Bennet Hayes (@hoopstraveler) is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after Tuesday night’s Georgia-Georgia Tech game in Atlanta.

When the college basketball season tipped off a month ago, Georgia and Georgia Tech found themselves facing similar expectations. Neither program appeared to be sporting a team capable of making the 2013 NCAA Tournament, but there was hope that both might be improved enough to escape the SEC and ACC cellars, respectively. While the 2-5 Dawgs had slogged their way through the season’s first month (with only wins over Jacksonville and East Tennessee State to brag about), early returns had been slightly more promising for the 5-2 Yellow Jackets, and Tuesday night’s rivalry game in Atlanta only served to further differentiate the Peach State’s two pre-eminent basketball programs.

Georgia Tech Appears to be Headed in the Right Direction (AP)

Mark Fox will surely write off Tuesday’s 62-54 loss as simply another missed opportunity for his team, but boy, this one seemed to resonate on levels far beyond tonight’s 40 minutes of hoops. Maybe that added significance stems from Brian Gregory running his record to 2-0 against Fox and Georgia in his short tenure in Atlanta. Or perhaps it’s due to the fact that, for the first time in 19 years, Tech has won back-to-back games against UGA. Or maybe, just maybe, this one matters more because Gregory seems to have the best Georgia high school basketball talent headed again to Georgia Tech — and far, far away from Athens. All those elements seemed to linger in the backdrop of this one, and the frenzied energy of the sellout crowd of 8,600 at the shiny, new (the three-game old kind of new) McCamish Pavilion drove home the largest message loud and clear — Gregory and Tech are seizing firm control of college basketball in Georgia.

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The SEC/Big East Challenge tipped off last night with the SEC’s supposed two top teams putting in drastically different performances. The #8 Kentucky Wildcats were run off the floor by host Notre Dame, while the #7 Florida Gators dominated visiting Marquette from start to finish. Each conference left the competition’s opening night with two wins apiece with four more games on tap tonight.

BJ Young will be counted on to lead Arkansas when the Orange come to town in the SEC/Big East Challenge.

Friday night’s games do not appear to give the SEC much of an opportunity to pull ahead in the Challenge, though, and the match-up between Syracuse and Arkansas looks like an especially one-sided contest. However, this SEC microsite writer won’t be shocked if the Razorbacks do enough to pull off a shocker. Here are three reasons why:

1. Depth- Second-year Arkansas coach Mike Anderson is fully committed to “The Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball.” Running and pressing are necessities for his teams, and for that to work, Anderson requires a deep bench. Through the season’s first five games, 10 players are averaging more than 12 minutes/game, with no one being relied upon for more than 28 per contest. This heavy rotation allows Arkansas to continually attack on offense and defense, a strategy Syracuse doesn’t often see in their Big East opponents. If the Razorbacks can stay within striking distance through the opening stages of the game, they’ll undoubtedly be fresher than the more talented Orange late in the second half. Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @EJacobyRTC on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

The #12 Florida Gators have high expectations this season, as usual, with a loaded starting lineup that features two returning SEC stars and a bevy of other talented scorers. But Billy Donovan’s team lost much of its backcourt production from last season in Erving Walker and Bradley Beal, the second- and third-leading scorers on last year’s team who also accounted for over 40% of the squad’s total assists. Those 2011-12 Gators ranked sixth in the nation in overall offensive efficiency and came just a few plays away from reaching a Final Four. Yet does this season’s version of Florida have an even higher ceiling? Conventional wisdom would say no given the loss of its two perimeter leaders, but a strong recruiting class joins a healthier team this year, most notably a much improved senior forward Erik Murphy. Wednesday night’s 74-56 victory over defensive stalwart Wisconsin, featuring a perfect shooting night from Murphy, provided a glimpse of UF’s offensive upside that few teams in the country can match.

Erik Murphy led Florida with a perfect shooting night on Wednesday (AP Photo)

The Gators attempted and made the most three-point shots in all of Division I last season (9.6 makes per game), a crucial element to the team’s conversion of 1.15 points per possession, good for fifth in the country. While Walker and Beal’s 132 three-point makes are gone, don’t be so sure that Florida will fall off in the long-range shooting department. Preseason all-SEC senior guard Kenny Boynton and the aforementioned Murphy return 169 makes of their own, sparkplug sixth man Mike Rosario hit over one trey per game last year as well, and a loaded recruiting class of shooters joins the fold. Braxton Ogbueze headlines the freshman class as a heady point guard, while fellow newcomers Michael Frazier II, Devon Walker, and Dillon Graham all specialize as three-point bombers. Graham models his game after J.J. Redick, Walker has unlimited range from outside, and UF assistant coach Mike McCall noted this preseason of Frazier, “Every time [the ball] leaves his hand, you think it’s going in.” The Gators are already scoring at a more consistent rate this year with a 1.18 points per possession ratio. While only two games is an extremely small sample size, Wednesday’s game came against Bo Ryan’s Badgers; a masterful defensive team that finished seventh in total defensive efficiency last season.

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Evan Jacoby is a correspondent for RTC and a regular contributor. He filed this report from the Kentucky-Maryland game tonight in Brooklyn. You can find him @EJacobyRTC on Twitter. 

We assumed it was nearly impossible for Kentucky to repeat the kind of immediate, dominant success it had last season with a brand new crop of young players this year. For the first half of their season-opening game against Maryland on Friday night, though, the Wildcats came out on fire and efficient on both ends en route to opening a 15-point lead just minutes into the second half in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. But it didn’t take long for the inconsistency, poor decision-making, and defensive mistakes that are typical of freshmen players to crop up for John Calipari’s team, which opened the door for Maryland to make a run in front of a very pro-Terrapin crowd. Led by emerging sophomore center Alex Len, the Terps went on a 15-0 second half run and eventually took the lead before seesawing to a tough, 72-69 loss. Len was the catalyst on both ends for Maryland’s near-upset, as the sophomore seven-footer finished with 23 points, 12 rebounds, and four blocks — all game-highs. He shot 10-18 from the field and committed zero turnovers. Despite failing to capitalize with a monster non-conference victory, Maryland and its fans must feel confident about this season’s outlook on the heels of Len’s dominant opening performance.

Alex Len nearly led his Maryland team to a big-time upset win over Kentucky on Friday night (Maryland 247 Sports photo)

The big sophomore showed flashes of greatness last season for Maryland, but he did not put together any dominant performances that could propel Mark Turgeon’s team to big wins. The center from the Ukraine recorded six total games in double-figure scoring last year, and none after February 4. He averaged 4.1 points per game in his final 10 games and amassed just one double-double all season. Tonight was a completely different story, as Len looked much more polished in the paint with offensive moves, finishes at the rim, rebounding prowess, and strong defensive positioning. Len turned national consensus #1 recruit Nerlens Noel of Kentucky into an afterthought, dominating the freshman in the paint as well as beating him down the floor in transition on multiple occasions. Noel had just four points on 2-6 shooting to match his nine rebounds and three blocks. If not for the unlikely late-game heroics of former Kentucky walk-on Jarrod Polson, who scored 10 points tonight after recording a total of seven previous points in his career, the Terps could have left Barclays Center with a defining victory.

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Christopher Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The most recent wave of conference realignment was set off by a desperate scrambling of high-major powers to elevate their statures in a changing (re: dying) BCS landscape. Inevitably, the movement shook the college hoops world, and while most of the changes either weakened conferences, ended rivalries, or both, some leagues were made better off from the frenzied switches. The biggest victim, so it has been said, was the Big East, whose long and fruitful marriage with Pittsburgh and Syracuse will cease to exist after this season. The main beneficiary was the A-10, with newcomers Butler and VCU entering the fold this season. There were plenty of other less heralded moves – from Northern Kentucky’s jaunt to the Atlantic Sun to Texas-San Antonio’s voyage to the crumbling WAC – but I’m singling out four schools who harbor bright short-term outlooks in their new stomping grounds. New environments typically guarantee unpredictability. For these four teams, there’s nothing unpredictable about their ability to compete at the top of their new leagues upon arrival.

VCU (Leaving: CAA — Joining: Atlantic 10)

Every college hoops coaching candidate hot list starts with two names: Butler’s Brad Stevens and VCU’s Shaka Smart. They are the pipe dream of any athletic director’s wildest coaching replacement desires, and both have spurned the power conference ranks on multiple occasions. We’ll get to Stevens’ squad a little bit later (Spoiler!), but there’s no question Smart’s team, which returns basically everyone of note besides guard Bradford Burgess, is poised to make a statement in its new home. Forget the fact that the A-10 will feature its strongest competitive lineup in years. Forget that VCU is entering a league where every game will require intense focus and execution just to avoid an upset. What Smart has built during his tenure – a consistent outfit with the stability to compete at the sport’s highest level on a yearly basis – is not going away, nor will it be swayed by one of the nation’s best collections of inter-conference strength.

Better all-around competition won’t phase VCU as it makes its move to the A-10 (Photo credit: Getty Images)

VCU is not, as many speculated two seasons ago, a one-year Cinderella. The Rams are a mid-major in name only; they are as talented and as deep as most high-major ensembles in any conference. Now that I think of it, VCU is a perfect microcosm for the A-10: technically excluded from the Power Six denomination, but ripe with Tournament-bound teams and stars. Navigating that landscape will be a stark change of pace, even for a program conditioned to creating “havoc” in 40-minute samples, but VCU is no stranger to top-end competition. Last season’s Tournament run didn’t quite live up to the previous year’s Final Four appearance, but it’s worth remembering the Rams very nearly took out preseason AP No. 1 Indiana in the Third Rund. VCU is ready to join a league that offers formidable tests on a nightly basis. This season will reflect as much.

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Big ups to Superstorm/Hurricane Sandy for knocking our podcasting studio offline for the better part of a week during the busy preseason, but thanks to the miracle of electricity we’re back in action and will be rolling out the rest of our power conference preseason podblasts throughout the week. Our Big Ten preview podblast and our Big East preview podblast are already in the books, so we’ve invited our SEC microsite correspondent Brian Joyce (@bjoyce_hoops) over to talk Southeastern Conference roundball for the 2012-13 season. Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114), as always, hosts as we break down the top contenders in the SEC and some of the overrated and underrated players on the preseason all-conference lists.

We welcome any and all feedback on these podcasts including topics for future discussion or if you want to send us any questions for our “May Not Be From Actual Listeners” segment. Hit us up at rushthecourt@yahoo.com or @rushthecourt on Twitter. For now, enjoy the listen and feel free to jump around to the areas you’re most interested in by using the below outline.

Also, make sure to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after each recording.

RTC Podblast: SEC Preseason Review

• 0:45 – Kentucky: Can They Do It Again?
• 7:50 – Florida Preview
• 12:15 – Missouri Preview
• 17:55 – Tennessee as a Sleeper
• 20:53 – How Will the Top Four Finish?
• 22:30 – Best of the Rest
• 26:07 – Evaluating the Preseason all-SEC Team
• 28:43 – Phil Pressey as POY?
• 30:00 – Can Nerlens Noel Live Up to the Hype?
• 31:02 – Breakout Candidates in the SEC

Andy Glockner revealed his preseason conference rankings — quite impressively giving nearly as many words to the SWAC as the Big Ten — with the ACC coming in at fifth behind all of the power conferences except the Pac-12 (#8). Glockner’s top two make sense. The Big Ten and Big East both have fewer questions than the other conferences. Also, it’s a safe bet based on the past couple of seasons that those two will be on top of the college basketball totem poll.

Does the National Media Still Doubt Leonard Hamilton?

However, ranking the Big 12, SEC and ACC raises a few more questions. The first issue is weighting the depth of the conference against the quality of the best teams. Is it better to have a strong top or a decent bottom? Both certainly enhance a conference’s standing, but it says here that a strong top is more important. After Kansas, the Big 12 is a mess. It’s true most of those teams will be good, but does one great team (that’s headlined by Jeff Withey, Elijah Johnson, and some talented freshmen) make for the third best conference in the country? The SEC is a different story. Kentucky, Missouri and Florida have the potential to be great. Tennessee and Alabama should be good. But are those five better than the ACC’s top five? Also can any fan expect consistent results from Frank Haith?

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1. The SEC media on Monday released its preseason selections for the upcoming season and with the exception of some carpetbagging school called “Missouri” on this year’s list, it looks an awful lot like last year’s list. Kentucky came in as the choice for first place in the 2012-13 version of the SEC race with 17 first-place ballots, with Florida (five), Missouri (one) and Tennessee (one) following up the Wildcats. It appears that not much is expected from South Carolina (#11) or Mississippi State (#12) this season, which gives Frank Martin and Rick Ray an opportunity to immediately exceed expectations if they can put together some conference wins. Missouri’s Phil Pressey was chosen as the preseason SEC POY, another interesting choice given that he was a third-team selection in the Big 12 last year — clearly many pundits are predicting big things for the dynamic waterbug guard this season. Pressey was joined on the first team by Kentucky’s Nerlens Noel, Arkansas’ BJ Young, Florida’s Kenny Boynton, and Tennessee’s Jarnell Stokes.
2. While on the subject of making preseason lists of elite players, CBSSports‘ Gary Parrish and Jeff Goodman released their combined ballot for their top 50 Wooden Award candidates (which by rule cannot include transfers or freshmen). Forty-two players showed up on both of their lists, but the devil is always in the details, and where the pair differ is far more interesting and open for debate. Which writer left Ohio’s DJ Cooper off his list? Or Allen Crabbe? Or Elias Harris? The one thing missing here is the why/why not — we wish that the pair had taken the time to explain their differences, even if was only with a sentence or two at the end.
3. NCAA president Mark Emmert gave a talk at Wright State University on Monday, and The Sporting News‘ Mike DeCourcy was there to report on the proceedings. In response to a question about the highly controversial NBA one-and-done rule, Emmert stuck to his previous position on the matter by stating that he “dislikes it enormously” and finds it “anathema to the collegiate model of academics.” When pressed for additional information afterward, Emmert appears to have once again punted to the NBA, stating only that he’s had “conversations” with the league and its players’ union about changing the rule. While we certainly recognize that Emmert has no authority over the NBA whatsoever, we’d like to see him take a more forceful stance on the issue that would satisfy fans and coaches alike. If the NBA refuses to cooperate in pursuit of its own self-interest, then Emmert should begin saber-rattling likewise — he has more leverage here than he’d like to admit if he’d only recognize it.
4. With all the bad news coming out of the UCLA program recently — the ongoing sagas involving the eligibility of star recruits Shabazz Muhammad and Kyle Anderson and recent injuries to David Wear and Tyler Lamb — it was somewhat shocking to read this sunnier-than-SoCal headline from the LA Times on Monday:  UCLA basketball seems to be entering a bright new era. Mmmkay. Granted, the piece by Bill Dwyre focuses more on the long-term prospects of the Bruins program with a renovated Pauley Pavilion and a gleaming new statue of the Wizard of Westwood outside, but other than a brief mention of the NCAA’s investigation into the two freshmen, it more or less glosses over the fact that the program from the outside appears to be tottering. Maybe when Dwyre is walking around the tree-lined campus it’s easier to get lost in the Wooden mystique, but several things — not of all which are completely under Ben Howland’s control — need to come together for this program to get back on its blue-blooded track this season. It remains to be seen whether the planets and stars will indeed align.
5. Finally, Luke Winn gets historical with us in his latest column where he enters the wayback machine and finds a slim but sturdy Shaquille O’Neal facing off in an “epic” battle between LSU and the running and gunning Loyola Marymount Paul Westheads some 22 years ago. The theme of his piece is that last season’s scoring across all of college basketball was the lowest it has ever been in the shot clock era (including when it a 45-second clock was in effect in the late ’80s and early ’90s). What was defined as uptempo two decades ago would look like a different game today — even then, nobody ran the ball like LMU, but teams regularly hit 80 possessions per game, whereas nowadays most teams never see the north side of 70 per game. There are a number of reasons for this trend, of course, but we’ll save that for the book that we’ll write someday — for now, just get over there and check out the data and a superb highlight clip of a young Shaq destroying everything in his path on the way to a 148-141 victory (you read that correctly).

No surprises here: The SEC media has chosen the Kentucky Wildcats to repeat as SEC champs. John Calipari’s team, coming off the first perfect season in conference regular season play since they last accomplished the feat in the 2002-03 campaign, received 328 total votes, including 17 first place selections. Florida finished second in the voting with 310 votes (five first place votes), Missouri third (286, one) and Tennessee fourth (269, one). Mississippi State, with new head coach Rick Ray and the loss of stars Dee Bost, Renardo Sidney, and Arnett Moultrie, was picked dead last with 37 votes, over 150 votes below the Bulldogs’ preseason ranking last year. The Vanderbilt Commodores, after surprisingly winning the 2012 SEC Tournament last season, also lost nearly the same number of votes as Mississippi State because of a similarly large personnel losses. The full preseason poll is listed below.

Kentucky was picked to repeat as SEC Champs by the media on Monday

SEC Preseason Media Poll

1. Kentucky (17)  328
2. Florida (5)         310
3. Missouri (1)      286
4. Tennessee (1)   269
5. Arkansas            226
6. Alabama             222
7. Ole Miss              186
8. Georgia               149
9. Texas A&M        122
10. Vanderbilt         120
11. LSU                       116
12. Auburn               95
13. South Carolina 54
14. Mississippi State 37

1. As Missouri slowly tries to find its identity in the SEC football realm, its basketball presence has already been met with much hype and high expectations heading into the season. The Tigers’ initial move from the Big 12 to the SEC was criticized regarding the status of some of their regional rivalries, most notably with its immediate neighbors, Kansas and Illinois. Yesterday the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the “Braggin’ Rights” rivalry between Missouri and Illinois will continue through the 2016-17 season. The annual Mississippi River border showdown at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis has featured an intense regional rivalry since its inception in 1980. Missouri has won the last three meetings in the series after Illinois had won nine straight from 2000-08. As for the rivalry with Kansas, no news has surfaced (and may never surface) since Missouri’s departure from the Big 12 and thus ending the century old Border War, for now.
2.  Could Michigan’s Fab Five beat last year’s Kentucky squad? Or vice versa? Coach John Calipari defended his Wildcats in an ESPN “Numbers Never Lie” clip on Thursday. Co-host and former Fab Five member Jalen Rose, in defense of his Wolverines, jokingly stated “Kentucky cheated by not starting all five freshmen last year.” Calipari praised Rose for his vocal leadership that helped make the Fab Five a very tight-knit group and said “my team wasn’t as vocal but came together in the same way. It would’ve been a heck of a game.”
3. With the release of the Top 25 Coaches Poll earlier this week, head coach Mike Anderson and the Arkansas Razorbacks saw the difficult road that lies ahead: Seven ranked opponents on their schedule this year, including four within three weeks of each other. The Las Vegas Classic will challenge the Hogs early with games against #15 Creighton and #21 Wisconsin on November 24. Less than a week later, Arkansas hosts #9 Syracuse on November 30. In conference play, Arkansas will play home-and-home with #10 Florida and  #17 Missouri with another home game versus #3 Kentucky on March 2. Anderson will be tested early and often this season, hoping these difficult games will improve on last year’s 18-14 record and get the Razorbacks back into the NCAA Tournament.
4. In recruiting news, Missouri picked up a commitment on Thursday from ESPN Top 100 forward Johnathan Williams, III. Dave Telep of ESPN reported that the 6’8″ Memphis native chose the Tigers over Tennessee, Michigan State, Georgetown, and George Mason. Williams is ranked as the 38th best overall recruit in the Class of 2013 and the second Top 100 recruit Missouri has obtained for next year. Williams’ pick has immediately vaulted the Tigers to #16 in next year’s class rankings.
5.  New LSU head coach Johnny Jones spoke out on Wednesday about the first four practices he held this year. Jones discussed the difficulty of playing with only 11 guys and the challenge of molding his squad to understand the tempo he expects to see this season. “We want to try and make sure that our level is as such the way that we play. We’re trying to implement our system in just a short time because we’ll obviously be playing here in less than a month,” Jones said. The new head coach also praised several of his players but was still grounded, knowing they must all improve individually as well as a team going forward.