1. Pac-12 coordinator of officials Ed Rush resigned on Thursday after it was revealed he put a bounty on Arizona head coach Sean Miller during last month’s Pac-12 Tournament. Multiple officials said that Rush offered $5,000 or a trip to Cancun if any official gave a technical to Miller during the tourney. The Wildcat coach ended up receiving his first T of the season in UA’s semifinal against UCLA, a game the Wildcats lost by two points. Conference commissioner Larry Scott announced earlier in the week that Rush’s comments were made “in jest” and that he wouldn’t be fired because of them. But after much national scrutiny and heat, Rush took care of things himself and avoided what would have likely been a mutiny among Pac-12 referees.
2. Although an official announcement will not come until Monday, former Oregon State point guard Gary Payton will be elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame this year. While in Corvallis, Payton was named the Sports Illustrated college basketball player of the year in the 1989-90 season. He also holds the Seattle SuperSonics’ franchise records in points, assists, and steals, and finished his career as a nine-time NBA all-star.
3. Coming as a bit of a surprise yesterday was news coming out of Los Angeles that  UCLA has extended athletic director Dan Guerrero‘s contract through 2019. The extension comes on the heels of Guerrero’s hiring of new basketball coach Steve Alford, who comes from New Mexico fresh off a 29-6 record. He will receive $734,774 in base pay, with a 5% raise each year of the contract. Bonuses tied to academic and athletic achievements will also be available.
4. Speaking of Alford, he’s got until April 29 to pay a $1 million buyout to New Mexico. Alford had just agreed to a new 10-year deal with the Lobos that would have been worth around $2 million a year. Under the new agreement, if Alford took another job prior to April 1, 2015, he or his new employer would owe the school $1 million. As the article states, UCLA officials said that Alford is responsible for the buyout, but that UCLA would help him work out the details.
5. Jeff Goodman and CBS Sports released its initial list of postseason transfers from around the nation yesterday, and four of the 100 who were revealed will be leaving a Pac-12 institution. Junior shooting guard Jeremy Adams will be leaving Tad Boyle and Colorado, while Washington sophomore Martin Bruenig, who would have been in line for an increase in minutes in 2013-14, will also be departing. The other pair of transfers are freshmen; Kaileb Rodriguez of California and Justin Seymour of Utah.

1. We are nearly at the finish line as we have whittled the field down to four. The Regional games were not exactly things of beauty as outside of two games (Michigan-Kansas and Ohio State-Arizona) the games were not particularly exciting. Hopefully next weekend provides a little more drama, but there should be no shortage of story lines with one semifinal pitting Syracuse against Michigan (possibly Boeheim’s last run and Michigan’s first trip since the Fab 5) and Louisville against Wichita State (winning for Kevin Ware and the Cinderella trying to make history). We are sure that more story lines will come out as the week progresses, but we hope that they aren’t in the form of investigative journalism revealing some scandal.
2. And the coaching carousel goes around and around. The big domino from the weekend was Steve Alford backing out of his brand new 10-year extension at New Mexico to take over at UCLA. Of course, that opens up a spot at New Mexico where the school is looking for a replacement. If Alex Kirk has any say in it the next coach of the Lobos will be Craig Neal as Kirk has reportedly threatened to graduate over the summer and transfer to UCLA if Neal is not named the next coach of the Lobos. UCLA may have landed its man, but Minnesota has not found a coach yet as they were rebuffed by Flip Sanders.  Meanwhile former Minnesota coach Tubby Smith is reportedly under consideration to be the next coach at Texas Tech (must have something for former Kentucky coaches). With USC reportedly targeting Andy Enfield we could likely see another spot open up although we doubt that Dunk City will be that attractive of an opening despite their run this year.
3. The coaching carousel may have dominated the off-court news, but the bombshell of the weekend came from Arsalan Kazemi who claimed that Rice Athletic Director Rick Greenspan repeatedly directed racist comments at Kazemi and two other players from the Middle East while Kazemi was at Rice. That treatment was reportedly the basis for the hardship waivers that Kazemi and another player (Omar Oraby) used transfer to Oregon and USC respectively without having to sit out a year. Kazemi is not talking about those comments at this time, but in documents obtained by Sports Illustrated he claimed that Greenspan repeatedly referred to the Axis of Evil and Al-Queda when talking to the players. Rice, which obviously didn’t support the hardship waivers, has come out and strongly denied these claims, but it is not a good look for any organization much less an institution of higher learning. The NCAA has also refused to discuss the case citing privacy concerns, but we would hope that they did a decent amount of investigating before granting a waiver for such a claim.
4. The decision by Ryan Harrow to transfer from Kentucky should not come as much of a surprise given his poor play this season and the tsunami of talent coming into Lexington next season that would essentially eliminate his minutes. While Harrow’s decision to transfer to Georgia State raised a few eyebrows initially it made much more sense when he revealed his reason for transferring there was to be closer to his father who is still recovering from a stroke. Harrow will reportedly attempt to use a family hardship waiver to avoid sitting out a year before playing for Georgia State. While we wish Harrow the best in his career and more importantly his father’s recovery the use of hardship waivers in situations like this feels strange to us. If your family member is doing so poorly that you need to move closer to assist with their care we aren’t sure how playing college basketball is going to help them recover.
5. The college basketball epicenter of the universe has probably been somewhere around Louisville, but if you are looking for the epicenter of college basketball recruiting you need to head east to Washington, DC as the area has produced a ridiculous amount of talent recently. The article focuses quite a bit on the famed 2004 All-Met team, but the talent extends well beyond that year. The amount of talent and the lack of success of some college teams in the area has become a hot button topic and is probably responsible for the firings of some coaches in the area. The level of talent also probably means that some potential sleepers could be found there who may not be quite NBA-level talents, but certainly good enough to play Division I and will have had experience playing against great talent even before they get to college.

Less than a week after he removed Ben Howland from his job as the UCLA head coach and after taking on a couple of strikes with his top two candidates, athletic director Dan Guerrero dug in and roped a solid line-drive single in hiring former New Mexico head coach Steve Alford. It is in no way a home run hire, but it is a workmanlike chance at bat. Maybe it turns into a forgettable event if there are strikeouts and pop-ups down the road, but if Alford and UCLA play their cards right, maybe this single is the start of a big inning.

The Hiring Of Steve Alford May Not Be The Home Run UCLA Fans Hoped For, But It Could Be The Start Of Big Things (AP)

To begin with, let’s put this idea of “UCLA should have just kept Howland” to bed. That was not an option, a change had to be made; it was a matter of finding the best possible new coach for the program, not a matter of finding a better coach than Howland. But, there are plenty of areas in which Alford compares negatively with Howland. For instance, it is true that Howland had more success in his brief pre-UCLA career (four years at Pitt, five at Northern Arizona) than Alford has had in his 18 years at his three previous stops. Despite getting to the NCAA Tournament three times at both Iowa and New Mexico, the only time Alford has made the Sweet Sixteen was in his final season at then Southwest Missouri State (now just Missouri State). Even more disturbing, that record comes despite some regular season success that four times earned him a five-seed or higher. So yeah, for a UCLA program that prizes success in March far more than success in the regular season, Guerrero just hired a guy with a shakier postseason record than Howland or his predecessor, Steve Lavin, who was fired after reaching five Sweet Sixteens in seven seasons.

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Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish each week throughout the season. In this piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…. the swag of the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles. Absurd (and questionably timed) alley-oops, the wing walk, tongues wagging, unknown jigs while running downcourt – it’s hard not to like the amount of fun that these kids have on the court, and they have the talent to back it up.

Florida Gulf Coast: the Story of the NCAA Tournament This Year

I LOVED…. Duke’s defense on Creighton. The Blue Devils didn’t play well in this one, but man did they defend. I thought Creighton got the exact pace they wanted and the ideal defensive effort to slow down Duke’s perimeter play, and it still didn’t matter. Duke just continued to bang with a relentless Doug McDermott and got the stops that allowed them to finally pull away when a few threes began to drop. That’s the kind of game you have to grind out in March, and they did it comfortably.

I LOVED…. that I don’t have to watch Marshall Henderson for another weekend (and believe me, I was worried there for a while). In case you were wondering, Henderson’s stats in the tourney were about as prolific as the regular season – 14-of-42 from the field (33%), and 7-of-27 on three-pointers (26%). I’d love to see the Ole Miss coach explain to his players why they would build their team next year around a guard that shoots too much, and not particularly well.

I LOVED…. the statement game. For me this was an easy one to pick – Michigan seemed to be fading a bit, but they put on an absolute clinic against a very talented VCU team and showed just how versatile they can be when freshman Mitch McGary can stay on the floor for an extended period of time. It opens up everything else for the Wolverines, and with Trey Burke dancing around the lane and Tim Hardaway, Jr., able to spot up, this looked like a squad ready to make a legit run.

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Andrew Murawa is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after the Round of 64 NCAA Tournament game between #3 New Mexico and #14 Harvard in Salt Lake City.

Three Key Takeaways.

1. The Great Equalizer. For a program with no NCAA Tournament wins in their history, you need a special performance to get your first. And if you ain’t got great size and athleticism, there’s one thing you can do make up for your weaknesses: knock down threes. And Harvard did that in abundance tonight, getting five threes from Laurent Rivard and three from Christian Webster, mostly all on drive-and-kick opportunities. But eight threes isn’t enough to pull off an upset of this size and the Crimson did plenty of other things to get themselves over the top. Perhaps it was in part due to the fact that some early threes opened things up inside for them, but as it turns out, Harvard wound up shooting 14-of-24 from inside the three-point arc, getting scoring from Wesley Saunders, Kenyatta Smith and Siyani Chambers inside. The three-point shooting will get the pub, but the Crimson played a complete game.
   

   Harvard players run off the bench and celebrate after beating New Mexico during a second round game in the NCAA college basketball tournament in Salt Lake City Thursday. (AP)

2. Inconsistent Scoring From Guards. I’ve harped on it all season long, but these New Mexico guards are awful hard to trust. When things are going good for them, the trio of Kendall Williams, Tony Snell and Hugh Greenwood are about as fine of a trio as you’ll find in college basketball. But when things aren’t going well, they can get hard to notice. Take Williams for example. You probably remember Williams going for 46, or maybe you remember him sending in a 360 dunk to seal the Lobos Mountain West tournament title game against UNLV. Or even an inexplicable MW Player of the Year award. Tonight he was nearly invisible en route to just eight points, along with no assists. And Snell? He was much better than Williams, but after the Mountain West tournament he was the toast of the town. Tonight just 4-of-12 shooting and 1-of-6 from deep for nine points. All told, the three New Mexico guards combined for 17 points on 21 field goal attempts with just four assists.
3. Mountain West Gone South. We’ve heard all about how the Mountain West is one of the best conference’s in the country, second in the RPI, deep and talented and with several teams capable of making runs in March. Well, to put it nicely, today was not a good day for the conference. The teams with arguably the best chances of making deep runs – New Mexico and UNLV – bowed out. Coupled with Boise State’s loss last night, the conference’s only bit of good news was Colorado State’s win over Missouri today. San Diego State plays tomorrow, but for a conference with an abysmal record in NCAA Tournament play, this has been a terribly depressing couple of days for the conference.

Star of the Game. Kenyatta Smith, Harvard. On a team built around a quick point guard and a bunch of three-point shooters, you need someone to do the dirty work, especially against a team with as much size inside as New Mexico features. And tonight, Smith did that dirty work with pride, standing up to Alex Kirk and Cameron Bairstow time and time again as the Lobos repeatedly tried to take advantage of the undersized Crimson inside. Kirk and Bairstow got their points, although not often in the 19 minutes Smith played, and Smith made them work for it. And, despite picking up his fourth foul early in the second half, Smith stuck around long enough to make some key plays down the stretch.

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We released the Official RTC Bracket for the South and East Regions earlier today — be sure to check that out if you need a refresher on our methodology for this exercise — and we’ll save you the fluff this time and cut right to the chase with the Midwest and West Regions. (note: our Final Four selections are after the analyses)

Quick Hitters From the Midwest Region

• Advancing to Atlanta: #1 Louisville
• Round of 64 Upset: #11 St. Mary’s over #6 Memphis
• Later Round Upset: N/A
• Three Most Disputed Games: #5 Oklahoma State over #12 Oregon, #11 St. Mary’s over #6 Memphis, #2 Duke over #3 Michigan State

Four Questions About the Midwest Region

Louisville is the odds-on favorite to not just advance out of the Midwest Region, but win the National Championship. Which team has the best chance at dashing Louisville’s title hopes?

Does Pitino Have Another One of These In His Immediate Future? (Getty Images)

Andrew Murawa: After giving the Cards the nod as the overall #1 seed, the selection committee certainly didn’t do them any more favors, dropping them in, what is to me, the toughest region in the bracket. Once they get out of the Round of 64 in this region, Rick Pitino’s club could be facing nothing but dangerous clubs, from the nation’s best rebounding team in Colorado State, to one of the nation’s hottest teams in Saint Louis, to possibly Michigan State or Duke in the Elite Eight. All of those teams can beat the Cards. But the team with the best chance is certainly the Blue Devils, a squad that has already beaten them this season, albeit without Gorgui Dieng.

The #8 vs. #9 game is usually a coin-flip type of game, but it is a 100% consensus that Colorado State beats Missouri. Are the Rams that much better than Missouri?

Zach Hayes: The Rams are by no means world-beaters, but the consensus opinion probably stems from their ability to compete where Missouri excels: on the boards. Colorado State ranks in the nation’s top two in both offensive and defensive rebounding, a glass-crashing tenacity which should work to negate the rebounding prowess of both Alex Oriakhi and Laurence Bowers. The confidence also resides in how shaky Missouri has been at the tail end of close games despite featuring an elite point guard in Phil Pressey. Most bracket prognosticators would rather go to war with a Rams team starting five seniors over Missouri’s constant unpredictability away from home, where their only scalps came against the dregs of the SEC.

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I. Renko is an RTC columnist and the author of the weekly column, The Other 26. Follow him on Twitter @IRenkoHoops.

Oh, well. What’s a royal ball? After all, I suppose it would be frightfully dull, and-and-and boring, and-and completely… Completely wonderful. — Cinderella

It’s time for college basketball’s annual ball, which means it’s time for America to fall in love with Cinderella all over again. There are 36 teams from the 26 non-power-conferences who have been invited to this year’s Big Dance, and while the slipper no longer fits for some of the more prominent of these schools, for the bulk of them, this is a rare opportunity to make a name for themselves on the grandest of stages.

This is the first of a two-part series taking a look at the NCAA Tournament prospects for all 36 teams hailing from The Other 26. We focus today on the TO26 teams in the South and West regions, grouping them into five rough categories, and, within each category, ordering them by their likelihood of advancing.

Regional Threats

These are the teams that have a credible chance of dancing all the way to the Sweet Sixteen and beyond.

Can Kelly Olynyk Lead the Zags to Their First Final Four?

• Gonzaga (#1, West) — It’s been five years since a TO26 team reached the top seed line. In 2008, Memphis rode its #1 seed all the way to the brink of a national championship, and Zags fans are hoping for the same — and perhaps more — this year. Gonzaga has no glaring weaknesses. They are led by an athletic, skilled frontcourt, the centerpiece of which is NPOY candidate Kelly Olynyk. They get steady guard play from Kevin Pangos, Gary Bell, and David Stockton. If they’re to run into any trouble, it will likely be against a team that (1) sports a strong, athletic interior defense that can contain Olynyk, Elias Harris, and Sam Dower and pound the glass, and (2) can hit the three-point shot consistently, as Illinois did in beating them (Gonzaga’s defense allows a lot of three-point attempts). There are a fair number of teams that meet the first criteria in the West bracket, but not many with a lot offensive firepower from the three-point line or otherwise. In short, this is as good a shot as Gonzaga has ever had to make the Final Four. The eyes of the nation will be watching to see if they can make good on their promise.
• Virginia Commonwealth (#5, South) — VCU is a popular sleeper pick for the Final Four, and there’s some merit to that notion, but here is the most important thing you need to know about them: They are 25-2 on the year (and 14-0 in A-10 play) against teams with a turnover rate over 18 percent. And they are 1-6 (and 0-5 in A-10 play) against teams with a turnover rate under 18 percent. The Rams’ first-round opponent, Akron, falls squarely in the former camp (20.8 percent), a problem for the Zips that will be exacerbated by the absence of their legally-troubled starting point guard, Alex Abreu. After that, things get a bit trickier for the Rams. Their two potential Third Round opponents, Michigan and South Dakota State, rank in the top 10 in the country in turnover rate. Those stats are perhaps somewhat inflated by the fact that both teams play in conferences that don’t feature a lot of pressure defenses, but if you’re looking for a point guard to lead you against such a defense, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better option than Trey Burke or Nate Wolters. It’s true that Michigan has struggled lately in general, and that if you look ahead to a potential match-up with Kansas in the Sweet Sixteen, Havoc’s odds of success improve, but I’d caution against over-exuberance at the Rams’ chances given a potentially dicey Third Round contest.

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In a season where the #1 ranked team in the country fluctuated almost weekly, Louisville is the top team in the final RTC25 this year. In fact, the Cardinals are the consensus #1 team after their very strong showing at the Big East Tournament last week. This isn’t the first time Louisville has been ranked as the top dog, though. After a 15-1 start they were ranked #1 for a brief stint in Week 9, but then three straight losses knocked them off their pedestal. Around the poll, it took them a while to climb back up the rankings, but New Mexico has finally cracked the Top 10. The Lobos were stellar all season in the competitive Mountain West, finishing with a 13-3 conference record and winning the MW Tournament. Further down in the RTC25, North Carolina sneaks in with Colorado State as the two last teams. It has been an up-and-down year for the Heels, but they are playing their best ball of the year at the right time.

More good stuff with the Quick n’ Dirty after the jump…

Quick n’ Dirty Analysis.

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Throughout Monday, we will roll out our region-by-region analysis on the following schedule: East (9 AM), Midwest (11 AM), South (1 PM), West (3 PM). Here, Andrew Murawa (@amurawa) breaks down the West Region from top to bottom. Also, be sure to follow our RTC West Region handle on Twitter for continuous updates the next two weeks (@RTCwestregion).

You can also check out our RTC Podblast with Andrew breaking down the West Region, which will drop both on the site and on iTunes Tuesday.

West Region

Favorite: #2 Ohio State (26-7, 16-5 Big Ten). Not to take anything away from Gonzaga, a team and a program that should be very pleased with itself for the excellent season it has had, but the Buckeyes get the nod by an eyelash. While the Zags have been coasting through WCC play for the past couple months, Thad Matta’s club has dealt with the gauntlet of the Big Ten and emerged with an eight-game winning streak, boasting wins over teams like Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan State (twice). Aaron Craft, a veteran guard with plenty of great basketball in his past, is probably playing the best ball of his distinguished career. And guys like LaQuinton Ross, Sam Thompson and Lenzelle Smith are tossing in just enough offense to aid big-time scorer Deshaun Thomas. Throw in the nation’s sixth-best team in defensive efficiency and let’s make the battle-tested Buckeyes a slight favorite to repeat as a Final Four team.

Aaron Craft and The Buckeyes Have Been Through The Big Ten Gauntlet, Making Them The Slight West Regional Favorite

Should They Falter: #1 Gonzaga (31-2, 18-0 WCC). It would be easy to play the contrarian here and offer up plenty of backlash to the Bulldogs’ first-ever #1 seed and name New Mexico – a pretty darn good team in their own right – as the next best team in this region. But make no mistake, Gonzaga can ball. With Kelly Olynyk, a first-team All-American favorite, the Zags have the third-most efficient offense in the nation and Mark Few’s best offensive team in his time in Spokane. And while there are some concerns about the Zags’ ability to match up defensively with big and athletic guards, this is a team that is also Few’s most efficient defensive team ever – by far. While there are plenty of potential stumbling blocks (regardless of who they face in the Round of 32, that looks like a serious rumble, for instance), the Zags definitely have the ability to reach an Elite Eight. Or better. Read the rest of this entry »

Championship Week reached a crescendo on the eve of Selection Sunday, as thirteen automatic bids were handed out. As each of the 31 automatic qualifiers plays their way into the Dance over the next week, we’ll take some time to give you an analytical snapshot of each team that you can refer back to when you’re picking your brackets this week.

Albany

How About A Court Storming On An Opponent’s Home Floor? Completely Legal, Especially If A Trip To The Big Dance Is On The Line. Congratulations Albany.

• America East Champion (24-10, 12-7)
• RPI/Pomeroy/Sagarin = #143/#152/#172
• Adjusted Scoring Margin = +2.0
• Likely NCAA Seed: #16

 Three Bruce Pearls of Wisdom.

1. It’s been a rollercoaster of a year for Albany, but Saturday’s ticket-punching win at Vermont means the ride will roll on to the Big Dance. The America East champs put together an impressive 11-3 non-conference campaign that included a win at Washington, but conference play proved trying for Will Brown’s team, as a 9-7 finish left them as the fourth seed in the America East tournament. Albany lived the familiar March mantra “survive and advance” to the fullest this week, winning three games by a total of eight points to earn the bid.
2. In a fashion quite typical for these Great Danes, Albany won games this week in which they scored 50, 61 and 53 points, respectively – not exactly “grab some popcorn and take in the show” territory here. The tempo is predictably slow (279^th nationally), and with national ranks of 170^th offensively and 144^th defensively, Albany is very much middle of the road on both ends of the floor. Where the Great Danes do excel is on the glass. They are an above average offensive rebounding team and rank 40^th nationally in collecting caroms on the defensive end, aided in part by a relatively big lineup, especially for the America East.
3. The Albany offensive blueprint is not especially refined, but they rely heavily on a small senior duo of three-point shooters. 6’0” Mike Black leads the Danes in scoring at 15 a contest and towers over his backcourt mate, 5’10” Jacob Iati, who chips in 12.2 PPG. The two have combined to make 139 threes this season, and they would be well served to keep chucking come next week, because unless Albany gets slotted for the First Four in Dayton, it will take a hot shooting night and then some (and then some more, and some more…) to keep the Danes surviving and advancing.

Memphis

Rulers Of Conference USA For The Final Time, Memphis Is Dancing Again

• Conference USA Champion (30-4, 19-0)
• RPI/Pomeroy/Sagarin = #15/#38/#27
• Adjusted Scoring Margin = +12.0
• Likely NCAA Seed: #7-#9

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