1. For the third week in a row, a player on an SEC team has been suspended indefinitely. This week’s ‘winner’ is Florida starting point guard Scottie Wilbekin, who joins the list of Missouri’s Michael Dixon (still suspended for Missouri’s game on Friday), Vanderbilt’s Dai-Jon Parker, and Mississippi State’s Shawn Smith of suspended players for indefinite and undisclosed reasons. Rush the Court‘s own Brian Joyce wrote a great piece on how Wilbekin’s suspension could hurt the learning curve of the Gators early this season.
2.  The preseason Wooden Award list was released on Thursday by the Los Angeles Athletic Club, who has sponsored the Wooden Award for the last 45 years. The SEC was represented well with six players on the list, including: Kenny Boynton (Florida), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (Georgia), Phil Pressey (Missouri), Jarnell Stokes (Tennessee), BJ Young (Arkansas), and Patric Young (Florida). The Wooden Award list prohibits freshmen from its initial release because the LAAC “has not seen them play on the college level” and thus prevents notable freshman players such as Kentucky‘s Nerlens Noel or Alex Poythress from being included. All transfers and medical redshirt players are also off this exclusive list, but they will have a chance to play their way onto it later this season.
3. Switching coaching jobs, especially across the country and into a different conference is never easy, but South Carolina’s Frank Martin has handled the move with ease. What has been Martin’s first test as the head coach of the Gamecocks before their first regular season game on Friday? Finding a regular point guard, according to Martin, who recently spoke to Darryl Slater of the Post and Courier (SC) newspaper regarding his options at the position. Junior point guard Bruce Ellington will miss the first half of the season as he wraps up his wide receiver duties with the football team and even more time could be missed until he can learn Martin’s style of play. South Carolina’s best option at this point, as described by Martin, is returnee Eric Smith, who took over the point guard duties for the last 15 games of last season. Smith was described as a more natural fit but will need to work on his consistency to keep his starting job.
4. Ever wonder why there isn’t a well-documented fantasy college basketball leagues across the country? Well, the witty folks at NBC College Basketball Talk have a solution for your inquiry. They have drafted a league using FCBLZone.com to track fantasy stats for all of the top college basketball players this season. You can follow them by searching the Twitter hashtag #NBCtheLeague. Let’s hope it turns into the college basketball version of FX’s comedy show The League. Who will play the part of Taco and his explicit ability to sell a special kind of wine?
5. What should be expected from Tennessee this season? CBSSports.com breaks down the potential best and worst-case scenarios for the Vols this season, including the opportunity for a stellar frontcourt combination of Jarnell Stokes and Jeronne Maymon in the post. Daniel Martin predicts Cuonzo Martin will get his squad back to the postseason, including a win or two in the NCAA Tournament, and we can’t necessarily disagree with him.

1. The list of ineligible players in the SEC adds another as Texas A&M’s Shawn Smith was ruled a partial qualifier over the weekend. Smith, a freshman guard on the Aggies’ roster, will only be allowed to practice with the team this season. He will be eligible next season as a redshirt freshman and still have four years of eligibility remaining. Smith joins Missouri’s Michael Dixon and Dominique Bull as well as Dai-Jon Parker from Vanderbilt as the most recent SEC players to be removed from action. Those three suspensions are ongoing and the respective schools have not released any information as to the causes for their sanctions.
2. The expectations for typical freshmen are usually low but not at a school like Kentucky. John Calipari’s system of high-caliber freshmen coupled with the ridiculous love and support of the Wildcat fans raises the expectations of their freshmen exponentially. Will  Totten at Kentucky Sports Radio wrote a piece comparing the statistics of freshmen in the Calipari era to other freshmen across the country and the reasons why the Wildcat freshmen’s numbers are slightly higher than the national averages. With everything involved with Kentucky basketball, those reasons seem pretty obvious.
3. After his visit to Auburn where he was quoted by stating he wanted to be “the face of the program,” class of 2013 recruit Austin Nichols will not be committing to any SEC school this fall. Instead, Nichols chose Memphis on Monday over Auburn, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt, becoming the fifth commitment to the Tigers program in the class of 2013. Each of the SEC teams he considered could have significantly benefited from adding a five-star recruit next year, as Kentucky and Florida have recently been the only league programs regularly signing that level of high school talent.
4. Many coaches have mutual respect for one other, stemming from their success on the court and character off it. But does that respect come from actions that took place in a high school decades ago? Frank Martin thinks it does. Martin, who is in his first year as the head coach at South Carolina, stated in an Alabama.com article that his first college essay was about Alabama head coach Anthony Grant, describing his hard work ethic and humble attitude when both he and Grant attended Miami Senior High School together. The same degree of respect goes the other way from Grant to Martin as well, as Grant has in the past described his relationship with Martin as like a ‘relative,’ stating he has been very close to him in almost every aspect of life.
5. With a healthy Jeronne Maymon in tow, Tennessee is considered by many as a dark horse pick for the SEC crown. The problem is that Maymon is not healthy. The 6’7″ senior who spent the offseason rehabilitating the second knee surgery of his career is still on the sidelines for the Volunteers with still no timetable for his return. Cuonzo Martin and the rest of his squad is learning how to practice without Maymon in the lineup and are drafting a strategy for the season once he is healthy. With Maymon out, that means more practice time for Quinton Chievous, a redshirt freshman who could take Maymon’s place because of his speed and perimeter shooting. The injury also forces highly touted returning sophomore Jarnell Stokes to take a more pivotal role in the Vols’ game plan as well as providing leadership on and off the court.

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

Lead Story: Indiana Self-Reports NCAA Rules Violation

Tom Crean Made a Mistake in the Recruitment of Gary Harris.

Indiana Commits Violation While Still On Probation. Indiana, who is still on probation until November 24 for major rules violations under former head coach Kelvin Sampson, self-reported a secondary recruiting violation recently that involved head coach Tom Crean visiting Class of 2012 shooting guard Gary Harris the day after the contact period ended. According to Indiana’s self-report, assistant coach Tim Buckley discovered the violation later that day and reported it to the Indiana compliance office. The school then contacted the NCAA that same day. Indiana docked itself two days on the recruiting trail as punishment for the violation after consulting with NCAA enforcement representative Chris Strobel. Although the potential penalty for a minor violation like this will likely have minimal impact on IU, one can’t help but wonder what was going on in Crean’s head. You know you’re on probation, you know this rule inside and out, and one of your commits has been associated with rules violations within the last six months. When you’ve been in the spotlight this much for potential rules violations, it will only hurt you. The ironic twist in all this is that Crean did this to get an upper hand in recruiting, but in all likelihood it will set him back since multiple prospects have told RTC in the past that they have completely stayed away from schools that were just thought to be committing violations, not to mention schools that were actually penalized like Indiana. By next week’s column, we should have a better idea of any possible sanctions the NCAA may impose.

What Troy Williams Is Saying

Class of 2013 standout small forward Troy Williams talked to Blue Grass Hoops about his visit and why the Wildcats are standing out right now.

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