1. Mike DeCourcy wrote an article late last week attempting to explode the myths surrounding the one-and-done phenomenon, and although he takes a different tact than we would with it, we both pretty much arrive in the same place.  As our analyses of one-and-doners from 2007-10 have shown, having a single-year player pass through your program can help in ways beyond merely Ws and Ls — it can also help with marketing, recruiting and elevating the general cachet of the school.  Through last summer, we estimated that 20 of the 35 one-and-doners (57%) had either been worth it or well worth it, and we don’t expect that  percentage to change much after this year’s crop is settled. (see our yearly analyses here: 2007, 2008, 2009 & 2010)  Does this mean that that programs with large amounts of annual one-and-done turnover will lack the experience needed to win the national title — possibly, but no coach is going to turn down elite talent on the happenstance that he may only play college ball for one year (or two, if the NBA’s CBA changes soon).
2. Speaking of the next great crop of elite players, the Jordan Brand Classic occurred Saturday night in Charlotte, with a large number of the top prospects in the Class of 2011 showing their stuff.  UNC recruit James McAdoo and Kentucky recruit Anthony Davis shared the MVP honors, with McAdoo hitting the clinching FTs with 1.6 seconds remaining to lead his East squad to the victory over Davis’ West team.  We’ll have much more on this later today in our Who’s Got Next? post, but let’s just say that Kentucky fans are drooling over the duo of Davis (29/11) and Marquis Teague playing off each other next season.
3. Washington State’s DeAngelo Casto announced on Friday that he will be leaving Pullman to pursue his dream of playing in the NBA.  The junior averaged 12/7 last season for the Cougs and was selected to the all-Pac-10 second team.  Although he is questionable in terms of draftability, he became a father in 2010 and that no doubt influenced his decision to leave school.  He mentioned in his statement that he would be fine with playing overseas for a little while first.  Let’s hope it works out for him.
4. Some weekend transfer news…  LaSalle’s Aaric Murray has apparently narrowed his choices down to either Kansas or West Virginia.  The 6’10 sophomore averaged 15/8 last season in his second consecutive all-Big Five season for the Explorers.  He will have to sit out the 2011-12 season, but would be well poised to step into a starting role at either school after Thomas Robinson and Kevin Jones move through their respective programs.  Over in Syracuse, Jim Boeheim intimated that troubled freshman Dion Waiters may be on the outs sooner rather than later, noting during the weekend that “sometimes change is better for everyone.”  Waiters is considered a possible star in the making, but his attitude has gotten him into hot water at SU and he may have to blossom elsewhere next year.
5. An estimated 40,000 fans turned out in Hartford to celebrate the UConn Huskies’ national championship season on Saturday afternoon.  Jim Calhoun, Kemba Walker and the rest were all smiles as they paraded through the streets on a double-decker bus carrying the hardware they earned in Houston two Mondays ago.  The Hartford Courant had a bunch of great pictures on their site which we suggest you check out, but the below photo was our favorite one.  Given the cash-strapped state of the Connecticut government, it took a considerable amount of private proceeds from local businesses to make the parade actually happen (instead of a much smaller rally), which shows just how much the area supports their team — when it came to put up or shut up, they put up their own funds to make it happen.
   

   Kemba & Co. Celebrated in Style Sunday (H-C/B.Hansen)

It’s obvious why everyone loves March Madness, but why do people particularly love it when schools like Butler and VCU make runs to the Sweet 16 and, in this year’s edition, the Final Four? For the same reason everyone loves the early-round upsets. It’s the perception of David beating Goliath, the idea that some unranked team from a little college nestled in the woods in middle America can knock off a squad long on hype and McDonald’s All-Americans from some Power Six conference team. Kentucky and Connecticut may have the majority of partisan fans in Houston this weekend, and we’re sure Butler and VCU will be represented as well as they can be, but any unaffiliated fans inside of Reliant Stadium and watching at home will be rooting for those little guys. One of the hottest topics we’ve heard on sports talk radio and read about in numerous outlets since the incredible wins by Butler and VCU over the weekend is how great it is that two small schools made the Final Four and that one of them is guaranteed to play for the national championship.

Wait…VCU? A “small” school? Maybe we need to redefine our terms.

(Dollar amounts from Basketball State, and are as of 2010.)

Check out that table. If you look at total enrollment, VCU is the biggest school in the Final Four. It’s the only school with more than 30,000 students, and of all the athletic revenues they brought in last year, they spend the second most money by percentage on men’s basketball of the four remaining teams. Butler, as you can see, spends the highest percentage of its athletic revenue on our game. So what exactly are people talking about when they use terms like “small school” and “little guy” to describe programs like VCU’s? What makes a school small in a basketball sense? How can the biggest school left in the Tournament be…a mid-major?

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Past Imperfect is a series focusing on the history of the game. Every Thursday, RTC contributor JL Weill (@AgonicaBoss | Email) highlights some piece of historical arcana that may (or may not) be relevant to today’s college basketball landscape. This week: the boy wonder Damon Bailey.

It doesn’t seem odd to us these days to see kids touched by the grace of the basketball Gods at 14 and 15 years old, kids deemed saviors by followers of the game and coaches, too. Oh, sure, we act aghast that a coach would offer a scholarship to a 14-year-old, then we applaud and massively reward coaches who reel in the top talent, the very kids who have generally been courted since they were in junior high. But years ago, this still seemed something beyond the game. In an era where going pro early meant leaving as a junior, identifying and — more so — publicizing the exploits of a pre-high school-age player came across as crass, perhaps even unethical. My how times change.

Ignoring for the moment a decade in which high school kids were handed the keys to the NBA castle, we have become so inured to the phenomenon of the phenom, so accustomed to the custom of the precocious freshman, we no longer think it all that strange that kids are being identified and categorized and ranked and evaluated at an early age. It seems, well, normal. And why shouldn’t it? Last season, two freshmen were named first-team All-America, and this season many feel another freshman, Jared Sullinger, could be Player of the Year. That’s not a problem. That’s just the way it is.

Two decades ago, freshmen were certainly scrutinized, and plenty saw of minutes. The Fab Five entered college in the fall of 1991 and changed the way freshmen were regarded forever. But even then, in the pre-dawn of the age of the freshman, tapping a kid as a star before he has even settled on a high school seemed somehow too much. And then there was Damon Bailey.

*      *      *

The story came straight out of the big screen: Once upon a time in Indiana, a blond-haired kid with a square jaw and a jump shot is called one of the best basketball players in America. He outmuscles bigger players and out-quicks smaller ones. He can pass, he can score. He is tough-nosed and plays aggressive face-up defense and knows how to win. In fact, his team is undefeated two years in a row. A legendary college coach comes to watch him work. Of course, the star of this story has never played a minute of high school basketball. This is because he is still in the eighth grade.

The classic basketball film Hoosiers came out in 1986. A year later, Damon Bailey echoed the ethos of that iconic movie when he arrived on the basketball scene with a flourish, thanks to a writer and a Hall of Fame coach. That Bailey had little in particular to do with his fame is a story in and of itself – a script within a script.

This script shows Indiana University head coach Bob Knight – by that time a three time national champion and the physical embodiment of Hoosier basketball – coming to see this 14-year-old kid play, standing at the door with his arms folded as commotion abounds due to his very presence. Afterwards, Knight, in a bit of Knightian hyperbole, states to his coaches that the kid is better than the guards Indiana has at the time. Then the writer reports it, and the legend begins.

Damon Bailey had fame thrust on him when his name was part of a bestselling book.

In an era before the Internet, before fans could see clips of high school stars  — heck, junior high stars – dunking and juking and sweet shooting past and over outclassed opponents, it took a lot to get noticed by the national sports media. Yes, there were Five-Star Camps and recruit ranking services and nationally recognized recruiting analysts. It’s big-time basketball, so of course there was. But it wasn’t quite yet the sport unto itself it is now, and, more importantly, it wasn’t something readily accessible to the general college basketball fan, save possibly a back-page mention in a Street & Smith’s or Blue Ribbon preseason magazine.

But Damon Bailey got noticed. That’s what Bobby Knight coming to your junior high game can do for you. It’s also because Bailey’s presence (and Knight’s) was featured prominently in John Feinstein’s bestselling yearlong excursion into an Indiana Hoosiers season, A Season on the Brink. That’s where the story of Knight’s visit to the tiny gym in Shawswick first came to light.

And it’s also because Bailey was very, very good at basketball. But if the story of Damon Bailey was just making itself known to fans of the college game outside Indiana, the legend of Damon Bailey was already well under way in Hoosier-land.

*      *      *

Bedford, Indiana, is not a big place. Just 14,000 people or so. It’s the kind of place where being a good basketball player is a big deal. And it’s the kind of place where being a basketball legend is the biggest deal there can be. Damon Bailey was as big a deal as Bedford had ever produced. In November of 1986, no less than Sports Illustrated tabbed Bailey the country’s best ninth-grade hoopster. Add this to the praise afforded him by Coach Knight, and you can imagine that it would be tough for any kid to live up to that kind of hype. And it was, and it is. But that’s what Bailey did, beginning right away as a high school freshman.

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That’s Debatable is back for another year of expert opinions, ridiculous assertions and general know-it-all-itude.  Remember, kids, there are no stupid answers, just stupid people.  We’ll try to do one of these each week during the season.  We’re fairly discerning around here, but if you want to be included, send us an email with your take telling us why at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

This Week’s Topic: Santa is stopping by your house this week, and he’s bringing you one thing that you really want this college basketball season and he’ll take one thing away when he leaves.  What are those two things?

Ned Reddick, RTC contributor

My wishes for Christmas are pretty simple. I would ask Santa to bring Kyrie Irving back. No matter what you think of Duke it would be difficult to find a part of his game that a basketball fan would not enjoy. He’s fundamentally sound, athletic, and he plays hard. Although his absence makes the season more interesting in the sense that it makes the championship picture less defined, with Irving suiting up for the Blue Devils they would be the heavy favorites to win the title. With him on the sidelines in street clothes they are just one of about four or five teams that have a legitimate shot at the title. As for taking something away I would ask Santa to make players stop putting themselves in bad situations. I know they are just college students who as a group tend to do dumb stuff, but I wish they could stop taking things that the NCAA deems as impermissible benefits (like clothing or money) or just breaking the law (like a DUI or stealing other people’s stuff). It’s unfortunate that they are willing to risk a potentially lucrative career for a short-term pleasure so I hope Santa can take that away.

Brian Otskey, RTC contributor

This is a bit out of left field, plus it will never happen, but I’d want to see live video of the debate inside the committee room in the days leading up to and on Selection Sunday. I think it would be fascinating to see what they focus on rather than what we fans and the media lurch onto as the most important criteria. I’m glad the NCAA allows the media to participate in a mock bracket for a few days because it’s fun to read about the process and how they went about it, but nothing compares to seeing the real thing. Also, last year’s bracket was riddled with procedural errors and I’d be interested to see if they really focus on that or not. As for what I’d get rid of, that’s easy. All the agents, handlers, AAU coaches, etc. that make up the nasty part of recruiting. Seriously, why does a high school kid have to have his “people” decide where to go or what to do? What person that age has to have an entourage? It is terrific that the NCAA appears to be cracking down but they have a long, long way to go.

Andrew Murawa, RTC contributor

Well, I asked Santa to bring me the title of the commissioner of all sports, but he just mumbled something under his breath. “But Santa, all I want to do is ban the use of domed stadiums in sports that are meant to be played outside,” I said, but he saw right through that, knowing that a college football playoff would be coming along right after that. And you know Santa, he’s a big fan of those bowl games. Anyway, after some haggling, Santa has promised me a couple of four-day national holiday weekends in March. He’s got an in with the holiday creation board for some reason – I’m guessing blackmail, but you never can tell with Mr. Claus. He’s a mysterious one. And, just as a personal favor to me (we go back quite a ways), when he leaves on Christmas morning, he’s taking away four NCAA Tournament at-large bids, although I suspect he’s just going to dump them somewhere near the site of the Great Alaska Shootout on his way back home.

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1. The talk of Thursday was all Kyrie Irving, all the time.  The superstar freshman’s toe situation has the college basketball world buzzing about whether he’ll play again this season.  Even Irving himself fueled the fire with this tweet on Thursday morning suggesting bad (or at least, not good) news.  Jeff Goodman writes that Duke is still a national title contender, with or without the talented rookie, but obviously the Devils’ margin for error would now drop precipitously.  As Duke and Irving mull over the medical options available to him, our crack team of contributors at RTC debated the impact of Irving’s loss on the national landscape.
2. There was an amazing comeback on Wednesday night and almost nobody outside of 432 lonely souls on a cold night in Fairfield, Connecticut, knew about it.  In a classic intersectional battle between 2-6 Hartford and 1-7 Sacred Heart, the SH Pioneers found themselves down 51-31 and their prospects looking rather bleak for a second win with eight minutes to go.  An 8-1 run followed by a march to the free throw line — remember kids, scoring with the clock stopped is the best way to score! — where Sacred Heart hit 11 of 12 foul shots brought them back into the game.  A late steal, foul and subsequent free throw with 0.2 seconds remaining by Stan Dulaire sealed the unlikely victory for the Pioneers.  We hope that none of the few in attendance decided to beat the traffic early!
3. The SI boys’ columns came out on Thursday, and if you’re reading this, you know that Seth Davis and Luke Winn are always worth a look for some insights nobody else will have thought of yet.  Davis gives the Pitt Panthers some overdue dap (the quietest #3-ranked team in modern hoops history?) while correctly calling out NC State fans for their intellectual dishonesty, and Winn continues to make better use of interesting graphics and clip-art in his Power Rankings than any college basketball scribe has ever dared to attempt.
4. Have you ever seen an 11-year old dunk in a game?  No, we hadn’t either.  But we’d never seen a 6’2 pre-teen named Adrian Moore, and get this, according to a profile from BIAH, Baylor is already recruiting the young lad who can sky from the Class of 2016.  Michael Avery, anyone?  We don’t think Michael Avery was doing this kind of stuff in middle school, though…  and whatever happened to that Kentucky coach who was recruiting him?

5.  Oregon unveiled a new throwback jersey yesterday that the Ducks will wear in their upcoming Saturday game against local rival (and current D-III school) Willamette University.  The unis refer back to the first game ever played at venerable old Mac Court, a 38-10 victory for the Ducks over WU in 1927.  We’re pretty sure that Phil Knight wasn’t selling shoes from the back of a truck outside the Oval in the 20s, but he’s certainly found a way to make these throwback jerseys look pretty cool (with a conspicuous swoosh on the right shoulder, of course).  (ed. note: pay no attention to the eye hovering behind the jersey)

1. For those of you who, like us, are into such things, Ken Pomeroy added the player ratings to his website late last night.  Some of the more interesting findings after one month of the season?  Arizona’s Derrick Williams and UConn’s Kemba Walker have the two highest offensive ratings in the nation, Miami’s Reggie Johnson has been the best offensive rebounder in the country, and St. Mary’s guard Steve Holt is the nation’s best pickpocket.  Steve Holt! You can spend hours fiddling around on there learning the hidden secrets of the game, secure in the knowledge that Pomeroy’s work has made the college basketball world a slightly better place.
2. From the you-don’t-see-this-every-day department, College of Charleston announced on Monday that the school had signed top-50 recruit Adjehi Baru, a 6’9 forward who spurned offers from several ACC schools including North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia Tech.  Needless to say, Baru represents the highest-rated recruit ever signed by the school.  The SoCon occasionally puts players into the NBA (most notably, Stephen Curry), but rarely are those players considered elite recruits coming out of high school.  Tremendous get for CofC head coach Bobby Cremins.
3. Seth Davis takes a look at some of the intricacies of calling a foul when a player swings his elbows around, and even though he warned us, we came out of it more confused that we were before we started.  One of the more interesting nuggets of the article, though, is that it appears that the use of the block/charge semi-circle underneath the basket in select preseason tournaments was a rousing success.  We’ve been asking for that thing for years (familiarly called the “Battier zone”), and with that sort of a commendation it may be well on its way.
4. Some injury news…  Duke’s Kyrie Irving will likely not play in Wednesday’s game at home against Bradley as a result of a toe injury that they’re hopeful will not become a serious problem.  They clearly want to be careful with him, but with games against the Braves, St. Louis, Elon and UNC-Greensboro between now and the new year, they can afford to take their time with him.  In less important-to-his-team news, Baylor will lose freshman guard Stargell Love for up to two months as a result of a stress fracture in his left foot.  He was playing about sixteen minutes per game, but with AJ Walton and LaceDarius Dunn manning most of the backcourt minutes, the Bears should be alright in his absence (assuming no further injuries).
5. We hate doing these, but long-time Marquette Warrior Hank Raymonds passed away on Monday after a battle with cancer.  Raymonds was not nearly as well-known nationally as his boss Al McGuire, but he was an integral part of the Marquette program as the masterful x & o tactician/assistant behind the charismatic McGuire.  After the 1977 national title and McGuire’s retirement, Raymonds took over the program as head coach and athletic director, and led the Warriors to a 126-50 (.716) record in six seasons, including five NCAA Tournament appearances and a Sweet Sixteen in 1979.  In reading through the comments in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s story on Raymonds, it’s easy to see just how beloved this man was in the Marquette community.  RIP, Hank.

1. The ACC/Big Ten Challenge ramped up last night, and as you’re probably aware by now, the Big Ten leads the Challenge 4-2 after a dominant evening where only Iowa lost on the road at Wake Forest.  Going into tonight’s five-game set, the ACC will be favored in three of the games, but if Wisconsin and Penn State can take care of business at home against NC State and Maryland, respectively, the Big Ten will win its second consecutive Challenge.  If either of those two drops the ball, the Big Ten’s next best shot for a road win will be Tom Crean’s Indiana team taking on a rebuilding Boston College, or Purdue going to Coleman Coliseum to take on Virginia Tech.  The one game we’re giving to the ACC right now is the Duke game against Michigan State in Cameron Indoor Stadium.  Remember when MSU played UNC a couple of years ago at Ford Field in this event — that Spartan team still made the Final Four, if you recall, but Carolina ran Michigan State out of the building.  We expect Duke to do likewise tonight.
2. Free Guy-Marc Michel?  We’d expect to see shirts like this popping up around Bloomington after the NCAA yesterday rejected Indiana’s appeal for the 7’0 freshman’s eligibility to play college basketball for the Hoosiers this season.  The Martinique native played in five games with a French club team that included professionals in 2007-08, but the more troubling issue according to the NCAA was his admission to a university in 2006 which created problems with their “five years to play four” rule.  Indiana is off to a 6-0 start but they haven’t played anyone of consequence yet, but it’s never bad to have a seven-footer lying around in case you need one.  That option is now off the table for Tom Crean’s team.
3. Speaking of Indiana, the Hoosiers’ ACC/Big Ten Challenge opponent tonight will be Boston College.  Gary Parrish takes a look at how its new coach, Steve Donahue, is trying to balance the competing interests of teaching his players how he wants them to play the game and trying to win those games.  He used the early-season loss to Yale as an example of what not to do, and it paid off with a 2-1 record at the Old Spice Classic last weekend.
4. One of the few remaining uncommitted top 25 players in the Class of 2011, DeAndre Daniels, has narrowed his list to four schools: Texas, Kansas, UCLA and Florida.  The 6’8 forward whom Rivals has rated as the #9 overall prospect in the class was once a Texas commitment, but he re-opened his recruitment last summer.  He’s originally from the Longhorn State so the smart money is still probably on Texas, but don’t count out Bill Self or Billy Donovan in this race (Daniels is playing at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida this season).
5. Former Maryland star and current ESPN commentator Len Elmore, a Harvard Law graduate who never suppresses his informed opinions, believes that the NCAA should suspend Tennessee head coach Bruce Pearl for two years as a consequence of his lying to investigators about his transgressions.  He said that the Tennessee’s salary docking of $1.5M and the SEC’s eight-game suspension of the coach were a “total cop-out.”  Our position on this isn’t quite as punitive as Elmore’s, but we also believe that the NCAA will come down hard on Pearl when they decide to hand out any sanctions.

1. It’s Opening Night, part trois.  Yeah, we know that the “official” opening night was on Monday and then again on Wednesday with the 2kSports CvC games, but there are 135 games tonight that say quite differently.  Tonight is the first night that teams not in that exempted tournament are allowed to hold games, and the majority of D1 teams have chosen to do so.  Why they’re exempted we have no freaking idea, but that’s an argument for another time.  The point is that college basketball is back in earnest this evening, and we can formally agree that the season is underway.  For a list of each night’s biggest games around the country, be sure to check out the “Nightly Nonsense” box above.
2. Hoosier Nation rejoiced as Tom Crean beat out North Carolina and local-sensation Brad Stevens and Butler for the services of 6’9 power forward recruit Cody Zeller yesterday.  Zeller was one of only two of the top 25 players left on the big board, so under normal circumstances this probably wouldn’t be so newsworthy.  But the takeaway here is that Zeller, while likely not a program-changing recruit, is the first major homegrown talent to sign with Indiana since Crean took over in Bloomington nearly three years ago.  There was a time not too long ago when every kid who grew up in the Hoosier State wanted to play for the Hoosiers, but the last decade-plus hasn’t been all that kind to the program as player after player left for other environs.  Re-building that pipeline of in-state talent is essential to IU becoming once again a player commensurate with its historical presence as a top-six program along with Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, UNC and UCLA.  This is the first step toward that end.
3. Villanova’s JayVaughn Pinkston has been charged with two counts of assault and harassment and therefore will be held out of games until his legal situation is settled.  He will be allowed to continue with other team activitites, which includes practicing with the team.  VU has three games in the next eight days (vs. Bucknell, Lafayette & Marist), so we wouldn’t expect to see him in any of those.
4. Sigh…  Minnesota’s Devoe Joseph is the latest and greatest player who has now been suspended indefinitely for “off the court issues” involving a violation of team rules.   According to the article, the issues are not academic nor injury-related, so that means it’s something he’s not doing up to Tubby’s standards of conduct.   He will not be playing in the Gophers’ season opener against Wofford nor next week’s game against Siena and traveling to the subsequent Puerto Rico Tipoff. Let’s hope he figures it out, because Minnesota needs him.
5. You certainly now know that Kentucky’s Enes Kanter took $33K in salary as a member of a Turkish club team which the NCAA deemed makes him ineligible to play college basketball.  Jeff Goodman writes that it was a risk well worth taking for John Calipari, whose reputation wasn’t going to change regardless of the NCAA’s decision, and despite how unlikely it was that Kanter would ever have become eligible (not even Oak Hill Academy would take him).

1. Today is the basketball version of National Signing Day, inasmuch as the sport has such a thing.  Officially it’s the first day of a week-long signing period, but there’s virtually no drama this year as most of the elite players have already made their collegiate choices (23 of the top 25 players, according to this Sporting News article).  The two biggest names still on the board are 6’8 power forward DeAndre Daniels from Bradenton, Florida, and 6’10 power forward Cody Zeller, from Washington, Indiana (brother of Tyler and Luke).  Daniels is expected to wait until the spring signing period to make his choice but Zeller has scheduled a press conference on Thursday where he will choose between UNC, Indiana and Butler.  Scout has some interesting information available as to which conferences have the strongest aggregate classes thus far, and breaks down the classes for each school within each.
2. What will a thumping at the hands of the University of Indianapolis get ya?  How about a 5:30 am film session to see in living color all of your mistakes from the night before?  That fate befell Bruce Pearl’s Vols yesterday morning a few short hours after Indy walked out of Thompson-Boling Arena with a 79-64 win.  Obvious joke: did the Tennessee players refuse to acknowledge that it was actually them on the screen when Pearl asked them questions?
3. This is an absolute must-read from a guy that literally nothing in this sport gets past — Jeff Goodman’s 68 Things to Watch in the 2010-11 Season.  Goodman is one of the few in this business who, when he says something has a good chance of happening, we actually listen.  You should too.
4. CNNSI came through with its Crystal ball selections from its three primary CBB writers: Seth Davis, Luke Winn & Andy Glockner.  Look at Sexy Seth with the Gonzaga Final Four pick!  There’s a lot of great stuff in this article, so read it, but we’re especially loving Winn’s pick for Surprise Team, Glockner’s choice for Best Player Nobody Knows About, and Davis’ Flop Team.
5. More exhibition nonsense last night:  Syracuse got its revenge on last year’s nemesis, Le Moyne, 91-48, which clearly means that this year’s Orange squad is a lock for the Final Four since the 2009-10 edition could only muster the Sweet Sixteen.  SU hit 11-16 treys, which addresses one of their key questions going into this season.  Kansas also defeated Emporia State, 90-59, and Purdue beat Midwestern State, 78-58, last night.  As for games that count, the 2kSports CvC continues tonight at the four regional sites of Austin, College Park, Pittsburgh and Champaign.  We’ll have our SYT out later today for those.

1. It’s been 217 days and nights since Duke and Butler thrilled us for two hours on a warm Monday night in Indianapolis, but ladies and gentlemen, make sure that you have your affairs in order because starting tonight college basketball shall be lovingly (re)welcomed into our homes.   For the next 147 days until we convene in Houston on another warm spring night for a championship, our season is back in session.  Twenty-one pending weeks of squeaking sneakers, packed gyms, ridiculous finishes, burgeoning controversies and “fear the beard” chants.  You know us — we’ll be right there from start to finish with the high-quality analysis and coverage you’ve come to expect.  But you know what might be the best part of all?  The silence.  We will not be talking about the BCS, Brett Favre or the LeBron James Nike commercial.  Here you won’t find Randy Moss analysis, Hot Stove rumors or coverage of whatever Phil Jackson/Jerry Buss fracas develops this year. If you want that kind of coverage, we’re quite sure you can find plenty of it elsewhere.  No, we’re happy to put our fingers into our ears and descend back into the college hoops bubble;  and, frankly, we really aren’t all that interested in resurfacing again until April.  Our invitation to join us is open and can be executed at any time — won’t you be our hoops neighbor?
2. We already know that Washington’s Isaiah Thomas has a lot to say, and he often reaches to his Twitter account to express himself.  On Friday the talented Husky guard went after Fox Sports’ Jeff Goodman for his preseason all-Pac-10 selections which did not include he nor any of his teammates (we think Thomas should have been chosen too, actually).  Thomas specifically called out UCLA’s Tyler Honeycutt and USC’s Nikola Vucevic as players who shouldn’t have been chosen on the team, which means that there are at least three opponents now on the UW schedule whom he has provided bulletin board material for (Kentucky is the other).  Lorenzo Romar’s Huskies are quickly becoming must-view television this season.
3. If you consider yourself at all a hoops prognosticator, you need to get over to Vegas Watch this week and submit your preseason picks for the top four seeds in each region of the 2011 NCAA Tournament.  The person who is closest to the actual seed placements on Selection Sunday will win a cash prize, and surely the majority of our readers will be interested in this, right?
4. Former Cornell guard Jon Jaques writes in his “Blue Chips” blog that UCLA fans shouldn’t be throwing themselves off the nearest rooftops with the news late last week that prep star Quinn Cook committed to Duke despite the obvious need and a promise from Ben Howland that he could have the starting point guard position.  While everything Jaques says is true about UCLA competing in the Pac-10 this season and the deep and rich pool of talent that Howland has at his disposal in Los Angeles, he doesn’t seem to recognize that goals such as finishing second in the Pac-10 and winning recruiting battles are not appropriate analgesics for the Bruin faithful.  That program measures itself not even by Final Four appearances but by championships, and right now UCLA seems quite a few years away from competing for that kind of hardware again.
5. We rarely like to mention exhibition games because they simply don’t hold much predictive value as coaches experiment with lineups and different sets, but there were two notable events from the weekend.  First, Xavier lost to D2 Bellarmine (Ky) 63-61 on Saturday night as the Musketeer frontcourt laid a giant egg (1o points).  XU of course lost leading scorer Jordan Crawford along with big man Jason Love from last year’s Sweet Sixteen team, so it will take some time for the Musketeers to adjust.  Make no mistake, though; with Tu Holloway outside and Chris Mack on the sidelines, XU will be dealt with this season.  The other notable exhibition news from the weekend involved the first preseason AP All-American ever chosen, UNC’s Harrison Barnes.  Citing a case of what Roy Williams called “freshmanitis,” the freshman wing shot 2-9 from the field for seven lackluster points while committing six turnovers.  Don’t get used to it, though — he may not end up in single-figures again this season.