Northwestern attempts to continue its miracle season on Saturday against Stanford. Yes, the Wildcats have never been to the NCAA Tournament, but an 8-1 record has caused the dream to live on in Evanston this season. Welsh-Ryan Arena is hosting two schools noted more for their academics than their athletics. Stanford has struggled to a 5-4 record this season, but the Cardinal are coming off a close loss to Oklahoma State earlier this week. Forward Landry Fields is a do-everything forward that can light up the scoreboard, he leads Stanford with 22.9 points per game and 8.8 rebounds per game. Northwestern has been bombing opponents out of the gym lately by dropping a plethora of threes. Outstanding junior guard Michael Thompson leads the team in scoring at 17.2 points per game, but it’s a balanced attack that gets the job done for the Wildcats. You could watch this exciting game on the Big Ten Network, but no matter what you should follow along here for an entertaining look at the game and the post-game press conference.

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Ryan ZumMallen of LBPostSports is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Big West conferences.

Recap:

It was another tough week for the PAC-10 Conference, as their sole remaining Top-25 squad may be unranked by this time next week and the conference won just five of its last twelve games.

It’s also a conference of classes, with Washington and California clearly the best teams (despite recent trouble), then a clear three-team middle class and a dreadful five-team bottom class.  Most teams have scheduled cake opponents to build some confidence before heading into the Pac-10 schedule, but that may not be enough to fool voters into handing out at-large bids come March.  Already, this is looking like a three (ok, maybe four) bid conference.

Power Rankings:

#21 Washington (6-2)

The PAC-10’s last remaining Top-25 team may lose that distinction after a convincing loss to #13 Georgetown at last weekend’s Wooden Classic in Anaheim.  No shame in losing to a very impressive Georgetown team, but you expect a fellow ranked team to put up a fight (I’m getting tired of saying this about the PAC-10 this season).  It’s clear now that there are no offensive weapons besides Quincy Pondexter and Isaiah Thomas, and the Hoyas forced 25 Washington turnovers.  Twenty-five!

Washington State (8-2)

The Cougars got another good win this week, beating 5-3 Air Force by a 75-68 score at home.  Leading scorer Klay Thompson put up 19 (six below his average) and Washington State shot 51.0% as a team, with very balanced scoring that puts the PAC-10’s only eight-win team in good position as we near conference play.

California (6-3)

California is out of action this week but will returns with a bang visiting Allen Fieldhouse to take on #1 Kansas next Tuesday.  Obviously, a win would be huge for the sliding Golden Bears.  It’s also extremely unlikely.  Cal hasn’t beaten any of the three best teams they’ve faced so far this season, with losses to Syracuse, Ohio State and New Mexico.  In those three losses, the Bears are allowing 86 PPG.  If California wants to work back into the Top 25, a good showing in Kansas is mandatory.

ASU (7-3)

‘Tis the season to schedule some cake opponents before heading into the conference schedule.  That’s exactly what Arizona State did when they beat lowly Delaware State last week, winning by 40.  It was a morale booster for the Sun Devils after two losses.  But ASU heads right back into its tough schedule with a date against rising San Diego State coming up.  Are the Sun Devils for real?  This game will be a good indicator.

Stanford (5-4)

Stanford continues to surprise and impress, winning a game they should have won (85-69 over UC Davis) and nearly knocking off a very good Big 12 team (71-70 to Oklahoma State).  There’s going to be a great race for third place in the conference this season, with Stanford, Arizona State and Washington State clearly playing some of the best ball in the Pac-10 right now.

Oregon (5-4)

No one expected Oregon to be a Final Four team this year, and for good reason.  The Ducks have a pretty easy schedule and are struggling with it.  This week, they fell to St. Mary’s and then beat up on Mississippi Valley State. That’s all well and good, but consider Oregon’s next three opponents:  Oakland, Idaho State and Arkansas Pine Bluff. Their combined record?  7-21.  All at home!  Someone please tell Oregon that this is the Pac-10 and not the Eugene School District.

USC (4-4)

The Trojans are struggling visibly, but they’ll win some close games in the Pac-10 this season because of their interior dominance.  Forward Alex Stephenson is developing into a force, and Marcus Johnson had a school record 13 blocks in a 59-35 win over Idaho State.  That said, USC only beat Idaho State by six, and suffered through some severe offensive droughts.  The Trojans will likely get steamrolled by Tennessee this Saturday.

Arizona (4-5)

It was going to take some time to evaluate Arizona and determine whether the Wildcats were a poor team, or had just scheduled tough opponents.  After a 63-46 loss to San Diego State, it’s safe to say that Arizona just ain’t that good.  The Aztecs are a very strong mid-major this season, but they played ‘Zona like a mandolin.  They’ll rebound at home against Lipscomb, and then get crushed by North Carolina State and BYU before more of the same in the conference season.

Oregon State (4-5)

The bad news continues with the Beavers’ woeful ways.  Nebraska took a 50-44 win and then Oregon State fell to Illinois Chicago in a 63-61 loss.  Where is the Oregon State team that beat Colorado earlier this season?  They didn’t show up in Nebraska, where the Cornhuskers didn’t score a field goal in the final 6:53 and still weren’t threatened by Oregon State’s laughable offense.  Like the rest of the conference, the Beavers scheduled a pair of juggernauts in Mississippi Valley State and 4-5 Fresno State.  Step your game up, Pac-10.

UCLA (3-6)

The Bruins couldn’t hang with the length or athleticism of Mississippi State in a 72-54 loss, but rebounded with an offensive outburst in a 100-68 win over New Mexico State.  Glory be!  Has coach Ben Howland righted the ship?  The Bruins snapped a five-game skid, had five players in double figures and held the Aggies to 38.9% shooting, but UCLA is hardly out of the woods yet.  They face a high-octane Notre Dame attack and a strong Colorado State before hosting Pac-10 punching bag Delaware State and heading into conference play.

Games To Watch:

•  #21 Washington vs. Portland – 12/19, 10:00pm
• Stanford @ Northwestern – 12/19, 2:00pm
• Arizona State vs. San Diego State – 12/19, 6:30pm
• USC vs. Tennessee – 12/19, 4:30pm on FSN
• #21 Washington vs. Texas A&M – 12/22, 11:00pm on FSN
• Stanford @ #20 Texas Tech – 12/22, 8:00pm
• Washington State vs. LSU – 12/22 10:00pm
• Arizona vs. North Carolina State – 12/23, 10:30pm on FSN

Upset of the Night. UAB 64, Cincinnati 47. Hangover, anyone? Three days after playing the game of the year in the Crosstown Shootout against Xavier, Cincinnati travels to Alabama, shoots miserably, and falls 12 points short of their previous season low. No disrespect to the Blazers, though; they were responsible for more than their share of the Bearcats’ lackluster showing. UAB was obviously the fresher team, coming off of a 12-day stretch with no games, a time they used to improve themselves on the defensive side of things. UAB coach Mike Davis said afterward, “We knew how important it was for us to come out and really play with a lot of intensity on defense. It was the best performance we’ve had all season on defense.” The combination of fatigue (both mental and physical) and UAB defense forced UC into a 31.7% shooting night, including an atrocious 3-22 (13.6%) from behind the three-point arc. The Blazers weren’t exactly lacking on offense, either. Elijah Millsap was formidable, stepping up with 22 points and 15 boards, and Howard Crawford added 14/5. Dion Dixon, the Bearcats’ only player in double-figures (13/3), minimized the possiblity of a post-Xavier hangover when asked about it after the game, saying, “That didn’t have anything to do with it. We’re a young team, we haven’t played many games on the road.” Really? It’s true, not all of them are major contributors, but eight of UC’s 14 players are juniors or seniors. And five of their nine games this year have been away from their home floor. The most damning evidence that the Bearcats’ minds and bodies weren’t totally into this one, though, is that Cincy came in as the 10th best rebounding team in the nation, averaging 40.2 a game. UAB ranks 179th (32.6 RPG). Tonight UAB owned the boards, 44 to 29. No doubt, Cincinnati will be back, but it was UAB, now 9-1, who served notice to the rest of the nation tonight.

UAB Drove Around Cincy All Night (AP/Butch Dill)

RTC Live.  Oklahoma State 71, Stanford 70. RTC Live visited Maples Pavilion for the first time this evening, and although the fans weren’t all that excitable throughout the game, we were treated with a near-miraculous finish as Stanford hung around just long enough to have a shot in the air to win this one.  It didn’t happen, as Andrew Zimmermann’s drive to the left and subsequent shot attempt went long and fell harmlessly off the glass into the hands of an OSU player, but for most of this game it appeared that the Cowboys were the far superior team, so the fact that Stanford was even in that position had to be a positive for Johnny Dawkins’ team.  The two stars for the respective teams both had big nights — OSU’s James Anderson dropped 28/6/3 assts, including several very difficult three-point plays the old-fashioned way and a few deep threes the modern way in the second half.  Stanford’s Landry Fields had 22/12/4 assts to keep the pace, and it was his playmaking down the stretch that led to open looks for Stanford to crawl back into the game.  Dawkins has to be kicking himself a little bit, though, as the Cardinal committed 11 fewer fouls than Oklahoma State, shot thirteen more FTs, yet only earned four more points from the stripe — that’s what 12-24 will do to you.  It was OSU’s second-half three-point shooting (6-12) that gave the Cowboys as much as a 15-pt lead, but Stanford’s Jeremy Green (19/7) stepped up with a few timely shots to keep his team within striking distance.  We came away not very impressed with either team tonight, but clearly Oklahoma State should feel good about itself in getting a road win, even one against a Pac-10 team with half the fans not in the building tonight.

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Hello again everybody, it feels like it’s been a long layoff since we last did an RTC Live, but truth be told, it’s only been three days.  Still, by our count, this will be our 49th RTC Live game of the season, and we’re only about five weeks strong.  Tonight we’ll be heading to a new venue (for us), Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, for the eleventh game of the Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series, which so far the Big 12 has dominated by a score of 8-2.  Both of these teams come into tonight’s game with question marks.  For the home team, Stanford has played up and down all season, losing games at San Diego and vs. Oral Roberts, yet taking the now-unbeaten and super-talented Kentucky Wildcats to overtime in the Cancun Challenge (a game that Stanford should have won).  Senior forward Landry Fields is their do-it-all player, coming into this game averaging 23/8/3 assts/3 stls per game as a high-volume contributor in both minutes and shots.   Sophomore guard Jeremy Green has become Johnny Dawkins’ second option, coming into this one averaging 15/4 and over three treys a game this year.  As for Oklahoma State, the Cowboys come into this game at 8-1 overall, but they lost their only true road game badly at Tulsa two weeks ago.  James Anderson is the foil to Landry, averaging 20/7 from the wing and featuring a vast array of athletic moves that create scoring opportunities.  That matchup should be an interesting one all night.  Maples is not an easy place to play when the fans are engaged, so this one (simulcast on FSN) should be a great environment for some December college hoops.  Join us for all the action tonight. 

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Ryan ZumMallen of LBPostSports is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Big West conferences.

Player of the Week.  Nic Wise (Arizona) – The 5-foot-10 warrior has willed the Wildcats to a few victories this season and posted 19.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.0 assists this week with a loss to Oklahoma and a win over 7-2 Louisiana Tech that could point Arizona in the right direction going into a tough stretch of the schedule. Some players score more points, but no player means more to his team than Wise does. He absolutely belongs in the Pac-10’s elite class of point guards with Jerome Randle and Isaiah Thomas.

Power Rankings

• #16 Washington (6-2) – The Huskies finally got a double-figure performance from highly touted freshman guard Abdul Gaddy when he scored 11 in a win over Cal State Northridge, but he didn’t do much in a tough 74-66 loss against #13 Georgetown today.
• California (6-3) – The preseason favorite to win the conference is still a damn good team, with losses to three quality opponents and one of the few victories in the lopsided Pac-10/Big-12 Challenge. The Golden Bears righted the ship this week with two blowout wins and have ten days between now and their next game, a true challenge on the road against the #1 Jayhawks. The conference’s deepest squad boasts four players in double figures and a likely Pac-10 Player of the Year candidate in point guard Jerome Randle.
• Washington State (7-2) – The Cougars rebounded from consecutive losses with a win over Idaho this week. No secret here, but Washington State’s chances almost solely depend on guard Klay Thompson, who is currently balling out loud. The sophomore scores 25.8 per game, but posted just 18.5 in losses to Gonzaga and Kansas State.

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Michael Vernetti is the RTC correspondent for the West Coast Conference.

Standings (through games of 12/8/09)

1. Saint Mary’s 6-1
2. Gonzaga 6-2
3. Portland 5-3
4. Santa Clara 4-4
5. San Diego 4-5
6. Pepperdine 3-5
7. Loyola-Marymount 3-6
8. USF 2-6

The Best

With approximately one-quarter of the 2009-10 season completed, does it make any sense to designate the league’s best team so far? If so, what criteria should be used? Saint Mary’s has the best winning percentage and leads the conference in several key statistical categories (scoring offense, scoring defense, scoring margin, rebounding margin, and blocked shots), but has compiled that record against a mixture of strong (Vanderbilt, San Diego State, and Utah State) and weak teams (Cal Poly, New Mexico State, and San Jose State).

Gonzaga has two losses, but they came against powerhouse Michigan State on the road and up-and-coming Wake Forest at home. The Zags’ three wins at the Maui Invitational were over a resurgent Colorado, Big Ten stalwart Wisconsin and potential Big East contender Cincinnati. That performance, plus a come-from-behind 74-69 victory over Washington State at home on Dec. 2 was enough to vault the Zags to a high of No. 16 in the ESPN/USA Today poll before they fell to No. 22 following the loss to Wake. Zag fans would argue strongly that their more difficult schedule in the early going gives them the nod over the Gaels, and the national media agrees by awarding Gonzaga a Top 25 ranking while casting only a few votes for Saint Mary’s.

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Ryan ZumMallen of LBPostSports.com is the RTC correspondent for the Big West and Pac-10 Conferences.

Sometimes it’s not so painful to watch a once proud and mighty warrior fall from grace, as it is bizarre.  You may be able to accept that nothing lasts forever, and that eventually the tide must turn. But it’s one thing to have a rebuilding year, and quite another to be a national laughingstock.  Yet, that term best describes the way that Pac-10 teams have performed so far in this early season. It also describes the way that the conference’s flagship program, the UCLA Bruins, has performed so far in this early season.  The Pac-10, we knew, was a conference in decline. But few predicted that the decline would be so far, so fast.

The conference’s two Top 25 teams have each suffered losses to unranked, seemingly-lesser teams.  The conference was soundly beaten in this week’s Big 12/Pac-10 Challenge, losing each of Thursday night’s three games. In fact, until late Friday, the Pac-10 Conference has not won a single game since Monday night, when Arizona State defeated 0-5 Arkansas-Pine Bluff.  Obviously it’s early in the season, and this is a conference that will play its best basketball later in the season, but the Pac-10 was considered mediocre among the power conferences this season and has instead looked dreadful, while the two teams that did possess national potential are obviously flawed and UCLA continues to trip all over itself. It’ll take a lot for the Pac-10 to rebuild its reputation this season, so let’s take a look at what’s transpired thus far.

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Who Else is Rooting for 12-0? The Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series started tonight (ok, officially it started Sunday when Nebraska defeated USC 52-49, but the bulk of games are over the next four days), and given just how horrible the Pac-10 has been so far this year, there is nothing at all surprising about the Big 12 sweeping tonight’s games to go to 4-0 in the Series.  Can the Big 12 sweep this entire event?  It would be one of the all-time PWNDs if the west coast ballers fail to win a single game, and from our quick analysis, this is a possible, if not plausible, scenario.  In looking at the remaining schedule, there are a couple of sure losses (Kansas at UCLA; Oregon at Missouri), one likely loss (Washington State at Kansas State), three more games where (according to Sagarin’s predictor) the Big 12 team will be favored (Arizona at Oklahoma; Oklahoma State at Stanford; Colorado at Oregon State), and two other games where — admit it — you wouldn’t be shocked if the Big 12 team pulled out two road wins (Iowa State at California; Texas A&M at Washington).  Our curiosity got the better of us thinking about this (see below), and using the Sagarin spreads (which we realize are not fully interrelated yet, but should still give a decent ballpark estimate), we determined that there’s a <1% chance of the Big 12 sweeping the remaining games.  It’s the Iowa State and Texas A&M road games that really hurt, but honestly, we don’t have a lot of faith in any Pac-10 school at this point.  Anyway, that’s the math, but our general sense is that the odds of a sweep are in reality a little greater than that.

Make Mine a Double (RTC).  Texas Tech 99, #10 Washington 92. There weren’t many games tonight, but the matchup between Texas Tech and Washington in Lubbock tonight was a classic.  The game was so nice, the students rushed it twice.  Or something like that.  After TTU’s Mike Singletary rebounded Elston Turner’s second straight miss at the foul line with five seconds remaining, he dribbled it upcourt and appeared to beat the horn with a running three-pointer (see the 1:50 mark in the below video).  The students rushed the court and started celebrating only to be told by the refs that the shot would not count and we were heading to overtime.  After a bizarre interlude waiting for the robotic vacuum to clean off the floor, the players reconvened for the extra period where Texas Tech used a late 6-0 run to pull away and finish off the previously unbeaten Huskies (the last team in the Pac-10 to lose a game), after which the students RTC’d again (good for them).  John Roberson had 25/7 and Mike Singletary had 16/12/4 assts in the winning effort, while Quincy Pondexter dropped 31/5/3 stls for UW.  Quick question — has anyone seen Abdul Gaddy this year?  The freshman phenom had a ridiculously bad 0-point, foul-plagued 10-minute performance tonight, which dovetails nicely with his season averages of 5/3 on 28% shooting (10% from three).  Ouch.  Washington will not reach its goals this season without more production from this talented guard.  As for Texas Tech, the Red Raiders are now 8-0, but tonight was by far their best win of the season.  Still, the defense has been solid, and if they can get through several difficult road games coming up (@ TCU, @ Wichita State, @ New Mexico), then they could be well positioned from an NCAA bid standpoint heading into the Big 12 season.

Other Big 12/Pac-10 Games.

• #2 Texas 69, USC 50.  Texas’ defense continue to impress, as the nation’s #1 stoppers (according to Pomeroy) held an obviously outmatched Trojan team to 30% from the floor and 10% from behind the line.  Damion James had 19/9 and Dexter Pittman dominated the interior for 13/5/7 blks, including a complete emasculation of USC’s Alex Stepheson (0-8 FG).  UT’s freshman corps didn’t even play well (6-23 FG), but they really weren’t needed tonight, which goes to show just how deep and talented this Longhorn team is.
• Baylor 64, Arizona State 61.  Baylor’s Tweety Carter remains scorching hot from outside, as he nailed 7-9 threes tonight for 27/4/3 assts in an evenly-matched game between two middling major conference teams.  This gives Carter thirteen treys in his last two games, as he hit six against Xavier the last time out.  ASU led for much of the second half before a 4-minute drought at the 9-minute mark allowed Carter to do his thing, giving the Bears a lead that they would hold onto through the remainder of the game.  Baylor leading scorer LaceDarius Dunn had only 7 pts on a poor 3-10 shooting night.

Was This Really Necessary? Marshall 119, Salem International 35.  We know that it’s not Marshall’s fault that Salem Intl. is going through an especially tough season in terms of breaking in a new coach, suspended players and so on… but did Marshall really need to embarrass them by 84 points tonight?  Even though the Marshall starters barely played, it may have been a good idea to run the clock on possessions after the lead blew up to, oh, say 70 or so.  Can anyone defend this score?  Why is a CUSA team playing a D2 team anyway?  Color us unimpressed.  If there’s any justice in this world, maybe UNC will beat the Thundering Herd by 60 when they visit Chapel Hill in three weeks.

Other Games of National Interest.  After about 100 last night, we had one tonight.

• Seton Hall 89, Hartford 56.  The Hall has been very quiet in the first month of the season, in part due to their weak schedule, but the Pirates stayed undefeated behind Robert Mitchell’s 15/9 and Jeremey Hazell’s 15/2.

Sean McDonough Rips Karl Hess.  Rarely will you hear an announcer publically call out an NCAA basketball official by name for a terrible call, but during the second half of the Vanderbilt-Arizona game tonight in the Maui Invitational, ESPN play-by-play man Sean McDonough ripped Karl Hess a new one for calling a bizarre quick-trigger technical foul on Arizona coach Sean Miller for protesting a cheapie on one of his players.  Another blog gives a much more detailed take than we will here, and we’re not really buying the gambling angle they suggest, but McDonough’s comments were without question incendiary and had us thinking that he might even face some sort of internal administrative censure for going after Hess so vigorously.  McDonough’s specific comments were that:

Karl Hess, he was involved in the 54-foul game the other night, and he’s one of these officials, unfortunately, who always finds a way, it seems, to be at the center of the action.  You don’t come here to watch him officiate, but more often than not, he finds himself at the center of attention.  And here he goes again over the scorer’s table to try to sort something out…

We found a video of the situation and posted it below — the relevant parts begin after the 2:00 mark, but there are comments throughout leading up to it.

OT Exotica.  We head into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with a couple of nice overtime battles in exotic locations for tournament titles.  Both were unexpected for completely different reasons.

• #5 Kentucky 73, Stanford 65 (OT).  Even with Kentucky’s apparent growing pains in terms of defense and turnovers, nobody could have predicted that a team picked tenth in the Pac-10 that already has losses to San Diego and Oral Roberts would be able to hang with John Calipari’s stable of Wildcat stars  in the finals of the Cancun Challenge — even for a half.  Yet there was Johnny Dawkins’ Cardinal with a chance to seal the game away at the line as Jarrett Mann stepped to shoot two with under fifteen seconds remaining.  Problem is… and we see this with struggling teams all the time, Mann missed both.  That gave Kentucky wunderkind John Wall (23/4/5 assts) just enough of an opportunity to slice through the Stanford pressure to get into the lane for a foul and two free throws (which he nailed) with 2.4 seconds left.  This clutch performance came on the heels of another Kobe-style icewater jumper from the right side with thirty seconds left that had tied the game at 61-all.  In the overtime period, Stanford predictably fell apart and Kentucky’s other star freshman guard Eric Bledsoe hit a dagger three to salt the game away with 33 seconds to go.  The Cardinal should be proud of its performance, especially Landry Fields (23/13/3 assts/4 stls), who often appeared to be the best player on the court in this game (yes, just a mirage), but it’s now exceptionally clear that all the squawking Calipari has been doing about how far his team has to go is truth-speak.  The talent for this team to become something special is there, but it’s also painfully obvious that his Cats often rely on God-given abilities (especially on offense) rather than an actual understanding of strategy or the sets.  Decisionmaking by some players, especially DeMarcus Cousins, is also troubling in their naivete and youthful indiscretion.  For example, back to back horrendous decisions by Cousins late in the game to shoot a three (not his shot) and later to purposefully miss a FT attempt in a misguided attempt to get his own rebound only to foul Stanford in the process, exhibits these characteristics.  Kentucky has a chance to be very, very good, and when you have a release valve player like John Wall to cover up mistakes, that can go a long way, but there’s no doubt that UK has a lot of work ahead of it to reach its goals this season.
• Gonzaga 61, Cincinnati 59 (OT).  The other really good game tonight was in the Maui Invitational finals, where those plucky little Zags from Spokane once again proved to the world that we should never take them lightly regardless of who they lose from year to year.  Mark Few’s team won its first Maui Invitational title behind a balanced scoring effort among its starters — Robert Sacre (14/5), Elias Harris (13/7), Steven Gray (13/7/4 assts), and Demetri Goodson (12/2).  The Zags’ supposed best player, Matt Bouldin, contributed the least offensively (6/11 on 1-7 FGs), yet the others stepped up and held off a very athletic and gritty Cincinnati team that looks nothing like the disaster that Mick Cronin inherited there a few years ago.  The Bearcats’ starting five is extremely athletic and talented, and nobody is going to want to face this team as it continues to develop together (remember, Lance Stephenson is brand new and Cashmere Wright is essentially so).  We were already high on Cincy but now we’re even moreso.  One tiny complaint, though.  When Cashmere Wright decides to take the game into his own hands as he did on the final drive in regulation, Born Ready needs to be ready to get to the rim for the putback and not stand around at the three-point line pouting that he didn’t get the ball.  Just sayin’…

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Story of the Night.  Evan Turner’s Date With History.  It’s only a matter of time.  So long as Evan Turner stays healthy this year, he should have the new record for triple-doubles in a single season by around New Year’s Eve.  He’s already got two in November, which puts him in select company of 33 others players in the entire history of the NCAA to have multiple trip-dubs in one season.  The record is four, held by Stephane Lasme (UMass), Jason Kidd (Cal), Brian Shaw (UCSB) and Michael Anderson (Drexel).  We should go ahead and dust off the record book because Turner is on pace to not only beat this record, but obliterate it.  With his 16/10/11 asst night in an 84-64 win over Lipscomb, he’s now averaging an absurd 21/14/7 apg over five games this season.  He’s really not that far from approaching an Oscar Robertson-esque season-long triple-double average, but suffice it to say that we’re calling the over/under on this year’s total at 10.  The mere fact that you’re thinking about this — really thinking about this! — should give you pause as to the ridiculousness of how well Turner is playing.  If Ohio State continues to hang around the top 10-15 in America this year, does anyone else stand a chance at NPOY?

Upset of the Night.  Morgan State 97, Arkansas 94.  We guess that the Pac-10 and SEC are simply going to trade spots in this section for the rest of the nonconference season.  Arkansas, with several really good players in their lineup (Michael Washington, Rotnei Clarke, Marshon Powell), dropped a barnburner of a game to a nonconference foe for the first time in a long time (45 games).  Morgan State’s Reggie Holmes went off for 34/5/4 stls, but there’s really no excuse for a loss like this for a team like Arkansas.  Maybe it was something we saw in the body language of John Pelphrey’s players last week in St. Louis, but we feel like there are fundamental problems on this team beyond basic basketball skills. 

Co-Upset 0f the Night.  Seattle 77, Utah 74.  This is nothing short of amazing, as Cameron Dollar’s Seattle club is playing its first full season as a member of D1, and to get a win on the road in a fairly tough environment as that at Utah is very impressive.  Seattle’s Charles Garcia blew up for 24/8 and is it too early to tell Lorenzo Romar to start looking over his shoulder in the Emerald City?  The Redhawks are already 3-2 this season with wins over Fresno State and Weber State in addition to the Utes.

Maui Invitational.

• Cincinnati 69, #22 Maryland 57.  Cincinnati is looking good.  Yancy Gates dominated the inside, dropping 17/13 on the Maryland frontline, who often looked confused about where to be and what to do during this game — UC was also +15 on the boards.  Greivis Vasquez finally broke through for double-figure points (19), but he shot poorly (5-17, 0-5 from three) and his percentage for the year is downright icy (30%).  The Bearcats will take one of the other surprises of the young season in Gonzaga tomorrow night in the title game. 

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