1. Conference realignment doesn’t always guarantee that traditional rivalries will continue in the future. But some schools have made a diligent effort to continue the rivalry games. Illinois and Missouri in particular have renewed their “Braggin’ Rights” game through 2017. Illinois has won 20 of the last 31 games in this series but has been dominated lately by the up-tempo Missouri teams. The rivalry game might not be at the same level of Duke – UNC but it certainly has a great history and matters to both the programs as the annual game is held in St. Louis. Missouri will be the favorite to win this season as the Tigers have been ranked in several Top 25s, while Illinois is just trying to recover from a disastrous season that ended up with a 17-15 record.
2. Minnesota coach Tubby Smith may lose one of his star players again for an extended period during the season. Forward Trevor Mbakwe is scheduled for a probation hearing on Friday and may potentially face additional jail time. Mbakwe is on probation in Florida for an assault charge from 2009. The redshirt senior was arrested earlier this summer for a DUI which forced Smith to question his status on the team for the upcoming season. Mbakwe was awarded a medical redshirt after missing most of last season with an injury but may not be allowed to play a full season (if any) if sentenced for jail time on Friday. Smith has not had a full season where one of his star players stayed out of trouble off the court or stayed healthy in a couple of seasons.
3. Ohio State’s Aaron Craft understands that you don’t always need to put up 15-20 points per game to have an impact on the game. Craft is considered to be one of the best defenders in the game and approaches basketball from a different angle than most other players. He talked to Sporting News about why basketball is a thinking man’s game. The junior guard only averaged 8.8 PPG last season but his value to Ohio State may not be measured using any statistics. He can dictate the tempo of the game and control the direction of the game by forcing key turnovers throughout. Craft has been working on his offensive game during the offseason and will be expected to look for his shot a little bit more than the past with the departures of Jared Sullinger and William Buford.
4. Last weekend, top 30 recruit Xavier Rathan-Mayes passed over Illinois to play for Leonard Hamilton at Florida State. A few days later, another top 50 recruit passed over another Big Ten school, this time Michigan State, to play at Missouri in 2013. Jonathan Williams III, a 6’8″ forward, will play at Missouri rather than for Tom Izzo. Williams’ commitment could have helped Izzo in convincing the top high school recruit, Jabari Parker, to come to East Lansing next season. Parker is scheduled to visit Michigan State this weekend, his first visit out of the five schools over the next month. He is supposed to announce his decision in mid-December.
5. Speaking of recruiting,  Tom Crean continues to be active on the recruiting trail despite having the best team in America per the preseason rankings. Five-star recruit Noah Vonleh has trimmed his final list of potential schools to six and Indiana is one of those institutions. Vonleh is a top 20 recruit in the Class of 2013 and will visit Bloomington in November. His other schools are Connecticut, Ohio State, Georgetown, North Carolina and Syracuse. All-American Cody Zeller will probably leave for the NBA after this season and a top recruit like Vonleh should keep Tom Crean’s foundation strong in Bloomington as he marches towards reviving Indiana as a perennial powerhouse program again in college hoops.

1. If you’re in the market for an experienced scorer just a few weeks before practice begins and you missed out on the extremely late and unanticipated transfers of Xavier’s Dez Wells and Rice’s Arsalan Kazemi, you might still be in luck. Washington State shooting guard Reggie Moore was dismissed from his team on Monday for an undisclosed “violation of team rules,” effectively ending his career in Pullman and making him an immediate free agent for a team in need of some help. Even if Moore were able to find a school with an open scholarship at this late date, it’s unlikely he’d be eligible for the upcoming season anyway; but, Moore has shown flashes of offensive pop (10.7 PPG) and good play-making acumen (4.4 APG) in his three years at Wazzu. Whether Moore will be able to clean up his act (he was suspended in 2011 for marijuana possession) is another story, but sometimes the incentive of a last, best chance in a new environment is what it takes.
2. On Monday ESPNU announced its television schedule for this year’s Midnight Madness whirlwind, scheduled to begin at 5 PM on October 12, which, if you’re scoring at home, is a shade over 17 days from now. The broadcast will begin at likely preseason #1 Indiana with an actual nuts-and-bolts practice rather than the fan frenzy Hoosier Hysteria (scheduled for one week later), and will be followed by a studio show peeking in on 12 other prominent programs including Kentucky, Missouri, Baylor, North Carolina, Georgetown, NC State, Syracuse, Murray State, Pittsburgh, Maryland, Florida State and Kansas. While we’re absolutely thrilled to have college basketball in any form coming back in two weeks and change, can we strongly encourage the producers at ESPNU to focus predominantly on the action on the floor at these schools rather than endlessly talking at us in the studio? There will be plenty of time for that as we get closer to the start of the season.
3. In yesterday’s M5 we mentioned a piece by Gregg Doyel excoriating the NCAA for its presumed lack of interest in aggressively investigating the allegations involving Lance Thomas’ 2009 trip to a New York City jeweler. In the interest of equal time, today it’s North Carolina‘s turn. AOL Fanhouse‘s David Whitley doesn’t break any new ground in his scathing piece against the governing body (and his missive could be premature, depending on what the Martin Report shows), but the way in which he frames the NCAA’s lack of interest in the school’s academic scandal is amusing. Whitley’s best line: “The fact a basketball power like UConn got nailed shows that the NCAA is somewhat serious about putting the student in student-athlete. The fact UNC skated shows that the NCAA is still the NCAA. It wrote the manual on double standards and arbitrary justice. In fact, NCAA officials could teach a course on those subjects. If they taught it at North Carolina, it would be in front of an empty room.” The NCAA is an easy target to pile on — everyone knows that — but its weirdly inconsistent usage of precedent given very similar sets of facts is without question confounding.
4. With rumors persisting that Class of 2014 superstar prep player Andrew Wiggins will reclassify to the Class of 2013 soon, one of his peers beat him to the idea. Noah Vonleh, a 6’8″ power forward who was considered a top five player in his class, has performed enough academic work at New Hampton School (NH) to reclassify as a senior for the current academic year. ESPN.com‘s Dave Telep reports on the move and says that Vonleh compares favorably with some of the elite players in his new class, rating him as ESPNU’s #7 overall player in the Class of 2013. This is actually the second reclassification for the 17-year old in that this move represents Vonleh’s return to his original class, so let’s hope that he’s finished moving around so that some lucky suitor — Indiana, Ohio State and UNC have recruited him the hardest — will have him in uniform just over a year from now.
5. It’s nothing new that Butler’s Brad Stevens is a prominent user of advanced statistical metrics as a tool to understanding his team’s strengths and weaknesses. This article by WISH-TV in Indianapolis explains that one of Stevens’ directives for this offseason was for his staff (led by statistical wunderkind Drew Cannon) to determine what kind of RPI the Bulldogs will need heading into conference play to ensure an NCAA Tournament bid now that they’ve moved to the more competitive Atlantic 10. People game the system in all kinds of different ways — some ethical, some not — but we get the feeling that coaches like Stevens and Buzz Williams are so far ahead of their competitors in this regard that it’s astonishing to us that the rest of the coaching lemmings haven’t already fallen in line.

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Each week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are in the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we’re missing, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com. 

Introduction

From another recruiting scandal to new developments on an old recruiting scandal, this week has been full of news and headlines in the high school basketball world and also includes the best class of 2012 guard in the country de-committing. There have been several updates as well on top prospects from sophomores to seniors regarding their favorite schools and numerous guys have continued to step up their performances throughout the AAU circuit.  Let’s take a deeper look…

What We Learned 

Rodney Purvis (#7) is considering Duke, Kentucky, Louisville and North Carolina State after de-committing.

Louisville Loses Purvis. In a somewhat expected move, the best Class of 2012 guard in the country, shooting guard Rodney Purvis (#7), backed out of his commitment to Louisville after assistant coach Tim Fuller left to take a job at Missouri. However, Louisville has brought in a new assistant coach, Kevin Keatts, who has coached many guys from Purvis’ AAU team and has done well recruiting in the Raleigh area, Purvis’ hometown. Before he chose the Cardinals, Purvis considered Duke, Kentucky, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest and Xavier, among others, but has already come out with a new list featuring Duke and Kentucky (again), Louisville (still), and North Carolina State. North Carolina and Missouri are also expected to jump in because Purvis is an RTP native and has obvious ties with the Tigers since their new assistant coach is the reason he chose the Cardinals orginally. Purvis said he’ll be looking for a stable coaching situation and a strong relationship with a staff going forward (to see the rest of Purvis’ comments, check out the “What They’re Saying” section below) and that he hasn’t ruled out Louisville. Another thing to note is that he hasn’t yet talked to new NC State head coach Mark Gottfried. 

High School Powerhouse Oak Hill Adds Elite Shooting Guard. In a surprising move, Class of 2012 shooting guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera (#32) will be transferring from North Central High School (IN) to powerhouse Oak Hill Academy (VA) for his senior season. Smith-Rivera will be joining an already talented squad that has junior wings Jordan Adams (#50) and Damien Wilson as well as center A.J. Hammons (#48). The news was confirmed Saturday night by his mother, Kelana Rivera, but shocked North Central head coach Doug Mitchell (see the “What They’re Saying” section below). Smith-Rivera was a three-year starter and played a key role in North Central’s 2010 state championship. He committed to Xavier last year but later de-committed and told us that Texas, Baylor, UCLA and Georgetown are his favorites right now. He also hasn’t made any public statements about this transfer but Rivera cited playing for Oak Hill head coach Steve Smith and the good opportunity to prepare for college as to why he’s doing so.

Tony Wroten, Jr., Involved In Academic Scandal. Just one week after the Kevin Ware and UCF recruiting scandal, the Seattle Times discovered that the Garfield High School (WA) athletic director in 2010, Jim Valiere, had given Class of 2011 point guard Tony Wroten Jr. (#14 – Washington) and another star athlete passing grades in a Spanish class that never existed. Wroten, Jr., and the other student, Valentino Coleman, told an investigator that Valiere did little more than occasionally quiz them in the hallway last year. The UW commitment needed the class since it requires two years of foreign language credits to enroll. Now you would think that after an investigation discovered this incident, the Athletic Director would try to keep his hands clean, but right after this he created a tiny three-person remedial Spanish class taught by a substitute teachers specifically for Wroten, Jr. This class was district-approved but keep in mind that Garfield High School is already overcrowded and is cutting teachers due to the economy like everyone else. Despite all of this controversy and scandal, if Wroten, Jr., passes his final semester of Spanish this school year, the situation will not affect his UW eligibility, school officials said.

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