the national average for men’s college basketball players. So, that’s something.

But is it the whole story? No, but since the NCAA loves nothing if not thorough documentation, we can get at least get a clearer view of the story. The NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR) is a modified version of a rolling measure called the Federal Graduation Rate (FGR). The Federal Graduation Rate for a given year is the percentage of an incoming freshmen class that graduates at that institution within six years of entry, averaged with the three classes that preceded it. The FGR does not count any player who transferred to another university and graduated or otherwise left the university. The NCAA’s measure, GSR, tries to account for the fact that lots of athletes transfer to other universities, and, at least in a few sports, enter the professional leagues. So, in short, the GSR is in some ways, an inflated version of the Federal Graduation Rate, where an athlete can get counted as “graduated” as long as they leave the university in good academic standing. It almost makes sense, but since it’s the NCAA’s preferred metric, we’ll roll with it.  (ed. note: see our previous article this morning for Matt’s take on the value of graduation rates to the NCAA)

Now, because of the six year window that both rates use to count graduation, the numbers that were released this year deal with the players who entered a given university between 2001-02 and 2004-05.  So, while these numbers can give a good indicator in the general direction a program is heading, the data isn’t particularly timely.  Still, looking at the past and looking at how the data is trending can give a useful glimpse into the present.

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As you probably know, the Academic Progress Rating (APR) has made the news a lot lately largely because of a new NCAA rule that would exact postseason bans for teams not up to snuff academically (in the form of a 930 threshold score). Defending national champion Connecticut wouldn’t have made last year’s tournament with the stricter guideline and there was some speculation that the Huskies might not be allowed to defend their title as a result (this has since been resolved; the new threshold and punishments will go into effect next season).

Basketball writer Joe Giglio started tweeting North Carolina schools’ relative graduation rates Tuesday afternoon, sparking quite a conversation on the merit of graduation rate as an acceptable method for evaluating a school’s worth. Duke led the ACC in both general population graduation (94%) and overall athlete graduation (81%), which are phenomenal numbers. However, Giglio’s alma mater NC State only graduated 72% of its general population and 54% of its athletes (worst in the ACC in both categories). All percentages were calculated using a six-year window.

Are NC State's Low Graduation Rates Cause For Concern?

On a national scale, these numbers actually aren’t low. According to a USA Today study from 2009, the national average for four-year colleges is to graduate 53% of its students in six years — which is roughly on par with NC State’s average for athletes and much lower than its overall student body. That number is shockingly low. Even compared with fellow BCS schools, NC State compares favorably (#35 out of 67 schools) and the Wolfpack would be ranked third and fourth in the Big 12 and SEC, respectively.

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On the heels of NCAA president Mark Emmert advocating up to a $2,000 stipend to cover some of the costs of living, the Associated Press reports that more than 300 college athletes at Georgia Tech, Arizona, UCLA, Kentucky and Purdue signed a petition to ask for a percentage of the television revenue from skyrocketing deals. They sent the petition in to the NCAA last week.  But this petition wasn’t just about padding student-athlete wallets — the signers want to see a portion of television revenues put into an “educational lock box” to help basketball and football players pay for future education once their eligibility is exhausted. That said, the petition also called for players to get the money “with no strings attached” upon graduating.  Yellow Jacket freshman defensive end Denzel McCoy summed up athletes’ discontent well: “The things we go through, the hours we put in, what our bodies go through, we deserve some sort of (results).”

NCAA President Mark Emmert Has A Player Petition On His Desk. (Credit: Nick Laham/Getty Images)

I, for one, think this is a terrific idea. Clearly, the fine economic details will need to be worked out, but using money to promote graduation and further education might be a way to keep players in school. The NCAA’s mission is to educate athletes. Unfortunately for a select few basketball and football stars, there are only potential injuries awaiting an extra year or two of college eligibility. While the money wouldn’t be nearly enough to compete with professional salaries, the lock box would at least begin to balance the scales.

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We promise to make our foray into jurisprudence short, but did you ever wonder why the American system of governance has been copied worldwide for the better part of two centuries? Even if in practice what it means to be an American hasn’t always withstood scrutiny, the underlying basic principles and tenets of the United States as written into its Constitution remain an ideal the entire planet respects and admires. Our system implies a certain contract between the government and its people — essentially, that you’re guaranteed a fair shake when it comes to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  This is one reason why the Founding Fathers wrote in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution that “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”  In terms of criminal law, it essentially meant that the Congress (or states, per Section 10) couldn’t go around changing legal consequences on people they don’t like after they’ve already been punished for it  — or, in simpler terms, tacking on another 20 years to someone’s sentence after they’ve already received a sentence of ten.  With some exceptions, ex post facto laws are generally verboten in America and around the world, and with good reason — they create politically charged after-the-fact situations where there should be none.

Will the NCAA End UConn's Repeat Bid Before It Starts?

Defending national champion Connecticut probably feels like the NCAA is channeling Chairman Mao given president Mark Emmert’s comments to the Knight Commission on Monday suggesting that the NCAA is considering a plan that would immediately raise the Academic Progress Rate (APR) threshold for postseason eligibility to 900.  You read that correctly — the NCAA’s Board of Directors will vote to consider the institution of an APR minimum that could keep schools out of March Madness a mere five months from now. Needless to say, UConn men’s basketball, sporting a not-quite-good-enough 893 in its four-year rolling APR average, is feeling a little unfairly singled out right now. School president Susan Herbst responded by diplomatically asking for more time:

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