1. Kansas AD Lew Perkins unveiled the secrets behind the curtain when he explained yesterday that the five Big 12 schools facing life outside the BCS — KU, Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State and Baylor — came up with a ‘business plan’ to keep the Texas and Oklahoma schools from bailing on them to the Pac-10.  This business plan essentially amounts to these five schools paying for the privilege of having Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in their conference.  Whether the subsidy will come from their NCAA Tournament revenue or penalties levied against Colorado and Nebraska for leaving is unclear, but what is absolutely certain is that the dollars will end up in Austin, College Station, Stillwater and Norman.  Just.  Wow.
2. Jerry Jones has done some amazing things in his lifetime, so if anyone else was pitching the idea of adding Arkansas and Notre Dame to the newfangled Big 12, we’d immediately dismiss the idea.  With the billionaire Cowboys owner saying it, we’ll at least entertain the thought for fifteen seconds or so.  For what it’s worth, Arkansas AD Jeff Long said that the Hawgs have “no interest” in leaving the SEC.  And why would they?  They are making major bank where they are, and the Big 12 is still going to be fraught with uncertainty given its ridiculous revenue ‘sharing’ agreement.
3. Here’s a good recap of Tom Izzo reactions from around the blogosphere over at BiaH.  Izzo as professional coach just doesn’t feel right.  We like this move to stay in East Lansing.
4. An interview with one of the best in the biz, Jay Bilas, for your lazy-day summer reading.
5. We enjoyed this post by Braves & Birds, an Atlanta-area sports blog, but we need to make one clarification: if you add up the value of all of the separate conference television contracts as well as the BCS bowl game contracts, it still does not approach what the NCAA Tournament brings in an average year (~$700-$800M) from its television deal.  The problem isn’t revenue in college basketball; it’s where the revenue goes.  Since the NCAA Tournament collects all the money from CBS/Turner up front and metes it out to the schools and conferences as it sees fit while all the college football dollars go directly to the conferences/schools themselves, it’s easy to see why the gridiron game is the driver here.  It also explains why there won’t be a college football playoff anytime soon as administered by the NCAA — the big-ticket schools simply don’t want to share that revenue with anyone else.

It’s being reported everywhere, now, that Tom Izzo is turning down the head coaching job offered by the Cleveland Cavaliers and staying in East Lansing as coach of the Spartans.  Chris Broussard stated on ESPN moments ago that , in addition to Izzo’s love of coaching at Michigan State, Izzo is not taking the position in Cleveland largely because he “couldn’t get assurance from LeBron James that LeBron would be back in Cleveland,” but noted that this is due to lack of contact between the two, not because LeBron left Izzo with doubts after a conversation.  By all accounts, such a conversation never happened.

A Spartan for life -- his words.

Spartan fans had reason to be nervous just before the reports began to surface that Izzo was staying;  his future still uncertain, he called a team meeting before confirming he was going to remain as the Michigan State coach, a sequence of events that one could have taken to mean that he was about to accept the job with the Cavs.  This now can only mean that he simply wanted to first alert his players to the good news as any responsible coach would do, and not have them receive it via television or tweet.

That’s why it’s good for college basketball that this man sticks in East Lansing.  Anyone who remembers how he struggled to keep his composure when asked in a post-game interview about the welfare of Kalin Lucas after Lucas tore his Achilles’ tendon knows how much he cares about his players off the court as much as on it (that’s just one example).  His players love him, he’s polite, affable, even self-effacing, as evidenced by the fact that he apologized for taking so long to come to a decision about this job offer.  Clevelanders certainly can’t be too mad at him, since he included in his statements an entreaty that LeBron hang around as a Cavalier.

1. In case you haven’t heard, the Big 12 is now a ten-team conference and Texas will earn more money than God for the woodshedding that it pulled on the rest of its conference peers on Monday.  Seriously, we’re a fan of keeping this conference together, but we don’t want to hear any whining from the Missouris and Kansas States of the world when they see the dollar differential that they’re receiving versus the Horns AND THEIR OWN PRIVATE TV NETWORK on an annual basis.  Our man on the matter Andrew Murawa once again puts it all into perspective for us in a coherent, logical fashion.
2. No news is good news for Michigan State on the Tom Izzo front, as he had nothing to say when questioned by a camper about his plans at his summer basketball camp on Monday.  If the report that Izzo and LeBron James have yet to speak is true, though, this might seem to indicate that James is noncommittal about his plans for next season and clarity on that front is unlikely to factor into Izzo’s final decision.
3. Speaking of Izzo, assuming he ultimately leaves Michigan State for the Cavs, how much revenue could that end up costing the university on an annual basis?  This article takes a shot at trying to piece that together.
4. We missed this news late last week as a result of the USC sanctions and the conference realignment madness, but it’s worth noting that Portland State was banned from 2011 postseason play because of a very poor APR (Academic Progress Rate) score.  Its 865 score from the academic years 2005-09 is far below the national average of 940 — is it coincidental that the Vikings’ two best seasons (Big Sky champs) were in 2007-08 and 2008-09?
5. Luke Winn visited CP3’s summer camp that features many top college stars, including UNC’s Harrison Barnes, Duke’s Seth Curry and Washington Isaiah Thomas.  The story about how Thomas and the other UW players were completely fooled by former recruit Terrence Jones’ decision to go to Kentucky over Washington at the last minute was very interesting — Thomas suggested that the Wildcats better watch out in November in Maui if the two teams face each other.

1. Tom Izzo update — shockingly, the Michigan State coach is still considering the Cleveland Cavaliers job, but a report that surfaced late Sunday night stated that LeBron James would be behind the Izzo hiring.  What’s less clear is whether that means James would support the hire as a member of the Cavs or as a member of some other team, a key distinction surely not lost on Izzo in trying to make his decision.  Honestly, the only way that this move makes sense for Izzo is if he can rest assured that he’ll have the opportunity to coach LeBron; otherwise, he’ll be in much the same position that his collegiate forebears such as Pitino, Calipari and Floyd found at the next level — in possession of a swollen bank account but an emaciated roster.
2. You typically don’t see this happen often, but Ralph Willard did it last year when he left Holy Cross to become an assistant at Louisville and now Indiana State head coach Kevin McKenna is leaving his post to become an assistant under Dana Altman at Oregon.  McKenna was only 43-52 in his three seasons at ISU but he did get the Sycamores to the CBI last year, so you wonder what might have been the underlying reason for this move.
3. Was the Pac-10 taking another look at Kansas in light of rumors that Texas A&M is more interested in moving to the SEC (leaving the rest of the Big 12 South to the west coast)?  Pac-10 Commish Larry Scott was scheduled to stop over in Kansas City on Sunday night, but apparently the plane never showed up.  Does this mean that A&M is back on board with the move west?  And what of Missouri, who was so gung-ho about joining the Big Ten a month ago, but who is now scrambling around to try to save itself and the rest of the Big 12 (good luck with that).  Sensing an opportunity to improve its profile, the Mountain West is already looking at both schools as possible expansion candidates.
4. D-day for the Big 12 will be Tuesday, as the regents for the University of Texas will meet to decide what, if anything, to do about the reported offers to join the Pac-10 or the SEC versus staying put.  If the Horns decide to move, the Big 12 will probably be kaput as a major conference, a doomsday situation that had its commissioner spending the weekend trying to convince UT brass that a 10-team conference could still remain viable and that the school would be free to pursue its own television deal (presumably something the new Pac-16 would not allow).  Stay tuned — much more will undoubtedly happen this week.
5. FedEx CEO Fred Smith has his own ideas about conference realignment — if any BCS league agrees to take his beloved Memphis Tigers into its fold, that league could earn up to $10M yearly for the invitation.  The most likely beneficiary?  The Big East, especially if the Big Ten as expected raids some of the conference’s football-playing schools.

1. Might want to set your alarms for this one.  UCLA will be holding a public ceremony at Pauley Pavilion for the late, great John Wooden on June 26 at 11 am PDT, and it will be broadcast live on Prime Ticket and streamed live at www.ucla.edu (brief aside: a smaller tribute will also occur today at UCLA’s graduation ceremony).  We doubt that Wooden’s tribute will get 1% the attention of what another departed Angeleno of far lesser character got last summer, but we’ll do our part (and we hope you will too) to honor the man who helped make college basketball what it is today.
2. One day after Kansas AD Lew Perkins was cleared of any wrongdoing by the university on an equipment flap, he announced his retirement effective next summer.  Um, congratulations?  Under your watch, you certainly helped to grow the Kansas football program (Orange Bowl winners in 2008) and keep the basketball program on the top plateau (national title in 2008), but the last year has been ridiculously bad, beginning with the football/basketball team fights and ending with KU apparently getting thrown to the wolves by the rest of the Big 12.  Well, he does have another year to solve some of those problems.
3. Tom Izzo update: he spoke with Cleveland officials today while MSU faithful held a rally on his behalf back in East Lansing.  His quote on the matter: “It’s not going to be forever,” referring to his dalliance with this NBA job.  Stay tuned.
4. UConn was warned over ten years ago about the “appearance of impropriety” with agent Josh Nochimson, but that didn’t seem to matter when it came to recruiting Nate Miles in 2006 and 2007.
5. Where’s your glove, Dickie V!?!  The larger-than-life ESPN commentator found a way to get himself into the news during the offseason by throwing himself into the path of a foul ball at a Tampa Bay Devil Rays game last night.

In less than 48 hours, our televisions will be taken over by the biggest sporting event the world has to offer.  Your TweetDeck (or whatever Twitter application you use) will be lousy with friends, celebrities, and sportswriters tweeting about it.  Your Facebook friends will be centering their status updates about it.  And, for the next five weeks, when you walk into your favorite sports bars, as you peer at the flat-screens you’ll notice an increased presence of a game to which you might not be accustomed.

It’s World Cup time.

Like the Olympics and the Fields Medal, this is an every-four-year event.  It pits nation against nation in the sport that still stirs up the most passion among its fans on a worldwide scale.  Imagine if we only got one NCAA Tournament every four years.  Well, this is the one summer in four that soccer (the word we’ll use for this article, though we’re aware that most of the world calls it football) lovers get to enjoy their chance to crown a champion.  If you follow RTC on Twitter (if you don’t, shame on you, and go click our logo at right), you’ve probably been impressed by our occasional tweet about other sports or even current events.  It’s not exactly a long limb we’d be going out on for us to assume that if you’re a college basketball fan, you’ve probably got an interest in other sports, too — though international soccer might not be one of them.

Want to talk to her? Know your World Cup. Yeah, we thought that'd keep you reading.

Worry not, our fellow college hoopheads.  We’ve got you covered.  We want you to be able to hang in those conversations at those sports pubs.  We want you to be able to approach that lovely blonde bespectacled German girl wearing her Deutschland jersey in the supermarket (this actually happened to us a week ago).  We want you to impress your friends with your world vision and increased overall sports knowledge.  You think those kids in the stands at Duke or Xavier or Utah State are both well-prepared and berserk?  Wait until you hear the crowd at a World Cup soccer match.  We want you to enjoy that vital aspect of it all, as well.  We’re by no means experts on the subject, but to those ends, we give you — trumpet flourish — Rush The Court’s College Basketball Fan’s Guide to Watching the World Cup.

If this England squad is like Kentucky, then Wayne Rooney is their John Wall.

THE TEAMS

First, let’s list some of the participating  teams and define those squads in terms familiar to college hoop fans.  As you’ll see, by the way, national soccer teams have some of the best nicknames you’ll ever hear.  The best?  Cameroon.  The Indomitable Lions.  I mean, COME ON…

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1. Is it just us, or does this feel like the busiest June in college basketball history?  Between Wooden’s passing, every college coach of note contemplating a chance to coach LeBron James, the insanity of conference realignment, and the endless discussion of violations and sanctions, you’d think that we were in the middle of January.  Whew.
2. The good news: Kansas cleared its AD Lew Perkins of any wrongdoing amidst allegations of trading tickets for athletic equipment.  The much, much worse news: he may no longer have a BCS conference in which to sell or trade those tickets.
3. Would Tom Izzo realistically leave his successful program at Michigan State to take a shot at coaching LeBron James in the NBA?  According to various reports last night, the answer is yes.  The MSU coach will visit Cleveland Thursday and his Spartan players already have a sense that he might be leaving for this opportunity, the latest of many in his career.  Reportedly Cleveland is offering Izzo twice his current salary of $3M per year, and of course, the opportunity to coach the player widely regarded as the greatest of his generation for the next decade.  This is a very interesting dilemma for the fiery Michigander.
4. Get excited now, kids — the SEC/Big East Invitational matchups were announced yesterday.  The headliner is that Kentucky will play Notre Dame in Louisville’s Freedom Hall after Seton Hall and Arkansas tip it off in the first game on December 8.  Three days later, Rutgers will face Auburn and Pitt will host Tennessee in the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh.  Contain yourselves.
5. As much as we like to poke fun at Digger Phelps in his role as ‘analyst’ on ESPN, we’re happy to hear that he’s recovering nicely after having prostate cancer surgery in recent days.  Quick question, though — why did Digger choose to have this surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle?  We thought he was pretty much an east coast guy.

(Not that we condone such behavior.)

Within the last hour, the AP released a report citing a source who claims that Michigan State’s legendary Tom Izzo has been in talks with the fine folks from the Cleveland Cavaliers — namely, owner Dan Gilbert, who’s a Michigan State alumnus — about the terms of a possible contract to coach the Cavs, if Izzo should feel so inclined.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Monday that such talks centered around a five year deal worth $6 million a year.  Even the John Calipari-to-the-NBA rumors didn’t get this far.

If he's talking, Cavalier fans are smiling. (G. Shamus/Getty)

If this is true, Cavalier fans should take heart.  It’s doubtful that Izzo would even be involved in such a discussion if he wasn’t positive that LeBron James was returning to Cleveland.  Even if Izzo doesn’t sign on the dotted line, Cavs supporters are probably breathing a little easier (by the way, the LeBron-O-Meter on that above link is great), not to mention that the New York Post‘s Peter Vecsey is reporting that he has an insider with knowledge of a three-year contract being finalized for LeBron.

You know how this works… here are some random thoughts bouncing around our head as we come out of a pretty damn good Final Four in Indianapolis.

Welcome to Indy!

Coach K is the Current Dean of Coaches.  But let’s get one thing put to rest right away.  He’s not John Wooden.  For all you presentists out there convinced that the era we’re currently in is tougher than any other previous one, get your head out of your sphincter.  Make all the excuses you want, but Wooden beat all comers west AND east, year after year after year after year (ten times in twelve seasons).  We could go on and on about this, and if the numbers were anywhere near each other (like if K had eight titles to Wooden’s ten), we’d entertain the argument.  But they’re not, and Coach K would probably be the first to chastise you of such foolishness.  Now, with that said, Krzyzewski is a clear #2 all-time with his most recent title.  Tom Izzo came into the Final Four with everyone gushing about his six appearances in the last twelve years, but it’s K who has done it better for longer, now with eleven F4s and four national championships to his credit.  Whenever he decides to retire, and there’s a good chance it won’t be for another decade, Coach K will have far surpassed the man whom he set his eyes on as a target way back in the early 80s — UNC demigod Dean Smith.  What seemed like a herculean impossibility at that time ultimately came to pass, as Coach K is now the Dean of Tobacco Road and the Smith family tree of he and Roy Williams must combine championships at UNC to simply match those of K (something undoubtedly not lost on Williams in his lair at this very moment).  Furthermore, Krzyzewski proved with this year’s team that he doesn’t have to have better talent than everyone else to cut down the nets — his other championship teams were stacked to the brim with future pros, but it will ultimately be the 2010 national titleist that raises his legacy from one of the coach with the best talent to one of the talent with the best coach.

K: Best in the Business

Greatest Title Game Ever? Had Gordon Hayward’s half-court shot found net, we’d be on board with this.  The storyline is just too good.  Even better than Villanova taking down big, bad Georgetown in ’85 or NC State’s miracle of miracles two years earlier.  The Jimmy Chitwood/Bobby Plump comparisons would have been endless, and we’re a little more than halfway convinced that we’d have seen our first-ever title game RTC should the ball have gone through.  Unfortunately for most of America, like many life-story endings awkwardly forced into a Hollywood template, reality leaves you waiting for the next moment that never comes — the Hayward shot didn’t magically bounce up in the air and fall back through…  The truth is that the national championship game was a hard-nosed, calculating, defensive-minded drama between two teams where every single point came with a price tag.  But it wasn’t beautiful, and in order to have greatness bestowed upon a game, it usually needs to end with a make rather than a miss.  This is not always the case, but it’s difficult to buy into the GOAT argument when the last made field goal occurred with just under a minute remaining (as a comparison, the widely-accepted greatest game of all-time, 1992 Duke-Kentucky, had five lead changes in the last 35 seconds of overtime).  So where does it rank?  Still pretty high — for our money, this was the best championship game since 1999 UConn vs. Duke (yes, Memphis-Kansas was thrilling, but not for the entire game), and is definitely in the top 6-8 in the post-Wooden era, but let’s keep our wits about us here. 

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We’ve spent most of the week reading and writing about the various ways that one of Michigan State, Butler, Duke or West Virginia will end up winning the national title and cutting the nets down on Monday night.  Duke is the favorite, but bookmakers give all four teams a reasonable shot to win it.  But often it doesn’t come down to the elevation of greatness in these situations, but instead the avoidance of weakness.  Simply playing your average game is sometimes enough to advance if you avoid a bugaboo that has plagued your team in its losses this year.  For example, if you go cold from three (see: Kentucky), or can’t make a foul shot (see: Texas), or start throwing the ball into the crowd (see: Syracuse), or over-rely on your starters (see: Ohio State) or get key players in foul trouble (see: Baylor)… the entire house of cards can come crashing down.  Let’s take a look at the four remaining teams standing to see what, if anything, could cause problems for them this weekend.

Foul Shooting

Duke (76.1%) and Butler (73.9%) are both excellent foul shooting teams, while West Virginia (70.3%) and Michigan State (68.8%) are best described as mediocre.  None of the four are downright terrible, though.  Michigan State lost games when they shot well , average and poorly from the line, so it doesn’t seem to impact their overall performance much.  Contrast that with WVU who lost three of its six games this season (@ ND, @ UConn, vs. Villanova) when they shot a collective 32-59 (54%) from the line, so they certainly appear vulnerable in that regard.  Both the Devils and Mountaineers average about 22% of their total points from the foul line, so keep an eye on WVU’s foul shooters early (especially the better ones such as Da’Sean Butler, Devin Ebanks and Kevin Jones) to see if they’re making or missing their attempts.  If they’re not going down, West Virginia is going to have to replace those points from somewhere else.

WVU Needs to Make These This Weekend

Three-Point Shooting

Butler takes 40% of its field goal attempts from behind the arc even though they only convert on 34.5% of them.  In all four of their losses this season, the Bulldogs shot at or worse than that percentage, but it has to be noted that despite hitting only 6-24 threes against Syracuse last week, they still managed to win.  Against Michigan State, you should probably figure that will need to hit at least six bombs to put themselves in a reasonable position to win the game.  MSU doesn’t take (14) or make (5) very many threes per game, so an off-shooting night from deep from the Spartans probably won’t impact their offense all that much.  Duke and WVU are equally reliant on the long ball, but Duke shoots it substantially better (38.2% vs. 33.6%).  Both teams have proven throughout the year that they can win games regardless of whether the threes are dropping or not.  The team that appears most vulnerable is this area is Butler.

Turnovers

Turnovers can kill any team if there are too many of them, but Duke (16.4% TO rate) and West Virginia (18.4%) are solid when it comes to taking care of the ball.  Both force more TOs against their opponents than they give up, but neither rely on turnovers to necessarily fuel their offense — it’s just an added bonus when they get one.  Butler is also ok at 19.1%, but Michigan State is in the danger zone here.  The Spartans turn the ball over 21% of the time, highest among the Final Four teams, and are susceptible to games where every one in four possessions ends in a miscue (nine times this year).  When Sparty goes over their season average of turnovers, they’re not a great team: 7-5 is MSU’s record when they commit turnovers greater than 22% of their possessions.  This is something to keep an eye on in the first half against Butler, as both Syracuse and K-State had trouble figuring out the Bulldog defense, and Butler is far better at causing turnovers than Michigan State is.

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