We keep reading all of these arguments in light of the OJ Mayo controversy about how the 1-and-done rule is a joke, about how it punishes the athletes, about how it makes unwitting (or is it witting?) accomplices of the schools in the whole charade, about how peace and prosperity and all things good and holy are tied into the elimination of this silly rule… and we stop and wonder.  Why the uproar?  Actually, what we meant to say is, why the uproar now?

If all of these pundits maligning the 1-and-done rule haven’t noticed, OJ Mayo isn’t the first kid who was being handled by an agent throughout his college career, and guess what, he won’t be the last.  We already know that Rodney Guillory was handling Jeff Trepagnier and Tito Maddox in the early 2000s, well before the 1-and-done rule was implemented.  We know that Reggie Bush played at USC for three collegiate years and the agents still got their hooks into him.  If writers such as this guy, or this guy, or this guy, really believe that by letting the Lebrons and KGs and Odens go pro straight out of HS eliminates the problem with agents and runners contacting and influencing college players, then LOLOLOLOL on them. 

Their complaints aren’t flat wrong, but they’re misattributed.  Why?  Because there are players right now on nearly every major D1 school across the country who have been contacted by and have talked to agents.  Guaranteed.  Some of them have probably taken a few gifts here and there.  Does eliminating the handful of 1-and-dones from college campuses each year solve that problem?  Not at all.  The agents will then just focus on the next tier of college players – the Chris Douglas-Robertses, the Deron Wiliamses, the Jordan Farmars.  The problem isn’t solved, it’s merely shifted.   

The Commish Loves the Free Marketing the NCAA Provides

Look, here’s our point.  The 1-and-done rule is stupid for certain, but it’s not stupid because of the OJ Mayo problem.  It’s stupid because it places all of the risk on the players and colleges for the benefit of the NBA evaluation process.  Nevertheless, it’s not going anywhere until 2011, and early indications are that Comandante Stern wants to tack another year onto the age minimum and the NBAPA is unlikely to battle that point.  So then we’ll have 2-and-dones, which isn’t all that dissimilar from the NFL rule currently in existence (3 yrs).  But whether there’s a 1-year rule, 2-year rule, 3-year rule or 4-year rule, the problem begins with the corrupt and criminal AAU basketball system in this country and the agents that feed off of it.  These folks will not remove their grimy hands from the pockets of college basketball until there are no longer players on which they think they can ride to fortune.  In other words, never.  While there have been dozens of players drafted in the first round in the preps-to-pros era (the current 1-and-dones), there were far more early-entry sophomores and juniors over that same period.  It won’t go away, no matter what these people are saying (well, at least one commentator gets it). 

More blah on a blah day around the net…

• Doc Rivers’ kid is transferring to Indiana – too bad he can’t suit up next year. 
• Orange & Blue Hue did a nice analysis on why Jai Lucas cost the Gators an NCAA bid this season.
• Duquesne’s Kojo Mensah is staying in the NBA Draft.  Yeah, the L really values 6’1 guys from small colleges who averaged 12ppg last season.  Wait, Duquesne?
• 11 months later, Billy D. still hasn’t signed his contract extension from Florida (to be fair, neither has Billy G. at UK or Bob Huggins at WVU). 
• Too little, too late, Myles Brand.  Is this “new info” the old info that we all already know about?
• All the summer recruiting links you could ever want.  You too can find an eighth grader of your own!
• …and the obligatory Erin Andews video link.

In the effluvia of the OJ Mayo report from Outside the Lines (you remember, he took money and gifts from street runner Rodney Guillory, acting as a proxy for the Bill Duffy Agency) the other night, there has been a cacophany of predictable kneejerk reactions from every corner of the media universe. 

Tim Floyd and USC are to blame!

The NBA’s 1-and-done rule is to blame!

The NCAA’s lax enforcement is to blame!

AAU basketball, or even worse – the system – is to blame!

There’s a lot of culpability being thrown around by the various pundits, and with good reason on many counts, but we’d like to proffer another culprit that few in the MSM have been willing to indict – their own 4th Estate, the so-called watchdogs of the community.  We in the blogosphere have been told repeatedly by those in pedigreed positions of media power that what separates us from them is the simple concept of access.  While we can riff on the same televised game that a USC beat writer for the LA Times can, he has a level of access to players, coaches and administrators that we do not (from our parents’ basement), thereby rendering his reporting more valuable than ours.  Or so the story goes.

While we completely agree that level of access of which the MSM has to sports figures makes our job different than theirs, there also must exist a certain amount of responsibility for said journalists to follow up on rumors, whispers and innuendo that such access enables.  Because of the difficulty for a blogger to gain entree into a circle of coaches willing to speak off the record to a trusted journalist, we expect that the writer will not simply wink and nod with the rest and ultimately let it slide into oblivion.  After all, isn’t the journalist’s role to not only report the news, but investigate it? 

Gregg Doyel wrote nineteen months ago that USC should be wary of Mayo due to his relationship with Rodney Guillory – that’s a great start.  Did anyone else follow up on this accusation of impropriety?  Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times recounts a conversation with two prominent coaches he had about recruiting Mayo during his prep days:

“It’s not even a consideration,” one coach said.  “You don’t even understand how many problems that could cause,” the other said.  Back then, there was much fear about Mayo’s large circle of friends. There were whispers that he had already been bought, a common rumor about prep basketball stars.

If there were whispers among prominent coaches about Mayo, and the writers knew about it, why didn’t anyone investigate it?  Where was the local watchdog, the award-winning LA Times investigative staff on this story?  It’s not like outing Mayo, the “next Lebron” at one time during his HS career, wouldn’t have been a prime catch.  How hard could it have been? – the Big Lead even gave the MSM a roadmap in March 2007 – you have Mayo associated with Guillory; you know that Guillory is a runner for an agent who already got USC player Jeff Trepagnier and Fresno St. player Tito Maddox in hot water several years ago; and you know the weird circumstances of Mayo’s “recruitment” to USC.  What more do you need to look deeper into this steaming hunk of  brown mess??

And yet, to our knowledge, until the OTL piece on Sunday by ESPN’s Kelly Naqi after Mayo’s college career was all-but-finished, the MSM’s inertia effectively made certain that Mayo will never face any sanctions over this scandal.  As for USC… well, we’re still waiting to hear their penalties from the Reggie Bush situation a few years back.  Just keep in mind among all the yelling about blame this week that if someone, anyone, in the MSM had been doing their job a year ago, Mayo would have never suited up for USC in the first place.  The NCAA plans on watching college basketball recruiting a little more closely, but given its limited enforcement resources, perhaps all the doomsday rhetoric being thrown around as a result of this fiasco will inspire our MSM friends to include a little more self-awareness of their watchdog role next time. 

I’m not even sure where to begin with this post. Here at RTC, we have discussed OJ Mayo several times most recently in what rtmsf myopically thought would be a final retrospective on the latest OJ to grace the USC campus. As pretty much everyone knows by now Mayo has been implicated in a rather large scandal involving Bill Duffy Agency (BDA) and Rodney Guillory, who appears to have been essentially hired by BDA to bring Mayo to them.

Most of my knowledge on the topic comes from Kelly Naqi’s Outside the Lines report I saw on Sunday morning while I was staying at a beach resort so this isn’t going to be some deep NY Times investigative piece that some of you may be expecting from RTC–we’ll work on that over the summer. Instead, I think it’s more interesting to consider the impact this will have on USC and recruiting/college basketball in general given the hype that Mayo brought with him to USC and the manner in which he handled his recruitment of USC–yes, the way he recruited USC.

According to the OTL report, Guillory gave Mayo cash,  a flat-screen television, cell phones, hotel rooms, clothes, meals, and airline tickets. Given Mayo’s celebrity status, it’s pretty hard to believe that Tim Floyd and others at USC didn’t notice this was going on. Some prescient writers like Gregg Doyel even warned USC about the specific threat as early as 2006, but USC never did anything about it. Floyd and USC just looked the other way and hoped nobody else would notice or at least that nobody would give them up while they raked in the money from the increased attendance and sales of Mayo’s jerseys. The transgressions are not at the same level as those involving Reggie Bush’s family at USC, but these directly involved a player (Mayo) while the majority of the financial benefit in the Bush situation appears to have been reaped by Bush’s parents who stayed at a million dollar house essentially for free.

The big question now is what the NCAA will do about it. There have been several reports over the past year that the NCAA has investigated Mayo thoroughly, but did not find anything. Given the amount of evidence presented in the OTL piece, it’s hard to imagine that the NCAA spent much time digging into Mayo if they never came across any of this stuff. Ever since Yahoo! Sports broke the Reggie Bush allegations, Internet message boards have been abuzz first with what sanctions would be levied against the Trojans and when none came with conspiracy theories about how the NCAA was protecting the Trojans while being much more harsh on other teams such as a dominant football power on the East Coast (Miami). Compounding the fans fury was the seeming indifference of the sports media outside of Yahoo! Sports (read: ESPN) to really go after USC. Fans claimed that ESPN was trying to protect its sacred cow as ESPN had hyped up the Trojans to the point where they ran a week-long segment on where the Trojans ranked historically even before their Rose Bowl game against Texas, which they lost thanks to a super-human performance by Vince Young (I Heart VY). Now that ESPN has decided to join the attack against USC, it will be interesting to see if the mainstream sports media will turn up the heat on the NCAA (still waiting for the SI cover asking USC to cancel its athletic program). For those of you who think I may be going too far, the list of transgressions by USC athletes goes far beyond Bush and Mayo and includes recent charges against athletes ranging from dealing drugs to weapons possession to sexual assault.

While I’m not on board with Pat Forde’s reactionary death penalty column, I think the NCAA should come down pretty hard on USC. I am not sure what the precedent is for multi-sport probation, but given the multiple transgressions by the USC football team and the Mayo fiasco that anybody could have seen coming, its pretty clear that the Athletic Director Mike Garrett has no control over his programs or doesn’t care as long as they win. I would think that a 1- or 2-year probation with a ban on postseason play would send a pretty clear message that the NCAA won’t tolerate this kind of behavior. However, I doubt the powers that be will punish USC that severely, but USC should at least have some scholarships taken away from them in addition to the ones they lost with their poor APR performance. If the NCAA fails to do that, the Internet and the parents’ basements that bloggers inhabit will be all over them and this time the mainstream sports media with ESPN’s support will be behind them.

The story about Mayo’s recruitment is well-known as an associate of his (Guillory) entered Tim Floyd’s office and offered Mayo and his “services” to USC. When Floyd asked for Mayo’s number to speak with him, he was told that Mayo would call him. Perhaps Guillory wanted to make sure Mayo stayed within the minute limits on the plans that Guillory was paying for. Hopefully, this fiasco will convince more coaches not to get involved in these situations as it was obvious from the beginning of this relationship who was in control. At least Floyd seemed in control over the team, but it won’t be too long before some 5-star comes in with his personal coach and pushes for certain personnel moves and demands that the offense runs through him so he can get his numbers to boost his draft status.

The final issue, and potentially the most important in terms of its overall effect on college basketball, is how this will affect the NCAA’s decision on the 1-and-done rule. It’s pretty obvious that Mayo and several other stars like Michael Beasley were never going to spend a minute more than required in college before jumping to the NBA. If it’s going to be like that for the next generation of college stars, I wonder if the trade-off is worth it. As much as opposing fans like to knock Tyler Hansbrough and J.J. Redick, they embody what we used to love about the college game with guys staying 4 years and developing their games and fans identifying teams with players and not just the coaches manning the sidelines. Unfortunately, Tyler and J.J. are not the caliber of player that we saw do that in the 1980s. College hoops fans need to face the reality that we will never see a Lebron James (would have finished his senior year last year) or Dwight Howard (would have finished his senior year this year) having those kind of historic college careers. The question is how much is it worth to bring in guys of that caliber (or Mayo who is clearly several steps below James or Howard) in for 1 year with the risk of it blowing up an athletic program like it threatens to do at USC now. Mayo’s career and eventual legacy at USC may go a long way in determining the future of this rule.

Your weekend news and notes…

• OJ, OJ, OJ, OJ, OJ…
• In the wake of the Kelvin Sanctions fiasco, Indiana has responded to the five major NCAA allegations and believes that it has already punished flagellated itself enough.  Since IU is painting Sampson as the fall guy, he felt the need to defend himself in a separate letter to the NCAA.  
• The NCAA is proposing a change to the college goaltending rule to make it mesh with the NBA version – a ball that hits the backboard may no longer be blocked whether it is moving in an upward or downward motion.  Our biggest pet peeve, the lack of a collegiate block/charge restricted area under the basket, was merely “discussed.”  Wonderful. 
• Orchestration, or tampering, Coach Crean?  Say what you really mean.
• Kentucky’s Derrick Jasper has decided to transfer closer to home. 
• Andy Glockner writes that Davidson as the “new Gonzaga” is fraught with challenges.
• Vegas Watch breaks down odds on who will be #1 in the draft.
• Speaking of which, one Who? (Missouri’s Leo Lyons) decided to return to school, while another Who? (Duquesne’s Shawn James) decided to stay in the NBA Draft. 
• STF took a look at the 69 early entries (now 68!) and breaks each player down into a probable spot. 
• The Anxious Tar Heel has a solid breakdown of the percentages of an early entry a) getting invited to the Orlando Predraft Camp, and b) getting drafted from there. 

Not surprisingly, OJ Mayo today declared that he will be leaving USC after one year, hiring an agent, and entering the NBA Draft.  He is projected to be among the top few selections chosen.  After what seems like an endless biding of time with his ultimate destiny of the NBA, this ends the amateur career of one of the most ballyhooed schoolboy players of the last decade.

Mayo in HS at Rose Hill Christian Academy

How long have we been talking about OJ Mayo?  A simple google search reveals that news reports were already discussing the seventh-grade phenom in the winter of 2001.  On a personal tip, we watched him play live as an eighth grader and started out more impressed with Bill Walker than Mayo at the time (until the 4th quarter, that is, when Mayo took over the game, erasing a 14 point deficit by himself to win against a superb opponent).  We followed his every move, from tiny Rose Hill Christian Academy in Ashland, KY, to North Indian Hills HS in Cincinnati, and back to his hometown of Huntington, WV, again.  We read the countless articles in SLAM magazine telling us that he was the Next Lebron, sifted through the message board character assassinations, and often wondered aloud if his buddy Bill Walker’s tribulations and lack of a true father figure would somehow end up destroying Mayo before he ever made it out of high school.

Turns out he did just fine.  He made it through HS without much of a hiccup (there was that simple possession charge during his senior year), and although the recruitment of Mayo was effectively a non-starter because of his pre-emptive strategy to call Tim Floyd out of the blue and commit to USC, there were lingering questions about his ability to be a good teammate and handle authority.  

We’ve Been Reading About Mayo For Years

Mayo’s only season at USC was marked with some basketball ups and downs, but there was nary a peep about his being a bad teammate or issues relating to his character.  He averaged 21/5/3 assts in just under 37 mpg, which are eye-popping numbers for any player regardless of class.  One of the initial concerns was whether Mayo would turn out to be a human cannon, chucking shots at every opportunity without consideration for the team concept.  While his assist numbers weren’t great, Mayo shot good percentages from the field (44% FG, 41% 3FG, 80% FT) and we watched at least a dozen USC games this year and never once thought he was trying to do too much. 

The ups and downs derive from USC’s team success.  In a normal year for a program like USC, 21-12 overall, 11-7 in the hypercompetitive Pac-10, a win over UCLA, close losses to both Kansas and Memphis, and an NCAA bid amount to a great season.  But in a year when USC brought in one of the top five freshmen in America (and easily the most hyped freshman), you have to wonder if Tim Floyd privately thought he could get more from this team.  As an example of what the public thought, USC was a trendy pick to move several rounds through the Tournament prior to the first day’s games, but they crashed and burned 80-67 to Kansas St. and another super frosh, Michael Beasley (Mayo was 6-16, scoring 20/5/2 assts) in the first round.  Should USC have done more that that with an exceptional talent like OJ Mayo running the show?  

Mayo is by no means alone among his fellow freshmen in this regard.  Eric Gordon’s Indiana team collapsed with the removal of Kelvin Sampson and were easily dismissed in the first round by Arkansas.  The aforementioned Michael Beasley at K-State and Kyle Singler at Duke were both defeated convincingly in the second round.  Only Kevin Love at UCLA and Derrick Rose at Memphis, both of whom were surrounded by oodles of talent, were able to take their teams deep into March Madness as freshman leaders.

It’s a Tough Call Whether Mayo Helped USC or Vice Versa

So now it’s on to the NBA for Mayo, where his size, strength and transcendant hooping abilities should provide a natural fit at the point guard slot for an LA Clippers or Seattle (er, Oklahoma City) over the next ten years.  He’s not the next Lebron (and he was never going to be), but his game is reminiscent of a Jason (Jay) Williams before his injury – perhaps not quite as speedy, but a little longer and equally as effortless in his motions.  Given the rocky life and media crush that Mayo has experienced throughout his amateur career, we truly wish him the best as he moves on to the professional ranks.       

This is going to be a brief update because we realize listing the scores is kind of useless since you’re already on the Internet. We’ll just give you a little commentary and offer some more thoughts in the morning.

– The big story of the night was Belmont’s nearly historic near-upset of Duke. The amazing thing is that Belmont didn’t even have a player going off or a great night from beyond the arc. That just shows you how vulnerable this Duke team is when it doesn’t hit the 3. They needed a great 2nd half and end-to-end layup by Gerald Henderson to escape with the win. We also have to question the decision-making by Belmont in the final 10 seconds. Given their distinct disadvantage athletically we thought the decision to come back after Henderson’s layup without taking a timeout a questionable one. Then when DeMarcus Nelson short-armed a FT, they ran a horrible in-bounds play. How does Belmont expect to get a jump-ball against Duke? We also wonder why Coach K didn’t put Brian Zoubek by the basket to prevent that type of play anyways.

– In the only legitimate upset of the day, #11 Kansas State knocked off #6 USC. Surprisingly, they did it without a huge game from Michael Beasley (by his standards). Instead, Beasley used a solid game from Bill Walker and an off-night from OJ Mayo to lead the Wildcats to the win and ruin my bracket. Yes, you’re looking at the sucker who thought USC would make a run to the Elite 8.

– In the only other interesting game of the evening/early night, Texas A&M beat BYU 67-62 behind 26 pts from Josh Carter. This marks the sixth straight opening-round loss for the Cougars. Let that be a lesson before you pick BYU again. Well unless they have Danny Ainge on the team again. . .

The rest of the previews are going to be much shorter than the East Regional Analysis because the other regions aren’t as loaded. Ok, you got me. That preview took way too much time given my schedule. Plus, the other regions suck. . .

Teams
#1 Kansas: Bill Self leads a loaded Jayhawk team into the tournament. They have all the tools–experience and talent in both the backcourt and frontcourt–that they need to win (although they are one of the few teams in college basketball that doesn’t take advantage of the short 3 point shot). The question is that will Kansas end its reputation for choking in the tournament. With a few exceptions (1991, 1993, 2002, and 2003 come to mind), the Jayhawks have found a way to lose to vastly inferior teams. The most notable example are 2005 and 2006 against Bucknell and Bradley respectively. We think the Jayhawks are too talented for that to happen, but the Jayhawks have proven us wrong before. Schedule/Roster.

#2 Georgetown: As we stated in our Big East finals review, we noted that the Hoyas have all the tools to win the tournament. They have experience, a very good backcourt, the nation’s best 7-footer, and a solid coach. Before the bracket came out, we were worried about Hibbert’s tendency to disappear for stretches when he should be able to dominate. However, their road to the Final 4 seems particularly favorable, which means they are a trendy pick to make it to San Antonio. Schedule/Roster.

#3 Wisconsin: While we don’t think the Badgers have much of a chance of winning the NCAA title, they definitely deserved a 2 seed over Duke. Like your typical Bo Ryan team, they play excellent defense. Led by Brian Butch and Michael Flowers, the Badgers are team capable of making the Elite 8, but will have a difficult road getting there (probably USC and Georgetown). Schedule/Roster.

#4 Vanderbilt: Vandy is an exciting team to watch and capable of beating anybody (ask Bruce Pearl). They have a solid all-around lineup with 3 seniors. However, their mediocre defense all but guarantees they will trip up somewhere along the line. Schedule/Roster.

#5 Clemson: With a win over Duke and three close games against UNC, Clemson can play with anybody in the country when they are on. The Tigers are athletic and had a nice run in the ACC tournament, but their awful FT shooting will catch up with them making them unlikely to advance past a round or two. Schedule/Roster.

#6 USC: We think that everybody knows about and has seen USC at this point. OJ Mayo has turned the Trojans into one the tournament’s most talked about “sleepers”. After reaching the Sweet 16 last year before bowing out to UNC, Tim Floyd added 2 “diaper dandies”. Ok, so maybe that isn’t 100% accurate since Mayo and Jefferson are closer to Depends than Huggies and Mayo’s recruitment was more like OJ adding the Trojans to his schedule. One of the interesting and challenging things for the Trojans has been how the freshman were integrated into a team that was already good. After struggling early, USC has come together at the right time. Mayo has reined in his tendency to dominate the ball although he still lapses into his old habits occasionally. The Trojans NCAA fortunes will like ride on which Taj Gibson shows up. Gibson, who has been college basketball’s version of Steve Slaton, will need to come up big if the Trojans want to make a deep run. Either way, we enjoy having another guy named OJ at USC. We hope that he has better “luck” with relationships. Schedule/Roster.

#7 Gonzaga: At this point, Gonzaga is way past the point of being a Cinderella. This team has a lot of talent including several guys with pro potential. They have a solid squad with 4 guys averaging double figures. Their first round matchup with Davidson will be a must-watch. Schedule/Roster.

#8 UNLV: These aren’t your old school Running Rebels. Lon Kruger returns a very different team from last year’s Sweet 16 team as most of the roster changed (including his son). Their own hometown doesn’t seem to believe in them, as Vegas has put UNLV (the higher seed) as 2 point underdogs against Kent State. Schedule/Roster.

#9 Kent State: As we noted above, Vegas has Kent State as 2 point favorites. Apparently they don’t agree with the selection committee. The Golden Flash should be a tough matchup as they feature a balanced attack with 4 scorers in double figures. Schedule/Roster.

#10 Davidson: Led by Stephen Curry and coming in with a NCAA-leading 22 game winning streak, Davidson is a very dangerous team. The committee made an interesting decision to pit them against Gonzaga. This can be interpreted in one of two ways: knock out a dangerous mid-major in the first round or ensure a dangerous mid-major in the second round Schedule/Roster.

#11 Kansas State: We would love to see Michael Beasley make a run deep in the tournament, but with his sidekick Bill Walker most well-known for peeing in a towel and going 0-for-14 against Texas it will be a short run for the #1 pick in the 2008 NBA Draft. Schedule/Roster.

#12 Villanova: Jay Wright’s team was likely the last at-large team invited to the tournament. They are a young team with some talented players (most notably Scotty Reynolds), but they appear to be a few years away from being a threat to make a run (assuming nobody does anything stupid by leaving school early). However, Clemson’s awful FT shooting may let them stay in the game and allow Villanova’s talented players to steal a game. Schedule/Roster.

#13 Siena: Before you get too excited about their win over Stanford, you should remember that Brook Lopez was suspended earlier this season making Stanford a very different team in November. With a young team and the talent to beat Stanford (even if it wasn’t at his peak), Siena will be a very dangerous mid-major in a few years. However, their matchup with Vanderbilt will be a stiff challenge even if Vandy is soft defensively. Schedule/Roster.

#14 Cal State Fullerton: A team full of transfers (literally everybody transferred from somewhere else), CSF is a team that likes a fast pace, but will find out in the first 10 minutes that Wisconsin prefers a slow pace. They will quickly learn that it is easier to slow a game down than it is to speed it up. Schedule/Roster.

#15 UMBC: The winners of America East, a horrible conference except when Germain Mopa Njila becomes a household name for 15 minutes, UMBC should enjoy their hotel and the scenery because Georgetown is too talented and has too much experience to let UMBC hang around. We think. . . Schedule/Roster.

#16 Portland State: We’ll save both you some time (and us some research time). No #16 has ever won a first round game. Schedule/Roster.

Back for the second part of the review after a short 2+ hour nap.

Pac 10
– We’ll get the late game over with first since it was past our East Coast bedtime (had to get up to watch a bunch of 9 year-olds “run” a 5k at 8 am). #11 Stanford beat #22 Washington State 75-68 behind Brook Lopez’s 30/12/3 for the third time this year. Basically the Cougars don’t have anybody who can match Lopez inside and not even a 12/20 showing from 3 could save them. Not much to say here except it sets up a rematch of the most controversial game we have seen this year.
– In the most exciting game we saw all day, UCLA hung on to beat USC 57-54 when OJ Mayo’s last second hesitation 3 was a little long. This was a pretty exciting game to watch and UCLA didn’t even need the refs giving them a 6th man to win this game. It was a back-and-forth affair all night. In the early going, USC controlled the game behind their freshmen (Mayo and Jefferson) who are almost as old as Dwight Howard is. Ben Howland’s vaunted defense looked terrible early as UCLA decided they didn’t want to defend off the screen. Down 6 at half, UCLA woke up and Kevin Love scored 11 of his team-high 19 during a Bruin 15-2 run coming out of half. UCLA built up a pretty good lead going into the closing minutes, but OJ Mayo took over and started to show flashes of what made him the most-hyped recruit in his class for most of high school as he beat up on UCLA and Pac 10 Defensive POY Russell Westbrook hitting a 3 and a tough left-handed layup. Then on the last 2 possessions, he showed us why he dropped off his perch as the next Lebron (not sure how anybody ever saw that) and fell to probably the #3 guard in his class behind Rose and Gordon. On the first possession, he dribbled into traffic and was stripped from behind by Westbrook. Then on the final possession, he had a good look at a 3 from the top of the key to tie it, but added an unnecessary hesitation which may or may not have thrown off his timing to cause a miss. Daniel Hackett grabbed the offensive rebound, but did not have enough time to get off another 3 as Mayo did not leave his team with enough time for another shot. Perhaps the bigger news for UCLA was the loss of Luc Richard Mbah a Moute who sustained a sprained ankle. I haven’t heard anything definitive about how long he’ll be out but I wouldn’t expect to see him for a while as he had a similar injury recently.
– Prediction for tonight: Stanford gets revenge for getting screwed on the call at the end last week at Pauley. The match-up down low should be one to watch as the Lopez twins battle Love who will be without Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (see above).

Big 10
– This seems like it was a pretty interesting set of games unfortunately I somehow missed all of them, but I’m making up for it today by watching MSU-Wisconsin as I am typing this. First, the routine stuff with Wisconsin crushing Michigan 51-34. We’re reserving judgement on the Beilein experiment for another year or two given how unique his offense is and the players it requires. Also Michigan hasn’t been Michigan the past few year, but this year wasn’t that encouraging. Now onto the important games. We’ll start with MSU beating OSU 67-60. It seems like MSU controlled this game as OSU only had the lead once at 32-30, but MSU could never really pull away with their biggest lead being 9 points. OSU will probably make the tournament (one of Lunardi’s last 4 in) unless some “locks” in small one-bid conferences lose and cost the majors a few middle-of-the-pack teams. The two other games were arguably the most exciting of the night not involving falling roofs (we can joke since nobody was hurt, right?). In one game, Illinois continued its push for an improbable auto bid with a 74-67 OT win over #17 Purdue. The Illini were led by Demitri McCamey’s 26 points and now stand 2 more win away from returning Bruce Weber to the NCAA tournament. This road was made slightly easier by the shot of the night by Blake Hoffarber pulling a Christian Laettner with a turnaround off a full-court pass at the buzzer to beat the up-and-down Hooisers 59-58. DJ White did his part for the Hooisers with 23 points, 13 boards, and 4 blocks, but super-frosh Eric Gordon was off as he finished with 16 on 4/13 FG and 5 turnovers. All-in-all, a very satisfying day for Illini fans who made the trip to Indianapolis. With the loss, Indiana might be positioning itself as the scariest #7 seed in a long time (probably a #6 now, but depending on how the other games work out they make drop a seed given their Jekyll/Hyde act the past few weeks). On a sidenote that I’m sure all of you have heard a hundred times already today, Blake Hoffarber is no stranger to miraculous last second shots as his most famous one makes the turnaround last night rather routine.

First, the ESPN highlights from last night:

Which gives me a reason to post the Laettner shot (and to piss off rtmsf):

And it was shown as a flashback in the first clip, but it won and ESPY and won a state title so here is Blake Hoffarber’s most famous shot:

– Since there is still 3 minutes left in the 60-57 MSU-Wisconsin game, I guess I can still make my predictions for the Big 10: MSU and Minnesota.

Game of the Night Year? Baylor 116, Texas A&M 110 (5 OT). For the second straight season, possibly probably the game of the year comes to us from the heart of Big 12 country. Let’s get straight to the stats, which are simply astonishing for a college game: 65 minutes of basketball, 191 FG attempts, 106 FT attempts, 69 fouls (!!), 8 player DQs, 120 rebounds, and 216 total points. We’re wondering how anyone had enough energy reserves to finish off this one. More importantly, this was a HUGE road win for the Baylor program, now 16-2 and tied atop the Big 12 standings with Kansas at 4-0. Who could have believed that this program, so maligned after the Dave Bliss/Patrick Dennehy fiasco, could have risen from the ashes to this point so quickly? We could understand a major power rebuilding after such a disaster, but Baylor, one of the annual Big 12 doormats? Major props to head coach Scott Drew for making the Bears one of the feel-good stories of the season thus far. On the flip side, what has happened to Texas A&M? They appear to be imploding, but maybe they were being overvalued (ourselves included) based on that dominant victory over Ohio St. (70-47) back in the Preseason NIT in November. Their next best win was over Oral Roberts (also in Nov) and they’ve only gone 2-4 against the kenpom top 100.

OJ Mayo’s Tickets. So the other big news coming out of yesterday was the possibility that OJ Mayo will be penalized by the NCAA for taking and using a guest ticket provided by Carmelo Anthony for the Lakers-Nuggets game on Mon. night. Tim Floyd, godluvhim, is doing his best to become the fall guy here, knowing full well that at 11-6 (1-3 Pac-10), he needs OJ out there every night to try to secure an NCAA bid in his only year on campus. We’re not sure how Floyd giving Mayo permission to take the ticket somehow exonerates Mayo, but we love his attempt at cover. Nevertheless, we predict a 1-2 game suspension over this violation for Mayo.

Last Night’s Games. There were several interesting results last night:

• St. Joseph’s 81, Massachusetts 77. The A10 is going to be wild this year, with six teams in the RPI top 52.
• Florida St. 69, Virginia 67. Can anyone definitively tell us who the third best team in the ACC is?
• Georgia Tech 77, NC State 74. At 1-3 in the ACC, the Wolfpack really have their work cut out for them.
• Rutgers 80, Villanova 68. A really poor loss for Nova.
• Purdue 64, Penn St. 42. Don’t look but Purdue is now 5-1 in the Big 10.
• #2 Kansas 83, Iowa St. 59. Next week’s game to Manhattan, KS, is looking like the best possibility for a KU loss.
• #17 Pittsburgh 81, St. John’s 57. A once-proud program such as St. John’s should be ashamed of itself.
• Connecticut 84, Cincinnati 83. We thought Cincy had this one, but this was a necessary with for the Huskies.
• William & Mary 73, Drexel 72 (OT). The surprising Tribe are moving up the ranks of the CAA (6-2).
• BYU 59, San Diego St. 56. SDSU has gotten less hype than BYU and UNLV, but they’re the top team in the Mtn West right now (4-1, #55 RPI).
• West Virginia 66, Marshall 64. Marshall always makes this a hellacious game for WVU.
• #1 Memphis 56, Tulsa 41. Line of the night – 2/19/2 blks for Dorsey.
• Florida 73, South Carolina 71. The Dave Odom farewell tour continues with another home L.
• Texas Tech 92, Missouri 84. Missouri is faltering again in the Big 12 (1-3).
• #8 Indiana 65, Iowa 43. The undervalued Hoosiers (17-1, 6-0 Big 10) keep cruising.
• #4 UNC 98, Miami (FL) 82. Carolina recovers from its shocking loss to Maryland.