Another week has started, and we’re within one week of the NBA Draft withdrawal deadline, so let’s see who’s returning…

• LSU’s Tasmin Mitchell will return to Baton Rouge for his senior season (smart move).
• Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds is leaning toward a return to the Main Line for his senior year (also a smart move).
• Arizona’s Nic Wise will also return for his senior season (a wise move, indeed).
• Miami (FL)’s Dwayne Collins has wisened up and will also be back for his senior season (yep, these guys are getting it).
• Memphis players continue to jump ship, with Shawn Taggart now deciding to forgo his senior season (not a great move, but he’s already 24 and who knows what penalties Memphis may face next season).
• Tennessee’s Tyler Smith is still thinking about returning, but he’s also considering going to Europe to start his professional career.  While on the subject of collegians moving to Europe, Luke Winn explores the issue a little further in the context of Nick Calathes’ decision to play in Greece.
• Wake Forest’s Jeff Teague injured his knee in a workout last week, but is expected to remain in the first round and therefore will most likely stay in the draft.

Some other news bouncing around the early summer months…

• Memphis made its defense to the NCAA on Saturday, and we pretty much agree with most of what Gary Parrish writes here.  Details are scarce as to what was actually said at the hearing, but Kentucky’s John Calipari did phone in from China, and Memphis official stated on the record that they feel that they’d made their case to the NCAA.  Not sure what else they could say in that spot though.  Memphis should hear something from the NCAA in 6-8 weeks.
• The Shane Battier Memorial Rule will be in effect beginning next season.  Wonderful.
• We really don’t have a good feeling about the long-term prospects of Josh Pastner at Memphis.  Nothing against the kid, but Calipari is just too tough of a situation there to follow.  He’s showing his recruiting chops already, but can he coach?
• In a cost-cutting measure, three Big Ten schools (Michigan, Ohio St., Wisconsin) are eliminating their annual media guides for their sports teams.  We’d expect this to be a major trend in the next few months nationwide.   The NCAA is also lending a hand by suspending members’ dues this upcoming year.
• A Tennessee congressman named Steve Cohen is petitioning the NBA to change its “one-and-done” rule.  Interesingly, his district includes Memphis, who is of course dealing with the Derrick Rose fiasco.  Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt took offense at some of Cohen’s comments about his former player, Thaddeus Young, and is now demanding an apology.
• Former Razorback Patrick Beverley threw Arkansas under the bus in an interview with DraftExpress when he said, “Someone from Arkansas was doing papers, was doing me and some of my teammates’ papers…”
• UK countersues Billy Gillispie.  This could be really fun.
• Gary Parrish explores Billy Donovan’s thoughts on the Orlando Magic making the NBA Finals two years after he backed out of his commitment to coach that team.
• In a bit of a shock, Fairleigh Dickinson fired head coach Tom Green after 26 years of loyal service, including four NCAA Tournament appearances and 407 wins at the school.
• UT-Martin’s head coach, Bret Campbell, resigned after an internal audit found that he had deposited $20k in basketball camp checks directly into his personal account.

Yesterday the pairings for the 2009 ACC/Big 10 Challenge were announced, and cries of rejoice went up from Iowa City through Evanston over to State College as the Big 10 schools realized that they have a fighting chance at actually winning their first Challenge in the eleven years of its existence.   Let’s take a look at the matchups and show you the games where the land-grant institutions (+NW) from the midwest can actually make this happen.

Penn St. @ Virginia – PSU is coming off of an NIT Championship and will return its best player, Talor Battle, along with a strong corps of juniors.  UVa will still be learning new coach Tony Bennett’s system.  This is a winnable road game for the Big Ten, and PSU will win it.

Maryland @ Indiana – Assuming Greivis Vasquez returns to school (he should), Maryland should be able to pull away from Indiana relatively easily.  Even moreso if they nab Lance Stephenson.  Tom Crean has a nice recruiting class coming in, but it’s heavy on volume, not stars, and Maryland should get this one.

Michigan St. @ UNC – Goodness, haven’t we seen enough of this already?  We don’t care who UNC loses or Michigan St. keeps.  It’s in Chapel Hill, and even that doesn’t matter.  UNC wins.

Northwestern @ NC State – NW wasn’t terribly far from being an NCAA team this year, and they return most everyone; NC State was pretty far from it and they may lose Brandon Costner.  The gut says this is a winnable game for the Wildcats, but you never know with those guys.  If the Big Ten expects to win this year’s challenge, though, they’ll need this one, so we’re giving it to them.

Virginia Tech @ Iowa – Todd Lickliter’s extremely young team should make a leap of progress next season, but we’re still not sure they’re ready for Malcolm Delaney and Jeff Allen.  ACC gets the road win.

Wake Forest @ Purdue – Best game of the Challenge, with two black/gold teams taking each other on.  While Wake has proven it can look dominant in November/December before crumbling in February/March, Purdue will be super-jacked for this one.  Look for Hummell and Moore to outplay Teague and Aminu as the home team wins.

BC @ Michigan – In Y2 of John Beilein’s rebuild in Ann Arbor, he worked miracles.  Next year his best two players (Harris and Sims) return, and Crisler Arena will become a place nobody wants to play.  Big 10 win.

Duke @ Wisconsin – these are the games where the home team camps out for weeks in anticipation of beating the Devils, only to watch as Duke eviscerates said home team by 18 pts in the first half on their way to a laugher.  Wisconsin will think it can win this game; Duke knows better.

Florida St. @ Ohio St. – For the first time in four years, OSU won’t be bringing in some 7-foot top recruit, but they won’t need it because they’re bringing back everyone else, including star Evan Turner.  FSU will lose their star Toney Douglas and Uche Echefu, and while they’ll be very good next year, they’ll still be adjusting to life without those players at that time.  OSU at home gets the W.

Illinois @ Clemson – This game is a tossup because both teams bring back a substantial amount of talent as well as bring in strong recruiting classes.  We have a feeling that Illinois is about to become relevant nationally again, but we’re not sure Clemson is ready to cede their spotlight.  Especially in December, when Clemson excels.  We’re going with the home team here.

Minnesota @ Miami (FL) – Tubby welcomes back every player of consequence from an NCAA squad while bringing in a top 12 recruitng class.   Miami isn’t that tough to play at anyway, but especially when Frank Haith loses three of his top five players (incl. Jack McClinton).  Minnesota wins.

There you have it.  Final results (projected):

Big Ten: 6
ACC: 5

The key tossup games in our eyes are Northwestern @ NC State and Illinois @ Clemson.  The Big Ten will need to win one of those two to supplant the ACC for the title of this challenge for the first time in, um, ever.

Welcome back.  The RTC Braintrust got together tonight and hammered out our 32 first round winners for the RTC Modern Bracket, one step closer to picking the team that we believe is the very best squad of the last quarter-century.

A reminder: we used resume/body of work to select and seed our 64 finalists, but that criterion now takes a step back to how we think teams would perform in head-to-head matchups.  So if your favorite team won a title but had a relatively weak inside game, don’t be surprised if a runner-up or at-large from another year with superb inside play knocks you out of the bracket.  Yes, we’re looking at you, Illinois fans.

Quick analysis of the numbers: fourteen of our 24 national champions survived the first round, but only eight of our runners-up made it through their first game.  Ten of our sixteen at-large teams also survived.

And now, the updated bracket through the first round of matchups, with brief explanations of how we analyzed each game below.

Instant Analysis

#1 Duke 1992 def. #16 Indiana 2002 – Coach K’s best team picked apart the Cinderella Hoosiers while the two Hills – Thomas and Grant – made life miserable for Jared Jeffries.

#8 Arizona 1988 def. #9 Maryland 2002 –   In a very close contest, Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott got it done from the perimeter despite Juan Dixon’s heroics to keep Maryland in the game.

#12 Arizona 1998 def. #5 Kansas 2008 – Upset Alert!  The defending champs led by Mike Bibby, Miles Simon and Michael Dickerson, took care of a Kansas team that could not bottle up the Arizona guards (think 2.5 Derrick Roses).

#13 St. John’s 1985 def. #4 Arkansas 1994 – Arkansas didn’t want to face a team with a superb PG in this matchup, and they faced one of the best of his generation in Mark Jackson.  Jackson continually hit Chris Mullin and Walter Berry for open looks to pull off the upset over the national champion Hawgs.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been sitting on this idea for some time now, and we figured that the relatively quiet week prior to the 2009 Final Four would be the best time to unveil it for your vetting, review and diligence.  So the plan is this: each weekday we’ll advance one round until we get to a Modern Era Final Four on Friday.  On Sunday following the F4, we’ll release our two finalists and the Modern Era champion will be crowned on this year’s Championship Monday.

Let’s get down to it with our criteria for selection of the 64 teams:

• We selected the 24 national champions (noted in black).
• Next, we selected the 24 national runners-up (noted in blue-gray)
• Finally, we selected the 16 best at-large teams of the last 24 years (noted in red).

You’re undoubtedly wondering how we chose the last group of sixteen at-large teams, and that’s a fair question.  There was no single measure (such as making the F4) that guaranteed inclusion to or exclusion from our at-large field, but we considered each team’s body of work in a particular season when doing so.  Criteria such as overall record, conference record, AP poll ranking, NCAA seed, postseason success, general reputation at the time, and team history were included.  Similar to selecting and seeding the field every year, the last few teams looked largely the same on paper and in our memories.  Some of them will without question inspire debate, but that’s ok, because the point of this entire exercise is to do so.

The same is true for how we seeded each team in the field.  As much as possible, we tried to stay away from the Team A would beat Team B analysis (that’s next!), focusing mostly on the team’s full body of work.  Of course, comparing teams between eras and even years is nearly impossible in many cases, so there’s a fair amount of subjectiveness that went into the seed placements.  Bear with us on that.  Additionally, as much as possible, we tried to avoid early-round matchups between the same school and teams from the same season, while still keeping a reasonable amount of competitive balance among the regions.

Enough chatter, here’s our Modern Era bracket.  Please leave us comments below telling us your choices for the first round winners.  We won’t guarantee that we’ll listen, but you’ll likely know something about these matchups that we don’t.  Feel free, and we’ll be back tomorrow with the next round!

Update: here are the First Round results.

Overall Top Four Seeds:  Duke 1992, Kentucky 1996, UNLV 1990, UConn 1999

Last Four At-Larges: UNC 2008, St. John’s 1985, Georgetown 1989, Kansas 2002

First Four Left Out: UCLA 2008, Arkansas 1991, Michigan St. 2001, St. Joseph’s 2004

Breakdown by School (total, at-large):

• Duke (8, 1)
• Kansas (7, 3)
• North Carolina (5, 3)
• Arizona (4, 2)
• Kentucky (4, 1)
• Florida (3, 0)
• Indiana (3, 1)
• Michigan (3, 0)
• Syracuse (3, 0)
• UNLV (3, 2)
• Arkansas (2, 0)
• Connecticut (2, 0)
• Georgetown (2, 1)
• UCLA (2, 0)
• Georgia Tech (1, 0)
• Illinois (1, 0)
• Louisville (1, 0)
• Maryland (1, 0)
• Massachusetts (1, 1)
• Memphis (1, 0)
  
• Michigan St. (1, 0)
• Ohio St. (1, 0)
• Oklahoma (1, 0)
• Seton Hall (1, 0)
• St. John’s (1, 1)
• Utah (1, 0)
• Villanova (1, 0)

Be sure to check back on Tuesday morning for the First Round results of the RTC Modern Era bracket.

Looking back at the Midwest Region 1st/2d Rounds…

Best Game:  undoubtedly the game of the Tourney thus far, the Ohio St.-Siena game had not one, but two, game-changing threes by the underdog Saints to keep their hopes alive. 

Shocker:  Wake Forest’s complete and utter failure to show up for its game against Cleveland St. last Friday night.  With three first-rounders on the team, there is no excuse for a team to be this mentally out of it (which they were much of the last six weeks of the season). 

Cinderella That’s Not Really One:  Arizona was one of the last teams invited to the Dance, but we all knew that their talent was better than most #12 seeds if they could just put it together.  They received a favorable draw in the first two rounds, playing an overrated #5 Utah team and a true Cinderella #13 Cleveland St., but if they really want to impress us, beat Louisville tomorrow night. 

Region MVP (so far):  Cole Aldrich, Kansas.  A player who gets a trip-dub automatically wins the MVP from us.  Aldrich terrorized Dayton for 13/20/10 blks on Sunday. 

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First Weekend Storylines. Like most of you guys, we figure we watched approximately 38 hours of basketball last weekend over the first four days of the NCAA Tournament.  Since we were in Vegas taking advantage of the sportsbooks’ multiple huge-screen tvs, we pretty much saw pieces of every game on the dance card.  Here are some of our thoughts and observations based on the sensory overload (speaking of sensory, that chick making bedroom eyes at the burger in the McDonald’s commercial is ridiculously difficult to remove from the internal hard drive).

Coach K, Your Filet o’ Sole Has Arrived.  From our point of view, at least in terms of the elite teams of each conference, there was never any question that the Big East was much stronger than that of the ACC this year.  The fact that anyone was even questioning this seemed odd.  This year, the Big East had six teams (of seven bids) with a reasonable shot to make a run at the F4 – UConn, Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville, Villanova and Marquette, and the first five of that group is still standing (the most ever by a single conference in the Sweets, btw); the ACC had three (of seven bids) – Duke, UNC and Wake Forest, but only the twin towers of Tobacco Road royalty are left dancing.   The simple fact of the matter is that the ACC’s middle – comprised of Clemson, Florida St., Maryland, BC and Virginia Tech (NIT) – were only “solid” teams that had significant weaknesses due to personnel or other issues.  Conversely, the equivalent caliber teams from the Big East (with the notable exception of WVU) were left out of the Big Dance.  This group includes Providence, Cincinnati, Georgetown and Notre Dame, and there shouldn’t be any dissent as to the fact that each of these teams would have competed for the middle of the ACC with the above group and several would have also earned bids on the basis of the occasional upset (see: Maryland and BC).  Sitting where we are now, with five Big East teams a mere two wins away from the F4, it wouldn’t shock us to see all four slots filled by a BE team.  This is still an unlikely scenario, but keep in mind that only Villanova is considered an underdog to reach the next round (Syracuse is a pick’em against Oklahoma), and all five of these teams are more than capable.

#1 Seeds. UConn looked absolutely dominant in its two games, and while not much can be discerned from a 56-pt dismantling of Chattanooga, the 92-66 beatdown of a Texas A&M team that was coming on strong must be viewed with awe.   The Huskies will get the best team in the Big Ten next – Purdue – but we have trouble believing that the Boilers will challenge Jim Calhoun’s team at this point.  Suddenly a #1/#2 matchup against Memphis in the regional finals looks very appealing.  UNC bombed Radford in its first round game before riding a partisan crowd’s energy and Ty Lawson’s toe to a breakaway win over LSU in the second round, 84-70.   The Heels should put away Gonzaga easily in the next round (we doubt Heytvelt will dominate Hansbrough this time around), but a regional final against either Oklahoma or Syracuse could present all kinds of problems for the Tar Heels.   Louisville and Pittsburgh both struggled to put opponents away in both their first and second round games.   Both of these teams sometimes have trouble scoring, and we have to wonder when a prolonged scoring drought against a good team will be enough to end their run to the title.   Pitt should have a relatively easy go of it with its next game against Xavier, but we’re looking at Louisville’s next game against Arizona and wondering what might happen if the trio of Budinger, Wise and Hill are all making shots.

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Ohio State (#7, Midwest, Dayton pod)

vs. Siena (#9)
Mar. 19 @ 9:40pm

Vegas Line: Ohio St. -3

Thanks to Vegas Watch for providing these graphs that measure the moving average of a team’s spread (moving avg.) over time vs. the spread for each individual game (indiv).  If a team’s moving average is higher than zero, then Vegas currently has a higher opinion of them than Pomeroy, and vice versa.

General Profile

Location: Columbus, Ohio

Conference: Big Ten
Coach: Thad Matta, hired 2004.  Record at OSU = 127-45.

08-09 Record: 22-10 (10-8)

Last 12 Games: 7-5

Best Win: vs Michigan State 82-70, on 3/14/09

Worst Loss: at Northwestern, 69-72, on 2/18/09.

Off. Efficiency Rating: 114.0 (26th)

Def. Efficiency Rating:  95.9 (72nd)

Nuts n Bolts

Star Player(s): Evan Turner (6’7″ sophomore forward); 17.1 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 1.8 spg.
Unsung Hero: William Buford (6’5″ freshman forward); 11.3 ppg, shooting 45.2% FG and 89.6% FT.
Potential NBA Draft Pick: 7’0″ freshman center B.J. Mullens is currently projected as the 12th overall pick in the 2009 mock NBA draft at www.nbadraft.net.
Key Injuries: Would-be star player David Lighty (6’7″ junior F) injured his left 5th metatarsal against Jacksonville on 12/17/08 and was slated to miss 6-12 weeks.  No recent mention of possible return.
Depth:  26.6% mins (271st nationally)
Achilles Heel: The boards.  The Buckeyes pull down 28.2 rebounds/game, which is 301st nationally.
Will Make a Deep Run if…: …they shoot well, and the Buckeyes know how to do that.  9th nationally in FG% (48.9), and 7th nationally on shots inside the arc (54.5%).
Will Make an Early Exit if…: …they don’t take advantage of limited possessions; OSU only gets an average of 63.1 chances per game, which is 315th nationally.

NCAA History

Last Year Invited: 2007
Streak: 1
Best NCAA Finish: 1960 National Champions.
Historical Performance vs. Seed (1985-present): -0.12 wins per appearance

Other

Six Degrees to Detroit: Freshman guard Anthony Crater is from Flint.  And the Buckeyes know the state of Michigan well, let’s just say.

Distance to First Round Site: 71 miles

School’s Claim to Fame: Largest single-campus university in the nation.  Oh, and they kind of like football.

School Wishes It Could Forget: Recent football shortcomings, along with that loss to Florida in the 2007 tournament final after the Gators had also beaten them for the football title earlier that year.

Prediction: Another Big Ten team that doesn’t jump off the page, and Siena would be a typical team that could surprise the Buckeyes if it were not for the fact that this will basically be a home game for OSU, playing in Dayton and all.  They’ll have the best chance to knock off a 1-seed if they get to play Louisville in Dayton in the 2nd round.

Major RTC stories: Big 10 Wrapup and Tourney Preview

Preview written by: John Stevens, Rush The Court.

When Ben Allaire isn’t drumming up meaningless college basketball statistics, he’s writing about the Virginia Cavaliers over at Dear Old UVa.  RTC appreciates having Ben stop over this week to make some numerical sense of this year’s NCAA Tournament field.   

A great man once said, “Our offense is like the Pythagorean theorem: There is no answer.”

Unfortunately, that man was Shaquille O’Neil and it’s funny because he couldn’t be wronger… er, more wrong. 

The Pythagorean theorem does have an answer and it’s going to help us examine which teams are most consistent on offense and defense together.  Last time, I gave you a scatterplot of all 65 teams’ consistency on offense and defense.  Using the Pythagorean theorem (or you might say Euclid distance), I’m calculating the distance between each point on the plot and the origin (0,0).  We’ll call this distance: Pythagorean Consistency (PC for short).

This will combine the two measures into one and tell us exactly how consistent a team is.  Now, remember as I said last time, this isn’t necessarily a measure of who’s best.  If you want that, kenpom.com has a myriad of ways of determining it.  It’s a measure of who performs according to expectation.

Let’s glance at the top and bottom ten list:

Note: Conference in parentheses; seed in brackets.  Data source: kenpom.com

I find this to be a fascinating list. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Some very quick food for thought after the big reveal…

• At least in the #1-#4 seed positions, the Midwest (Louisville, Michigan St, Kansas, Wake Forest) appears to be the toughest region.  It gets weaker at the lower seeds, but among the top teams, this is a beast (3 BCS regular season champs + a second-place team).   That said, Louisville having to play Ohio St. in Dayton in the second round is an interesting game.
• The weakest appears to be the South after #1 UNC.  Oklahoma is falling off, Syracuse is up-and-down, and Gonzaga is softer than toilet paper.  Arizona St. and Clemson are darkhorses in this region.
• Cannot believe that #3 Villanova in the East will get to play essentially at home for the first two rounds.  That’s even more egregious than the annual UNC/Duke games in Greensboro/Raleigh/W-S/Charlotte.
• How about a Cinderella #13 Portland St. playing in Boise vs. #4 Xavier (slumping) and then the #5 FSU/#12 Wisconsin winner?  Or a WAC team, #11 Utah St. playing #6 Marquette in the same location?
• We have a feeling #11 VCU over #6 UCLA is going to be a very popular upset choice.  The Bruins don’t travel that far east very well in recent years.  Or #4 Wake, a team that has proven they only get up for “name” teams, losing to #13 Cleveland St. in the first round in Miami?
• Most vulnerable teams in the first round by seed:
  • #1 – none
  • #2 – Oklahoma (Morgan St.)
  • #3 – Kansas (North Dakota St.)
  • #4 – Xavier (Portland St.)
  • #5 – all of them?  But probably Illinois (W. Kentucky)
  • #6 – UCLA (VCU)
  • #7 – Boston College (USC)
  • #8 – LSU (Butler)
• Best Games by region (first round):
  • East – #8 Oklahoma St. vs. #9 Tennessee – very up-and-down high-scoring game.
  • South – #7 Clemson vs. #10 Michigan – will the Beilein style frustrate the Tigers?
  • Midwest – #7 BC vs. #10 USC – can the athletic Trojans keep it going?
  • West – #8 BYU vs. #9 Texas A&M – Let’s do this again…
• Best potential games by region (second round):
  • East – #3 Villanova vs. #6 UCLA – if the Bruins survive, this would be a fun guard-oriented game.
  • South – #3 Syracuse vs. #6 Arizona St. -two teams coming on at the right time.
  • Midwest – #1 Louisville vs. #8 Ohio St. – in Dayton.
  • West – #2 Memphis vs. #10 Maryland – the Terps have proven they can beat top-level teams.
• QnD Final Four (subject to change):
  • Pittsburgh (East) vs. Syracuse (South)
  • Memphis (West) vs. Kansas (Midwest)

Much more later as we get ourselves steady for the rest of the week…

TBL, BIAH, CHJ and RTC have a little bet going where we both will choose the 34 at-large teams with the blog picking the most right getting access to the other’s vast collection of “cinema verite.”  Faces will be obscured to protect the innocent enterprising.  So here goes…

*we’re also sick of using the word “bubble,” so we’re starting a new one – the Globule.  Until further notice, that’s our word.

At-Large Teams

The Globule aka Enjoy the NIT, Fellas: Providence, San Diego St., Dayton, Boston College

A10 (1)

Xavier

ACC (5)

UNC, Wake Forest, Florida St., Clemson, Maryland

Big 12 (5)

Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma St.

Big East (6)

Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Villanova, Marquette, West Virginia

Big Ten (6)

Michigan St., Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Purdue/Ohio St.

Horizon (1)

Butler

Missouri Valley (1)

Creighton

Mountain West (1)

BYU

Pac-10 (5)

Washington, UCLA, Arizona St., California, Arizona

SEC (2)

LSU, Tennessee

WCC (1)

St. Mary’s